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RED Files Lawsuit Against Nikon


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14 hours ago, kye said:

I would think it's too common a requirement, but it's not too uncommon either?

I think Luminaries is the only set I've been on where I saw it used, which every time there was a gimbal used then the grip followed behind with the VENICE body in a backpack. 

 

13 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

It's definitely a nice feature. However it becomes outdated as soon as the camera body gets small enough to not need it, which happened with the Alexa mini.

Even the bare bones ALEXA Mini is kinda big. If  you need to go into a VERY small place, it can be tricky.

And for gimbal usage, a Mini is very doable and commonly used, but if you want to do lots of long takes on the roll without  killing the operator then the VENICE setup I mentioned could be better?

13 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

I am honestly not quite sure why there isn't a smaller version of the Venice. The RED Monstro body, which does 8k RAW, is under 4 pounds. Less than half the weight of the Venice.

Maybe they think the FX3/FX6 is the "smaller VENICE"? (of which they are waaaaaaaaay smaller!) If you want to rig up a dozen crash cams, then the FX3 makes sense. 

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5 hours ago, kye said:

There are still some applications that need to go smaller still....

https://ymcinema.com/2022/05/16/meet-the-cockpit-lens-behind-top-gun-maverick/

I don't think you're getting 4 Alexa Mini bodies into the cockpit of a fighter jet, for example.

Top-Gun-Mavericks-Cockpit-Shots-Were-Cap

Besides, the smaller they make the whole camera, the smaller they could make the detachable head, and therefore the smaller the places they could get it compared to the body.

 

That showcases the benefits of having an underlying E Mount which the VENICE has! They can use the very small E Mount lenses you see in that BTS. 

(although I'm still kinda sad that FZ mount got abandoned, which the F3/F5/F55 used 😕 I understand why though)

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12 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

I think Luminaries is the only set I've been on where I saw it used, which every time there was a gimbal used then the grip followed behind with the VENICE body in a backpack. 

 

Even the bare bones ALEXA Mini is kinda big. If  you need to go into a VERY small place, it can be tricky.

And for gimbal usage, a Mini is very doable and commonly used, but if you want to do lots of long takes on the roll without  killing the operator then the VENICE setup I mentioned could be better?

Maybe they think the FX3/FX6 is the "smaller VENICE"? (of which they are waaaaaaaaay smaller!) If you want to rig up a dozen crash cams, then the FX3 makes sense. 

For sure but I really don't think the FX3/FX6 fit in their cine line. It's a clear separation without any of the RAW recording options you get in the Venice. I just feel the Venice could be smaller, but maybe not.

I wasn't comparing the mini to the Venice with the removable sensor, I was comparing it to the Alexa M, which is basically obsolete now.

IMO Arri has a chance to completely take over the Market by making a 6k full frame camera, and something lighter and smaller than the Alexa 35. But they are happy with the current line up and the Alexa 35.
 

The Venice definitely has a place in Cinema.

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7 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

For sure but I really don't think the FX3/FX6 fit in their cine line. It's a clear separation without any of the RAW recording options you get in the Venice. I just feel the Venice could be smaller, but maybe not.

FX3/FX6 are listed as part of Sony's cinema line up. 

And the FX6 outputs 16bit raw, just like the FX9. But also for many productions the internal high bitrate XAVC-I of the FX6 is more than good enough. 

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3 hours ago, IronFilm said:

I think Luminaries is the only set I've been on where I saw it used, which every time there was a gimbal used then the grip followed behind with the VENICE body in a backpack. 

Even the bare bones ALEXA Mini is kinda big. If  you need to go into a VERY small place, it can be tricky.

And for gimbal usage, a Mini is very doable and commonly used, but if you want to do lots of long takes on the roll without  killing the operator then the VENICE setup I mentioned could be better?

Maybe they think the FX3/FX6 is the "smaller VENICE"? (of which they are waaaaaaaaay smaller!) If you want to rig up a dozen crash cams, then the FX3 makes sense. 

Yeah, the FX6 is much smaller and the FX3 is really very small in cine camera territory.  

Even if it doesn't do RAW as Tom mentioned, for action sequences it's got to be very usable, especially considering that up until relatively recently GoPro footage was used in features...  and let's just say there aren't any FX3 vs GoPro comparison videos because there'd be no point!

