13 Hours!

[Evin Grant]

I was just thinking about the 7MB per second data rate of 2K Redcode Raw. And maybe this has occurred to you all already but with a 320GB Reddrive. You should be able to record almost 13 HOURS of footage. Now for any of you who have some documentary experience this is very cool. Two Reddrives should be sufficient for most location shoots, coupled with a S16 zoom and a few hardware Raid 1 back up drives and you have one slick traveling Doco system. Man this cam is versitile.

[Scott Webster]

Or 19 minutes to a 8Gb compact flash card. Sweet.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Yeah it was mentioned in one of the "What we can do" threads...

Pretty amazing, eh?

Although, by my pedantic calculations, I'm coming up with 12.1 hours on a 320GB RED DRIVE. ;) That's just insane though... Definitely shouldn't be any complaints from the long-format, event shooting crowd.

[S. Um]

After formatting the drive, you lose about 7 or 8%. So you'll probably get just a little under 12 hours. Still a huge amount.

But why shoot 2k when you can shoot 4k? :)

[Jason Murphy]

But why shoot 2k when you can shoot 4k? :)

To fit 12 hours of footage on a Reddrive, of course! :)

[Häakon]

But why shoot 2k when you can shoot 4k? :)

Framerates. :mail1:

[Nils Ruinet]

A 30' HDCAM tape costs around $30.
So for 12 hours, tape would cost 24 x $30 = $720
A 320 GB RedDrive costs $900, so it's only about $200 more than HDCAM tape.
A 320 GB external harddrive costs around $100.

Hmmm... interesting... :whistling:

Maybe we'll end up keeping the RedDrives as masters after all...
and just making a copy to another Harddrive for Backup purposes...

The other good news are, you'll be able to transfer your footage 4 times faster than realtime for backups. 1 hour of footage should be copied in less than 15 minutes ! Cool :)

So if you know you won't need 4K, I see some pretty good reasons to shoot in 2K in some situations, especially when flexibility and cost are the key...
Keep in mind, you won't always need 4K, and 2K is still very high definition. Most of the movies today are scanned and finished in 2K... and they look fine.

[Scott Webster]

After formatting the drive, you lose about 7 or 8%. So you'll probably get just a little under 12 hours. Still a huge amount.

But why shoot 2k when you can shoot 4k? :)

And at this stage it is the only onboard option for 25p (subject to change)
But let's not go there again.

[Joe Carney]

I thought I was imagining things when 7MB @Wndowed-2Kx60p was mentioned.
You can edit on a well equipped laptop with that.
Can someone point to some great s16mm zoom lenses?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The 7MB/s is for 2K RAW at 24fps. At 60fps, we're looking at 17.5MB/s

Actual 2K 24fps storage time on a RED DRIVE should be:

320billion bytes == 298.023GB or 305,175.78MB.

305175.78 - 8.32MB FAT32 overhead == 305,167.45

305167.45MB / 7MBs == 43,595.35s / 3600 == 12.1 hours :)

2K @ 60fps would be:

305167.45MB / 17.5MBs == 17,438.14s / 3600 == 4.84 hours :w00t:

8GB CF card would hold about 7.6 minutes of 2K at 60fps.

[Karl H]

Or 19 minutes to a 8Gb compact flash card. Sweet.

also bear in mind with 2K being 7Mb/s it would run on a lower CF card such as an extreme III , you wont need one with 40Mb/s transfer rate(ok, you might not be able to get very high frame rates) however you could currently use very cheap 16GB cards to store 40mins of 2K redcode.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

you could currently use very cheap 16GB cards to store 40mins of 2K redcode.

I wasn't even thinking of that. Wow... :)

[Joe Carney]

Still quite a bit. Thanks for setting the numbers straight.
I'm thinking syndicated sports shows and more.
This is great stuff.

[Joe Carney]

The 7MB/s is for 2K RAW at 24fps. At 60fps, we're looking at 17.5MB/s

Actual 2K 24fps storage time on a RED DRIVE should be:

320billion bytes == 298.023GB or 305,175.78MB.

305175.78 - 8.32MB FAT32 overhead == 305,167.45

305167.45MB / 7MBs == 43,595.35s / 3600 == 12.1 hours :)

2K @ 60fps would be:

305167.45MB / 17.5MBs == 17,438.14s / 3600 == 4.84 hours :w00t:

8GB CF card would hold about 7.6 minutes of 2K at 60fps.

still awesome. 4.84 hours is still a lot.

