Hindsight certainly is 20/20 and I like to review technology after the fact to reflect on how well it worked. Overall my G5 was a great machine and it was difficult to let it go. But a couple of the components were very hard to let go: the monitor, and the storage…

The original Apple 23″ Cinema Wide Display…

…was an awesome monitor.  As much as I complain about mac monitors, their high price tag and the singular input, I have to say that Apple makes good monitors.  They last and they have good color.  If not for the fact that this monitor was ADC I would have kept it.  But I couldn’t let myself pay $100 for an adaptor that still only gets me to Apple DVI.  Maybe if it were a breakout box that got me HDMI and other inputs, I would have considered it.

The Storage

Almost three years ago I purchased a storage solution which consisted of an eSata card, an eSata mini tower, and 5 x 500 GB hard drives.  I had originally intended to set it up as a RAID 5, but after I got it found that the solution wouldn’t do Raid 5, so I used it as 5 mounted volumes. The drives were fast and (thank God) I never had any data loss with them.

To prepare for the sale I cleaned up the Fusion 500 P and blew out all the dust. Taking it apart reminded me how well it’s made.  It is completely modular.  The fan is easily removed and makes it’s connection to power simply by plugging it in.  Typicaly for these types of eSata towers, each of the drives is screwed into a tray which also slides into place making it’s connection.  This make for easy clean up.

The unit holds 5 drives, all which run off a single multiplexed eSata connector.  The accompanying host adaptor card has 4 eSata connections.  This means that theoretically you have 4 towers with 5 drives each, or 30 drives.

To get my data backed up, I replaced one of the 500 GB drives with a 1.5 BG Seagate and moved everything over.  Then swapped a few of the drives out and repeated to a second 1.5 GB drive.  Each copy of 500 GB took about 3 hours.  Since these drives are connected eSata, it’s best to shut everything down, then swap out the drive.  Powering up requires that the drive be turned on first and then the system.

Speed-wise, the drives are quite a bit slower than a direct connected eSata, presumably because of the multiplexed connection. I never noticed it in use. They always seemed fast.  I never experienced any drop frames in Final Cut. But under benchmark they came in around 40 MB/s for both read and write:

The Fusion 500P was the hardest to give up because the technology isn’t very old.  The Fusion is still being sold today and after cleaning it up I realized that three years of use hardly shows. And all you have to do is swap out the hard drives for newer, bigger ones and you’re on your way to a 7.5 TB tower.  Also, in my new Intel Mac Pro, a RAID 5 IS possible – so you could add in some data protection.  But it’s gone now and I’ll be looking to replace it with something new for storage.  Keep your browser bookmarked here for what I buy and how it works.

If you follow the link above you’ll see that the monitor retails at $698, but I used a Black Friday 25% off coupon and paid only $556.80 delivered.  The original estimated ship date was 12/10/08 but the first business day after I ordered it shipped.

Inside the box is the monitor, the stand which is separate piece, manuals, quick start guide, power cable, VGA cable, USB cable, HDMI cable, DVI cable, and an installation CD – which I didn’t use for the mac.

The monitor stand does not arrive attached to the monitor but snaps in very simply. It feels very securely attached even though it can be removed with the press of a button. Gravity holds the monitor in place and prevents it from falling off the stand even if the button is pressed.

What made this monitor so attractive to me was all of the input ports. On the bottom of the back of the monitor is everything you can think of: HDMI, DisplayPort, 2 DVI ports, VGA, Composite, S-Video, and Component Video (both SD and HD compatible), audio in and out, and a USB hub with 2 USB ports on the bottom.  Click the images to enlarge:

Upskirt View of Ports

Port Labels

Moving to the left side of the monitor there are 2 more USB ports, a memory stick/SD slot, and a Compact Flash slot:

It only took a moment to snap the monitor together, hook it up to my 8-core and reboot.  Check out the comparison between my old Apple 23″ HD Cinema Wide Display and my new Dell Ultrasharp 24:

