Odyssey7 & Odyssey7Q October 2014 Firmware Update

[stefanhuberfilms]

Mitch, a idea CD may think of:

what about allowing the user to set up a "preferred codec profile"?

e.g. when i switch my camera to 4K30p, the Odyssey detects the signal, and as specified in the menu, the 7Q will then change it's recording mode to 4KtoUHD(or RAW or 4K2HD or whatever). Righty, done with UHD - now ready to shoot some slowmo - i press the S&Q button on the camera, let the camera switch to 2K240p, the 7Q detects the signal, and again changes its recording mode to 2KRAW.

You could use the "unit will restart now to switch recording mode, press OK to confirm"-message, so that the user must confirm the change of recording modes always after pressing the S&Q button.

would be a handy feature IMO, and would speed up shooting greatly, and users would have to fiddle around less on the screen.

i know you guys have to fulfill the promised features first, though.

 

[Essami]

You can experiment with this yourself. Simply rate the camera at a lower ISO and expose accordingly. Then bring down the exposure in post to see how the image is effected. A good old fashioned light meter is great for this.

What will be different is doing it with a preview at the OLED, or even recording directly in ProRes with that LUT baked in. We are working on this now.

Hi Mitch! Very much looking forward to this feature, but can you clarify this a little bit. If I rate the FS700 at 800 asa that means raising my exposure by 2 stops compared to 2000 asa. This would effectively be overexposing the image and clipping the highlights in some cases. Or are you actually doing some processing (as I hope for) with the raw signal that gives it more headroom to prevent over exposure?

 

[cuervo]

Sami
It's not exactly a full two stops, but, that's not the real point. In order to understand why using an EI works, I think one needs to understand the color space and gamut of slog. The F5 has this feature where one can set an EI, while the actual ISO remains the same. This is identical to under/over exposing film then push processing the film. The real ISO never changes, only the exposure index that you choose to expose it at. Because the gamut of the scene that is being captured doesn't completely fill the range of 0-255 IRE, one can change the EI, which simply slides the overall scene histogram up or down the gamut, either towards 0 IRE in the case of underexposing, or towards IRE 255 in the case of overexposing.Most scenes don't fill a full 14 stops of dynamic range, even if the sensor can capture it. As long as the histogram stays between 0-255 IRE, everything is fine. This is the nature of slog, to force fit the gamut of the scene into the available space. There is no additional processing applied in post other than to bring the histogram back to 18% gray. Since the gamma curve is non-linear, more data bits are held at higher IRE. The entire reason to use EI rather than ISO is to push the majority of the scene into the non-linear part of the gamma curve that contains most of the data bits.

 

[Essami]

Sami
It's not exactly a full two stops, but, that's not the real point. In order to understand why using an EI works, I think one needs to understand the color space and gamut of slog. The F5 has this feature where one can set an EI, while the actual ISO remains the same. This is identical to under/over exposing film then push processing the film. The real ISO never changes, only the exposure index that you choose to expose it at. Because the gamut of the scene that is being captured doesn't completely fill the range of 0-255 IRE, one can change the EI, which simply slides the overall scene histogram up or down the gamut, either towards 0 IRE in the case of underexposing, or towards IRE 255 in the case of overexposing.Most scenes don't fill a full 14 stops of dynamic range, even if the sensor can capture it. As long as the histogram stays between 0-255 IRE, everything is fine. This is the nature of slog, to force fit the gamut of the scene into the available space. There is no additional processing applied in post other than to bring the histogram back to 18% gray. Since the gamma curve is non-linear, more data bits are held at higher IRE. The entire reason to use EI rather than ISO is to push the majority of the scene into the non-linear part of the gamma curve that contains most of the data bits.

I thought slogs most bits are around 40-50% IRE and below, where the skin tones are? And higher IRE is where the curve is most compressed?

http://www.xdcam-user.com/2013/07/correct-exposure-levels-with-sony-hypergammas-and-cinegammas/ quote from Alister Chapman:
"If you overexpose a face when using these advanced gammas (and S-log and S-log2 are the same) then you start to place those all important skin tone in the compressed part of the gamma curve."

Is there a difference of an opinion or did I misunderstand?

 

[abreu-canedo]

I too understood (perhaps wrongly so) that the processing power of these sony cameras was limited and so they mapped the processing algorythm to allocate more processing power to the range of the incoming light spectrum where the most important stuff happens (skin-tones--38-72 percent...ish), while the foot and the knee of the log curve increased dynamic range of the sensor while dedicating less processing power to the extreme highlights and deep shadow roll-offs...because these areas are less dynamic in color, texture, etc.

