I just posted this over in the Birger Lens Mount Reservations thread on RedUser, in response to the recent flap over Birger’s Canon EF mount voiding the Red One’s warranty:

People seem more angry at Red than at Birger here. Can we have a bit of a reality check? As a third-party developer, it was Birger’s responsibility to keep channels open with Red. This is how it always works with this sort of vendor relationship. Erik has talked about Birger having “more than 200 customers”. Let’s be generous and assume this means ~300 mounts. That’s still well under 10% of the cameras Red has taken orders for. Red’s primary responsibility is the camera, not taking the initiative to check up on what third-party developers are doing.

Given what appears to be a complete lack of communication, I suppose we’re lucky this all came to light when it did, rather than, say, after Birger had already shipped a few dozen mounts and cameras were failing left and right. That would have created a really awkward situation. Like, the sort of situation that doesn’t get resolved without lawyers getting involved.

Of course, it also would have been nice if Red had some clearly written documentation for third-party vendors explaining (among other things) exactly what parts of the camera are considered interchangeable and what parts aren’t. But it’s frankly a little hard to fault Red too much in this instance for not having such a thing, because if communication had been better (which, as noted above, is the responsibility of the third-party vendor), this issue would have been dealt with anyway.

Finally, I feel it’s rather important to note that even if the Birger mount wasn’t stuck in warranty-related limbo, we still wouldn’t have what we were told we’d have months ago. Birger has, whether deliberately or merely by drastically underestimating the relevant engineering challenges, strung its customers along with promises that its product would ship in a matter of weeks (or even days) for seven months now. It took them six months to just confirm many people’s orders. We still have no estimate of when the focus knob system and/or Bluetooth remote (the electronic focus controls that actually make this more useful than a Nikon dumb mount) might be done. And if Birger did offer such an estimate now (again, even assuming no warranty issues) would you feel comfortable planning around it?

We really wanted Birger’s project to succeed. Back in December of last year, when the Birger mount was supposed to ship in a couple of weeks, I made a post on Indie4K which concluded that “EOS lenses with the Birger mount are shaping up to be the indie option of choice for Red”. And we hung in there for quite a while, despite the fact that it was costing us money (for lens rentals) and that we weren’t using our camera for our own projects as much as we would have been if we’d had our own glass. I don’t think we were the only ones experiencing such inconvenience and expense.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, when Erik posted the pictures of FedEx boxes (implying mounts would really ship this time), and then shortly thereafter explained the new electrical problem would cause yet another delay, we gave up and ordered a Red 18-50mm lens, and four days later we could actually shoot with our camera without renting glass. We weren’t sure it was the right thing to do, because Birger was still saying they’d be shipping very soon… but then again they’d been saying that for half a year already. When these warranty issues surfaced, though, and when another week passed with no information about the focus knob, etc. we knew we’d made the right choice.

From our perspective, the only thing Birger has ever actually handled at the standard I would expect was promptly canceling our order when requested.

I still hope Birger’s product eventually succeeds — I still believe that the ability to use EF lenses (with electronic focus controls) is a very compelling idea for the do-it-yourself indie crowd.

But we couldn’t wait anymore. And if someone just getting their camera asked me whether they should wait, I’d probably advise them not to as well. Seriously. Don’t sit there staring at a $25K paperweight. If you can afford the Red 18-50 lens, buy one. It’s not high-end Zeiss glass, but it’s sharp, it’s lightweight, and it’ll put a nice image on your sensor. If you can’t afford that, get a Nikon dumb mount. Maybe you’ll be able to swap it out for Birger’s Nikon smart mount in a few months. But just get out there and start using your camera!

There’s a certain demographic which seems to sit around thinking of reasons why the Red One can’t possibly be any good. We’ve all run across these arguments. One that has really been bugging me recently is the notion that RedCode compression somehow constitutes, essentially, cheating; that Red shouldn’t really be considered a high-end camera because it shoots compressed footage.