The new Dell feels larger. I’ve always said that an extra inch can mean a lot. It is also noticeably brighter than the older monitor. It might not be a fair comparison, since apple’s newer monitors are brighter as well. But so far I really like the look of the Dell. Don’t get me wrong, the older Cinema Wide is a very good monitor. It was the first Apple HD monitor and it still holds up today. But the only problem with it is that only has an ADP port – and no DVI. Apple has always made good monitors and for some applications I think it’s best to stay with them. But Apple monitors do not have multiple input options. This time around I didn’t want to get stuck with a monitor that wouldn’t have the built in flexibility to be used for a multitude of applications, including watching TV, Blu-ray movies, and playing Xbox games.

The Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP has that flexibility, it can be attached to more than one computer at a time, and it also the ability to do picture in picture. It has a bright clean and appropriately saturated look. It also has a built in USB hub with plenty of ports. The image to the left is a closeup of the monitor pixels. Of course the camera doesn’t do it justice. The image looks great at my normal viewing distance of about 1 foot.  (I’m a bit blind.)

While it’s possibly more expensive than some competitive products, it will last me much longer because of that DisplayPort – which most other monitors don’t have yet. Like I said, I call this future-proofing.

And while I’m back on the subject of that DisplayPort, this monitor has the typical version of that connector. Apple, of course, has their own mini-version of it for MacBooks and they recently announced the availability to license their version of the port with no fee.  This means that other computers and third party monitors could soon start having the mini display port as well.  OR a mini DisplayPort to regular DisplayPort connector might soon surface. So far Apple is not selling this connector.  But either way this new monitor connectivity option will be gaining ground and will most likely take over where DVI leaves off.

Final thoughts…  I’ve only had time to hook up the monitor and check out a few videos on it. I plan to attach a Blu-ray player to it via HDMI this weekend and give that a look. So far I’m really pleased with it. I like the monitor stand and the range of motion it has. The USB ports are working out well.  And the most important thing is that the picture looks amazing.

UPDATE 12/7/08 – Hooking the monitor up to a Blu-ray player revealed that it does not come with an HDMI cable. What I assumed was an HDMI cable is really a DisplayPort cable. At first glance they look quite similar. As for the 1080P HD quality – so far it looks good. I’ll have to explore a few titles and update again.

For the rest of us the information to focus on is surrounding the new Scarlet and Epic products what all they’ll do and what they’ll mean to our pocket book.

Jannard starts by saying that the last few weeks has brought some advancements in “all aspects of the electronics design and sensor fabrication…” and “a radical new approach to overcoming some of the previous system limitations.”  All leading to the “re-write of the system specs to the benefit of our customers.” He also categorizes all changes as “changes for the better” and looking at the new specs I have to agree.  On the bad side he admits that some of these changes will come with a slight delay in the releases, but describes it as being only “a few extra weeks”, and worth the wait.

I wanted to examine the differences in the specs and discuss some of the new pricing information. The first step there is to look at the original announcement details which I had modified to show the prices (click it to see full size):

Now look at the new specs sheet:

The first thing I looked at is the prices. The original details had a TBD price listed for the fixed lens Scarlet, which we now see is the originally promised 3k for $3k, with a ‘full kit’ listed at $3,750. I think it’s important to point out that whatever you want to say about RED’s approach to PR, hype and all the “waiting,” they are a company that makes promises and keeps them. Last year at NAB we were promised a 3k camera for 3k and it looks as if Jim plans on keeping that promise. In these times it’s refreshing to see that kind of integrity.

Here’s the scoop on the rest of the prices.  The middle two Scarlet brains stayed at $2,500 and $7,000 respectively, but the higher end scarlet dropped from $12,000 to a more attractive $9,750. The Epic models also had a few price drops.

Second I compared the release dates. According to this “as always details will change – count on it” schedule, the earliest anyone will be getting a Scarlet is Summer 2009.  The S35 Scarlet lost it’s “Spring” possibility and I fear we may see even more delays as these cameras as still being developed. I have to say that at this point it all seems like an eternity away. Like many other ‘fanboys’ I want one now.

