Odyssey7 & Odyssey7Q Status Update

paulcurtis said:
Well that's piqued my interest... Can you say what kind of downsampling is done from 4K to 1080p? Is it a nearest neighbour style or a quality scale? In other words: is it worth recording the output?
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Hard to imagine they would even put it in as an option if it wasn't a high quality downscale...

*removed other questions since I forgot they are answered by the roadmap Mitch shared earlier
 
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nyvz said:
Hard to imagine they would even put it in as an option if it wasn't a high quality downscale...

*removed other questions since I forgot they are answered by the roadmap Mitch shared earlier
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Well it's mainly for monitor display, so i don't know, it doesn't have to be a high quality downscale. The road map for deriving 1080/2K from the 4K is down the line a bit, so perhaps the quality of the scale isn't as good as CD would like to store.

cheers
Paul
 
I would caution that 4k dpx is very unwieldy - it was/is mostly used as part of a digital intermediate process inside of post houses where you have benefits from a full 4k raster image (film scanners usually don't use bayer area sensors like cameras, but acquire a full raster RGB scan using a line scanner - Arriscan is the only exception). Even at the highest end of film production 4k dpx is not generally used. Raw gives the full sensor output at a third of the file size of dpx, with no downsides. If anything baking the debayer into the image can be problematic.

As to the right approach to petition Sony - remember that we are dealing with human beings, not some theoretical corporate monster - treat them as you would want a client to treat you! Sony makes a lot of choices that should be applauded. While RED uses Foxconn with their borderline slave labor to manufacture their cameras in China, Sony made the choice to manufacture the FS700 in the UK. They also, for all of their faults, really do understand color science in a way that certain other manufacturers will probably never grasp (RED, I'm looking at you yet again). Also, their cameras are generally reliable (I keep looking at RED for some reason).

What is somewhat amazing about the FS700 is the wide range of potential users it serves once you unlock the full feature set and allow it to work with the 7Q. It competes with the 1DC for the online crowd, certainly the C100, C300 and maybe even the C500 for the Indy, TV and B-Cam market. It beats the Scarlet in every possible way for the Indy crowd, and even competes nicely with the Epic (I love the amount of Epic users who want to trade for FS700's on various forums). It really does have the potential to lead the pack in the prosumer camera market.

Sony traditionally makes and delivers turnkey camera systems. They don't sell one piece and let 3rd party manufacturers deliver the rest. This is how they are used to making money. It is very open minded of them to work at all with the 7Q, and I'm sure there are people at Sony trying hard to get the higher-ups to understand that unlocking the full feature set to work with the 7Q will do nothing but help Sony. Let's keep this as a positive message about how the FS700 has the potential to really stand out as a camera, and not about how we will all despise Sony if they don't acquiesce to our demands.

The truth is that a lot of us will end up paying more for other cameras that we don't really like as much as the FS700 if it can only do raw 4k with the Sony record solution. We aren't going to move up to a $30k F5 package, we're going to mostly move to the cameras I mentioned above or wait for the new crop of cameras being announced at NAB.

-FDP
 
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cuervo said:
Well, sorry if you're in disagreement with my approach, Gene. Sony is a multi-million dollar corporation with a well defined business plan. I applaud anyone who puts the time into trying to move a mountain, regardless of how naive I think they are being. Historically, sony is a monolithic wall that does not provide any customer support, to speak of. They have trampled over all my interactions with them, in the past.

As far as FS700 owners go, we're a drop in the corporate bucket, about the size of a flea on a buffalo's back. I'm sure the collective influence of all FS700 owners doesn't come close to what a major film company in Hollywood spends at Sony.

I present my perspective, whether it is deemed "condescending and mocking", or not. Take it or leave it, and insulting me is just in poor form.
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Let me say this:

- I am not a fan of spitting in the wind or wasting anyone's time.
- I actually have some knowledge of what is going on behind the scenes here.
- I am the one who suggested that everyone make it known to Sony on its own forum that they support this idea.

Lay on, MacDuff.
 
Mitch Gross said:
Gentlemen, let me try to state this tactfully.

Calling people names or telling them how to do their jobs is not likely to gain you positive influence. However, explaining your position and trying to make helpful suggestions may have a positive outcome.

