Price,what is the catch.

[Felipe Jaco]

Yes, the price, what is the catch in it?
You can buy two RED cameras for one Varicam,
and RED is superior in all things against Varicam. Is it?
So what is the question, why is RED so cheap or why is Varicam so expensive?

[Costelloe Michael]

Felipe,

Welcome to the revolution!

Mike c

[Vincent Rice]

You have to wear Oakley sunglasses 24/7 for the rest of your life and you must agree to paint your children red.

[Jeremy Hughes]

"No catch, just keep it a secret."

[albert rudnicki]

What makes Varicam so expensive?
Monopoly, and politics

What red is doing, may change it and brake it.
In favor for us; Things will not be the same and
Sony and Panasonic will have to adapt.
Filmmaking should be affordable not exclusive, and that's what Jim and his team is accomplishing.

www.yayofilms.com

[Costelloe Michael]

The catch is that good material, which is well conceived, well shot and well edited will look good on any format. There is of course the old adage "you can't polish a 'richard'".

Mike C

[Michael Schrengohst]

What makes Varicam so expensive?
Monopoly, and politics

What red is doing, may change it and brake it.
In favor for us; Things will not be the same and
Sony and Panasonic will have to adopt.
Filmmaking should be affordable not exclusive, and that's what Jim and his team is accomplishing.

www.yayofilms.com

"Sony and Panasonic will have to adopt."
Yes they would love to adopt RED!
I think you meant adapt?
I was at NAB and looked at all the major booths....
The big boys are slugging it out with each other....
The Sony booth proclaimed P2 was dead. The Panasonic
booth was huge and had an HPX3000 body that was only
$48,000....It is going to get real hard to sell the high
end gear even to the rental houses.....The big boys business
will turn to the consumer and broadcast areas. I have always felt
while owning Sony and Panasonic gear as being the oddity anyway.
RED is going to capture the middle and high ground and
those shooters that continue buying over-priced, under performing
equipment will be a small minority.

[Costelloe Michael]

...And yet the strange thing is that if you look at the adopters of red, in the uk, it is mostly independant production companies and part time film makers with the exception of Axis Films.

A lot of the facilities guys I am talking to still think it's smoke and mirrors vapourware ... denial methinks?

Mike C

[Michael Schrengohst]

With a big D!!

[donatello b]

"A lot of the facilities guys I am talking to still think it's smoke and mirrors vapourware "

over the years they have seen alot of equipment announced that never shipped ... until RED is shipping, denial has no affect on their business ...

[JohnF]

Felipe,

A simple answer would be that the big companies could charge what they like or as I suspect they would prefer the term charge what the market was prepared to pay... This point is a sore one as a number of key descision makers within the industry (from my perspective in the UK) were not equipment users or technically minded so the companies could charge what they liked without being questioned.

Though I do remember a conference (just before the HD cameras were released) where a high ranking BBC engineer humiliated a "Large broadcast camera company" by pointing out in detail why their cameras were over-priced. (it was quite amusing to see the company reps faces)

As far as I'm concerned their "trickle down" technology approach was the big companies undoing because as more and more of the broadcast market were becoming freelance and therefore the equipment price did not, does not reflect the ability to pay off or make a profit on before the next wave of improved technology cameras reach the market. Thus leaving a potential market available to new companies (like RED) prepared to jump in and offer what we as camera operators wanted at a price that was appropriate.

The 35mm chip is a classic example. Fitting a 35mm chip on a Panasonic or Sony camera was not, is not difficult. They could have, they still could just order chips at the 720 or 1080 resolution that were of 35mm dimensions without changing a single other piece of techology on their cameras (except the lens mount). I suspect they chose not too because they wanted to maintain the premium pricing that 35mm represented (35mm at the moment means expensive shoots which in turn means you can charge a lot of money for 35mm equipment) whilst keeping the prices up on all their lower grade 1/3rd-2/3rd" chip equipment.

Well what's the catch with RED? I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it:

1. It's a completly new workflow - non tape based. So can you build a support infrastructure that will enable you to work with it? (I think yes but like always there will be problems found as we all learn to handle this)

2. Some producers/directors will be hesitant (at first) to use, from their perspective new untried technology.

3. Again as it's non tape based - archiving your material poses interesting problems.

4. The resolution of this camera is so high it's going to catch out non-35mm film shooters!

5. It might completely change the industry!!!

JohnF

[Michael Stanmore]

Also, this is one of those funny businesses where budget actually brings status. There are many clients who will demand that their commercial be shot on film rather than High Def even though their commercial would benefit in many ways (some budgetary) by being shot on HD. In their eyes, commercials shot on film are automatically of a higher standing than anything shot on video, or even digital cinematography. This is a mentality that will continue to bug people like us for years to come.

[Johnny Johnson]

...And yet the strange thing is that if you look at the adopters of red, in the uk, it is mostly independant production companies and part time film makers with the exception of Axis Films.

A lot of the facilities guys I am talking to still think it's smoke and mirrors vapourware ... denial methinks?

Mike C

I've found the same in the UK, a lot of private owners or folks getting in quick and setting up rental houses based on Red. Many large and small, already established rental companies want to "wait and see," but by then, the new small rentals will have a head start on renting the red to prod. companies and setting up red-based relationships.

I know some are on board though, I believe Decode hire are getting some and mr. paul carter down at axis gets excited about almost all new cameras coming out. I think they have a viper they rented out to mutant chronicles. I don't know how much longer they'll be able to make proper money out of the viper once they get their reds though!

[Costelloe Michael]

Johnny I think that if you look at the basis of UK production that all this makes sense. The TV companies won't be able to adopt the workflow until the independents have worked it all through. For this look at the BBC supposedly adopting a 'tapeless workflow' but when Panasonic give them the HVX200 which is perfectly suited to the job replacing the Z1 they find that they will have trouble archiving and backing up the data.

The higher level commercials will still want to shoot 35mm as it is a matter of status. I know a few guys who have shot on the PV Genesis and Arri D20, same sort of cost though, not cheaper and better!

Personally I think that this camera will open up the Independent Features market, which is firmly where my hat is placed. If I can get commercials work for it also then so be it. I want to shoot low budget features but not have the constraints that DCT and 2/3" chips place on me.

Furthermore, camera hire houses cannot do what we do and that is establish firm workflow pipelines, unless, that is, you are Paul Carter and happen to have a post facility attached to you!

Bring it on! Mike C

[Jay A. Kelley]

The trick here is to NOT compare this camera to a varicam.. You really can't, they are very different systems.

