you should not be able to patent the idea of losslessly compressing 4k+ picture/video. the specific implementation/codec/file format definitely, but not the concept of compression
This is what happens when we have people who don't understand the kind of democratization of a lot of technology running the patents office and crap. LG had a patent for OLED tv screens so if anyone wanted to make an OLED TV they had to buy the screen from LG even though OLED is a display concept not an exact technology, there's other ways to implement it.
@@samuelgunter I know it’s confusing but my understanding of the patent has always been that “substantially visually lossless” in fact means lossy. They may have challenged lossless/uncompressed cDNG cameras at one point but my understanding is they did not win these cases. I could be wrong!
@@jordanfish I just looked at their patent abstracts (might have more details in the patents themselves but I don't think either of us cares to read through all those lol) and the language used their is "visually lossless" so I guess youre right. doesn't change the intent of my original post, because compression in general, lossy, and lossless has been around for so long that they shouldn't be able to patent it. while we're talking about compression, you might find the QOI format ("Quite Ok Image format") interesting. it's able to compress images (actually) losslessly in linear time, getting approximately the same image size as PNG but encoding 20x-50x faster (without any parallel processing of any sort) and 3x-4x faster decoding. The algorithm is so simple that it fits on a single page PDF
Red's story is so sad. The industrious, optimistic entrepreneurs became the monopolists who now starve and prevent the very kind of innovation that made them what they are. I used to be a big fan of their's, now when I wonder why I'm not able to shoot raw internal video, I look at them with disgust. It's pathetic really that they've been able to get away with it for so long. Save us Nikon!
@@karlwithak1835entrepreneurs that are afraid of the competition and use anti competitive tactics shouldn’t be called entrepreneurs. They are greedy cowards that prefer to hinder innovation. It will bite them in the ass in due time as soon as their patent expires.
That's what Disney have been doing for 80 odd years with their IPs. IPs which they freely took and adapted from (at the time) public domain fairy tales.
@@Zehahahaa by this country you mean the US? Its not the only way but one of the ways. People do not forget. Its one of the reasons amazon became what it is today. It created trust. The most valuable thing in any form of business. Red is a bordeline scam with the prices they are charging and practices they are using. Α company always makes more money obviously if they have someone to exploit be it their workers business partners or costumers. Ideally you want to satisfy as many as possible because otherwise you are risking your downfall. Red as of right now puts all its bets on one patent. If they lose that then it means total carnage 😂
@Karl with a K Red started as a visionary, innovative company, one I wholly endorsed upon their conception. Patents are for the purpose of protecting one's original invention. Without them, there are no incentives to take risks with new idea's. That's not in dispute, anyone with a cursory knowledge of macroeconomics knows this. It's the abuse of those patents that is the problem: Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, in order for an invention to be patentable, it must be new and not the subject of a public disclosure more than a year before your patent application filing date. "Both RED’s offer for sale and public use of the RED camera occurred more than a year before December 28, 2007, the earliest possible effective filing date of the ’560 patent. However, RED, James Jannard and Thomas Graeme Nattress (the named inventors of the ’560 patent), and their representatives did not disclose the RED camera’s April 2006 offer for sale or November 2006 public use during the prosecution of the ’560 patent. The offer for sale and public use of the RED camera are material, because the PTO would not have allowed the ’560 patent had it been aware of these undisclosed events. Also, on information and belief, RED, the named inventors of the ’560 patent, and their representatives acted with a specific intent to deceive the PTO by withholding information about these events, because they knew that disclosure of either of these events to the PTO would prevent the issuance of the ’560 patent. Accordingly, the ’560 patent and its related patents are unenforceable under the doctrine of inequitable conduct." (See YMCinema article: Nikon Denies and Fights Back RED’s Lawsuit). IF the above is true, the patent should have never been granted. In that time, the hard work of many an entrepreneur has been stymied due to Red's practices. Who's going to speak for them?
@Karl with a K 31 million Americans own small businesses, that's 16% of our population. Factor in educational institutions, corporate accountants and investment professionals, that easily exceeds a quarter of our population who are well versed in economics. Your 1/1000 of 1% immediately invalidates your credibility. In the end, a jury will decide. The whole argument is conditional, nobody is saying otherwise. Claims must be proven in court. If the December 2007 patent date is substantiated, that exceeds the allowable grace period given the public disclosure in April 2006 and public demonstration in November 2006. In addition, if that information was withheld in the application, that could potentially constitute a fraudulent patent.
Red used to be a lot more relevant. You would see a bunch of movies shot on Red. Today, almost none of the top movies are shot on Red - only Arri and Sony Venice, which is changing the Red reputation. They found a hit with the Komodo, but it's a totally different market. Between really good hydrid mirrorless cameras and smaller camera makers like Z-Cam and Blackmagic, it's hyper competitive. They can only trade on the Red name for so long before they aren't able to stand out in the market anymore. That's why they're focusing more on filing broader patents and working harder to enforce their existing patents. There's more money in royalties (if they can get people to pay them) than in the cameras. There's no R&D and no manufacturing costs with an existing patent. But the problem is the patent itself. If you read through it in detail, you'll find that key claim has to do with how raw is pre-processed before compression, but Cineform did this prior to Red's existence. Other parts of their technology was mostly industry standard or off the shelf. Redcode is just JPEG 2000 in a QuickTime container with some extra bits to make it proprietary. Whether through the Nikon lawsuit or others the Red patent will be deemed unenforceable. It seems like many companies are expecting this because no one is paying them to license their patent. They'd rather do uncompressed RAW (e.g. Arri) or compress with an external device. Hopefully this will happen sooner than later. The patent is hurting all consumers, and not really helping Red either.
This was best comment, expanding this topic. If there is no video about it, then do it or mail someone who can and have large reach... Maybe Linus Tech Tips?
Well, when you are RED and are charging absurd amount of money even for a stupid simple SSD drive in a fancy red metal case, people eventually get annoyed at you. I liked RED in the past, but they can politely go fuck themselves today.
Red still has a big market with most low-budget, tv, or independent movies. If Arri did start making budget-friendly cameras, they would probably really start hurting Red.
Blah blah blah. No one cares about what you just said. It's Arri, RED and the Sony. Blacmagic can't hold a candle to RED even though they make good cameras and used to push the market in a good direction. RED did a great thing with the Komodo and it probably helped RED more than anyone wants to admit. The Komodo is a quality camera that produces a great image. And look at what Sony has done without producing internal RAW.
Patent attorney here 👋. I don’t know the specifics of this patent, but I do know that the reason Blackmagic can compress raw isn’t because they “figured it out first.” If that was true and publicly disclosed before Red’s invention, it would be prior art against Red and invalidate their patents (or wouldn’t have received a patent in the first place). Blackmagic designed around the patent.
@@InvisageStudios oof. That's kind of shit though. So many different de-bayer algorithms for different software processing. Hell, even ones that don't exist yet! Better than nothing, I guess.. but a raw format really ought to be bayer sensor data (or whatever other sensor type the camera is.)
Could you have an extremely fast local storage broken into two flash drives A and B and give a camera the ability to store a few mins of uncompressed raw to drive A. Then you make an “external device” that slides on hot swappable on pogo pins. That reads drive A once full and writes the data back to drive C in a compressed raw format. Camera switches to drive B once drive A is full. But the time drive B is full, drive A had been read, data compressed and copied to C, and drive A is erased and ready to use again once drive B fills up. The camera essentially switched back and forth between two drives A and B and “magically” the unused drive is free again by the time it is needed
The whole concept of compressing a particular kind of data is not patentable. Your implementation, yes, but certainly not the concept of doing so! If that were patentable, we wouldn't have the plethora of file compression or network data compression formats out there!
This goes deeper than just the camera industry. This problem exists in anything involving high bandwidth data streams. Networking hardware, live stream encoding, database acceleration boards, AI and machine learning image recognition. Everyone working with ASIC's, FPGA's, and hardware embedded devices are locked into very strict licensing agreements which greatly restricts the smaller businesses from getting their foot in the door.
@@abyssstrider2547 It should last 3 years max, if even that. International patent law is meant PRIMARY as a way to stifle non-US competition. The justification given for it i.e. amortization of research costs is mostly just a convenient excuse. It's certainly clear in software where costs are basically zero when compared to traditional manufacturing.
The issue might just be how big they are. No one wants to sue them and loose. Even if you sue them and win, you just spent a shit ton of money and all your competitors get to profit off your work. There is no advantage as a business to sue them unfortunately. The whole situation sucks.
Agree. Maybe if they had created a new compression algorithm, etc. a patent on THAT, itself, would be valid, but a patent on a CONCEPT that plenty of people have thought of (if not implemented) is wrong.
Here's an idea for Sony, Canon, Nikon etc. Make the frame size/sensor size 3840x2161 (vs the defined 4k size of 3840x2160). In the compression algorithm, drop the extra 1 pixel line. Now they're no longer compressing 4k files, which is what the patent is for. But the editor still gets a 4k file.
Dji should enable custom firmware, and someone should write some code for it or it should somehow get leaked from dji somewhere so you can install aftermarket. Similar to the magiclantern software for canon cameras
Great idea, they should do this! They do this in FPV already, their fpv goggles can legally only provide really pathetically low amounts of output power. Meaning your video range would be really low. But there is a super easy 'hack' that allows you to increase the power limit by like 20x. The 'hack' is as simple as inserting an sdcard to the system with a txt file that reads '1' or something like that.
If any company can skirt the patent law it is a Chinese one :p To be honest, as much as I hate what the CCP is doing in China, I've never held against Chinese companies that they ignore the stupid patent law and just use the technology that is on the market in their own products. In the end the consumer benefited the most and that is what is actually the most important here. If a company develops a key technology it's much smarter to keep it a trade secret than to patent it and blurt it out to the world.
Either that or DJI should create an entire new recording format superior to raw. Not sure how it would be done but it would be cool to see them try, especially with how they just completely reinvented the focusing system on the camera he mentioned in the video like no one has ever seen before.
They are literally holding the entire industry back with this selfishness and greed. Allowing this to happen seems like an incredibly ignorant decision by whichever legal authority made the call.
Yes, this is pretty much the same story as LG's blue pixels halting progress of TV-technology for years. At it's current state copyright does more harm than good because basic things can be copyrighted.
Just a point of clarification: Blackmagic did not figure this out before Red. They use a partially debayered format to get around the patent. Arri does something different (something involving LOG that’s technically lossless) to get around it.
