C200: The new Canon C200 with 4K

Simple solution, buy the C300 MKII or EVA 1, it sounds like the C200 is not a good fit for you. For me, it's not ideal, but the positives seem to outweigh the negatives. I will be buying an Atomos recorder for it as a stop gap until the XF-AVC update comes out. Then, depending on if it is usable or just a wrapper for the same .MP4 specs, I'll go from there. Will be shooting RAW for shoots under three hours, or if clients don't want to deal with RAW, the .MP4 or Prores from the Atomos will work. Not a big deal for me overall.

DJi Go 4 App CPU Overload Message
https://forum.dji.com/thread-100636-1-1.html
https://forum.dji.com/thread-100601-1-1.html
https://mavicpilots.com/threads/device-cpu-fully-loaded-related-performance-will-be-affected.19478/
https://phantompilots.com/threads/cpu-overload-warning.118894/

You begin getting stuttering, freezing and glitches in your video feed then this pops up "CPU Overload-Performance may be adversely affected". I have the iPad Mini 4 so I know I have enough CPU power to handle the DJO GO 4 app easily, it was working smoothly just a couple of weeks ago. Updated the app and this started happening. Really sucks. Hope DJI fixes it soon. The Mavic Pro is GREAT. 60 Mbps is not enopugh for smooth, perfect 4k though but if you use ND filters and then apply deflicker and calibrated NR with Neat Video (which is an absolute render pig), it can look really good.
 
puredrifting said:
Simple solution, buy the C300 MKII or EVA 1, it sounds like the C200 is not a good fit for you. For me, it's not ideal, but the positives seem to outweigh the negatives. I will be buying an Atomos recorder for it as a stop gap until the XF-AVC update comes out. Then, depending on if it is usable or just a wrapper for the same .MP4 specs, I'll go from there. Will be shooting RAW for shoots under three hours, or if clients don't want to deal with RAW, the .MP4 or Prores from the Atomos will work. Not a big deal for me overall.

DJi Go 4 App CPU Overload Message
https://forum.dji.com/thread-100636-1-1.html
https://forum.dji.com/thread-100601-1-1.html
https://mavicpilots.com/threads/device-cpu-fully-loaded-related-performance-will-be-affected.19478/
https://phantompilots.com/threads/cpu-overload-warning.118894/

You begin getting stuttering, freezing and glitches in your video feed then this pops up "CPU Overload-Performance may be adversely affected". I have the iPad Mini 4 so I know I have enough CPU power to handle the DJO GO 4 app easily, it was working smoothly just a couple of weeks ago. Updated the app and this started happening. Really sucks. Hope DJI fixes it soon. The Mavic Pro is GREAT. 60 Mbps is not enopugh for smooth, perfect 4k though but if you use ND filters and then apply deflicker and calibrated NR with Neat Video (which is an absolute render pig), it can look really good.
Click to expand...

Thanks I just skimmed through the first link. It seems to be a problem with the iPad. I didn't read any problems yet with the iPhone. I'm gonna go back and read more.

Yea, went crazy when the C200 first came out, but I'll be getting the C300 mkii no doubt about it.

Yea, Neat video takes a long time to render, after I denoise the videos, I add the noise back in with film Convert.... which then has to render it all over again! Oh, I just realized will be rendering 4K my God that will take a long time!

So many cheap ND filters for the Mavic, do you recommend any particular brand, or does it even matter? The more I look into it I have seen some very good graded Mavic footage. The comparison videos on YouTube between the Mavic and P4 pro were of un graded footage. The Mavic graded up better than I thought it would.
 
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Taco RC filters are very solid and are what I used when I had a Mavic. I have PolarPros for my Phantom 4 Pro and I use B+W on my Inspire 1 Raw.

DJI software is usually buggy as s*%t right after a big update. It's annoying and I wish they'd get their s*%t straight, but it's where we're at and no one else is even approaching them for a turnkey drone system, so we all ***** and moan and deal with it. I'm thinking about buying a CrystalSky just to see if their software running on their hardware is any less craptastic.

FWIW, the GO app (not GO 4) has the same issues with the weird stuttering and freezing. It's pissing me off because I'm in the middle of shooting a big job (over a couple of weeks) for our local economic development folks and the GO Apps have been a hot mess.

