KnightsFan

@FranciscoB x264 is a specific set of libraries that encodes h.264 files, it's not an either or. I'm not sure what library Resolve uses under the hood to encode h.264 if you use the internal encoder. You can also use Nvidia's NVENC. To clarify, NVENC and x264 are different algorithms that both end up with an H.264 video. I haven't compared them myself. In the past, I have seen better results from ffmpeg compared to Resolve when exporting to h.264 and h.265. One thing that I have noticed is that Resolve does much better if you give it a quality preset rather than a max bitrate. Use the dropdown instead of a number and you'll have fewer artifacts even at comparable bitrates. Yes, you can still get better quality up upscaling to 4k and uploading that instead of HD--but only if the user watches in 4k. I never watch YouTube in 4k so if I was your target audience then it wouldn't make any difference. My phone doesn't even stream 1080p most of the time, and honestly I watch as much on my phone as a PC.

You can read YouTube's upload guidelines here. YouTube reencodes everything to a very low bitrate (~8mbps for HD). So while you do want to maximize the quality that you upload, keep in mind that viewers watching on YouTube will see worse quality than the file you created. So for example, if you are worried about a quality difference between 50 mbps and 25 mbps on your HD file before uploading, well, that's a moot point since the actual stream will be much lower than either of them. I always upload in H.265. I haven't uploaded much to YouTube in the past year or two, but when I did I couldn't see any benefit or downside between H.264, H.265, and DNxHD uploads. So I picked the one that was easiest for me, which is a high quality H.265 file.

I use the NX1 with an external monitor all the time and all buttons continue to function. At one time I had a hack installed and didn't have any issues there, I don't remember which one it was and I uninstalled it long ago. Have you tried with other field monitors? TVs or PC monitors? Is the USB actually connected to anything while you're trying this? I previously found issues with HDMI and USB having issues when using both at the same time. I'd try without a USB cable attached, if you haven't already.

One option is to use hashing to determine whether a digital file has been altered or not. The one technology I saw about it was that the user is directed to make certain camera movements, which are hashed with the content of the video. That makes it virtually impossible to edit the video without anyone being able to immediately tell it's been altered, since the hash would change. So that technique won't help you immediately determine if a video you see on YouTube is real or not, but it would be possible for the filmmmaker to provide source clips to prove that they are real, if necessary.

Locking your focus while vlogging can be useful, but I have yet to see anyone vlog with a follow focus.

I find the F4 relatively easy to use on the go. I think that audio equipment in general has UI/UX issues since the general convention is to use a little knob to twiddle your way through expansive menus. You kinda have to memorize where things are, but it's not worse than other recorders. (I think the DSLR convention of a wheel built on top of 4 directional buttons is simply easier to use). But the main UI of being able to toggle channels on/off with 1 click, adjusting gain directly on a knob, and soloing a channel with 1 click are nice. I like having all the controls on the front panel so that it's easy to see when hanging from a neck strap. The one thing I miss from the DR60 Mk2 is that little Mic/Line/Phantom switch. You have to enter the menu on the F4 to get to that. But you can press a button on the F4 to immediately access a channel's options, so day-to-day I don't have to hunt around. It's things like switching from 48kHz to 96, or changing the routing matrix, that are a pain because I only do them once every few months and forget where the options are. The biggest issue F4 has for me is that battery life is quite bad using 8 AA batteries. I affixed a large 12V battery on top, but it's an ugly, heavy solution. However, most recorders have pretty bad battery life in my experience, especially older ones. The F6 is very attractive to me for the simple reason of having a built in NPF battery sled and (supposedly) really good battery life, along with 32 bit recording of course.

My EF and F lenses follow me from camera to camera, so it will be a long time before I buy anything other than EF. I'd love to see Rokinon get some competition for affordable EF cine style lenses. It's great that they also have mirrorless mounts as well. Gotta love the #vlogger on Meike's tweet about manual focus cinema lenses though.

