An Open Letter to Dan Keaton/Convergent Design:
Dear Dan Keaton/Convergent Design,
Thank you for not only all the hard work and effort that you've put into being an innovative and pioneering startup in the world of film, but for also dreaming big and fighting to make technology accessible to more people. You're doing on the indie/prosumer level what the high end and professional market seems to refuse to deliver below their current market base. You've breathed life into a product that many of us spent countless nights researching, begged our partners to invest in, only to feel abandoned and stilted by the large corporate politics that mades us the same promises. But thanks to you, we might actually have the 4-5 year product cycle that we originally hoped for when investing into our cameras.
And also thank you for the brilliant hire of Mitch Gross, an established maven in the tech space who's passion for tech and ability to address to a vocal community meant volumes about how much you believed in listening to your customers. While he receives a hard time on this board, I honestly believe that anyone who has interacted with Mitch or seen his postings knows he's genuinely working as hard as he can to deliver us a product that will exceed our expectations. You, Mr. Keaton, who was answering our questions in the beginning have hired just the right person to build the community forward.
All that being said, Mr. Keaton, please fire your lead engineers now. While your product was "first" to market with its announcements and release, the development and release cycle of the O7Q is in a horribly sad state. If you look at my post history, there was a time I tried to defend your engineers and the complexities of software dev involved. But the excuses of "it's harder than it looks" are now completely moot. Those arguments were possibly relevant 6 months ago, during a time when you were also addressing hardware manufacturing issues. But your product cycle is now almost entirely software based, and I have to call this out, your engineers are not holding up their end of the bargain. A cameraman was able to hack the F5 for internal XVAC 4k recording. A small group of unpaid developers have reversed engineered Canon's firmware to allow RAW on their cameras, working purely on trial and error. Your engineers not only chose the CPU that you're working with, but have build and have 100% access to the codebase. By all accounts, with its small and agile dev team, should be crushing anyone on the market for delivering software update cycles. Instead, you fall further and further behind your competition.
But worst of all, rather than admitting fault for their incompetence, your engineers cower behind Mitch and yourself, constantly throwing excuses which Mitch then tries his best to relay in a PR manner. Want to see a good example of smart engineers that are bold enough to respond to tough questions from their paying and knowledgeable community? Check out the brilliant devs working not the biased ray-tracing 3D rendering engine Redshift. They get shot questions about theoretical Siggraph advancements from their competitors, and are not only able to answer them intelligently, but have software update cycles measured in days. DAYS.
I've worked at tech companies big and small, and if a product cycle fell behind, as a lead engineer, I always personally asked to explain first-hand to our customers why it was that we missed a deadline. As the person coding with deep knowledge of the technical issues that we faced, I understood exactly why we were falling behind and was the best at explaining. It's not like the PR guys, marketing, PMs or CEO could program. I've worked with several engineers and leads who cower behind their PMs or PR for explaining. Want to know why they didn't bother explaining the technical reasons for the lag? Because they knew the rest of us could easily call them out for it and they'd lose their jobs.
A7s, Atomos Shogun, Panasonic GH4 and new internal 4K E-mount F700II (or whatever it is), F5 4K internal. Your window is closing fast. While 4K RAW is nice, a lot of us would trade that for 10-bit 4:2:2 in a heartbeat if price/portability/usability were also improved. As a paying customer and early adopter, as well as vocal advocate for the company, please do the hard thing and replace your engineers with those who are up to the task. I have absolutely no doubt there are hundreds, if not thousands, who could do better. Or at the very least, if that seems too harsh, allow your engineers come on this board and explain to us, technically, what is so damn hard about Debayering and writing 4K to 4K ProRes 422 HQ instead of DNG.
Cheers,
James
Dear Dan Keaton/Convergent Design,
Thank you for not only all the hard work and effort that you've put into being an innovative and pioneering startup in the world of film, but for also dreaming big and fighting to make technology accessible to more people. You're doing on the indie/prosumer level what the high end and professional market seems to refuse to deliver below their current market base. You've breathed life into a product that many of us spent countless nights researching, begged our partners to invest in, only to feel abandoned and stilted by the large corporate politics that mades us the same promises. But thanks to you, we might actually have the 4-5 year product cycle that we originally hoped for when investing into our cameras.
And also thank you for the brilliant hire of Mitch Gross, an established maven in the tech space who's passion for tech and ability to address to a vocal community meant volumes about how much you believed in listening to your customers. While he receives a hard time on this board, I honestly believe that anyone who has interacted with Mitch or seen his postings knows he's genuinely working as hard as he can to deliver us a product that will exceed our expectations. You, Mr. Keaton, who was answering our questions in the beginning have hired just the right person to build the community forward.
All that being said, Mr. Keaton, please fire your lead engineers now. While your product was "first" to market with its announcements and release, the development and release cycle of the O7Q is in a horribly sad state. If you look at my post history, there was a time I tried to defend your engineers and the complexities of software dev involved. But the excuses of "it's harder than it looks" are now completely moot. Those arguments were possibly relevant 6 months ago, during a time when you were also addressing hardware manufacturing issues. But your product cycle is now almost entirely software based, and I have to call this out, your engineers are not holding up their end of the bargain. A cameraman was able to hack the F5 for internal XVAC 4k recording. A small group of unpaid developers have reversed engineered Canon's firmware to allow RAW on their cameras, working purely on trial and error. Your engineers not only chose the CPU that you're working with, but have build and have 100% access to the codebase. By all accounts, with its small and agile dev team, should be crushing anyone on the market for delivering software update cycles. Instead, you fall further and further behind your competition.
But worst of all, rather than admitting fault for their incompetence, your engineers cower behind Mitch and yourself, constantly throwing excuses which Mitch then tries his best to relay in a PR manner. Want to see a good example of smart engineers that are bold enough to respond to tough questions from their paying and knowledgeable community? Check out the brilliant devs working not the biased ray-tracing 3D rendering engine Redshift. They get shot questions about theoretical Siggraph advancements from their competitors, and are not only able to answer them intelligently, but have software update cycles measured in days. DAYS.
I've worked at tech companies big and small, and if a product cycle fell behind, as a lead engineer, I always personally asked to explain first-hand to our customers why it was that we missed a deadline. As the person coding with deep knowledge of the technical issues that we faced, I understood exactly why we were falling behind and was the best at explaining. It's not like the PR guys, marketing, PMs or CEO could program. I've worked with several engineers and leads who cower behind their PMs or PR for explaining. Want to know why they didn't bother explaining the technical reasons for the lag? Because they knew the rest of us could easily call them out for it and they'd lose their jobs.
A7s, Atomos Shogun, Panasonic GH4 and new internal 4K E-mount F700II (or whatever it is), F5 4K internal. Your window is closing fast. While 4K RAW is nice, a lot of us would trade that for 10-bit 4:2:2 in a heartbeat if price/portability/usability were also improved. As a paying customer and early adopter, as well as vocal advocate for the company, please do the hard thing and replace your engineers with those who are up to the task. I have absolutely no doubt there are hundreds, if not thousands, who could do better. Or at the very least, if that seems too harsh, allow your engineers come on this board and explain to us, technically, what is so damn hard about Debayering and writing 4K to 4K ProRes 422 HQ instead of DNG.
Cheers,
James