Blackmagic also does the workaround that Arri does, using LOG for their compressed raw codec, it's essentially placing 16 bit linear raw in a 12 bit log container and reversing that formula once you import your footage into your software of choice, it's actually incredibly interesting and is pretty genius.
For everybody the problem is in the sensor. Arri have some important patent on their sensors and they are the only true 16 bit dual gain technology and nobody else can copy it.
That is insane! Lossless compression on a camera is a patent?!?! What the heck? It's tech bullying! Thanks for letting us know about this! I'm gonna share this video with some other TH-camrs in the community. More people need to be aware of this!
The specific method they came up with (it’s got to do with separating the colour information pre-debater and compressing them separately) was extremely novel in 2008 when they patented it. Basically everyone else just assumed you’d always want to debayer in camera first. It wasn’t until several years later that everyone started wanting to do it.
@@stephengentle2815 no, it wasn't novel. It already existed as software from Cineform, as someone else mentioned, and it existed in the SI-2K camera. They just tacked "but at 4K" on to what Silicon Imaging had already done in a camera and patented it. Their "extremely novel" method is just JPEG2000, which they didn't invent, inside an Apple QuickTime wrapper, which they also didn't invent.
@@narcis3720 there are so many patent applications that they don't have time to review them. They just grant them and wait to see if anyone challenges them in court. It helps make the lawyers rich.
Hey, here is an idea for competing camera manufacturer: Make a camera that compress raw data, but add a black pixel on the top left corner. Here it is: it's not "loss less" anymore. In fact they could voluntarily alter the image with a bunch of random pixels that could easily be corrected in post. Or slightly increase the size of your sensor and add dark lining on one side, just big enough so it's perceivable to the eye. Of course ship the camera with software that removes that. Just not in realtime. Or add a buffer so it's compressed but simply not in realtime, just with a few milliseconds offset.
I think this will actually cause issues for RED in the long run. While they will spend their time in courts and resting on their laurels, other companies will be forced to innovate new codecs, new storage, workarounds, etc. It may take more time, but eventually people figure it out and leave gatekeepers behind.
If I were DJI I’d just basically plant a coding back door & make it look like the community is hacking raw back into the system when in fact the “community” is DJI employees acting as camera modders on forums. Black project done. Alternatively fly to Australia or China & get the Blackmagic deal (I’d guess the camera company that basically made raw acquisition available to Indy would be more approachable.)
Blackmagic has licensed its raw codec in the past in external recorders, notably the Ninja Atmos 5, I wonder if Blackmagic would be willing to incorporate their codec into DJI cameras, that would be a dream imo, Blackmagic raw is better that Recode raw in a lot of regards.
@@divisionoflabor3070 Sadly, there exists quite a bit of abuse of patents overall. For example, pharmaceutical companies are abusing the system in order to suppress the manufacture of affordable pharmaceuticals.
yeh still got my 4k, can't believe how smart a decision it was now. i got the second production batch that ended up in Australia. it had fixed some bugs and i waited 6 MONTHS for it fully paid. got it at below MSRP!!!.
Good for you to say it as simple as it is! I think this world needs much more people with such frank and open mind. Wishing you all the best and I do hope you will inspire many more.
Man i am 100% with you on this. I hate this company and everything it represents. Back in 2010 i could swear that 10 years later we would have 4K raw in small factor & affordable bodies from makers like Panasonic, Nikon and Sony. It has happened to a certain degree but this company has held the whole industry back with their supposed "patent". I would never buy a RED even if i could afford one.
What would that do though? It's not exactly a secret, especially within and around associated industries. We're talking an industry litterally at war with these guys, and getting BUTCHERED every time they make a move against it (haven't checked in on Nikon's in recent. I'm assuming it's at least not going well)
@@MaddJakd the world would be a much better place if consumers chose to not support crooked companies. If they take advantage of workers, consumers, manipulate the market, corrupt banks, etc. Without consumers, companies have nothing. We can decide to make it not profitable to be shitty towards us. That's the way it should be.
I'm confused. If the patent is for compressing raw in the camera, why not create a camera attachment that does it right outside the camera before it goes into the drive?
@@samwhaleIV Red did sue, but Nikon seems to be hopeful that they found a problem with the patent. Something about RED selling their cameras more than one year before the patent, meaning that the patent should not have been granted, thus rendering the patent void. So we'll see how things turn out, so far the Z9 still has the compressed raw video, as far as I know (I don't own one myself).
@@eiko4252 before the jury trial RED has no way to prevent Nikon from using the compressed raw format in Z9, and the final trial is set to Jan 2024. But I don't know if Nikon's lawers are really planning to claim the ilegitemacy of RED's patent, 'cause it's pretty fucking solid(Apple and Sony law teams would agree with me, I think). But we'll see...
@@sora_mugen From what I understood, Apple and Sony tried to argue the contents of the patent. Nikon does not argue the contents, but the timing of the patent instead, claiming Red misrepresented to the patent office when they started to sell their cameras. So thats a different approach from sony and apple.
The problem is that once a patent is granted, no matter how frivolous, it's incredibly difficult to get it revoked, because patent offices are full of pieces of shit.
It was the same with hearing aids. The patent squashed competition and most people could not afford that product. I am not going to say which company it was but it sucks people suffered because of it for so many years. Luckily that is now over and we will see competition improving in the next few years
Why not name them? We should be publicly shaming every crooked company that wants to subvert innovation in favor of profit especially when those companies are responsible for producing and distributing medical or quality of life enhancing products. A camera company is one thing, no one NEEDS a camera to live or enjoy life, but a company that provides a product like hearing aids or insulin driving up prices based solely on the fact that they are the only ones allowed to provide that product is sickening and the one's responsible should be held fully accountable.
A company called cineform invented compressed raw 2 years before red copied their idea and covered it up with fake metadata. Also canon has on camera compressed raw in many of its cinema line cameras.
This is correct. I shoot RAW ST on my Canon C70. It's a form of compressed RAW (and it works beautifully). Not sure how Canon is getting around this patent if that is the case.
@@ChrisbottrellphotographyCoUk That makes sense. RED is the only other company offering the RF mount that I'm aware of. Pretty sweet deal for both parties IMO.
@@jakealbrecht I *believe* the patent only applies to video, hence the use of the terms 4K and such, which are rarely used in photography, which favors terms like megapixels, Compressed Raw DNG files are not covered under the patent. It's the same reason that there's no problem with cameras like the sigma FP recording "compressed" raw video, the FP is simply recording image sequences of Raw DNG files along with audio and embedded metadata.
Stephan Kinsella is a brilliant Patent Attorney who compellingly argues that Intellectual Property is not in fact property thus any laws enforcing it are utterly immoral. The history alone about how it became a thing is fascinating. He says he's in the profession to help defend people preemptively against the epidemic of patent trolls. Subbed! :-)
This leads me to believe that RED will lose at the end of the day. Being on defense, rather than competing for the better of the industry with other camera brands, is a toxic and negative way of business. Thanks for the info Theo.
@@TH-cam_can_ESAD Fk you know about that? RED fanboy ass. My to buy list is comprised of two new cameras, pro glass, DJI RS3 Pro Combo, rig equipment, and accessories. Some of those I already bought. Troll ass.
@@astanisystems exactly why my studio skipped over Red. We ended buying Arri, which while more expensive (has its obvious pros as well) ultimately doesn’t support a patent troll, that hinders growth in the industry.
@Seeyou Seemee "color science" is just how each camera manufacturer renders color from the sensor in the final file. It's essentially a LUT or color bias in most cases. I'm curious about what your understanding on "color science" is.
@Seeyou SeemeeWay to come off as an elitist snob. Maybe it _is_ a myth, but Nikon images always looked great to me right out of camera to me with minimal tinkering. I don't care if "CoLoR sCiEnCe Is A MyTh" if you have to do hours of color correction to get a decent image out of a camera (or to match a look that another camera already has by default.) ... and Nikon totally _could_ make a cinema camera if they wanted to take the risk. They're already like 40% of the way there already with the Z9. Nikon's size and "lack of expertise" has little to do with it. If relatively new companies like Black Magic/RED can appear pretty much out of thin air and make _hugely_ successful cinema cameras -- then I am _sure_ an established company that has been making cameras since 1948 can do it, too. It's just risky, expensive as hell and would probably bury Nikon if it failed. However, it could also pay off big time, too.
This was really interesting. I hadn't heard about any of this until the other day, and this helps provide the context I was missing. I didn't realize you could so thoroughly shut down competition like this by patenting a concept so thoroughly that no one else could hope to reinvent it (your point about writing your own codec, I believe). Seems like there should be an anti-monopoly thing here?
It's known as patent war. Idk if you're a gamer, but if you've ever played a game called Shadow Of War the creators patented a system used in game called the 'Nemsis System's. Let's just say people thought it would be the next evolution of video games until the patented it which absolutely sucks. If you wanna know what the nemesis system is -> th-cam.com/video/Lm_AzK27mZY/w-d-xo.html
@@krazymeanie Speaking of games, I can't recall what company it was but a company held a patent on minigames in the loading menu of a game for a long time. That's also a concept, and shouldn't be patentable.
@Karl with a K Pretty sure people understand the use and purpose of patents. The problem is in what you can patent. A concept or idea shouldn't be patentable (to a certain extent), it's execution should.
@Karl with a K I get where you're coming from but that thinking is naive. Evolution on all front depends on the reiteration and improvement of already conceded inventions. For sure, anyone with an idea would be upset if someone else "steals" their idea for a profit but what sense does it make to hold onto an idea that you're probably never gonna follow through on just because someone actually brought it into reality? You're acting like that doesn't take work as well. They aren't getting paid for your idea, their getting paid for their implementation that was better than yours. I can't begin to imagine what the world would be if that type of thinking was exercised in all markets. There would be no innovation or improvement on already existing products. Now one can argue that it would force the means of coming up with totally new ideas but that would just make evolution slower and monopolies more rampant which would be nightmares for consumers. Yeah sure no one is gonna steal your creative soul but it's gonna die and go to waste and for what? Because you're concerned about someone out doing you. If your idea, implementation and execution is good no matter how much money another company has it shouldn't be able to outdo or outsell you, for its your very own idea isn't it? So it's not a fear of someone stealing your idea it's a fear of them executing it better than yourself. Just like everything else there's good and bad things about them and patents definitely have both. Patents stifle innovation upon and evolution of products to protect monetary gain. Also the whole "its my idea" fiasco it nonsense. I can assure you it's probably already been thought of by many and hasn't been executed. So in terms of patents it's not about protecting a creative idea its about protecting the person that did it first, regardless if it the implementation was good enough or not which is dumb. I'm not against patents, I'm against people that use it as a weapon. They could care less about "creative soul". They solely care about money and competition so don't be swayed by these companies. They're businesses after all.