It's definitely worth differentiating opinion vs. fact. But I'll second the opinion in this case: be wary of old pro audio equipment, modern engineering has done marvels at a low price. I tried out an FR2 back when I owned a DR-60D mk2. The FR2 was noisier using the same mic in a sound proofed studio. Granted, @independent 's numbers are for the FR2LE (which is supposed to have better preamps) and the DR-60D (which has worse preamps than the Mk2). also keep in mind that if your problem is too much wind, then you are certainly not going to be hearing the noise floor of the recorder. The difference between self noise in any of those recorders is negligible in any normal outdoor recording. And, to bring it back to the original suggestion, I've had a Zoom F4 for a few years now. It is superior audio quality to either the FR2 or the DR60 Mk2 by a significant margin. Even more importantly, it has better ergonomics than the FR2. The headphone preamp is much cleaner than Tascam's rather terrible one, and the construction is another league from the DR60.

There's one on ebay from Adorama at the moment. I think it ships internationally https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zoom-F4-Multitrack-Field-Recorder-with-Timecode-6-Inputs-8-Tracks-SKU1256834/254610621129?hash=item3b47f9c2c9:g:q2gAAOSw0Yxez7qE

If you need the lenses to be physically large and have cinema ergonomics, then Rokinon is the only option in that budget range. However, in my personal experience, Nikon AI primes produce the more traditionally cinematic image compared to Rokinon. Rokinon has strange colors. I have a harder time color correcting Rokinon shots than Nikon ones. I remember watching Duclos tear down the 35mm and his bafflement at finding an orange lens element inside. Doesn't surprise me. It's not that they're terrible, but every time I used them it's an uncanny valley, something is off feeling about the colors. I never had issues with sharpness even wide open, especially not compared to vintage Nikons. In my opinion, follow focus gears and a step up rings make the Nikons look aesthetically like cinema lenses. If you really wanted to you could even add lens hoods or something like that. My recommendation is to stick with Nikon, save the money, and enjoy beautifully imperfect images, the best build quality out there and the ultimate adaptability.

I think @IronFilm is right for narrative indie filmmakers. I can't speak for wedding/corporate/doc people, who may need more mobility, AF, and less rigging. I think even music videos tend to require more mobility than narrative. In my experience, even the worst Blackmagic camera, the 2.5k EF mount, was preferable over the Panasonic and Sony mirrorless that I also used back in ~2015. The only thing comparable was 5d3 raw, which was unreliable and an even bigger PITA to use (and also more expensive, incidentally). That said, obviously photo/video hybrids are a different class which does exclude things like the Pocket, or GoPros, etc, so it's a useful categorization.

If you want the turbo mount pictured on the right, you have to buy it separately. The camera comes with a MFT mount. I could be wrong, but I believe it is the exact same sensor as the P6K. I think all E2's have phantom power. The original E2 does for sure. Though, audio on Z Cam cameras is an afterthought at best anyway. You can stream with the ethernet port on current firmware. You just have to run the StreamConverter software at the same time, which will enable it as a virtual camera for use with OBS, Zoom, etc. The future firmware is to stream wirelessly directly to FB or YT without a computer at all, and I think there's another update which would allow the cameras to work natively with OBS/Zoom (i.e. without StreamConverter). You can choose any codec you want, unless you're at such a high framerate/resolution that your options are A) shoot H.265 or B) buy a more expensive camera. Agreed. I probably would have bought a P4K if it was boxy with an larger battery.

More amazing news from Z Cam: the E2-M4 is on the way, which is the same internals as the Z Cam E2 but with the body and interchangeable mount of the S6/F6. It does not have the multicam sync feature of the E2, however. It's $1500 in the US. If you bolt Z Cam's 1st party focal reducer on the front, you basically have a S35 active locking EF cinema camera in a tiny package for a low price. https://cvp.com/product/z-cam-e2-m4-cinematic-camera Also, the S6 and F6 will have price drops of $500 and $1k respectively.

I agree! If you want truly open, the Octopus cinema camera is promising. The Axiom project was promising, but doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast--though I wouldn't be surprised if the Octopus camera is benefiting from the R&D that Axiom did and made open source. Z Cam cameras are really quite open. There aren't hacks per se, but they don't need any imo. In addition to just having a lot of options out of the box, they have an open API for controlling the camera and really are going out of their way to make their products compatible with third party accessories. Both of these are strictly cinema cameras. It would be really nice if some manufacturers of hybrids took the same approach. The closest we ever got to an EOS app store was the Samsung Galaxy NX, which is close to just a simple android device shaped like a DSLR. I haven't used one, but it honestly looks like what I'd expect the future of hybrids to be: massive back screen, good ergonomics, and designed for connectivity.

