Canon EOS M6 Mark II

[Jrsisson]

3 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

With regard to h264 costs, I'm just going to bump this again for anyone who wants to look at the actual figures.

Thanks for this.

 

So there is a licensing cost to using h.264 but it doesn’t matter whether you use one flavour or multiple?

 

To put it another way, using more than one frame rate doesn’t increase the licensing costs?

[BTM_Pix]

1 hour ago, Jrsisson said:

Thanks for this.

 

So there is a licensing cost to using h.264 but it doesn’t matter whether you use one flavour or multiple?

 

To put it another way, using more than one frame rate doesn’t increase the licensing costs?

That is my reading of it from the document itself as well as their FAQ.

Worth bearing in mind that h.264 is licensed in really cheap stuff like the Raspberry Pi where margins are tighter than a duck's arse.

[Mokara]

6 hours ago, Jrsisson said:

Where’s your evidence for 24fps licensing costs?

 

Please don't repeat your educated guess that’s what is happening here.

 

I'm interested in seeing a link to evidence.

In order to use H.264 they have to get a license like everyone else. There is absolutely a license fee structure involved, it is NOT free. You are not going to find any link to it because that information obviously is confidential, but suggesting that there is no license is ridiculous. What you pay for a license depends on who your are, what you use the codec for and how you use it. It can range from nothing to a very large amount of money. The exact amount would be negotiated at the time the license is issued and having some restrictions in return for a lower fee is normal business practice.

That is a reasonable and obvious explanation for why something like 24p is omitted. The suggestion that they left it out on purpose just to make their product less competitive is absurd, but that is essentially what most of you are arguing. It is not like 24p was not in their cameras before, so they were not protecting anything then and are not now. The reason for the omission has to be something else.

[newfoundmass]

2 hours ago, Jrsisson said:

Thanks for this.

 

So there is a licensing cost to using h.264 but it doesn’t matter whether you use one flavour or multiple?

 

To put it another way, using more than one frame rate doesn’t increase the licensing costs?

Correct. It's all the same codec.

2 minutes ago, Mokara said:

In order to use H.264 they have to get a license like everyone else. There is absolutely a license fee structure involved, it is NOT free. You are not going to find any link to it because that information obviously is confidential, but suggesting that there is no license is ridiculous. What you pay for a license depends on who your are, what you use the codec for and how you use it. It can range from nothing to a very large amount of money. The exact amount would be negotiated at the time the license is issued and having some restrictions in return for a lower fee is normal business practice.

That is a reasonable and obvious explanation for why something like 24p is omitted. The suggestion that they left it out on purpose just to make their product less competitive is absurd, but that is essentially what most of you are arguing. It is not like 24p was not in their cameras before, so they were not protecting anything then and are not now. The reason for the omission has to be something else.

Can't fathom living in a fantasy land where this ridiculous theory is more "reasonable and obvious" than Canon, I repeat CANON, intentionally crippling cameras. 

[Mokara]

5 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

With regard to h264 costs, I'm just going to bump this again for anyone who wants to look at the actual figures.

That is the standard license that is available to everyone. You can negotiate other terms however.

5 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

Correct. It's all the same codec.

Can't fathom living in a fantasy land where this ridiculous theory is more "reasonable and obvious" than Canon, I repeat CANON, intentionally crippling cameras. 

The fact that there is no reason to intentionally cripple cameras doesn't bother you? After all, if that was the case then why do older consumer cameras have 24p in them? Surely Canon would still have been "protecting" other products then as well? Why would they suddenly stop including 24p to "protect" professional products? What kind of professional is going to give up on their Cx00 in order to shoot on an EOS-M camera? Really??? You guys seriously believe that??? Your argument makes absolutely no sense at all. The only reasonable reason for doing this is to reduce costs in order to improve the profit margin, something you would expect them to do in a climate of rapidly shrinking consumer sales.

[BTM_Pix]

1 minute ago, Mokara said:

That is the standard license that is available to everyone. You can negotiate other terms however.