Sony is a big company, with numerous layers of management, international divisions, and a complicated process to making decisions. Certain decisions have been made, and even if some of their employees wish to make a change, it is something which would take time to work through the system. By lending your voice of support for a certain change and laying out well-reasoned informative comments as to why you would find such a change helpful both to you and to Sony, the people within the company wishing to make a change can use this to bolster their position.

This is not just a nice philosophy for getting through life, but also a functional reality.

Lastly, don't think that you are in some remote little backwater here. While Sony does have its own forum (which I suggest you all continue to use as your support outlet), don't think that they don't monitor such discussions across numerous places on the internet.

They are not stupid, but a battleship cannot turn on a dime.
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you sound like my wife. He's a direct quote from her today: Colin, it's my job to influence people, if you go in hard and aggressive like that people won't listen to you, they'll just get defensive (that was on a totally unrelated matter).

I must admit I'm shockingly terrible in text, honestly I quite often come across as a total arse (yes, I'm sure you're shocked to read that). I guess I must be better in person or on the phone or there's no way in hell I'd have a career!
 
Mitch Gross said:
Let me say this:

- I am not a fan of spitting in the wind or wasting anyone's time.
- I actually have some knowledge of what is going on behind the scenes here.
- I am the one who suggested that everyone make it known to Sony on its own forum that they support this idea.

Lay on, MacDuff.
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I'm sort of assuming that you're talking to Sony directly and saying: look, there's a whole bunch of users out there and potential users that you can win over with this product - here they are talking about how much of a game changer 4K Raw on the 7Q will be. Here's them saying how it will destroy your competitors, let's really show them what a ground breaking piece of technology the FS700 is!

And it's true! Although I think Red have peaked (I mean, seriously, what's their issue with Geoff Boyle?) Sony have really upped their game recently with the FS700, F5 and F55. They've got a real shot at cornering the market here - but they have to respond to that market and respond to what is going on there: the black magic 4K production camera is just around the corner and it's going to present a serious challenge to Sony and Canon's domination of the low-budget market (much the way Red did back in '07)

In many ways Sony is in an enviable position with the FS700 and it's integration with the 7Q. Although the combination of the two is just about twice the price of the BMC - and let's not pretend that this won't dramatically impact on FS700 sales - if they were to unlock the 4K raw capabilities of the 700, then I think it would remain a serious competitor: 240fps in 2K Raw, a great monitor, a shallow flange depth mount, a massive range of recording options AND 4K Raw, when you need it, I think that combination would make many think it was worth the extra expense.

Seriously, the market has changed a hell of a lot in the last 10years - and in many ways it's impressive that a big established company like Sony has managed to respond as well as it has, but if they are going to continue to be one of the big players (and even dominate), especially across the board (as they seem to want to do), then they're going to need to be a bit more sensitive to what is going on in the various segments and make sure that they leverage whatever advantages they have and the potential for 4K Raw on the 7Q is a massive advantage, should they choose to make use of it.
 
Mitch Gross said:
Our HD-SDI utput is 1920x1080 10-bit, and we can output either 4:2:2 or 4:4:4. It is not 4K, it is 1920x1080 derived from the 4K.
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Well, it sounds like I could record it on the Samurai, so that might be a good stop-gap until the q1 update and the 4K derived recording options on the camera itself. It should be an improvement over the current 8bit 422 - is Slog2 a current option for the monitoring output? Or is it some flavour of rec709?
 
Mitch Gross said:
I don't have the math in front of me, but I think 4K DPX file (that means a frame each of R, G & B) at 24fps would give you maybe 20 min. on 1TB of memory. It's frickin' huge. Does anyone really want to deal with that?.
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An efficient raw codec is what I'm personally looking forward to most from the future of digital cinema. The Red codec is one of the most efficient I've used.

We are currently shooting a feature film with the FS700 internal codec. Right now we've shot 4 out of 17 scenes and we have 150GB of footage (13 hours). Even with the most efficient raw codec available it will seriously push the capability to store, backup and edit the footage.
 
