F5: v8 brings 4K 480 mbps XAVC

[starcentral]

I think most have heard about the new higher data rate version of XAVC coming to version 8 firmware for F5/F55. I recently learned about this from Mark/Grug so went poking around.

Currently we have 600mbps @ 60p in 4K XAVC, or 240mbps in 24p in 4K XAVC.

With the newer data rate we would be going to 384mbps in 24p. A 50% increase in data rate, and difficult to say how much better the image might look in terms of less artifacting at this stage, but exciting nonetheless.

It does look like the newer speed XAVC might be capped at 30p speed - similar to how SR codec is also capped there.

All,

XAVC Class300 is the current implementation of the 10 bit 422 XAVC in the F5, F55 cameras. We are able to implement Class480 up to 30p because it is still within the bandwidth, throughput threshold of the existing SxS card format for sustained write speeds.

As a benchmark, the Class300 is 300Mbps at 30p. And the Class 480 is 480Mbps at 30p. It is simply turning up the datarate, and with a slightly better PSNR - Peak Signal to Noise Ratio - both classes are within the 10 bit 422 XAVC implementation

As you may know, XAVC is Sony's implementation of H.264, at the very highest quality @Level 5.2. The encoding architecture is treating each frame based on the unique picture characteristics. In other words the camera is independently encoding each frame based on the complexity information frame by frame. This is very different to competitor codecs in competitor cameras in which they set the encoding characteristcs to the first frame only and do not change during the writing of that file.

Whether you are going to really see a difference in picture quality between the existing Class300 and the Class480 will very much depend on what you are shooting, the level of complexity within each frame.

Several third party workflow vendors already support Class480 including Resolve and Adobe. If you look in their XAVC settings you will see it listed.