New Monitor / Recorder from Convergent Design

Dear Anatusa,

The Odyssey7 may be used with the C300.

The Odyssey7 does not have "Quad Display" mode, thus it can't show multiple image analysis tools at the same time.

The Odysse7Q does have this mode, plus the ability to be enhanced in the future (more "Logic Space").

At this time, our Recording Options, for example to support the FS700, C500, ARRIRAW, etc. are only available on the Odyssey7Q.

The FS700 option can not be added later to the Odyssey7 since it requires more "Logic Space" to perform the decompression of the 2K/4K Raw signals.

Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 
KINOKS said:
Hi Dan,

will these recorders work with normal SSDs or only with yours?

These are some random low prices that I found on amazon for SSDs:

240 GB $160
480 GB $350
960 GB $600

These are probably not as good as the ones you are selling but for most they will probably be just as good.
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Dear Sanjin,

Our SSD's are Enterprise Class, with Power Protection and firmware, to protect the contents of the SSD and the SSD itself when power is lost.

These SSD's are not sold via normal retail channels, they are a very special high performance SSD.

These are an integral part of the Odyssey7 and Odyssey7Q.

And they are very low power, which helps keep the heat down, and power draw low.

Only our SSD's may be used.

Please compare our drives to other true Enterprise Class SSD's and not typical consumer drives.

Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 
Dan, I predicted that your drives are better in some way, but I was comparing with standard drives because I suspect that for most people they would work just as good as your special drives. I'm not trying to be purposely negative here I'm just thinking out loud:)
For me propraitery media is a big turn of. Especially if it's something that I don't really need. I was really looking forward to the odyssey7q especially because it uses SSD drives but now that I see that you have to be bound to propraitery media I can firmly say that I won't get one for my production.

It just doesn't add up price wise. I for instance (and many others) would probably greatly appreciate if you would leave the odyssey open up to normal non-propraitery drives. But still have the option to buy yours super-duper SSDs. I don't want to question your business model here:) just want to make a suggestion. I love the Ninja 2 for instance, you can plug any 2,5" drive in there, even normal HDDs!:)
 
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snowblindfilm said:
Dear Dan, I would like to know why CD is charging almost $1500 for FS-700 for .dng? It is an open and free format.
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I agree. I have a pre-order for the 7Q and I will now be pulling it due to this cost which seems unjustified. Also, no telling what Sony will charge for a firmware update (likely another unjustified high cost).

I appreceiate Dan's availability to us "public people", but he also deserves feedback on our purchase decisions. I hope CD reconsiered this $1500 cost for a DNG file when it's almost as expensive as the recorder itself.
 
Dear Friends,

I am now back home (for 1 day) from a business trip.

I want to catch up and answer these posts.

Our FS700 option cost is not a license fee, such as a Cinema DNG license fee.

Our option cost, either $1,495 purchase or $75 a day rental fee, is to cover our cost of developing and supporting the option.

It may or may not be apparent, but just the testing alone of these features requires a substantial amount of work.

And, unlike normal computer software, every time we make even a small change to the FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) firmware, we have to redo all of the testing again. Every time we come out with a firmware upgrade, we have to perform thousands of hours of testing.

And, in order to be able to offer these products, we have a make a profit.

While Cinema DNG is an Open and Free format, we still have to accept the signal from the FS700, decompress it, format it for Cinema DNG, and simultaneously deBayer it in real time for display. These are not trivial tasks.

Later we will all know Sony's FS700 hardware and firmware upgrade plan details. I know that they are attempting to make this upgrade available at a very reasonable cost.

Of course what is considered a reasonable cost is very personal.

Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 
KINOKS said:
Dan, I predicted that your drives are better in some way, but I was comparing with standard drives because I suspect that for most people they would work just as good as your special drives. I'm not trying to be purposely negative here I'm just thinking out loud:)
For me propraitery media is a big turn of. Especially if it's something that I don't really need. I was really looking forward to the odyssey7q especially because it uses SSD drives but now that I see that you have to be bound to propraitery media I can firmly say that I won't get one for my production.

It just doesn't add up price wise. I for instance (and many others) would probably greatly appreciate if you would leave the odyssey open up to normal non-propraitery drives. But still have the option to buy yours super-duper SSDs. I don't want to question your business model here:) just want to make a suggestion. I love the Ninja 2 for instance, you can plug any 2,5" drive in there, even normal HDDs!:)
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Dear Sanjin,

Our SSD's cost much more that entry level consumer SSD's, and less than (and typically far less than) any other professional media.