Colinelves said:
Well, it sounds like I could record it on the Samurai, so that might be a good stop-gap until the q1 update and the 4K derived recording options on the camera itself. It should be an improvement over the current 8bit 422 - is Slog2 a current option for the monitoring output? Or is it some flavour of rec709?
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i dont think so, as far as i understand u ll get 8bit 4:2:2 in 10 bit wrapper with samurai..... what is still 8 bit.

with CD u get TRUE 10 bit and its completely different!
 
stefanhuberfilms said:
i don't know if anybody of you guys saw that already, but Rule Boston Camera uploaded this "lowlight" video where Dan Keaton demonstrates the 7Q... could be useful :)

It's super long, and kinda exhausting to watch - but worth sharing! :)

https://vimeo.com/76157286
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Definitely worth sharing, thanks! I just finished watching the whole thing with our pal Dan and it was cool to see all the information we've been discussing being demonstrated.

One thing I found of interest was Dan's discussion on the 2K RAW aliasing issue and it's cause. According to Sony (via Dan's recollection) it's due to a mild OLP filter that was used on the FS700 and a Sony rep suggests that using a third-party filter (like a Pro-Mist 1/8) will help alleviate the issue. Dan does say that CD has not tested to confirm this solution, but that was new information that I had not heard before. You can see Dan's comments starting at 1:35:00 in the video, if you're curious.
 
Colinelves said:
I'm sort of assuming that you're talking to Sony directly and saying: look, there's a whole bunch of users out there and potential users that you can win over with this product - here they are talking about how much of a game changer 4K Raw on the 7Q will be. Here's them saying how it will destroy your competitors, let's really show them what a ground breaking piece of technology the FS700 is!
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I shall not qualify your assumptions. Take the statements for what they are.

I would again encourage all constructive remarks be repeated over on the Sony board to be sure that they are made proper use of.
 
brazzam said:
Again, reading between the lines here... it might not only be a Sony issue. 4K compressed recording cannot be done using DNxHD, so clearly it has to be done using the "popular codec" *cough*ProRes*cough*... it could be that they are being conservative on their timeframe estimate as the 7Q has not been approved for ProRes support just yet. Until ProRes becomes a possibility, they can't release 4K recording.

I'm sure CD is doing everything they can to get this functionality to us ASAP... I don't see a need to cancel my preorder - I'll have an awesome monitor for a month or two that will suddenly become a great recorder one day. I won't say I'm thrilled about waiting, but that's just my impatience talking. I have faith in CD.
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They could always do CinemaDNG. It natively supports a sort of JPEG compression, but it also supports vendor specific compression, so a company could develop whatever kind of compression they want. Hell, they could include zip compression if they waned.
 
brazzam said:
Definitely worth sharing, thanks! I just finished watching the whole thing with our pal Dan and it was cool to see all the information we've been discussing being demonstrated.

One thing I found of interest was Dan's discussion on the 2K RAW aliasing issue and it's cause. According to Sony (via Dan's recollection) it's due to a mild OLP filter that was used on the FS700 and a Sony rep suggests that using a third-party filter (like a Pro-Mist 1/8) will help alleviate the issue. Dan does say that CD has not tested to confirm this solution, but that was new information that I had not heard before. You can see Dan's comments starting at 1:35:00 in the video, if you're curious.
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I didn't have time to watch it yet...
That Pro-Mist solution is also new to me... thanks! Would be worth a try :)
 
Promist will add a global softening ie soften everything not just frequencies close to the pixel size?

It may be 'a look', but it wont 'work'?
 
Just wanted to express my thanks to Convergent Design for working so hard to make this great product available to us, and to Mitch and Dan for being so patient and open in their communication. Looking forward especially to a possible HD 10-bit 4:2:2 solution; could really use that in upcoming jobs.
I just posted a request on the Sony forum to implore them to make the full potential of the FS700 accessible to CD and to its users. We all know that big companies can seem cold and hard to reach and influence, but if we don't try to convey our thoughts surely nothing will happen. I think it a good thing that Sony is willing to coöperate. Let's cheer them on!
 
Judging by the jumping up and down on the thread I thought all the 4k had been removed?

You get Hd derived from 4k and 4k-422 in time?

This seems excellent and already a serious reason not to buy an f5

I don't think anyone ever expected or announced 4k raw did they?
 
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