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Hi All, As someone who shoots 305MBit 4K and edits on a 2016 MBP with Resolve, there's one thing you should all keep in mind about Resolve performance. Resolve has several in-built features for caching and rendering, some are manual and some are automatic, and they can be used in any combination you like (ie, you can use all of them at the same time if you choose to). However, for editing 4K footage on a low powered machine they may simply not be enough, which is why some people use an Online / Offline workflow that they manage manually. This manual online / offline workflow is complicated, takes some time to get working and understand, but it works really well. I personally transcode my own proxy footage using "Prores Proxy" at 720p and edit with that - timelines with this footage play flawlessly forwards and backwards at more than 60p with no lag and editing is a breeze. This is with effects disabled of course. As Resolve is an NLE, a colour correction suite, a professional sound mixing and mastering suite, and is now a VFX suite, we have to be clear with our language around these things. I can EDIT whatever resolution footage I like because I use proxies. My proxy workflow doesn't help with mixing lots of audio tracks though. Nor will it help if you want to do precise colour or VFX work. You may be able to do simpler VFX work at a lower resolution and then just bump up the resolution when rendering out, but you may not, depending on your specific situation. Resolve is great in that you can have a 1080 timeline, you can edit 720p proxy footage on it, viewing it at a range of resolutions while you do so, then you can swap back to the 4K source footage and then render out at whatever resolution you like - all from that same 1080 timeline. In this way, you can do non-critical things at lower resolutions and get the performance benefits, but not limit the quality of the final output. So when someone says "I edit 4K footage in Resolve" the first step is understanding what they are talking about SPECIFICALLY. When people say that I just automatically change it in my head to say "I use Resolve with 4K footage in some unspecified way for some unspecified purpose" and then go from there. I hope this helps. K.

Has anyone shot anything really impressive with the A7III yet? I did a big comparison of the 'look' of the BMPCC vs the A73 by binging on BMPCC travel films for 2-3 hours and then trying to binge on A7III films, but the only real observation I made was that A7III owners can't edit for sh*t! The only A7III videos I've seen that aren't terrible are these.. Matti Haapoja (he had focus issues - I think from not using the right focus modes) Christian Mate Grab:

I agree with previous comments about this not being value for money. This is a new space and early adopters will pay heavily for the privilege - either navigating software limitations and customisations as @Don Kotlos mentioned, or by buying plug-in solutions that aren't great value from a power:dollar perspective. For those unfamiliar with the eGPU space, this is a pretty good resource (this link is for Mac, but the site covers everything): https://egpu.io/setup-guide-external-graphics-card-mac/ Totally agree. Basically everything is more expensive for laptops - just look at the prices for the BM external monitor cards for PCI vs USB.... The 4K PCI card is $199, but I think the Ultrastudio 4K is the cheapest external 4K converter and it's $995! I think the only reason not to have a desktop computer for editing is that laptops are portable. Obviously if you're a pro working from an office (with controlled lighting etc) then this isn't an argument that applies, but if you're like me and edits on the move, or even someone that doesn't want to run two computers (and manage all the syncing that requires) then a laptop is the only option. Travel film-makers, YT creators with demanding publish-schedules, etc are in this situation. I read that more and more producers and directors want a colourist on set to provide feedback on the 'look' of footage, so flexibility might be worth something. Or, if you're at the lower-end of the market and using Resolve as your all-in-one (I hear the Media Management features are excellent for ingesting footage) but can only afford one computer then a laptop might also be a compromise that makes sense. I'm waiting for the support for multiple eGPUs to take off, and then it won't matter what the computer is because you'll be plugging in 4 or 6 of them and having a real-time render farm. Resolve should be well suited for this as I hear it's more reliant on GPU than CPU, and if they're partnering with Apple that might give them access to the MacOS bits that might need to change there too. Plus, the ability to sell multiple eGPUs to each person would be a huge deal.

Now it's my turn to not understand. If you know all of that, then why did you ask this? And then why did you criticise when my answer was clearly stated as being generic about testing. It sounds like you're the one with the contacts etc, and we should be asking you!

