Firmware Update To Output RAW over HDMI? Is that even remotely possible???

[Mark Romero 2]

So Atomos just announced the Ninja V and also announced a firmware update to their other recorders that will allow them to record ProRes Raw over HDMI.

The trouble is that apparently no DSLR / Mirrorless cameras are actually outputting RAW over HDMI (think the BMPCC4K WILL do that, but I have been known to be wrong in the past).

So, during an interview at NAB, ATOMOS CEO Jeromy Young said to petition your camera manufacturer to add RAW output over HDMI. He mentioned this would be great for the a7 or the 5D Mark IV, so I assume that HE was assuming that adding RAW output over HDMI to an existing camera via a frimware update is a thing.

Does that seem even remotely likely???

I mean, how likely is it to be technically feasible that Sony is going to add firmware to the original a7, or that Canon is going to add firmware to the 5d IV to output RAW?

And beside the technical difficulty, how likely is Mr. Sony or Mr. Canon to actually be influenced by whatever we ask for cameras that were released a few / several years ago???

Seems like buying lottery tickets would have a higher chance of paying off.

[BTM_Pix]

Technically feasible but politically/commercially less so would be my opinion.

The only new sales it would generate would be for Atomos so I can't imagine the will would be there.

 

[TwoScoops]

I can see Panasonic giving it the ole college try with the gh5s in light of recent events. 

[Mark Romero 2]

18 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Technically feasible but politically/commercially less so would be my opinion.

The only new sales it would generate would be for Atomos so I can't imagine the will would be there.

 

Well, good to know that it is technically possible. On the other hand, Sony still seems to sell the original a7S new, so maybe it would breed new life in to it???

2 minutes ago, TwoScoops said:

I can see Panasonic giving it the ole college try with the gh5s in light of recent events. 

Yeah, I can see your point.

[BTM_Pix]

4 minutes ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Well, good to know that it is technically possible. On the other hand, Sony still seems to sell the original a7S new, so maybe it would breed new life in to it???

If they were to put it in anything, they'd put it in the A7Siii (whenever that happens) to stimulate sales of that.

But, then again, you then end up with the protectionism stuff again where they don't want to give away the farm on the lower (ha!) end cameras.

There is also the issue of getting too closely in bed with a 3rd party damaging your own brand if the whole solution doesn't work 100% of the time. There is a thread on here at the moment regarding the GH5s not playing nice at certain resolutions with the Atomos and both sides pointing fingers at the other. A bit of a minefield things like that, as is only being one firmware update away from disaster on either side so it also increases the support testing efforts and so on.

Manufacturers should make their own for all those reasons but for some reason (protectionism or not sufficient demand/return or both) they don't seem to bother.

 

[KnightsFan]

4 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Seems like buying lottery tickets would have a higher chance of paying off.

I don't know. Even if its unlikely that any cameras will in fact output ProRes Raw over HDMI, it may not have been a huge cost for Atomos to implement. I wonder if the hardware is actually any different? I mean it's the same data rate, and the recorder is still just taking a signal and writing it to disk. Sure, there's debayering etc. for the screen, but literally every camera in existence does that same processing in real time, so the hardware can't be too expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if world-of-mouth advertising (like that of this topic!) boosted sales enough for it to pay off.

[Mark Romero 2]

20 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

I don't know. Even if its unlikely that any cameras will in fact output ProRes Raw over HDMI, it may not have been a huge cost for Atomos to implement. I wonder if the hardware is actually any different? I mean it's the same data rate, and the recorder is still just taking a signal and writing it to disk. Sure, there's debayering etc. for the screen, but literally every camera in existence does that same processing in real time, so the hardware can't be too expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if world-of-mouth advertising (like that of this topic!) boosted sales enough for it to pay off.

Ahh... I see my posts are clear as mud...

I actually meant that - for me, the end user - that buying lottery tickets would pay off better (for me) than trying to petition Sony / Canon / Nikon to add RAW over HDMI output from their older cameras. Sorry it didn't seem like that was what I was trying to say.

As for ATOMOS, since it seems like it was mostly a firmware thing, then yeah, they are probably going to do fine with it.

[KnightsFan]

Oh okay, yeah, I completely misread it. I totally agree with you!

[webrunner5]

The data rate for ProRes Raw is not that thigh. And from what i have seen it can be done as low as 10bit. So I don't see why it can't be done on the 2.0 HDMI spec.

White paper on it.

https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_RAW_White_Paper.pdf

Apple ProRes RAW

April 2018

Data Rate

ProRes RAW data rates benefit from encoding Bayer pattern images that

consist of only one sample value per photosite. Apple ProRes RAW data rates

generally fall between those of Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 422 HQ,

and Apple ProRes RAW HQ data rates generally fall between those of

Apple ProRes 422 HQ and Apple ProRes 4444, as shown in the chart below.

