Odyssey7Q February 2014 Firmware Update

Hmmmppf....

At the very LEAST, releasing a maintenance release to fix the outstanding and existing operational issues seems to have been in order, at least a month ago. To have us wait for some nebulous, "can't be mentioned", proprietary codec seems unreasonable. But what do I know? Scrap it and go DNxHD. There's a whole cadre of DNxHD users, as can be seen be a short review of comments, elsewhere. If this missing link is Prores, dump it!

There, I said it! Now, with my advice, all the other comments, and $2, you can get a cup of coffee. Not sure what the real issues are, here, but, this is nonsense. But, I do have my experience working for a small company; and I know what complications have to be dealt with every day. My sympathies go out to you Mitch, Dan, Mike, and everyone at C-D. Keep on truckin'.
 
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I ejected all apple products out of my life last year because of the closed eco system, and now they're back in my life being a nuisance, lol.

+1 couldn't care less about the voldemort codec. We're now ebbing into month 5 since release. I hope things get rolling soon!
 
People who promise clients functionality that they neither have in their hand nor have personally tested... I don't understand. I'm not trying to say we shouldn't be disappointed by the news - I just don't understand this complaint. My clients don't even know about the firmware's capabilities as I'm not going to offer it until I know it's in my hand and working great. Now, you're mad because something you promised to your customer isn't going to be available because of a broken promise that's outside of your control. Well, that's exactly what CD is feeling. You and CD made the same mistake... the result of a series of cascading promises.

For me, I understand CD is developing something from scratch with TONS of constantly changing parts as well as various corporations they have to work with. I mean, look, they already successfully negotiated with Sony to get us 4K RAW... that's incredible!

Sure a maintenance release would be great. Absolutely. But that would require them to disable all the ProRes code, and then spend a week or two quality control testing this new version of the firmware to make sure disabling the ProRes code didn't break something else. In that time, Apple will probably come through with certification and then all that work would be moot. These features aren't in some checkbox system they can go through and easily activate and deactivate... this is lines upon lines upon lines of complex code. I dare say, a system infinitely more complex than any edit we've taken upon ourselves. Coding is a whole different ball game.

Mitch has expressed that Apple's delay surprised them as well, and says that they and Apple had a discussed timeframe for this project. I HIGHLY doubt they would have promised February without some assurance from Apple that given a submission by X date that they'd have certification by the end of the month.

CD continues to impress me. Calling the O7Q "vaporware" is simply not fair to the team of people who are still working terribly hard to make us a cool tool. Many of us have the device and are using its 2K RAW functionality to impressive results. I myself love it even as just a monitor - it probably is my favorite filmmaking tool I've bought in a long time.

I understand the frustration, I really do... They didn't meet their deadline, one we are all anticipating and looking forward to immensely. But this is the same company we were praising a week ago for their 4K RAW announcement, and now we're turning on them? Just seems a bit fickle to me. I've never seen a company work harder to make an awesome product and fight for/listen to the end users like CD has. And because of that, they've earned a little slack from me.
 
brazzam said:
People who promise clients functionality that they neither have in their hand nor have personally tested... I don't understand. I'm not trying to say we shouldn't be disappointed by the news - I just don't understand this complaint. My clients don't even know about the firmware's capabilities as I'm not going to offer it until I know it's in my hand and working great. Now, you're mad because something you promised to your customer isn't going to be available because of a broken promise that's outside of your control. Well, that's exactly what CD is feeling. You and CD made the same mistake... the result of a series of cascading promises.
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I'm not entirely sure who you're aiming that at, however from my perspective:

- The majority of my clients are pretty well informed, they know what's available and what's not.
- The promises I've made to my clients will be delivered, either using the Odyssey 7Qs that we have invested in, or by hiring in the Sony external recorder. Each time I'm forced to do the latter, the outlay comes directly off the return on investment on the 7Q. In quite simple terms, it is costing my business money.

There's not a great deal that CD can do about non certification, however they have the ability to sort out the bugs and functionality issues right now.
 
Stuart Keasley said:
I'm not entirely sure who you're aiming that at, however from my perspective:

- The majority of my clients are pretty well informed, they know what's available and what's not.
- The promises I've made to my clients will be delivered, either using the Odyssey 7Qs that we have invested in, or by hiring in the Sony external recorder. Each time I'm forced to do the latter, the outlay comes directly off the return on investment on the 7Q. In quite simple terms, it is costing my business money.