The ronin 4D is Not stabilized in all directions lol, and its using Laser, not IR. Regarding the RAW/RED deal: its not such a big deal. It isnt standard here in Sweden atleast, most high end stuff is shot in ProRes on ARRI cameras.
Kind interesting topic is how some manufacturers got around the patent. Arri captures uncompressed raw, but allows you to compress to HDE (High Density Encoding) during the offload. Sony Venice I got around it by being an “external recorder” even though it was basically part of the body
thanks for the fanfic Theo Rants red cameras break down and accessories are a nightmare there's a reason everyone wants ARRI for higher budgets and Sony for small creators
"I am neither a lawyer nor a very seasoned camera person" and proceeds to give us valuable creative and legal gems we've never heard anywhere else. Love the humbleness. Love the willingness to share information. Well done Theo!
I would understand if it was for certain codecs or even type of certain storage units that compress it in a certain way. Patenting just the fact that you compress raw on-camera, how was that even possible.
They’re setting back the industry by 20 years. However, I think others should try to make compressed codex for higher resolutions and patent them too. Red should be equally shut out of the higher resolution codex too as retaliation. Just my wishful thinking as I know that higher resolution would just mean a steep price point.😢
As the technical lead, I designed the codec for the Google StreetView cameras in 2007. We compressed raw, but not as much as RED. Red's US 8,174,560 patent, issued 2012-May-08, appears to have priority dating back to 2008-Apr-11, but the expiration has been adjusted to 2030-Aug-14, which suggests it has a priority date of 2010-Aug-14, but I'm not sure about that last. Claim 1 has a few clauses describing a camera, and the following: an image processing system configured to compress and store in the memory device the raw image data at a compression ratio of at least six to one and remain substantially visually lossless, and at a rate of at least 23 frames per second. Typical image data for good sensors is 14 bits per pixel, linear coded. So if your video is less than 14/6=2.33 bits/pixel, which is 464 megabits/sec, you're going to want to look very carefully at the definitions in this patent. What is "raw image data"? Is it the data format coming off the image sensor chip? Many chips do an approximate gamma-coding of the data so that they can read 16,384 different voltage levels from the pixel, but only need to push 8 bits/pixel off the image sensor chip. There is no visual loss in doing this. The I/O pins on that chip produce a lot of electrical noise, noise that is greatly attenuated but eventually does creep into the image a little. Cutting down on I/O pins helps. So for these sensors do we call the data off the image sensor "raw image data"? The phrase "raw image data" isn't defined anywhere in '560 (for instance, there's no diagram with a labelled item described as "raw image data", which makes the litigation more complicated, since you'd have to refer to contemporaneous public documents to see how people defined that term. Interestingly, the patent talks about gamma coding a red and blue channel, then subtracting the green channel, and then says: "In this state, the image data can still be considered “raw” data. For example, the mathematical process performed on the data are entirely reversible such that all of the original values can be obtained by reversing those processes." That's quite interesting! It appears that in the context of the '560 patent, we can apply the term "raw image data" to a data stream significantly smaller than what came off the image sensor. For instance, I know of a scheme different than described in the patent that will reversibly code raw image data with a compression of about 3:1 without visual artifacts, so the output of that might be considered "raw image data" in the context of this patent. I'd be happy to argue in court that a scheme that further compressed that data stream by a factor of 5 (so
Arri gets around this because they don’t internally compress their RAW or you can use an external recorder. I have the Black Magic Pocket 4K, which uses their BRAW and gets around it. Everyone else is basically screwed at this point. Even Apple backed off, which sucks cause you need a huge storage drive and fast processor to deal with uncompressed ProResRAW, hence only the Pro models get it
If the compression is on the attached harddrive it would not go against the patent, because it wouldnt be on camera. Other camera manufacturer only would need to make an external ssd module that does the compression in that module. Would add a bit of bulk but it wouldnt be hard to develop for a company like sony for example.
Getting around this nonsense is why things like the Ninja exist at this point (a huge point at least) The point is, it's such a broad concept that it shouldn't be patentable.
But they would still have the patent bestowed upon them from above, individual action is not going to stop a systemic problem. Broad change, like what Nikon is trying to do, is the only way we can get anywhere.
Pretty sure complaining about it is how you signal boost/convince people to not buy their products, they go hand in hand. People need to understand what is going on in order to make informed purchasing decisions
@@JustinKent You make it sound like everyday people are buying REDs. 95% is rental houses and production companies. Doesn’t really matter that much to them most of the time
@Stranger This! The studios, productions houses, the creatives. Those guys are going for what gives them the results they want. Naturally there are thos among them that will avoid RED for their variois reasoning, but we're talking the big gunz, not laymen. When a company like Apple backs off the fight, what on earth are up-and-comers and hobbyists supposed to do?
I agree fully, and wish that other influencers with larger audiences were pushing a campaign to get red to drop this sort of crippling of the industry. - Insert flock of seagulls joke here -
Crazy that they were able to get a patent on just the CONCEPT of compressed raw video and not their specific implementation... Like that's how most other patents go... Unless you're LG and you somehow managed the same thing for OLED tv screens
Didn't know about this, thank you for your rant. Now I'm incredibly pissed at both Red and whoever granted them such a stupid patent. What a clown world...
Other companies should have "encrypted RAW recording". Encryption isn't purely compression, however there are a lot of encryption schemes out there that heavily reduce file size 🙂
Idk how they’ve managed to get away with this. They don’t even have that much liquid cash or that much market share compared to other companies. I’m surprised other companies haven’t banded together to fight this patent or try to appeal to the court about this bull shit.
The reason being is that it's best to think of Red Digital Cinema as primarily a patent holding company that "happens to be" a manufacturer of digital cinema cameras and accessories to said cameras. Look at them more as a repository of corporate/patent legal professionals with a weird small niche hardware company attached. They have plenty of cash to do what they are doing long term. That is until they loose or the patent runs out or if one of the big companies buys them out. But until then they have made bucket loads of cash and continue to do so. So the whole thing is worth it to them. Honestly the big companies only have themselves to blame for this cause they failed to capitalize on what was then common technical knowledge in fear of innovation or cannibalizing existing product lines. Red had no such fear.
Companies are worried for their own patents, if someone wins against Red and leads to something crazy like a nullification of said patent, everyone is going to start getting ideas on potentially defeating held patents. In the eyes of big players, it's worth letting RED have this, just so as long as they keep what they have themselves.
@@JFreshInEffect I just realized the company is funded and founded by the same dude that made Oakleys sunglasses. So they have plenty of cash. Which I did not know when I wrote that comment initially. It’s still so stupid.
@RiceCube Tech They all need to band together and do some serious digging on RED as opposed to separately fighting them (they've all been slaughtered as such)
Love the rant. I know Red is pretty much only used for this reason at this point. Truly disappointing that instead of competing in developing the best videography workflows they rested on their laurels only to fight any “threat.”
I don't think this is true. Red cameras offer really incredible IQ. The raptor is right there with Alexa in dynamic range. The A35 is really the only camera on its own in that regard. And red color science is fantastic. Image detail stellar. Compressed redcode is a joy to work with, but its not like these cameras would be trash if they didn't have it. At the end of the day, they are great cameras that produce great results.
Reds are not just used for this reason at all. That's a ridiculous statement. And before you come at me for being a red fanboy. I don't enjoy shooting red cameras at all and think the idea of patenting a lossless compression format is awful for everyone and is another reason I dislike red. Regardless of this they are an industry staple right behind arri for a reason.
I worked at a company that manufactured red digital parts. I created all the laser marking programs and procedures they still use for marking their cameras. I still have a lot of their early prototypes and stuff we made for them.
@Karl with a K I worked for a company called TMX Engineering... we were the first to produce their aluminum body housings for the Scarlett and other components. We also did all the Laica mounts they use for the lenses. Cheese plates, the red button they use and a bunch of other components including the inside housing that sits just outside the sensor. The entire body housing was machined out of aluminum and need to be perfect with no tool marks (it was a pain!!) some of the mounts were made from aluminum and some out of titanium. I have some titanium rings that they used to tighten the lends I believe. The R&R that we did to get the Anodizing color on the housings was crazy as well as the color red that went on the buttons. Also the paint that goes on the sensor body is special as it needs to be very matte and not let light bounce around in there. It was pretty cool all the stuff we did. I have some anodized Cheese plates and titanium rings and mounts. I programed the Laser machines that did all the logo work on the mounts and even had to go to RED DIGITAL to program their machine because they couldn't figure our the laser parameters to laser mark bright white.
I haven't seen a Red cam on a shoot in over 10 years, commercially any of the major studios default to Alexa or Sony Venice these days. I was surprised when I came across your video. I thought that they had disappeared. Too bad they have become such asshats. Thanks for the great informative video.
Not a solution, (more of a question really) but what if DJI or others, should make it possible to mod the firmware or have a plugin ecosystem, then they would not infringe on the patent... and if the anon open-source community makes drivers to do whatever... perhaps that should be an acceptable work around?
Sometimes these patents really hurt the companies that actually cares about us the consumers. There should be some regulatory body to these patents bcz some of them makes no sense
Here’s the funny thing. A patent troll is defined as”a company that obtains the rights to one or more patents in order to profit by means of licensing or litigation, rather than by producing its own goods or services.” - Oxford Dictionary. RED produces products on all of the patents they own. Therefor, they are not patent trolls at all. They are patent holders who actively protect their IP. You can dislike it, I understand. But, it is a legally obtained patent that has been held up in court, every single time. You can dislike what’s behind the patent, I understand. However, none of this is new information. It has been brought up numerous times before, in court. And, its been upheld in court, every single time. It is also interesting that this DJI story keeps coming up. And its interesting that the same incorrect information keeps getting repeated. I always hear the same wrong source on this and yes, he is respectable, but he is wrong. The truth? It can’t come out. NDAs are very strong. Those who say the reason don’t know. Those who know the reason, won’t say. As it pertains to the industry, anyone can license the codec from RED. But, its not free. Nor should it be. Any camera out there that uses compressed raw in their camera either has a license, will end up in court, or, its simply not compressed raw. I get that you’re ranting and I have no problem with that. I enjoy listening to all sides of a debate. But, repeating incorrect information is just getting people riled up for no reason. Its what Its. We should all be out there making cool stuff.
