RED-VD anyone?

[Gregory Karydis]

No, this is not another venereal disease, though I see how the marketing department may reject it on those grounds...
So say goodbye to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.
The future is red,
The RED-Video Disc

I thought since RED has made 4K the new HD, how about a new medium to rule them all?

Something to show off on your (upcoming) new 4K display ;)
Will make everyone red (it's the new green) with envy.

Hey, you could even take on sony (even more) by making REDmini capable of recording to RVD instead of a hard disk.

Now imagine in a few years theatres equipped with 4K projectors will receive the new releases on an RVD won't that be great?

Oh, I think I should've changed the title to RVD instead of RED-VD.

[Michael Schrengohst]

Hollywood exec sighs big as eyes roll......

[Ace]

redcode is a great compression format for distributable entertainment. A redcode 4k movie will easily fit on a high density medium such as a bluray disc or whatever. No doubt that the market for Red Media Player decoder chips would dwarf the camera business a few times over.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I'd say it's definitely do-able...

Although REDCODE 4K video discs will need to store at least 250GB to make it a viable format. BluRay will scale to 300GB at its maximum, but unless Sony augments the standard to include faster spin-rates and / or multiple laser pickups, it won't have the transfer rate to play back the 27MB/s for 4K 24p, let alone the 70MB/s or so needed for 60p. ;) Hey, if you're going to push a new disc format, at least make it support all the insane modes that we have to look forward to.

I definitely think 4K is coming as a distribution medium, but it will be the successor to BluRay and HD-DVD, not a near-future replacement.

[Steve Gibby]

"DVD" actually means "digital versatile disc", not "digital video disc", thus RVD would translate as "RED verstile disc", thus avoiding the term "video".

[Thom Steinhoff]

"DVD" actually means "digital versatile disc", not "digital video disc", thus RVD would translate as "RED verstile disc", thus avoiding the term "video".

How about "RRD" Red Reality Disk as that's what 4K on a Red LCD will look like.

[Thom Steinhoff]

I think you are on to something here, Gibby, not so much for throwing a new disc format into the mix, but for finding the best way to connect to a 4K projector or LCD.

I saw somewhere that now, currently, to connect to a 4K you need 4 Dual link SDI or something monstrous like that. If we just pushed Redcode to the LCD, the connection would just need to be a firewire running off of a portable drive. The TV of projector would just convert Redcode Raw to true Raw to project it--no monster drives, no monster decks, no monster connections.

Shoot, unplug your drive, plug it into the TV and play. Or, if you do get your RVD into the mainstream, shoot, edit, print in Redcode to a RVD (or 4KD) take the disk and plug it into a RVD player that connects to the TV via firewire or USB2 and you're good to go.

How amazing would that be?

[Gregory Karydis]

I'd say it's definitely do-able...

Although REDCODE 4K video discs will need to store at least 250GB to make it a viable format. BluRay will scale to 300GB at its maximum, but unless Sony augments the standard to include faster spin-rates and / or multiple laser pickups, it won't have the transfer rate to play back the 27MB/s for 4K 24p, let alone the 70MB/s or so needed for 60p. ;) Hey, if you're going to push a new disc format, at least make it support all the insane modes that we have to look forward to.

I definitely think 4K is coming as a distribution medium, but it will be the successor to BluRay and HD-DVD, not a near-future replacement.

Knowing the properties and limitations of Blu-Ray (including tha fact that it's fathered by sony on a great part) I suggested the geniuses of RED to make a brand new and probably open-source medium.

From a competitive perspective it's better to develop RVD as soon as possible and make the format modular and upgrade-able so while HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are still in their relative infancy they could be "shot down while they are young" because once they grow up...

EDIT: yeah, thought of calling it 4KD but it's not so easy to say as RVD (obviously nothing to do with Recreational Vehicle Deluxe)

EDIT 2: Oh, and following the naming tradition the material used to store the data could be called Informatium™ a magnetic light reflecting polymer used to store information sharing Oakley's HDO lens properties of being virtually unbreakable!

[PaulClements]

I read somewhere that a commitee discussing the delivery of digital media to cinemas should be no larger than 650GB. I think if Red was to aim at a media of this size that could work on a reader that would automatically sync with their projector they could offer a complete package from shooting, delivery and display.

[Steve Gibby]

How amazing would that be?

Very cool indeed...

[MikeCurtis]

Redcode RAW is an acquisition codec ONLY - not a distribution one, since it is based on RAW recording methodology, which it isn't practical to write back to. You'd need an RGB codec. Thus data rates would go up.

[Stephen Gentle]

Does anyone know the data rates for REDCODE RGB? And is it wavelet, like REDCODE RAW?

[Rob Lohman]

Undecided yet and yes. If you're talking about the output codec we're probably gonna give you options to choose different bitrates.

[Chris Kenny]

Well, we don't know how REDCODE RGB does, but since we're talking about distribution here... the DCI spec for digital cinema distribution (which uses JPEG 2000 compression) sets the data rate for 4K at 238 Mbits/sec. Blu-ray does all of 54 Mbits/sec. It'll probably be a while before we've got optical formats fast enough for 4K.

The good news is, at this data rate, a 120 minute feature requires 210 GB, which fits on a $70 hard drive. (People who want to ship 4K around just need to start thinking of hard drives as removable media.)