[David Battistella]

A 30' HDCAM tape costs around $30.
So for 12 hours, tape would cost 24 x $30 = $720
A 320 GB RedDrive costs $900, so it's only about $200 more than HDCAM tape.
A 320 GB external harddrive costs around $100.


And you can use the RED DRIVE AND CF cards over and over again...but.. you do have to factor in the cost and time of archiving. Unless you just buy a bunch of RED DRIVES per projects instead of Tape.

David

[Noah Kadner]

I'm sure this has been answered someplace but is hot swapping a la HVX200 between two drives a possibility? That could mean unlimited recording time.... <drool>

Noah

[Evin Grant]

Not unless they add a second CF card slot, it's currently just a single, at least in the prototypes they've shown so far.

[David Battistella]

Two Reddrives should be sufficient for most location shoots, coupled with a S16 zoom and a few hardware Raid 1 back up drives and you have one slick traveling Doco system. Man this cam is versitile.

How would the RED zooms fair in this situation?
Would the camera do 100FPS in 2K crop and in 2K scaled 60FPS? (wait do I have the backwards?)

Another killer option would be to laod up on light wieght CF cards. I know the would weigh a lot less on remote shoots and the weight you save could be put into batter power or a solar charger.

Anybody want to join the RED backpack planning committee. I think nit can be kep to about 25lbs for camera and accessories. Now all we need is a fold down matte box.

David

[Damien Molineaux]

...

But why shoot 2k when you can shoot 4k? :)

So you can have a smaller lightweight camera, with a high quality S16 versatile zoom lens.

So you can have more depth of field.

So you're post production is speedier, less render times.

So you need less hard drive space.

Because you know your film will never be shown at a higher res than HD.

and all the reasons already mentioned

Cheers,
Damien

[MikeHedge]

Evin! Darkline!.... you guys rock. I know this will be great for long timelapses. Count me in for the backpack trip. Alaska anyone?

[Joe Carney]

Evin! Darkline!.... you guys rock. I know this will be great for long timelapses. Count me in for the backpack trip. Alaska anyone?

I was thinking more like South Beach.:)

[David Battistella]

Not unless they add a second CF card slot, it's currently just a single, at least in the prototypes they've shown so far.

I have asked for multiple slots in a different thread. I think at least a double card slot would be a good idea. I'm not sure how hard that would be to implement, but it would expand the possibilities for sure.

David

[Stokestack]

Any word on user-selectable data rate? 2K at 14 MBps would double your recording time against 4K but give you better quality than 7 MBps.

Granted, the value of this depends on the interplay of artifacts, deBayering, raw scaling, and what have you.

[Evin Grant]

Now all we need is a fold down matte box.
David

Ask and you shall recieve...
http://www.cinetactics.com/imager/mb125h_11_dvx100b.jpg
http://www.cinetactics.com/imager/mb125h_05_hd100.jpg
http://www.cinetactics.com/imager/mb125h_set.jpg
These guys make a very cool product, and a very cool LCD hood too.

I have both, not a replacement for a studio mattebox but deinately a good choice for Uber-lightweight filtration and light control.
http://www.cinetactics.com

[I Bloom]

Any word on user-selectable data rate? 2K at 14 MBps would double your recording time against 4K but give you better quality than 7 MBps.

Granted, the value of this depends on the interplay of artifacts, deBayering, raw scaling, and what have you.

THE FOLLOWING POST IS ALL SPECULATION:

I think the major computing overhead inside RED comes from compression. Scaling is probably minimal in comparison, and limited anyway by the clockspeed of the chip (60 fps if you sample 4K)

My guess is that in order to optimize the compression for speed it has to be hardwired to a particular bitrate. So we won't get a 14MBps format or any other bitrate besides 7 and 27 roughly unless we get RGB or some other transformation of the number of samples in the image.

Look at it this way, all these formats fit together very neatly as variations on the same theme. 4K RAW is just four tiled 2K windowed RAW frames. 2K Scaled RAW is exactly the same format digitally speaking as 2K windowed RAW just before compression. This makes me think that RED could use the same hardwired compression designs in their FPGA's for multiple formats. It also explains why when 4K is limited to 24fps, then 2K windowed comes out at 96 fps (4 x 24). Same circuitry, one quarter of the work. My guess is if we get 4K up to 30 we might have 2K windowed up to 120.

Graeme is the only person who knows these answers. So forgive me for speculating. But what I'm saying is from what I can tell the compression ratio is always exactly the same, what's changing is the number of samples being compressed.

Here is the good news though Stokestack, 7MBps 2K is exactly the same amount of compression as 27MBps 4K, just 1/4 the samples (whether its scaled or windowed). So it should look pretty good.