If an illegal patent is held up in court then the court is corrupt. The patent is so broad and unspecific, it's like patenting the sun. It cannot hold up.
@@doltBmB And if it is held up by multiple, different courts then its likely a legal patent. Remove your emotions from the situation and you’ll find the patent is just fine. Its also not that broad. There are much more extremely broad patents that are legal and still upheld in the courts. I.e. moving money across the internet. That is a legal patent. And no one is complaining about it because you don’t think it affects you. It does, every single day. You are paying for it.
@@ScottBalkum Such broad patents are literally against patent law. You can only patent a specific implementation, and not a general idea. Ideas are not protected by anything. So if such broad patents as that are granted then the system is corrupt.
I guess the patent system works primarily to facilitate wealth accumulation and monopolising control rather than support creativity, collaboration and innovation. And if that's the case, it could be more of a liability than an asset.
That’s one of the biggest issues with patents. How they should work is that people can replicate whatever is being patented but have to pay royalties to whoever holds it.
In certain jurisdictions, contracts could be void or voidable. Void means that the entire contract becomes worthless when reasons are so obvious that parties do not need to go to court. It may be less simple so the contract is voidable and a court case is needed claiming the contract is void and a judge then needs to affirm that in a verdict. Seems to me that this principle might also apply to patents, or hold up in court in an equivalent reasoning.
You are dead wrong, and clearly miss the point of the very purpose of patent law, or the basic concept of intellectual property. Without patents and copyright protections, there will be a lot less innovation, especially in fields that cost a lot of money, like camera development. That is why the exist. Red created something that was innovative, and to a large degree, it was their patent that enabled them to successfully enter a market that was dominated by giant corporations such as Sony and Panasonic, that before Red emerged, were selling 1080p and 720p video cameras for $100,000 and $65,000 respectively. Without their patent, Red as a new company, had no chance to survive the competition. Red pushed the camera industry forward, and continues to do so, and we should all be thankful to them for it. If you're annoyed by copyright and patent laws, or worse: claiming that whomever utilizes them "sucks", you simply don't understand the immense importance of them for the real-world viability of innovation itself. Without these protections, the insensitive to innovate would be gone. Red was the catalyst to the amazing camera industry we all currently enjoy. They aren't destroying the industry, but rather, they are to thank for causing it to flourish and making higher end cameras more affordable. There are those who create and innovate, and those wbo complain about them having temporary ownership on their innovation. You are clearly the latter, which is ironic, because being in software development, your employer (assuming you work for a software company) is relying on patents and copyright laws to survive. Developing new technologies costs a lit of money and takes a lot of time. No one would do it without the protections of intellectual property laws. That is why these laws have been adopted in almost every country in the world.
@@doltBmB You are severely mistaken. As someone with 2 issued US patents to his name and an additional international patent pending, I can attest that without the protection of a patent, the financial risk of bringing new technology to the market would have been too great, and I would have not been able to get the necessary funding to bring innovation to market as products people can actually use. This is how it is in many, if not most cases. Without the protection of patents, many medical advances would have not been possible, and for the same reason. Research and development are expensive. No one in their right minds would risk all that money without being able to protect their investments. Not everything is patentable. Patent law leaves sufficient room for further innovation and competition. Your argument, while stated as if it was settled fact, is merely a false argument. By allowing everyone to copy the innovative work product of one inventor/company you're not encouraging innovation. You're doing the exact opposite. The competitors don't have to innovate because they can copy, and the inventor, unable to enjoy the fruit of his labor, is disincentivized from innovating again.
It is not only a RED issue, for instance, Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve doesn't support Apple ProRes RAW, not because they aren't capable of implementing the codec, but because it competes with their own "RAW" codec, and BTW, Blackmagic RAW is NOT a RAW codec, they do a partial demosaicing/debayering before recording the data to the file, which allows them to record a pseudo-raw file without infringing on RED patents, a patent that shouldn't be filed in the first place.
A little update, checkout this amazing analysis about RED, specially Part 6 which show how RED RAW is just a rip-off Cineform: th-cam.com/play/PL57C0kLWLiIIYebuD07uOFjeH08kTwlLX.html
Reminds me of a certain over priced audio cable company that tried to extort money from anyone using one word from their name. It’s one of the oldest boycotts I know of and most stores won’t even stock their products now.
People in jurisdictions where patents don’t apply should be able to develop and run their own firmware that has whatever codecs they want. Good case for open source cameras that violate patents as long as it’s legal where it’s done.
Any digital photo or video is a "compressed raw". Sometimes lossy (like h264, hevc with default options), sometimes not. May include different kinds of optimizations, may not. There's definitely something wrong with this patent system
Regarding judicial things, I know that saying a sentence in 2 different ways has a different impact on a lawsuit. I believe that it is possible to overturn the RAW Compression patent in an easy way (maybe it will take 2 to 5 years) with just a process, a well-composed sentence and an unquestionable analogy, the objective is to convince the judge that this patent is an absorp. Just imagine a scenario where filtered water is a patent...
I dont know all too much about cameras but I wonder what the work around is here for DJI? what format do they use in this camera and how bad is this in comparison to RAW?
This is actually pretty common. Look up the Selden patent where someone literally patented the idea of a gasoline automobile. 3D printing exploded the last couple years because the patents on their processes expired. The good news is patents only last 20 years so the clock is ticking.
Like many times in history, a company having good product from what all can benefit and holding greedy onto its patent, will be at the end the looser. Always good example was the epic battle between Sony standard and VHS. Sony had better product, but was not willing to sell the licence (and still win the money!) to others. So, the lesser quality system (VHS) won by selling more licences and establishing itself as the standard of the time. No, Sony did not collapse as a company, but ended up using VHS on their products. Another example were the 3D printers. Someone held onto their patents for 19 years and the world was waiting for the patent to expire. And after that came the revolution. Theo, thumbs up for the effort and the more people put pressure on The RED the bigger the chance they'll get to their senses. Thank you.
What is needed is for other major camera makers to sue over the overly broad patent. Being able to patent over compression of raw video, is like being able to get a patent for the concept of a car being able to drive over 30MPH.
This guy seems pretty smart idk
I think he should learn react, might make a decent engineer
This guy should definitely create a company and become it's ceo
Insert Obama medal meme here
Who cares just use ProRes 422 looks better than raw anyway , we moved from BRAW to ProRes for all our shots and it’s a way higher quality output
@@tmcafrosounds No it doesn’t, Clown.
you should not be able to patent the idea of losslessly compressing 4k+ picture/video. the specific implementation/codec/file format definitely, but not the concept of compression
This is what happens when we have people who don't understand the kind of democratization of a lot of technology running the patents office and crap.
LG had a patent for OLED tv screens so if anyone wanted to make an OLED TV they had to buy the screen from LG even though OLED is a display concept not an exact technology, there's other ways to implement it.
They have the patent on lossy compression.
@@samuelgunter I know it’s confusing but my understanding of the patent has always been that “substantially visually lossless” in fact means lossy. They may have challenged lossless/uncompressed cDNG cameras at one point but my understanding is they did not win these cases. I could be wrong!
@@jordanfish I just looked at their patent abstracts (might have more details in the patents themselves but I don't think either of us cares to read through all those lol) and the language used their is "visually lossless" so I guess youre right. doesn't change the intent of my original post, because compression in general, lossy, and lossless has been around for so long that they shouldn't be able to patent it.
while we're talking about compression, you might find the QOI format ("Quite Ok Image format") interesting. it's able to compress images (actually) losslessly in linear time, getting approximately the same image size as PNG but encoding 20x-50x faster (without any parallel processing of any sort) and 3x-4x faster decoding. The algorithm is so simple that it fits on a single page PDF
@@samuelgunterso why isn’t it used instead?
I read somewhere that Nikon wants to go to court with RED and they are going to challenge the legitimacy of the patent granted to RED.
True, the Z9 integrated the Compressed RAW without RED's permission
yeh it's ripe for a class action
The jury trial is set for January 2024.
@bahaatamer1245 They’re using Ticoraw licensed from intoPix. And if Nikon wins the case against Red they basically set the industry free.
Good
Red's story is so sad. The industrious, optimistic entrepreneurs became the monopolists who now starve and prevent the very kind of innovation that made them what they are. I used to be a big fan of their's, now when I wonder why I'm not able to shoot raw internal video, I look at them with disgust. It's pathetic really that they've been able to get away with it for so long. Save us Nikon!
@@karlwithak1835entrepreneurs that are afraid of the competition and use anti competitive tactics shouldn’t be called entrepreneurs. They are greedy cowards that prefer to hinder innovation. It will bite them in the ass in due time as soon as their patent expires.
That's what Disney have been doing for 80 odd years with their IPs. IPs which they freely took and adapted from (at the time) public domain fairy tales.
@@Zehahahaa by this country you mean the US? Its not the only way but one of the ways. People do not forget. Its one of the reasons amazon became what it is today. It created trust. The most valuable thing in any form of business. Red is a bordeline scam with the prices they are charging and practices they are using. Α company always makes more money obviously if they have someone to exploit be it their workers business partners or costumers. Ideally you want to satisfy as many as possible because otherwise you are risking your downfall. Red as of right now puts all its bets on one patent. If they lose that then it means total carnage 😂
@Karl with a K Red started as a visionary, innovative company, one I wholly endorsed upon their conception. Patents are for the purpose of protecting one's original invention. Without them, there are no incentives to take risks with new idea's. That's not in dispute, anyone with a cursory knowledge of macroeconomics knows this. It's the abuse of those patents that is the problem: Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, in order for an invention to be patentable, it must be new and not the subject of a public disclosure more than a year before your patent application filing date.
"Both RED’s offer for sale and public use of the RED camera occurred more than a year before December 28, 2007, the earliest possible effective filing date of the ’560 patent. However, RED, James Jannard and Thomas Graeme Nattress (the named inventors of the ’560 patent), and their representatives did not disclose the RED camera’s April 2006 offer for sale or November 2006 public use during the prosecution of the ’560 patent. The offer for sale and public use of the RED camera are material, because the PTO would not have allowed the ’560 patent had it been aware of these undisclosed events. Also, on information and belief, RED, the named inventors of the ’560 patent, and their representatives acted with a specific intent to deceive the PTO by withholding information about these events, because they knew that disclosure of either of these events to the PTO would prevent the issuance of the ’560 patent. Accordingly, the ’560 patent and its related patents are unenforceable under the doctrine of inequitable conduct." (See YMCinema article: Nikon Denies and Fights Back RED’s Lawsuit).
