Odyssey7Q+, and support for Odyssey7Q

Clermond said:
this is something I don't understand. Convergent changes plans and has a delay for months with promised and paid in advance features and people thank for hard work and apologize for having complained.

I am not interested in 4K over HDMI at all and if I had a G4 or A7s as B-Cam I would go definitely for the Shogun. For me the 7Q+ is another example of C-D's inconsistent policy.
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Clermond,

My initial aim with posting to this thread was to respond to your post, in which you suggested that the 7Q may no longer get certain upgrades, and your relating this to a potential higher processing power of the 7q+. I then proceeded to layout some potential scenarios, without necessarily qualifying their probabilities.

It was not meant as a complaint. Also, in the process, Mitch's response to it suggested that perhaps I misrepresented him as a professional and a person. Being that this was not my intent and that I respect him as a professional and a person, I was more than glad to clear up any miscommunication. Any frustration I may experience from time to time as a result of late firmware
upgrades or timeline changes are not mutually exclusive for my appreciation of the good things CD and Mitch have done as a company.

Now, you are also entitled to your opinion on the matter and I appreciate your comments...certainly enough to respond. I hope it's ok that I'm not of the mind state to be very upset with CD. I purchased the item as is, knowing that if they decided to discontinue the 7Q today (please y'all, I'm not saying they will!!), that they are legally allowed to do so and that I knew this was a possibility when I purchased the 7Q...as with other items I purchase. Plus, i wouldn't resort to venting my frustration by personally attacking Mitch (not saying you are). After all, he's a human being, with a family. Those things matter more to me. And in my opinion, my interpreting his response as him potentially feeling he had been personally attacked by me (my interpretation, not a fact), led me to want to clarify.

I wouldn't let my comments get to you, assuming they did since you chose to respond in the way you did. You probably have more important things to devote attention to and frankly, this is not the most productive contribution to this thread...in my humble opinion. Then again, what do I know? I'm just a junior member here. I say this sincerely. And if I have misinterpreted you, then I have no problem extending my apologies to you as well. I just imagine the best case scenario in this forum as it being a welcoming place for folks of different opinions and skill levels to have productive dialogue and where posts are interpreted in their most positive way first as opposed to just defaulting to the negative right away. And while that is often the case that this forum is a source of richly productive dialogue, I suspect perhaps my involvement here in this thread is not the most productive use of this forum.

Respectfully, Rafael
 
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Onion skinning
Timelapse ( i had to use a 150gb timelapse file last week for just 15 secs)
UHD 50p
4K Prores
240p prores
100p prores
100p uhd prores

The list goes on about sexy stuff we want added.
 
Mitch Gross said:
First off, I am not a PR person.

I am the Director of Communications at Convergent-Design. As such I do try to be in contact with users on forums such as this as well as in many other ways. I also work with our third party manufacturers and work directly with the companies such as Sony and Canon who make the cameras our products interact with. Not to sit here and toot my own horn, but I am not a flack, a spin guy, a marketer or other public relations type whose job it is to take the company line as handed down from others and try to sell it to the public. I am a decision maker within our company. I may not be a programmer or an electrical engineer, but I was a cinematographer for 20 years with a couple dozen features and hundreds of other projects under my belt. I also worked for the better part of a decade at AbelCine, consulting with end users as well as manufacturers on the available technologies and their use. I believe that I can safely state that I have some knowledge and the reputation and experience to prove it.

That all said, let me once more categorically state that other than the higher capability of the HDMI input (allowing 4K/UHD as well as 1080p60), there is no difference in the capabilities of the Odyssey7Q and the Odyssey7Q+. Furthermore we would NEVER cripple the Odyssey7Q and al of our future firmware updates will apply to the Odyssey7, Odyssey7Q and Odyssey7Q+ as functionally makes sense. That "makes sense" is not a secret code, it is just to separate the Odyssey7 from the other two and between the 7Q and the 7Q+ separate those HDMI functions. And that's it.
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PR - period. You are talking publicly to potential customers, and try to convince as much people to buy your product - and you promise whatever it takes to make that happen. That's how i see it, honestly.

On the other hand you also care for customers with problems of your product, which i appreciate, but those two things do not have anything to do with each other.
 
Rafael,

You are a polite and considerate person. I did not take offense, but I did want to steer the conversation back to reality as opposed to conjecture.

abreu-canedo said:
Mitch,

Forgive me if my calling you a PR person undervalues the entirety of the work you do as Director of Communication at CD. This was not my intent. I'm aware of your history with Able Cine and your technical expertise--not to be underestimated. I suppose I just meant that part of what it seems you do as Director of Communication at CD is relate with the public--so to speak. And as such, there is a tact to that. I thought it was a fair statement to make and marketing speech does not inherently imply misleading. I won't belabor this any further, I just wanted to clarify what was an informal response to another post on this thread. When I said PR person, that was not meant pejoratively, nor to call into question your character and skills. I respect you as a professional and a human being, and I hope you keep this in mind as you read this or any other of my posts.