There's not a great deal that CD can do about non certification, however they have the ability to sort out the bugs and functionality issues right now.
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The smart thing would have been to implement DNxHD instead of putting all of their eggs in the "popular codec" basket. Even thought most of us were barking for ProRes, it's Convergent Design's responsibility to do what works best for them as a business. Even if I'd prefer ProRes as the compressed codec, I would use ANY compressed codec over DPX files at this point.

On top of that, the 7Q isn't even a good monitor for me right now. I set it up and have to tell the client/producer "so that black line... it's not in the recording. And if you notice a slight flicker, that's not in the recording either."

I was as excited about the fixes in the firmware as I was about "popular codec" and 4K RAW.
 
jshbckr said:
The smart thing would have been to implement DNxHD instead of putting all of their eggs in the "popular codec" basket. Even thought most of us were barking for ProRes, it's Convergent Design's responsibility to do what works best for them as a business. Even if I'd prefer ProRes as the compressed codec, I would use ANY compressed codec over DPX files at this point.
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Personally, I'd much rather DNxHD, so would the majority of my clients...
 
Stuart Keasley said:
I'm not entirely sure who you're aiming that at, however from my perspective:

- The majority of my clients are pretty well informed, they know what's available and what's not.
- The promises I've made to my clients will be delivered, either using the Odyssey 7Qs that we have invested in, or by hiring in the Sony external recorder. Each time I'm forced to do the latter, the outlay comes directly off the return on investment on the 7Q. In quite simple terms, it is costing my business money.

There's not a great deal that CD can do about non certification, however they have the ability to sort out the bugs and functionality issues right now.
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Stuart, I wasn't "aiming" at any person in particular. It was just a general statement based on several reactions I'd read over the 'net. From my perspective, I just consider this a series of cascading promises. If clients want 4K, I would tell them whether or not I can deliver. For now, if a client asked me if I could do 4K, I would say no. Granted, I know that's a loss of business with an opportunity cost associated with it, but it's part of business. I am not claiming this is ideal, by any stretch of the imagination. I'd love to have a fully functional O7Q right now! All I'm saying is I would have not planned a 4K or ProRes shoot next week, personally.

I'm sure our businesses are not similar. I'm a smallish, simple setup and my clients are apparently not as technically demanding as yours are, so I can understand and appreciate that our perspectives will be different. My main point is I just think that while CD does inherit blame for not hitting their deadline, it's not as damning as some have reacted.

And as I stated in my earlier post, I do not believe the ability to rip out the ProRes code and only release a firmware with the bug fixes is as easy as it has been suggested. I believe that it would take them more than a week to make that change. Also, with Clermond's link to Dan's information about the certification process, it sounds like CD are extremely close to getting the Go signal from Apple and thus, this type of decision would be a waste of their time and resources.
 
As a FCPX user and a not-yet-owner-but-hope-to-be-soon I'm obviously not affected by the delays (cause they are nothing compared to the delays my bad finances impose on my 7Q purchase), I hope they'll stick to implementing the popular codec :)
 
brazzam said:
Stuart, I wasn't "aiming" at any person in particular. It was just a general statement based on several reactions I'd read over the 'net. From my perspective, I just consider this a series of cascading promises. If clients want 4K, I would tell them whether or not I can deliver. For now, if a client asked me if I could do 4K, I would say no. Granted, I know that's a loss of business with an opportunity cost associated with it, but it's part of business. I am not claiming this is ideal, by any stretch of the imagination. I'd love to have a fully functional O7Q right now! All I'm saying is I would have not planned a 4K or ProRes shoot next week, personally.

