Odyssey7Q April 2014 Firmware Update

The thing that is galling about about buying gear that has promised updates is that sometimes we buy and sell more with our desires than our experience. It is my experience that updates are always late where price increases are always early. I bought the c500 largely on the promise of the q7 turning it into an everything machine- you know the saying you can't have everything? Well here I am in Havana, Cuba shooting the Ballet de Cuba. The c500/q7 with the new Helix is a superb combination and performing beautifully except for one promised update that I don't have and it is proving very, very frustrating. 120fps- a promised update, I paid a huge up charge to CD to have full use of the c500- 70% again the cost of the q7. Some of the greatest dancing in the world and no slo mo. What a waste of an opportunity, and don't say I should have brought more gear. This is Cuba and there are restrictions on amount of gear you can bring in. I travel a lot in off beat places and that is why I invested in the c500/q7 because often you are limited to what you can bring/carry. I am willing to invest more into CD products but they must get real about what they promise so that we can fulfill our and our producers desires on some kind of a reasonable schedule.. And the ***** of it is I know the guys at CD desire to create the best monitor/recorder in the world. It must be very frustrating for them also to not be able to deliver. They can't deliver 120fps. I can't deliver 120 fps. So- folie a deux instead of pas a deux. Like they say it takes two to Tango.
 
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jshbckr said:
Hopefully the finish line is soon. I've got a shoot in late July that would be awfully nice to have either 1080p60 ProRes or compressed 4K (up to 60p would be a cherry on top for compressed 4K)... Are any new features coming in this firmware update?
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There are new features in the next firmware, not just bug fixes. As noted previously, compressed 4K will not make it into the next release.
 
Clermond said:
As said before if you review the correlation of firmware and feature announcement and realization I would not expect 4K ProRes before October. If you need compressed 4K I'd recommend to search in time for another solution.
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Luckily my 4K productions are mostly passion projects and music videos, none of my clients are looking for 4K yet. I'd love to have compressed 4K, but I'll live without it.

It's a little crazy to think about the fact that I preordered the Odyssey7Q exactly one year ago today... And I was so excited for their July launch because I had a great project in early August that I was imagining shooting in 4K... Of course it was shot 1080p AVCHD. And here we are a year later, still without compressed 4K. Don't get me wrong, I've captured amazing things with the 7Q and it has completely transformed my camera into a beast of a machine. But I've learned some valuable lessons in working with what you have and not putting too much into all the "coming soon!" stuff. This doesn't just apply to Convergent Design, as I'm sure many BlackMagic users have learned the same lesson.
 
"This doesn't just apply to Convergent Design, as I'm sure many BlackMagic users have learned the same lesson."

It applies to EVERY vendor. After years of buying hardware and software the best advice I can give is
if it isn't delivered and working properly don't count or plan on it no matter what the vendors say.
 
I work in a different space, pretty much just uploading videos to YouTube and monetizing, etc. So, i don't exactly have producers asking for 4K like some who work in the film/television industry. But, the audience is now looking for 4K. Some content creators that cross with my audience are uploading in 4K now. I'm aware that YouTube compression isn't the greatest, but it's considered high end by the audience there. Kind of a new buzzword, and i think there are views to be had JUST for offering 4K now. I was really hoping to beat most of my peers to the punch by having the 7Q. Unfortunately, the RAW just is a bit unwieldy to be working with right now. So, the day that 4K compressed arrives i'll get to join the 4K movement that's starting on YouTube itself.

I'm writing this to say that i believe that 4K is coming to mainstream faster than some think. Hope the 4K compressed isn't far behind the next update!
 
ChadN said:
I'm writing this to say that i believe that 4K is coming to mainstream faster than some think. Hope the 4K compressed isn't far behind the next update!
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I second that! And if not for your daily work it is at least something you have to put NOW into your shopping window and show it to your clients. c'mon C-D get the act together.
 
Mitch, what is going on here? It's been six weeks since you said it would be under a month for the next firmware update. How are you managing to get the predicted dates for firmware releases so wrong? Simply not good enough.
 
I don't make up these dates out of thin air. I go by what the engineering staff tells me. Unfortunately, two things keep playing out:

1. Engineers are always overly optimistic about how long something will take to accomplish.
2. There are unexpected complications and then there are VERY UNEXPECTED complications.

#2 is the one that appears to have really hit us this time. A major function we thought would be completed in May took another six weeks to get the bugs out. I and others have been testing beta versions for weeks and pointing out issues that needed to get fixed before the firmware could be released. And when they fix one thing out pops a couple new ones. But it looks like we're in the home stretch now.
 
