Sony to show 4K Cine camera at NAB2011

[Chris Hurd]

Preliminary news from my friend Jon Fauer:

"It doesn’t have a name yet... behind the PL mount, there’s an 8K sensor: 8768 x 2324 pixel single CMOS sensor (that’s 20.4 Megapixels) — Super35 3-perf size, 16-bit RAW output, 16:8:8.

In normal mode, the new Sony 4K camera will shoot from 1-72 fps. In HFR (High Frame Rate) mode... from 1-120 fps."

The Sony 8K sensor subsamples to 4K and records one hour of 24fps footage to a dockable 1TB SR Memory Card recorder.

No pics yet, but you can read more at New Sony Camera: 4K and Beyond Film and Digital Times: News

Should be an interesting NAB...

[Ozzy Alvarez]

With that and the latest on the Sony 35mm NXCAM, and all other potential cameras and announcements that might be delivered, this is turning out to be one of the more interesting and exciting NABs in a long time. I can't wait. Just a little more than a month to go.

Ozzy

[Chris Hurd]

I have to agree, this year's NAB will be a good one.

[Don Parrish]

Any guess as to what kind of bit rate that would work out to be.

[Walter Brokx]

1TB = 1024GB = 1024x1024MB
1024GB/3600sec = 291,2711 MB/s = 2330,16888 Mb/s
(1B=8b)

If we pretend the formatting will take off 10% of the storagespace it will still be 2097 Mb/s.
That's still about 83,8 times the bitrate of SD DV-PAL and 5 times the bitrate of RED 48.

(Correct me if I'm wrong!)

I think the specs are a bit over the top (at this moment)...
Is there any way to see the difference between 16:8:8 and 4:2:2 images?
After some heavy postprocessing I imagine it can make a lot of difference.

[Evan Donn]

what is 16:8:8? 4:2:2 are ratios, so functionally the two should be the same - are they using this as a way to indicate oversampling here?

[Michael Murie]

I think it's Sony marketing trying to remind us that it's 16-bit (not 10 bit or 8 bit.) That's my theory.

Color sampling is usually described as just a ratio, not an actual indication of the amount of data, so I think most people in the industry would think that 4:2:2 is the same as 8:4:4 and 16:8:8.

[Walter Brokx]

But if 16:8:8 = 4:2:2
then
4:2:2 = 2:1:1 ??
(I know my math ;-) )

[Mike Marriage]

I believe "4" was used because you had 4:2:2, 4:2:0 and 4:1:1 so it was a lowest common multiple (if that is the right phrase) that can be used for a comparison.

I guess Sony are trying to make the point that the luma res is much higher, although it does make the ratios look a little silly. Also odd as they still describe both SD and HD as 4:2:x.

[David Heath]

The original use of "4" goes back to the earliest days of digital video, and the earliest systems of digital composite when the (anaogue) NTSC waveform was being directly sampled. At that time, the sampling frequency was 4x subcarrier.

The usage of "4" then continued into the component world of digital, with "4" indicating a sampling rate of around the same frequency - 4x3.58MHz. The "2" then indicated twice subcarrier frequency sampling for the chroma signals.) (I say "around" since I believe a common NTSC/PAL frequency was introduced for component video, close to both 4xNTSC and 3xPAL subcarrier frequencies. Digital composite in PAL used 3xsubcarrier frequency.)

Move into the HD world, and it's silly to draw too much direct meaning from "4" type sub-sampling numbers, certainly without specifying the reference.

[Glen Vandermolen]

Didn't the original HDCAMs have a 3:1:1 ratio, or something similar?

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Glen Vandermolen

Didn't the original HDCAMs have a 3:1:1 ratio, or something similar?

Yes. Come HD, the first conventions were that "4" meant "full raster" - so in the case of a 1080 system, 1920 pixels horizontally. Hence for HDCAM, 3:1:1 meant the luminance was subsampled down to 1440, the chrominance to 480. So far so good.

It starts to get messy with the 1080 variant of DVCProHD, which subsampled luminance not to 1440, but 1280, and chrominance to half that (640). If the same standard as for HDCAM had been used to describe it (referencing everything to 1920), it should really be called a "2.666:1.333:1.333" system - not surprisingly, problems were seen with that.

But if you did want to compare like with like, say DVCProHD with HDCAM, you do have to do something like that. So the comparisons should be either 2.666:1.333:1.333 v 3:1:1, or 4:2:2 v 4.5:1.5:1.5!!! A 3:1:1 v 4:2:2 comparison is meaningless without qualification.

See why it's best to take colour space numbers with a large pince of salt in the HD world? :-)

The "16:8:8" takes it to another level of silliness. It also implies that chroma res will be the same as luminance vertically, but half horizontally, and since it's being used to refer to the sensor (rather than the recording system) that is almost certainly not true.

[Henry Olonga]

Wow - what can I say. This sounds like a beast! Good luck trying to edit this stuff. A super computer will be on order as well.

[Chris Barcellos]

Does this provide higher resolution than film ?

If the starlets are upset about their blemishes showing up now, just imagine how this will make them feel..

[Brian Drysdale]

I'd imagine you'd edit with proxy files rather than the full files.