GH4 The Atomos Shogun Discussion

[Yapper]

Hey folks,

I don't see a thread about the Shogun in combination with the GH4 yet, so here it is. We can find enough information online how the Shogun works and what it's capable of.

Here's a video showing the Atomos in action with the GH4:

Now, what I would like to discuss further in this thread is how the experiences are with the people who already have it or what people think the experiences shall be.
For instance, I think the workflow is pretty nice. But the files will be pretty large. I also doubt to have any huge benefit so grade and edit on 10bit proress files if you are going to deliver an H.264 for the web anyways.

What are your thoughts? Is the shogun really worth the larger files and cost of the product? And for what type of work?

 

[Richy Lacey]

I'm not a fan of using HDMI for this purpose.
They're fragile, insecure connections not designed for filmmaking.
If one gets pulled during a take, which is liable to happen at some point, what happens to the card? You'll likely lose the current clip and possibly the contents of the card depending on how it's been designed to write.

 

[Alpha Beta Omega]

I returned my Shogun due to the unfinished software and poor built quality.

 

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

I returned my Shogun due to the unfinished software and poor built quality.

More information please. What's unfinished in the FW, do you mean the external LUT support and C500/FS7 raw compatibility? And where's the major build quality concern you found?

 

[Yapper]

I'm not a fan of using HDMI for this purpose.
They're fragile, insecure connections not designed for filmmaking.
If one gets pulled during a take, which is liable to happen at some point, what happens to the card? You'll likely lose the current clip and possibly the contents of the card depending on how it's been designed to write.

HDMI is indeed not the perfect solution. But there're helpful tools to secure it more. Like a lockport, thin or spiral HDMI cables,.. I've been using an HDMI EVF since the 5D2 came out, I've only had problems with it before I had a lockport and a proper cable.

I returned my Shogun due to the unfinished software and poor built quality.

First time I hear this. I'd also like to hear more..

 

[TheTrickster]

I also doubt to have any huge benefit so grade and edit on 10bit proress files if you are going to deliver an H.264 for the web anyways.

You know, this is exactly why I don't think I'll be jumping on the shogun at this point, I'm running a GH4 with a Ninja2 underwater and as long as I've got the WB nailed (or close to) I don't do much grading (apart from contrast / noise reduction) so the investment i don't think will return much better results - like as you say, its all going up online anyway.

Really want to see someone take a flat profiled GH4 (well as flat as they can) and do a side by side with a 10bit / 8bit file and do some serious grading on it and output to 1080.

 

[Yapper]

Really want to see someone take a flat profiled GH4 (well as flat as they can) and do a side by side with a 10bit / 8bit file and do some serious grading on it and output to 1080.

this

 

[Thomas Smet]

I don't think you will see a huge advantage for grading. 10bit is not RAW and does not have the benefits of shooting RAW. It may hold up a little bit better under extreme grading but it only extends the range until it breaks. 10bit does not magically give one more latitude or change the overall look of the video captured. It helps keep banding at check so you can push RGB values harder but other than that it is still the same video from the same sensor and DSP.

The advantage of the Shogun is not having 100mbit IPB compression for detailed scenes or complex motion and the ability to push values a little bit harder if one really needs to. You will have less DCT compression artifacts as well as no macro blocking and motion estimation artifacts.

There is a lot of debate over using external recording and if it really matters. There are those that insist their video looks better and others that cannot see a difference at all no matter how hard they look. It dependson what you shoot, how you shoot and how critical you are over splitting hairs of image quality.

External recording has been around for years with SD and HD cameras. 4k external isn't a magical new concept. Same exact thing just larger. No need to wait for Shogun 4k material to know what the advantage will be. Just look at the last 10 years of external ProRes recording to see what the advantages will and will not be. In the past we tethered our cameras to a desktop computer with a Blackmagic Card. Eventually we moved to laptops and now we have external recorders. The recording gear is smaller but the end result is pretty much the same as it always has been. The video looks the same just with less compression. Like looking as a photo saved as Tiff and comparing it to a photo saved as jpeg 65%. Both still the same photo just one is a little bit more compressed and has less color detail.

 

[Yapper]

I agree with you Thomas.

Dave Dugdale today posted his review about the Shogun. The results are very interesting. Do you NEED a shogun? After all this reading and watching, I don't think so.

 

[Thomas Smet]

I agree with you Thomas.

Dave Dugdale today posted his review about the Shogun. The results are very interesting. Do you NEED a shogun? After all this reading and watching, I don't think so.

Don't get wrong it is a great product and it does have its advantages. This was a great review that really hit all the important points of really what to expect. We have been trained for years to hate video compression and think it still greatly suffers the way video did with HDV. This isn't very true anymore.

The one issue I will point out from this video is the issue I have of most online video compression tests and that is the motion complexity. Every test Doug did was a locked down shot with little to no motion in the scene. If one shoots a lot of fast complex action like ocean waves and surfers or fiery explosions then you may start to notice a more obvious compression quality difference. Codecs like H264 use motion prediction to determine how to divide the limited amount of bits per frame. The more predictable or simple the motion the better the compression will be. Scenes with random motion where the codec cannot predict what will happen in each frame are much harder to compress.

To really test external recording these reviews need to shoot some extreme motion to see how well the formats compare. If one shoots talking head material and locked down shots then there will likely not be a lot of quality difference. If one shoots action movies at higher ISO levels with a bit of noise then the compression could make a difference. Noise is an example of motion that is hard to predict and can quickly hurt a H264 format.

The other main advantage to the Shogun is of course the monitor. It is pretty rare to find a portable 1920x1080 monitor that runs off a battery and can be mounted to the camera or rig. Add to that all the exposure and focusing features and the Shogun may be worth the money just as a monitor. I really wish Atomos would build a Shogun without the recording capabilities for those of us that just want the great monitor. It would be lighter and cheaper and likely last longer on a battery and that may appeal to me more.

One other thing I would like to point out about the CPU usage in Doug's test was that it kind of depends on the platform and what one does. Doug measured basically timeline playback which is not a huge stress on a machine. Where he should have tested performance is when using filters or the playback live of altered video. Scrubbing or skimming is also a big factor in formats. Playing footage is a linear function and the codecs are designed to play video forward so it is an easier optimized task. Moving randomly backward and forward at different speeds however is totally different and that requires pulling frame data to display. A codec like ProRes can skim better because it is easier to grab those random frames. Sometimes effects are easier as well and the system can playback more complex filters, effects and image adjustments with a format like ProRes because it is faster to grab frame data to perform those calculations. If Doug was on a PC then ProRes isn't optimized as well as it is on a Mac. Even Premiere on the Mac side doesn't get to use the full 64bit Quicktime engine that FCPX gets to use so there is a performance hit. I have never found ProRes to be a great format in Premiere but it sings in FCPX.

It is true however that system performance is not as important as it once was.

 

[BitMaestro]

To really test external recording these reviews need to shoot some extreme motion to see how well the formats compare.

Infinity focus and fire off a confetti cannon.

 

[Yapper]

Hehe, true. I think we can all say the Shogun is great piece of hardware. But Dave puts us all decently back on the ground. If you shoot video for the web, I doubt it's worth the money.
I'd love to see a test with more motion though. And also like Thomas said, a test on how the proress files performs with filters applied.