KnightsFan

I don't know if our thoughts diverge that much. I agree with what you said. I'm saying that streaming is supporting a cultural shift away from more thoughtful movies, towards lower quality (imo) content. Like I said, it's not that streaming is inherently making movies worse, but that the audience is less invested in their content since it's on in the background, or literally stays on after they fall asleep. Quantity over quality. Of course some people still critically watch their streamed content (myself included), but we're in the vast minority. (The other issue I brought up, of concentrating wealth in fewer people is a separate problem.)

Exactly. It's not that all janitors will disappear but when 1 janitor + some automation can take the place of 3 janitors, you have a few million people out of work across the country. Yes, if we don't figure out a plan it will. Amazon's retail business model taken to the extreme would mean that their workers won't have enough money to afford their products, meaning no profits. Everyone at Amazon knows this, but the short term profits are so high, and the possibility that it will affect anyone currently in the company's top positions is so far fetched that there is no incentive to address the issue. Basically what I said to Matins above, it's just a numbers game. There are ~5,000 cinemas in the US, and ~500 billionaires. Each billionaire will employ personal janitors, but will each billionaire employ 10x as many janitors as the average cinema? Probably not, so we can look at the numbers and see that a large number of janitors will be out of work in this ultra-simplified example even though the profession will continue to exist. To bring it back to the topic, that's the exact argument against removing theaters. Theaters support filmmakers like Nolan and Tarantino, where fans pay extra to pick out a movie that they like and want to watch it in the "proper" setting, as opposed to streaming whatever is trending where generally the attitude is more often "well it's free* so I can't complain." Or People have it on in the background and tune out most of the content. Whether you like Nolan or not, you have to admit that he puts a lot more personal thought into his projects than the average Netflix production. (*Netflix isn't free, but when you pay per month instead of per movie, the content feels free to a lot of people). Now I don't believe that streaming is bad intrinsically. I love watching movies at home. I don't care if I watch Inception in theater or stream it, I love it either way. That's why I put "proper" in quotes above, it's not that theaters are the Correct way to watch movies, but that we all know that it is easier for low quality content to be popular on Netflix or YouTube, than it would be in a traditional box office. The trend towards streaming is catering towards a less-discerning audience, and that having a broader, less interested, and less invested audience will reduce the number of unique, high quality productions, both the ones that I love and the ones that I don't.

No one expects a fresh high school grad to make CEO or even middle class pay, but I think it's not healthy for our society to decrease the number of middle class people, have a larger number of people in poverty, and concentrate wealth in fewer mega-millionaires and billionaires. When a trend applies to 350 million people, I don't think it's the result of "everyone is just not working as hard." I agree. I hope that in 30 years, you've got a respectable amount of wealth and power in your business ventures! What I don't like is that given 1000 random people who all put in the average amount of work, the percent that will be in poverty in 30 years is larger now than it was when America had a booming middle class, through no direct fault of their own. Like we agree, it happened or is happening in all industries and ultimately it's worse for a large number of people, and better for a small number of people. Technology has increased that trend. Here's an example: Theaters employed thousands of low paid cashiers, janitors, middle class managers, owners. A streaming service might employ a few dozen highly paid software engineers instead. This is not the fault of the software engineers and ideally they should be rewarded for doing skilled labor and increasing efficiency. But if we don't figure out a way to deal with the large number of displaced workers, wealth disparity will grow. More people fighting over fewer low paying jobs means the wages of those jobs will go down. And of course it's simply impossible to expect everyone to work harder or become a software engineer, because A) there aren't as many jobs required B) we don't have the resources to educate everyone as software engineers and C) not everyone has the aptitiude. I guess that's straying a bit off topic, but it is related. It's not anymore.

It's worth pointing out that Netflix had a net free cash flow of -$3.3 billion last year. Which isn't to say it's losing money, almost no successful startups have positive balance sheets for their first few years or even decades, but it's not like Netflix is making gobs of net money.

