Odyssey7Q April 2014 Firmware Update
- Thread starter Mitch Gross
- Start date
rheinturmblau
Well-known member
I guess this forum will not be the only place, where CD receives feedback. I would expect much more pressure from their dealers. Dealers observe many aspects, e.g. reliable shipping dates (that might be another story). I guess, they need a cheer up, too.
I do software development myself and from my point of view, CD's management of development processes is causing that type of delay, not the single engineer or a buggy hickup. From an outside perspective, the developers are still chasing too many Features the same time. Someone is responsible for their priorities. Important features seem to be coded by a single person, if I read behind lines and excuses. I hope it's not one of the business owners himself ("The Nerd"). Modern development suites offer team management tools, major companies combine power of several teams to push important projects. There is no technical need to be dependent on a single person. Or go single-threaded. I know, CD is a small firm, their development team might be only a very, very small bunch of people (raise prices, hire people, deliver).
If you have a development pipeline, that is running far behind its targets, the company needs to react. Not being able to handle common standards like 1080p50/60 or 720p in a relevant codec is not funny. Revealing a product for 4K compressed recording in April 2013 and not being able to support that format today (or near future) is even worse. Instead of throwing all available resources into solving those core tasks, the company forks out new devices like Athena. This is adding more complexity to the coding job, instead of reducing it. Even if Athena is a sibling product of Odyssee7Q, they promise streaming, device grouping and other additional functions. Is this another empty promise by now (bad) or did they pull away capacity from current tasks (worse)?
I hope, the dealers will set a clear agenda: Deliver the products you promise. Deliver mature products. Be more reliable in meeting targets. Therefore, visiting Expos around the globe could be very useful. I cannot see, that Athena will be ready for sale in Q4 2014, if it uses the same code. If CD is able to ship hardware, the buyers will join our Waiting-for-the-Firmware queue.
My expectation is: We will read much more postings in this forum, until the mission is done.
We might not be in the middle of the storm, it might be just the beginning.
Mitch and Dan are Marketing and Sales people, they cannot change or speed up the development processes. I hope their bosses understand. I really appreciate Mitch's and Dan's style of communication and regret, that they have such a difficult work to do.
I would be more than happy, if the nice little gear on top of my camera would do the relevant features, that have been promised last year. So no need to sell it, from today"s perspective.
I do software development myself and from my point of view, CD's management of development processes is causing that type of delay, not the single engineer or a buggy hickup. From an outside perspective, the developers are still chasing too many Features the same time. Someone is responsible for their priorities. Important features seem to be coded by a single person, if I read behind lines and excuses. I hope it's not one of the business owners himself ("The Nerd"). Modern development suites offer team management tools, major companies combine power of several teams to push important projects. There is no technical need to be dependent on a single person. Or go single-threaded. I know, CD is a small firm, their development team might be only a very, very small bunch of people (raise prices, hire people, deliver).
If you have a development pipeline, that is running far behind its targets, the company needs to react. Not being able to handle common standards like 1080p50/60 or 720p in a relevant codec is not funny. Revealing a product for 4K compressed recording in April 2013 and not being able to support that format today (or near future) is even worse. Instead of throwing all available resources into solving those core tasks, the company forks out new devices like Athena. This is adding more complexity to the coding job, instead of reducing it. Even if Athena is a sibling product of Odyssee7Q, they promise streaming, device grouping and other additional functions. Is this another empty promise by now (bad) or did they pull away capacity from current tasks (worse)?
I hope, the dealers will set a clear agenda: Deliver the products you promise. Deliver mature products. Be more reliable in meeting targets. Therefore, visiting Expos around the globe could be very useful. I cannot see, that Athena will be ready for sale in Q4 2014, if it uses the same code. If CD is able to ship hardware, the buyers will join our Waiting-for-the-Firmware queue.
My expectation is: We will read much more postings in this forum, until the mission is done.
We might not be in the middle of the storm, it might be just the beginning.
Mitch and Dan are Marketing and Sales people, they cannot change or speed up the development processes. I hope their bosses understand. I really appreciate Mitch's and Dan's style of communication and regret, that they have such a difficult work to do.
I would be more than happy, if the nice little gear on top of my camera would do the relevant features, that have been promised last year. So no need to sell it, from today"s perspective.
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Mitch Gross
Veteran
While the guesses and presumptions of our corporate structure, etc. may be interesting on an internet forum thread, I can tell you that they have little basis in reality. I will not share such information about our company, but I will say that most of this speculation is wildly off base.
We will have more features for you soon.
We will have more features for you soon.
cuervo
Veteran
It appears speculation, fantasy, and WAGging is quite popular with many posters, here. Despite the bandwidth spent, now and in the past, intending to lite a fire under C-D, C-D plods along in their own unique way. Some folks just can't accept that. So, creating drama is all that's left them. Personally, I'd just as soon see utter silence than the often offered, "soon". Just my $.02 US. So, as long as I'm occupying bandwidth, I'll add to the melieu by remarking that I'd sure like to see DNxHD, as was originally promised. Despite local indications that ProRes is the cat's meow, DNxHD remains an important codec in many quarters. ProRes is a rather arcane codec that offers no real advantages over DNxHD, except that clients keep asking for it...
. At first blush, a variable bitrate looked attractive, but, since it has a bitrate cap, there is really no difference to DNxHD except that I have to use my Mac to encode it. With over 15000 views, this thread is ready to be turned off.