Although I guess you can calibrate that high-processing area to be mapped higher or lower by changing the Exposure Index...which I believe is just analogue gain prior to digitization (A-D conversion).

Essami, I'd say rate the camera at 800 if you have the dynamic head-room in your scene so that you're not raising noise levels or clipping highlights. If you max out the sensor's capabilities, the 7Q won't be able to recover anything...unless you're talking like super-whites to 109% or something. I would only do this, however, if I desperately needed to capture a full 12-14 stops of dynamic range in a scene that contained important information in all of these "stops". But I find that it's not often that a scene contains important information in such a wide dynamic range...although it does happen and ultimately you will be the judge of that.

I'm not sure that this adds to the conversation at all, but just thought I'd pitch in. But I too would be curious to hear from Mitch on this one

 

[Mitch Gross]

Mitch I knew about the release notes, however I was just trying to play back a clip without scrubbing being done, and the playback would stop, start, jump, lock-up, etc. So that's when I switched to 4K HD Prores to be safe. I assumed what was going on and computer playback is fine. I usually don't have time to playback but thought since it was a new update I better check to be sure the footage was good, and it was just choppie in playback, but good in reality.

Can you tell me what frame rate, both for shooting and for the project rate (likely the same)?

 

[Mitch Gross]

Mitch, a idea CD may think of:

what about allowing the user to set up a "preferred codec profile"?

e.g. when i switch my camera to 4K30p, the Odyssey detects the signal, and as specified in the menu, the 7Q will then change it's recording mode to 4KtoUHD(or RAW or 4K2HD or whatever). Righty, done with UHD - now ready to shoot some slowmo - i press the S&Q button on the camera, let the camera switch to 2K240p, the 7Q detects the signal, and again changes its recording mode to 2KRAW.

You could use the "unit will restart now to switch recording mode, press OK to confirm"-message, so that the user must confirm the change of recording modes always after pressing the S&Q button.

would be a handy feature IMO, and would speed up shooting greatly, and users would have to fiddle around less on the screen.

i know you guys have to fulfill the promised features first, though.

Interesting idea. I'll bring it up. We would have to protect general operations use of the Odyssey7Q because we wouldn't want it forcing others into changes they didn't intend or do not wish. And we would want the operator to know exactly what is happening so that no false assumptions are made. That's the big danger with automatic operations -- the user stops paying close attention and then regrets it later.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Hi Mitch! Very much looking forward to this feature, but can you clarify this a little bit. If I rate the FS700 at 800 asa that means raising my exposure by 2 stops compared to 2000 asa. This would effectively be overexposing the image and clipping the highlights in some cases. Or are you actually doing some processing (as I hope for) with the raw signal that gives it more headroom to prevent over exposure?

The RAW signal from the camera is the RAW signal. We will not change our way of deBayering and otherwise processing the signal to turn it into video. What we will do is show what a 3D-LUT in post does and apply it to the signal directly on the Odyssey7Q. It's was enough to create such a 3D-LUT if you really understand how the numbers work. So we will create some standard offsets for different relative sensitivities, IE, different ISO ratings, and these can be used in the Odyssey7Q's LUT system. The result will allow you to preview (or if you're in that sort of situation, bake in to a ProRes recording) what the post LUT would give you. You can see how the noise floor reacts and what is happening in the mid tones and where the high end is clipping. And you can choose to light and expose accordingly.

It's no miracle cure to transform what the FS700 sends out as a signal, instead it is a tool to help you get the image out of it that you like best. Lit and exposed correctly (as in, correct to YOUR liking), the FS700 & Odyssey7Q can deliver quite amazing images. This would be a tool to better help you achieve this.

Please let me know if this better or fully answers your question. The tool is in active development now.

 

[cuervo]

I thought slogs most bits are around 40-50% IRE and below, where the skin tones are? And higher IRE is where the curve is most compressed?

http://www.xdcam-user.com/2013/07/correct-exposure-levels-with-sony-hypergammas-and-cinegammas/ quote from Alister Chapman:
"If you overexpose a face when using these advanced gammas (and S-log and S-log2 are the same) then you start to place those all important skin tone in the compressed part of the gamma curve."

Is there a difference of an opinion or did I misunderstand?

