I'm just trying to get an idea of the Video market and my potential life with it in the stills industry.

I'm assuming the final output of a Red is better than a 5DII which in turn is better than GH1 right? What do Red mean by 5K etc it's still 1080 isn't it, I don't know what to measure against to get any idea of what is suitable for which market.

Kevin.

RED video is more than 1080P. You'd have to downres it to show on a 1080P display.

So how does a 5DmkII compare against a Red? I've been quoted over $35k for a Red, I'm trying to see if it's overkill for my needs. My needs being film library and short aerial clips. Output unknown but I would not want to be limited to Powerpoint presentations.

Kevin.

Think of the RED as a manual focus DSLR that shoots 12bit RAW movies at up to 30fps and 4096x2304. There is no mirror, hence either a high resolution EVF or LCD panel are used for monitoring. The RAW files are similar to what you're used to with stills, but they're nicely compressed so you can record about 4.5mins on an 8GB CF card. You can record a few hours on a hard drive.

The major difference of the 5D2 is that the video recorded is highly compressed, 8bit, processed video, similar to how a DSLR records a JPEG instead of a RAW. However, because of how the video works on the 5D2, it must downsample from the full sensor down to a 1920x1080 for the recording. If that were done with finesse, then the recorded image would be very nice indeed (save for the strong compression), but tests show that the downsample is crude, and, indeed, it looks like for every 3 rows on the sensor, 2 are not read. This is obviously not optimal. Advantages are the simplicity of the camera, and if you have lots of Canon glass you're ready to go out of the box. It really all depends on how it's image quality and robustness of the compression to suit post colouring needs holds up to your needs and expectations.

Without fully knowing your skills, background and needs, it's hard to recommend a RED. It's a unique camera for sure, and I get the feeling that one of the forthcoming Scarlet models may be more to your liking. I'm happy to answer any questions on the RED products if you need more info.

Graeme

I haven't heard anything to suggest 5DII video is better than the GH1. In fact, Panasonic is claiming that GH1 video is more high-tech than the 5DII video.

Graeme,
Phew at last, some real information, now I see better. I could not believe with all the hype a 5DII was in the same league as the RED. The Scarlet does look interesting, from their site I get the impression the cheaper models are more biased to the stills shooter and the more expensive to the broadcaster. I am a stills shooter, I do mostly aerial. I am looking into stabilised mounts and the possibility to shoot some aerial video, what I don't want is to shoot stuff that is limited to the very low end of the market. Neither do I want to blow money on unnecessary equipment. Now the smaller frame RED I presume handles colour grading etc better than a 5DII would?

Thanks,

Kevin.

Smaller frame RED I'm meaning Scarlet 2/3 cinema, these all look some way off yet I could be waiting until next year and beyond for them.

Kevin.

I wouldn't be so hasty about the 5Dii providing better video quality than the GH1. No one will contest its superiority for stills, and the video may be somewhat better in low light, but with both sensors downsampled to 1080p, the differences for video are going to be more down to the way the processing is handled. In this case, it seems that Panasonic's methodology is a bit more advanced and probably on par with or better than most camcorders.

When you consider that the GH1 is also vastly more flexible while shooting video (autofocus, creative control, EVF viewing rather than arm's-length LCD viewing), much less expensive, much smaller, etc. it doesn't make much sense to buy a 5Dii if video is what you're looking for.

I suspect that the quality you'd be able to pull out of a RED would significantly surpass either of these options.

It's all about the details of the processing. Saying "1080p" means nothing. I'm utterly biassed - a lot of my code is in the RED cameras and I like them for both objective and personal reasons. I measured the 5D2 video resolution and it was a lot less than 1920 horizontally. Vertically, the aliasing was atrocious. If you shooting shallow DOF so not much is in focus, none of that really matters though as I'll not see neither artifacts nor the loss of resolution. It will be interesting to see how the GH1 downsamples to 1080p.

Scarlet is being very actively worked upon. On the REDUser site, we're starting to post test shots from the 2/3" Scarlet: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27238 and http://www.reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?...p;postcount=402 so things are really moving forwards there.

The difference in grading ability of footage is probably similar to JPEG compared to RAW, which is not surprising as the REDs shoot RAW.

One big question mark in how they get down from full still resolution to the roughly 2MP of the video. My guess is that the 5DMkII and GH1 use sub-sampling (discarding most pixel data), and perhaps also interpolation, because the total horizontal pixel counts are not an exact multiple of the 1920 horizontal of their HD output. So maybe the sampling is every third pixel, horizontally and vertically (I do not see how every second row and column could work; once one pixel is G, going by steps of 2 left, right, down or up gives just more G pixels.)

It would be a pleasant surprise if Panasonic is binning or downsampling, to use all the signal from all the photosites within its 16:9 frame, but I doubt it.

Red uses all of the sensor signal, so should be way ahead (except with its smallest format 2/3" sensor models.)

5k is 5000 pixels 1080 is 1080 pixels unles I am wrong - 5k is way bigger res - before you start thinking about the losses that compression bring (to non red cameras)

Think 20mp RAW vs 5mp jpg at compression 5 in stills terms (roughly)

so 5k footage is futureproof and awesome (and unwatchable/editable on all but the fastest computers)

Red offers RAW and full contol of settings

The 5d lacks even basic control although can be 'forced' to do 'nearly' what you want (nikon lenses)

The 5d is 1/8th of the price and may look similar to RED once RED had been downsized from its native cinema resolution to just HD telly size

The 5d can still look fantastic and can, debatebly, challenge video cameras like the sony EX1 (£4000) - and Im really excited about that other new camera too

One word of caution on scarlet - chip size - if you are looking for the 35FF sensor look - narrow DOF and affordable ultra wide lenses - the cheaper future Reds may not give this to you due to smaller chips being used

Of course your footage needs to be in focus which means an $800 handy cam with 'face recognition' af can trump them all sometimes

S

Graeme and others thanks,
I'm getting a good idea now, when all you get fed is impressive sounding numbers it gets confusing. The talk of the 5D and it's FF chip being top end quality only bettered by spending the price of a house was a bit hard to swallow. Shallow D of F is of little use to me for what I will be shooting. My priorities are stable platform, and footage that can cope with post processing that could include some software stabilisation/tracking. So starting with questionable 1080 and heavily compressed does not sound very sensible. And with the pace of things 1080 in a short time could look low tech. Right now I'm favouring a 2/3 Red over bolt on video in a still camera. So I'm off to check out the samples.

Kevin.

'1080' is generally understood to refer to 1920 x 1080 px or 2k (almost)

I did say 'unless I am wrong'

S

Video resolutions were typically referred to in vertical resolution, as TVs scanned the picture from top to bottom with a number of lines. PAL was a 625 line system (525 in Brazil) and NTSC a 525 line system. When things went digital, the horizontal resolution was standardized at 720 pixels, with either 576 or 486 for the vertical resolution. With HD, two systems were adopted, 720p and 1080i, with resolutions of 1280x720 and 1920x1080 respectively. 1080p is the progressive version of 1080i.

Because film if often shot with widely different aspect ratios, film scans were standardized on the horizontal dimension of 2k and 4k (6k and 8k scans exist too) with a vertical resolution dependent on the aspect ratio of the film.

RED being a digital cinema camera uses the horizontal notation, hence 4k is 4096x2304 etc.

Graeme

thanks for the useful info, Graeme! also waiting for a scarlet here, any ideas when they might become available?
cheers,
Mike
http://www.mikekobal.com

They're still in progress, and looking good: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=29372

If you want to get an idea of the image quality RED can deliver: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=29473

Graeme