Panasonic is a huge company, and while we LOVE to diss our "hollywood powerhouses" it also good to remember that Panasonic was the first company to come out with a REAL HD CAMERA for less than $10,000.00 (That's less than RED I believe.)

:)

Jim and the boys are making use of new existing technology, and hoping people will let loose of their existing workflow designs in favor of a new one for a better camera system at lower costs. So far, that concept seems to be working. Of course, we'll know how WELL it's working in three days when Jim announces a schedule!

Panasonic and Sony (Who I like a LOT less) are having to serve THOUSANDS of existing customers using expensive hardware with millions of moving parts.. Say what you want, that stuf costs a lot of dough.

Are they overcharging? Who knows, I don't have a copy of their books, but they don't seem to be too poor.
:)

Jay

[donatello b]

"There are many clients who will demand that their commercial be shot on film rather than High Def even though their commercial would benefit in many ways (some budgetary) by being shot on HD."

bottom line is FILM is the "STANDARD" which all is compared against.
in the world of film commericals - these are usually high end/big budgets ..
a product can bring in MILLIONS $$$$ if the commercials does what it is suppose to ... a client with huge $$$$ at stake wants the BEST image and that has been FILM ... so you as a agency producer with a 5-30 million X product account when the client complains it has a video feel/look - is that when you tell them you saved $5000 by shooting HD ? or HD is just as good as film ?

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The catch is generic hardware has come down significantly in price. To the point that an IT based camera is feasible.

And it cuts out the VTR so you don't pay $$$ for a tape deck.

[Partam]

I'm wondering...
what if one of the big companies called Jim and the boys and offered xx million for selling the RED company and assets and then shutdown the whole project...
It happened before...
hope not again

[Adrian T.]

I'm wondering...
what if one of the big companies called Jim and the boys and offered xx million for selling the RED company and assets and then shutdown the whole project...
It happened before...
hope not again

Jim doesn't need money. He needs the camera. So it won't happen... :red_bandana:

[I Bloom]

The catch is generic hardware has come down significantly in price. To the point that an IT based camera is feasible.

And it cuts out the VTR so you don't pay $$$ for a tape deck.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. I think a lot of things in the film industry are overpriced, and there is a lot of politics involved in the fact that Panasonic won't undercut a Varicam with a cheaper better camera. I think that may be part of the puzzle, but the bigger part of the puzzle is the progress of the computer industry.

Until I crack open a RED and take a look at what chips are on what boards I won't know for sure, but here is my theory:

For me, RED represents the first camera to really leverage what seems to be off the shelf computing components (minus the Mysterium, we think, though some have suggested this could be an overcranked chip off a DSLR). So you can thank the reduced price of the body to it's cousins; not video cameras; but instead high performance computers, laptops, servers etc.

DALSA could have done the same thing, but they chose to serve the high end only, and I think you can see they are suffering because of it. (It's not too late to change DALSA, I still love you. I'm just with RED right now while I'm working some things out.)

RED is less expensive because they are tapping into components that come from a much larger marketplace than the film industry. It's a simpler system, the only moving parts are fans and hard drives.

It seems that much of the functionality of the system is actually being implemented in software alone. So that instead of using expensive and rare electronics to achieve a task RED is using more generic processors (and perhaps programmable gate arrays) to accomplish its heavy lifting. This is in line with what is happening in the world of post production, as expensive systems that require outboard electronics are falling to systems that use software alone. (Latest chapter: Final Touch/Color).

Someone was bound to do this: RED isn't the only company that is trying, but they perhaps have the right amount and kind of funding (one investor, intimately devoted to the project). They also have some unique and smart ideas, wavelet compression and skipping bayer pattern demosaicing in camera among many.

So here is my thought: Is RED making a profit off the RED one body? I think its possible they are (forgetting of course all that they are investing in R&D and etc.) based on my larger theory. Maybe they aren't, and they intend on making their money off of their accesories. Like McDonalds makes money off drinks, not hamburgers.

I hope that they do make a profit and that the whole team gets rich. They deserve it.

What do you think?

[Joel Kaye]

REAL HD CAMERA for less than $10,000.00

Which camera was that? (Can't be the HVX-200, The HD-100 and XLH1 were out before the HVX-200 and they are both higher resolution - ie not 960x540 uprezzed)

Or did you mean less than $100k - the Varicam? Yeah, that was a really nice camera at the time.

[I Bloom]

Which camera was that? (Can't be the HVX-200, The HD-100 and XLH1 were out before the HVX-200 and they are both higher resolution - ie not 960x540 uprezzed)

Or did you mean less than $100k - the Varicam? Yeah, that was a really nice camera at the time.

HD not HDV.

[Joel Kaye]

HD not HDV.

Oh God. Hahahaha. Believe me - I owned that camera and the CODEC is HD. But the camera sure isn't.

[I Bloom]

Oh God. Hahahaha. Believe me - I owned that camera and the CODEC is HD. But the camera sure isn't.

Ok dis the HVX-200, they use pixel shifting to achieve an HD image. RED uses bayer pattern, that doesn't make it a 1.5K camera. What's important is the final result and how it looks. Thats often more a product of compression and latitude than of resolution. The HVX is the most sought after low budget camera in the dramatic industry right now because of the codec. If you can't see what's wrong with HDV then god help you.

[Brook Willard]

Different formats mean different things to different people. Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it won't work for somebody.

[albert rudnicki]

"you can't see what's wrong with HDV then god help you."


Agree 100%

www.yayofilms.com

[tj williams]

Why are we comparing the RED to Varicam F900 D20, Dalsa etc. etc.

The closest thing to a RED Camera out there is a Digital SLR it has:
1. 35mm size single beyer chip.
2. Records to card media.
3. Raw origination which is compressed.
4. Uses Still Nikon or Canon lenses.
5. Will electronically control those lenses (Birger)
6. Has a small light form factor.
7. Is finished in Black and is or looks like metal (not Sony
grey plastic)
8. Has a much larger brighter viewfinder than HD cameras.
9. Is supported by a number of secondary suppliers
10. Is made in high numbers so is inexpensive.
11. Is simple inside with few moving parts.

The real mystery is why Nikon who has no investment in Broadcast to protect didn't take the Digital SLR above 24 fps attach a belt pack 0 raid array, and sell it for 17.5

[Mark K.]

We compare them because they're aimed at the same market. Personally, I'm gonna be really stoked when the Revolution comes and Thompson sells me a complete Viper Filmstream for $20,000 (with lens) because they can't compete with a resolution that's a quarter of Red One!

