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>RED’s story is one that is rooted in the American tradition of game-changing companies that started in a simple garage. >Jannard was the founder and owner of

by ginko 11y ago

>RED’s story is one that is rooted in the American tradition of game-changing companies that started in a simple garage. >Jannard was the founder and owner of sunglass and sportswear giant Oakley, providing him with the capital and means to literally engineer the future of digital cinema That must have been a nice garage.

bsder 11y ago
Quite. Jannard pumped a LOT of money into it to pull it off. While I absolutely applaud him for doing actual R&D, it's not clear his ROI was actually that good.
- cptskippy 11y ago
  I guess it depends on whether or not his investment was for purely financial gain. From what I've read, it sounds like he was in it for the love of film. He is directly responsible for revolutionizing the film and TV industries. That's a pretty good ROI if you ask me.
  - bsder 11y ago
    > From what I've read, it sounds like he was in it for the love of film. Ayup, he's a big photography/movie buff. > He is directly responsible for revolutionizing the film and TV industries. That's a pretty good ROI if you ask me. It's not clear he did revolutionize the industry. Digital was obvious to everyone. The question wasn't whether it was going to happen, it was when it was going to happen. By doing it when RED did, they had a LOT of problems that the companies doing it now don't. They were developing sensors in VLSI technologies that really weren't up to the task. They had gigantic cables leading to a refrigerator cabinet of disk drives because storage technology wasn't up to the task (small disks, slow transfer rates, no SSD's). They were continuously swapping batteries because battery and power management technology wasn't up to the task. All of these things improved simply with time. VLSI nodes changed to 12" wafers. Disks got way bigger and then switched to SSD's as well as developed faster versions of SATA. Lithium batteries came online and lots of power management technologies improved. I remember talking to the folks at RED at one of the NAB shows. I had a very nice technical conversation with the engineers as everybody else was drooling over the booth bunnies (some inconsequential Hollywood actresses). My first question was simply: "Every engineering student has effectively been required to purchase a personal computer since about 1995. Why aren't film majors required to outright purchase one of these cameras are part of their tuition?" After they both broke up in laughter, they explained to me that the yield on the sensors was so bad that it completely gated their ability to ship cameras. They were estimating that it was going to take 2 more VLSI process nodes to clear the backlog of orders. It looks like they were about right.
    - stephen_g 11y ago
      > They had gigantic cables leading to a refrigerator cabinet of disk drives because storage technology wasn't up to the task (small disks, slow transfer rates, no SSD's) This was only at the very early prototype stage, of course. By the time they shipped, the cameras could record to hard drives and Compact Flash cards using their wavelet-based raw codec. Later the cameras were upgradable with a module swap to use SSDs. 4K onto CF cards was a huge thing at the time - at this stage, a lot of people were still using HDCAM SR tape and only a few cameras recorded onto file based media, like the Panasonic HVX200 that recorded 720p to PCMCIA cards!
onion2k 11y ago
It wasn't even his garage. It was a rented warehouse space really. According to the RED website; "Starting literally out of a warehouse garage, he and a small group of pioneers changed the face of the motion picture industry."
danmaz74 11y ago
Yes, that "garage" reference was pretty stupid and completely unwarranted in an otherwise interesting article.
- deeviant 11y ago
  It's not totally off-the-mark. Having a pile of cash in your pocket does not automagically allow one to revolutionize a sector, just ask any VC. But yes, it was a bit overblown.
happyscrappy 11y ago
"When I started Reynholm Industries I only had two things in my possession, a dream and six million pounds."
- royjacobs 11y ago
  It's similar to the articles that I occasionally see here where people say stuff like "If you have a job that you don't like you should quit IMMEDIATELY" as if that's a perfectly valid option for everyone :)

by ginko 11y ago

bsder 11y ago

Quite. Jannard pumped a LOT of money into it to pull it off. While I absolutely applaud him for doing actual R&D, it's not clear his ROI was actually that good.

cptskippy 11y ago
I guess it depends on whether or not his investment was for purely financial gain. From what I've read, it sounds like he was in it for the love of film. He is directly responsible for revolutionizing the film and TV industries. That's a pretty good ROI if you ask me.
- bsder 11y ago
  > From what I've read, it sounds like he was in it for the love of film. Ayup, he's a big photography/movie buff. > He is directly responsible for revolutionizing the film and TV industries. That's a pretty good ROI if you ask me. It's not clear he did revolutionize the industry. Digital was obvious to everyone. The question wasn't whether it was going to happen, it was when it was going to happen. By doing it when RED did, they had a LOT of problems that the companies doing it now don't. They were developing sensors in VLSI technologies that really weren't up to the task. They had gigantic cables leading to a refrigerator cabinet of disk drives because storage technology wasn't up to the task (small disks, slow transfer rates, no SSD's). They were continuously swapping batteries because battery and power management technology wasn't up to the task. All of these things improved simply with time. VLSI nodes changed to 12" wafers. Disks got way bigger and then switched to SSD's as well as developed faster versions of SATA. Lithium batteries came online and lots of power management technologies improved. I remember talking to the folks at RED at one of the NAB shows. I had a very nice technical conversation with the engineers as everybody else was drooling over the booth bunnies (some inconsequential Hollywood actresses). My first question was simply: "Every engineering student has effectively been required to purchase a personal computer since about 1995. Why aren't film majors required to outright purchase one of these cameras are part of their tuition?" After they both broke up in laughter, they explained to me that the yield on the sensors was so bad that it completely gated their ability to ship cameras. They were estimating that it was going to take 2 more VLSI process nodes to clear the backlog of orders. It looks like they were about right.
  - stephen_g 11y ago
    > They had gigantic cables leading to a refrigerator cabinet of disk drives because storage technology wasn't up to the task (small disks, slow transfer rates, no SSD's) This was only at the very early prototype stage, of course. By the time they shipped, the cameras could record to hard drives and Compact Flash cards using their wavelet-based raw codec. Later the cameras were upgradable with a module swap to use SSDs. 4K onto CF cards was a huge thing at the time - at this stage, a lot of people were still using HDCAM SR tape and only a few cameras recorded onto file based media, like the Panasonic HVX200 that recorded 720p to PCMCIA cards!

onion2k 11y ago

It wasn't even his garage. It was a rented warehouse space really. According to the RED website; "Starting literally out of a warehouse garage, he and a small group of pioneers changed the face of the motion picture industry."

danmaz74 11y ago

Yes, that "garage" reference was pretty stupid and completely unwarranted in an otherwise interesting article.

deeviant 11y ago
It's not totally off-the-mark. Having a pile of cash in your pocket does not automagically allow one to revolutionize a sector, just ask any VC. But yes, it was a bit overblown.

happyscrappy 11y ago

"When I started Reynholm Industries I only had two things in my possession, a dream and six million pounds."

royjacobs 11y ago
It's similar to the articles that I occasionally see here where people say stuff like "If you have a job that you don't like you should quit IMMEDIATELY" as if that's a perfectly valid option for everyone :)