Every time I get to play with a Convergent Design Odyssey I am impressed. It a really nice piece of kit, first off it’s a fantastic OLED monitor with excellent tools such as waveforms and some very sophisticated focus aids. But in addition it’s recording capabilities are second to none. For Sony’s FS700 the Odyssey 7Q is in my opinion a far more elegant and practical solution for 4K and 2K recording than Sony’s IFR5/R5 raw option. In addition I’m excited about being able to record 2K raw at 240fps using the 7Q.
The 7Q has always been competitively priced, but it’s still not what you would regard as a cheap device, at least not compared to the many cheap compressed HD recorders out their now. But don’t forget this is a 4K capable recorder and the monitor is as good as it gets. You are getting some cutting edge technology and that’s never cheap. Convergent Design have been listening to FS700 owners and in an attempt to make the 7Q not only the best, but also the cheapest way to get a 4K recorder they have re-assed their pricing. Previously, you had to have multiple options if you had several different Sony cameras and wanted the Odyssey to work with them all, the separate options for the Sony F3 + FS700 were each $1,495 USD.
Now though there is just one single option for Sony cameras that will support both the F3 and FS700, and it will be only $795 (US)
In addition Convergent Design will be reducing the SSD prices while increasing their capacity.
The 240 GB SSD, was $595, will be priced at $395 and will be 256 GB.
The 480 GB SSD, was $1,195, will be priced at $895, and will be 512 GB.
So this means that the Odyssey7Q ($2,295) + Sony Option ($795) + two 256 GB SSD’s ($395 each) + Thunderbolt Reader ($99) will total $3,979 which is an absolute bargain compared to the cost of a Sony IFR5/R5, 1x AXS card and the Sony CR1 reader which comes to around $9k. It’s also a much tidier device to rig.
I also think that for many FS700 users, compressed 4K will be easier to work with than 4K raw.
Alister, I left this question to you on the dvinfo FS700 forum as well. You mention compressed 4K, but on CD’s website I read the 7Q does 4K UNcompressed. Do you know what it actually is? And if compressed, what codec? What about bitrates?
The 7Q will be able to record 4K uncompressed and 4K compressed in 10 bit 422 using one of the very well known and commonly used production codecs. CD are not allowed to publicly identify the codec just yet, but I’m sure you can guess which it is.
Wow I will definitely get the 7Q for my F55 !
I am a bit confused on what is 2k raw a 4k sensor that has a bayer color filter array of 2×2 pixels. Hence raw is supposed to be the sensor data, in other words only the luminance of each pixel.
So how on earth can you get 2k out of that, since then you would still require the luminance of every pixel inorder to calculate colors etc from bayer cfa. Red has solved this issue by always cropping the image to desired size. Sony seems to be doing something differently, are they perhaps calculating already on camera the other values to 2k by de bayering the image instead of making it raw sensor data?
Maybe I am totally of here since this subject is a bit confusin.
Raw simply means that the sensor data is unprocessed, so no gamma, gain, white balance etc applied. Raw can be bayer or with a 3 chip camera it could be RGB. I’m not exactly sure what Sony are doing but they are using the whole sensor for 2K so it is most likely that they are binning the pixel data. This should bring some nice advantages because 2K bayer is insufficient for even HD resolution (you need 1.3x the number of pixels than the desired image resolution). From a 4K pixel sensor it is possible to derive 2K RGB simply by binning (combining) each pair of G pixels in the 2×2 block and taking the individual R and B values. That’s one possibility, another is to bin the G pixels and also bin the R and B pixels from adjacent 2×2 blocks, this would give full resolution in the G channel with slightly lower resolution in R and B. However it’s done all that’s happening is that pixels are getting combined during the sensor read, so the pixel data is still raw sensor data.
Thanks for a swift reply, as I was expecting the answer is not that simple. I wish the foveon sensor would have been the CCD instead of CMOS hence it has all the data in every pixel. However, i have not followed what happened to it after the struggle of releasing atleast one camera with it.
I fidled a little with the fs700 raw clips that you posted, thanks a million about that, and noticed that nailing the WB spot on had a remarkable effect on noise in blues, changing wb only by 200k caused a lot of noise. At the moment he problem is that if i want the raw this year i gotta go with sonys recorder since Q7 is postponed now and then and i have not found even a single sample clip out of it online which is quite worrying and brings back the memories of th trouble BMC had with their camera. Really promising product and would suit me just fine.
And propably they already have quite a long que for the Q7 and will they be able to respond on huge demand?
What did you use to do your grading? I am pushing and pulling Sony raw footage all over the place and am not seeing a noise issue when shifting white balance. Remember raw does not have a white balance as such, only what gets applied by the LUT or transform used in the grading package.
Is 2k raw going to be as bad in the q7 as it is in sonys recorder?
Please explain what you mean by as bad in?
I did some test with sonys raw viewer on your clips. easiest place to spot the red green noise is on the blue dress.
This same fenomenan occurs with still photography raw also, if you are really trying to make the gradients towards shadow go smoothly even though you open them up a little you will run into varying noise levels by adjusting white balance
I wonder if the 7 can be used simply as a monitor without SSD cards attached to (say) the HD SDI port of an F3 with LUT turned on while a 7Q is attached to the Dual Link port(s)? That way you have the 7 as a backup device to put the SSD cards in should the 7Q go down.
On the “Cine Gear 2013 – The Sony FS700 in the RAW” on vimeo you can see that the 2k raw has the same resolution as the 240fps at the moment and they are not even going over the other difference compared to 4k, for example hoe the color of each pixel renders n 2k raw.
This could be something that sony might fix in the future with firmware update, at least i hope this is due to the algorithms they use at the moment to create 2k raw out of 4k
Yes I see what you mean. The 2K raw is not the best. On the F5/F55 Sony offer an interchangeable low pass filter for use at 2K, I guess the FS700 needs this too.
Just ordered the whole 4k package because i want the raw to be better in resolution than what i am getting now from the camcorder. the upgerade will take for about a week, so i should have the whole recorder interface package prior of receiving the camcorder 😀
Let us know how you find your poor mans F55/Alexa.
Hi everybody…!
Will the 7Q be able to record Slog2 in 4K from the FS700 (compressed or uncompressed)?
Thanks…!
I can’t say too much, but you will get the ability to record 4K compressed with the equivalent of S-Log2. The camera will feed 4K raw to the Odyssey which will then internally debayer and convert from 4K raw to compressed with the addition of a log curve (generated by Convergent Design) very similar to S-Log2.
Now I can waste the saved money on lenses 🙂
“the Odyssey which will then internally debayer and convert from 4K raw to compressed with the addition of a log curve (generated by Convergent Design) very similar to S-Log2”
Now there is a good chance to go horribly wrong there, hopefully sony will help CD with debayerin algorithms, noise reduction, gammas and everthing else involved in the process hence that is the knowledge that sony has mastered over the decades and what separates them in terms of picture quality from the other manufacturers. However I would think that this kind of knowledge is something that sony is not that eager to share.
CD know what they are doing. They already work with Arri raw on the Gemini.
I quess we will have to wait for 4k sample footage from CD inorder to verify that assumption.
Did a quick test on 2k raw, there is a lot of moire in the picture :/
resolution and colors are very good, but with sharp lenses you end up with moire. Maybe I should switch to canons soft and brown lenses to get rid of moire 😀
the 4k however is amazing, just takes a little getting used to exposing s-log2
one question, will the 7Q double as a grading monitor?