Posted by Steve Guidry on 10/01/06 14:27

At last ! Some sanity to this pie-in-the sky thread !

Here's my take :

OK - - so it's possible to make it.

MAYBE some smart guy can figure out how to store all that popcorn
relialbly.

But there's STILL an enormous hurdle (2 inter-related ones, actually . .
..)
1) How to convince enough guys like me that it's worth plunking down the
$$$ to actually BUY one, and

2) Find enough clients who actually NEED (or think they need) the
capabilities that his new toy will offer.

THOSE are the main problems with red or any other product from neophyte
video companies like Mr. Oakley's. (as well as convincing me that they'll
be around to service the beast when it breaks.) These are enormous hurdles,
and the odds are not good, in my view.

Steve



> Most of us who regularly attend NAB saw the prototype back in April.
>
> I'll say again what I said then.
>
> The camera is perfectly rational and I can't think of any manufacturing
> or production reason why it won't fly.
>
> But I do think that the 4k camera is all well and good, but shooting at
> that rez brings HUGE stresses to the post process that nobody's come
> even close to addressing.
>
> In essense post-shoot storage is a massive and currently unsolvable
> problem that will choke this concept unless something changes hugely in
> storage technology between now and when the product ships.
>
> Sorry, but flash memory isn't going to work for my clients work. - nor
> any other volitile media that upon encountering a glitch, makes all my
> work disappear.
>
> I will NEVER put myself into a position to tell a client "You know all
> the equipment, cast, crew, actors and even craft services money I just
> spent for you over the past week? There was a static discharge when I
> picked up the memory module and the footage - all of it - Poof, it's all
> gone. Sorry.
>
> Nor do I find dedicating a closet to a bunch of aging legacy "client
> hard drives" anything but deeply stupid. Drives fail. And when they do,
> they're no better than flash memory.
>
> And investing in and stockpiling mechanical hard disc drives - instead
> of tapes or discs is just stupid on it's face.
>
> Sorry, but I want dependable media for storage. Betacam worked, DVCAM
> works, even Mini-DV works. Until there's a reliable and robust storage
> medium that works for a few hours of 4k media - I don't think this dog's
> gonna hunt.
>
> And right now, nothing I can see on the horizon - certainly not Blue ray
> or Sony's XDCAM - has anywhere NEAR enough capacity to be realistic as a
> storage and backup solution to something putting out uncompressed files
> that size.
>
> It's like someone invented a popcorn popper that can churn out a
> thousand gallons of popcorn a second. Sounds great until you turn it on
> and realize that after it's run a couple of minutes, you have a mountain
> of popcorn and have to turn the bloody thing off until someone figures
> out where to get - how to use - and who actually can afford the bloody
> GIANT popcorn bags.
>
> Until that changes, IMO, it's a lovely technological innovation that got
> everything totally right - except the part of the production chain that
> could potentially make it actually an effective production choice -
> affordable, dependable, field footage file storage.
>
> Until they show me that - I'm spending my money elsewhere.
>
> FWIW
>
> --
> Bill Davis
> StartEditingNow.com
> DVD editing instruction with Multi-Track Movies

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