Anyone get the 7Q+ to work with Sony A7s & GH4?

[Steve Kimmel]

I just spoke with someone who said they had a 7Q+ and they cannot get it to read the signal from either an A7s or the GH4. Has anyone had any luck with this?

[Gary Huff]

Yes, a lot of people.

[Nick Hiltgen]

Despite Gary's really helpful reply I'm going to bump this because while I can find loads of test footage with the shogun I'm having a hard time finding actual users of the 7q+ and a7s. I'm currently in the market for one of those two recorders and while I have been happy with the updates on my 7q when they arrived I do feel like I'm perpetually waiting for one more thing (currently vectorscope) and the price of the media is pretty high.

Has you friend called convergent design to see if they can help him?

[Steve Kimmel]

The person did call but apparently no reply yet. It was Friday afternoon though.

[Olof Ekbergh]

I have used both the Shogun and the O7Q+ with the A7s.

I was doing comparison tests when I found the blue frame problem with the Shogun, and I spent a lot of time testing that with different drives. And then the new FW came out and I spent time testing that.

The O7Q+ worked flawlessly, I will post some footage soon. But the problems delayed my comparo testing.

I went on to do a lot of testing the FS7 with the O7Q+ and the Shogun but had problems with the Shogun there as well so I just delayed more tests until the Shogun FW is fixed.

It does appear that the FW now works w/o dropped frames or "blue frames" on the Shogun and the approved SSDs has been updated for the Shogun.

So this next week i will do more comparos.

Through all this the Odyssey worked flawlessly. There is a gamma shift in Slog footage on both the Shogun and the Odyssey due to how Sony outputs the HDMI signal. I did a testing a few months ago using a O7Q compared to internal in HD and the Odyssey worked well with that but the gamma shift was there as well.

This is some footage from that test:

Test 3 on Vimeo

You can tell this was a while ago, it is 70 degrees cooler and really white in the back yard now.

[Nick Hiltgen]

Thanks Olof I was nearly convinced to abandon CD for the shogun but then they pushed the timeline for when they would have 4k playback available, of course the 7q+ doesn't have 4k prores lt available so maybe it's just a waiting game for both.

[Olof Ekbergh]

At the moment the O7Q+ can record UHD (3840 x 2160) from the A7s up to 29.97P in ProResHQ.

And it works perfectly. I will post some footage here this week.

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Nick,

I am surprised to read that you feel that the Odyssey7Q+ does not have 4K ProRes.

In this post, when I mention 4K, I mean Cinema 4K (4096 x 2160) and Ultra-HD (UHD) is 3840 x 2160.

The Odyssey7Q and Odyssey7Q+ both have support for 4K Apple ProRes 422 (HQ).

The Odyssey7Q and Odyssey7Q+ can accept 4K and Ultra-HD via HD-SDI 3G Dual Link, as output from a Sony F55, Phantom Flex 4K, the F5 (with the recent $998 firmware upgrade) and other cameras.

And the Odyssey7Q and Odyssey7Q+ can accept 4K and Ultra-HD via HD-SDI 1.5G Quad Link, as output from a Sony F55, F5 (with the recent $998 firmware upgrade) and other cameras.

And the Odyssey7Q+ can accept 4K and Ultra-HD over HDMI.

All of the above are recorded to either 4K or Ultra-HD Apple ProRes 422 (HQ).

All of this support is in our latest firmware 4.10.100.

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The Sony A7s can only output Ultra-HD (3840 x 2160) (as opposed to outputting 4K (4096 x 2160), but this should not be a problem for most people as Ultra-HD is the preferred choice for many people.

And the Odyssey7Q+ fully supports the A7s and the GH4.

The Odyssey7Q+ fully supports both 8-bit and 10-Bit signals via HDMI.

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In other modes, such as HD and 2K, the Odyssey7Q and Odyssey7Q+ support both 10-Bit and 12-Bit signals from many cameras, such as the C500. This is over HD-SDI, not HDMI.

(We have not tested the F35's 12-Bit output mode yet.)

These are supported in Full Uncompressed and Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) up to 60 fps.

It will not be long before we support Apple ProRes 4444, which is 12-Bit and RGB 4:4:4.

I hope this helps.

Respectfully,

[Dan Keaton]

Originally Posted by Steve Kimmel

The person did call but apparently no reply yet. It was Friday afternoon though.

Dear Steve,

Could you please have your friend call me at:

seven one nine --- nine three zero --- one three seven six

My Skype account is dan (dot) keaton1

I try hard to provide support 24/7.

Respectfully,

[Dan Keaton]

Originally Posted by Nick Hiltgen

...while I have been happy with the updates on my 7q when they arrived I do feel like I'm perpetually waiting for one more thing (currently vectorscope) and the price of the media is pretty high.

The Vectorscope is included in a substantial upgrade of our Image Analysis Tools.

This upgrade is currently being incorporated into the rest of our firmware and will be out relatively soon, but it is not expected to be ready this month (January 2015).

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When compared to consumer SSD's, our SSD's cost more.

But, consumer SSD's do not have built-in Power Protection, and generally do not have the same write speeds over the entire SSD (many slow down drastically when they get over 50% full), and do not have the same write speeds over time as they have been reformatted many times.

Most consumer SSD's are optimized to perform well in industry standard benchmark tests. This optimization increases the write speed for the first half of the SSD while sacrificing the write speed for the second half of the SSD.