Exploring what is being said regarding the tech specs, I think there is a lot to learn from the small details. One of the items to consider is FF1080p, which is the concept of using the Full Frame to capture a 1080p image. This is different than what I had understood about the Red One and the general Red Way. My understanding of the past is that to get a 1080P image you were just using the pixel for pixel center of the 3k (or higher) image sensor.  That means that from a shooting perspective, in that mode you’d also be using only the center of the lens.  I expect that FF1080P will provide more of a film-look in terms of focal length and improve light sensitivity, especially when you move higher in the image-sensor-resolution-size chain.

Another piece of new information is the addition of a “Burst Speed” which is higher than the previously mention max fps, the mention of “Time Lapse” and “Ramping” which are all very exciting options.

Jumping back to the topic of wanting one now.. I’m hopeful that we’ll see something real teased this year at NAB. Maybe just a clip in that 4k screening room of theirs. But even if not, these people are designing cameras from scratch. And not just any cameras, but the cameras we’ve all been wanting and fantasizing about for a while. When I took my first few photos with my Sony Digital SLR I had the thought “why can’t someone make a camera that just takes pictures like this 24 times a second?” And RED has done that in the Red One, and they’re doing even better things in these forthcoming cameras. I think it will be worth the wait and like I said, I’ve got to save up some cash to buy it and develop a project to shoot with it.

FYI, in a future post I also plan to explore the specs on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Did that camera start hitting the shelves in the US today?  What a coincidence.

Here’s a message to the dude (or chick) at Microsoft who paid millions of dollars for that mess… if the majority of people watching the ad can’t see the last half of your tag line, how is your message getting across?  Surely the tag line “Windows – LIFE WITHOUT” is not what you were hoping to communicate.  But that is the message that 80% of viewers saw Monday night.  Maybe you need a new editor/producer/ad agency to give millions of dollars to. Call my people and we’ll talk.

The G-SPEED eS is a mini-tower with 4 removable drive modules. With current drives it provides an unformatted capacity of 4 TB.  It attaches to a Mac or PC via one eSata cable. The typical package comes with an PCIe eSata raid controller, which is the host adaptor and handles the raid management.  This particular raid card has 4 eSata ports, meaning that it can handle 4 G-SPEED’s.  It is therefore possible to raid 16 TB drives together providing a reported 600 MB/sec.  (Although I have not invested the 6 grand to verify this speed – and you know how much I hate just repeating advertised bandwidth – so YMMV).

Once it’s set up as a RAID 5, your local system sees it as one volume and a single drive failure should not cause data loss. The bad drive module can be replaced and the RAID will rebuild itself.  I’ve not dissected this particular model, but generally a module is just a tray that the raw eSata drive screws onto, which makes for easy replacement and upgrade.

Now, let’s talk about the storage solution in practice.  In my setup, I’ve raided the 4 x 1TB drives into a Raid 5. This means that 1/4th of the drive space is lost for parity (data loss protection). The formatted capacity is down to 2.73 TB. I do wish that G-Technology had made this tower 5 high instead of only 4 high. Then the RAID 5 would only lose 1/5th of the space for the raid.

Read/Write performance is impressive with a very consistent Write: 163.7 MB/s, Read: 174.9 MB/s.  A read speed that rivals a well equipped Xsan.

This storage solution also has some downsides. First is the setup time. Unlike a G-Raid drive that come ready to roll, the G-SPEED eS can be used in any number of configurations and therefore arrives unconfigured configureless raw.  For me, the RAID 5 setup process took 18 hours – so DONT expect to take the tower out of the box and use it the same day.  During this process the RAID is not usable and does not show up on your desktop.  You just have to wait.

As seen on G-Tech’s website, setup is done via a control panel which is loaded using Safari.  This confused me at first.  Basically what’s happening here is that the RAID configuration happens on the PCIe controller card.  It formats the drives, sets up the RAID and then presents it to the computer as one mountable volume.  If a drive failure were to happen, you would log into this control panel to rebuild the raid. I don’t know what the process looks like or how long it takes because I’ve never had to do it. I welcome someone to talk about it in the comments.