3 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

For sure but I really don't think the FX3/FX6 fit in their cine line. It's a clear separation without any of the RAW recording options you get in the Venice. I just feel the Venice could be smaller, but maybe not.

I wasn't comparing the mini to the Venice with the removable sensor, I was comparing it to the Alexa M, which is basically obsolete now.

IMO Arri has a chance to completely take over the Market by making a 6k full frame camera, and something lighter and smaller than the Alexa 35. But they are happy with the current line up and the Alexa 35.
 

The Venice definitely has a place in Cinema.

Interesting that you draw the line between 'cinema' and not on the basis of RAW recording.  I'm not suggesting some other line, I just hadn't thought about drawing it there, but I can see the logic.

I think with the increasingly blurred lines between the categories of old, classifying things is becoming increasingly difficult and some definitions are so vague that they've been swallowed by hyperbole already.

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Forgive my ignorance on this topic, looking through the lawsuit is red patent that you cannot compress raw video and store it internally on a camera regardless of if you find a very new innovative way of doing it? Is the patent that it prohibits any form of lossless compress video been stored internally on a camera?

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11 hours ago, IronFilm said:

FX3/FX6 are listed as part of Sony's cinema line up. 

And the FX6 outputs 16bit raw, just like the FX9. But also for many productions the internal high bitrate XAVC-I of the FX6 is more than good enough. 

That is for marketing IMO, I don't even think they have the same people working on it.

What does it output 16bit RAW to? The Venice has its own compressed RAW. The FX6 only does Prores RAW to my knowledge.

 

7 hours ago, kye said:

Yeah, the FX6 is much smaller and the FX3 is really very small in cine camera territory.  

Even if it doesn't do RAW as Tom mentioned, for action sequences it's got to be very usable, especially considering that up until relatively recently GoPro footage was used in features...  and let's just say there aren't any FX3 vs GoPro comparison videos because there'd be no point!

Interesting that you draw the line between 'cinema' and not on the basis of RAW recording.  I'm not suggesting some other line, I just hadn't thought about drawing it there, but I can see the logic.

I think with the increasingly blurred lines between the categories of old, classifying things is becoming increasingly difficult and some definitions are so vague that they've been swallowed by hyperbole already.

I don't know if I draw the line there but it seems like Sony intentionally limited the FX6 to separate it from the Venice. The Venice shoots its own form of compressed RAW. You can only do Prores RAW on the FX6.

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1 hour ago, Lenscamera said:

Forgive my ignorance on this topic, looking through the lawsuit is red patent that you cannot compress raw video and store it internally on a camera regardless of if you find a very new innovative way of doing it? Is the patent that it prohibits any form of lossless compress video been stored internally on a camera?

yes, that's exactly how much BS that RED's so called "patent" is. 

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Do we really expect a company not to patent their invention and surrender billions of dollars to competitors?

I am playing devils advocate here. If RED keeps winning the legal cases, you've got to assume their patent works.

If the combined force of Apple and Sony can't overturn the RED patent you guys need to look at the US patent office and courts as they are the ones making the decisions, not the guy who invented lossless compressed REDcode.

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52 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Do we really expect a company not to patent their invention and surrender billions of dollars to competitors?

I am playing devils advocate here. If RED keeps winning the legal cases, you've got to assume their patent works.

If the combined force of Apple and Sony can't overturn the RED patent you guys need to look at the US patent office and courts as they are the ones making the decisions, not the guy who invented lossless compressed REDcode.

I don't think Red invented anything. They just took a bit of this and that from other peoples work and patented the hell out of it. They called it REDcode,  that type of compression had been around since the 70's.

Hell you think Sony, Ikegami ENG cameras were just shooting pure raw back in the day. A reel of tape would not have lasted 5 minutes in an ENG camera without compression. I would have spent more time changing tapes than shooting if that was the case. And all the TV shows were taped, Sure as hell not using raw data. This is WAY before Red cameras came out. Red's patent is just pure bullshit.

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6 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I don't think Red invented anything. They just took a bit of this and that from other peoples work and patented the hell out of it. They called it REDcode,  that type of compression had been around since the 70's.

