Samsung unveils Flash 1080P HD camcorder

[Christian Edwards]

http://www.digitalmedia.com.au/node/479

it seems companies like sony , samsung, panasonic etc wont be resting on their laurels much longer. the development of new digital media is progressing at an extraordinary rate .these company's seem to be working from the bottom up where as Red has started at the top.Red has set a pretty high bench mark, not only for other company's but for themselves too.It wont be long for "rival" producers to catch up. lets face it, its not like its beyond their capabilities to produce maybe even surpass where Red is at now....and i though Digital wars only existed in science fiction books.
Has Red ever found out who it was that infiltrated their head quarters and stole their documents ?

[killfilm]

thats why the scarlet really has to stand out

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

prosumer

[killfilm]

how about scarlet--the world's first affordable 2k cam.

[Gareth Gerrard]

Is the price really $299?????

[Stuart English]

http://www.digitalmedia.com.au/node/479

Something to watch out for with this type of design is mismatch between the headline grabbing resolution number and actual image quality. By analogy watch the NFL playoffs. CBS is "full HD" 1080 but the pixelation artifacts are very obvious. On the other hand Fox is "only" 720p and looks great - why? The main reason seems to be the MPEG-2 compression used to broadcast both can handle the pixel data rate requirements of 1280 x 720 but not 1920 x 1080. Hence it may be "full HD" but its hardly worth watching.

Now translate this to cameras (especially consumer ones) and consider pixel size. A same size sensor cannot have the same signal to noise and low light sensitivity if you divide the sensor up into 1920 x 1080 (or more) pixels as it would have if you only have 1280 x 720. And noisier images are even harder to compress cleanly, so its a double whammy...

Then add into the equation the truly horrible (noisy) images that the new "true HD" 1080p LCD-TV's are making.. and..

Well I guess the numbers game is the easiest way to sell these things - shame about the image quality though.

[David Birdy]

Something to watch out for with this type of design is mismatch between the headline grabbing resolution number and actual image quality. By analogy watch the NFL playoffs. CBS is "full HD" 1080 but the pixelation artifacts are very obvious. On the other hand Fox is "only" 720p and looks great - why? The main reason seems to be the MPEG-2 compression used to broadcast both can handle the pixel data rate requirements of 1280 x 720 but not 1920 x 1080. Hence it may be "full HD" but its hardly worth watching.

Now translate this to cameras (especially consumer ones) and consider pixel size. A same size sensor cannot have the same signal to noise and low light sensitivity if you divide the sensor up into 1920 x 1080 (or more) pixels as it would have if you only have 1280 x 720. And noisier images are even harder to compress cleanly, so its a double whammy...

Then add into the equation the truly horrible (noisy) images that the new "true HD" 1080p LCD-TV's are making.. and..

Well I guess the numbers game is the easiest way to sell these things - shame about the image quality though.


Good Point Stuart..

Marketing uses numbers they often really do not understand…especially consumer marketing.

Broadcasters are very aware of the final delivery method and strive to get
the best image to the consumer…but of course this is very difficult and
Mpeg 2 does not help.
Mpeg-4 H.264 is the answer for DirceTV, Blue-Ray, QuickTime and many more.
Codec technology is amazing and it seems Jim may have found a guru to write some type of 4:4:4 codec for home delivery..(Stay tuned and visit NAB).

One thing is clear…4:4:4 images from The RED One will stop you in your tracks and will have wide appeal to all areas of the media.

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

4:4:4 codec for home delivery.

Wow. :spidy:

[divergent]

Is the price really $299?????

I expect this will be the key difference between Scarlet and anything anyone else puts out - Samsung's camera, and all the other 'pocket cameras', are built to a consumer price point, and in order to achieve the marketing numbers (1080p!) at that price point a lot of more important numbers are given up - as Stuart pointed out. A lot of people have questioned the combination of 'professional' and 'pocket' but I think that's because no one yet has approached it from the standpoint of 'how can we build the best possible tool in this form factor?' and then priced it accordingly. Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Samsung - none of them will do this simply because the market isn't big enough, especially compared to the market for $299 'HD' consumer cameras.

[Stokestack]

Broadcasters are very aware of the final delivery method and strive to get the best image to the consumer…but of course this is very difficult and Mpeg 2 does not help.
Mpeg-4 H.264 is the answer for DirceTV, Blue-Ray, QuickTime and many more.

Hm, that's a charitable view. It depends on who you consider the "broadcaster." Distributors are about stuffing more channels onto their transponders without regard to quality; one look at DirecTV tells you that. And with millions of pieces of hardware out there that don't have updateable firmware, we're stuck with MPEG-2. There'd have to be a major effort by the delivery companies themselves to subsidize the replacement of all that hardware, and quality will never be enough of a reason (if any reason at all) for them to spend the money.

The more likely reason would be to upgrade codecs but then cut bitrate so you get the same crappy quality and even more channels of it.

[Eugene]

http://www.letsgodigital.org/images/artikelen/6/canon-hf10.jpg

I would buy a Canon over a Samsung.
The specs are not pro, or even prosumer for either.
1/3.2" CMOS Sensor
FXP (17 Mbps) 2 hours 5 min -Allows 1920x1080 Full HD Recording
HDMI Terminal Type C 480i/480p/1080I Format Supported

Looks like it can only output 1080i, not 1080p, and besides it uses ACHVD which is not good for editing. It looks cool on the surface, but once you examine the specs, you see that it is not as good as the Canon TX1 which outputs 720p. I am with Stuart. Good 720p is better than bad 1080.

http://www.gearfuse.com/wp-content/uploads/samuel/feb07/tx1_2.jpg

I have not bought a TX1 because I read that the reds are over saturated, and RED is my favorite color.

Give me a reversed engineered TX1 with broadcast safe colors, RedCode encoding, HDMI 1.3, etc.

[Dylan Reeve]

Clearly, imaging in 1080 isn't as hard as it was, but the problem (I expect) with these cameras for us in a professional word is they are a huge pain in the ass to deal with. They will be recording quite heavily compressed formats, and ones we can't easily edit (thing MicroMV from Sony a few years back, or the DVD and HDD cameras of the last few years) - they are designed to be easy for the consumer to uses, with small files they can store on their computers, and they can edit in their easy-to-use manufacturer-provided editing application.

If you want more from it than that, you're stuffed.

One of the beauties of DV was that it was a well adopted and clearly defined format. It could be recorded with a crappy 1/4" single-chip handycam, or a full 2/3" 3-CCD broadcast head - they video was the same, the interface was standard and it was very widely supported. We haven't had that with any format since (HDV came close, but JVC and Sony ruined it for everyone, and it's kinda crappy). With file-based recording (in professional and consumer markets) it's only going to get worse. Already we have a hand full of professional HD file-based formats, and with the consumer models coming in there's only going to be more. The worst is the oh-so-similar-but-not-the-same ones, where one manufacturer's choice to encode audio differently or something creates yet another confusing format.

We know that Sony, Panasonic and others can make HD cameras, so there's nothing new in this sort of thing, it's just that we're now going to have to be prepared for allsorts of odd formats to turn up on our doorsteps on occasion...

[Bruce Allen]

Hey, isn't Stuart's comment the first actual hint we've got from Red about Scarlet since this whole forum section started?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Christian Edwards]

i guess its still a Mysteri(um)