Here is one example: 520 Megabytes per second (MBps) write speed for the first half and 100 MBps for the second half.

Thus, for demanding applications, such as recording Raw from a Sony FS700/FS7 or Raw from a C500, recording over 400 MBps, you will only be able to use the first half of the SSD. When you get over 50%, for many consumer SSD's, it will fail.

And recording 4K Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) is right on the edge, for the second half of many consumer SSD's.

Our SSD's can handle loss of power while recording, or playback, or even when the SSD is performing an internal function.

Ours are extremely robust and can handle being removed while being used, which can cause serious problems for most SSD's.

And we support our customers. If recorded footage cannot be read from an SSD, we use every means available, (including performing surgery on the SSD, to the best of our ability), no matter the cause of the problem, in an attempt to retrieve our customers footage, and we do this for free.

Our SSD's can be used for every format that we record, including the most demanding formats, such as recording 2K 12-Bit Raw at 240 fps.
(It does take two SSD's to record this 772.5 Megabytes per second data).

It might be false economy to purchase lower cost SSD's only to discover on set, that the higher quality, or higher speed, or Raw recording that was not planned, cannot be actually recorded, since you need faster, more capable SSD's.

Our SSD's can be used for compressed recording, full uncompressed recording, and full uncompressed Raw recording. Any format, any frame rate, any flavor that our Odyssey7, Odyssey7Q or Odyssey7Q+ can record, our SSD's can record it. This is not an accident, this is by design.

Our SSD's are standardized, with a "Locked Bill of Materials". By this I mean that all of the components used to build the SSD's are the same. Most manufacturers will change core components or the firmware in the SSD, over time, while keeping the same brand/type name. Thus one SSD may work, but then another SSD of the same type purchased later may or may not work.

Since we use one family of SSD's, they have been very thoroughly tested in our lab, with tens of thousands of hours of testing time. And they have proven reliability.

And, to the best of our knowledge, our SSD's have never dropped a frame of footage when using "Production Level" firmware (not beta versions during testing).

If you compare prices of professional media, (and we do not consider consumer SSD's to be professional media), ours are the lowest price per Gigabyte and if you consider cost per minute of recording time, ours are also the lowest.

I hope this helps.

Respectfully,

[Steve Kimmel]

Originally Posted by Dan Keaton

Dear Steve,

Could you please have your friend call me at:

seven one nine --- nine three zero --- one three seven six

My Skype account is dan (dot) keaton1

I try hard to provide support 24/7.

Respectfully,

Thank you Dan! Will do.

[Nick Hiltgen]

Dan Thank you for your response, I need to make sure that I am more careful about what I post, I left two critical letters off of my post I meant prores 4k (LT). I was aware that the 7Q(+) offers 4k recording (and has for a little while now) but the bit rate difference between 4k LT and 4k HQ is substantial. Especially if you're using a camera like the A7S which doesn't take advantage of the properties that proves 4k hq offer.

Also I am completely aware that the SSD's used on the 7q are specifically engineered for the performance required of the 7q. (I have even mentioned as much how satisfied I was when the recording of ARRIRAW was flawless in my previous experiences)

But I will say we live in a world of rapidly dropping prices for media, so the fact that the drives have not dropped in price in over a year is a little bit annoying, however as you mentioned when compared to something like a 64GB sxs card it does seem like a better value. (in fact this is how I justified purchasing the first two 7q drives that I purchased.) I will also say that almost every other media manufacturer provides cases for their pricey media and it is kind of scary to think that If I purchase the 1tb drives I will have no safe way to hold them outside of the recorder.

Also as Olof has mentioned the other recording option seems to have quite a few bugs that it needs to work out, where as the Odyssey family seems to have worked pretty much out of the box.

So for me it would be nice to have something similar in price and accessories to the other guys but with the screen and reliability of the odyssey.

Also and I realize that I am most likely the only person complaining about the lack of vectorscope but I've owned my 7q for almost a year now hoping to be able to use the vectorscope function (because I didn't carefully read the product details when I bought it and thought that it was already included not an upcoming firmware update) and while i do sincerely hope that it will be added in the future you'll understand if I don't hold my breath.

[Ole Salomonsen]

The 7Q+ and my A7S works fine, but, for some reason, if the camera is powered on before I turn on the 7Q+, then the 7Q+ will not detect the A7S signals. I then have to switch off the A7S, and on again, then the 7Q+ detects it.

This had me baffled for 30mins until I by accident discovered it.

So, first power on the 7Q+, then the A7S.

Not a major issue for me, but this is hopefully something that can be overcome in a future fw.

Do not know if this is the same with the GH4.

Reg,
Ole

[Steve Kimmel]

Hi all. Just wanted to follow-up. The problem was resolved with Convergent Design tech support. Turns out it was two issues: (1) cables/adapters -- a bunch didn't work and they finally found a combo that does work. (2) They had Info Display set to "on" in the toolbar section, 3rd menu.

Hope this helps others.

[Willem Kotze]

[QUOTE=Steve Kimmel;1873562]Hi all. Just wanted to follow-up. The problem was resolved with Convergent Design tech support. Turns out it was two issues: (1) cables/adapters -- a bunch didn't work and they finally found a combo that does work. (2) They had Info Display set to "on" in the toolbar section, 3rd menu.

Hope this helps others.[/QUOTE

Which combo finally worked ?