Uncompressed

12-bit raw

ProRes

422 HQ

ProRes

4444

ProRes

RAW HQ

ProRes

RAW

ProRes

[jonpais]

I think it would be a huge win both for Atomos and the camera manufacturers. Atomos has a close working relationship with all the major brands. If the GH5s or GH5 implemented RAW HDMI out, there is little question in my mind that it would stimulate sales. As far as needing a 5” recorder/monitor, I can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s nothing to carry around handheld. My advice continues to be, bombard every camera review, interview, unboxing, tutorial and promo with requests for RAW HDMI out. It is a fallacy that monitor/recorders are no longer relevant in filmmaking.

[webrunner5]

37 minutes ago, jonpais said:

I think it would be a huge win both for Atomos and the camera manufacturers. Atomos has a close working relationship with all the major brands. If the GH5s or GH5 implemented RAW HDMI out, there is little question in my mind that it would stimulate sales. As far as needing a 5” recorder/monitor, I can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s nothing to carry around handheld. My advice continues to be, bombard every camera review, interview, unboxing, tutorial and promo with requests for RAW HDMI out. It is a fallacy that monitor/recorders are no longer relevant in filmmaking.

I don't see Panasonic adding it at all to the GH5 or the GH5s. Who the hell would buy a EVA1 then. Current owners would cut off some heads if they did. I would not blame them.

[jonpais]

8 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I don't see Panasonic adding it at all to the GH5 or the GH5s. Who the hell would buy a EVA1 then. Current owners would cut of some heads if they did. I would not blame them.

You could be right. On the other hand, just playing devil’s advocate here - just how many Oscar contenders have been shot with DSLRs? And why hasn’t BMD dropped their Ursa Mini Pro? $4,500 in savings can get you a ton of ND filters. ?

[webrunner5]

About the only big edge the EVA1 has now on the Gh5s is that it can do 2K- FOUR-THIRDS FRAME 1-240fps while the GH5s only does 240fps in 1080p. I know the Codecs on the EVA1 are better and it has a 5.7 K sensor but hell give the lower ones Raw why really buy it other than the Slo Mo. Raw would even them out too much I think. Hell the EVA1 is like 3 times more money than a GH5s or more.

21 minutes ago, jonpais said:

You could be right. On the other hand, just playing devil’s advocate here - just how many Oscar contenders have been shot with DSLRs? And why hasn’t BMD dropped their Ursa Mini Pro? $4,500 in savings can get you a ton of ND filters. ?

Form factor as much as anything, lots of buttons handy. And the ND filters in the Pro. People are not going to stop buying Sony FS5, FS7's, Canon C300 mk II's  just because the 4k BMPCC has come out. You still need a lot of real estate to rig a camera properly and the new BM sure isn't going to shine in that department. Big productions will still buy big camera bodies. They are more stable also because of the weight. Stronger mounts on them, on and on. Plus I don't think Clients are going to pay someone 1000 bucks an hour to shoot with a sort of Toy looking camera yet.

But to stay competitive in the bigger camera market BM is going to have to raise their ISO on them like they have done with the new 4K BMPCC.

[Kisaha]

4 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

About the only big edge the EVA1 has now on the Gh5s is that it can do 2K- FOUR-THIRDS FRAME 1-240fps while the GH5s only does 240fps in 1080p. I know the Codecs on the EVA1 are better and it has a 5.7 K sensor but hell give the lower ones Raw why really buy it other than the Slo Mo. Raw would even them out too much I think. Hell the EVA1 is like 3 times more money than a GH5s or more.

Form factor as much as anything, lots of buttons handy. And the ND filters in the Pro. People are not going to stop buying Sony FS5, FS7's, Canon C300 mk II's  just because the 4k BMPCC has come out. You still need a lot of real estate to rig a camera properly and the new BM sure isn't going to shine in that department. Big productions will still buy big camera bodies. They are more stable also because of the weight. Stronger mounts on them, on and on. Plus I don't think Clients are going to pay someone 1000 bucks an hour to shoot with a sort of Toy looking camera yet.

But to stay competitive in the bigger camera market BM is going to have to raise their ISO on them like they have done with the new 4K BMPCC.

The cameras you are mentioning are S35, and EVA takes EF lenses natively. For a lot of pros, these 2 things matter. When you say "the codecs are better, the sensor is 5.7" then you mean that it is more expensive! GH5s is 2500euros and EVA is 6500euros here, certainly a lot more expensive, with all these new releases I would expect EVA/C200 to come down to 5000euros territory, or else a lot of people will have back thoughts about investing in them.