The notion that uncompressed is always better for a professional camera shows a complete lack of understanding of the trade-offs involved with this sort of decision. Sure, uncompressed is better if all other things are equal. But all other things aren’t equal.

What particularly annoys me is the notion that the Red One is somehow less professional than cameras which output uncompressed 1080p as their final product. Modern compression algorithms are extremely smart about what data they discard. The idea that you’re better off with an uncompressed image with a much smaller number of total pixels simply doesn’t hold up to even the most cursory analysis.

Even very low bit-rate consumer formats like HDV, when shooting HD, produce much better looking images than uncompressed SD, despite having far lower bit rates. (And HDV compression for 1080p footage is something like 85:1 or 90:1 compression. RedCode 28 is 12:1, and with a much more advanced algorithm.) You’re far better off capturing lots of detail and having a modern compression algorithm figure out what it can safely get rid of than you are capturing less detail in the first place, or capturing lots of detail but throwing lots of it away immediately using more primitive techniques like downscaling or subsampling chroma.

OK, so why doesn’t Red just record uncompressed 4K bayer, instead of compressed 4K bayer?

I’m quite confident in saying that given today’s technology, the Red One is a far more compelling product because of RedCode than it would be if it only shot uncompressed data. In fact, the camera wouldn’t be nearly as significant to the market if it didn’t shoot to a compressed format.

RedCode is what allows you to shoot to CF cards and Red Drives, rather than being tethered to a RAID the size of a mini-fridge. It’s what allows footage to be downloaded in a practical way on-set. It’s what allows you to play back footage from a single SATA or FireWire 800 hard drive, and store about 10 hours of footage per terabyte, instead of around 50 minutes.

Of course, you don’t get all of this for noting. The Red One probably could probably use less power and run cooler if it didn’t have to do 4K wavelet compression in real-time. And there is some loss of image quality vs. a totally uncompressed 4K image.

But the fact is, the Red One wouldn’t be a remotely practical camera for the vast majority of the projects it’s being used on, if Red had bought into the myth that professional recording must be uncompressed. RedCode is the major factor that makes the Red One usable by low-budget indies. Without RedCode, the data situation would simply be unmanageable for low-budget indies, both on-set and in post. Without Redcode this blog, which after all focuses on the technical issues surrounding low-budget indie filmmaking, probably wouldn’t talk about the Red One at all. As it is, that’s practically all we talk about….

We’re still here, we’ve just been rather busy. Regular updates should start again… about now.

See major new features and menu map. Camera owners can, of course, get it in the usual place.

The biggest enhancements are related to image quality. Red appears to have rather dramatically reduced compression artifacts and noise levels. 16:9 4K is also now far more practical to shoot and worth with, with the codec errors during recording supposedly fixed, and 16:9 4K QuickTime proxies now working.

Red has also introduced a new color space, REDSpace, that allows for better WYSIWYG exposure on-camera. Or, for those who work in a more technical way, you can now directly monitor raw, so you know exactly what the sensor is capturing.

Build 16 also introduces 1080p output in playback mode, though not for live monitoring, and many user interface conveniences and fix-ups, like user buttons that are now actually programmable, and the ability to adjust a range of parameters with the rotary encoder on the EVF.

Be warned, however, that Build 16 changes the format of R3D files. There are QuickTime plugins and RedAlert/RedLine builds for the new format, but not RedCine build that can work with Build 16 footage yet. So if your workflow relies on RedCine, you’ll probably want to hold off until that shows up (possibly as soon as next week).

Update: the Build 16 compatible version of Redcine has just been posted. Get it in the usual place.

I haven’t previously posted anything about the Epic, Red’s new $40,000 5K camera. Why? Mostly because I’ve been trying to gauge reaction, and figure out just where it fits into the market. As usual, this post assumes you’ve already read the information on the Epic’s tech specs; I’m going to focus on what it all means.