Lastly, I was not accusing you of using misleading speech, nor of crippling the 7Q. I was simply laying out some imagined scenarios and responding to others concerns that we're being expressed in this thread. I never qualified the probability of any scenarios I mentioned, nor make definitive suggestions about the intentions of you as a person or CD as a company. My main point was to inform others on this thread of your statement about the comparable capabilities of the 7Q and the 7Q+ because speculations about the 7Q not getting certain firmware updates were expressed in this thread.

Thank you for clarifying. There are now less scenarios and possibilities for us to consider here (although I can only speak for myself) and I'm sure that for myself and others this new release and direction feels much less "murky". I can only hope that the roadmap for the 7Q remains as positive as you have suggested here and in other threads I have no reason to believe otherwise, since my technical expertise is limited, and I look forward to seeing this piece of equipment (which I gladly purchased) continue to grow.

Thank you for your hard work.
-Sincerely, me!
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Martin.G said:
Onion skinning
Timelapse ( i had to use a 150gb timelapse file last week for just 15 secs)
UHD 50p
4K Prores
240p prores
100p prores
100p uhd prores

The list goes on about sexy stuff we want added.
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Our list is even longer.

Note that other than onion-skinning, everything in your list is recording functions. Almost half of our users are monitor-only clients, and they are constantly asking about those functions. So we have many priorities and we are trying to fulfill them in appropriate areas as quickly and effectively as possible. You will find that there are a few new functions coming in the new firmware that have not yet been discussed.
 
Sounds great, Mitch.

Hey, is there a good place for me to submit a bug? A few times now, i've hit the play/rec button and it's actually begun recording video (rather than switch to play or rec mode). This might have happened a few times while hitting the "zoom" button as well.

Anyone else have that happen?

That said, i've been really enjoying shooting with the 7Q lately.
 
ChadN said:
Sounds great, Mitch.

Hey, is there a good place for me to submit a bug? A few times now, i've hit the play/rec button and it's actually begun recording video (rather than switch to play or rec mode). This might have happened a few times while hitting the "zoom" button as well.

Anyone else have that happen?

That said, i've been really enjoying shooting with the 7Q lately.
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Ive had an issue where the Odyssey makes 1 sec files that are corrupt. Previously I have not seen how this happens but on my last shoot I saw it happen while I pressed the power off button. The recording was on for one second or less. Weird thing is that the next Odyssey file has the same timecode start as the corrupt file.

You can email cdsupport@convergent-design.com and if you have corrupt files send those to them. Prepare for a little wait though. I waited a week for an answer.
 
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I honestly feel a bit disappointed by Convergent lately. The 7Q+ is a pretty major debacle any way you look at it. Yes, it's now a good recorder but it took a long time and a lot of stress to get their.

I guess what really has me a bit disheartened is the price of the 7Q Extended Warranty - $250 for one year or $450 for three. That's really, really expensive.

I feel like Convergent has really put 7Q users through a lot of ups and downs, way more than any customer deserves and they could have given existing 7Q users who bore the brunt of the firmware debacle a break on the extended warranty. Maybe keep the higher price for new buyers but give back sometime (lower price extended warranty) to the 7Q users who bought theirs before the 7Q+. Why? Because for many early 7Q owners, the units barely worked as recorders until the first firmware release almost 5 months into the cycle. It's was so glitchy, then we had to contend with so much drama with subsequent firmware releases.

I feel like the 7Q is something that needs an extended warranty because it does seem like quite a few have had bad units, but the extended warranty is so expensive.

Just to compare - a three year warranty on an iMac (cost $2000) is $199 and Samys is offering me $400 for a 3 year warranty on the FS7 + Back Recorder which is $10,000. That's so much more reasonable than what CD is offering.

Please reconsider the price on the extended warranty for existing 7Q customers to something reasonable. It's the least you can do for the super drama filled first year and to rehabilitate the companies image which took a beating with the 7Q.
 
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gene_can_sing said:
Please reconsider the price on the extended warranty for existing 7Q customers to something reasonable. It's the least you can do for the super drama filled first year and to rehabilitate the companies image which took a beating with the 7Q.
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With all the trouble I've had on my odyssey (pun intended) I'd love to see this happen. :)
 
gene_can_sing said:
I honestly feel a bit disappointed by Convergent lately. The 7Q+ is a pretty major debacle any way you look at it. Yes, it's now a good recorder but it took a long time and a lot of stress to get their.

I guess what really has me a bit disheartened is the price of the 7Q Extended Warranty - $250 for one year or $450 for three. That's really, really expensive.

I feel like Convergent has really put 7Q users through a lot of ups and downs, way more than any customer deserves and they could have given existing 7Q users who bore the brunt of the firmware debacle a break on the extended warranty. Maybe keep the higher price for new buyers but give back sometime (lower price extended warranty) to the 7Q users who bought theirs before the 7Q+. Why? Because for many early 7Q owners, the units barely worked as recorders until the first firmware release almost 5 months into the cycle. It's was so glitchy, then we had to contend with so much drama with subsequent firmware releases.

