Mike Curtis, from HD for Indies, has been working on the RED Digital Cinema stand at IBC and has posted a few updates to his website. First up and most important, the RED project were showing footage taken with their own Mysterium chip, demonstrating that, in a few short months since NAB, they have working prototypes of the chip and are able to capture useful (if short) footage from it. Although it's totally unfair to show HD footage in Flash on a You Tube video, someone posted the presentation there, proving, at least, the demonstration was real. You can read Mike's notes on the shots seen in the projected footage here.

Other items from Mike have been news on the Redcode 4K RAW codec. REDCODE is a 10 bit log, full raster, wavelet based codec at 28 MByte/sec at 24 fps and is Variable Bit Rate (VBR). This is even better than what was being discussed at NAB when RGB and 2K were being discussed, now it's RAW and 4K at a data rate only double that of DVCPRO HD. DVCPRO HD is 100 Mbit/sec and REDCODE is 28 MBytes or 224 Mbits/sec, to put it in the same measurement space. 

Working with REDCODE RAW won't require huge RAIDs of storage to work in 4K Raw - in fact a decent 3.5" SATA drive can handle the data rate. At 60 fps, the data rate would be up around 70 MByte/sec, still comfortably within the capability of modern drive systems. Uncompressed RAW video (also an option) at that rate would be up around 323 MByte/sec for 24 fps, but the gentle Wavelet compression will likely be where most people work with it.

A Wavelet codec is more flexible than the traditional Discrete Cosine Transform, with the big plus that it only softens when the data rate can't keep up - no blocking or mosquito noise like DCT codecs.

No codec would be any use without a way of working with it, and at IBC RED also announced their REDCINE software to read REDCODE or REDRAW and convert it to something your NLE can work with. The workflow proposed by RED at IBC is:

1. Shoot 4K;
2. Process - Demoasic the image and convert to an RGB color image in a useful colorspace and white balance;
3. Color Correct;
4. Set Output size; and
5. Export.
   

You'll be able to export to any codec you have installed on your PC or Mac editing workstation, including Cineon and DPX workflows. Mike has more of his take here and RED have a graphic representation here.

The RED Digital Cinema Website has been updated with updated designs for the RED-RAIL and RED CAGE and with the announcement of a second lens they are working on. To join the 300mm prime announced at NAB for US$4995 will be an 18-85mm Zoom coming later in 2007 for under US$10,000.

Also new details are available on the Viewfinder, LCD screen and recording and power. The power pack has been removed from the body of the camera and can be bolted anywhere on the cage or rails system.