I've been planning to create a chest mount for a small monitor (actually, phone) that rests just under eye level. I think having it permanently on my eye would be eye-straining and make it hard to walk around which is why I'm planning a chest mount. The nice thing about the E2 is that you can use a cellphone for wireless monitoring out of the box, so there's no extra gadgets required. Wireless latency is noticeable, but no worse than the HDMI latency on half the cameras I've used. So it might even find use when I use a glidecam.

Yeah, definitely no the camera for great in-camera audio control. I always record externally so it's not an issue for me. You can get an adapter cable for direct(ish) XLR, but you'd have to figure out how to cable manage that--I don't know if I'd want heavy XLR connectors hanging off that little Lemo port. Or you could get a small mixer of some sort, which is really more a bandaid than anything else. I'd love to see some actual numbers on the rolling shutter on the S6 and F6. If I get time I'll do some measurements on the E2 and see if they match C5D's numbers.

I have to agree with @Kisaha, that looks terrible. It doesn't even look like high dynamic range at all--it's an overcast day, a decent Rec 709 camera would capture that range.

You can, but what I'm saying is every sensor currently being used in any camera we discuss here uses linear ADCs that double bits for every doubling of light. Theoretical ADC's aside, for every real camera on the market, including the S1H, dynamic range measured at full resolution will never be substantially greater than the bit depth of the ADC. Well it's exactly because of what @Lux Shots is saying: bit depth has more to do with gradations than dynamic range (unless you're talking about 1:1 linear ADC's). 10 bits is plenty to store all the usable data from any sensor, when encoded logarithmically. There's really no point to storing a 12 bit image if you sensibly map values into 10 bit.

Maybe? I think members here just aren't that interested in the E2. Though it's an extraordinarily awesome Facebook group, especially a few years ago when it was very small. It's recently grown to the point of having a lot of repeat questions.

You're right about what bits are and what dynamic range is, but virtually every modern sensor has linear ADC's, so bits equate to dynamic range stops because of the linear relationship. I don't know of any sensors that don't behave this way and suspect that none exist. (That's strictly dealing with the sensor ADC, not any encoding afterwards, which is hardly ever strictly linear.)

It's a well known fact that DaVinci Resolve uses a maximum of 639kB! The USB standards are getting very confusing. I have faith that eventually we'll get to a one-connector-for-everything utopia, but in the last few years USB has gotten so much more convoluted. I wish they would at least require clear markings about which cables and ports supply what. The USB C cable that comes with the Oculus Quest only supports USB 2.0, so you need to buy an identical-looking third party cable to use Oculus Link at USB 3.0 speeds--which is now called USB 3.2 Gen 1 apparently. Just a mess.

The new firmware (v0.95) enables ProRes RAW over HDMI to Atomos recorders on all E2 models. This includes the $800 E2c. This means that the E2 series now has not one, but two different Raw formats. I'm sort of surprised the Z Cam is still barely talked about here. It checks a lot of boxes that people complain about with the P4K. The entire series now has H.264, H.265, ProRes, ZRAW, and ProRes RAW recording capabilities, plus incredible frame rate options at full sensor width on the E2, multiple crop options and aspect ratios, low rolling shutter, long battery life, and incredible build quality. I recently got one, though probably won't have any projects to use it on for a few months.

Great post! I think design, UI, and ergonomics are an under-reported element to our work. As every NX1 will say, it is such an enjoyable camera to use. Not just the chunky grip and sensible button placement, but the straightforward, simple menus deserve a shoutout. As a general use photo camera nothing comes close. Though I haven't used them, I think the Z6/Z7 are noteworthy for actually including a locator pin hole on the bottom--so simple, but so helpful. On the other side, the Z Cam E2 has some unique design choices that stand out. Lack of a grip makes gimbal balancing easier, and the presence of two 1/4-20 threads makes it super stable. Unlike larger pro cameras, it's tiny and much more easily managed for a single person crew. Then there's the phenomenal Z Cam app: wired/wireless monitoring and control from an iPhone. I noticed that! Definitely a nice touch.

The Fuji XT3 is marginally smaller and lighter, but I do believe that you will find smaller lenses for MFT than X mount in general--maybe someone can correct me on that though. A gopro is nice also because they are designed to be mounted on stuff like bikes. If you use a DSLM, make sure it can't rotate at all on the single 1/4-20 thread--vibrations from a bike could easily knock it loose.

Z cam E2 + all the E2 flagships