micro SD for 4K recording?

[Defleur]

My first post, & maybe a stupid question, so apologies beforehand!

Is it possible to use a Micro SD card with an adapter in your camera for 4K recording?
I only ask because my computer has a micro SD slot & it would be so handy (& faster) to take the microSD straight out of the camera & insert it into the computer without having yet another USB peripheral...
I fully expect the answer to be "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" but thought I would ask anyway... thanks!

[kye]

23 hours ago, Defleur said:

My first post, & maybe a stupid question, so apologies beforehand!

Is it possible to use a Micro SD card with an adapter in your camera for 4K recording?
I only ask because my computer has a micro SD slot & it would be so handy (& faster) to take the microSD straight out of the camera & insert it into the computer without having yet another USB peripheral...
I fully expect the answer to be "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" but thought I would ask anyway... thanks!

Not a stupid question at all, and I use a micro SD card in my GH5 via an adapter and it records just fine.  I'm recording 4K at 150Mbps or FHD at 200Mbps with it and an adapter. The cards I have aren't UHS-II so I can't do the 400Mbps modes continuously, but they're just fine.

I tested a high speed micro SD card in various SD adapters once via a speedtest and all the adapters worked just fine and all got the very high speeds that the card was rated at.

What camera are you using?

[Defleur]

Thanks for the reply Kye, that's encouraging.

At the moment I am planning to upgrade to a 4K camera (going from a Canon Rebel) but I need to be sure of the workflow before I make a decision.
I have 3 good Canon-mount lenses (Samyang 35 T1.5, Canon 50 1.4, Samyang 85 T1.5) but all I know at the moment is that I am definitely NOT buying a Canon for 4K - so well done Canon!

I'm caught between just buying the best or buying the cheapest, i.e. do I just bite the bullet & get a new BMCC4K + Metabones EF-M43 speedbooster (about £2,000), or get the (2nd hand) Olympus E-M10 III (based solely on what's been said about it on this forum, otherwise I never would have considered it! 2 years after Andrew's post about it, it's still a sticky on the EOS main page!) + VILTROX EF-M2 II (about £500.) - A Panasonic could be an option too, but they have so many 4K models at the moment they confuse me! Buy the best or buy the cheapest has always been my motto!

What I do know is that whatever I choose will be M43, so it might be worth investing in the Metabones now as it's the best future-proof option, as I could use it on the Olympus to begin with then maybe a Panasonic or BlackMagic further down the road - but then Metabones has just released a new speedbooster solely for the BlackMagic so that's another consideration....

With the BMCC I'd just use an external SSD. A cheaper 4K camera wouldn't have this option, so it would be SD cards - & the transfer from card to computer was slow when it was just HD from the Canon Rebel, but now I'm going to 4K that's why I'm thinking more about microSD cards as my desktop has a microSD slot - it also has a thunderbolt but I use that for a 2nd screen.

One question you can perhaps help me with Kye is: for your workflow, how do you get the files off your microSD card to an external SSD? Do you put them on the computer from your microSD, then connect an external SSD to your computer to transfer them? Or do you use a docking station?

Like I said, before I make any decision, I want to be absolutely sure of the workflow for 4K!

Thanks again for your reply!

 

[Defleur]

Actually:  (2nd hand) Olympus E-M10 III (£284) + new Viltrox (£154) = £438!

[kye]

9 hours ago, Defleur said:

Thanks for the reply Kye, that's encouraging.

At the moment I am planning to upgrade to a 4K camera (going from a Canon Rebel) but I need to be sure of the workflow before I make a decision.
I have 3 good Canon-mount lenses (Samyang 35 T1.5, Canon 50 1.4, Samyang 85 T1.5) but all I know at the moment is that I am definitely NOT buying a Canon for 4K - so well done Canon!

I'm caught between just buying the best or buying the cheapest, i.e. do I just bite the bullet & get a new BMCC4K + Metabones EF-M43 speedbooster (about £2,000), or get the (2nd hand) Olympus E-M10 III (based solely on what's been said about it on this forum, otherwise I never would have considered it! 2 years after Andrew's post about it, it's still a sticky on the EOS main page!) + VILTROX EF-M2 II (about £500.) - A Panasonic could be an option too, but they have so many 4K models at the moment they confuse me! Buy the best or buy the cheapest has always been my motto!