Are you suggesting Canon have negotiated a deal with more restrictions in return for a reduction in price ?

[Mokara]

1 hour ago, BTM_Pix said:

That is my reading of it from the document itself as well as their FAQ.

Worth bearing in mind that h.264 is licensed in really cheap stuff like the Raspberry Pi where margins are tighter than a duck's arse.

Right. And the financial terms of the license take that into account. But you have to negotiate that.

[Shell64]

12 hours ago, Phil A said:

Did I miss something? How does 24p cost extra money for the manufacturer of a camera that will anyway have a video function? Wasn't the whole argument around video always that it's easy to do with minimal effort based on the live view function, while the photography purists were yelling that video functions have to be removed because they make cameras "way too expensive"?

Should we remove raw pictures because the soccer moms shoot JPEG?

PNG would appeal more to the soccer mom crowd. JPEG will be a premium feature, only found in Canon’s R line. 

[Mokara]

9 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Are you suggesting Canon have negotiated a deal with more restrictions in return for a reduction in price ?

For their lower end products, yes. They have obviously created a restricted technology package for video in their lower end products, since all of the consumer cameras built around Digic 8 appear to have the same video specs. This is not speculation, it is fact as evidenced by the specs themselves. The reason for doing that would be to reduce costs, and having some sort of negotiated license for those products would be part of that.

[newfoundmass]

21 minutes ago, Mokara said:

That is the standard license that is available to everyone. You can negotiate other terms however.

The fact that there is no reason to intentionally cripple cameras doesn't bother you? After all, if that was the case then why do older consumer cameras have 24p in them? Surely Canon would still have been "protecting" other products then as well? Why would they suddenly stop including 24p to "protect" professional products? What kind of professional is going to give up on their Cx00 in order to shoot on an EOS-M camera? Really??? You guys seriously believe that??? Your argument makes absolutely no sense at all. The only reasonable reason for doing this is to reduce costs in order to improve the profit margin, something you would expect them to do in a climate of rapidly shrinking consumer sales.

Canon launches the EOS R, their flagship full frame mirrorless camera they've directly marketed to filmmakers. 

Within a year every camera Canon releases no longer has the frame rate that most filmmakers shoot. 

Which is more plausible:

Canon removes the frame rate as a way to try and move that market towards their more expensive, new offering. 

OR 

Canon removed 24p because that feature, which they've included in sub-$200 consumer camcorders, was now just too costly to implement in $800+ cameras. 

As a reminder, this is CANON we're talking about. 

[Mokara]

3 minutes ago, Shell64 said:

PNG would appeal more to the soccer mom crowd. JPEG will be a premium feature, only found in Canon’s R line. 

A hell of a lot more users use the stills RAW function in these cameras than those who use 24p. 24p is very much a niche, and the people who occupy that niche by and large buy higher end cameras (and are driven  by other reasons). The absence of 24p will have very little effect on sales. The absence of stills RAW however will have a very significant impact on sales. The two are not comparable, no matter what soccer moms are doing. His argument is a red herring.

There is also the question of cost. A camera shoots RAW in the first place, JPEG is produced from that RAW image. Having the ability to save that RAW image directly costs nothing outside of the software tools which are already there in the basic OS used in Canon's cameras, there is no IP involved and the hardware is already in place. So, eliminating RAW would provide very little cost savings, but instead would cost a lot in the form of lost sales. 

[newfoundmass]

9 minutes ago, Mokara said:

For their lower end products, yes. They have obviously created a restricted technology package for video in their lower end products, since all of the consumer cameras built around Digic 8 appear to have the same video specs. This is not speculation, it is fact as evidenced by the specs themselves. The reason for doing that would be to reduce costs, and having some sort of negotiated license for those products would be part of that.

So Canon is in such a dire position that they need to shave a few pennies off a license agreement that every other manufacturer, including the lowest of low end action cameras, can afford? Is that what we're saying? 