Consumer level SSD's do not have the important features that we need, very high performance and protection against sudden power failure.

Our SSD's have a very substantial power reserve built in, and special circuitry and firmware to gracefully complete all pending operations (mainly writes but also other internal tasks). This is vitally important to ensure the integrity of the data under typical on-set conditions where running out of battery power happens quite often, especially with power hungry professional cameras.

We considered offering a lower-cost SSD, but we rejected this idea.

The lower-cost SSD, would be useful for certain camera modes and frame rates, but not others.

Thus, we were afraid that the wrong SSD's would be on-set for a specific shoot, and then the desired camera modes and frame rates would be unavailable, thus creating a serious problem. The potential damage that this might cause was too large of a risk for us. We find it almost impossible to get the word out about such important, but tricky details to everyone involved.

While Hard Disk Drives can work, for some situations when shooting with the Atomos products, they are not suitable for any camera mode/frame rate that requires very fast media.

And yes, we do require our SSD's to be used. We do this for many reasons, but one is that we want every SSD to be thoroughly tested, in an Odyssey7 / Odyssey7Q before it is first used on-set. We want each SSD to be tested at normal temperatures and extreme temperatures to help ensure flawless operation on-set. Not all SSD's pass our tests.

And SSD's are not really commodity items. There are substantial differences in feature, functions and minute details in how they work.

Here is one example: Garbage Collection. Many SSD's go "deaf" to the computer while they perform internal housekeeping operations.

This has no real impact in a computer environment, as the computer just waits until they are ready to communicate again.

For high resolution/high frame rate video recording, this is just unworkable.

I hope this helps.

Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 
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Essentially with the 7Q you are buying a $2200 monitor for the fs700 and a basic recorder. If you want your 7Q to be a fully functional recorder, well that costs $1500 extra plus now you have to buy high priced proprietary drives (is there even a price yet?). The main reason I put down a deposit for one because it was being sold is an all-in-one tool.

It's all about expectations. My expectations were $2300 and a little more, now it looks like it's going to be at least DOUBLE that to make it a fully functional recorder. It would have been nice to know a month ago, but I guess at least I know now so I can pull it-- it was impulsive on my end with all those unknowns in pricing.

I think CD is making a poor decision here. Sure there is R+D that goes into a making the codec work (as I'm sure there is with ANY recorder), but it's a file-- the costs are done. They could sell way more 7Qs if they priced their codes more friendly (or included them in the price like most!). Not to mention, leaving out that a codec is going to cost more than Adobe Creative Suite is just bad expectation setting.

I personally jumped the gun too soon on 7Q. People buying fs700s aren't red users who are used paying a high prices for essential add-ons. I had $2300 in mind with the unknown of what Sony was going to charge for the 4K update. Now we know...

$2300
+ unknown price of codec (we now know is $1500)
+ unknown price of proprietary drives
+ unknown price of Sony upgrade.

It's not going to be cheap. Probably will have to buy the equilvant of a whole other fs700.

I'll wait. BMCC is looking better and better for 4K.

I appreciate Dan's availability, and I hope you appreciate the feedback from someone who was all about buying the 7Q after NAB.
 
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I am sorry to say that I echo magillb's post above. I knew that Sony's solution would break the bank, but I too fell into line with the Odyssey 7Q solution as a solution I could manage. More important, I felt we were entering into a new paradigm for acquiring a bit of the future of video for the "rest of us."

The bottom line is that it is just too expensive. Of course I follow all the arguments for it here, but part of me is just tired of always paying premium prices, and the costs of the SSDs puts me off, on principle, even if the logic for their pricing is accurate. I too felt that for the cost of a 7Q I might get fully functional codecs, etc., or for not a lot more.

I realize that this paints me as not entirely professional, and that is true. I am not someone who has to have this technology. I just would like to have it

So part of me has gone back to waiting until the future provides a system that is deemed affordable and turns out to be affordable. I could just pony up and buy it, but I think I will not. Instead I will upgrade and firmware-upgrade my FS700 and make do with that.

Technology seems to come in waves, and I am back to looking for the next wave instead of riding this one. Just disappointed, that's all. It is my own fault for getting my hopes up.
 
Dear Friends,

Here are a few thoughts.

For $1,295 (US Price), the Odyssey7 can record from the current FS700, in Avid DNxHD, up to 720p60 and 1080p60, and later we add another popular compressed codec for free. If this is all that one needs or wants, then $1,295 + $595 for one 240 GB SSD is the total package price.