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Did you buy a 7Q and do you rely on that as your primary source of income?
I'm sorry Mitch, but it's time to get back to reality. Here's what you did. You decided to appease the market by over promising and under delivering. You made a guess at the features you could deliver and you wildly speculated about the timescale in which you could deliver them. You know why you did that? To sell units. That makes sense. But don't be all surprised that people are getting pi55ed at your constant BS about delivery dates and vagueness about what you did say and what you didn't say. I see that Gene just pulled up your last promise about having a firmware update within a month or even better, way under a month. And yet again, you're not able to meet that promise. Really Mitch, another missed deadline? And you still appear to remain unfazed about that.
And so now I'm left with 50% of the product that I paid for, with no real idea of when I will get the other 50%. As I remember, I didn't keep you hanging on for 50% of the money for the product. No, you made sure you got it 100%, upfront. Would you call that fair, Mitch?
100% on failed promises. You're consistent, if nothing else.
And so now I'm left with 50% of the product that I paid for, with no real idea of when I will get the other 50%. As I remember, I didn't keep you hanging on for 50% of the money for the product. No, you made sure you got it 100%, upfront. Would you call that fair, Mitch?
100% on failed promises. You're consistent, if nothing else.
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Essami
Well-known member
I was sent a new unit.
My Odyssey had several issues. Faulty clips, touchscreen popped up menus on it's own and the AC adapter was stuck in the power jack and needed to be detached with brute force. Haven't had any issues with the new unit, fingers crossed.
Just be aware that if you do have to send your Odyssey back to CD (from outside UK or USA) it took over three weeks for me to get a new one (shipping included). So factor that in. But everything takes ages when one does it from Finland, took over four weeks to get my FS700 firmware upgrade.
Essami
Well-known member
I need to shoot 50fps slow motion in a shoot with the O7Q. The slow&quick motion only offers 100-200fps so do I select 2K 50p for this? Is it 50p and will playback 25p or do I have to conform in Premiere afterwards?
Testing with the O7Q it plays back slow mo, but I'm away from my computer so can't test how it will behave in Premiere.
Testing with the O7Q it plays back slow mo, but I'm away from my computer so can't test how it will behave in Premiere.
i think this is depending on the rest of your workflow (ie whether you are going through resolve or ACR). but since you are capturing RAW stills, you can set whatever framerate you like, without loss in quality or any other problems.
setting a 50p clip in premiere to half speed is one click, so i would not bother about the framerate while shooting. and yes, select 2k 50p or 4k 50p.
setting a 50p clip in premiere to half speed is one click, so i would not bother about the framerate while shooting. and yes, select 2k 50p or 4k 50p.
Colinelves
Well-known member
Yes, as, set it to 50p. The playback rate for the clips can be set on the Odyssey itself. Just change it from 'follows input' to '25p' and they'll playback at half speed on the odyssey and your NLE
I'd just like a damn bug fix firmware update - pretty tired of waiting now for something that was promissed to be a much quicker process. Clearly CD aren't releasing a bug fix FW on it's own and are waiting for new features to be finished. Mitch - correct me if I'm wrong. Surely bug fixes that are introduced as part of a new firmware should be rapidly deployed without having to wait for new features? surely!!!
hambulance
Member
As a PC workstation user, I can't encode in Prores (not an issue). I've typically used DNxHD, but it does not seem to support 4K and to me is 'artifacty'. I've been looking at Cineform (owned by goPro) and it looks like a much better/cleaner & cpu-friendlier intermediate codec. I'm currently trying it and it's really clean, what are the chances the O7Q would or could use this? The reason I ask is Cineform when pushed hard, still looks so clean.
From tests I've seen with it's variable rate and constant quality (excuse my lack of exact terminology). It looks much cleaner than DNxHD and Prores in comparable formats. I don't know what GoPro are doing with such a great cinematic codec. I just imagine what this would be like with the O7Q. I'm sure CD have enough on their plate already, by a read of this thread.
From tests I've seen with it's variable rate and constant quality (excuse my lack of exact terminology). It looks much cleaner than DNxHD and Prores in comparable formats. I don't know what GoPro are doing with such a great cinematic codec. I just imagine what this would be like with the O7Q. I'm sure CD have enough on their plate already, by a read of this thread.
hambulance
Member
Thanks for the tip, yes, I have seen a few of these, they use a [FONT=Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]FFMPEG implementation which exhibits gamma shifts. For an intermediary codec I don't want any perceptible changes to manage. Official Apple ProRes on Windows is like $5000 through something like this [/FONT]http://www.assimilateinc.com/products/scratch. Cineform which you can own for $300 from what I can see is a cleaner better performing codec (albeit slightly if at all compared to prores) for windows systems anyway. DNxHD is free! But does not support 4K from my last check and I see compression artifacts when I pixel peep.
These are my initial assumptions, I'm going to run Cineform through it's paces, from some 4K raw and see how it performs.
Miraizon tell me that the codecs are QuickTime components that install into QuickTime. There are no FFMPEG installs etc, so unless I've missed anything, I don't think it's using that at all. Have you tried it yourself? I've not looked carefully for any gamma shifts. I certainly didn't notice anything but will have another look.
Clermond
Veteran
that was ten days ago. Broadcast Asia is over for two days.
More than two months since last update. Oh man...
i just finished a good shoot, going on a surf trip to Nicaragua for 3 weeks until July 12th. If no firmware is out by then, it will be painfully obvious something is very, very wrong at Convergent.