Yes, I recommend reading the book I mentioned earlier, Who Owns the Future, it explains everything better than I can. A couple examples of top earners getting massive deals is exactly what I'm saying is wrong. The industry as a whole is making plenty of money, but the middle class worker base is shrinking with a few rising to the very top and most losing jobs or getting lower pay. Same as every other industry, actually. I don't know if that's strictly true. Again, the music industry is making gobs of money, but today a large and growing share is going to platforms instead of artists.

Who makes the money, though? The music industry makes tons of money from streaming, but less of it goes to artists than before streaming. Gaming has concentrated in fewer, larger studios as well, with a few large blockbuster titles, a lot of very small, single-developer/small team indie projects on steam, and very little in between. To bring it back to the topic, there used to be a place for large budget, unique blockbuster films like Inception, or the Matrix. "Free" and "unlimited" streaming is paving the way to large quantities or low quality, pumped out with adequate visuals, engaging actors, addictive by-the-numbers stories. The industry might make more money, but if all of it goes to the AT&T and Netflix execs, the way it did for music, then I do think it warrants pessimism. The reason streaming is lowering average quality is the low bar of entry to view content. One of my friends just watched 4 seasons of Mr. Robot this past week with it on in the background while doing other stuff. That's something you won't do if you pay $11 for a theater ticket, and I guarantee if you're sitting there paying attention to every moment you'll be less willing to put up with filler, inconsistencies, and bad moments. As bad as the theater experience is (and it is bad!), keeping a high cost and requiring a time commitment does force viewers to be more discerning, or in another sense it weeds out the casuals.

I think the comparison to the music industry is apt. I think we need to figure out an economic model for digital goods that doesn't rely on supply and demand, because digital-only goods which can be exactly duplicated indefinitely don't behave like normal products. (CD's or DVD's are still physical objects that need to be bought and owner, despite being digital files.) There is no easy way to determine the value of "a stream," and how that value compares to an actor, or a cinematographer, or hairdresser working for x number of hours. I read an interesting book called Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier that talked a lot about this, and extrapolated to the buying and selling of digital money and futures, which led to the 2008 financial collapse, and a prediction that in the far future once 3D printers are good enough, other industries will go the same way. We can see the same thing with our software and increasingly-software-driven cameras. What is the cost of a copy of Adobe CC? Does it have to be the same for every customer? Is it ethical to have two identical models of a camera, but one with software crippling, if if not, why is it okay to have free vs. paid versions of DaVinci Resolve? Tesla cars are doing it too. Ultimately, we can't get rid of streaming. It's too convenient and cheap. But like the music industry, we'll need to figure out how the economics will work otherwise it's not sustainable long term--or maybe it is, and we just will never see big budget, quality movies ever again and everything will be split into either big budget crap, and a few self-funded gems.

Oh interesting. Did Z Cam say that? I never saw it on the FB group. Viltrox already makes E mount lenses and adapters, so I assumed that Z Cam just gave them the camera's protocols, and Viltrox used the E mount information they already had.

This E mount is a 3rd party piece made by Viltrox, not Z Cam. Hopefully they do reverse engineer a couple more protocols, the more options the better!

You're right, I was mixing up some things. You still can't change framerate after adding clips in 17b2. What I was thinking of is that starting in version 16 you can have two timelines with different resolutions in the same project, which wasn't possible before.

Not after you added clips to it.

I started using 17 beta 2 today. So far I am impressed. HEVC playback is improved (the last few versions of 16 seemed to get worse, but it's back to being great), overall UI responsiveness is noticeably better, and the new color tool is pretty cool. I haven't had any crashes yet, but I also haven't done anything other than edit and color. I'm really excited for the direction this software is going!