Sounds like you're at the start of your journey.

A few thoughts that hopefully will be of use:

Think very clearly about why you want 4K.  If you want better image quality than your Canon Rebel then 1080 would do that.  Your Canon Rebel outputs 1080p files, but they are absolutely terrible quality compared to almost any other camera that shoots 1080.  You would be amazed.

Long story short, I have been where you are now.  I had a Canon 700D, and noticed that the video wasn't "sharp".  I thought I needed 4K.  I spent thousands of dollars on a Canon 4K cinema camera (the Canon XC10), 4K display, new computer to handle 4K.  After shooting with the XC10 for about a year I realised that it didn't have the type of image I was looking for.  I also learned that the 4K it shot was actually a lot worse than many other cameras 1080p footage.  This is because the XC10 had 4K and a high bit-rate, but these things aren't the only things that matter.  
I moved to a GH5 and I am now shooting with that and really happy with the images.  The GH5 can shoot great quality 4K - it is still right up there with the latest cameras.  But here's the thing, i'm now going back to 1080p.  The quality of the 1080p image from the GH5 is just as good as the 4K modes in most situations, the file sizes are better, and the workflow in post is much easier to deal with.

There is no "best" camera.

Every camera is a compromise, and a very serious one at that.  A few radical examples - my GH5 is better than the $100K Alexa LF they shoot Hollywood blockbusters on because my GH5 has image stabilisation and the Alexa doesn't.  That stabilisation is critical in the work I do and how I shoot.  

I say this as a prelude to the next point....

Cameras are all very different and the "best" camera is the one that will suit you.

The P4K has a great image and files are nice to edit in post, but file sizes are huge, battery life is abysmal, it doesn't have stabilisation so you need a rig of some kind.  In these ways the Olympus is completely different, the image is good but not as good, files are smaller but are much more difficult to edit in post, battery life is probably fine (I can't recall), and it has stabilisation.

The first step in choosing a camera is working out what and how you shoot, then finding the best camera for you.

If you're a chef you can buy the best fork in the world but it's still going to be completely useless for eating soup!

10 hours ago, Defleur said:

One question you can perhaps help me with Kye is: for your workflow, how do you get the files off your microSD card to an external SSD? Do you put them on the computer from your microSD, then connect an external SSD to your computer to transfer them? Or do you use a docking station?

I just use a USB card reader from Transcend.  I've found that card readers can be absolutely rubbish, but the Transcend USB 3.0 one is cheap and the data rates are huge, much faster than the high-speed cards I have.

10 hours ago, Defleur said:

Like I said, before I make any decision, I want to be absolutely sure of the workflow for 4K!

4K is a serious serious headache that you should seriously reconsider before you start down this path.  Compared to 1080p, 4K has 4 times the number of pixels, which means everything in your entire setup needs to have 4 times the performance.

A suggestion that you should consider is buying a cheap 1080p camera (such as a GH3) and using it to work out what you really need.  It would be a very small cost investment, combine it with a Metabones SB and you could use the lenses you have but it would give you the opportunity to shoot a bunch of projects on it, edit them, learn the workflow, learn the pros and cons, and then once you've really got an understanding then you can sell it (probably for as much as it cost you) and then upgrade with much more confidence.

Here's what a cheap but good 1080p camera (the GH3) looks like:

 

[ac6000cw]

On 8/20/2020 at 12:56 PM, Defleur said:

Is it possible to use a Micro SD card with an adapter in your camera for 4K recording?

Yes, absolutely - I've been using them for a while, at up to 4k60p (150Mbps) in a Panasonic G9 (and other Panasonic and Olympus cameras). I normally use SanDisk 'Extreme Plus' V30-rated micro-SD cards, but you can sometimes get the faster 'Extreme Pro' version for not much more money.

I shoot a mixture of 1080p and 4k. Using 4k allows for re-framing in post while retaining enough quality for good 1080p output.

I'd also seriously consider a used Panasonic G80/G85 if you are thinking about a used EM-10 III - below the 'GH' level cameras, it's probably one of the best all-round cameras Panasonic have produced. Only real downsides are the crop in 4k and noisy audio from the internal microphones (but it has a mic socket so that's easily solved).

