Report: F3 looks almost the same a EX3

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by James Houk

S-Log comes out April, and is apparently $3,500 license fee, additional to the camera cost. That fee also unlocks 4:4:4.

S-Log is a gamma curve - at minimum 10bit 4:2:2 is advised to have enough data for post. But it's not automatically necessary to work in 4:4:4 to take advantage of the S-Log gamma curve.

That means the Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini ought to be an option. The Cindeck Extreme is about $10k and can record 4:2:2 or 4:4:4, and like the Ki Pro options, it's portable.

Tethered, you could do 4:4:4 recording to a $1k Blackmagic card by recording direct to a Mac Pro tower. That's the cheapest 4:4:4 option, but the the tether is a significant caveat.

I guess the Ninja recorder people are also making plans for an HD-SDI version. If that happens, and works solidly, then that will be a great option.

[Jacques Mersereau]

I was unaware of Cinedeck. Wow, that is exactly what I was think about when I mentioned thunderbolt.
A recorder and monitor in one small package - on-camera package. I must have walked right by it at NAB and didn't notice. That's one problem when attending alone, you miss a lot of the cool stuff.

[Ryan Koo]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

I guess the Ninja recorder people are also making plans for an HD-SDI version. If that happens, and works solidly, then that will be a great option.

Especially if it will do 1080p/60p. Correct me if I'm wrong but neither than Nanoflash nor the Ki Pro Mini will do 60p in 10bit, right?

[James Houk]

Originally Posted by Ryan Koo

Especially if it will do 1080p/60p. Correct me if I'm wrong but neither than Nanoflash nor the Ki Pro Mini will do 60p in 10bit, right?

I sincerely doubt that it will, since by definition that would need to be a Dual Link recorder. Single link HD-SDI is 1.5Gb/s - which can carry 1080 30p. You need twice the bandwidth to carry 1080 60p - hence, dual link. As both the Ki Pro and Nanoflash are single link, they cannot support 1080 60p.

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Originally Posted by James Houk

Regarding just feeding the SDI data stream into a hard drive... yes, it's 1s and 0s. But for 10bit 4.2.2 it's 1.5GB/s, and for Dual Link it's 2.970GB/s.
...
By comparison, consumer SSD drives have a read/write speed much closer to 230MB/s
...
Using the HDCamSR codec on Sony's upcoming recorder, a 1TB card could hold about 40minutes at 440MB/s.
...
Please correct my math if it's wrong.

Ok, yeah that math is wrong. Watch out for those b's and B's... bits and Bytes. You made all the bits into Bytes.

You mean 1.5Gbps / 3Gbps for SDI/3g-SDI. The only number you were correct about in the comparison is ~230MBps (aka 1.8Gbps) which is close to the common maximum speed for some SSDs that use a Sata-2 bus.

A 1TB card would hold ~5hrs of 440Mbps (HDCAM SR compressed) footage.

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Originally Posted by Jacques Mersereau

That is stupid. We're talking O's and 1's. Lacie is rumored to have a 500 gig SSD drive for $300.

Even if simple storage devices were the same thing as video processing/recording devices, which they are not, the rumor you are thinking of is that Lacie's new thunderbolt little big disk will cost about $300 when outfitted with HDDs (NOT SSDs). The 500GB SSD version you are talking about is supposed to use 2x250GB Intel 510 SSDs which cost $600 each as bare drives, so more likely it will cost about $1500 considering the thunderbolt and raid hardware and markup also involved.

As for 0s and 1s, you could just use a random bit generator on a 500GB SSD and fill it with data. You can call that 8k raw 16bit uncompressed data but good luck viewing it or making a movie out of it. Building hardware and software that does high quality video data processing in limited spaces with real environmental and technical imitations and does so in a standards-compliant way for a limited marketplace and selling it at prices that will turn a profit is another story.

That said, yes specialized industry-specific proprietary solid state storage media will always be overpriced when compared to consumer-level commodity standardized solid state storage media, even if the same nand chips are inside. Hopefully manufacturers of proprietary media will be able to add some value added to their media in the form of higher performance or stability or features or it will not last in the market.

[Jacques Mersereau]

Random bit generator - that's good, but I understand the points made. I just do not see plunking down $40K for a 1TB recorder - no matter what it does. Others may find it to be a worthy investment.
In my situation, I would rather invest the $40K into filling out the F3 kit, and if I had to run a couple of cables to the camera, I would accept that minor annoyance.

[Aaron Newsome]

All of $30k is not out of line. All the recorders that can do this (except Cinedeck), are priced in that range. All of them. I researched it heavily before I got the Cinedeck.

Watch NAB though. There will be some other players.

[Steve Kalle]

I, too, had delusions of grandeur about the SR1's price.

So, lets take a look at 'Pro' flash and military-grade flash. Pro is SxS and a 64GB card is ~$850. It takes 15 of these to equal 1TB which would cost $12750. The flash is MLC which is why it has a shorter life span. MLC has roughly 10,000 writes and SLC has 100,000 write cycles before the flash cannot be written to anymore (but it still can be read).

For military-grade flash, you need SLC because its lower error rate, higher data throughput and lack of 'MLC stuttering'. Surprisingly, SLC SSDs cost a bit less per GB than the SxS cards. The Intel Extreme 64GB is only $750.

Or you can look at Red and their 256GB SSD at $3200. 4 of those equals $12800.

Either way you look at it, those 1TB SR drives will cost several thousand dollars - probably near $10k each.

I wonder, is it possible to use the S-log output in the F3 and use a Cinedeck to record the 444 S-log. And is it possible to use an I/O card with 3G SDI like the Kona 3 to record S-log.

[Daniel Doherty]

The Cinedeck looks mighty appealing right now.

[Alister Chapman]

As Aaron says, wait for NAB, or maybe sooner ;-) There will be new players with some very impressive devices for a lot less money than current offerings.

[Daniel Doherty]

Absolutely. I'm attending NAB for the first time this year. Very Excited.

[Alister Chapman]

I'm doing some stuff for Sony, so you'll find me on the Sony booth most of the time.

[Kenn Christenson]

Any resolution tests/comparisons between the F3/EX1 and maybe the AF100? I've heard both the F3 and the AF100 top out at about 800 lines/vertical. Been considering the F3 as a replacement for my EX1- until I heard about the lower resolution. Is this something Sony can firmware fix? (my guess would be no - but have to ask, because I like this camera, otherwise.)

[Aaron Newsome]

Fortunately, I'm not planning on making any movies of test charts.