Interesting. I use a phone as a monitor so I'm not sure. I'd expect it to be as sharp as the internal 1080p, for external recording, so I wonder if there's a setting somewhere? The Clutch is nice. I got one essentially for free as I bought a large package deal, then sold it all individually except the Clutch and came out about even. The more customizable dials and buttons the better, particularly for run'n'gun (which I virtually never do, hence no rigging). It would be cool if there was a thin, fixed handle that you could bolt on for extreme low-profile handheld shooting with a few ergonomic dials and buttons on it. I wouldn't buy it, but it might appeal to people coming from photo cameras.

The first one doesn't look thick. Second one is better in a few shots in particular, but it does bother me that the levels aren't correct. I think if that were fixed it would be better still. It has a lot better use of shadows, and overall uses warmer tones instead of cooler.

Looks great! I think your color is spot on. I actually disagree on rigging expenses--particularly if you use a tripod or gimbal. I don't rig my M4 at all, and my 2nd hand iphone monitor was free. 3rd party NPF batteries are very cheap. You can add simple side handles for next to nothing as well. You can position an iphone above the handle and still have easy access to all controls as well. CFast is very expensive, that's my only complaint in terms of accessory cost. I have a single 32GB CFast card, and I'll probably get another before doing a long shoot. It would be nice if they had an SD slot as well, even if it could only do H265, or 4k60. Do you have HDMI set to 1080p or 720p? 1080p is of course sharper, but has very bad latency I found.

I've never heard depth of field described as "compression." Generally what people mean by "lens compression" is perspective distortion. (I assume this is what you mean by perception distortion?) Perspective distortion of a subject changes as a function of distance from the camera to the subject, and is not related to sensor size, focal length, or aperture. Perspective distortion applies to 3D graphics and your eyes by themselves, not just cameras. You can also look at nuances and distortions of individual lenses, e.g. barrel distortions, "3D pop" etc. but those are not perspective distortion.

Thanks! Based on your screenshots numbers, an 80mm lens at f2.8 will produce shallower depth of field compared to a 50mm lens at f2.8. That's why in your screenshots the image on the left has more depth of field than on the right. That's also why (depending on what equivalence you are looking for), you also need to factor an aperture change into your crop factor equivalence calculations. Another aspect I tried to convey with the tool is that you should specify which dimension you are calculating crop based on. Typically people use the diagonal, but obviously with different aspect ratios that doesn't give the whole picture. A 16:9 video section of a 3:2 full frame photo sensor technically has a diagonal crop factor larger than 1. Just keep that in the back of your mind when comparing numbers as close as 1.5 vs. 1.6.

@herein2020Not to self promote too much, but I made a comparison tool a long time ago that you might find useful https://gobuildstuff.com/tools/CropFactor/index.html There's no way to change the distance from camera to subject in this tool at the moment, maybe I should add that.

You can assign a 3D LUT to the GUI monitor in settings. So if you create that LUT correctly, then your GUI monitor will be perfect, although it is just 8 bit I believe. Making the LUT with DisplayCAL is a royal PITA and there is so little information that it's impossible to know whether you've done it correctly. I've asked on here once or twice from people who say they have "calibrated their monitor" and they don't seem to know either, so I just followed DisplayCAL's somewhat sparse documentation and blindly trust it. If my understanding is correct (and please correct me if it is not!). On Windows if you run calibration software it will only change the desktop color. Software that outputs directly to the graphics card, including most NLE's, are not affected by your "system wide" icc profile. However, the gamma profile is applied system wide. So if you run calibration software, you need to create a LUT based on your calibration that modifies the colors, but not the gamma. The easiest solution is to get a monitor with its own builtin LUTs, like the SW320--just make sure your calibration hardware is compatible.