Another problem is that the PCIe controller card has a very loud alarm that goes off whenever it thinks there is a problem. One thing that set it off was detaching a stand-alone eSata device – the Vantex NexStar.  The first time this happened I thought it was the UPS alarming. Eventually I figured out that it was coming from inside the computer. Once it starts the only way to make it stop is to reboot the computer. There is a setting inside the control panel to turn off the alarm – which I recommend.

The final consideration is that the RAID controller is on the PCIe card. For my taste an overall better solution is to have the raid controller inside the mini-tower. The advantage of having it inside the computer is that you can raid multiple towers together creating a mega-RAID. However, I prefer having it inside the tower to remove the RAID management process from the inside of the computer and have the solution as more of a stand alone device.

Overall the G-SPEED eS is a lot of bandwidth bang for your buck. A 4TB package is about $1600 which includes the PCIe controller card.

I’ve been so busy lately that I almost forgot that today is November 13th – the day of the big RED Digital Cinema announcement regarding the new Scarlet and Epic cameras. Not to be too much of a fan boy, but I have been waiting for this for a while. Scarlet had been very high on my list since I “saw it” at NAB. When you look at what’s out there, you can’t beat a 3k camera for $3k. Then mid September they announced that Scarlet was basically going to be scrapped and redesigned. While no one knew exactly what that meant, I’ve been holding out hope that the specs will be even better.  I wanted to get in on the first batch of orders. But this announcement changes everything! It’s bigger than anyone imagined.

A few hours before the announcement Jim Jannard “leaked” a few renders of the new design. In case you haven’t been following, Jim had been in the press lately raving about how huge this announcement is going to be – taking some jabs for his enthusiasm along the way. However, from the early pictures I could tell that his level of excitement was totally warranted.  Now that I’ve seen the announcement (a few hours early) – I know what he was so excited about…

The new Red system is a DSMC system – which stand for Digital Stills and Motion Camera.  The idea is to select a “brain” and then build a body around it.  Everything is modular and interchangeable. There are multiple Scarlet and Epic brains to choose from and they range in Price, Image Size, and available Frame Rates. The various brains will not all be available at the same time. They will be released in phases over the next two years.  But the idea is that you can build a custom camera based on your needs now, and then just swap out the brain later on for a better one.

Unfortunately we still have a lot of waiting to do. It looks like the earliest any of us will be getting one of these will be Spring 2009, with some of the less expensive brains not coming out until Summer/Fall 2009. The $2500 model falls into this category and will have a 2/3 inch sensor, a 3K image, max out at 120fps, and have a Mini-Red mount, B4 Mount and C-Mount. Of course all of these details are subject to change – especially the dates. “Count on it.”

On the high end is the 617 which has unbelievable specs: a 28k image sensor, an image size of 28,000 x 9334 and will run $55,000.  Check out these specs. I added a column with the very important price and estimated release dates:

Other announcement details:

• There is an upgrade path for current Red One owners – and the promise that Red pioneers will not be forgotten for their investments.  In practical terms they can upgrade the sensor, trade in their Red One for an Epic getting a full 17,500 towards the price, or keep it and get a 12% discount on a Scarlet.
• Red One owners will also have priority on purchasing Epic or Scarlet, meaning that they’ll be in the order queue in front of those of us who waited.
• You have to check out this page to take in the whole thing.  But there are 8 bodies to choose from. 4 Scarlet variations, and 4 Epic variations.  They range in price and in resolution.
• “Scarlet and EPIC are themselves built on several variations of next-generation Mysterium-X and Mysterium Monstro sensors. With performance specifications that are nearly unbelievable, until you see for yourself. The sensor size and frame-rate combinations, couples with increased dynamic range and decreased noise, put Scarlet and EPIC off the scale against any competitor. At any price.”
• “Sensor sizes begin at 2/3″ and go all the way up to an “I don’t believe my eyes” 6x17cm and, as Mysterium technology advances, both Scarlet and EPIC can be upgraded simply by purchasing a new “brain”. Not a whole new camera.”
• The Scarlet brains are not all 3k – 2/3″.  They range up to 6k – FF35.  Likewise the Epic brains are not all 5k.  They start there at S35, jump to 6k – FF35, 9k – 645, and the massive 28k – 617.
• There is one Scarlet mentioned that has a fixed 8x lens, an estimated Fall 2009 release, and a price that is TBD.  Will this fixed lens scarlet be even less than it’s $2500 brother or come in closer to the originally promised $3k.
• They also announced a slew of accessories. The prices in that chart above are only for the brains. Expect to spend at least a few thousand for recording modules, monitoring, lenses, batteries, mounts, handles, etc.  Most of which will be required to record even one frame.

