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Monday, April 21, 2008
Top 5 Things at NAB ‘08
Mike Curtis | 04/21
1.) Red Scarlet/Red Epic - one for home, one for SERIOUS D-cinema work. Scarlet is easily summed up - “3K for $3K” - with 3K sensor that can shoot up to 120 fps for under three grand, when it ships in 2009 it will be a tough price point to beat. Red Epic, meanwhile, with better quality Redcode RAW, and 5K resolution at up to 100fps for only $40K, should be an indie filmmaker’s new Must Have.
2.) Codex Portable - record dual link HD-SDI or even RAW formats the latest cameras using 4:1 wavelet technology, on a breadbox sized package you can sling over your shoulder. Add the virtual file system on top of that, as well as the ability to transcode material in-the-box, you’ve got a helluva solution for a damned attractive price.
3.) Glue Tools 3 - full, honest-to-God DPX workflow in Final Cut. Compressor aware to boot. NICE. Plus, Bob also makes a native Phantom plugin. Dude’s a rock star.
4.) Vision Research Miro camera (in the Abel Cine booth) - 1256 fps at 800x600 at 14 bits RAW, and higher frame rates at lower resolutions. DSLR sized camera, with no-instructions needed touchscreen simplicity. Offloads to SD cards to ingest. Too bad it is $30K - I’d LOVE to have one to mess around with all day.
5.) Cinemag - big honkin’ solid state RAM recorder for the Phantom HD and Phantom 65. Small, dirt simple recording media, docks for offloading to GigE now, 10GigE in the future.
I didn’t get a chance to see all kinds of cool things, like Wafian’s new rig, the SI-2K based 3D rig, Cineform’s latest, eCinema Systems or Cinetal’s new displays, or a bunch of other things. I did see and like Avid’s new approach, I think it is a significant step in the right direction to address my concerns with their competitiveness, but it didn’t excite me as much as what is listed above, which was mostly work related.
-mike
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Re: “3k for #3k” - to be fair, what sort of accessories do you need to kit the Scarlet out with to be a functional system? As you’ve noted with your own REDOne purchase experience, there’s the body, and then there’s everything else… Not that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth! But for the uninitiated, those prices need at least some small asterisks next to them…
Posted by Chris Meyer on 04/22 at 12:13 AM
As far as I can see, the scarlet could be used out of the box AS IS.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/22 at 04:54 PM
I _think_ but do not know that Scarlet will be usable as is, but how usable might be debatable. Will it include a CF card or two? Dunno at this time - so that might be your first mandatory purchase.
But will you want some handles, a shoulder rig, the matte box, some filters, etc. - depends on how serious you want to shoot, and how hand holdable the camera is.
It is DEFINITELY a more consumer-ish camera, so I don’t think you’ll have to have as many accessories that are functionally required as the Red One has.
But it might be a splitting hairs, horses-for-courses thing as to how much extra stuff is truly necessary.
-mike
Posted by Mike Curtis on 04/23 at 12:13 PM
At 40K, Epic is a “must-have” for indie filmmakers? 40K is the total BUDGET of a lot of indie features. You’d be smarter to rent and keep your future options open—what if something better comes along next week? Looking forward to buying a Scarlet, though!
Posted by John Touhey on 04/25 at 08:12 AM
Did anyone catch the Convergent-Design Flash XDR? For $5,000 you get compact box that takes uncompressed footage from your camera’s HD-SDI port, turns it into any kind of MPEG-2 you can think of (including 160Mb/s 1920x1080 4:2:2 Intraframe!) and records it onto compact flash cards (and it’ll work with x133 CF cards too).
Very exciting piece of kit for anyone who already owns a HDV or EX1 camera. Cheap solid-state recording - who would’ve thunk it?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/03 at 10:22 PM
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