Kinefinity yanks compressed RAW formats

There was a Rodney Charters interview (Newshooter at the NAB, I believe) from 2014 or so, where he admitted that they only shoot in ProRes. That was in the original Alexa 2.8K-to-HD era when he was working on the "Dallas" reboot.

But the Netflix require some cameras (like most of the BMD products or Varicam Pure) to deliver Raw footage, with some allowances for the various compression rates. Alexa LF's are allowed either ARRI Raw or ProRes 444.

Netflix happily accepts fat ProRes files of a certain level as long as they are in a LOG form so that they can be regraded for HDR or other forms as the library gets reused over time. Without LOG you couldn't go back to a program from five years ago and make a REC2020 version. They're just protecting their library. The only cameras that they insist on RAW from are ones that cannot deliver an acceptable LOG video file otherwise.
 
ha...in that case the first step for BMD would be to actually support a 4K HDMI output.

Some of their older cameras with SDI can output 4K and if Convergent-Design was still around and booming, maybe they would support a 4K to 2K 444 conversion as they did with other cameras.

Can I tell you that I was the only person championing this as a workflow? It didn't happen because no one else believed in it even when I came back with networks who wanted it. And then Panasonic incorporated this into the VariCam LT and I was like "HELLO???"

I was also the one to say let's take a 4K 8-bit 422 signal and record it as a 2K 10-bit 422. I called it a quasi 10-bit because it wasn't quite the same, but it was certainly better than the 8-bit that was otherwise available on cameras like the Sony A7S. That one was hella popular with several networks who would only let the camera be used if it was done in conjunction with the Odyssey in this mode.
 
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haha, I bet. You did a lot for that device.

It was a great idea at the time and I really thought more cameras would start outputting some sort of RAW signal the recorders could use (which is what's happening now 5 years later with many of these newer cameras).

The C300 Mark II had the internal 2K 444, which was sort of the beginning of seeing some more higher-quality modes internally (besides what BM and RED were doing), but the industry jumped into 4K so quickly that 2K 444 just didn't sound appealing anymore while 4K 444 appears to be too much for anyone to bother with besides a few companies.
 
haha, I bet. You did a lot for that device.

It was a great idea at the time and I really thought more cameras would start outputting some sort of RAW signal the recorders could use (which is what's happening now 5 years later with many of these newer cameras).

The C300 Mark II had the internal 2K 444, which was sort of the beginning of seeing some more higher-quality modes internally (besides what BM and RED were doing), but the industry jumped into 4K so quickly that 2K 444 just didn't sound appealing anymore while 4K 444 appears to be too much for anyone to bother with besides a few companies.

Definitely unfortunate. Color depth is really the separation between high end and consumer cameras these days. Hopefully everyone follows suite with Blackmagic and comes up with some kind of 12bit codec.
 
That night I went to the Kinefinity website and I saw the MAVO Edge 8K will offer 444 and 444XQ.

It's unclear which specs as they have a note saying not all resolutions and framerates support that.

IMO, it's safe to guess nothing above 60p starting around 4K will have it, and will be limited to 422.
 
Actually just checked the others; MAVO LF and 6K offer 444 and 444XQ as well, and TERRA 4K (TERRA 6K is discontinued) had a FW update for it last year...but same deal, all very limited.
 
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