[Yash Keough]

Jim also just so happens to be like what, a billionaire? Because RED is a private company and he is (I believe) using his own money, I'm guessing though I could very well be wrong, that developing the camera isn't the same kind of financial undertaking as it would be to a company such as Panasonic. In other words, I'm thinking he has a good deal of cash to spare which allows him to sell the camera perhaps for less than others could even if they developed the exact same thing. My 2 cents, correct me if I'm wrong :)

[el_cheapo]

I wonder what other companies will come out with now that red is gaining momentum. perhaps the next genration cinealta and varicam will have to follow the example set to put off extinction. The only format i think that could possibly compete is hdcamSR, and with redcode raw or red's 4:4:4 option availible, who in the right mind would pay more for something that does the same or less? even if you have a disposable budget..

[GlennChan]

Probably the reason why Red is so cheap is that they're being aggressive on pricing / sacrificing their margin to sell in volume. My uneducated guess is that the per unit manufacturing cost of Red is only a few thousand dollars, *ignoring* R&D costs. To recoup your R&D, you either need a really big profit margin or you need to sell a lot of units at a smaller margin. If you look at FCP, their margin is not very big (a few thousand if you include the Mac, and maybe the XSERV) but they are definitely selling in volume- Apple claims hundreds of thousands registered users.


This is in line with what is happening in the world of post production, as expensive systems that require outboard electronics are falling to systems that use software alone. (Latest chapter: Final Touch/Color).
Color is not the same quality as some of the other film grading packages out there (Nucoda, Baselight, Da Vinci Resolve, etc.). How many major feature films have been graded on Color? Not that many (I don't think there's a single movie??).

The same can be said of Final Cut... despite what Apple's marketing would like you to believe, not a lot of high-end work is being done on FCP.

2- To get back on topic, what's the catch? You still need talent. You need to be able to do good work, and you have to be easy to work with.

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

Zodiak was edited on Final Cut Pro, so was Jarhead and so was Cold Mountain, from my understanding.

There's no reason to use anything BUT Final Cut Pro for editing, plain and simple, it has no disadvantages over Avid. In fact it has many advantages. I wouldn't use that POS program to edit anything, this is 2007 not 1999. I'm sure it was great back in the day, because there weren't good alternatives.

And Color is adapted from very expensive software, it's a good program, it may not be perfect yet, it's just a 1.0 release, but that doesn't mean it's incapable of doing great work. In fact quite the opposite.

[el_cheapo]

[QUOTE=GlennChan;50609]

The same can be said of Final Cut... despite what Apple's marketing would like you to believe, not a lot of high-end work is being done on FCP.

QUOTE]

indeed... i cant see too many small production companies buying discreet SGI systems:blink: I know cold mountain "Cold mountain" was FCP. kudos to apple for that one!
I really wish autodesk would just release an affordable version of smoke that would run on an ordinary old linux machine instead of a 150k Silicon Graphics freakmachine

[Joel Kaye]

There's no reason to use anything BUT Final Cut Pro for editing, plain and simple, it has no disadvantages over Avid.

Dude, you will type just about anything won't you?

[Gavin Greenwalt]

There's no reason to use anything BUT Final Cut Pro for editing, plain and simple, it has no disadvantages over Avid. In fact it has many advantages. I wouldn't use that POS program to edit anything, this is 2007 not 1999.

*cough* Bullshit *cough*

[RobRoySyd]

There's a big differnce between doing an offline using proxies and pushing a 2K DI through a desktop computer. Heck I didn't even need a computer the first time I edited 16mm and the gear was pretty damn cheap. Back then proxies were called work prints.

To the best of my knowledge the gong for first movie edited at 2K on a desktop computer goes to Dust to Glory and that was done using PPro and Cineform.

For quite some time now several companies including Pixel Harvest have been able to deliver a 2K DI on a single $100 HDD from a 35mm neg, this you can edit on a lowly PC with PPro with full frame, full rate playback, on a system costing under $10K including software.

Yes you don't need an Avid these days, nor do you need FCP. Both are over hyped.

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

I'm sorry I won't conform to old industry standards. Avid is an awful system and there is no reason to use it. I WILL type anything that is true, yes, and I don't care if I offend old Avid editors or if you don't agree with me. You have the right to use what you want, but if you really think that outdated, garbage program has anything on either Premiere or Final Cut you're insane. Both companies have actually worked to improve their software and offer features, while Avid has sat around with its thumb up its @$$ for the last few years. If they don't improve that program it won't even exist five years from now.

[Finner]

Jonathan you clearly have no experience with Avid systems as your inexperience is shining brighter then ever. I am a big fan of final cut but there are a lot of big benifits to avid systems. What always suprises me is how the people that argue "final cut is the only good system" or "only quality pro projects are done on avid" are pretty much at the same level of ignorance.

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Again, it is amazing how similar this all is to the music business. For years I have heard discussions about really expensive gear vs. ProTools. It usually went like "Well, it might not sound very different, but our clients are used to big stuff in the controll room. If only a ProTools system was there, nobody would take us seriously."

So most people invested themself out of business (I´m talking about music mixing, not feature film dubbing. Console´s are still growing bigger every week there)

Jochen

[jaadgy akanni]

Jonathan you clearly have no experience with Avid systems as your inexperience is shining brighter then ever. I am a big fan of final cut but there are a lot of big benifits to avid systems. What always suprises me is how the people that argue "final cut is the only good system" or "only quality pro projects are done on avid" are pretty much at the same level of ignorance.

Finner, you've always been argumentative, confrontational and antagonistic (and I mean it as a compliment...lol), so don't be shy and expand on what you're saying. This is no time to hold back. Now, I'm an Avid user, and was planning on moving on up, from Xpress Pro HD to Media Composer. However, lately I've been having second thoughts. So Finner, please convince me not to get rid of Avid and move to FCP. C'mon man, stop me from taking the plunge!

[Jeremy Hughes]

What makes Varicam so expensive?
Monopoly, and politics

What red is doing, may change it and brake it.
In favor for us; Things will not be the same and
Sony and Panasonic will have to adapt.
Filmmaking should be affordable not exclusive, and that's what Jim and his team is accomplishing.

www.yayofilms.com

Like Hugo Chavez with his cheap oil.

[albert rudnicki]

Boy, is everyone a bit edgy lately:)
We are very close, almost there...
Cheers

[RobRoySyd]

Again, it is amazing how similar this all is to the music business. For years I have heard discussions about really expensive gear vs. ProTools. It usually went like "Well, it might not sound very different, but our clients are used to big stuff in the controll room. If only a ProTools system was there, nobody would take us seriously."