To keep this on-topic, I bought a C300 Mark II and love it. :)
 
puredrifting said:
Simple solution, buy the C300 MKII or EVA 1, it sounds like the C200 is not a good fit for you. For me, it's not ideal, but the positives seem to outweigh the negatives. I will be buying an Atomos recorder for it as a stop gap until the XF-AVC update comes out. Then, depending on if it is usable or just a wrapper for the same .MP4 specs, I'll go from there. Will be shooting RAW for shoots under three hours, or if clients don't want to deal with RAW, the .MP4 or Prores from the Atomos will work. Not a big deal for me overall.
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Puredrifting, will the external recorder be for 10 bit 1080 or 8 bit UHD? Will the external 8 bit UHD feed recorded as prores or DNxHD files to an atomos recorder be better quality than internal 8 bit UHD mp4s?
 
Fishflavour said:
Puredrifting, will the external recorder be for 10 bit 1080 or 8 bit UHD? Will the external 8 bit UHD feed recorded as prores or DNxHD files to an atomos recorder be better quality than internal 8 bit UHD mp4s?
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It will be both, but I am mainly buying it for the UHD capability. The files recorded are not better quality, it's still recording the 8-bit 4:2:2 but it is a better codec, with a higher data rate for editing and compositing. You can't improve what is already there or somehow boost it, but I often shoot 1080 green screen for one particular client with the C100 and the Atomos Ninja Blade, which is a 4:2:0 8-bit camera recording out to a Prores 10-bit 4:2:2 codec and we pull amazing quality keys and composites with it. I have no doubt the C200 and the Atomos Shogun Flame or Ninja Flame will be the same.
 
fhammond said:
I'm curious: why? I'm in a similar position to you - non-pro - and I decided on the C200 instead of the C300M2.
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I think for a lot of people it's the lack of 10 bit. You have two extremes, and no middle ground. People aren't ready to deal with raw, and aren't willing to deal with 8 bit.

I'd be willing to accept 8 bit internal if they gave you a 10 bit or raw external feed so you can use an external recorder, like you can with the c300mk2. This is a "cinema" camera, and you can't even monitor what you're recording. When shooting 4k raw, the SDI out is limited to 2k. Why? This cannot be a cost saving / hardware limitation factor. If you can process compressed raw internally, then you can send that same signal out.

Personally, i would trade internal raw for internal 10 bit and external raw (which is what the c300mk2 can do). Then Canon can give the C300mk3 internal raw as an upsell point.
 
Danilo Del Tufo said:
# autofocus test
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The same company's Raw into ProRes 444 looks so much better than their MP4's. But, as a sign that the camera is going to be released soon, more videos are trickling out.

PS. As we were talking about cartels, the Euro agencies are investigating if, at least, VW (including Audi and Porsche) and Mercedes (Daimler Benz) have been rigging their diesel MPG tests in collusion. There could be other German based companies involved too (MAN was mentioned as the other).
 
puredrifting said:
Simple solution, buy the C300 MKII or EVA 1, it sounds like the C200 is not a good fit for you. For me, it's not ideal, but the positives seem to outweigh the negatives. I will be buying an Atomos recorder for it as a stop gap until the XF-AVC update comes out. Then, depending on if it is usable or just a wrapper for the same .MP4 specs, I'll go from there. Will be shooting RAW for shoots under three hours, or if clients don't want to deal with RAW, the .MP4 or Prores from the Atomos will work. Not a big deal for me overall.

DJi Go 4 App CPU Overload Message
https://forum.dji.com/thread-100636-1-1.html
https://forum.dji.com/thread-100601-1-1.html
https://mavicpilots.com/threads/device-cpu-fully-loaded-related-performance-will-be-affected.19478/
https://phantompilots.com/threads/cpu-overload-warning.118894/

You begin getting stuttering, freezing and glitches in your video feed then this pops up "CPU Overload-Performance may be adversely affected". I have the iPad Mini 4 so I know I have enough CPU power to handle the DJO GO 4 app easily, it was working smoothly just a couple of weeks ago. Updated the app and this started happening. Really sucks. Hope DJI fixes it soon. The Mavic Pro is GREAT. 60 Mbps is not enopugh for smooth, perfect 4k though but if you use ND filters and then apply deflicker and calibrated NR with Neat Video (which is an absolute render pig), it can look really good.
Click to expand...

Yeah I have a Mavic and started getting that CPU overload message along with stuttering, too. Sucks that through mandatory firmware updates, companies can make a product that you were already happy with and paid for actually worse. BTW you should try shooting @ 2.7k. Better match for the bitrate...
 
fhammond said:
I'm curious: why? I'm in a similar position to you - non-pro - and I decided on the C200 instead of the C300M2.
Click to expand...

Really I'd be quite happy with the C200, and you made a great decision to get it. It's a very seductive camera in many ways.