I feel like the 7Q is something that needs an extended warranty because it does seem like quite a few have had bad units, but the extended warranty is so expensive.

Just to compare - a three year warranty on an iMac (cost $2000) is $199 and Samys is offering me $400 for a 3 year warranty on the FS7 + Back Recorder which is $10,000. That's so much more reasonable than what CD is offering.

Please reconsider the price on the extended warranty for existing 7Q customers to something reasonable. It's the least you can do for the super drama filled first year and to rehabilitate the companies image which took a beating with the 7Q.
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CD gives 7Q owners a free extra year of warranty if you buy the 7Q+... but I almost feel like all 7Q warranties should re-start from October, the point in which we actually got the UHD ProRes recording mode that the 7Q was supposed to ship with. Haha, won't happen, but a man can dream!

There is no denying that from the day of buying the 7Q, I was able to capture more/better video from the FS700... it's just that for a long time it was only 2K RAW... big files and had aliasing issues. 5 months later we had 4K RAW (massive and unwieldy) and ProRes (1080p, finally!) and then another 6 months after that we got UHD ProRes. It took an awfully long time to get the things we were told we would get immediately. But of course after you drop several thousand dollars on something, you're at the mercy of CD unless you want to sell it. Anything CD gave us on the 7Q was better than what we were capturing internally on the FS700, so you had to just take what it had and be happy with it.

I dunno, of course all of that is in the past now. The 7Q has UHD ProRes, 1080p ProRes up to 60p, RAW... It's just a bummer that I used up all of my warranty to get here.
 
jshbckr said:
I dunno, of course all of that is in the past now. The 7Q has UHD ProRes, 1080p ProRes up to 60p, RAW... It's just a bummer that I used up all of my warranty to get here.
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I feel ya Josh. I think that the least CD could do, especially in light of the 7Q+, is to extend the warranty for existing 7Q owners by 1 year, or charge a reasonable fee (I don't mind paying, just not these inflated prices). That's an olive branch that will go a long ways for all the crazy 7Q drama everyone had to endure. The 7Q has a left a bad taste towards CD for many people and they should try to do some PR work to repair their image.

Basically with the 7Q+, the resale value on my 7Q took a massive hit and is now an end of life product after just 1 year.
 
gene_can_sing said:
I feel ya Josh. I think that the least CD could do, especially in light of the 7Q+, is to extend the warranty for existing 7Q owners by 1 year, or charge a reasonable fee (I don't mind paying, just not these inflated prices). That's an olive branch that will go a long ways for all the crazy 7Q drama everyone had to endure. The 7Q has a left a bad taste towards CD for many people and they should try to do some PR work to repair their image.

Basically with the 7Q+, the resale value on my 7Q took a massive hit and is now an end of life product after just 1 year.
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And to sound like a broken record and beat a dead horse: It's "outdated" a month after getting it's advertised launch feature.

I wouldn't say it's end of life, they have said they are continuing to support it with firmware updates. But actions speak louder than words, as we've learned here. Sometimes it's hard for me to reconcile pre-paying for "promised features" when the Odyssey7Q website says (and I quote) "All specifications are subject to change without notice." I know it's a typical legal line but they don't really have any obligation to further implement user-loadable LUTs or any other features that were talked about in the past. They already ditched Bluetooth (not a big deal, but it was a cool feature when I was dropping money on the 7Q).
 
jshbckr said:
They already ditched Bluetooth (not a big deal, but it was a cool feature when I was dropping money on the 7Q).
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Was it only the monitoring that was dropped, no? There won't even be an app where one could input the metadata remotely?
 
Yeah. When we finally have a unit that can deliver what i bought it to produce, the warranty expires.

Its amazing, really.
 
Martin.G said:
Theres a new firmware soon?
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Yes, releasing at the same time as the Odyssey7Q+ ships.

For all those thinking that we are somehow leaving the Odyssey7Q behind, I note that this new firmware will have features for the Odyssey7, the Odyssey7Q as well as the Odyssey7Q+. And that is exacty how we plan to do things moving forward.
 
ChadN said:
Sounds great, Mitch.

Hey, is there a good place for me to submit a bug? A few times now, i've hit the play/rec button and it's actually begun recording video (rather than switch to play or rec mode). This might have happened a few times while hitting the "zoom" button as well.

Anyone else have that happen?

That said, i've been really enjoying shooting with the 7Q lately.
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Can't say I recall hearing that particular one.

The best place to submit bug reports or to ask technical questions is cdsupport -- at -- convergent-design -- dot -- com. I will always try to answer my best, but I am not one of the engineers and this is what these people are there for. Just last week we hired another person primarily to assist with technical support.
 
Fader8 said:
does the Odyssey 7Q needs a license to record UHD ProRes?

Cheers
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No, as long as the source is a video source. A camera such as the F55 outputs UHD as a standard video signal and the Odyssey7Q & Odyssey7Q+ can record this out of the box. For a camera that only outputs UHD as a RAW signal, such as the FS700, a Record Option is required to read that RAW data. Then the signal can be recorded in RAW or transformed into video and recorded as ProRes.
 
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