IF the above is true, the patent should have never been granted. In that time, the hard work of many an entrepreneur has been stymied due to Red's practices. Who's going to speak for them?
@Karl with a K 31 million Americans own small businesses, that's 16% of our population. Factor in educational institutions, corporate accountants and investment professionals, that easily exceeds a quarter of our population who are well versed in economics. Your 1/1000 of 1% immediately invalidates your credibility. In the end, a jury will decide. The whole argument is conditional, nobody is saying otherwise. Claims must be proven in court. If the December 2007 patent date is substantiated, that exceeds the allowable grace period given the public disclosure in April 2006 and public demonstration in November 2006. In addition, if that information was withheld in the application, that could potentially constitute a fraudulent patent.
Red used to be a lot more relevant. You would see a bunch of movies shot on Red. Today, almost none of the top movies are shot on Red - only Arri and Sony Venice, which is changing the Red reputation. They found a hit with the Komodo, but it's a totally different market. Between really good hydrid mirrorless cameras and smaller camera makers like Z-Cam and Blackmagic, it's hyper competitive. They can only trade on the Red name for so long before they aren't able to stand out in the market anymore.
That's why they're focusing more on filing broader patents and working harder to enforce their existing patents. There's more money in royalties (if they can get people to pay them) than in the cameras. There's no R&D and no manufacturing costs with an existing patent. But the problem is the patent itself. If you read through it in detail, you'll find that key claim has to do with how raw is pre-processed before compression, but Cineform did this prior to Red's existence. Other parts of their technology was mostly industry standard or off the shelf. Redcode is just JPEG 2000 in a QuickTime container with some extra bits to make it proprietary.
Whether through the Nikon lawsuit or others the Red patent will be deemed unenforceable. It seems like many companies are expecting this because no one is paying them to license their patent. They'd rather do uncompressed RAW (e.g. Arri) or compress with an external device. Hopefully this will happen sooner than later. The patent is hurting all consumers, and not really helping Red either.
This was best comment, expanding this topic. If there is no video about it, then do it or mail someone who can and have large reach... Maybe Linus Tech Tips?
Well, when you are RED and are charging absurd amount of money even for a stupid simple SSD drive in a fancy red metal case, people eventually get annoyed at you. I liked RED in the past, but they can politely go fuck themselves today.
Red still has a big market with most low-budget, tv, or independent movies. If Arri did start making budget-friendly cameras, they would probably really start hurting Red.
💯
Blah blah blah. No one cares about what you just said. It's Arri, RED and the Sony. Blacmagic can't hold a candle to RED even though they make good cameras and used to push the market in a good direction. RED did a great thing with the Komodo and it probably helped RED more than anyone wants to admit. The Komodo is a quality camera that produces a great image. And look at what Sony has done without producing internal RAW.
I find it funny how the other camera companies don't team up to all sue RED together
Patent attorney here 👋. I don’t know the specifics of this patent, but I do know that the reason Blackmagic can compress raw isn’t because they “figured it out first.” If that was true and publicly disclosed before Red’s invention, it would be prior art against Red and invalidate their patents (or wouldn’t have received a patent in the first place).
Blackmagic designed around the patent.
Correct. Blackmagic partially debayers in camera prior. It’s technically not a true “raw” and dodges REDs patent.
@@InvisageStudios oof. That's kind of shit though. So many different de-bayer algorithms for different software processing. Hell, even ones that don't exist yet! Better than nothing, I guess.. but a raw format really ought to be bayer sensor data (or whatever other sensor type the camera is.)
Could you have an extremely fast local storage broken into two flash drives A and B and give a camera the ability to store a few mins of uncompressed raw to drive A. Then you make an “external device” that slides on hot swappable on pogo pins. That reads drive A once full and writes the data back to drive C in a compressed raw format. Camera switches to drive B once drive A is full. But the time drive B is full, drive A had been read, data compressed and copied to C, and drive A is erased and ready to use again once drive B fills up. The camera essentially switched back and forth between two drives A and B and “magically” the unused drive is free again by the time it is needed
Blackmagic used Black Magic to be able to do this
The whole concept of compressing a particular kind of data is not patentable. Your implementation, yes, but certainly not the concept of doing so! If that were patentable, we wouldn't have the plethora of file compression or network data compression formats out there!
This goes deeper than just the camera industry. This problem exists in anything involving high bandwidth data streams. Networking hardware, live stream encoding, database acceleration boards, AI and machine learning image recognition. Everyone working with ASIC's, FPGA's, and hardware embedded devices are locked into very strict licensing agreements which greatly restricts the smaller businesses from getting their foot in the door.
This is one of millions of reasons why patent law should be revisited or forgotten forever in the past.
@@maximbankovski7833 It just kills competition tbh. And even if it gets granted, it shouldn't last more than 10 years max. Not 50+ years.
@@maximbankovski7833 It just kills competition tbh. And even if it gets granted, it shouldn't last more than 10 years max. Not 50+ years.
It's not even jush an issue in data. It's an issue with all software. It's an issue in all parts of mechanical engineering. Patent law is a joke.
@@abyssstrider2547 It should last 3 years max, if even that. International patent law is meant PRIMARY as a way to stifle non-US competition. The justification given for it i.e. amortization of research costs is mostly just a convenient excuse. It's certainly clear in software where costs are basically zero when compared to traditional manufacturing.
Sounds like this can fall under a legal precedent that states that you can’t patent general ideas and they need to be sued over it.
This.
The issue might just be how big they are. No one wants to sue them and loose. Even if you sue them and win, you just spent a shit ton of money and all your competitors get to profit off your work. There is no advantage as a business to sue them unfortunately. The whole situation sucks.
@@michaelmacdonald5674 all companies can chip in and make a collective lawsuit
Agree. Maybe if they had created a new compression algorithm, etc. a patent on THAT, itself, would be valid, but a patent on a CONCEPT that plenty of people have thought of (if not implemented) is wrong.
actually, Apple did and failed - even Apple, so I guess very few others would try
Here's an idea for Sony, Canon, Nikon etc. Make the frame size/sensor size 3840x2161 (vs the defined 4k size of 3840x2160). In the compression algorithm, drop the extra 1 pixel line. Now they're no longer compressing 4k files, which is what the patent is for. But the editor still gets a 4k file.
The patent is much broader than that
Dji should enable custom firmware, and someone should write some code for it or it should somehow get leaked from dji somewhere so you can install aftermarket. Similar to the magiclantern software for canon cameras
Great idea, they should do this!
They do this in FPV already, their fpv goggles can legally only provide really pathetically low amounts of output power. Meaning your video range would be really low. But there is a super easy 'hack' that allows you to increase the power limit by like 20x. The 'hack' is as simple as inserting an sdcard to the system with a txt file that reads '1' or something like that.
Exactly this.
If any company can skirt the patent law it is a Chinese one :p
To be honest, as much as I hate what the CCP is doing in China, I've never held against Chinese companies that they ignore the stupid patent law and just use the technology that is on the market in their own products. In the end the consumer benefited the most and that is what is actually the most important here.
If a company develops a key technology it's much smarter to keep it a trade secret than to patent it and blurt it out to the world.
Either that or DJI should create an entire new recording format superior to raw. Not sure how it would be done but it would be cool to see them try, especially with how they just completely reinvented the focusing system on the camera he mentioned in the video like no one has ever seen before.
They are literally holding the entire industry back with this selfishness and greed. Allowing this to happen seems like an incredibly ignorant decision by whichever legal authority made the call.
Yes, this is pretty much the same story as LG's blue pixels halting progress of TV-technology for years. At it's current state copyright does more harm than good because basic things can be copyrighted.
@@camaxidewhat was the lg blue pixel issue, could you give a bit more info on it
@@real_mikkim🤡
May I direct you to Adobe
why are they greedy?
why in the fuck would you allow others to bloom and get rich of your invention,without paying you?
Just a point of clarification: Blackmagic did not figure this out before Red. They use a partially debayered format to get around the patent. Arri does something different (something involving LOG that’s technically lossless) to get around it.
Interesting, thanks for sharing
Blackmagic also does the workaround that Arri does, using LOG for their compressed raw codec, it's essentially placing 16 bit linear raw in a 12 bit log container and reversing that formula once you import your footage into your software of choice, it's actually incredibly interesting and is pretty genius.
For everybody the problem is in the sensor.
Arri have some important patent on their sensors and they are the only true 16 bit dual gain technology and nobody else can copy it.
ARRIRAW is also not compressed. More specifically the RED patent relates to [visually] lossless COMPRESSED RAW.
Lol Arri said if you can afford our Cameras, buying shit tons of SSDs and SD cards won't even dent your pocket
That is insane! Lossless compression on a camera is a patent?!?! What the heck? It's tech bullying!
Thanks for letting us know about this!
I'm gonna share this video with some other TH-camrs in the community.
More people need to be aware of this!
The specific method they came up with (it’s got to do with separating the colour information pre-debater and compressing them separately) was extremely novel in 2008 when they patented it. Basically everyone else just assumed you’d always want to debayer in camera first. It wasn’t until several years later that everyone started wanting to do it.
@Seeyou Seemee If that's the case then the patent's disputable and/or may require amendments to lower the scope of their patent.
@@stephengentle2815 no, it wasn't novel. It already existed as software from Cineform, as someone else mentioned, and it existed in the SI-2K camera. They just tacked "but at 4K" on to what Silicon Imaging had already done in a camera and patented it. Their "extremely novel" method is just JPEG2000, which they didn't invent, inside an Apple QuickTime wrapper, which they also didn't invent.
who the fuck actually grants these patents?? I'm flabbergasted
@@narcis3720 there are so many patent applications that they don't have time to review them. They just grant them and wait to see if anyone challenges them in court. It helps make the lawyers rich.
Hey, here is an idea for competing camera manufacturer:
Make a camera that compress raw data, but add a black pixel on the top left corner.
Here it is: it's not "loss less" anymore.
In fact they could voluntarily alter the image with a bunch of random pixels that could easily be corrected in post.
Or slightly increase the size of your sensor and add dark lining on one side, just big enough so it's perceivable to the eye. Of course ship the camera with software that removes that. Just not in realtime.
Or add a buffer so it's compressed but simply not in realtime, just with a few milliseconds offset.
