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What is that supposed to mean?

I guess it depends on budget, but I've always found that it's better to have as much computer built in as you can afford. More cores are better, particularly for h264 footage, and I'd go with the Vega inside rather than rely on an eGPU system. There are just times where you want to be able to open your laptop to get something done quick without having to plug in the eGPU. If that's not the case, you should just get a desktop which will give you more bang for buck. For reference, I edit 4k h264 material in Resolve on a 2016 Macbook Pro (i7 2.9ghz, Radeon Pro 460, 16gb RAM) and it works great. I don't use Fusion, and I don't grade much beyond basic colour correction (curves mostly, the odd power window and tracking) and I rarely have more than 3 video tracks running (and never simultaneously like editing multicam footage). The system you're speccing should be faster than my MBP, so depending on what you actually edit/grade it should be fine. As an aside I've worked with some 6k RedCode footage in Resolve and my MBP was not handling it well. No problems after transcoding to prores, but it was not handling RedCode well.

There are lots of suggestions for camera mounted external batteries, but why not consider a battery charging solution and use standard LP-E6 batteries? As soon as you rig up any kind of external battery that will last longer than LP-E6 you're adding weight and clunk, which kinda takes away from the point of this kind of camera I think. Whenever I need a portable camera battery charging station I use one of my Hyperjuice batteries [1] with the built in inverter in a small camera bag with a couple of Hahnel proCube [2] dual chargers. It'll charge both batteries at the same time, and takes about an hour and a half to fully charge, with a percentage readout so you can see just how far away it is. Between that an 4-6 LP-E6 batteries and you should get through a full day's shooting. [1] https://www.hypershop.com/collections/battery-pack/products/hyperjuice-ac-battery-pack-100wh-26-000mah [2] https://www.hahnel.com.au/li-ion-battery-chargers/

Awesome, thanks! I had a BMMCC for a while and the battery was completely exposed, so I got used to it :D

Just curious, is there space in the battery door for a cable for a dummy battery? It looks like there is from that pic of the bottom of the camera, but that could be the latch I'm looking at...

I guess it depends where you are, but very few places are completely dark, even at night. Street lights, other house lights, passing cars... even in rural areas moonlight can light a room. I would seriously consider punching a hard light with a CTB gel through a window (as far back from the window as is practical) to mimic that light, exposed at one stop under, and expose for your flashlights maybe a half or a full stop over.

Hahaha, I'm not sure about his methodology and I suspect the results says as much about his audience as about colour science! But he speaks a lot of sense in his takeaways about how important straight-out-of-camera colour actually is, especially if you shoot stills. I started with Nikon and have now moved to Fuji (because I like the way they work) but I've shot with all those systems (along with Phase One and Hasselblad) and frankly they all work fine as long as you stay within their limits. Canon sensors find limits earlier than the others, followed but Fuji, but honestly I think Sony gets a bad rap for colour, I've never had a problem with them.

Yeah they don't hold back! But if you take their recommendations for the Threadripper and substitute for parts that are closer to your budget you can get to a pretty good place. For example the 16 core 1950X is like $1200 AUD but the 12 core 1920X is $600 AUD -- I'd doubt the 16 core is twice as fast as the 12. Plus the guide has pretty good pointers to stop you from overspending on stuff you don't need, like going to 32gb RAM when they only recommend 16 etc. I edit off a 1st Gen TouchBar Macbook Pro 15 and I can handle the 4k from my X-H1 ok. But if you're editing h264 material you need CPU cores -- the more the better. Or you transcode / generate optimised media. My advice would be to buy a balanced system -- don't spend all your money on a super fast GPU and not enough on a CPU, don't spend too much on the compute bits and forget about fast storage. If anything get more storage than you think you need -- you can transcode to wring better performance from slower systems, but if you're out of disk space it's a pain in the arse (and incredibly time consuming) to have to juggle and move things around to accommodate.

Blackmagic puts out an official hardware and configuration guide for every version of Resolve, no better advice than from the people who write the software: https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/DaVinciResolve/20180407-79c607/DaVinci_Resolve_15_Configuration_Guide.pdf

100%. I didn't expect the XT3 to be available so quickly so I went in for an X-H1 a couple of months ago, and really the only thing I'm missing is a really nice looking 120fps mode. Eterna is absolutely perfect for a camera like this, looks 80% finished out of camera so no need to really stress the codec in post. I'd also love to see a dedicated hotshoe audio adaptor like Sony and Panasonic have, and a video centric power grip with more function buttons and rods support. I'm looking forward to the new firmware that apparently will tune the IBIS for smoother movements.

Yeah what is the deal with that guy? The other day he resurrected an old thread just to rip into a young wedding videographer he found on youtube over the most minor and unimportant details, talked up his career, told a few people to kiss his arse and promptly disappeared. I know retirement is boring but surely he has more camera tests he can make in all his spare time?

I’d like to see some of your work from your time as a professional photographer. Maybe some of those car shots with General Motors you talked about. Because I’ve only ever seen you post camera tests, nothing where you operate under pressure. Surely with the kind of career you describe you’ve got 15 shots from an old book to show? I’ll start — here’s my wedding work: https://www.harustudio.com.au/

Excellent, so you can show us some work then? Which I'm sure we won't harshly and unfairly rip into with no thought to context or the conditions you worked under.

I was on set last week watching the camera op pull off beautiful dolly shots with an Amira off an EasyRig. It still takes a practiced hand but you couldn't do that with a lighter camera.

...did we watch the same video? I skipped to the last few minutes just to watch her work and to see her footage, which I thought looked great -- I mean it's a wedding, you don't have the luxury of a gaffer truck and crew. She was confident in her instruction, she knew her gear and moved fast to get the maximum number of shots in a short space of time. There was a couple of shots where the background was a bit hot, but mate who cares about the background?!? Her exposure was on her couple! As it should be! Your criticism makes me wonder if you've ever shot a wedding before, because it's a high pressure environment where you work with people you don't cast and barely know and you're at the mercy of someone else's schedule and the weather. You're on your feet all day and constantly worried about making sure you've covered everything that's happening and with enough variety for the edit, and keeping tabs on battery life and card space and where you've left your camera bag. If I had a second they'd be busy getting a second angle, not holding a reflector. Not entirely sure how you expect to see any diffusion -- to diffuse full sun for two people walking they'd be under a 20' x 12' at least, and then you'd have to worry about shadows on the ground and the wind blowing the damn thing over. As a wedding photographer (who have also shot a few wedding highlight films) I'd be more than happy to work with her on a wedding. Definitely better than some that I've had to work with. My only criticism would be that she's simply not charging enough if she has to work 80 weddings a year, that is an express train to burnout town.