Sami...
Neither. I could recall that most of the bits were at one end of the S-curve. I was connecting overexposure with the hilights, rather than the shadows. But couldn't remember which. I beleive you are correct. The following is extracted from Dennis Hingsberg's (Starcentral) excellent article on exposure:

 

[stefanhuberfilms]

Interesting idea. I'll bring it up. We would have to protect general operations use of the Odyssey7Q because we wouldn't want it forcing others into changes they didn't intend or do not wish. And we would want the operator to know exactly what is happening so that no false assumptions are made. That's the big danger with automatic operations -- the user stops paying close attention and then regrets it later.

i hear you... sure, it has to be clear that the 7Q changes the recording mode according to the input signal, but i think a simple prompt where the user has to press OK will do. Also, IMO all settings other than the recording codec should always remain the same.

BTW one thing that always bugged me: WFM, Histo and peaking always are shut off when restarting into another recording mode or powering up the unit. Would be nice to have the last used settings stored in the unit.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Mitch, I'm curious, when you put out the press release that Matthew Allard is speaking from in this review - https://vimeo.com/82442001 - 9:42-10:56, where it says;

"The Odyssey7Q will soon have the ability to record in a popular compressed video codec. When that is available, the Odyssey will accept the 4K RAW data, deBayer it and transform it into a high quality 4K video, and then record this video in the popular codec. This will be enabled up to the highest frame rate of 4K the FS700 can output, which is 60fps."

Who wrote that and what were they basing it on? Or was that just wishful thinking? Just curious as to how someone got it so wrong. It hasn't happened "soon" (1 year!) and now there is doubt as to whether it will happen at all.

Richard,


As you chose to email us privately as well as then post this publicly, we feel it necessary to respond here so that the constituency of DVXUSER understands the greater story.


I am the one who wrote that. At the time we believed that this is what we would be offering and that it would come soon. As we moved forward we discovered additional complications that delayed the process, as everyone knows. We still believe that the Odyssey7Q has the technical ability to reach this mark, but we need to make sure the image quality will be there when processing so much information at such high speed. That is why we have released up to 30p at this time.


But Richard, I believe you know this, just as you know what our goals are for 2K high frame rate ProRes from the FS700 RAW. It has been discussed here on the forum numerous times by me with you. And in PMs. And in emails. And in phone calls.


Convergent Design has repeatedly worked to try to answer all your questions and to respond to all of your various posts. No matter the tone of your remarks.


In an effort to satisfy you, we have even offered you a full refund for your Odyssey7Q on several occasions, and you even accepted the offer one of those times only to not follow through with the return. Although you have asked, you are mistaken that we ever offered to give you any SSDs, and we do not particularly appreciate any form of blackmail as your recent email stating that if we were to gift you SSDs that we would “no longer hear anything” from you. Noting that you will “spread your helpful words” to “the online community, social media and companies that I work for” is indeed your right, but it does not particularly influence our decisions, or certainly not in the direction you appear to intend.


Richard, you seem to get a great deal of use out of your Odyssey7Q. We are glad it is a useful product for you. We are sorry that it is not exactly the product you believed you were purchasing. Our numerous offers to provide a refund have all now expired. We have never and will never offer to give you any SSDs. You may of course continue to post on DVXUSER about us or anywhere else you like, but please note that should any posts here be slanderous or otherwise factually incorrect then as a sponsor and active participant of DVXUSER we will inform those that administer the forum.


Convergent Design considers this matter closed.

 

[Prendi]

Richard,


As you chose to email us privately as well as then post this publicly, we feel it necessary to respond here so that the constituency of DVXUSER understands the greater story.


I am the one who wrote that. At the time we believed that this is what we would be offering and that it would come soon. As we moved forward we discovered additional complications that delayed the process, as everyone knows. We still believe that the Odyssey7Q has the technical ability to reach this mark, but we need to make sure the image quality will be there when processing so much information at such high speed. That is why we have released up to 30p at this time.


But Richard, I believe you know this, just as you know what our goals are for 2K high frame rate ProRes from the FS700 RAW. It has been discussed here on the forum numerous times by me with you. And in PMs. And in emails. And in phone calls.


Convergent Design has repeatedly worked to try to answer all your questions and to respond to all of your various posts. No matter the tone of your remarks.


