AE edits RAW? That's pretty amazing (and wonderful). Can you tell us more?

"AE edits RAW? That's pretty amazing (and wonderful). Can you tell us more?"

Sure thing, it's one of the best kept secrets in this game at the moment. Here's what I have been playing with:

Shoot 2K with SI-2K, apply 3D LUT in camera, that's purely metadata. Sets WB and Look.

Bring tiny files into PC. Double click Prospect2K icon to load the codec. Open AE, drop camera file onto T/L. Do what ever in AE. Don't like the Look, want to change the WB etc. Click (sorry been a few weeks forgot the exact commands) through the AE Preview menu and you're in the Prospect2K / Speedgrade OnSet control window, fuzt with the metadata and then exit back into AE. Even the debayering is done inside the Prospect2K codec, it doesn't get anymore RAW than that. And you can output this without actually changing one bit of what the camera shot. Better still you can project 2K straight off that file, a 160GB USB drive will hold your entire movie as 2K 10bit log 4:4:4.

Everything you need to try this out is availalble as a fully functional 15 day trial! You can download RAW camera files from the SI-2K site, Prospect 2K comes as a 15 day trial, Speedgrade OnSet the same, even AE can be had as a 15 day trial. You can even download Speedgrade itself and run for 15 days for free if you want to try your hand at grading with a full on grading application.

Now comes the really sneaky bit. The big showstopper for a lot of this DCI stuff is the 'how does the client view the images they paid so much for?'. Well, piece of cake really, the Prospect2K files will play back in WMP at half res, this is for free and the average laptop can handle this thanks to how the wavelet codec works, you can strip a low res stream out with less CPU work.

So, if you want to try all this out at home, read through the documentation on the SI site, download all the freebies and have a whirl. Pretty amazing that for under $20K you can shoot 2K that looks arguably better than many 35mm prints on the big screen and edit and grade it on a desktop PC. The only thing you don't get for that $20K is any cine glass. If you can put up with using them though you could use Fujinon C mount lenses or 35mm still lenses.

Bob.

Wow! Thanks for that!

Cool workflow beats hot gadget anytime.

This is great, gotta look into it some more.

farss, u own the camera or u renting? Are u in LA or NYC?

I'm in Sydney, Australia.
The company I work for (Digihire) owns the camera.
There's three that I know of in Sydney.
Silicon Imaging are in NY, nice bunch of engineers with many years experience in machine vision and medical imaging. The SI-2K pretty much grew out of DVInfo. People were buying SI machine vision cameras that talk over ethernet and having a go at rolling their own systems so SI decided to help them along. When SI and Cineform got together then the whole concept became viable. It also needed Intel to build the Core 2 Duo CPU to get the processing into a mobile platform. P+S Techniks are building all the hardware and have quite a range of lens mounts for the camera.

The DVR software that runs in the camera is great. The fake color metering must be a DoPs dream come true. The camera is a breeze to use thanks to it recording RAW, it really reminds me of shooting 16mm, set focus and aperature and shoot, dial in a look if you want, dial in a view look too if you like, it's all just metadata but you get to see it applied in real time in the viewfinder. The same Look management system from Iridas now runs in the Arri D20 so this is not tonka toy stuff by any means.

The marketing of the SI-2K is another matter entirely, engineers have no idea how to sell anything but that's why we got interested, no hype. The marketing plan is to just get the camera into DoPs hands shooting with it and then people will buy into the system when they see the results. Atomic FX in South Africa are in editorial on a CGI intensive low budget feature called Spoon, should be released early next year. Another indie shoot (A butchers Tale) is entire green screen shot in a small room, a bit like Sin City. Elite in Mexico are now in production of a feature destined for 35mm, there's several music vids already shot, one in 3D for the Black Eyed Peas and one television series (Boss of Glory) shot with the SI camera screening in the USA.

Having said all that, this is still engineering wise bleeding edge. Running the SI MINI into a laptop works perfectly. Trying to crunch all that down into a single unit camera seems to have been an engineering nightmare. I have to take my hat off to SI, RED, Arri and Sony, what sounds like a trivial task when you say it quickly is much harder than I would have ever realised. Advances in silicon is what will make it easier to achieve, heat is the biggest single problem. The technology behind the sensors is pretty good, the SI MINI head draws only a few watts and barely gets warm. It's processing the data that's the heat generator. I've heard that Sony's F23 likes to be kept cool for the same reason.

Patryk,
if you're interested in shooting something with this camera, contact SI, they'll know who in your area has one available. I'd love to see you shoot something with one, I think you'll really enjoy the experience too.

