A7S 4K RAW recording on the Shogun?

M

Mo.

Member
A7S 4K raw would be like : (3840x2160x12x24)/8 = 298,598,400 bytes/second
which means the needed transfer speed to record such stream is around 3 gbits/s
hdmi 1.4 (a7s and shogun supported) can handle such data rate.. even the shogun supports recording to cinema dng raw..


so, why this camera is not being able to output raw to the shogun?
camera internals? i think it's harder for the electronics to do the de-bayering and scaling of the same raw other than just outputting the data directly..


expectations (hope)
a firmware update surprise from sony? for extra fee? for free?
magiclantern like hack?
maybe a camera app?


in my deep conscience, I believe that this camera is able to output 4k raw
Come on Sony surprise the world.. :-D
 
While not impossible, it seems a bit unlikely. Sony did find a way to send compressed 4k RAW over an SDI connection in the FS700 and CD found a way to support recording it, but doing so over HDMI is another story as no one has done that yet. They will likely have to use some kind of custom data transmission since standard HDMI spec only supports uncompressed RGB/YUV data, and then any external recorder would also have to have a specialty HDMI that can support that custom HDMI format. I wouldn't expect it to happen, but I guess you never know. Do you really want to shoot 300MBps RAW? That's a lot of data to handle.
 
Well, Noah,
There is 2:1 compression for dng so its gonna be around half of that rate
And come on, if they added onboard 4k raw recording to Cfast card, or even to lower profile recorder (like in a form of a grip) and made the sensor shutter global
No other camera will sell on this planet IMO..

So sad about HDMI I thought the Shogun was ready for that task but it looks like it does the raw recording over SDI only?

Although raw is magic, s-log isn't bad.. And will have some latitude of post work..
 
I really doubt they'll ever send a RAW signal out of the a7s. It would be lovely, and it could be done (by not conforming exactly to the HDMI standard), but I don't think they'll do it.
 
I simply don't understand why in the world HDMI wouldn't carry raw data.. Its a data port zeros and ones moving at a certain speed, anything else would software..
 
It can carry it, but it's not in the spec. And Sony has to decide to send it out, which I think they won't.
 
Why do u think they won't? And also I'm hoping that if Sony didn't someone else will..
Edit the firmware add the magic to both the camera and the recorder.. Some human being with super programing capabilities and enthusiasm in film making will get interested and share it with the folks..
 
I think they won't do it because they want to charge $$$$$ for cameras with better codecs and features. Maybe features alone can hold that price difference, but as long as they can keep it I think they'll try to have a codec difference too.

And I wouldn't be optimistic about a RAW-over-HDMI hack. The ML team tried to do exactly what you describe but on the Canons and they couldn't manage, even with four years of experience hacking those cameras.
 
Mo. said:
Well, Noah,
There is 2:1 compression for dng so its gonna be around half of that rate
And come on, if they added onboard 4k raw recording to Cfast card, or even to lower profile recorder (like in a form of a grip) and made the sensor shutter global
No other camera will sell on this planet IMO..

So sad about HDMI I thought the Shogun was ready for that task but it looks like it does the raw recording over SDI only?

Although raw is magic, s-log isn't bad.. And will have some latitude of post work..
Click to expand...

There is 2:1 compression for DNG but I've only heard of one camera/recorder that uses it, and you're still talking about >150MBps of footage if somehow they implement that uncommon format. Even CD who has promised many things for their 7Q has never mentioned recording compressed or lossless DNG that I know of. Also, even 2x compressed 4K raw recorded to CFAST will still require CFAST 2.0 which currently seems to cost about $10/GB or about 10x more than average solid state media. So that if what you dream comes true, in the current market you'll still be paying $5K for 1hr of recording media... $10K for uncompressed RAW.