As a non-pro like you my thoughts are like this. For what I do and primarily use video for is promoting my work. My last video I used 2 C100's and 2 5D3's. I was able to match up the 2 C100's pretty easily by adding 400 more kelvin to the C100 mkii. By the time I start to grade I'm trying to match 4 different cameras and the 10 bit 422 will hold up better in color grading than the 8 bit 420 of the C100's, and I confess I forget what the 5D3 are. That's my main concern. The C200 without the 10 bit 422 feels like I'm not quite moving up from the C100's. I kind of take it for granted a C200 for $7500 should have 4K in this day and age, and the raw-lite is a very seductive feature which suprised everyone, no one saw that coming. Another poster mentioned he asked a Canon rep how taxing the raw lite was on your average computer, and he avoided answering the question. That was a bit of a red flag for me, and I began to think raw is a pain in the ass anyway you look at it. In other words I don't want to buy a new computer so I can use Raw-lite. I've never used raw before, tried it a few times on my 5D3 but could never get Resolve to work on my MacBook Pro so I gave up on it. If I'm not getting this and raw-lite is much easier to deal with than an external recorder for the C300 mkii then let me know. My thinking is with a recorder you've converted it into ProRes already and, one less thing for your computer to deal with. If I'm wrong please let me know cause I've never worked with Raw. So the appeal,of raw lite is more like iceing on the cake rather than the cake itself . I just feel the codecs in the C300 are more versatile and robust than the C200, and those will be the ones I'll use 90% of the time. If I need raw I'll just get an external recorder. So, besides Raw-lite what so great about the C200?

Another huge reason I want the C300 is popularity. Puredrifting mentioned the other day all he sees around LA are C300's no FS7's.

I'm winding down my day job, and building a house in Thailand hoping to retire there sometime within a year. I'll have lots more time to do video stuff. I met some professionals I could work with over there, and I could see some opportunity to perhaps do more and possibly get some work as a side thing. The truth is if I'm in Bangkok and tell people yea I've got a C100 or a C200 that won't be as expressive as if you say C300 MKII. Asians are more into brand name stuff, and I know this because my Thai wife likes Gucci hand bags and so do all her friends. Maybe that's superficial but it's also the way it is. George Lucas could make a movie on an iPhone, but I'm not him, and I need all the superficial help I can get if let's say I want to move slightly up to some profesional opportunities. People classify as hobbyist, or amature or whatever, but really the more you learn about video, the creative side of yourself might be aspiring to a project or a documentary as things progress, so if you limit yourself to limited gear then you might be holding yourself back in the future. So that's it in a nut shell. What are your needs?
 
Fahnon said:
Yeah I have a Mavic and started getting that CPU overload message along with stuttering, too. Sucks that through mandatory firmware updates, companies can make a product that you were already happy with and paid for actually worse. BTW you should try shooting @ 2.7k. Better match for the bitrate...
Click to expand...

I think I'm gonna hold back on the Mavic for now. You guys are depressing me.

Also, with all the new restrictions, that kills my hopes of gluing some wings and a beak on it, and dive bombing tourists on the beach all day.
 
Michael Thames said:
I think I'm gonna hold back on the Mavic for now. You guys are depressing me.

Also, with all the new restrictions, that kills my hopes of gluing some wings and a beak on it, and dive bombing tourists on the beach all day.
Click to expand...

Didn't mean to give the wrong impression. I love the Mavic! It's just the software needs some work and then be left alone...

But I'm not sure what you're gonna get that's better for the money.
 
Fahnon said:
Didn't mean to give the wrong impression. I love the Mavic! It's just the software needs some work and then be left alone...

But I'm not sure what you're gonna get that's better for the money.
Click to expand...

Nah ...... I'm gonna get it this week, and count on DJI fixing the bugs hopefully by the time it arrives. I have an empty Mavic case I bought on Amazon sitting here....... I have to buy it now, if for no other reason...... ha!

I just pray with all these bugs in the app, when I fire the bird up she doesn't come straight for me and chop my head off. In the mean time I'm hoping and praying I'm not with in 5 miles of the airport. Planes fly over my house sometimes on approach. I guess the app will tell me? I heard there was an indoor fly feature that would enable one to fly in near an airport.
 
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DJI is the company that made me appreciate the conservative approach that Canon takes. I have a few DJI products, but I no longer actually trust them to function without fail on a shoot. I also won't buy anything that has been out less than six months or still seems to have regular firmware updates. And their camera tech and firmware is laughable. The Ronin 2 looks nice, but I will wait for a year until they start showing up used at a big box retailer and have all of the firmware and manufacturing defects worked out.
 