So most people invested themself out of business (I´m talking about music mixing, not feature film dubbing. Console´s are still growing bigger every week there)

Jochen

And now for many Protools is the overpriced, overhyped system. See a trend here?

[Brice Ansel]

I am a big fan of final cut but there are a lot of big benifits to avid systems.
I never conformed for film from fcp, I heard the EDL is not not as good as avid. But maybe I'm wrong. Btw both systeme are good. Cheers

[el_cheapo]

Again, it is amazing how similar this all is to the music business. For years I have heard discussions about really expensive gear vs. ProTools. It usually went like "Well, it might not sound very different, but our clients are used to big stuff in the controll room. If only a ProTools system was there, nobody would take us seriously."

So most people invested themself out of business (I´m talking about music mixing, not feature film dubbing. Console´s are still growing bigger every week there)

Jochen

Indeed it is true that when people see a lot of buttons and equipment, their fear and anxieties are put on the back burner. I guess what they just dont realize is that nowadays its just silly to buy equpiment when a computer does the exact same thing, and is smaller and cheaper. Theres really no need for a mixing console if everything is mixed on the computer anyways, yet people like the "feel" of a large console so they pay the big bucks for it.


It also seems counter-productive to argue which NLE is better or worse. I do have my little preferences, but most of the stuff I know I could do in any NLE, if I would only take the time to figure out how. I guess in the end its what your used to.
if what is being filmed doesn't suck, it will be very hard for a "bad NLE" to ruin it... while if what is filmed does suck, it wont matter if its shot on 65mm and edited at dreamworks, because in the end it still sucks and you cant polish a turd.

[Johnny Johnson]

Johnny I think that if you look at the basis of UK production that all this makes sense. The TV companies won't be able to adopt the workflow until the independents have worked it all through. For this look at the BBC supposedly adopting a 'tapeless workflow' but when Panasonic give them the HVX200 which is perfectly suited to the job replacing the Z1 they find that they will have trouble archiving and backing up the data.

The higher level commercials will still want to shoot 35mm as it is a matter of status. I know a few guys who have shot on the PV Genesis and Arri D20, same sort of cost though, not cheaper and better!

Personally I think that this camera will open up the Independent Features market, which is firmly where my hat is placed. If I can get commercials work for it also then so be it. I want to shoot low budget features but not have the constraints that DCT and 2/3" chips place on me.

Furthermore, camera hire houses cannot do what we do and that is establish firm workflow pipelines, unless, that is, you are Paul Carter and happen to have a post facility attached to you!

Bring it on! Mike C


I think the adoption of post production to go with your camera is pretty crucial. Even stand alone operators will probably need some way of showing what the camera can do to attract clients to the new technology, and so far the only wa is to blow some money on a simple £1500 offline suite.

The tapeless workflow is filtering through though. Filmspace send out a lot of their HVX's to docu's for Nat. Geographic and Discovery (they happen to share offices!)

I agree on the 'status' of shooting on bigger equipment D20, 435 etc (heck, they're my day job) but i've done a few ads on the 750 and 900. Plenty of folks are doing cheaper HD based commercials. Even the government COI commercials, notorious for being stupidly expensive 35mm shoots, are shifting over to shooting F900 with lens adapters to cut back the budget.

Get out and offer that Red camera as soon as you get it and plenty of folks, both indie and independent prod. companies will come flocking I say. (Lets remember most of the BBC prods are outsourced now) I don't think I've done a single drama for the BBC directly, its always been through Hartswood, Baby Cow etc. I'm sure its the same for you Mike :-)

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

And now for many Protools is the overpriced, overhyped system. See a trend here?

He he, yes.

In the 80ies, essential audio gear was north of 100K.
90ies it was 10K, now its 1K.

So maybe in 10 years its fine to use gear that comes inside a pack of cereals.

Jochen

[vanguy]

Finner, please convince me not to get rid of Avid and move to FCP. C'mon man, stop me from taking the plunge!

Well, I ain't Finner, but I've cut on MCs, Express HD Pros, FCP systems and even Media 100. My Avid experience is about 2 years old, so things may have changed.

First thing is price. FCP wins hands down. Only caveat here is don't completely cheap out, especially on drives.

Second thing is stability. Again, in practice, Final Cut wins. Avid can run very stable, but has a lot of very specific requirements (some fonts are incompatible). In a typical small company environment, where the editing computer does graphics, compression, and other media related things as well as editing, Avid doesn't play well.

Third thing is ease of operation. Here I'd have to go with Media 100. It's simpler to perform edits of various kinds (fewer keystrokes or mouse inputs), but then there's not a lot you can do with it. Then, probably a tie between Final Cut Pro and Avid MC.

Fourth is response time. Avid MC is a bit quicker on responding to input. It's not a lot, milliseconds, really, but the system seems to respond instantly to mouse input and keyboard clicks. Final Cut seems to have a slight lag, and Avid Xpress Pro has even more (or did 2 years ago). This is not a big deal, but noticable.

Fifth is flexibility and power. Here, again, Final Cut Pro wins hands down. It can deal with more media types, apply more effects, do more complex titling, and has more controls than anything out there.

Sixth is integration. Final Cut Studio has fairly good integration within its own package, although I've noted some issues going back and forth to Soundtrack and Compressor. This has probably been fixed in FCP 6, which is sitting on my desk (no time to install it yet). Avid is better in workgroups (after investing in an EXPENSIVE Unity system) although Apple is addressing this with Final Cut Server.

So, recently, when it came to investing in a main editing system, although could have afforded an Avid, I bought Final Cut. I prefer editing on it. And I liked saving money...

[Finner]

Finner, you've always been argumentative, confrontational and antagonistic (and I mean it as a compliment...lol), so don't be shy and expand on what you're saying. This is no time to hold back.


What????? I'm a shy puppy dog.



Now, I'm an Avid user, and was planning on moving on up, from Xpress Pro HD to Media Composer. However, lately I've been having second thoughts. So Finner, please convince me not to get rid of Avid and move to FCP. C'mon man, stop me from taking the plunge!

This is how I see it. Both Avid and FC have their pluses and minuses but if you are getting a RED then from what RED has shown is they are extensively working with apple a bunch more then avid. Not that red is not working so that avid can support the camera but it looks like apple is the one making the big effort to build a system that best supports red so I feel my money is best spent on FC over avid.

