RED® is a trademark of RED Digital Cinema

Red One F.A.Q.

Meet the Red One

The "Mysterium" 12 megapixel 4K sensor

The Red One is a no compromise digital cinema camera featuring a single super 35mm sized, 12 megapixel, Bayer CMOS image sensor. It delivers a true 4K resolution (4096 x 2304) image in 12-bit colour RAW.

35mm depth of field

The 35mm sensor and 52mm nominal back focus ensures that the field of view and depth of field characteristics are the same as that of 35mm film cameras.

Redcode RAW

Uncompressed, a 12-bit RGB 4K image would require 1313MB/sec of data bandwidth and many TB of storage for practical use. Red has developed a wavelet compression algorithm called "Redcode" RAW which brings the data rate down to 36MB/sec and is almost visually lossless.

Here is how the Red One stacks up against it's competitors:

Panavision Genesis:

Single super 35mm sized striped RGB sensor, delivers 1920 x 1080 resolution, 10-bit RGB 4:4:4

Arri D21:

Single super 35mm sized Beyer sensor, delivers 1920 x 1080 resolution, 10-bit RGB 4:4:4 and 2880 x 2160, 12-bit RAW

Sony F35:

Single super 35mm sized CCD sensor, delivers 1920 x 1080 resolution, 10-bit RGB 4:4:4

So what is 4K?

4K is the term originally associated with motion picture film negative that has been scanned digitally to a resolution of 4096 horizontal pixels for a 4K digital intermediate. The vertical pixel count can vary depending on the aspect ratio.
The Red One shoots a 4K image with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and delivers a resolution of 4096 x 2304 pixels. This is over four times the resolution of 1920 x 1080 HD.

Why shoot 4K?

The advantages of shooting 4K when you know you will only finish and master to HD or 2K for film-out is that your downsampled HD or 2K image will benifit from all the original image data, it will be sharper and show less noise when compared to shooting straight HD. Your master archive material will always be 4K which means a conform to 4K is always possible.

I've heard the camera overheats?

Prototype and pre-production Red One's had a overheating problem. It is true that Steven Soderbergh's crew had to keep a ice pack on the camera body in the tropical heat while shooting The Guerilla. This problem has been solved in the production models that are now shipping.

There is NO overheating problem with the Red One. Countless productions have been shot in desert and jungle locations with the Red One with absolutely no problems.

I've heard the camera is noisy?

The camera has a small fan built into the body. The fan runs while the camera is on standby and switches off as soon as you are recording, other than this, the camera is silent.

What am I recording to?

You have two choices. You can record to compact flash cards, or you can record direct to a on-board RAID hard drive. You can record just under 4 mins on a 8GB compact flash card, or around 7 mins on a 16GB card, and 140 mins to each RAID drive pack.

What happens to my data?

A Redcine workstation will be supplied. As compact flash cards or hard drives are used, data will be copied onto a large internal RAID array in the workstation. The flash card and camera drives themselves will be formatted for re-use.

How do I view my footage on set?

As your data is copied onto the workstation, your DIT (Digital Imaging Technician) will be able to open your 4K files in RedCine, apply a primary grade and play back your footage in real-time.

Can I have my footage on tape?

We will accomodate lay outs to tape for dailies and review of footage during the shoot. However, this is not the best route to take for post production, we will supply data for your post facility in whichever resolution and codec they require.

Can you provide my footage in (insert any digital video file format here) for editing?

Yes! Whatever you need, whether it be Quicktime, AVI, DV, HDV, Prores... the list goes on ad infinitum, we will transcode your 4K Redcode RAW footage to any SD or HD format you need.

What about Nikon primes?

We can provide a Nikon mount adapter which allows the use of high quality, high speed DSLR Nikon primes and zooms as a cheaper cost alternative. There are however operational drawbacks. The focus throw is much less than for a cine lens, which makes pulling focus that much more fine, some increased breathing may also be noticeable. In the end, it depends on your priorities and your budget, the choice is yours.