IBloom

P.S. It wouldn't surprise me if by dumping the RGB formats we see improvements in 4K framerates as well, since by my theory any improvement to 2K will produce a 1/4 improvement to 4K. Of course we are limited overall by the clockspeed of the chip, 60fps at 4K and 120 fps at 2K windowed.

AGAIN THIS POST HAS BEEN ALL SPECULATION

[Rob Lohman]

We can tweak data rates, hence all numbers are subject to change. These numbers are not really fixed that much ibloom. There are of course limits to where we can go.

[I Bloom]

We can tweak data rates, hence all numbers are subject to change. These numbers are not really fixed that much ibloom. There are of course limits to where we can go.

Can you change rates in camera, as in on the fly?

IBloom

[Steve Sherrick]

That's incredible to think we can get 12 hours of 2K on a 320gb drive. That will make some of my clients very happy. It will look a lot better than 720P at a similar data rate. Very cool

Steve

[Rob Lohman]

Can you change rates in camera, as in on the fly?

IBloom
Not at the moment. Maybe in the future? That would be something for Jim to answer....

[MikeCurtis]

Hey Evin - between work and my fubared NetNewsWire install, I've been missing a lot of stuff - when/where was 7 MB/sec posted? Was that part of a wider datarate update somewhere?

Thanks to any who can answer (eek, I feel like I'm slipping into noob territory not knowing these as a brainstem function....)

-mike

[Brook Willard]

Mike! Where've you been, man?

[Nils Ruinet]

when/where was 7 MB/sec posted? Was that part of a wider datarate update somewhere?

Thanks to any who can answer (eek, I feel like I'm slipping into noob territory not knowing these as a brainstem function....)

-mike
Here, it was in the "720P and 1080P... losers" thread :
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3450


I think recording these formats is a waste of time. I'm voting to delete them from the recording options. You can always "downrez" to get these, but shooting these formats seems counter-intuitive and a waste of FPGA space. Remember that shooting 2K REDCODE RAW is only about 7MB/sec. Maybe we should add a You Tube option? :-)

What thinkest thou?

Jim

[Scott Webster]

Hey Evin - between work and my fubared NetNewsWire install, I've been missing a lot of stuff - when/where was 7 MB/sec posted? Was that part of a wider datarate update somewhere?

Thanks to any who can answer (eek, I feel like I'm slipping into noob territory not knowing these as a brainstem function....)

-mike

Hey Mike, You may of missed this as well:

One little known fact is with REDQUICK (our mini app) you can instantly put a Quicktime wrapper on REDCODE RAW files to immediately view as a Quicktime movie. There is no transcode time to do this. It is truly instantaneous.

Jim

REDQuick is just what it says. It's for RED files and getting them QUICKly into QUICKtime. It's practically instantaneous to make the wrappers, and then you can instantly play back the files in Quicktime player.

At the moment, REDQuick generates Quicktimes that play back at 2k, 1k, 0.5k.

Graeme

We are currently working on adding the option of REDQUICK-style Quicktime reference file generation into the camera itself (please note there are some technical hurdles still to be overcome). Your digital media would then have a master 4K REDCODE RAW data file plus Quicktime reference files (proxies) at 2K, 1K and 0.5K as Graeme described.

So in addition to real time playback of RECODE RAW data on-camera, we can offer instant or virtually instant playback via your computer.

Stuart English

[I Bloom]

Not at the moment. Maybe in the future? That would be something for Jim to answer....

No big hurry. I'm sure most people will stay with the factory settings. Otherwise shoot real RAW off the optical port.

IBloom

[Jim Arthurs]

8GB CF card would hold about 7.6 minutes of 2K at 60fps.

What's the current story on 1080i? I know, yuck, gag, all the obligatory reactions to it, but personal taste aside, sooner or later a client will ask, so...

It used to be in the specs for recording (is it available "live" through HD-SDI out?), then I remember someone saying that it was only going to be created by processing 60p in REDCINE.

So, if that's true, easy access non-raw port 60P has a purpose beyond just high speed, it's the only path to interlaced HD...

[Evin Grant]

The HD-SDI outputs on the side will max at 720 60P for the monitor out and 1080 30P for single/dual link, AFAIK there will be no interlaced out of the camera at all. Except maybe the HDMI but even there only Red knows.

[Nils Ruinet]

The HD-SDI outputs on the side will max at 720 60P for the monitor out and 1080 30P for single/dual link, AFAIK there will be no interlaced out of the camera at all. Except maybe the HDMI but even there only Red knows.