OK, let me have another go. A camera can be released with what you determine to be major imaging problems because....... it wasn't you making the decision, and they care about different things than you do. I'd suggest that you're very lucky to not understand. It's not uncommon for decisions in large corporations to be made straight after the boss says something like "either the product is going to be out on the street tomorrow morning or you are!"

LOL.. I guess you know better than all the people who actually do this for a living. I look forward to you releasing your prefect camera!!

Yeah, context is king. Every tool has pros and cons depending on the situation. That's one of the biggest challenges in these forums, we're all shooting different stuff in different situations but we don't reliably communicate what our unique needs are.

A 24-70 f/4 kit lens is a pretty nice offering, and a good strategy if you're releasing a new mount. If they released a 24-70 f/2.8 and a fast 70-200 for it at the same time it would cover a lot of bases for those looking to switch systems.

I'm definitely not JB, but I can talk about testing, having been involved in software development and testing in my day job. The short version of why things are released with bugs is this: A company figures out that they can build a camera with X features in Y time, and they think that it will fill a niche and make money They start to develop it, and due to how dependencies in projects work, development takes longer than anticipated The company knows that releasing a product late is a huge mistake, especially in a rapidly developing market, but they also know that releasing a product that is flawed is also a bad idea The company goes into TESTING, where people are using the camera, noting down issues, annoyances, and product features in a big database Everything in the database is ranked (according to importance) and then allocated to a tech to fix Once an issue is fixed it is then sent back to the person who found it to test it again It is common for a change to fix something but break something else, and it's also common for a problem to be caused by two things (eg, hardware and software, or two different software modules) not being completely aligned. Communication needs to occur, discussions to understand what is happening, what to be done, implications etc.. At some point (normally the publicised release date) a huge meeting is held and all the remaining items to be fixed are reviewed by management and the decision to release it anyway is made. It is very very very rare for something to miss the delivery deadline because of the number of issues. The process of identifying, tracking, fixing, testing, continues during the lifetime of the product (and is why there are firmware updates to a product) In reality there will be thousands, maybe tens of thousands of items involved in a process like this. Nothing is ever perfect. It is not possible to test every function with every combination of data. Here's a quote from an article about developing the software for the space shuttle: [Edit: here's the link to the below] I highlighted the relevant passages in bold. Obviously, NASA has more at stake with software problems than a consumer electronics company, and even then, they can't possibly test everything. There is a typical divide in culture in an organisation around Risk. IT and engineering professionals are normally trained in a culture of excellence, where due to advanced mathematical training, there is often an underlying and often unconscious mindset of there being one answer to a question, and therefore one solution to a problem, with the rest being sub-optimal. These teams are often incentivised by having KPIs and bonuses around system reliability. Sales, marketing, and product managers operate in "the market" which is complicated, messy, and is basically a shit-fight, and know that sales (and therefore profit) are more related to perception rather than facts, and they know that every day a product shipping date is delayed is lost sales. They know that nothing will ever be 'perfect' and are fully ready to 'explain away' any shortcomings of the product once it's in the market, but they can't do a single thing or sell a single unit until it is actually released. These people have KPIs and often have large percentages of their income based on sales bonuses. They care about quality, but only as it impacts sales. Often, Sales, marketing, and product managers think that IT and engineering professionals are ivory tower elitists who will 'gold plate' everything until the company goes bankrupt and products have to be ripped from their hands in order for the company to ever be finished and for anyone to ever get paid. Often, IT and engineering professionals think that Sales, marketing, and product managers are reckless, dodgy, cowboys who have no pride in quality, no understanding of shafting the consumer by fast-talk and no integrity, and they need to prevent products from being released too soon otherwise their lack of quality will immediately sink the company and no-one will get paid ever again. I hope this illuminates why products ship will bugs. It's a fundamental issue, and the final result is always a compromise.