It wasn't around in a camera in the 70s though was it.

The patent isn't on the type of compression, it is the use of it in cameras!

Much as it sucks we have to place most of the blame on companies like Sony who sat on their arse doing nothing for cinema or RAW codecs until it was too late and some sunglasses salesman had done it first.

6 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Hell you think Sony, Ikegami ENG cameras were just shooting pure raw back in the day. A reel of tape would not have lasted 5 minutes in an ENG camera without compression.

Again the patent isn't so broad, it applies to compressed RAW when it is recorded to solid state media not magnetic tape!

6 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I would have spent more time changing tapes than shooting if that was the case. And all the TV shows were taped, Sure as hell not using raw data. This is WAY before Red cameras came out. Red's patent is just pure bullshit.

It might be controversial but it isn't bullshit. If it were bullshit, they'd lose vs Apple's lawyers.

RED were early out of the blocks with the RED ONE and compressed RAW.

It was developed in 2005/2006 when the ALEXA didn't even exist and pros were shooting MiniDV tape!

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1 minute ago, Andrew Reid said:

The XDCAMs shot RAW?

Hmm you have a point. I don't know enough about all that stuff in that era. XDCAM was a pretty dope system. They were doing Progressive codecs on them at the time.  That was a big deal over interlaced. I think only on 24p but hey.

 

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LOL!

RED's overall group of patents is:

Compression of RAW video in-camera, recorded to solid state media at 24fps or more, and it is lossless

So it wouldn't apply to a 2005 XDCAM, which shoots MPEG to memory cards or DV to tape.

In those cameras Sony takes the RAW sensor data and compresses the hell out of it in-camera, but at no point does any of that RAW data go down on the tape or media as RAW values. It is MPEG. Similar to today's codecs or MP4.

So whilst Sony was dicking about with Mini DV and MP4, RED was doing RAW video for Peter Jackson.

So it is worth remembering that Graeme Nattress invented the first patented compressed cinema RAW codec.

Whether we like RED as a company or not, or think that they should relinquish control so we as filmmakers can benefit from more competition in compressed RAW cameras, is unfortunately irrelevant as far as patent laws go.

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@Andrew Reid Lossless image compression has been around for decades. Raw images are images. Cinema raw images are raw images are images. There isn't anything particularly special about raw images compression-wise. CineformRAW (introduces in 2005) is cited in Red's patents. CineformRAW is cinema raw compression. Red don't claim an invention of raw video compression, they claim putting it in cameras first.

Red's patents are mostly referring to "visually lossless" which is an entirely meaningless phrase in relation to raw. Here is a quote from one of their patents: "As used herein, the term “visually lossless” is intended to include output that, when compared side by side with original (never compressed) image data on the same display device, one of ordinary skill in the art would not be able to determine which image is the original with a reasonable degree of accuracy, based only on a visual inspection of the images." This, of course, makes no sense because anyone of ordinary skill can increase image contrast during raw development to an extreme point where the "visually lossless" image breaks before the original. It is a stupid marketing phrase which needs multiple additional definitions (standard observer, standard viewing conditions, standard display, standard raw processing) to make it somewhat useful. None of these are given in the patent, btw.

A basic requirement for some tech to be patentable is that it isn't an obvious solution to a problem for someone reasonably skilled in the art. If you present someone reasonably skilled with the goal of putting high bandwidth raw data into limited on-board storage do you think they wouldn't ponder about compression? In a world where raw video cameras exist (Dalsa) and externally recorded compressed raw video exists (SI2k)? Because that's what's patented; not any particular implementation of Red's. To play on your argument: surely big players like Apple and Sony didn't think this was patentable. There must be some base to that. I have no knowledge of the US patent law system, but it definitely lacks common sense. So kudos to Red for capitalizing on this lack of common sense.

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52 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

No crazier the patent that RED got than the patent which exists for wearing a lav bodypack recorder with an output!!

The comparisons between Zaxcom and RED are many.... 

It's insane to me that such broad ideas can be patented. No need to outline specific tech or software or whatever. Just the idea. 

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If I remember correctly, it's not as broad as stated here. It discusses the process of compression, which compression ratios they are claiming ownership of and how it will work within the confines of the camera. There's also room within the concept for others to work around.

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