FS7: Sony FX9 v Canon C500 mkII

kbainter said:
You cannot use SDI and HDMI at the same time on the c200. Similar to the RED not being able to display SDI, HDMI, and Viewfinder/screen all at the same time. Wonder if this will be a limitation.
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OK. So, I've got to the bottom of this one now. You can have SDI out and HDMI out at the same time, but not with the MON output. You have to use the SDI out and it will match your resolution settings, so if you are shooting 4K your monitor will have to be able to accept a 4K signal. So, a bit limiting...
 
Liam Hall said:
OK. So, I've got to the bottom of this one now. You can have SDI out and HDMI out at the same time, but not with the MON output. You have to use the SDI out and it will match your resolution settings, so if you are shooting 4K your monitor will have to be able to accept a 4K signal. So, a bit limiting...
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So you can't have the 12G-SDI, the regular SDI and the HDMI all running at the same time?
 
Grug said:
So you can't have the 12G-SDI, the regular SDI and the HDMI all running at the same time?
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Correct. You can have the 12G-SDI and HDMI at the same time, but not the MONITOR SDI and HDMI. Plus the output of the 12G does not downconvert so if you are recording 4K you will output 4K. Typically, the only 4K field monitor I have is a 22inch, not great for an onboard so, I'll have to use the MONITOR SDI and loop through. Not a biggie, but lacks elegance.

On a side note, my SanDisk card reader failed during testing today. Anyone had issues with theirs?
 
So you can only have two outputs at a time?

- 12G-SDI + SDI
or
- 12G-SDI + HDMI


That's pretty sucky.
 
Grug said:
Just had my first hands-on with the C500ii today. There was a lot to take in:



-Data Rates. There's no "if"s, "and"s or "but"s about it - 6k Canon Raw "Lite" is HUGE. One 512Gb card will get you 30 minutes of recording (in both regular and 60fps recording), which means (at a minimum) you'll need 2TB of media, realistically 2.5-3TB if you want to be safe to record a whole day without having to re-use cards. And that much data, means you're not going to be able to data wrangle to spinning drives. SSDs (preferably m.2 ones) are going to be essential to any Raw workflow with this camera. So that's another cost to factor in (and potentially one that we have to absorb and bill out to clients, as it won’t be safe to trust many of them to sort out the kind of high-speed drive setups that this much data will require). Having two CFexpress card slots is great though, that gives you up to a full hour of continuous 6k raw footage (until larger capacity cards arrive at least).
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I feel like this is the elephant in the room. The 6k raw data management on the C500 II is going to be insane and costly. Did you happen to notice if the C500 II can shoot a 4k scaled image in raw? The early stats seemed to suggest that and it would certainly help to reduce the file sizes and data requirements. I kinda wish they had also created a Canon Raw Ultralite option, or had just went with an additional ProRes option like what is in the C700. The data requirements of this camera are making me think twice about it. Especially when reports coming in of the XFAVC image is just average (not bad but not stellar), and definitely less quality than the 4K Canon Raw Lite on my C200, which gets an hour of shooting on a 512GB card.
 
robotfist said:
I feel like this is the elephant in the room. The 6k raw data management on the C500 II is going to be insane and costly. Did you happen to notice if the C500 II can shoot a 4k scaled image in raw? The early stats seemed to suggest that and it would certainly help to reduce the file sizes and data requirements. I kinda wish they had also created a Canon Raw Ultralite option, or had just went with an additional ProRes option like what is in the C700. The data requirements of this camera are making me think twice about it. Especially when reports coming in of the XFAVC image is just average (not bad but not stellar), and definitely less quality than the 4K Canon Raw Lite on my C200, which gets an hour of shooting on a 512GB card.
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The 500mkii shoots s35 4K in raw, at the same data rate as the c200. Scaled 4K is only available in Xf-avc. I wouldn’t downplay the XF-AVC just yet. In terms of bit rate, it’s pretty impressive, and the CVP comparison was highly suspect on a lot of levels, at least to me.
 
robotfist said:
I feel like this is the elephant in the room. The 6k raw data management on the C500 II is going to be insane and costly. Did you happen to notice if the C500 II can shoot a 4k scaled image in raw? The early stats seemed to suggest that and it would certainly help to reduce the file sizes and data requirements. I kinda wish they had also created a Canon Raw Ultralite option, or had just went with an additional ProRes option like what is in the C700. The data requirements of this camera are making me think twice about it. Especially when reports coming in of the XFAVC image is just average (not bad but not stellar), and definitely less quality than the 4K Canon Raw Lite on my C200, which gets an hour of shooting on a 512GB card.
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Yeah, the early specs about the oversampled 6k into 4k raw recording were one of the single most appealing things about the camera to me. Turns out they were misrepresented - the only downsampling is in 10-bit mode. It's 6k raw for full-frame, 4k for S35mm, 2k for S16mm.