Overall it’s all very exciting. The Red forum is buzzing with already 135 pages of posts in the last hour or so.  The main bummer is that there’s still a lot of the waiting ahead. Options are great, but looking over everything makes me want to creep up to the next tier, and then the one above that. I was hoping for a 3k camera for $3k. The fixed lens scarlet will probably fit that bill – but that’s a year away from being available. The sweet spot seems to be the Scarlet S35 which is $7000 for the brain.  But the model down from that is the one I’ll probably justify at $2500 for the brain.

You may have noticed this ad on my sidebar for the Sony HD-RTG1.  I hand picked that ad because it seemed like a great semi-pro video camera.  It is reasonably priced, records HD video to a memory stick, and is small enough to fit in your pocket.  It might not be as professional as a higher end camera, but it seems like a good backup camera or b-camera.  Rob Kelly used it on a recent realty shoot to get extra footage.  The size and convenience makes it perfect to get shots that would otherwise be missed.

The video file format is AVCHD. How does that fit into a pro video producer/editor’s workflow?  It seems to be becoming the consumer format of choice for all the new cameras.  How do we deal with this footage?

On a recent outing Rob shot some footage for me with his HD-RTG1. The clips created have a .MTS extension.  With other video cameras you end up with a folder full of .AVI or .mpg clips.  But with AVCHD cameras you get an entire BDMV folder structure that looks suspiciously similar to that of a BluRay disc.  Just in case I needed it, I copied the whole directory structure to my drive. (well, mostly)

Lets define the rules of the game:

• First off, and I don’t care if you disagree, professional video editing is done on a Mac, not Windows. So to be a useful format there needs to be a way on the Mac of either accessing the clips directly or converting them to work in Final Cut (or Avid).
• Second, it is acceptable to use one format as an acquisition format and another as an editing format. When your source format is highly compressed like h.264 it is basically a requirement that you transcode to a better format for editing.  H.264 is not good for that.  The editing format needs to be high quality to intermix with other professional video sources.  Apple ProRes 422 HQ is a very good, high bandwidth, full 1920×1080 format.  This is my format of choice.  FYI – it does require an intel mac.  The best scenario for retaining quality throughout post is to convert all sources to your editing format prior to editing. By the way, DON’T allow FCP or Avid to convert footage on the fly.  And DON’T use footage in your timeline that has to be rendered to play natively.  This puts too much trust in the default scaler/converter which usually sucks.  It will make your footage look like poo.
• Third, we’re looking for the fastest, most convenient, highest quality converter available. But it also has to be reasonably priced.
• Last, the converter can’t require that we have the camera because we might not always have that camera. Archival of the footage is going to be the original source .MTS files not the converted files which would be much much larger. We need the flexibility and longevity to be able to convert footage whenever we need, even if its after we’ve sold the camera.  Otherwise the file format could become obsolete and worthless.

A Google search revealed that several people have been asking “how do I use this footage.”  One popular response was to burn the BDMV folder to a BluRay disc.  While it’s very cool that this works, that plan is only worthwhile for a consumer who wants to watch home movies.  It’s doesn’t help us use the footage to edit.  Another response had something to do with Nero or some windows crap that is totally irrelevant according to rules 1 and 3.  It’s too annoying to have to load virtual PC to convert the footage, and windows can’t create a ProRes file.  This would mean having to convert the footage twice = NO.