Indeed - conceptually they're the same! I guess I see two major elements to the picture, one is size, and the second is the scalable architecture I mentioned before. With those two they can start putting two, three, four, six, twelve, and then onwards to dozens of them in the same box. I remember programming a computer that had 2048 processors when I was back at university, and geez, if you knew how to program it right it sure could fly! I didn't go into parallel computing far enough to get a glimpse of how they program a parallel algorithm for an unknown number of processors, but they should have worked it out now with these multi-core machines we all have.

It's still a card in a box - this is what I was referring to: https://www.amazon.com/Sonnet-Breakaway-Radeon-Windows-Compatible/dp/B076MHMF3V/ref=sr_1_10?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1531061276&sr=1-10&keywords=egpu Not as powerful, but it's one step further evolved than chopping a desktop case in half, putting a power supply in it, and then putting in a desktop graphics card. People are using huge numbers of graphics cards for bitcoin mining and AI, I'm waiting for them to invent a layer between the computer and the tech so that the software doesn't have to know how many GPUs are connected, and you can just connect as many devices like this as you want.

At ISO6400 the noise will eat whatever bit depth you throw at it, so I don't think that's really a consideration. The problem with 8-bit RAW is that even in great lighting it will still be 8-bits!

If you're willing to render proxy media then any modern machine should be fine. My 2016 13" MBP running Resolve plays 720p "Prores Proxy" at up to 60fps without noticeable delays both backwards and forwards. Ouch! I've previously repaired some dodgy keys on my old Mac Air by looking at YT videos, so it might be possible to rectify it yourself. If you attempt it I'd recommend you first attempt to remove a key you never use - normally we stuff up the first attempt and I was no exception lol. I did manage to fix the offending keys though, so it was all good in the end. Awesome, I've been looking at eGPUs for a while too. One of the most recent developments is that instead of buying a cage and a graphics card you can now buy all-in-one setups that are much smaller. Unfortunately they still run off mains power not USB-C so it doesn't help edit if you're on a plane/train/bus.

Actually, there have been a few attempts at electronically compensating for zoom to simulate a parfocal lens: (Source: https://www.newsshooter.com/2015/09/25/canon-xc10-review-a-simple-solution-for-everyday-video-journalism/ ) I just did a quick test with my XC10 and when you zoom in (24mm to 240mm) it doesn't stay in focus, but when you zoom out it seems to stay in focus, even if you do it quite quickly. Obviously in the XC10 it's not a perfect implementation, and obviously it would require the camera to be able to talk to the lens and "know" how to adjust, but with the modern focussing systems like the A7III etc you should be able to get something that would work pretty well. Sorry if this is out of context with the broader conversation, I was skimming though and just saw your comment and thought I'd mention the above

I edit 4K footage (by making 720p proxies) on my 2016 13inch MBP, but you may look at the performance I get and find it's not enough. With editing there is no "can" or "cannot" there is only "I need X amount of performance with Y amount of effects etc". Perhaps you can elaborate on what you need? If you turn on proxies and all the caching then Resolve can work on almost any computer. However if you need to colour grade ARRIRAW footage in 4K live in front of a customer then obviously you're going to need much more processing power.

Definitely agree. It's easy to say that a company didn't make good decisions but often their decision-making is quite sophisticated. I don't know what kind of margin a manufacturer might make on a camera model, but it might only be a few percent, which means that a successful company has great ability to predict the market. I used to work in finance, and before that in the insurance industry, and both of those industries are single percentage point profitability industries. I used to catch the train with a co-worker who was in the strategy team and did a 6 month analysis for a new financial product (a loan of some kind I think) and he worked out that they could get something like 1% profit over the multi-year lifetime of the product, and it was going to have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars put through it. The key difference in finance being that if the product wasn't popular they wouldn't have lost much, maybe a few million dollars in development and advertising, but the cost of developing a camera would be absolutely huge. I, too, feel like I want a camera that's different to almost everyone else on this forum. Ironically, the impression that I get is that most people here have similar priorities to you! I wonder if everyone feels the same way - what an amusing / ironic situation that would be.

Would membership be a variable? If you're a paying member maybe you get streaming priority or something? My household has a family YT Red account so I don't get ads, yeah, they were definitely annoying as hell.

