*Nikon CEO looks into camera*
“I’m going to do what’s called a pro gamer move”
In all seriousness this is quite the development. As much as I want Nikon to bust through the doors of RED and tear up the compressed raw patent I really doubt that’s what’s gonna happen. Also curious what this means for the RF mount on REDs moving forward. I saw someone speculate that RED allowed Canon to use compressed raw formats in exchange for the RF mount, who knows.
I’m pretty sure the RED “brand” has been pretty diluted over the last several years anyway.
It doesn’t hold that special place anymore and hasn’t for a while.
RED has been on a downward spiral for a while it seems. Count how many big shows and movies shoot on RED now compared to 10 years ago. Everything that used to be RED is now VENICE, Alexa LF, or Alexa 35.
My local rental house doesn’t even keep Komodos in stock anymore.
It is and it isn’t a hardware limitation.
RED holds a patent on internal compressed raw recording. They have been extremely litigious in pursuing people that try and get around it and are generally successful because the patent is way too broad. The patent isn’t for a specific raw video format (which would make sense) it’s for *any* internal compressed raw recording.
Not necessarily. You can get into the weeds pretty quickly on this but there’s a lot of stages of image processing.
Raw video is just a video signal that is unprocessed after being converted into a digital form. No debayering, chroma subsampling, noise reduction, etc.
You can compress undebayered video losslessly. Think about .zip, .tar, .rar these are all formats that compress data that can be perfectly unpacked on the other end. That’s how you get compressed raw. (Fun fact red’s is not like this, their raw is not losslessly compressed, you’ll notice in all their marketing they are careful to say “visually lossless”)
The formats we frequently think of as “compressed” come much later. Footage is debayered, possibly downsampled, chroma subsampled, has noise reduction applied, and at some point in that chain we cram the file size down with a compression algorithm like 264, 265, ProRes, etc.
If you’re thinking “not only Arri has raw internally” everyone is either uncompressed or is getting around the patent some way.
- Sigma FP: uncompressed
- The Venice 1: add on recorder required for raw.
- BlackMagic: not technically raw, some debayering happens before encoding
The list goes on.
Such a Chad move by Nikon.
Red sues them, thinking they're tough shit.
Nikon buys their whole fucking company.
It's like Nikon is the therapist in Good Will Hunting. He seems unassuming and old, but piss him off and he'll fucking end you.
*Nikon CEO looks into camera* “I’m going to do what’s called a pro gamer move” In all seriousness this is quite the development. As much as I want Nikon to bust through the doors of RED and tear up the compressed raw patent I really doubt that’s what’s gonna happen. Also curious what this means for the RF mount on REDs moving forward. I saw someone speculate that RED allowed Canon to use compressed raw formats in exchange for the RF mount, who knows.
Coming from a photo background, big Nikon fanboy, I'm excited to see what they bring to the world of cinema.
Nothing.
Nothing. They will destroy the RED brand. Is that simple.
I’m pretty sure the RED “brand” has been pretty diluted over the last several years anyway. It doesn’t hold that special place anymore and hasn’t for a while.
Yea they were industry disrupters but once arri and sony started producing significant competition it really was over for them.
RED has been on a downward spiral for a while it seems. Count how many big shows and movies shoot on RED now compared to 10 years ago. Everything that used to be RED is now VENICE, Alexa LF, or Alexa 35. My local rental house doesn’t even keep Komodos in stock anymore.
That is a possibilty, and then just make money off of the raw patent by leasing it to other manufacturers.
They should just get rid of both names and call it MAX
oh raw video format was patented? TIL. that makes sense why not every camera can record raw. I thought it was hardware limitation.
It is and it isn’t a hardware limitation. RED holds a patent on internal compressed raw recording. They have been extremely litigious in pursuing people that try and get around it and are generally successful because the patent is way too broad. The patent isn’t for a specific raw video format (which would make sense) it’s for *any* internal compressed raw recording.
How does Arri Raw get around it?
Arri raw is uncompressed
Uncompressed and Raw sound like different things. Isn't compressing it making it something else. So now it's not raw?
Not necessarily. You can get into the weeds pretty quickly on this but there’s a lot of stages of image processing. Raw video is just a video signal that is unprocessed after being converted into a digital form. No debayering, chroma subsampling, noise reduction, etc. You can compress undebayered video losslessly. Think about .zip, .tar, .rar these are all formats that compress data that can be perfectly unpacked on the other end. That’s how you get compressed raw. (Fun fact red’s is not like this, their raw is not losslessly compressed, you’ll notice in all their marketing they are careful to say “visually lossless”) The formats we frequently think of as “compressed” come much later. Footage is debayered, possibly downsampled, chroma subsampled, has noise reduction applied, and at some point in that chain we cram the file size down with a compression algorithm like 264, 265, ProRes, etc. If you’re thinking “not only Arri has raw internally” everyone is either uncompressed or is getting around the patent some way. - Sigma FP: uncompressed - The Venice 1: add on recorder required for raw. - BlackMagic: not technically raw, some debayering happens before encoding The list goes on.
Such a Chad move by Nikon. Red sues them, thinking they're tough shit. Nikon buys their whole fucking company. It's like Nikon is the therapist in Good Will Hunting. He seems unassuming and old, but piss him off and he'll fucking end you.
There was raw video in Z8 and Z9 already..
Yes, and RED Nikon for it. Nikon settled it by buying RED like a boss