[Mokara]

1 minute ago, newfoundmass said:

Canon launches the EOS R, their flagship full frame mirrorless camera they've directly marketed to filmmakers. 

Within a year every camera Canon releases no longer has the frame rate that most filmmakers shoot. 

Which is more plausible:

Canon removes the frame rate as a way to try and move that market towards their more expensive, new offering. 

OR 

Canon removed 24p because that feature, which they've included in sub-$200 consumer camcorders, was now just too costly to implement in $800+ cameras. 

As a reminder, this is CANON we're talking about. 

EOS-R is marketed primarily to stills photographers, with video as an extra. The only hybrids on the market that are video orientated are Panasonic's GH series.

Prosumer cameras will still have 24p since people who buy those products might still want that. These new cameras are consumer market cameras. Two different types of products aimed at different types on consumers.

If people in the consumer market don't use 24p the absence of 24p is not going to move them to prosumer cameras. I am not sure why you think it would. I highly doubt that Canon's marketing team thinks that. Do you buy more expensive stuff just because it includes some functionality you never use? I am pretty sure that most people have more sense than that.

[OliKMIA]

1 hour ago, Mokara said:

That is a reasonable and obvious explanation for why something like 24p is omitted. The suggestion that they left it out on purpose just to make their product less competitive is absurd, but that is essentially what most of you are arguing. It is not like 24p was not in their cameras before, so they were not protecting anything then and are not now. The reason for the omission has to be something else.

As soon as they release an entry level cam with DPAF and no crop, they magically remove 24p. Don't you see any link here? As you said, they used to have 24p in the past on anything, including sub $500 entry level DSLR such as the 100D. First they release 4k after everybody else, then they release 4k with with huge crop, to finally implement 4k on cheap mirrorless by removing DPAF and now this. I'm not sure if you are blind or if you playing the devil's advocate.

Crippling and segmentation is nothing new or specific to Canon. All manufacturers do that at some point (Sony with shitty codec on the A7x, S1 with shitty audio) but Canon is just mastering the art. Same as the lack of intermediate codec on the C200 (and no 4k raw out!!), etc. Canon line-up is full of crippling, more than the other brands. That's all.

53 minutes ago, Mokara said:

That is the standard license that is available to everyone. You can negotiate other terms however.

The fact that there is no reason to intentionally cripple cameras doesn't bother you? After all, if that was the case then why do older consumer cameras have 24p in them? Surely Canon would still have been "protecting" other products then as well? Why would they suddenly stop including 24p to "protect" professional products? What kind of professional is going to give up on their Cx00 in order to shoot on an EOS-M camera? Really??? You guys seriously believe that??? Your argument makes absolutely no sense at all. The only reasonable reason for doing this is to reduce costs in order to improve the profit margin, something you would expect them to do in a climate of rapidly shrinking consumer sales.

The reason is to protect their higher margin Cxxx camera business, it's both simple and very dumb, which is why you might have issue to grasp at this difficult reality. They are somehow terrified that people would buy entry level stuff for B cam. Sony and Panasonic don't, FS and EVA exist along with A7 and GH/S1 product. People won't give up a pro cam for a DSLR but these type of cameras could be nice as B or C cam if you already own the lenses and want to maintain a certain image consistency.

Your explanation doesn't add up, no matter how many times you repeat this non-sense on every thread. It just goes against basic observation of Canon release history over the year. Nothing to be mad about but this is just embarrassing for you at this point. Not sure if you are a troll, a Canon Rep or really believe in this fairy tale. That said, I'm out of this discussion. Have fun.

[Shell64]

@Mokara I respect your opinion but you sound like a canon sales person right now. Canon is removing 24p to protect their eos r and cinema eos cameras. There is an abundance of evidence to prove THIS is why canon removes features. Why did the 6d mark II have no All-I codec?  Why did the M50 have no DPAF in 4K?  Why did the 5d mark iii have no MJPEG 4K when the sensor can read windowed 4K?  