Michael Thames said:
...The C200 without the 10 bit 422 feels like I'm not quite moving up from the C100's .... and I began to think raw is a pain in the ass anyway you look at it. ...... My thinking is with a recorder you've converted it into ProRes already and, one less thing for your computer to deal with. If I'm wrong please let me know cause I've never worked with Raw. .... Another huge reason I want the C300 is popularity. ..... The truth is if I'm in Bangkok and tell people yea I've got a C100 or a C200 that won't be as expressive as if you say C300 MKII. Asians are more into brand name stuff, and I know this because my Thai wife likes Gucci hand bags and so do all her friends.
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My english is poor, so only shortly:

C300 hasn't 4K/UHD 50p (will be at C400 soon?).

C200 is C100 with 4K/UHD 50p, if you don't need it, then there is C100 mark II or C300 mark II.

raw has proxy 2K/HD, so you can work with proxy and at finish you can relink files.

raw light isn't a sekvence of files (DPX), you can link raw light to Avid MC directly with AMA. And bitrate 1Gbps with 10bit is OK for UHD 50p, for grading. At UHD 25p it is about 400-500Mbps.

The rest is about you - if you will wait for "C400" (C300 with UHD 50p) or if you are at broadcast and prefer HD 10 bit internaly (C300). That's all.

--

If the bitrate is too small, then 10bit or 422 color sampling is nothing. I have C100 with NinjaStar (HD 25p or 50i at ProRes HQ) and AVCHD (long GOP with poor bitrate) vs ProRes (intra-frame with good bitrate) at difficult light condition (or with rapid light changes) is a big difference. 4K or UHD 25p at 12bit with ideal 1Gbps? It is really "gold point" of C200.
 
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Michael Thames said:
Really I'd be quite happy with the C200, and you made a great decision to get it. It's a very seductive camera in many ways.

As a non-pro like you my thoughts are like this. For what I do and primarily use video for is promoting my work. My last video I used 2 C100's and 2 5D3's. I was able to match up the 2 C100's pretty easily by adding 400 more kelvin to the C100 mkii. By the time I start to grade I'm trying to match 4 different cameras and the 10 bit 422 will hold up better in color grading than the 8 bit 420 of the C100's, and I confess I forget what the 5D3 are. That's my main concern. The C200 without the 10 bit 422 feels like I'm not quite moving up from the C100's. I kind of take it for granted a C200 for $7500 should have 4K in this day and age, and the raw-lite is a very seductive feature which suprised everyone, no one saw that coming. Another poster mentioned he asked a Canon rep how taxing the raw lite was on your average computer, and he avoided answering the question. That was a bit of a red flag for me, and I began to think raw is a pain in the ass anyway you look at it. In other words I don't want to buy a new computer so I can use Raw-lite. I've never used raw before, tried it a few times on my 5D3 but could never get Resolve to work on my MacBook Pro so I gave up on it. If I'm not getting this and raw-lite is much easier to deal with than an external recorder for the C300 mkii then let me know. My thinking is with a recorder you've converted it into ProRes already and, one less thing for your computer to deal with. If I'm wrong please let me know cause I've never worked with Raw. So the appeal,of raw lite is more like iceing on the cake rather than the cake itself . I just feel the codecs in the C300 are more versatile and robust than the C200, and those will be the ones I'll use 90% of the time. If I need raw I'll just get an external recorder. So, besides Raw-lite what so great about the C200?

Another huge reason I want the C300 is popularity. Puredrifting mentioned the other day all he sees around LA are C300's no FS7's.

I'm winding down my day job, and building a house in Thailand hoping to retire there sometime within a year. I'll have lots more time to do video stuff. I met some professionals I could work with over there, and I could see some opportunity to perhaps do more and possibly get some work as a side thing. The truth is if I'm in Bangkok and tell people yea I've got a C100 or a C200 that won't be as expressive as if you say C300 MKII. Asians are more into brand name stuff, and I know this because my Thai wife likes Gucci hand bags and so do all her friends. Maybe that's superficial but it's also the way it is. George Lucas could make a movie on an iPhone, but I'm not him, and I need all the superficial help I can get if let's say I want to move slightly up to some profesional opportunities. People classify as hobbyist, or amature or whatever, but really the more you learn about video, the creative side of yourself might be aspiring to a project or a documentary as things progress, so if you limit yourself to limited gear then you might be holding yourself back in the future. So that's it in a nut shell. What are your needs?
Click to expand...

Hmmm...there's a lot to unpack here.

First, I don't think working with raw will be that difficult. It's a moderately compressed, 125 MB/second codec that'll enable you to make changes in post production - like white balance - that aren't possible with non-raw formats. To me, being able to work with raw video like I work with raw images from my still camera is a huge benefit.

