Red Goes 3K, 5K — and Puts 4K on a DVD

Epic, Scarlet, and Red Ray Shake Things Up at NAB

Red Digital Cinema was on the NAB show floor this year with its usual tent, a red velvet rope, and a bouncer practicing crowd control. If you didn’t make it in to see the show, here’s a quick rundown of what the team announced. (Want to hear it straight from the source? Click below to see James Mathers of the Digital Cinema Society interview Red's Ted Schilowitz from the show floor for Studio Daily.)

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On the high end, there was the 5K Epic camera (around $40,000). Boasting a new, Super-35 sized “Mysterium X” sensor (let’s hope for image improvements beyond pure resolution gains), the six-pound, PL-mount camera shoots at frame rates between 1 and 100 fps; records Redcode Raw and RGB to Redflash at up to 100 MB/second; has dual-link HD-SDI, XLR audio, and HDMI outputs; has FireWire 800, USB 2.0, and Wi-Fi interfaces; and an upgradable sensor, body, boards and mount. The exact resolution of this chap hasn’t been revealed, but based on the diagram included in Red’s NAB brochure (see below) indicating another 16x9 aspect ratio, it looks like 5120 x 2880 wouldn’t be a bad guess (increasing both horizontal and vertical resolution by 25 percent). Red One owners will be able to trade in their existing cameras for full credit toward the Epic.



The much smaller 3K Scarlet ($3,000) has a new 2/3-inch version of the “Mysterium X” sensor, shoots at between one and 120 fps (180 fps in short bursts recorded to compact flash), has a 4.8-inch LCD and an 8X T2.8 fixed zoom lens, HDMI, HD-SDI, FireWire 800, USB 2.0, WiFi, and a still mode. It’s due early in 2009.

Finally, Red Ray is a sub-$1000 playback system that works with “Red Disc” and other media (including R3D files from compact flash) to output 4K over Quad HDMI or Quad HD-SDI. Here’s the kicker — Red is purportedly planning to cram more than two hours of 4K footage onto a standard, dual-layer, red-laser-based DVD. Do the math: that’s 4K, with audio, running at an average bit rate of less than 10 Mbps. How good can it look? Well, we’ll see. It’s slated for early 2009 delivery—and of course dates are always a moving target—so the crew at Red has a year or more to work on it. Something to look forward to at next year’s NAB.

Also coming soon from Red One are a new matte box; the new Red Pro seven-inch LCD ($2500); and a line-up of seven PL mount cinema lenses, including a set of primes and an 18-85mm zoom.