I got a refurbished BenQ SW320 for $700 and I've seen deals like that frequently with the SW320. You might find something better for $1k, but I doubt you'll find anything better for $700. And as mentioned above, you can use the extra money for a calibrator. I would disagree slightly, however. Once you're in the range of "good monitors designed for color accuracy", (i.e. NOT gaming monitors) then a calibrator really does very little. Conversely, a low end panel will never look very good even with calibration. Here are my +/-'s for the SW320: + Looks great. 32", IPS, UHD 10 bit panel. + Easy to switch between profiles (sRGB, aRGB, P3) - HDR isn't great. Part of this is Windows' fault for having terrible HDR support. You might have better results with Mac. - Response time is not good. Motion tends to tear or have other artifacts. It's pretty noticeable on even ordinary pans and can be pretty bad on footage with a lot of motion. It's a photography monitor, after all. I suspect that most color accurate IPS monitors will be similar, outside of very expensive ones made specifically for video work. But if you're coming from a gaming panel, it's a big difference for how it shows video motion. - Does not calibrate with Datacolor calibrators. If you really want to use a Spyder, you can calibrate with DisplayCAL software. On Mac I believe it's fairly easy to apply a system-wide LUT from DisplayCAL. However, on Windows, it is a nightmare. Honestly I might not have gotten this monitor if I'd known that its built in LUTs would be useless to me without further hardware investment. - USB hub and card reader isn't particularly accessible In terms of actually using the monitor for color grading, if you're using Resolve then remember that the best way to get an accurate signal is with a Blackmagic card like the Decklink. Another option would be a lower end 4k monitor for the UI, and a decklink + color accurate HD monitor for critical grading. I decided against it because I wanted color accuracy in other software as well, but if I was exclusively using Resolve then I would have done that for sure.

That's absolutely true, I forgot about that since it would sort of be outside my use case. I'm willing to put up with a few frames of drift when disconnected from a source if it means saving me hundreds or thousands of dollars, particularly since it's so easy to sync based on audio waveform if you know that you're within a reasonable margin of error to begin with. A year-ish ago I started used a low end smartphone as a TC master clock, sending LTC over bluetooth 4.0 audio which hopped between different bluetooth receivers in 3 second bursts of LTC, which was just as inaccurate as it sounds, but the entire process ends up with frame accurate TC after automated post processing. Now if I can just extend that to 32 bit bodypack receivers, that's virtually zero cost automation of some of the most tedious jobs. But it doesn't look like the F2 or Track E quite fit into my hacky workflow unfortunately.

Actually... if it's getting TC from an external source, it doesn't need its own TXCO at all. It's just reading serial input and writing it to the metadata of the file. And unless it has a very slow processor it will definitely be frame accurate.

Yes, it's a very bad thing to feed gullible people falsehoods that is personalized to appeal to them, and then ask them to vote in elections, be responsible for getting their own vaccinations and preventative healthcare, be responsible for the environment, or drive on the same roads as the rest of us. If people's actions only affected themselves then "ignorance is bliss" could be true, but when people's ignorance hurts others, there is no bliss.

If I'm not mistaken, though, the Track E does it via the 3.5mm input, which means you'd need to disconnect the mic, jam sync, then reconnect the mic. At that point you may as well set time of day at the beginning of the shoot and use that instead of TC to sync, which you can do on virtually any recorder. What makes a timecode crystal more expensive than normal time? I imagine that even without TC they keep track of time of day. That's not a bad idea, and at $350, it's same price as the Track E. I'm still not clear whether you can pair multiple F2's to the same app and have a single start/stop button for them, but even if so it is annoying to have another rec button to hit--or record all day and deal with a ridiculous file at the end. Maybe not a big problem for doc filming. If these devices had a TC input that could start/stop from signal presence like the F4, then for about $20/device I could add TC to each plus my F4, with a single rec button controlling all at once along with metadata.

Both these "timecode enabled" bodypacks are hamstrung by a hodgepodge of proprietary protocols. I wonder if a better approach would be a 3.5mm TC input on the bodypack and let users use their choice of TC system. Wired TC can't infringe on any patents, right? Bonus points if they can start/stop recording via timecode presence the way the bigger Zooms can.