I think this will actually cause issues for RED in the long run. While they will spend their time in courts and resting on their laurels, other companies will be forced to innovate new codecs, new storage, workarounds, etc. It may take more time, but eventually people figure it out and leave gatekeepers behind.
If I were DJI I’d just basically plant a coding back door & make it look like the community is hacking raw back into the system when in fact the “community” is DJI employees acting as camera modders on forums. Black project done.
Alternatively fly to Australia or China & get the Blackmagic deal (I’d guess the camera company that basically made raw acquisition available to Indy would be more approachable.)
Blackmagic has licensed its raw codec in the past in external recorders, notably the Ninja Atmos 5, I wonder if Blackmagic would be willing to incorporate their codec into DJI cameras, that would be a dream imo, Blackmagic raw is better that Recode raw in a lot of regards.
If I was dji I would have photo copied my ass and sent it to red because china couldn't give fewer fucks about international copyright
@@edenem correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Fujifilm also now had BlackMagic BRAW in their XH2?
Exactly what I was thinking: just make RAW compression an "hack" / unofficial modification made by company in disguise.
@@Jan-xf8sk yes but not internal :/ I was super excited until i learned i would need the external BM screen/recorder
I‘m the son of a patent attorney and I agree - a patent of such a broad scope should never have gotten granted.
i am a friend of a son whose father is patent attorney and i also agree.
As a son of a patent attorney, you should find out the legal strategy to get their patent revoked.
@@xelax1982 That’s awesome. 😁
@@divisionoflabor3070 Sadly, there exists quite a bit of abuse of patents overall.
For example, pharmaceutical companies are abusing the system in order to suppress the manufacture of affordable pharmaceuticals.
@@taxiuniversum ;)
I’m so glad that we have Blackmagic with reasonable and fair prices
I own a Bmpcc6kpro and its the camera of my dreams
You need some external batteries tho 😅
@@alexandre7634 same thing with Red cameras...
Yeah I’m still rocking the 4K and it’s incredible what I can turn out
yeh still got my 4k, can't believe how smart a decision it was now. i got the second production batch that ended up in Australia. it had fixed some bugs and i waited 6 MONTHS for it fully paid. got it at below MSRP!!!.
Good for you to say it as simple as it is! I think this world needs much more people with such frank and open mind. Wishing you all the best and I do hope you will inspire many more.
Man i am 100% with you on this. I hate this company and everything it represents. Back in 2010 i could swear that 10 years later we would have 4K raw in small factor & affordable bodies from makers like Panasonic, Nikon and Sony. It has happened to a certain degree but this company has held the whole industry back with their supposed "patent". I would never buy a RED even if i could afford one.
Just wanted to say thanks for bringing this up. Most of us have no idea what really happens behind the scenes.
Ya happy this vid popped up
Yo, this video should have millions of views. Companies that act in bad faith against the market and their customers should be shamed out of business.
What would that do though?
It's not exactly a secret, especially within and around associated industries. We're talking an industry litterally at war with these guys, and getting BUTCHERED every time they make a move against it (haven't checked in on Nikon's in recent. I'm assuming it's at least not going well)
@@MaddJakd the world would be a much better place if consumers chose to not support crooked companies. If they take advantage of workers, consumers, manipulate the market, corrupt banks, etc. Without consumers, companies have nothing. We can decide to make it not profitable to be shitty towards us. That's the way it should be.
Why hasn't Linus or somebody really popular that has made a lot of content surrounding RED cameras covered this?
I'm confused. If the patent is for compressing raw in the camera, why not create a camera attachment that does it right outside the camera before it goes into the drive?
I thought I was the only one mad at Red. I love Nikon is fighting red over this. I am the hugest DJI fan and was so bummed about the raw issue.
I'm pretty sure the Nikon Z9 has compressed, lossless raw video. Did they just say "fuck you" to Red?
@@samwhaleIV Red did sue, but Nikon seems to be hopeful that they found a problem with the patent. Something about RED selling their cameras more than one year before the patent, meaning that the patent should not have been granted, thus rendering the patent void. So we'll see how things turn out, so far the Z9 still has the compressed raw video, as far as I know (I don't own one myself).
@@eiko4252 before the jury trial RED has no way to prevent Nikon from using the compressed raw format in Z9, and the final trial is set to Jan 2024. But I don't know if Nikon's lawers are really planning to claim the ilegitemacy of RED's patent, 'cause it's pretty fucking solid(Apple and Sony law teams would agree with me, I think). But we'll see...
@@sora_mugen From what I understood, Apple and Sony tried to argue the contents of the patent. Nikon does not argue the contents, but the timing of the patent instead, claiming Red misrepresented to the patent office when they started to sell their cameras. So thats a different approach from sony and apple.
The problem is that once a patent is granted, no matter how frivolous, it's incredibly difficult to get it revoked, because patent offices are full of pieces of shit.
It was the same with hearing aids. The patent squashed competition and most people could not afford that product. I am not going to say which company it was but it sucks people suffered because of it for so many years. Luckily that is now over and we will see competition improving in the next few years
Why not name them? We should be publicly shaming every crooked company that wants to subvert innovation in favor of profit especially when those companies are responsible for producing and distributing medical or quality of life enhancing products. A camera company is one thing, no one NEEDS a camera to live or enjoy life, but a company that provides a product like hearing aids or insulin driving up prices based solely on the fact that they are the only ones allowed to provide that product is sickening and the one's responsible should be held fully accountable.
A company called cineform invented compressed raw 2 years before red copied their idea and covered it up with fake metadata. Also canon has on camera compressed raw in many of its cinema line cameras.
This is correct. I shoot RAW ST on my Canon C70. It's a form of compressed RAW (and it works beautifully). Not sure how Canon is getting around this patent if that is the case.
@@jakealbrecht canon allowed red to use the rf mount in some kind of deal.
@@ChrisbottrellphotographyCoUk That makes sense. RED is the only other company offering the RF mount that I'm aware of. Pretty sweet deal for both parties IMO.
@@jakealbrecht I *believe* the patent only applies to video, hence the use of the terms 4K and such, which are rarely used in photography, which favors terms like megapixels, Compressed Raw DNG files are not covered under the patent.
It's the same reason that there's no problem with cameras like the sigma FP recording "compressed" raw video, the FP is simply recording image sequences of Raw DNG files along with audio and embedded metadata.
@@edenem RAW ST is video and the C70 is a 4K videocamera.
Theo Thumbnail in Jan 2023: Red to kill Nikon
Nikon in March 2024: I dont think so. *Buys Red*
Stephan Kinsella is a brilliant Patent Attorney who compellingly argues that Intellectual Property is not in fact property thus any laws enforcing it are utterly immoral. The history alone about how it became a thing is fascinating. He says he's in the profession to help defend people preemptively against the epidemic of patent trolls.
Subbed! :-)
This leads me to believe that RED will lose at the end of the day. Being on defense, rather than competing for the better of the industry with other camera brands, is a toxic and negative way of business. Thanks for the info Theo.
Yeah, and that's why I'll never consider buying any RED product regardless of specs, price or performance.
@@astanisystems Lol, you can’t afford it anyway, stop lying.
@@TH-cam_can_ESAD Fk you know about that? RED fanboy ass. My to buy list is comprised of two new cameras, pro glass, DJI RS3 Pro Combo, rig equipment, and accessories. Some of those I already bought. Troll ass.
Yeah. Seems like desperation. You can't make inherently better products, so you have to go crying to the government to hamstring your competitors.
@@astanisystems exactly why my studio skipped over Red. We ended buying Arri, which while more expensive (has its obvious pros as well) ultimately doesn’t support a patent troll, that hinders growth in the industry.
I really hope Nikon can pull a win with this one. The 8k RAW footage out of the Z9 is amazing.
I've been saying it for years, Nikon needs to make a cinema camera. I think their color science is amazing.
@Seeyou Seemee "color science" is just how each camera manufacturer renders color from the sensor in the final file. It's essentially a LUT or color bias in most cases. I'm curious about what your understanding on "color science" is.
@Seeyou SeemeeWay to come off as an elitist snob. Maybe it _is_ a myth, but Nikon images always looked great to me right out of camera to me with minimal tinkering. I don't care if "CoLoR sCiEnCe Is A MyTh" if you have to do hours of color correction to get a decent image out of a camera (or to match a look that another camera already has by default.)
... and Nikon totally _could_ make a cinema camera if they wanted to take the risk. They're already like 40% of the way there already with the Z9. Nikon's size and "lack of expertise" has little to do with it. If relatively new companies like Black Magic/RED can appear pretty much out of thin air and make _hugely_ successful cinema cameras -- then I am _sure_ an established company that has been making cameras since 1948 can do it, too. It's just risky, expensive as hell and would probably bury Nikon if it failed. However, it could also pay off big time, too.
@@SooksVI tell that to hasselblad clown
This was really interesting. I hadn't heard about any of this until the other day, and this helps provide the context I was missing. I didn't realize you could so thoroughly shut down competition like this by patenting a concept so thoroughly that no one else could hope to reinvent it (your point about writing your own codec, I believe). Seems like there should be an anti-monopoly thing here?
It's known as patent war. Idk if you're a gamer, but if you've ever played a game called Shadow Of War the creators patented a system used in game called the 'Nemsis System's. Let's just say people thought it would be the next evolution of video games until the patented it which absolutely sucks. If you wanna know what the nemesis system is -> th-cam.com/video/Lm_AzK27mZY/w-d-xo.html
@@krazymeanie Speaking of games, I can't recall what company it was but a company held a patent on minigames in the loading menu of a game for a long time. That's also a concept, and shouldn't be patentable.
@Karl with a K Pretty sure people understand the use and purpose of patents. The problem is in what you can patent. A concept or idea shouldn't be patentable (to a certain extent), it's execution should.
This is kinda *exactly* how the patent system was and is designed to work…
@Karl with a K I get where you're coming from but that thinking is naive. Evolution on all front depends on the reiteration and improvement of already conceded inventions. For sure, anyone with an idea would be upset if someone else "steals" their idea for a profit but what sense does it make to hold onto an idea that you're probably never gonna follow through on just because someone actually brought it into reality? You're acting like that doesn't take work as well. They aren't getting paid for your idea, their getting paid for their implementation that was better than yours. I can't begin to imagine what the world would be if that type of thinking was exercised in all markets. There would be no innovation or improvement on already existing products. Now one can argue that it would force the means of coming up with totally new ideas but that would just make evolution slower and monopolies more rampant which would be nightmares for consumers.