The most popular advice given was to import the footage directly into either iMovie or Final Cut Pro. Skipping iMovie for obvious reasons I’ll focus on Final Cut Pro.  FCP supposedly ingests AVCHD footage via the Log and Transfer tool and converts the footage into either AIC or ProRes. The FCP HD and Broadcast Formats manual suggests that it can take the footage off the camera or off a hard drive as long as you copy the entire file structure.  So far I have not been able to get it to work.  This is possibly because of how I copied the files off the memory stick. Rob’s camera had about a hundred other clips on it that I didn’t want. I only copied off the clips from my shoot. My guestimation is that either the INDEX.BDM file or the PLAYLIST file points to his other footage which I didn’t copy.  FCP interprets the missing files as an invalid directory structure.  At this point I’m not sure what the work around is for that.

What about other methods of accessing or converting the file?  There are two other programs to take a look at.  First, Voltaic is a rather bare bones mac program that converts AVCHD footage to a quicktime file.  It has a batch mode, shows a thumbnail of the clip and some info, and gets the job done for about $35.  The downside is that it’s slow.  My 25 second clip took about 5 minutes to convert on a 2.33 GHz MacBook Pro.  The upside is that you don’t need any of the extra file structure that FCP requires.  Just drag in the .MTS files and you’re good to go.  By default it converted my file to an AIC codec, but under Preferences there is a Use Advanced Export Setting button that will allow you to pick from a large list of formats including Apple ProRes (if you have it installed), and the Elgato Turbo.264 codecs which is good for making footage review copies.

The second program to consider is VLC. VLC will play the MTS files but does not recognize them when you drag and drop then on the icon.  You first have to launch the program, then go to File>Open File… then pick the .MTS file manually.  VLC is free but is a video player and not a converter.  However it can be useful to quickly browse your MTS files since it decodes them for playback in real time.

My conclusion about AVCHD is that it’s similar to the early days of HDV.  I expect that all these bugs will eventually be worked out.  Hopefully Apple will fix Final Cut’s Log and Transfer mode so that it doesn’t require all the extra file structure.  And while the file conversion is a slow process and a bit of a hassle, at least there is a process that works.

Here are some things to keep in mind about using AVCHD in a post production workflow:

• AVCHD is an acquisition format.  Consider it as your source footage.  You can’t edit in that codec or finalize back to that codec.  Your edited master should be a much higher quality codec.
• AVCHD is very highly compressed.  Remember this is HD video compressed down to the 12 – 17 Mbps range.  Compare that to BluRay which has a similar codec and is more in the 25 – 35 Mbps range. Another quality consideration is that lower end AVCHD cameras record at 1440×1080 rather than 1920×1080.  Unfortunately so do many other HD acquisition formats, such as HDCAM.
• The transcoded video files will take up much more hard drive space than the AVCHD files. AVCHD is variable bit rate and therefore it’s difficult to know exactly how much larger the file will be.  An easy quick estimate is 10 times the space but it could be as much as 20 times.
• AVCHD support requires an Intel Mac Pro.  Same goes for Apple ProRes.  But we’re in the ‘out with the old, in with the new’ mode these days.  It’s time to sell off all the old gear and buy new stuff.
• For now, it’s best to copy the entire file structure off the memory stick and not just the .MTS files.
• This technology is new, so expect a few bumps in the process for the next year or so.

To me, the whole point of tapeless is that you get much faster access to the footage.  Copy it over via USB2.0  and start editing right away. With AVCHD the footage has to be converted to be useful, which for now, takes MUCH longer than it would take to just capture the footage in off tape.  Capture is real time - conversion take 5 to 10 times as long. Archival is also an issue.  With taped acquisition you have a built in archive – the tape.  With tapeless you have to work out the archival for yourself.  Think that through and don’t mess it up.  You don’t want to be one hard drive head crash away from losing everything.