The other day I was doing sound to a fashion internet tv thingy, and the guys were using GH5 with metabones and EF lenses, and the whole rig was close to FS5/C100  territory, price wise, a C100mkII would be sufficient 100%!

And to continue from another thread, the small-ish(I am not so sure that is that small anymore) pro video market is definitely listns to every release. If you had Canon/Sony having the 90% a couple of years ago, BlackMagic (rental houses here got a few UMPs), EZ, EVA, Kinefity, DJI (in a sense) and I do not know who else, cut their 20% until the end of the 2018, then it is something. Maybe they won't get it in 2018/2019, for sure they will know when in 2022 they would have lost almost half of the market.

The ability of having this kind of raw for cheap, will give to all the smaller players an advantage.

How special the C200 will look -for 9000euros here - when there will be half a dozen cameras (including the pocket and kinedity with their own raw) offering raw, 10bit middle codecs for less, or half, or 1/5 of the price?!

The market is changing, fast, faster than ever, and that is because of the small players.

[Mark Romero 2]

19 hours ago, Kisaha said:

The market is changing, fast, faster than ever, and that is because of the small players.

WORD!!!

[jonpais]

Now that we know Panasonic is not worried about cannabilizing sales of their EVA 1, I wonder how they’d go about implementing RAW HDMI out? A free or paid firmware update? Just the GH5s, or the GH5, too? Would they ship the code by snail mail, like they did with V-log? How would image quality really be affected? Would NR and sharpening be bypassed? Would petitioning Panasonic to write a few lines of code to allow turning off sharpening and NR be more likely to get a response than asking for RAW HDMI out? Because even enabling RAW output would mean customers having to spend nearly a thousand extra dollars for the Ninja V, storage, and whatnot. $3,500 for the GH5s + recorder vs. $1,300 for the Pocket! Because most of the complaints we’ve seen up until now from actual users are not about thin footage, but overprocessing. Most filmmakers would probably choose the Pocket 4K over the GH5 for RAW anyhow, since it can record directly to CFast or SD cards, no? Or would Apple users choose Prores RAW over DNG? So many questions! Probably never hapoen in a million years anyhow! Stop dreaming...

[BTM_Pix]

I think they could make it switchable based upon V-Log being installed on the camera, which would be the fairest thing to do anyway.

That way they give themselves a revenue opportunity from those who haven't upgraded and reward the people who have already paid.

Whether its worth having when, as you say, it then involves the user paying another chunk of money for a recorder is neither here nor there for Panasonic I suppose if it means that they overcome a major objection from customers.

Its a bit like the X-T2 only having F-Log externally - it offered a solution for Fuji to an objection and for customers to tick the box of their own 'must haves'.

And then hardly anyone used it

 

[Andrew Reid]

My opinion is a bit speculative but here it is anyway...

HDMI is too limited, but there are some cameras with USB C now that could get a trivial firmware update to dump the buffer RAM raw frames to a USB C SSD drive like the Samsung T5.

I think we'll be seeing at least one get such an update before the year is out.

[Kisaha]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

My opinion is a bit speculative but here it is anyway...

HDMI is too limited, but there are some cameras with USB C now that could get a trivial firmware update to dump the buffer RAM raw frames to a USB C SSD drive like the Samsung T5.

I think we'll be seeing at least one get such an update before the year is out.

GH5 series or A7 mk III series. I seriously doubt Sony will give any kind of raw anytime soon, but I can see Panasonic offer it until the end of the year, especially if the Pocket is for real.

[Damphousse]

On 4/10/2018 at 11:56 PM, webrunner5 said:

Form factor as much as anything, lots of buttons handy. And the ND filters in the Pro. People are not going to stop buying Sony FS5, FS7's, Canon C300 mk II's  just because the 4k BMPCC has come out. You still need a lot of real estate to rig a camera properly and the new BM sure isn't going to shine in that department. Big productions will still buy big camera bodies. They are more stable also because of the weight. Stronger mounts on them, on and on. Plus I don't think Clients are going to pay someone 1000 bucks an hour to shoot with a sort of Toy looking camera yet.

But to stay competitive in the bigger camera market BM is going to have to raise their ISO on them like they have done with the new 4K BMPCC.

I am definitely getting a BMPCC 4k but I could still see myself buying some kind of C camera like the C300 mk II or C200.  I don't do video for pay but if I can do a little at work and get the tax deduction for purchasing the equipment $7,500 isn't that much.  I won't have to do that much internal work to come close to breaking even.  Plus by the time I get the BMPCC 4k and use it for a few months to see how it works out the C series cameras I am eyeing will probably have gone down by a thousand or two dollars.