(To enable compressed codec recording, one need to purchase at least one SSD, which starts at $595 (US Price for 240 GB Model).


And please note that this supports recording 1080p60, where most other recorders anywhere near this price range only support 1080p30/1080i60.

But, this model can not be upgraded to work with the upgraded FS700 in 2K Raw or 4K Uncompressed, as this requires the Odyssey7Q (at $2,295 - US Price).

For these prices, one gets a great 7.7" OLED Monitor, Waveform Monitor (multiple modes), RGB Parade, Histogram (Multiple Modes), great Focus Assist (multiple modes), Zebras (two levels), False Color, Color Vectorscope, 1 to 1 Pixel Mode, and Audio Level Meters. And we expect to add more features later.

The Odyssey7Q adds even more monitor features, Onion Skinning, and Quad Display mode so that four video streams can be monitored at once.

And the Odyssey7Q supports many other professional recording options, which can be purchase or rented as needed making it a very versatile device.

(I have attached the spec sheets for both models.)



To record from the upgraded FS700, in the advanced modes (2K Raw and/or 4K) one must have the Odyssey7Q.
This is required since these signals are sent out compressed over HD-SDI 3G Single-Link and we have to decompress these signals.

We should be able to record 4K, up to 30 frames per second using only one SSD,
but above 30 frames per second in 4K, we will need to use two SSD's
(4K at 60 fps is 666 Megabytes per second).


I have spoken about our SSD's in other posts.

Our SSD's are an integral part of our recorder system, as it is designed and tested using our SSD's, which were selected as being the best at the conclusion of a very long process.

Other SSD's certainly do exist, but we need very high performance, 400 MBps, with very low power, no housekeeping delays, and complete immunity to power problems.

The low cost SSD's that one finds on the retail market do not have these characteristics.

These are not commodity items and these are not available from Amazon or Newegg.



So, is there another OLED Monitor plus Recorder that comes close in features?

Or is there another OLED Monitor plus Recorder that is in this price range?

Or is there any other similar device that is a better investment, one that can grow with your needs, one better than the Odyssey7Q?


We understand that not everyone is in a position to purchase the $1495 (US) FS700 2K Raw and 4K Uncompressed Option.

But, if you do need these features, then once you have the Odyssey7Q + SSD's, this option is available for rent for $75 a day.

Of course there are other options, but they do not offer you a nice 7.7" OLED Monitor, the professional monitor features, the small size, the low weight and power draw, and surprisingly, their media costs are higher.

Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 

Attachments

Sound Devices just posted a firmware update for the Pix 220(i) and Pix 240(i) that includes ProRes 4444, 12-bit 3 G SDI (4:4:4 RGB), and so on.

I am not an expert in video. I come from a still-photography background and have done only a fair amount of video, so I depend on the experts here to point out to me my options.

I guess I continue to look for what Sony will provide with the hardware upgrade and firmware update for my FS700. I have a Pix 220(i) and in my experience, this is a superior piece of hardware, with easy-to-use software in ROM, and as a software developer for some 40 years, I know a solid product when I see it.

So, I am backtracking to consider what my Pix 220(i) can do for me with the two upgrades, but hanging on to my PIX 220(i) and looking at what I can do to enhance 2K video.

What can we hope for with 2K if we just opt to the two upgrades?
 
Hi Dan
Thank you for your very good information.
I have an f3 with the RGB update.
Can I record 1080/60p in Avid DNxHD with the Odyssey 7 and one SSD for the price of $1,890 (US-Price)

Thank You.
Greets Jochen
 
sobcitystar said:
Hi Dan
Thank you for your very good information.
I have an f3 with the RGB update.
Can I record 1080/60p in Avid DNxHD with the Odyssey 7 and one SSD for the price of $1,890 (US-Price)

Thank You.
Greets Jochen
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Dear Greets,

The answer is yes.

You can record, using either the Odyssey7 or Odyssey7Q, from the Sony PMW-F3 in Avid DNxHD at up to and including 1080p60, using one Convergent Design SSD.

Thus, $1,295 for the Odyssey7 plus $595 for the 240 GB SSD and no extra cost options are required. (The prices are US Prices and prices around the world have to be different due to customs taxes, other import taxes, shipping charges and exchange rates.

Then later, after we develop the code, test, and obtain formal certification, we plan to offer, for free another very popular codec for the Odyssey7 and Odyssey7Q.