Bob.

Are u in LA or NYC?

You forgot to ask if he was one of the "Fly-Over" people, living somewhere between the two centers of the universe.

:O)

hey bob, you've got us second place in universe! even poor johnny could acheive that....

leslie

Thank farss, i'll be looking into this camera. I wonder what heir regular set up rents for.

We're still scratching our heads trying to work out what's a reasonable rate to rent these kinds of cameras for. With no moving parts in theory they'll last for ever so should it be really cheap or do you rate it based on image quality, say some factor of what an F950 goes for.
The camera isn't the expensive part anyways, the glass is what costs. A set of Digiprimes goes down here for $2K/day and they work very nicely with the SI-2K with a B4 adaptor, you can get a shallower DOF than you get on 35mm! A set of Cooke S3s are only $300/day and look pretty damn fine too but not as tack sharp.

Bob.

With no moving parts in theory they'll last for ever so should it be really cheap or do you rate it based on image quality
But you'd have to contend with depreciation, no?

IMO it'll reach a fair market value based on the camera's price. Very quickly there will be a bunch of SI2Ks (and Reds and other similar cameras) on the market and you'll pretty much have to charge a reasonable rental rate proportional to the camera's price (and how much it costs of rent).

Image quality and workflow-wise, I don't think it's so spectacular compared to the F950 (or Red) that you can really charge a premium (or really hurt the rentals of the other cameras). Especially when the workflows are dramatically different.

"But you'd have to contend with depreciation, no?"

Absolutely...but at what rate, that is the big question. The killer down here at least is insurance. Just to have kit doing nothing costs 10%/annum and you've got to recover that before you think about overheads.

I agree about workflows. The SI offers a huge range of opportunities but moving all the hard decisions to post sounds attractive at first but really throws a spanner in the works compared to how things are done traditionally.

I guess if you've got a calibrated monitor on set being able to say to the client "Yes this IS how it will look" would go some way to easing the pain but there'll always be the issue of totally changing the image down the track long after the DoP has moved on and then who is responsible.

Going to be an interesting few years as these cameras roll out but our first hurdle is doing our first film out. We'd really been counting on digital projection taking off quicker but speaking to one cinema chain manager she was damn adament it was dead in the water as far as they were concerned.

Bob.

Just to have kit doing nothing costs 10%/annum

Ouch!!! Do you keep your gear in a store window with a chain-mounted brick hanging under it for convenience?

How on earth can they charge 10% otherwise?

What else can you do? Put the gear in your mattress, and to be safe, put the mattress in a bank deposit box?

I used to pay 1% for my pro insurance (for my own gear that was going everywhere). You'd think that would be a greater risk than something locked up.

Today I self insure most gear, because I haven't had a claim in 39 years. When I travel with heavy video gear and have to eat on the road, I either get a window table watching my gear outside, or take everything valuable inside and put it next to me.

When I bring other crew members, they think I'm nuts. Obviously they are used to just leaving the stuff in the car. "That's not my worry." "Oh, nothing will happen."

They never seem to think about what they would do if a $25K camera was stolen in the middle of the night and the shoot is the next morning. Is it worth the substantial inconvenience to keep an eye on it? I think so.

The full SI2K with body, oled panel and no lens is currently listed for 28K USD. The Mini Rig, sans body is 17.5 K. Neither includes Adobe software, but cineform has special pricing when getting Prospect2K. Unless that has changed in the last month.
Price has continually gone up since P+S Teknik took over design.
C'est la vie.
I think we would be better served if we convinced Cineform to move up delivery of Neo 2K for Vegas, which gives up wavlet and 10bit 4:4:4 support (no meta data though). Would love to see a Decklink/Cineform capture option into 10bit444 that could be edited in Vegas 8, taking full advantage of the expanded color space.

If you just want to insure the gear, yes, around 1%, that's what I pay for my own gear in my office. If you want to rent it out and keep it insured when someone else is using it that's another matter entirely.

Bob.

Ahh, my misunderstanding of "Just to have kit doing nothing costs 10%/annum."

I thought rentals were more "on the clock" than "doing nothing."

Just to second the request in the thread starter. I'm slated to get my RED in late March/early April. Am sure hoping for native support of RED files or QT-wrapped RED files by then. I REALLY love Vegas and don't want to have to switch editing platforms.

I thought that any quicktime-compatible NLE was supposed to be able to read QT-wrapped Red files. Has anyone tried this in Vegas? It's supposed to work; do we know that it doesn't?