In an effort to satisfy you, we have even offered you a full refund for your Odyssey7Q on several occasions, and you even accepted the offer one of those times only to not follow through with the return. Although you have asked, you are mistaken that we ever offered to give you any SSDs, and we do not particularly appreciate any form of blackmail as your recent email stating that if we were to gift you SSDs that we would “no longer hear anything” from you. Noting that you will “spread your helpful words” to “the online community, social media and companies that I work for” is indeed your right, but it does not particularly influence our decisions, or certainly not in the direction you appear to intend.


Richard, you seem to get a great deal of use out of your Odyssey7Q. We are glad it is a useful product for you. We are sorry that it is not exactly the product you believed you were purchasing. Our numerous offers to provide a refund have all now expired. We have never and will never offer to give you any SSDs. You may of course continue to post on DVXUSER about us or anywhere else you like, but please note that should any posts here be slanderous or otherwise factually incorrect then as a sponsor and active participant of DVXUSER we will inform those that administer the forum.


Convergent Design considers this matter closed.

Mitch,

Thank you kindly for answering my question. Much appreciated. The reason that I felt I had to post this question publicly is because the CEO of CD, Mike Schell, point blank refused to answer my question. In fact, he and Dan Keaton repeatedly refused to acknowledge that CD had ever planned to implement 4k compressed as a feature, let alone 4k compressed up to 60fps. I guess that point is now put to rest and that it was you who wrote the press release. Good to know.

Firstly, I'd like to address the accusation of slander. Please refer me to posts that I have made that are factually untrue. If you are able to, then I sincerely apologise. However, I believe that that is not the case and that I have always posted factually with regards to 7Q and Convergent Design's conduct.

This is going to be a fairly long email, as it seems some of your "facts" are a little off. That isn't surprising considering I have never emailed you or talked to you over the phone. Really not sure which Richard you have been speaking with but it wasn't me.

Let's rewind back to the start, hopefully this will help you understand the issues that I have raised with Dan Keaton and Mike Schell.

I bought this product product because of CD's marketing. Whether it be because of reviews like the one I posted, seeing your "road map" posts here on DVXUSER or the specs on your site, you hooked me in with a great sounding product. It ticked all the boxes. You never once mentioned that this was wishful thinking or that some of this stuff might not be possible. Quite the contrary, you sounded adamant that it would all happen and in a timely fashion.

I primarily work in action sports. I also have a cable-cam business that is now taking off. The reason that this product sounded so great was because it would give me ProRes HFR (granted you never specified a frame rate), 4k ProRes up to 60fps and the bluetooth app (for remotely operating whilst on the cable-cam). All features that fit my needs perfectly. The raw was always a very welcome bonus. From the list of features that prompted me to purchase the 7Q, I'll allow you to count how many you have actually delivered on.

I would like to point out that I did not own an FS700 already. I decided to invest in the entire system based on the 7Q specs.

With regards to the SSD's, this wasn't a discussion that you were involved with. In fact, when Dan Keaton and I had that discussion, you in a different town to him. The turn of events went something like this - I was already frustrated at your/CD's use of the word "soon". Nothing with regards to the timeframe of the 7Q can constitute the use of the word "soon". However, it was when I discovered that you had simply decided to drop the App because of "Bluetooth processing issues", that I picked up the phone and got in contact with Dan Keaton.

Dan was originally very forthcoming and apologised for the situation at CD. I explained that I was annoyed that the App had been dropped and that I was hoping to be able to use 4K ProRes on my next shoot. He asked me what size SSD's I was using, then he asked me where I was staying on my next shoot. He said, "I'm going to get some SSD's sent out to you to help you with the storage on the next project" - "leave it with me and I will see what I can do". I though that was a fair offer. And yes, I have pushed for SSD's as compensation for Convergent Design lack of delivery on a product that I paid full price for. I don't think that is unreasonable, do you? However, your accusation of blackmail is quite serious and one that I would urge you to take caution over.

During our next conversation, Dan's attitude was quite different. Let's just say, not quite so friendly and the offer of some SSD's were clearly off the table. Can't imagine who influenced his change of attitude…

So I decided to move onto the next person in the chain of command, the CEO. I won't bore you with yet more details but the crux of his argument was, and I quote "marketing got ahead of the product". CEO talk for hype. When I asked if he thought it was acceptable when people, like myself, are making considerable investment based upon the marketing hype, he replied, "No doubt you realise that savvy users understand that Specifications are subject to change without notice". Basically, CD can say and promise whatever they want as long as they include that line within their TC's.