Yes IF the A7S turns out to be great, and IF they somehow went back in time and added RAW output and global shutter without affecting the price, and IF some company made some super-small perfect imaginary 4K RAW recorder that happened to be reasonably priced, then it might be a great combination... Other cameras would still sell since we're still talking about $2500 cameras and $2000 recorders that use $1000+ media, but it would probably could do a good job of dominating the >$5K camera market. Of course some people would still find things to complain about and wish about some other perfect imaginary equipment that would be better. :)

RAW is hardly magic, and DNG RAW is currently not the best workflow and really eats up storage space. I'm not sure RAW is more than 5% better in practice, but it really depends on the camera and implementation. Slog can be a pain and it's still quite annoying that Sony insists on making SLOG the only gamma curve that doesn't have significant image quality drawbacks on most of their cameras while simultaneously being the worst gamma curve for proper monitoring. They really need a good middle ground gamma curve that keeps all the sensor DR and doesn't have the issues with primary colors that cinegamma/hypergammas have and is still is nice to look at for monitoring or short turnarounds.
 
A proper 10+ bit log recording would be all that anyone needed, done right. RAW is a very wasteful storage of light. There are also methods to get better than 8 bit quality in an 8 bit signal. Did you know that the Sony RAW out of these cameras is only 8 bit (AFAIK)? But it uses some form of delta compression to negate the effects of banding.

However the biggest hurdle is getting the marketing dept to see the point of doing it and then get the tech folks to come up with a solution that works. I suspect that Sony were quite taken aback by how many of us jumped on the O7Q. I just doubt Sony are really, really caring that much.

cheers
Paul
 
I see your point, but RAW is magic from my prespective at least u never loose color density and rendition when you try to balance the image in post, full detail and noise control, high bit depth man.. Its really magic to work with RAW, some cameras are made to shoot only RAW, I've worked with RED RAW, BMD DNG RAW, ARRI RAW, ML RAW, and bunch of RAW formats from stills manufacturers, I shoot and Color Grade using tens of methods and workflows, believe me, if u get to know RAW well you'll forgive the extra space and money as it all adds to your image.. Its really different when shot raw and rgb on the same camera..
And its like the old times of film, you'll use raw for the craft style work aka fiction/ads etc.. You won't be taking tons of footage so no problem with space.. I would take your advice when I'm working with documentaries..
So you'll tell me go buy red or buy bmd for raw, I tell you a7s has its charm over all these types of cameras.. I won't be able to do a full comparison here.. You can do it..
And speaking of the case a7s Cfast suggestion was too dreamy from my side.. You are right, but come on my original idea was mentioning the shogun which is already ready to record 2 hrs of raw on 1000usd media..
Monitoring issues have been solved long time ago and most monitors and cameras have preview luts, the shogun has so don't worry you'll be less frustrated on set and get to know a good color grader you can trust to forge your vision..
 
Paul are u sure about this 8bit thing? Which sony cameras do you mean? And which recording methods do u mean?

And belive me 10bit is not good enough especially if you're dealing a high dr scenes.. And if it would be enough why would humans invent higher bit depth formats? 16bit? Ohh-nooo don't speak floating point.. :-o. Why? Waste of storage? Waste of cpu cycles? Everything has a price and a good enough approach is all about being effecient about what you're doing.. And it varies a lot..

Speaking at the interest of sony to care about such thing you are all right, we say it in Egypt like this (el 7edaya mabet7adefsh katakit) which means Falcons doesn't throw out baby chickens.. It was just an idea and hope coming from the intend of sony to dominate the 5k market.. This market has a lot of raw recording cameras which are not full frame, not high iso, not compact.. Bla bla bla..

Cheers,
 
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10 bits is plenty as long as the signal is not linear. 10-bit raw log can be everything you will ever need (in a typical gamut).

Also raw is not really wasteful at all. A raw pixel is around 1/3 the data of a RGB pixel, for the same bitdepth. We simply need some open standard "visually lossless" raw codec. Cinefrom RAW is beautiful, but it is not open, neither are Sony or Red's wavelet raw codecs.
 
Yes wavelet compression is cool.. But, they got many patent issues even with each other..

Also If 10 bit is enough why we project 12 bits at the theaters? You are saying that 10bit log is enough to fill the 12-bit xyz space we see on the screen?
 
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