[Michael Brennan]

Whats the price catch?
3 chip sensors are more expensive to make and in general single chip CMOS/CCD imagers are cheaper to make.

Also 35mm size sensors are being made literally by the millions compared to 2/3 inch ccds.

RED hope to deliver more pro cameras at an earlier stage than rollout of f900 and are selling direct.


With this in mind RED at $17k for a lowish volume 60fps 4k camera seems about right perhaps a little high, compared to $700 for a mass produced 10 megapixel SLR without video outputs that can do 3fps.




Mike Brennan

[I Bloom]

Why are we comparing the RED to Varicam F900 D20, Dalsa etc. etc.


Just for the record, I think Dalsa still has the highest image quality, though its a slight toss up. But basically the Dalsa Origin has a PL mount and Super35 chip, its shoots 4K Bayer Pattern (red is 4.5K, true).

But the big thing about Dalsa is the dynamic range, 12 stops linear over 16bits.

They also have a proprietary lossless compression scheme and Dalsa was the first camera to do compression prior to debayering (which is not in-camera).

Dalsa also uses a non-frame tranfer CCD that is read while a mechanical shutter blocks the chip. Which they would argue this is a cleaner system than CMOS.

Dalsa looses the battle of course because of cost, size of body (at least currently), assinine business model (in my humble oppinion), lack of availability, lack of a lossy compression option that would reduce data glut.

It would be interesting to see which camera has a cleaner image in terms of noise and aliasing artifacts.

But I think those extra 4-6 bits of bit depth mean something during color correction. I hope that RED eventually moves to 16 bits.

[Darwin]

Just for the record, I think Dalsa still has the highest image quality, though its a slight toss up. But basically the Dalsa Origin has a PL mount and Super35 chip, its shoots 4K Bayer Pattern (red is 4.5K, true).

But the big thing about Dalsa is the dynamic range, 12 stops linear over 16bits.

They also have a proprietary lossless compression scheme and Dalsa was the first camera to do compression prior to debayering (which is not in-camera).

Dalsa also uses a non-frame tranfer CCD that is read while a mechanical shutter blocks the chip. Which they would argue this is a cleaner system than CMOS.

Dalsa looses the battle of course because of cost, size of body (at least currently), assinine business model (in my humble oppinion), lack of availability, lack of a lossy compression option that would reduce data glut.

It would be interesting to see which camera has a cleaner image in terms of noise and aliasing artifacts.

But I think those extra 4-6 bits of bit depth mean something during color correction. I hope that RED eventually moves to 16 bits.

I will not be able to own Dalsa Origin....So for me any compression is pointless

[Gregory Karydis]

The catch..
Oh yeah there's not one to speak of :)
Now as for editing systems;
I am going to do about 300 effects shots in my first RED movie so for that I will edit and cut in Houdini (where I will do the SFX) instead of Flame* (sgi), Combustion, Digital Fusion Final Cut or Shake
But for argument's sake I WILL try out FC Studio2 on my McBook Pro just to see if I can :)

[David Dennis]

When Sony or Panasonic introduces a new camera, they consider the competition, which in this case is 35mm film, and price their gear accordingly. Is a $130,000 camera a lot cheaper to use than 35mm film? Yes. So that's good enough and there's the price. They haven't thought of the greater sales they could receive by pricing the camera lower since they already have cheaper cameras in the line that would then be devastated by the new unit.

Jim is different. His background is that he was shooting as a hobby with Canon's most expensive digital still camera. He wanted a digital movie camera with the same quality as his still unit. Now, Jim can easily afford any camera made, up to and including a Varicam. But the Varicam just plain wasn't good enough for him.

So he researched what was available and what he could create, eventually coming up with RED. He essentially wanted to get enough customers so he could at least avoid losing money on the venture. But his real goal was to get a camera for himself, which is why you see the RED #1 when he posts.

That's why the early customers of RED have their reservation number listed in their accounts here. They are showing their support for the company and its product line.

This background might also show why RED is a little cultlike. It's really very similar in tone to the Apple Macintosh (which of course is fully supported by RED). People admire this company and Jim personally because the effort is to build wonderful products over something as passe as making money.

Because of this, he gave the camera a very low price point versus the competition, and is making it as great as he can. And that's something I think all of us appreciate a great deal.

Hope that helps your understanding.

D

[Finner]

I agree with everything you said David except for the reason for the low price point. Jim set the low price point because he saw what all the other companies were missing and that is that a high quality cine style camera at a low price point would mean a massive amount of market share sales. Look at the amount of red employees add up all the gross numbers (3,000 or more sales x about $25,000 = 75million gross) If you do not think 75 million for initial sales of a product is not a large amount go to a university and speak with a bussiness proffesor about it. I for one am glad Jim and the RED team will make boat loads of money because this will mean great future development and products.

Hope that helps your understanding.

D

[Tonaci Tran]

I agree with you finner,

Which leads to me to say.. Jim, Stuart, Graeme, Jarred, Ted and all the other RED employees, please do not retire too soon. =)

[JohnF]

I think Finners above point is valid - infact I inferred it in one of my earlier posts.

I was pointing out that with a great number of the worlds camera operators being freelance combined with a general drop off in production budgets (esp for the mass market of TV) it became very difficult to justify spending £30,000 on a camera body without guaranteed work as it is becoming more and more difficult to pay off the price of the camera whilst making a profit before the next generation of camera came out.

RED's design and pricing has bypassed that problem which leaves an absolutely enormous market at their finger-tips (by being first in). Including full time professional film and TV crews, indie film-makers, wealthy hobbyists and enthusiasts, as well as a number of specialist photographers...

My advice, if RED want to listen, is to keep RED's price as far below $20,000 as economically possible as by going above that price will burst the psychological (and practical) bubble that the current price has in the heads of potential purchasers. NTM the big-gun companies will have to adjust to the threat that RED poses to their current markets - their sheer bulk (component purchasing and assembly) could well undermine RED's market position.

As someone mentioned earlier (possibly on another thread) a company like Nikon or Canon could easily jump in on this market using a similar design idea to RED...

JohnF

[David Mullen ASC]

Nikon or Canon could... but I doubt they will, or at least, I doubt Nikon would. The market for digital cine cameras is not really large enough for them. Canon, though, might see it as a way of breaking out of the prosumer video camera market into professional gear. In fact, they may be in a better position to create a RED-like camera than Sony since they aren't heavily invested in 2/3" CCD ENG camera production lines.