Hellou,

I think at this point it would appropriate to tell us what kind of fs700 upgrade are we looking for, so we can stop daydreaming...the only thing we know
is that we can't expect 4k compressed and that is a huge bummer - beacause that is something everyone is absolutely looking for...but can you at least tell us what are we looking for in the next firmware upgrade?
 
Mitch Gross said:
I don't make up these dates out of thin air. I go by what the engineering staff tells me. Unfortunately, two things keep playing out:

1. Engineers are always overly optimistic about how long something will take to accomplish.
2. There are unexpected complications and then there are VERY UNEXPECTED complications.

#2 is the one that appears to have really hit us this time. A major function we thought would be completed in May took another six weeks to get the bugs out. I and others have been testing beta versions for weeks and pointing out issues that needed to get fixed before the firmware could be released. And when they fix one thing out pops a couple new ones. But it looks like we're in the home stretch now.
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'When he got home, a sad spectacle offered itself the first thing to his eyes.'

Hamlet, Prince Of Denmark, by William Shakespeare.
 
I expect you will all know soon enough. But if I tell you something today and then we discover an issue and hold it back, y'all wouldn't be happy.
 
hi Mitch... I wonder if you could chat a little abut the proposed timelapse feature... Not when it will be released... More about the mechanism you might use to do it.

On the Blackmagic, it seems like they record the full 24fps and then delete the unwanted files, on the fly. This completely eliminates the problem of flicker you find in the traditional timelapse technique of only recording the required frame. Is this something you see CD doing to?

Of course, this technique also limits your ability to go under a shutter speed of 1/24 (on 24p base), so a system that would revert back to the more traditional method, when dialing in a really long shutter would probably be needed.

Just food for thought.
 
Jay Birch said:
hi Mitch... I wonder if you could chat a little abut the proposed timelapse feature... Not when it will be released... More about the mechanism you might use to do it.

On the Blackmagic, it seems like they record the full 24fps and then delete the unwanted files, on the fly. This completely eliminates the problem of flicker you find in the traditional timelapse technique of only recording the required frame. Is this something you see CD doing to?

Of course, this technique also limits your ability to go under a shutter speed of 1/24 (on 24p base), so a system that would revert back to the more traditional method, when dialing in a really long shutter would probably be needed.

Just food for thought.
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How would this eliminate the flicker? In my experience, longer shutters = smoother time-lapse. Like you said, this limited you to 1/24 shutter, which I think would have flicker. Does it average out parts of the image to create a blended image?

Personally, I'm a fan of just capturing manually. However many frames I indicate with a shutter speed that I set myself.
 
We are a bit limited in that we cannot control the settings of the camera itself, only capture its output. I can tell you that we are open to input on how people would prefer this to work. My suggestion to the engineers was to be able to program a number of frames total captured (say, a 1000 frame shot), the interval between captured frames (say, 5 seconds) and the number of frames per burst (say, up to 10). I know that some timelapse shooters like to capture several frames in a burst so that they can choose a best one in case there is something moving through the shot or so they can blend several frames together. Parameters such as exposure time would need to be set on the camera itself.

I believe it is best not to try to have the Odyssey7Q control the camera and initiate a trigger on it for each exposure. Many caneras have a start up time and a roll up of timecode as well as a need to ramp up the exposure and focus circuits. All of which would be a nightmare to deal with in time-lapse. Better to leave the camera running hot all the time and have the Odyssey chose when to capture the frames.

We might utilize some of the operational memory within the Odyssey to capture a number of frames in a buffer and then dump them onto the SSDs. That way we don't keep an open file going on the SSD all the time. This is safer for your files, as well as far less power draining. Always factors when shooting time-lapse.

Any other thoughts?
 
this really sounds great and very well thought. i am looking forward to the timelapse feature, and for myself a stripped down functionality would be great too (what doesnt mean it could not be improved in the future): i just want to able to program the interval between captured frames (which in my opinion shouldnt be too hard to implement).

one thougt about the improved features, especially about the burst recording: there might be a conflict with exposure time and the interval bewteen the burst images (i plan to do a lot of long-time exposure captures at night, as one of my clients is in the astronomy business). so it might be good to have an option to set this interval too (or maybe just to be able to disable it).
 
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Could a time-lapse feature average a number of frames, reducing noise and creating an interesting motion blur?

cheers
Paul
 
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