Yeah sure no one is gonna steal your creative soul but it's gonna die and go to waste and for what? Because you're concerned about someone out doing you. If your idea, implementation and execution is good no matter how much money another company has it shouldn't be able to outdo or outsell you, for its your very own idea isn't it? So it's not a fear of someone stealing your idea it's a fear of them executing it better than yourself. Just like everything else there's good and bad things about them and patents definitely have both. Patents stifle innovation upon and evolution of products to protect monetary gain. Also the whole "its my idea" fiasco it nonsense. I can assure you it's probably already been thought of by many and hasn't been executed. So in terms of patents it's not about protecting a creative idea its about protecting the person that did it first, regardless if it the implementation was good enough or not which is dumb. I'm not against patents, I'm against people that use it as a weapon. They could care less about "creative soul". They solely care about money and competition so don't be swayed by these companies. They're businesses after all.
The ronin 4D is Not stabilized in all directions lol, and its using Laser, not IR. Regarding the RAW/RED deal: its not such a big deal. It isnt standard here in Sweden atleast, most high end stuff is shot in ProRes on ARRI cameras.
Kind interesting topic is how some manufacturers got around the patent.
Arri captures uncompressed raw, but allows you to compress to HDE (High Density Encoding) during the offload.
Sony Venice I got around it by being an “external recorder” even though it was basically part of the body
thanks for the fanfic Theo Rants
red cameras break down and accessories are a nightmare
there's a reason everyone wants ARRI for higher budgets and Sony for small creators
"I am neither a lawyer nor a very seasoned camera person" and proceeds to give us valuable creative and legal gems we've never heard anywhere else. Love the humbleness. Love the willingness to share information. Well done Theo!
I would understand if it was for certain codecs or even type of certain storage units that compress it in a certain way. Patenting just the fact that you compress raw on-camera, how was that even possible.
They’re setting back the industry by 20 years. However, I think others should try to make compressed codex for higher resolutions and patent them too. Red should be equally shut out of the higher resolution codex too as retaliation. Just my wishful thinking as I know that higher resolution would just mean a steep price point.😢
Considering recent developments your thumbnail for this video is quite funny. They didn't know what was coming. :)
“I’m just really into patent trolling and understanding how these companies use patents in such awful ways“
he’s one of us
As the technical lead, I designed the codec for the Google StreetView cameras in 2007. We compressed raw, but not as much as RED.
Red's US 8,174,560 patent, issued 2012-May-08, appears to have priority dating back to 2008-Apr-11, but the expiration has been adjusted to 2030-Aug-14, which suggests it has a priority date of 2010-Aug-14, but I'm not sure about that last.
Claim 1 has a few clauses describing a camera, and the following:
an image processing system configured to compress and store in the memory device the raw image data at a compression ratio of at least six to one and remain substantially visually lossless, and at a rate of at least 23 frames per second.
Typical image data for good sensors is 14 bits per pixel, linear coded. So if your video is less than 14/6=2.33 bits/pixel, which is 464 megabits/sec, you're going to want to look very carefully at the definitions in this patent.
What is "raw image data"? Is it the data format coming off the image sensor chip? Many chips do an approximate gamma-coding of the data so that they can read 16,384 different voltage levels from the pixel, but only need to push 8 bits/pixel off the image sensor chip. There is no visual loss in doing this. The I/O pins on that chip produce a lot of electrical noise, noise that is greatly attenuated but eventually does creep into the image a little. Cutting down on I/O pins helps. So for these sensors do we call the data off the image sensor "raw image data"?
The phrase "raw image data" isn't defined anywhere in '560 (for instance, there's no diagram with a labelled item described as "raw image data", which makes the litigation more complicated, since you'd have to refer to contemporaneous public documents to see how people defined that term. Interestingly, the patent talks about gamma coding a red and blue channel, then subtracting the green channel, and then says:
"In this state, the image data can still be considered “raw” data. For example, the mathematical process performed on the data are entirely reversible such that all of the original values can be obtained by reversing those processes."
That's quite interesting! It appears that in the context of the '560 patent, we can apply the term "raw image data" to a data stream significantly smaller than what came off the image sensor. For instance, I know of a scheme different than described in the patent that will reversibly code raw image data with a compression of about 3:1 without visual artifacts, so the output of that might be considered "raw image data" in the context of this patent. I'd be happy to argue in court that a scheme that further compressed that data stream by a factor of 5 (so
Check out latest Jinnitech's video on Prior art allegations on red based on cineform raw codec.
th-cam.com/video/IJ_uo-x7Dc0/w-d-xo.html
Jinnitech's video
Arri gets around this because they don’t internally compress their RAW or you can use an external recorder. I have the Black Magic Pocket 4K, which uses their BRAW and gets around it. Everyone else is basically screwed at this point. Even Apple backed off, which sucks cause you need a huge storage drive and fast processor to deal with uncompressed ProResRAW, hence only the Pro models get it
If Blackmagic had developed the 4K solution before Red why does that not disqualify Red's patent?
Thanks. What advice do you have for a Sony camera purchase?
If the compression is on the attached harddrive it would not go against the patent, because it wouldnt be on camera. Other camera manufacturer only would need to make an external ssd module that does the compression in that module. Would add a bit of bulk but it wouldnt be hard to develop for a company like sony for example.
Getting around this nonsense is why things like the Ninja exist at this point (a huge point at least)
The point is, it's such a broad concept that it shouldn't be patentable.
Complaining won't do anything about it. People need to stop buying from Red, money is the answer. Unfortunately, the Red fandom is strong...
But they would still have the patent bestowed upon them from above, individual action is not going to stop a systemic problem. Broad change, like what Nikon is trying to do, is the only way we can get anywhere.
Pretty sure complaining about it is how you signal boost/convince people to not buy their products, they go hand in hand. People need to understand what is going on in order to make informed purchasing decisions
@@JustinKent You make it sound like everyday people are buying REDs. 95% is rental houses and production companies. Doesn’t really matter that much to them most of the time
@Stranger This!
The studios, productions houses, the creatives. Those guys are going for what gives them the results they want. Naturally there are thos among them that will avoid RED for their variois reasoning, but we're talking the big gunz, not laymen.
When a company like Apple backs off the fight, what on earth are up-and-comers and hobbyists supposed to do?
How does the Sony Venice 2 have internal compressed raw? Did they get a license?
I agree fully, and wish that other influencers with larger audiences were pushing a campaign to get red to drop this sort of crippling of the industry. - Insert flock of seagulls joke here -
We should all team up against red because red is hurting us
We (consumers) should but they (the camera companies) can't.
Think ahead and develop something that RED will probably need in the future to innovate. Patent it. Make sure RED never has access to it.
Yup, just them everyone else can license it for free.
Crazy that they were able to get a patent on just the CONCEPT of compressed raw video and not their specific implementation... Like that's how most other patents go... Unless you're LG and you somehow managed the same thing for OLED tv screens
Didn't know about this, thank you for your rant. Now I'm incredibly pissed at both Red and whoever granted them such a stupid patent. What a clown world...
Other companies should have "encrypted RAW recording". Encryption isn't purely compression, however there are a lot of encryption schemes out there that heavily reduce file size 🙂
Idk how they’ve managed to get away with this. They don’t even have that much liquid cash or that much market share compared to other companies. I’m surprised other companies haven’t banded together to fight this patent or try to appeal to the court about this bull shit.
The reason being is that it's best to think of Red Digital Cinema as primarily a patent holding company that "happens to be" a manufacturer of digital cinema cameras and accessories to said cameras. Look at them more as a repository of corporate/patent legal professionals with a weird small niche hardware company attached. They have plenty of cash to do what they are doing long term. That is until they loose or the patent runs out or if one of the big companies buys them out. But until then they have made bucket loads of cash and continue to do so. So the whole thing is worth it to them.
Honestly the big companies only have themselves to blame for this cause they failed to capitalize on what was then common technical knowledge in fear of innovation or cannibalizing existing product lines.
Red had no such fear.
Companies are worried for their own patents, if someone wins against Red and leads to something crazy like a nullification of said patent, everyone is going to start getting ideas on potentially defeating held patents. In the eyes of big players, it's worth letting RED have this, just so as long as they keep what they have themselves.
@@JFreshInEffect I just realized the company is funded and founded by the same dude that made Oakleys sunglasses. So they have plenty of cash. Which I did not know when I wrote that comment initially. It’s still so stupid.
@@JayJayYUP also a good point. Didn’t think of it from that angle. They all need to do what Black Magic did and find a way around the patent.
@RiceCube Tech They all need to band together and do some serious digging on RED as opposed to separately fighting them (they've all been slaughtered as such)
Love the rant. I know Red is pretty much only used for this reason at this point. Truly disappointing that instead of competing in developing the best videography workflows they rested on their laurels only to fight any “threat.”
I don't think this is true. Red cameras offer really incredible IQ. The raptor is right there with Alexa in dynamic range. The A35 is really the only camera on its own in that regard. And red color science is fantastic. Image detail stellar. Compressed redcode is a joy to work with, but its not like these cameras would be trash if they didn't have it. At the end of the day, they are great cameras that produce great results.
@@joshkiddfilms1295 okay…
Reds are not just used for this reason at all. That's a ridiculous statement. And before you come at me for being a red fanboy. I don't enjoy shooting red cameras at all and think the idea of patenting a lossless compression format is awful for everyone and is another reason I dislike red. Regardless of this they are an industry staple right behind arri for a reason.
@@D_O_M_A_ okay
I completly agree. This is one of the biggest problems with patents and copyright. It kills the progress and accesibility. It's so sad...
Brands should start selling a separate module for the raw compression, that way it's not on the camera itself but in a separate component.
Thank you for making this video. Now I have something to point people to when they ask why more cameras don’t record RAW.
I worked at a company that manufactured red digital parts. I created all the laser marking programs and procedures they still use for marking their cameras. I still have a lot of their early prototypes and stuff we made for them.
@Karl with a K I worked for a company called TMX Engineering... we were the first to produce their aluminum body housings for the Scarlett and other components. We also did all the Laica mounts they use for the lenses. Cheese plates, the red button they use and a bunch of other components including the inside housing that sits just outside the sensor. The entire body housing was machined out of aluminum and need to be perfect with no tool marks (it was a pain!!) some of the mounts were made from aluminum and some out of titanium. I have some titanium rings that they used to tighten the lends I believe. The R&R that we did to get the Anodizing color on the housings was crazy as well as the color red that went on the buttons. Also the paint that goes on the sensor body is special as it needs to be very matte and not let light bounce around in there. It was pretty cool all the stuff we did. I have some anodized Cheese plates and titanium rings and mounts. I programed the Laser machines that did all the logo work on the mounts and even had to go to RED DIGITAL to program their machine because they couldn't figure our the laser parameters to laser mark bright white.