FYI, I declined his offer of a full refund only yesterday due to the fact that I'm not in a position to invest in a complete new system right now. I will happily forward that email to you for clarification.

So to get to my point, I personally believe that you deliberately misled customers when selling this product. It is a fact that you have not delivered what you promised you would nearly 12 months ago. It is also a fact that every firmware release has experienced technical issues that have rendered the 7Q unreliable. It is not the first time that CD hasn't delivered on a product (please refer to the Gemini) and it is my belief that from the wording of your recent posts, you will not deliver the promised 4k ProRes at 50/60fps, the reason that many of us bought this product. People have made large investments based on the overzealous marketing from CD and I think it's only fair that CD expects some backlash when they fail to deliver on those promises.

Good day to you sir,

Richard

 

[Mitch Gross]

Richard,

My post was not just from me, it is from Convergent Design. We have all discussed it and are in solid agreement on our accounting. There were numerous forms of contact by you with various members of our team and we have track of it all. Including your SKYPE messages with Dan where you accepted the refund for your Odyssey7Q in August/September only to not follow through on returning the unit through your dealer as you had agreed and we had then arranged.

You are the one who asked for SSDs. Dan said that he would see what he could do, and the answer was no. It is still no.

I did not write that you had slandered us, I warned against slandering us in the future. As we read fairly clear inferences within your emails and other contacts, we felt it prudent to do so.

We could go on but there really is no point. Your accounts do not particularly align with ours. And as stated previously, Convergent Design considers this matter closed.

 

[jeics]

Hi Mitch, my name is Jeico from Panama city panama, today a got a mayor issue with my odyssey only 3 months old, I have call for support but the seems not to know or understand me, I started the day shooting a spot, did 3 takes and boom suddenly no more video signal, I mean the odyssey7q was recognising the sdi cables and the trigger bottom was red but there was no video not even for playback the clips I shoot prior, so I called and Andy told me that it could be a power source issue (voltage) I was using 9.2, to put it in 14 so I did and nothing re installed previous firmware soddenly I had image one more time (was happy for about 5 minutes) then boom no video signal again, I don't know if it had a problem with the with the new C500 firmware don't think so, but now my odyssey is not working, I bought the odyssey from B&H should I call them or what should I do, next week I have a tree more days of shooting and now sims Im going to have to rent another gear else were.

thanks

 

[Mitch Gross]

Hi Mitch, my name is Jeico from Panama city panama, today a got a mayor issue with my odyssey only 3 months old, I have call for support but the seems not to know or understand me, I started the day shooting a spot, did 3 takes and boom suddenly no more video signal, I mean the odyssey7q was recognising the sdi cables and the trigger bottom was red but there was no video not even for playback the clips I shoot prior, so I called and Andy told me that it could be a power source issue (voltage) I was using 9.2, to put it in 14 so I did and nothing re installed previous firmware soddenly I had image one more time (was happy for about 5 minutes) then boom no video signal again, I don't know if it had a problem with the with the new C500 firmware don't think so, but now my odyssey is not working, I bought the odyssey from B&H should I call them or what should I do, next week I have a tree more days of shooting and now sims Im going to have to rent another gear else were.

thanks

Hi Jeico,

Please send me an email or a PM with your direct contact info. We will do our best to support you so that you can keep shooting until we can determine what is causing this issue.

 

[smoki138]

Hello Mitch.

Yeasterday i buy in Adorama Odyssey 7Q and i wait for shipping. I'm very exciting! And thank you for making a really good job

I have got only one question do you plaining make update in PRO-RES 12bit 4:4:4? It's possible to make it?
Thank you so much and have a nice day!
Kamil

 

[jeics]

Hi Mitch, check your PM I sent you my email address Im all so using the sdi cables from convergent design HD-Sdi coax cables.
thanks for trying to help.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Hello Mitch.

Yeasterday i buy in Adorama Odyssey 7Q and i wait for shipping. I'm very exciting! And thank you for making a really good job

I have got only one question do you plaining make update in PRO-RES 12bit 4:4:4? It's possible to make it?
Thank you so much and have a nice day!
Kamil

We do definitely plan to do this in the future. We needed to complete ProRes 422 in various resolutions first, as well as various framerates. But work is already in progress on other flavors.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Hi Mitch, check your PM I sent you my email address Im all so using the sdi cables from convergent design HD-Sdi coax cables.
thanks for trying to help.

Replied privately.

 

[True North]

What is the latest on the 7Q being able to record off of a GH4?

Thanks