P R O D U C T

S E G M E N T A T I O N !

[newfoundmass]

 

[Mokara]

9 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

So Canon is in such a dire position that they need to shave a few pennies off a license agreement that every other manufacturer, including the lowest of low end action cameras, can afford? Is that what we're saying? 

The terms of a license vary depending on what it is used for and how many units are sold. So yes, if you are going to sell a shit ton of units, with some feature very few people use, then negotiating a lower fee structure in return for excluding those features absolutely makes sense. And it is not just in video modes available, there will be all sorts of other compromises being made in the camera to save a small amount here, a small amount there. Using USB 2 instead of USB 3 - maybe there is a reason for that. It all adds up to a significant portion of your margin. When manufacturing a narrow margin product you cut anything you can reasonably get away with, even if the actual cost might seem trivial to the casual observer. That is how you make money in business, you are not a charity.

[newfoundmass]

I can't continue this discussion, you're giving me a head ache. Canon didn't negotiate a cheaper license by promising not to use 24p. It didn't. There's not even anecdotal evidence to support such a ridiculous theory. End of story. 

Canon should just remove all manual modes on their cameras next, since most casual users don't shoot in anything but auto mode anyways!

[Mokara]

6 minutes ago, Shell64 said:

@Mokara I respect your opinion but you sound like a canon sales person right now. Canon is removing 24p to protect their eos r and cinema eos cameras. There is an abundance of evidence to prove THIS is why canon removes features. Why did the 6d mark II have no All-I codec?  Why did the M50 have no DPAF in 4K?  Why did the 5d mark iii have no MJPEG 4K when the sensor can read windowed 4K?  

P R O D U C T

S E G M E N T A T I O N !

M50 does not have DPAF in 4K because of processing limitations. If they could have implemented it they would have, because the cameras the M50 is competing against are the likes of Sony, not Canon's prosumers. 

The 6D series is a stripped down version of the 5D series, it has more basic hardware support. The 5D series have an additional processor in them to handle focusing/exposure for example, which the 6D lacks. That means the 6D has to handle those functions with it's primary processor, and that in turn affects performance when it comes to things the primary processor normally does. Presumably the codec options are one of those things impacted by that difference. That is in fact an example of how cost saving measures (one processor instead of two) has a direct impact on specs.

3 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

I can't continue this discussion, you're giving me a head ache. Canon didn't negotiate a cheaper license by promising not to use 24p. It didn't. There's not even anecdotal evidence to support such a ridiculous theory. End of story. 

Canon should just remove all manual modes on their cameras next, since most casual users don't shoot in anything but auto mode anyways!

There is no reason to remove manual mode because enough people use it to make it worthwhile. That is what it is all about. Cost and margins. Everything on a camera no matter how small has some sort of cost implication, and the decision to retain or remove it is made based on what market research shows people use the camera for. If your target market does not use a feature and it costs you money to add it, why spend the money to add it? You are just losing money doing so. For example, prosumer cameras generally don't include a whole bunch of "scene" modes because that costs money and the people who buy those cameras mostly don't use those functions. Do you think that is deliberate market segregation to induce people to buy consumer cameras then? To be valid, your argument would need to apply there as well.

Anyway, my prediction is that the absence of 24p will have basically no impact on the sales of these cameras. 

[Shell64]

@Mokara said this:

“The 5D series have an additional processor in them to handle focusing/exposure for example,which the 6D lacks. That means the 6D has tohandle those functions with it's primary processor, and that in turn affects performance when it comes to things the primary processor normally does. Presumably the codec options are one of those things impacted by that difference. That is in fact an example of how cost saving measures (one processor instead of two) has a direct impact on specs.”

 

Here’s the thing. All-I is SIGNIFICANTLY LESS PROCESSOR INTENSIVE than IPB compression. The encoder can simply save the entire frame instead of trying to detect every difference and synthesize the difference with non-changing areas of the scene. Sorry bro but your logic makes no sense.