One little potential hack that crossed my mind, is whether in S&Q mode (where the raw is 10-bit 2Gbps @ 60p), you get the same increased compression ratio when you set the camera to 24fps or 25fps?

If the compression ratio is constant in off-speed recording, that might allow you to do 24/25p @ 1Gbps 10-bit raw (which would be great to have if you absolutely need raw, but absolutely don't have the space for it at 2Gbps).

Can anyone test this for us? Liam?

A default 6:1 compression option would make raw a lot more viable for a lot of projects. I'm sure the downsampled 10-bit 410Mbps 4:2:2 will be excellent for most things though.

Mass storage is cheap these days, so the hefty data rates are easier to handle than they've ever been. But you're going to need fast storage at every stage of the process if you want to shoot 2Gbps. That means SSDs (NVME or RAIDed SATA) for on-set datawrangling. And substantial 3.5" SATA RAIDs for post. So if you/your team don't have those things in place, they're going to have to be purchased/established.

There is of course the option to simply go with 4k S35mm raw, which will still offer excellent image quality.
 
Grug said:
One little potential hack that crossed my mind, is whether in S&Q mode (where the raw is 10-bit 2Gbps @ 60p), you get the same increased compression ratio when you set the camera to 24fps or 25fps?

If the compression ratio is constant in off-speed recording, that might allow you to do 24/25p @ 1Gbps 10-bit raw (which would be great to have if you absolutely need raw, but absolutely don't have the space for it at 2Gbps).
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That is a very interesting idea.

Grug said:
There is of course the option to simply go with 4k S35mm raw, which will still offer excellent image quality.
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I wonder if the C500 II's S35 4k cropped will introduce more noise into the image than the C200's proper S35 4k, which makes full use of the sensor?
 
robotfist said:
I wonder if the C500 II's S35 4k cropped will introduce more noise into the image than the C200's proper S35 4k, which makes full use of the sensor?
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Take a look at CVP's test of the camera. It directly compares the C200 with C500ii cropped to S35mm (to match the field of view). It's not a useful test to see how the C500ii does in FF mode. But it shows off the S35mm crop just fine.

My take away was that you're getting a slight edge at the top and bottom of the image with the C500ii, but besides that, they look about as close to identical as you can get. I'm pretty sure it's the same sensor in both cameras (C200 and C500ii), just a larger cut of the silicon with a more refined backend on the C500ii.
 
robotfist said:
I wonder if the C500 II's S35 4k cropped will introduce more noise into the image than the C200's proper S35 4k, which makes full use of the sensor?
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Even from a pure theoretical standpoint, this shouldn't be an issue. This is one of the benefits of these new full frame sensors is that we can still use these cameras the exact same way we used the old S35 cameras with no loss in IQ. The full frame is just an added bonus that we can use once we become adjusted to the format or when a client asks for it.
 
Airwolf said:
FS7 slow motion is better. There atleast you are getting S35. C500 is super 16 crop.
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I never use full-sensor slow motion on FS7, the quality is useless :(

So its S16 or similar when cropping on FS7 too.

But does it look good on the Canon? Artifacts, aliasing, cringeworthy stuff?
 
Liam, any chance you could test the rolling shutter for us. A dude on FB posted up some sample footage (shot at 60p I think), and it was jello city. Would be great to hear how it handles at 25p and 50p in full frame mode and in S35mm crop.
 
Grug said:
Liam, any chance you could test the rolling shutter for us. A dude on FB posted up some sample footage (shot at 60p I think), and it was jello city. Would be great to hear how it handles at 25p and 50p in full frame mode and in S35mm crop.
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On the C500 ii? Can you link to it? I haven’t see it in the group
 
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