I thought the HDMI output was only 720P, and the HD-SDI 1080P ?

But I don't think there is any interlaced output anywhere.


If I remember correctly the HD-SDI is always running at 60 fps with the necessary conversions. I could be wrong on that though! Stuart can answer how this works for sure.

[Brook Willard]

AFAIK, the "Preview" HD-SDI output is 720p 4:2:2 and the "clean" HD-SDI outputs are 1080p 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 if run as dual link. The HDMI output is 720p.

This is what I understood as of NAB, so it very well may have changed. I'm certainly not an authority on the camera, so I don't want to claim something to be fact that may not be true.

[Nils Ruinet]

So you mean you could have a preview output through HD-SDI too ? I thought it was only through HDMI...
By "preview", you mean with an overlay of the framelines and everything you get in the EVF, or what is there in it exactly ?
Would be cool...

[Brook Willard]

So you mean you could have a preview output through HD-SDI too ? I thought it was only through HDMI...
By "preview", you mean with an overlay of the framelines and everything you get in the EVF, or what is there in it exactly ?
Would be cool...

That was my original understanding, yes. The "Preview" output would show you almost exactly what you'd see in the EVF... access to menus, frame-lines, etc. Keep in mind that this may have changed or I may just be remembering things incorrectly... but that's how I remember it.

[MikeCurtis]

Thanks to all for answers, I'm catching up.

Work, house disasters (no water in kitchen, then leaking dishwasher, then flat tire, then carpenter ants chewing up my house, etc), my messed up NetNewsWire that is my primary Interweb tube filtration system, etc.

Oh - and FCP testing - lotsa interesting info - 16 formats, 3 RT settings, 6 different machines, etc.

One Testing Timeline to Rule Them All - way back yonder read some review (was it MacWorld?) that was testing a box and did a 'filter test' that included the Wind Filter - set me off.

Decided to do a Righteous Test, and now I'm doing it, based on what editors REALLY use regularly, based on my own and client work experience.

-mike

[Steve Sherrick]

Can't wait to see the results of the FCP test Mike. You're work is always informative.

Steve

[Jeff Kilgroe]

So, if that's true, easy access non-raw port 60P has a purpose beyond just high speed, it's the only path to interlaced HD...

Yes, we absolutely must have a direct path to 1080p 60 out of the camera. Even if that means scaling/cropping 2K in post, as long as it's fairly quick and delivers great image quality. But There has to be a means to get this. Jim has said the camera will not provide any interlaced modes. And I think that's a good decision, but you're right, eventually a client is going to want this.

I think the best solution for 1080i is just to work within a 1080p workflow and then interlace on output. Whether you shoot 24p, 30p or 60p (or 25 or 50 p for PAL guys) will depend on what the project is... If you're delivering footage direct to the client and they want 1080i HDCAM or DVCPROHD, I say shoot 1080p60 (or whatever the appropriate camera mode would be / 2K). And then scale/crop if necessary, output to interlaced format all in REDCINE.

[GlennChan]

it's the only path to interlaced HD...
You could shoot 30p (29.97p really) and output as progressive segmented frame... you treat the progressive image as if it were interlaced and send it one field at a time.

The advantage of doing this over 59.97p would be...
A- Increased sensitivity. Your exposures are twice as long for each image.
B- If you need to paint stuff out, you need to deal with less frames.
C- The infrastructure for this is in place. You can for example monitor the footage on a broadcast monitor (whereas with 59.97p I think you need 3gbps SDI).

59.97p can be advantageous in that...
A- Standards conversion is easier.
B- Better for the future since next-gen HD is moving to 50+60fps. You get smoother motion of course.

And I think the only advantage to shooting 59.97p and converting to 59.97i would be if you want that 60i motion look. Which I suppose you could argue looks better than 30p. In other respects, 29.97p should compress better and have higher vertical resolution (since with interlace you would filter the output; when you filter from progressive to interlace, sensitivity should go back up).

[David Battistella]

Yes, we absolutely must have a direct path to 1080p 60 out of the camera. Even if that means scaling/cropping 2K in post, as long as it's fairly quick and delivers great image quality. But There has to be a means to get this.

I think we have to think of RED like film and create UNIVERSAL 24P masters. This will be the best way to get the 1080i 59.94 delivery, but it would never be that 1080i "video" look because it would be shot 24P.

David

As an aside, the software being release around FCP Studio is all geared toward progressive images. Shake and Color both don't really like interlaced images. I find most high end systems work in P images.