I think the one problem for those who think that owning a RED camera will give them a lot of unique leverage in the rental market is that eventually these rental houses will be buying RED cameras for themselves. I know that Denny Clairmont of Clairmont Cameras has a couple of reservations. Of course, with the low price of a RED camera, you wouldn't need as much time to earn back the cost of your purchase, compared to a more expensive pro HD camera, so perhaps by the time everyone else has a RED of their own, you've already made some money.

There are all sorts of models for renting, and to some degree, they vary regionally.

The general rule is that it is best to already know your business model and typical amount of paid work coming in before you buy new equipment to support that work, so you can fairly accurately predict the time it will take for the purchase to pay for itself -- as opposed to just buying new equipment and then looking for work to pay it off, creating a business from scratch. That's a bigger risk, though people also do that all the time.

[Michael Hastings]

David:

Your points are well taken, on the other hand Canon has to worry about p---ing off Sony and Panasonic because they are major buyers of their broadcast lenses. Although the customer chooses in the end, the manufacturer has a fair amount of influence in offering packages, and if Pana/Sony get annoyed they could easily throw all that business Fujinon's way. I think this is why we have always seen limits to how good the Canon prosumer video line gets.

Nikon on the other hand got out of the broadcast lens business years ago. It also seems that they are a much smaller company than Canon, so expanding in this direction might have more impact on their bottom line. Ultimately, who knows? But it seems inevitable that at some point the DSLRs will get to 24 FPS or more anyway.

PS I REALLY appreciate all of the time, effort, and intelligence you put into responses on the various threads. thanks, and keep it up.


Nikon or Canon could... but I doubt they will, or at least, I doubt Nikon would. The market for digital cine cameras is not really large enough for them. Canon, though, might see it as a way of breaking out of the prosumer video camera market into professional gear. In fact, they may be in a better position to create a RED-like camera than Sony since they aren't heavily invested in 2/3" CCD ENG camera production lines.

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

The business model that Finner alludes to makes a lot of sense because most pieces of equipment, or even software, in this industry operate on the principal that not (relatively) very many people need any of this, so the price point has to be set higher. We went to Studio Depot the other day and were asking about this 1.2Kw daylight HMI that was $8,800, and the guy said totally honestly, "If we sold 500 of these per week, it wouldn't be anywhere near as expensive as it is, but it's a specialty item," thus it's priced accordingly. The same is true for stuff like Final Draft 7. It's good software, but is that software really worth $190? Of course not, it's not any better than just simple Word processing software, which is much cheaper, it just fills a niche and they know people will pay for the convenience the program offers. Same with something like Storyboard Quick or other software like that, overpriced but also very useful and if you need to have it, you don't mind paying. The cameras are generally priced like that too, but in the case of RED the business model is lower margins but sell more cameras and I think so far that has worked very well.

[Jesse Wendel]

Nikon or Canon could... but I doubt they will, or at least, I doubt Nikon would. The market for digital cine cameras is not really large enough for them. Canon, though, might see it as a way of breaking out of the prosumer video camera market into professional gear. In fact, they may be in a better position to create a RED-like camera than Sony since they aren't heavily invested in 2/3" CCD ENG camera production lines.
This is why we had an entire thread (linked below) -- which thankfully RED's code chief Rob Lohman seemed to respond favorably to -- about the need for a RED SDK (software development kit). Once RED is seen as a Platform, not a Product, then an entire secondary market will spring up. As I said back in the SDK thread (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2597):


Who at IBM would have ever thought to use the IBM PC platform to make movies? Run Real-time OS's and control oil-drilling platforms? Go on the space shuttle? Model the weather? Control attached lathes? Let kids drive cars through Paris? Let grown-ups fly 747's into Oakland in a thunderstorm using a real joystick and pedals. Knit? Make coats? Build Lego robots? All this and more came from an open system. None of which was imagined by the original IBM gang releasing the PC. They just opened it up and people got creative. Let us be creative with RED. Don't limit us in advance.

SDK's -- because you don't know the future.

RED -- Platform, not product.

*smiles*
My point is, making RED into a Platform and not a Product, is precisely what will drive up barriers to entry for everyone else. If RED not only has enormous market share, but the question everyone asks is, "Is this RED compatible?", and all programs and tools being designed are specifically for the RED SDK or or the RED physical toolkit, then RED is defining the future and everyone else has to live in the world RED contextualizes.

IBM PC design still dominates (the basic architecture) of PC's, precisely because IBM kept certain stuff (their microcode, the stuff RED is keeping hidden inside the box) hidden, and opened EVERYTHING else wide open, published all of the specs and invited the world to come play in their sandbox. This is also how Linux is now wiping out Microsoft's and Sun's and HP's and IBM's once prior domination of the Server OS market. They made their Server OS wide open and invited everyone to come play.

I am not inviting us to rehash the SDK thread here. *laughs* I'm more than satisfied with that outcome (thanks Rob!) I'm saying in terms of this conversation about dominating the future market for digital cine cameras, as David Mullen points out, it isn't enough just to under sell the market and have a brilliant design, because although David doubts Nikon would come in, Canon still could (he implies.)

But if RED positions itself as Platform and not Product, then as I've said, this entire secondary world of products, code, special effects, tools, and businesses will spring up, all built around RED, much more so than if RED is "just" a camera and glass company. RED then becomes this robust base on which to build who knows what, but we're here to help you figure it out! Which is precisely the point.

No one knew when IBM invented the personal computer for the masses what was to come. And now look where we are today! RED is in one sense, an unpredictable outcome of the IBM PC; certainly, RED would not have happened without the ubiquitous personal computer as Platform for whatever people wanted to build, not a result of the closed mainframe and mini-computer world. This is my point.

RED can be and should be this solid base for the future of digital cinema, analogous to the revolution which was the IBM PC. If RED dares do this, no one will EVER catch it, as RED will be THE standard by which digital cinema is defined, just as IBM PC and PC are in many respects, synonyms.

Once RED is clearly sold by the RED Team as a developmental platform, the amount of secondary market resources dedicated to RED will jump ten, even 100-fold; consequently, the external barriers to entry will be vastly higher.

And then you'll see people buying individual RED's of all kinds and moving glass at quantities too large to be predicted. *smiles*

Respectfully,
Jesse Wendel

[number6]

The general rule is that it is best to already know your business model and typical amount of paid work coming in before you buy new equipment to support that work, so you can fairly accurately predict the time it will take for the purchase to pay for itself -- as opposed to just buying new equipment and then looking for work to pay it off, creating a business from scratch. That's a bigger risk, though people also do that all the time.