Both models include extensive image analysis tools, focus assist, waveform monitor, zebras, false color, histogram, 1-1 Pixel Mode, color vectorscope and a 7.7" OLED Monitor.

Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 
Dan, do you know what bit depths will be available on the Odyssey7 when recording DNxHD / "other Codec" at 1080p60?

thanks for your work and answers here!
 
I own an FS700 and am on a budget and have been piecing my package together as funds allow. When I heard about the 7Q I was excited about the possibilities it would open up for my camera. My plan was to adopt the entire system and offer it to my clients (some of which have been inquiring about 4K). After seeing what the costs will be, I have altered my game plan. I truly feel the Odyssey 7Q is going to be an amazing piece of equipment that many clients are going to be asking for, with or without my camera. I think the monitor itself is well worth the price tag so I will first just purchase it alone. I was going to buy an Alphatron and an inexpensive monitor but I think it makes more sense to wait for the 7Q, get that and push the EVF down the line. When my clients start asking for 2K/4K (which they will pay more for in rentals) I will buy whatever cards I need and rent the upgrade and codec (which they will pay for). All in all I don't see any downside (if you have good clients) as it is new technology and people pay up the nose if they want new and want to be first or they just want their end product to be of good quality. Someday down the road all these elements will be less expensive and possibly obsolete but the next great piece of equipment is always around the corner and someone will be complaining about the cost of that, while I'll be purchasing it with the profits from my satisfied clients:)
 
stefanhuberfilms said:
Dan, do you know what bit depths will be available on the Odyssey7 when recording DNxHD / "other Codec" at 1080p60?

thanks for your work and answers here!
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Dear Stefan,

For Avid DNxHD we plan on offering -36, -145, -220 (which are all 8-Bit) and -220x which is 10-Bit.

The -100 version is not currently a SMPTE standard and we may or may not include this until it becomes a SMPTE standard, which is scheduled to occur later this year.

By "-36", I mean the 36 Megabit per second version of the Avid DNxHD codec, these are standard Avid DNxHD designations.

For the other popular codec, we plan on offering the 4:2:2 versions of the codec for free with the Odyssey7 and Odyssey7Q as soon as it is certified.

Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 
PaulHelling said:
I own an FS700 and am on a budget and have been piecing my package together as funds allow.

When I heard about the 7Q I was excited about the possibilities it would open up for my camera. My plan was to adopt the entire system and offer it to my clients (some of which have been inquiring about 4K).

After seeing what the costs will be, I have altered my game plan. I truly feel the Odyssey 7Q is going to be an amazing piece of equipment that many clients are going to be asking for, with or without my camera. I think the monitor itself is well worth the price tag so I will first just purchase it alone.

I was going to buy an Alphatron and an inexpensive monitor but I think it makes more sense to wait for the 7Q, get that and push the EVF down the line.

When my clients start asking for 2K/4K (which they will pay more for in rentals) I will buy whatever cards I need and rent the upgrade and codec (which they will pay for).

All in all I don't see any downside (if you have good clients) as it is new technology and people pay up the nose if they want new and want to be first or they just want their end product to be of good quality.

Someday down the road all these elements will be less expensive and possibly obsolete but the next great piece of equipment is always around the corner and someone will be complaining about the cost of that, while I'll be purchasing it with the profits from my satisfied clients:)
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Dear Paul,

I appreciate your thoughts.

There have been a lot of complaints, by others about the cost of our FS700 2K Raw and 4K Uncompressed option ($1,495 US Price).

It appears that many seem to want us to offer this for free. I can only assume that they are underestimating the amount of work that goes into offering these options and the limited number of people that actually purchase these types of options.

This is not a matter of downloading a free codec and loading it into our unit. If it were, then the cost could be much lower or even free.

My other thought is that we do offer a low cost way to rent each recording option. This helps those that only need the added functionality for specific shoots.

Thank you for posting.


Respectfully,


Dan Keaton
Convergent Design
 
Dear Dan,
I own an FS-700. Several questions.
Is there some way to test the $70/day codec prior to purchase? I'm fine with your watermark. In my opinion, this should be a free download.
If I purchase the FS-700 package, are there any other software/codec costs from you? (Not including Sony's charge).
What does having 2 SSDs allow you to do over just one? (record 4k?).
Why isn't the pricing information on your website? Is it still tentative?
Thanks. Jim
 
Dear Dan,
One other question. Without Sony's hardware/software upgrade, and without purchasing your FS-700 option, can I record anything to the 7Q? HD?
Jim
 
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