Reaction to the Epic over on RedUser.net has not been entirely positive, particularly from the low-budget indie crowd. In one sense, any negative reaction is totally irrational. Sure, the Epic costs twice as much as the Red One. But both the Epic and the Red One offer far more that what competing cameras offer in the same price range, or even at four times the price level. And, of course, Red is offering that full-value trade-in for Red One camera bodies, which is generous practically to the point of absurdity.

In another sense, though, the less than totally positive reactions were completely predictable. To understand why, don’t think about camera specs and price points. Think about mythology.

Unlike with Scarlet, I think it’s actually a bit of a stretch to say the Red One and the Epic target different markets. The Red One was marketed as an alternative to 35mm film for everything up to and including major motion pictures by major Hollywood directors. That firmly overlaps with Epic’s intended market. I think an important part of the “Red revolution” in many people’s minds was that they’d be able to buy and use the same tools as the pros at the top of the industry. Epic makes that less true; once Epic hits the market, many of the guys for whom money is no object are probably not going to be using the same camera as the indie filmmakers who put their faith in Red.

Now, given just how capable the Red One is, being bothered by this is basically irrational from any sort of practical standpoint. This doesn’t really cause any material harm to indies who can’t afford Epic, who have, obviously, still benefited hugely from what Red is doing. But it disrupts what we could call the “mythology” of Red, and that can be upsetting to people. This is, I suspect, the single largest reason why reaction the Epic has been somewhat mixed.

This sort of thing is always an issue for companies that become the focus of a mythology; reading RedUser.net over the last few days reminds me of nothing so much as reading Mac forums in the days after a MacWorld Expo; in virtually every case, regardless of what Apple announces at a MacWorld, some of Apple’s most loyal followers react negatively, usually because they’re holding the company to a ludicrously high standard and/or failing to take business realities into account.

Red (and Apple) shouldn’t worry about this stuff. People react so strongly because they care about the company and the product. In other words, this kind of reaction is generally an indication that you’re doing something right. As long as you keep building products that get people excited — even if that excitement sometimes takes the form of ardent criticism — you’re ahead of game in every respect that matters.

There seems to be a lot of interest in comparing the Scarlet with that old standby of no-budget Indie filmmaking, the HVX200. It’s a little screwy to compare a camera that’s already on the market with one that won’t be out for a year (or more; I love Red, but they don’t exactly have the greatest track record for delivery dates), but I suppose it’s useful to put things in perspective for folks who are familiar with the HVX.

Scarlet is clearly going to generate a better image than the HVX, which resolves, in testing, somewhat less than 600 vertical lines. If Scarlet’s measured resolution is around 75-80% of its sensor’s pixel dimensions (which is about what the Red One is; can’t think of why Scarlet should be different), it should resolve about twice that many vertical lines, meaning around four times as much detail overall.

Now add high-bitrate raw recording. Processing the Scarlet’s 3K raw recorded image down to 1080p is going to produce something hard to tell from a 4:4:4 image, vs. the HVX’s 4:2:2 recording. So, we’ve got super-sampled 4:4:4 1080p vs. subsampled 720p 4:2:2. (Yes, the HVX has a 1080p recording mode as well, but the chips resolve a bit less than 720p, so the only real benefit is fewer compression artifacts.) Plus, you get all the advantages of raw recording, that I’ve discussed extensively in the past.

Of course, Scarlet is single chip, and three chip cameras sometimes do better in low light. But keep in mind it has a 2/3″ sensor. That’s measured across the diagonal. If you double the diagonal, you quadruple the surface area, so Scarlet’s single sensor is larger than the HVX’s three sensors combined. And that nice large sensor gets you shallower depth of field as well.

The HVX will probably still have some advantages for workflow (though it’s not impossible that by the time Scarlet ships, working with 3K REDCODE RAW in FCP will be as easy as working with DVCPRO HD currently is). And it does have a more conventional form factor, which might make some folks more comfortable. But specifically for no-budget indie filmmakers, the Scarlet is clearly the better camera, hands down, no contest. And even if Panasonic does introduce an HVX replacement by then, it’ll probably still cost twice as much as the Scarlet.