I haven't read anything about the RED aftermarket... That is, what will a RED in hand bring on EBAY after being used for a (failed) movie? That is, if someone makes a movie and gives up after having their pie-in-the-sky dreams dashed due to bad results, how much of their investment can they recoup? Any thoughts from anyone?

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

If someone sold a RED on ebay within the first three months it came out, I think it would command at least a 30% markup, maybe more. Because there aren't going to be a bunch of REDs just flooding the market, I mean I doubt there are many scalpers out there thinking, "Hmm, yeah, I usually scalp Star Wars collectibles but, sure, I'll put a 2nd mortgage on my house and risk my financial security hoping that I can buy this camera and re-sell it for a gain of $7,000 or more on ebay." No I kind of doubt that.

I also don't think you'll see these go up on ebay. Sometimes there's just too much enthusiasm over a product to see one go for sale on the secondary market for a long time (well, if ever, if it's a collectible). Like this George Lucas signed banner I got about seven years ago, there were only 5 like it in the world, and 8 total designs of 5, so about 40 of them. They sold out in less than ten minutes by phone, and when I talked to the sales guy 3 minutes before they were supposed to go on sale I had already missed the Darth Maul one, so I had to settle on my second choice. I kept checking ebay over and over for the next few years to see if anyone put theirs up for sale because I wanted to see if I could buy the other designs, but I never saw one go for sale. To this day I still have never seen one on ebay, which is kind of remarkable. I think private collectors got ahold of every one of them and, like me, will not sell.

So for the RED, yes, on the secondary market they will eventually have more normal prices, when they're readily available brand new from RED, but at least at first when they're hard to get and command maybe higher rental revenues, I would imagine that they're going to go for above retail.

[Stephen Gentle]

With this in mind RED at $17k for a lowish volume 60fps 4k camera seems about right perhaps a little high, compared to $700 for a mass produced 10 megapixel SLR without video outputs that can do 3fps.

You're kidding, right?

[hoko]

when I first became interested in the Red around Jan this year I too was surprised re: price. I phoned RED and had a long chat with someone whose name I didn't write down as at that point I didn't see myself jumping in (I ordered NAB time). He used to work with Panasonic, which may give some of you the clue to his name. He explained it quite simply as Red specialises and that narrows costs. Panasonic and Sony have tremendous R&D costs which they have to pass on somehow. It's that simple - no conspiracy. And yes, there is something to the Revolution bla bla and these guys are on a mission, especially the big guy and that's all a very good thing. Given the smaller R&D operation at Red (I guess) and what they're setting out to achieve, it's small surprise that there is a delay.

[Michael Brennan]

You're kidding, right?

No.

I forgot to mention RED sell direct, no regional distributors or retailers to take their cut.

RED is still good value for money in comparison to other digital cinema products.

Mike Brennan

[Michael Brennan]

RED can be and should be this solid base for the future of digital cinema, analogous to the revolution which was the IBM PC. If RED dares do this, no one will EVER catch it, as RED will be THE standard by which digital cinema is defined, just as IBM PC and PC are in many respects, synonyms.
l

Very insightfull post but I'm nervous about an eventual monopoly on the building blocks of moving images.(if I have understood your post correctly)

RED is doing a good job a shaking up the industry, it needs it because
proprietory codecs and formats which made Sony $$$$ for 20 years allowed them to control the market.

With industry giants like BBC sick of being overcharged they are calling for non proprietory codecs and media.

Are you suggesting a proprietory foundation to Digital Cinema?
Why won't history repeat itself?

Another example, what did Kodak do to significantly improve quality to the cinema audience in the last three decades?


Mike Brennan

[hoko]

Hi Mike,
are you the Mike Brennan living in UK who worked with Simon Nasht by any chance?
Chris Hooke

Another example, what did Kodak do to significantly improve quality to the cinema audience in the last three decades?


Mike Brennan[/QUOTE]

[JohnF]

I'm not sure about Panasonic's and Sony's R&D costs (at least for the broadcast market). For instance though Sony have produced many formats over the past decade most of them were basically BetaCam variations. Same tape format, same heads, just a different codec. That's all they really developed - new codecs. (SR has been the first major change to the tape mechanism for a long time) - though to be fair on panasonic they did provide a cameramans camera with the Varicam shame about the 720 (a limitation set by the data rate of the tape unchanged from older DVCPro format)

Take the Sony Z1 HDV camera. All it was was a higher resolution chip and a new (and very basic) codec slapped on a standard DV/DVCAM format and camera. The result in the first year was 30,000 camera sales resulting in a cool £75million. I really don't believe for one moment that the camera's R&D cost anywhere near that amount. (esp after using the horrible things, sorry z1 users)
My point being is that the market might be small but it is very profitable as it seems stupidly happy paying out what is a lot of money for the tiny trickle down improvements that the large companies provide. Now if a company looks at this and realises that they could blow their competition out of the water by making a larger than normal improvement in camera technology they're going to do it. I really hope RED establish themselves with great success before the big guns realize this.

JohnF

[Michael Brennan]

Hi Mike,
are you the Mike Brennan living in UK who worked with Simon Nasht by any chance?
Chris Hooke


Depends... does he owe you money :)

Mike B

[Jesse Wendel]

Note: This is a LONG post. Sorry about that. --jwe


Very insightfull post but I'm nervous about an eventual monopoly on the building blocks of moving images.(if I have understood your post correctly)

Are you suggesting a proprietory foundation to Digital Cinema?
Why won't history repeat itself?



No. The opposite will happen.



IBM PC design still dominates (the basic architecture) of PC's, precisely because IBM kept certain stuff (their microcode, the stuff RED is keeping hidden inside the box) hidden, and opened EVERYTHING else wide open, published all of the specs and invited the world to come play in their sandbox.

RED can be and should be this solid base for the future of digital cinema, analogous to the revolution which was the IBM PC.

Platform, not Product.

Okay, here's how that plays out...

IBM has given us two great examples.

First, the IBM PC.

Roughly 95% of computers are what we'd call IBM PC compatible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible), that is, right now, in 2007, 26 years after the release of the original 1981 IBM PC, the computer meets certain standards which allows it to run major operating systems, and all the programs and tools which come with. Today PC compatible systems are often called Wintel systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintel).

Regardless of their current name, the point remains the same... their is some core code which is proprietary. Everything else is public and available through SDK's (software development kits) and API's (application programing interfaces). All the hardware interfaces are well-known and fully exposed. In other words, while the inner-most code and the inner-most hardware processes are kept proprietary -- IBM in its early years, Microsoft and Intel today, along with AMD, all making plenty of money -- the interfaces are all widely known.