I'm sure our businesses are not similar. I'm a smallish, simple setup and my clients are apparently not as technically demanding as yours are, so I can understand and appreciate that our perspectives will be different. My main point is I just think that while CD does inherit blame for not hitting their deadline, it's not as damning as some have reacted.
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brazzam said:
And as I stated in my earlier post, I do not believe the ability to rip out the ProRes code and only release a firmware with the bug fixes is as easy as it has been suggested. I believe that it would take them more than a week to make that change. Also, with Clermond's link to Dan's information about the certification process, it sounds like CD are extremely close to getting the Go signal from Apple and thus, this type of decision would be a waste of their time and resources.
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Again, agreed re ripping out the code, that would be a lot of work... however as I said in my first response this latest bit of news, leaving the code intact but simply disabling it by removing those options from the menu tree would be a very simple and quick task.

However if it is purely a matter of days, then yep, I'll wait...
 
Yes. "Popular compressed codec" is "popular" due to the myopic manipulations of The Borg, but is continually fraught with iProblems. I've been working on ways in which I can exorcise it from my workflow and use something more robust and reliable. Sony seems to have it going on with their workflow, but they've had a very long and continually uphill battle in trying to conform to the the ways of The Borg, while not being assimilated.

DISCLAIMER: not a a hater--all my workstations are Mac, but the company doesn't amuse me much. Too many hipster "geniuses" I guess.
 
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LeavingTheCandy said:
Yes. "Popular compressed codec" is "popular" do to the myopic manipulations of The Borg, but is continually fraught with iProblems. I've been working on ways in which I can exorcise it from my workflow and use something more robust and reliable. Sony seems to have it going on with their workflow, but they've had a very long and continually uphill battle in trying to conform to the the ways of The Borg, while not being assimilated.

DISCLAIMER: not a a hater--all my workstations are Mac, but the company doesn't amuse me much. Too many hipster "geniuses" I guess.
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+1

I smell a rotten APPLE. iProblems, no kidding! ITunes is a piece of garbage.....and after the FCP fiasco, I would have thought people had learned...but...not
 
sunnyjimfilms said:
Personally, I'm all for Pro Res and I've come back to FCP.
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Same here! ProRes includes a 12 bit option and 4K resolution, two things Avid can't deliver now. However I won't be purchasing my 7Q until there is a shipping version that includes all the features I need today. It's gonna be an awesome device once all of it's power is unleashed! Unless there's a huge surprise at NAB it looks to be the one gadget to rule them all!

Gary
 
I think for myself (Not trying to irk anyone else), I need Pro-Res because all the studios I freelance at are Mac based and everything from Pre-Renders, to footage from clients to final output is done in Pro-Res. Once again, not saying one is better than another and each of us has our own needs, but I personally really need Pro-Res.

I do wish CD would release more increment bug fixes though. Some of them drive me nuts. But I'm going to be a glass half full kind of guy and say that CD is close. They promised up to 60fps in HD and 4K and with this release they are up to 30fps, so we will be almost half way there. If they can do up to 240fps in 10-bit, that would be huge extra credit.

I don't have a shoot till mid-March, so I'm not stressing until then. But I definitely feel for the people who need it now.
 
gene_can_sing said:
I think for myself (Not trying to irk anyone else), I need Pro-Res because all the studios I freelance at are Mac based and everything from Pre-Renders, to footage from clients to final output is done in Pro-Res. Once again, not saying one is better than another and each of us has our own needs, but I personally really need Pro-Res.

I do wish CD would release more increment bug fixes though. Some of them drive me nuts. But I'm going to be a glass half full kind of guy and say that CD is close. They promised up to 60fps in HD and 4K and with this release they are up to 30fps, so we will be almost half way there. If they can do up to 240fps in 10-bit, that would be huge extra credit.

I don't have a shoot till mid-March, so I'm not stressing until then. But I definitely feel for the people who need it now.
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Not sure if the HFRs in 10 bit are going to happen judging by Dan Keaton's comments on the subject over on DV info. Worth checking out, his answers are always measured and quite detailed. As far as the missed deadline - I think it's a perfectly natural reaction for people to be disgruntled. We've all parted with thousands in hard earned cash for a piece of kit which by most people's standards is limited and as far as some features are concerned just plain doesn't work properly. This is all fine as we've all bought in the knowledge that these issues will be addressed. I just suggest it isn't cool to wind us up on a daily basis with tales of coming updates and concrete deadlines only to tell us, actually it's not happening after all. This has pretty much been happening since the thing was announced. Anyway still got high hopes for it and love it as a piece of kit and I'm sure it will happen sooner rather than later.
 
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