@Karl with a K I wish I could post pictures in this comment section but I can't other wise I would. Thanks man
Super informative. I really hope this patent gets amended.
we really need a strong company like sony or dji go to the court against this odd behavior.
Thanks for sharing this 🔥🙏🏼 I had no idea
What about an external compressor module that would exist between the camera and the memory card? I wonder if that would violate the patent.
Crazy that red is the reason I need to buy a damn ninja to record raw on my camera
I haven't seen a Red cam on a shoot in over 10 years, commercially any of the major studios default to Alexa or Sony Venice these days. I was surprised when I came across your video. I thought that they had disappeared. Too bad they have become such asshats. Thanks for the great informative video.
Not a solution, (more of a question really) but what if DJI or others, should make it possible to mod the firmware or have a plugin ecosystem, then they would not infringe on the patent... and if the anon open-source community makes drivers to do whatever... perhaps that should be an acceptable work around?
Was thinking of this
The real villain here is the us patent office.
i love rants. logical one. you have a fan in me. keep up the rants
I'll never support Red with their BS
man this video struck a chord with me, ive been away from the industry for a while but anything handicapping DJi infuriates me lmao
Trolling or not when BM brings a cube factor cinema camera to market... RED's days will be numbered.
i jus bought a 6k pro so with my luck ur most likely right
I remember patent wars in 90s where companies were patenting obvious things in software. I thought it’s a thing of the past.
I live in the Middle of nowhere, right next to Jim's private island. I'll be sure to show him your video next time he comes past on his jet ski.
Sometimes these patents really hurt the companies that actually cares about us the consumers. There should be some regulatory body to these patents bcz some of them makes no sense
Actually it is but as we all see it's not working well.
Here’s the funny thing. A patent troll is defined as”a company that obtains the rights to one or more patents in order to profit by means of licensing or litigation, rather than by producing its own goods or services.” - Oxford Dictionary.
RED produces products on all of the patents they own. Therefor, they are not patent trolls at all. They are patent holders who actively protect their IP. You can dislike it, I understand. But, it is a legally obtained patent that has been held up in court, every single time. You can dislike what’s behind the patent, I understand. However, none of this is new information. It has been brought up numerous times before, in court. And, its been upheld in court, every single time.
It is also interesting that this DJI story keeps coming up. And its interesting that the same incorrect information keeps getting repeated. I always hear the same wrong source on this and yes, he is respectable, but he is wrong. The truth? It can’t come out. NDAs are very strong. Those who say the reason don’t know. Those who know the reason, won’t say.
As it pertains to the industry, anyone can license the codec from RED. But, its not free. Nor should it be. Any camera out there that uses compressed raw in their camera either has a license, will end up in court, or, its simply not compressed raw.
I get that you’re ranting and I have no problem with that. I enjoy listening to all sides of a debate. But, repeating incorrect information is just getting people riled up for no reason. Its what Its. We should all be out there making cool stuff.
If an illegal patent is held up in court then the court is corrupt.
The patent is so broad and unspecific, it's like patenting the sun. It cannot hold up.
@@doltBmB And if it is held up by multiple, different courts then its likely a legal patent. Remove your emotions from the situation and you’ll find the patent is just fine. Its also not that broad. There are much more extremely broad patents that are legal and still upheld in the courts. I.e. moving money across the internet. That is a legal patent. And no one is complaining about it because you don’t think it affects you. It does, every single day. You are paying for it.
@@ScottBalkum Such broad patents are literally against patent law. You can only patent a specific implementation, and not a general idea. Ideas are not protected by anything. So if such broad patents as that are granted then the system is corrupt.
@@doltBmB Oh, I’m quite versed on patents and have dealt with them for 30+ years. RED’s patent isn’t general at all. Read it.
@@ScottBalkum It's literally a protection on ANY compression of raw video no matter how it's done
I guess the patent system works primarily to facilitate wealth accumulation and monopolising control rather than support creativity, collaboration and innovation. And if that's the case, it could be more of a liability than an asset.
That’s one of the biggest issues with patents. How they should work is that people can replicate whatever is being patented but have to pay royalties to whoever holds it.
In certain jurisdictions, contracts could be void or voidable. Void means that the entire contract becomes worthless when reasons are so obvious that parties do not need to go to court. It may be less simple so the contract is voidable and a court case is needed claiming the contract is void and a judge then needs to affirm that in a verdict.
Seems to me that this principle might also apply to patents, or hold up in court in an equivalent reasoning.
RED makes me dead
You are dead wrong, and clearly miss the point of the very purpose of patent law, or the basic concept of intellectual property.
Without patents and copyright protections, there will be a lot less innovation, especially in fields that cost a lot of money, like camera development. That is why the exist. Red created something that was innovative, and to a large degree, it was their patent that enabled them to successfully enter a market that was dominated by giant corporations such as Sony and Panasonic, that before Red emerged, were selling 1080p and 720p video cameras for $100,000 and $65,000 respectively. Without their patent, Red as a new company, had no chance to survive the competition. Red pushed the camera industry forward, and continues to do so, and we should all be thankful to them for it.
If you're annoyed by copyright and patent laws, or worse: claiming that whomever utilizes them "sucks", you simply don't understand the immense importance of them for the real-world viability of innovation itself. Without these protections, the insensitive to innovate would be gone.
Red was the catalyst to the amazing camera industry we all currently enjoy. They aren't destroying the industry, but rather, they are to thank for causing it to flourish and making higher end cameras more affordable.
There are those who create and innovate, and those wbo complain about them having temporary ownership on their innovation. You are clearly the latter, which is ironic, because being in software development, your employer (assuming you work for a software company) is relying on patents and copyright laws to survive.
Developing new technologies costs a lit of money and takes a lot of time. No one would do it without the protections of intellectual property laws. That is why these laws have been adopted in almost every country in the world.
Bingo
Patents have never been shown to produce innovation, patents have been shown over and over to stifle innovation and competition.
@@doltBmB You are severely mistaken. As someone with 2 issued US patents to his name and an additional international patent pending, I can attest that without the protection of a patent, the financial risk of bringing new technology to the market would have been too great, and I would have not been able to get the necessary funding to bring innovation to market as products people can actually use. This is how it is in many, if not most cases.
Without the protection of patents, many medical advances would have not been possible, and for the same reason. Research and development are expensive. No one in their right minds would risk all that money without being able to protect their investments.
Not everything is patentable. Patent law leaves sufficient room for further innovation and competition. Your argument, while stated as if it was settled fact, is merely a false argument. By allowing everyone to copy the innovative work product of one inventor/company you're not encouraging innovation. You're doing the exact opposite. The competitors don't have to innovate because they can copy, and the inventor, unable to enjoy the fruit of his labor, is disincentivized from innovating again.
@@yshrem You are nothing but a sad shill.
I didn`t know that. Thanks for spreading this information.
Great video, smart guy, first video i saw from you, subscribed immidiately👌🏾
How do you patent something like that? Its like patenting the ability to record on a cinema camera
Any OpenSource RAW Compression avaible? Maybe even a external unit who does this capturing camera outputs?
It is not only a RED issue, for instance, Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve doesn't support Apple ProRes RAW, not because they aren't capable of implementing the codec, but because it competes with their own "RAW" codec, and BTW, Blackmagic RAW is NOT a RAW codec, they do a partial demosaicing/debayering before recording the data to the file, which allows them to record a pseudo-raw file without infringing on RED patents, a patent that shouldn't be filed in the first place.
A little update, checkout this amazing analysis about RED, specially Part 6 which show how RED RAW is just a rip-off Cineform:
th-cam.com/play/PL57C0kLWLiIIYebuD07uOFjeH08kTwlLX.html
Reminds me of a certain over priced audio cable company that tried to extort money from anyone using one word from their name. It’s one of the oldest boycotts I know of and most stores won’t even stock their products now.
I think I'll file for a copyright on making products out of physical matter.
surely if Red can get that bullcrap through, mine stands a good chance!
People in jurisdictions where patents don’t apply should be able to develop and run their own firmware that has whatever codecs they want. Good case for open source cameras that violate patents as long as it’s legal where it’s done.
On the 18th January 2018, I saw a patent attorney office on Google Street View and I agree that the patent should never have been granted.
Any digital photo or video is a "compressed raw". Sometimes lossy (like h264, hevc with default options), sometimes not. May include different kinds of optimizations, may not.
There's definitely something wrong with this patent system
Regarding judicial things, I know that saying a sentence in 2 different ways has a different impact on a lawsuit. I believe that it is possible to overturn the RAW Compression patent in an easy way (maybe it will take 2 to 5 years) with just a process, a well-composed sentence and an unquestionable analogy, the objective is to convince the judge that this patent is an absorp. Just imagine a scenario where filtered water is a patent...
I think these companies should come together with some expensive lawyers and take RED to court.
There is CRAW (Compressed RAW) on the Canon R5 in 8K. What I’m missing in this post?
I dont know all too much about cameras but I wonder what the work around is here for DJI? what format do they use in this camera and how bad is this in comparison to RAW?
This is actually pretty common. Look up the Selden patent where someone literally patented the idea of a gasoline automobile. 3D printing exploded the last couple years because the patents on their processes expired. The good news is patents only last 20 years so the clock is ticking.
Any idea about outside the USA? In Europe things are quite different.
Like many times in history, a company having good product from what all can benefit and holding greedy onto its patent, will be at the end the looser. Always good example was the epic battle between Sony standard and VHS. Sony had better product, but was not willing to sell the licence (and still win the money!) to others. So, the lesser quality system (VHS) won by selling more licences and establishing itself as the standard of the time. No, Sony did not collapse as a company, but ended up using VHS on their products. Another example were the 3D printers. Someone held onto their patents for 19 years and the world was waiting for the patent to expire. And after that came the revolution. Theo, thumbs up for the effort and the more people put pressure on The RED the bigger the chance they'll get to their senses. Thank you.
If this concept was applied to the automotive industry, it would be like saying "You can't make a car move using explosive liquid. That was our idea."
What is needed is for other major camera makers to sue over the overly broad patent. Being able to patent over compression of raw video, is like being able to get a patent for the concept of a car being able to drive over 30MPH.