There's lots of links between very different types of sounds, including the sound of a train on early Jazz music.. http://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2017/01/19/trains-jazz at about 75% of the way through. Edit: or this example where the album starts with the sound of a train and it is included until almost the 4:00 mark when the music fully takes over. This is an absolutely wonderful album, one of my all-time favourites.

There can be big differences between what people actually want, what they think they want, what they will tell you they want, and what they will actually pay for. In start-up businesses there's a trick. You hold a focus group, and then listen to people talk on and on and on about what they think (which you write down diligently and then throw away later on) and when people are leaving you either offer them free samples, or you tell people you have some stock for sale and would they like to buy some now? That final part is the real test. There's a story in startup land about a company getting into the MP3 player market, had a focus group with all sorts of different colours and patterns and people were very supportive of all the colours, but when the company offered a free player as a 'thank-you' every single person took black.

Every time I see a link to a Vimeo video my stomach sinks. I've never been able to play them smoothly, even with an internet connection that can stream multiple 4K files from YT while the Xbox is on. The poll that Andrew started shows others have the same issue. In a way you're right @zerocool22 - they are completely different audiences. This is actually a bad thing when combined with the above.. we have YT that streams smoothly but the content is mostly interruptible, and then Vimeo where the content is something you want to wash over you so you can be transported to the emotional place that the film-maker is taking you to, but in reality I just get waves of anger wash over me as the F*@#$ING thing just won't play properly. The best outcome (from my perspective) is that YT should buy Vimeo, and automatically transfer all the content across to be encoded in 4K and served properly.

Absolutely to subjectivity. What I was referencing with regards to weight is the Sony is 2,895g, the Canon is 3,850g and the Nikon is "approx 3800g", so the Sony is lighter, but they're all still really heavy with all that glass and metal!

My ultimate use for this would be to have it be integrated into the camera and have the camera vary it continuously instead of the other parameters. This would mean that you can set it to 1/50th, F4, Auto ISO and Auto ND and it will control the exposure for me while I still have control over SS and Aperture. Then I never have to think about exposure ever again but I still get the advantages of 180 shutter and controlling DoF. It's unlikely, but are you able to make a deal with a manufacturer perhaps? Having this thing as part of the sensor stack, or maybe as a switchable ND (so the camera just moves it into the light path or out of it) would be perfect. At the moment I can either have the camera control the exposure, OR I can have full creative control, but not both at the same time.

Yeah that thought crossed my mind too, it's a pretty obvious move. I don't really know how the camera industry works in terms of which people are primary producers and which only assemble things and who specialises in what.. I guess if Nikon hasn't got much experience of tech at that physical scale, and doesn't make any, then it might be a hard transition to become a preferred supplier for a major smartphone brand. I watched a review of the new Sony 400mm(?) lens and the reviewers took the A9(?) to a sports game and their conclusion was that the lens was slightly more expensive than Canon or Nikon, slightly lighter than Canon or Nikon, and performed similarly (ie, great) but that when following a subject in AF-C the combination got 20fps instead of the 10-11 that Canon and Nikon got. If you're a sports shooter then that's going to be a set of features that will be really hard to ignore. Hey - be careful being critical of Aussies!! I do it all the time, but it's like many things - only we're allowed to do it!!!! ????

It doesn't surprise me if they were. I don't know what it's like where you are, but where I live there are a couple of large grocery franchises where people do their weekly food shopping, and a number of other smaller competitors. One of the things that the smaller shops would do is run their freezers warmer (still within the rules, well, hopefully) but what it would mean is that by the time you got home the frozen stuff you bought would have melted, whereas the same products bought from the large chain of stores didn't. Cutting costs in hidden ways that hurt the customer is a pretty popular business strategy.

Resolve has a pretty good customisable shortcut key system, with preset configurations for some editing platforms, so if you've got muscle memory from another package that might be a good place to investigate first. Also, the manual is absolutely excellent, so your first point of reference for any questions should be that and not google.