I tried some raw sample files from the C200 in Resolve on my three year old computer and it handled it just fine. I think it's safe to assume that other NLE vendors will add Canon Raw Light support soon. Until they do, I'm ok transcoding to ProRes 4444.

The main issue with raw is storage space. An hour of video in Canon Raw Light format will use 450 GB of disk space. The cost of storing that is about $50. (I like LaCie rugged drives and they are about $100 for a 1 TB model.)

By comparison, the C300M2's 10 bit 4:2:2 is 410 Mbps - so that's 51 MB/second or about 185 GB for an hour of video. That'll cost about $18 to store. In the big picture, $18 vs $50 isn't a big deal (even when we're talking about hours of video). I'd keep a final cut of my work permanently but delete the other footage or archive it in a lower quality format than raw.

The CFast cards that the C200 uses are more of an issue as they still expensive. Ten cents per GB is a good estimate for hard drive cost; CFast cards are about $2.75 per GB. Ouch! My plan is to buy a couple when I get my C200, including one of the low-cost cards like the EgoDisk which is about $1.13 per GB, then hope the price drops as sales volume increases. With Lexar dropping out of the card market, I'm hopeful that Canon will certify more card brands.

On raw my summary is this: for me, I believe the benefits will far outweigh the disadvantages and those disadvantages (storage cost) will decrease over time. The C200's MP4 support will work fine for a variety of situations.

I'm not relying on the XFAVC support Canon says is coming next year. At worst, it'll be a similar quality or slightly better replacement for my use of MP4. At best (10bit 4:2:2) I might sometimes use it instead of raw. I think it's quite possible that we'll see good XFAVC support when the replacement for the C300M2 is announced. Which brings me to another point...

The C300M2 is already two years old. Unless I had an urgent need for a C300M2 (perhaps matching an existing camera), there's no way I'd buy a new one now. For me, the lack of 60 fps would keep me away from the C300M2. Touch screen autofocus is also a big benefit for me of the C200. (It's already something I use regularly on my 1DXM2.) Lastly, there are often smaller benefits to new camera models that don't come across when comparing spec sheets. I've been using Canon's pro still cameras (mostly the EOS-1 series) for over ten years and with each new model there are always a bunch of little tweaks that Canon makes that improve the usability of the camera and that I really appreciate. I can't imagine why that wouldn't be true of the C200 when compared with the C300M2.

I do get your point about the status issue - even though I think it's crazy. However, I would think that the impact of the brand new C200 would be greater than that of the two year old C300M2. That would only get more so when your C300M2 is made obsolete (in the eyes of the crazy people) by the C300M2. I suspect that 99.999% of the population couldn't tell the difference between the C300M2 and C200 and the 0.001% that could would be impressed if you said you were shooting raw or, more likely, would know that the C200 is a superior camera to the C300M2 in many ways.

Frankly, the more I think about it, the less the issue of status makes sense. It might right now, while the C200 isn't available but that's going to change in a few weeks.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth.
 
Bear with me, I just did some sums on the hard drive speed requirements for editing C200 material.

- Canon raw processing app only spits out 4K Prores 444 or a HD Proxy (i.e. you can't set it up to send out standard 4K Prores HQ or regular 422).
- 4K Prores 444 @ 24 fps comes in at 1131 Mbps

Using the Blackmagic disk speed test I just tested two Thunderbolt spinning drives (a Lacie Raid and a Lacie Rugged) and I got 640-800 Mbps read.

So both of these come up short for either Raw-lite or the Prores 444 transcode.

My Sandisk SSD over usb 3 got a whopping 3.3 Gbps.. but that's megabucks to get enough SSD storage.

In effect I would probably end up doing this workflow:

Shoot raw lite > Trancode in Canon app to 4k Prores 444 > Create a 4k proxy after using another app > eventually link back to 4K prores or raw

Which is doable but more time consuming (and requires storing the came clips 3 times (raw/4k full quality/proxy).

Obviously, this is not unique to Canon cameras... 4K Prores 444 from an Alexa Mini would pose exactly the same challenges.

All of a sudden, a middle codec is looking more an more appealing....

I think the Raw-lite is a big step forward, but it seems like it belongs in the not-to-distant future when SSD drives are huge and cheap and the footage can be worked with natively in post software.
 
mrtreve said:
Using the Blackmagic disk speed test I just tested two Thunderbolt spinning drives (a Lacie Raid and a Lacie Rugged) and I got 640-800 Mbps read.
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That seems really LOW. I have a drive "toaster" (drive-dock) that I use with single Western Digital RED PRO SATA drives and I am getting around 1600+ Mbps read speed from a single SATA drive.
 
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