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NAB 2008:
An Editorial Overview

by Jeremy Hanke

This year, I and two of my staff writers showed up at NAB ready to hunt bears. Okay, we didn’t in fact intend to hunt literal bears. Instead, we intended to track down the elusive reason all microfilmmakers everywhere were eagerly anticipating NAB 2008: the RED Scarlet.

Jim Jannard’s RED company has been exciting low budget filmmakers since NAB ’06 when it announced a revolutionary 4K Camera for roughly 10% of what a comparable Sony or Grass Valley setup would run. While it took awhile to get those RED One cameras out to the people, they finally started shipping last year to extremely favorable reviews, despite some initial beta-style hiccups. While microfilmmakers loved the capabilities of the RED One, it required about $30K to get into a basic shooting backage, which meant that most microfilmmakers would have to rent the camera if they wanted to use it, rather than own it.

As most microfilmmakers subscribe to the Mike Figgis’ mentality of ownership over renting, this did not meet our needs. I was hopeful that the technology found in the RED One might eventually trickle down to lower priced cameras, but I expected it to be a rival company who brought the trickle down technology to us.

However, a month before NAB ’08, Jannard “leaked” the information that they would be announcing a new, smaller professional camera that was codenamed, “The Scarlet.” Beyond that, he wouldn’t say a word until NAB. (Because RED’s team is a small group of cherry-picked professionals, there were no leaks before the show.)

As such, the Scarlet was the reason I was champing at the bit to wade through the sea of video professionals and media writers that jammed the Las Vegas Convention Center a few weeks ago.

The Red Scarlet
Before I could even get to the RED booth (which sat right beside the Adobe booth), I heard the first rumors about the camera: “Can you believe that?…under $3K!”

I could scarcely believe my ears and hurried to the booth to find out more. As I made my way into the packed space, I asked the RED security guards to direct me to Graeme Nattress, one of the hand-picked geniuses behind RED’s RedCode codec (and an old friend of MFM). I asked the British-born Canadian what he could tell me about the camera and he simply shrugged with a wry grin and said, “3K for $3K. That pretty much says it all.”

As 3K is better resolution than most theaters in the US currently have, I had to agree that that said a huge amount. I then went through the literature they had on their intended camera and was immediately excited by the fact that they do indeed want this camera to shoot RAW, which means that, like the RED One, the Scarlet would be able to record native 4:4:4 color space. This is a huge leap forward for anyone wanting to do greenscreen work, as the RAW codec preserves virtually all color information when it records, which is a huge difference between the HD and DV codecs, which immediately destroy half (HD) or three-fourths (DV) of the color data before recording the image. Additionally, the chip size they’re aiming for is 2/3” in size, which is double the size of the chip in the Panasosnic HVX200. (A 2/3” chip was what was used inside the high end Sony CineAlta cameras that were used to shoot the last two Star Wars films.)

As though these features weren’t enough, the Scarlet also aims to be able to shoot 120 fps in standard recording mode (fully double what the HVX200 is capable) and a blistering 180 fps in burst mode. Now, how much of the potential 3K quality will be able to be used in slow-mo is unknown. (The 4K RED One can only shoot 120 fps at 2K mode.)  Additionally, the length of burst mode is currently unknown, even to the engineering team behind the RED Scarlet.

While the lens on the camera is a fixed lens (as opposed to the RED One which can utlize PL mount cinema lenses, or with a basic adapter, SLR lenses), it has a decent 8X zoom with an F2.8 aperture. Additionally, it can be used as a still camera (which at the 3K resolution, would be approximately a 4.5 MP still image).  The camera is capable of recording up to the 100 MB/sec version of Redcode via a direct interface to a computer.  (The interfaces supported currently are HDMI, HD-SDI, Firewire 800, and USB2.)  With greater compression, it can be recorded directly to Dual Compact flash cards.  (These appear to be standard Compact Flash cards that you would normally use in DSLR cameras.  The amount that can be recorded per gig to the CF cards has not yet been announced.) 

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