This makes the Operating System and the CPU Platforms, not Products. CPU's get slapped into everything, and OS's onto everything. People then write for them and build products around them in ways their Microsoft, Intel & AMD never imagined. MS/Intel & AMD view as an enormous part of their mission, supporting the developers in helping them write new and inovative code.

THE COMPANY WITH THE MOST DEVELOPERS WINS. Said differently (I'm stealing this from a number of writers), there are only so many great hackers (http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html) (in the good sense of the word) working at any given time. Get them developing for you, and you win.

In a very real sense, this is how Apple has maintained itself through the years. In spite of having only 5% of the hardware, Apple has always attracted good hackers out of proportion to its hardware. So it survived the tough years.

Microsoft gave lip service to its customers, but it wined and dined developers, treated them like the Gods they wanted to be. MS gave them conferences, enormous conferences, all kinds of special software, tools for writing better software. Anything and everything to get the developers working for them. To this day, MS works their asses off to win the war for the best developers.

This is a war which MS is losing, by the way. The BEST developers now work on Open Source projects. Linux. Apache. OpenACS. PostGRES. Stuff from the Free Software Foundation, and so on. Why? Because they have access to the source code and can make changes.

I am not suggesting for a moment that RED go open source. First, Jim would laugh at me, and second, RED doesn't need to. Let me get back to my examples.

The IBM PC succeeded so wildly because it has an open architecture on which people could build whatever the hell they wanted. Companies around the world promptly did so. Where IBM failed -- and it cost them, although they still made huge money through their patents -- was in not aggressively moving themselves to be at the heart of taking advantage of the whole movement. The movement happened and IBM got left behind at the party they threw!

Everyone else made a ton of money building on top of the PC standard. Standards matter. They expand markets. They let people know what they can count on.

IBM set a standard, but when they didn't keep up, other people ran right by them. Which is why I'm not worried about RED dominating the market. They may set the market, but if they fail to play fair -- something I'm not worried about with Jim or his people -- the market could simply move around them, given standards.

No, if RED wanted to block the market, then they should not publish any SDK, any API, and keep everyone guessing. Their share of the market will be much less, the market will be smaller, but it would be tougher for anyone without enormous resources to reverse-engineer them, and people wouldn't be able to easily build on top of them either.

Standards promote innovation and reward the standard setter with market effect, making them the market leader.

Example 2, Linux. Microsoft holds a monopoly on the desktop. That's the finding of the US District Court, confirmed by a US Court of Appeals. We're not going to debate their findings here! *smiles* They do not hold a monopoly on Servers and never have. The Server operating system (OS) market has always had multiple players, and Microsoft Windows was a come-lately player, with Windows NT (the 90's) seen as not-ready-for-prime-time by most of us. Then came Windows 2000 and it got better, and with Windows XP Microsoft is a serious player in the Datacenter.

On the other hand, the Unixes -- HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Sun's Solaris, Tru-64, and even Mac OS X, not to mention FreeBSD, and all the Linux variations -- are significant players in most major datacenters, and are gaining ground, especially in the black box network appliance world. Many is the datacenter where say, the IT Director swears only Microsoft shall enter in, but network appliances take over printing, DNS/DHCP, spam/external messaging, and other basic services, perhaps even the firewall. Almost certainly all of these appliances are built on hardened Unixes.

The code is available and can be made to do as you like it. Furthermore, regular patches come out, and every time an improvement or bug fix to the whole arrives, network effects mean your appliance gets stronger. Developers want to work on projects which mean something to them. The Unixes are more attractive to developers for many reasons, way too many to list here.

Good developers can work anywhere they damn well want. Why they'd work on one project and not another is cultural. If we have the hot project and the right culture, we'll be attractive. If not, we won't be. Open communications and a commitment to treating developers enormously well would be a great start. *smiles* What matters is getting bone-deep that the commitment of the company needs to be not just to the shooters; they're one admittedly large part of the puzzle, but also to the hackers who will figure out how to make RED a platform on which an entire infrastructure lives. And for RED to commit in public to RED being a Platform company, not just a Product company.

So...

The Unixes are driving Microsoft out of the Server Market in the datacenter. Why? Because the developers and the operating system analysts who run datacenters, in the end, prefer the unixes. More control, flexibility, communication, and so on. Not to mention not being forced to upgrade every few years regardless of if you want to. Or having to deal with mandatory patches once a month. And so on. And so on. Not trying to start a flame/religious OS war in this thread. I'm just saying, Microsoft is losing the server war, long-haul.

But IBM is making money off Unix. How? They sell their consulting services, and people (and IBM servers, storage, and products) to datacenters. They come in and fix your datacenter operations. Install Linux, coordinate different vendors, handle issues. It's an enormous, really huge business opportunity for them. Plays right to their core competency as a business, which is: people trust IBM.

And these consultants do not play favorites with the IBM brand; they don't care what brand of hardware you're running. Why? Because they make their real money off consulting work. (To play favorites would violate trust. And trust is the whole ballgame.)

In other words, IBM is making literally billions and billions of dollars and building its brand up (and the heart of IBM's brand is, You can trust IBM, through integrating free software into large datacenters. How about them apples? They've found a way to take a platform -- Linux -- and turn it into a major business center. And in the process, take an enormous shot at their arch-rival Microsoft. While also contributing lots of code back to Linux. Good times. *laughs*

This is why it doesn't matter at all if at the core of RED there is proprietary hardware and code. What matters is there being defined hooks and calls in software, and defined physical connections people can rely on to build hardware devices. This will define the RED Compatible device. This is what makes RED a Standard, a Platform people and businesses can rely on to create new products around.

All that is missing is:


RED coming through with their first product; it being great. *smiles*
RED declaring loud and strong: We are a Platform company with great products.
RED acting consistently -- releasing an initial SDK, API, physical layout with pin-outs, and so on. All the stuff one would do in order to allow people to build stuff on top of your initial product. And then repeating this for every product which follows. Plus developers conferences, and so on.

Then watch the fun begin.

Got to go.

Jesse Wendel

[hoko]

Depends... does he owe you money :)

Mike B

haha - no, not yet. Should I be worried?$£@?? I'm directing/shooting for them in the near future. He and Annamaria mentioned they worked with you in UK and suggested looking you up when I had some HD questions about something (can't remember now). I see a Mike Brennan popping up on all sorts of sites - so I was curious ..... I've ordered a Red so I can use my long neglected Super 16 lenses - supposed to get it in Jan 08. Mmmmm :angry01: