Bob,
What can you tell us about the Si-2K? Have you had time to play with it? Likes/Dislikes?

Does it play well with Vegas at all-or do you have to edit in Premiere?

kairosmatt

thx for the info Bob,
Just been advised (unreliable source) that Vegas cant do 2k, 3k, or 4k... ???

well i just did a quick check and created a custom projec.t. the highest res i can pull off is 2048x2048...

hmm...

At one time, not so long ago, 2048x2048 was plenty, maybe the upcoming 64bit version of Vegas will up that to at least 4096x4096.

RED's rendering software is still beta (which in this company terms it means it messes up you clips every other time). My editor is pulling his hair out right now trying to render some clips shot with RED a few weeks ago. It starts rendering and all seems fine then all the sudden the clips have nothing but the front frame... Plus bunch of other issues. The Red team doesn't have their engineering in place -- they should spend less on the marketing and put the money where it counts.

With the SI-SK you can have a completely RAW workflow through the entire post process. You could even project from the RAW files. Or you could render to DPX or any of the usual files that one might want to use. However doing that bakes in the Look.
The Look files can be defined in camera or off camera using Speedgrade OnSet from IRIDAS, grading is best done with Speedgrade which also offers 3D / Stereo grading.
If you want to shoot 3D with two SI-2K Minis then you can have real time 3D preview in the video village.

One could export a file format that'd work with Vegas, just as one could with RED and edit in Vegas. Doing that from any RAW camera would kind of defeat the whole idea of shooting RAW. This should change with the next release of V8 when it would seem support for OpenEXR (possibly more than just that) will be added to Vegas.

The thing I like about the SI-2K is all the metalwork is designed and built by P+S Techniks, people that have a long history of building cine gear. No plastic, no scews into aluminium, real lens mounts machined from Invar. You pay a lot for this but then you avoid having things go wrong like getting lenses stuck in a mount or backfocus drifting. Other thing I like is you can now record to HDDs in RAID 1 in camera, instant backups. Or you can record uncompressed DNG using two HDDs in RAID 0. Almost all bits that you need like the disks etc are generic off the shelf bits and pieces that you can buy anywhere. The camera runs XPe and uses standard industrial mobo so upgrading is very simple, just pop in a faster Intel CPU.

Downsides. Like RED you cannot get a full raster preview. The CPU grunt required to decode RAW to full res, full raster, is beyond anything you'd try to do in a camera but this could change.
This stuff is expensive although you can save a fair bit on glass as lens mounts for every kind of lens you'd ever want to use are available now and changing mounts takes seconds. The full camera is pretty damn heavy but you can take the head off the body for things like putting it on a light crane or into an underwater housing.

Oh and yes, the SI-2K records two channels of audio but you only get line level inputs. Just add a decent field mixer.

Bob.

So the only non beta software that can handle Red RAW is FCP. Steve Jobs reminds me of Dr. Evil, bent on global domination. They are going to need a robust workflow if they want to sell a ton of $3000 Scarlets and not have a boatload of bad feedback.

Bob,

How do you like the image? I believe you also just got an EX1, how does it compare? Or to the HPXs?

Its funny that you don't hear too much about this camera compared to that other one...that one thats like a color or something.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!

matt

At least there is this comparison of EX1, RED, and F23.

SI-2K deserves to be compared with these. Perhaps the company could consider investing in say 1/4 marketing position for their company, so publications can become more aware that this camera exists?

"How do you like the image?"

Out of the box, the first time we fired it up one onlooker was gobsmacked, "What is THAT, it just looks like film".
Shooting RAW you can do a lot TO the image, much as you can with a DSLR. Best comparison would be to say it's like shooting film and what you record is the camera neg, except you can see it without waiting for the lab. In all fairness the same applies to RED however I think SI are doing a better job of managing the post workflow.
Certainly RAW will be the way of the future, at the moment it's a bit cutting edge though as not too many post houses have gotten their heads around it. Both RED and SI have certainly lowered the bar of shooting very good images that hold up very well compared to shooting 35mm.

If you want to have a play around with images from the SI-2K you can download some RAW camera files from their website and time limited trial versions of all the software you need to play around with them.

Bob.

Please tell your admittedly unreliable source that Vegas' current limit of 2048x2048 is actually GREATER than even Full Aperture Native 2K (2048 × 1536, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, [3,145,728 total pixels]). Vegas' 2048x2048 limit is not a liability; you can use a tool like RedCine (which apparently allows you to translate your Mac-centric RED RAW files into Windows friendly Cineform RAW files) and then cut in Vegas to your hearts' content.

What most people seem to be missing with the Scarlet is that 3k is not even a digital cinema standard. It would be good practice to acquire images at 3k and then rescale them to 2k for final output, but will just be confusing if content creators attempt to deliver 3k.

"What most people seem to be missing with the Scarlet is that 3k is not even a digital cinema standard. It would be good practice to acquire images at 3k and then rescale them to 2k for final output, but will just be confusing if content creators attempt to deliver 3k."

I agree but is it not a best practice to keep the highest resolution as possible until the last step?

You mean "rescale them to 2k for final output?"

:O)

I agree multiple interpretations are possible.

In Vegas right now there is no choice.

The question is whether the new 64-bit code was designed to handle beyond 2K.

Agreed. It really would be great to throw the 3k footage directly into Vegas. But even though RED has this exclusive thing going on with Apple, FCP doesn't truly support 3k or 4k resolution either. Unless I'm mistaken, the max spatial resolution for FCP projects is ALSO 2k, just like Vegas. From the RED ONE website:
"NOTE FCP only uses the QT reference files which access the RAW R3D files, it does not actually use the Native R3D files to edit with."
Since RED RAW and Cineform RAW are wavelet based codecs, they can scale down when you use such reference files. What would really help our community out would be tighter partnership with Cineform. Premier has ProspectHD and now Prospect4k, but we are still stuck using the VFW Cineform codecs.

I'm curious to know which of you has a 4k display to preview on...

3K is the Bayer imager resolution. The delivered resolution would be around 2K so downscaling to 2K would make perfect sense.
ProspectHD and Prospect2K/4K are very different beasts entirely and how Prospect2K works with Ppro/AE is something to behold, it goes way beyond the simple codec issue. When you run Ppro with Prospect2K RAW the entire guts of Ppro is replaced and you have access to how the codec is working as well as the 3D LUTs stored in the metadata. I assume this is all done through Ppro's HAL.

There's not a wealth of post facilities with 4K capability, with desktop systems there's not even too many people with 2K preview. The smallest LCDs that do 2K are 30".

Aside from that there's too much focus on spatial resolution going on here. Even 2K is well beyond what a 35mm print delivers to the silver screen. It's the bit depth that holds the key and trying to preview that is not a trivial matter at the moment. Working in 10bit Log is a whole new challenge regardless of resolution.

Bob.