[ac6000cw]

I agree with Kye that top-quality 1080p (e.g.  GH5/G9 level) isn't very far below 4k quality, particularly if your final output is heading for YouTube etc., and it is a lot faster to work with 1080p when editing. But the quality difference is more noticeable with a lot of cameras due to lower-quality down-sampling/scaling from the full sensor area to 1080p. The GH5 & G9 have the processing capability to do it properly.

[Defleur]

I really appreciate all the replies; this is something I've been considering for a few months now but I've been too shy to ask any question on the forum!

Kye, I absolutely understand what you're saying about asking myself if I really need 4K &, unfortunately, the answer is yes! - it's funny you went from a 700D to a GH5, I'm using a 650D at the moment!

This is a clip from a project I am working on at the moment:

Agamemnon

I work alone - & want to be able to do so for the future so I don't have to rely on anyone (I've been let down by so many people!) - so in this clip I've just filmed myself three times (with the camera on a table) then edited it in post with some artificial zooming & panning. Because I'm filming in 1080, my project has to be rendered at 720, & 1080 doesn't give me a lot of room to maneouvre. I would like 4K to give me more options (as AC600CW says) for re-framing in post to render as 1080 for YouTube. In fact, 4K would be overkill & 2K would be fine for video editing. Everything would be rendered finally to 1080. Also, filming in 4K would allow me to get some nice screengrabs for PR - I've had this problem before where newspapers have asked me for high resolution photos & all I have are 1080 screengrabs.

Luckily for me, the camera audio is irrelevant because I have the mic I need, & - as you can see from the clip - I'm wearing a mask! I have a few future projects in mind where everything will be voiceover.

And yep, I'm fully aware of the headache editing 4K is going to be! In the next few weeks I'm going to download some 4K files & mess around with them - for better or worse, I've been using Sony Vegas for years, it's the software I feel most comfortable with, so the free daVinci resolve with Blackmagic isn't a factor for me. In fact, I downloaded the free version last week, tried some simple editing & it crashed first time, so that's the end of that! I'll probably Handbrake the original 4K files to 2K & then use proxies & see how that is to edit...

I move around a lot (or I used to before the C-19) so I use mini PC's - at the moment I'm using an i7 8559U quad-core NUC (which has the microSD slot)- which probably won't be enough for 4K editing (I'll have to mess around for a while & see.) If it's not enough then I've got my eye on this: the Asus P50 mini PC with the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 4800U (which has the normal SD slot.) - Asus P50

So, basically, I'm not upgrading to 4K for the image quality - cos yes, then a newer camera with 1080 would be fine - I need/want the flexibility in editing to pan & zoom so I can film myself.

And absolutely, I know there is no "best" camera - I just meant that I need to make a decision so I feel comfortable afterwards. The Blackmagic 4K seems like the better "best" option for me since I don't do any photography & it's designed for film production. The "cheap" option for me is something like the Olympus, although I will definitely look into the G80/G85 option now!

 

 

 

 

[kye]

Welcome to the forums..  no need to lurk for so long, most of us don't bite 🙂

Reframing in post is one of the (few) valid reasons for "needing" 4K, and grabbing stills for PR isn't a bad application either.

I've been editing 4K footage on a 2016 MBP 13inch which is only a dual-core, so not particularly powerful.  It does well if you render proxies, but the online/offline workflow is a bit of a PITA.

Another thing to consider if you're filming yourself is to get multiple cheaper cameras and have more than one angle recording at once.  You already have several lenses, so with a dumb EF-MFT adapter you could easily get a second angle for little extra cost.

[Trek of Joy]

The drone and gopro groups have lots of photos of broken micro SD cards - as in snapped in half. I use them because I have to in my drone and gopro, but anywhere else I'd personally avoid it.  Again, just me, but no way. Plus they're so small and you can't lock them to prevent accidentally recording over footage you want to save, its not a very robust solution.

Chris

[kye]

8 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

The drone and gopro groups have lots of photos of broken micro SD cards - as in snapped in half. 

How on earth would that happen???

WTF are people doing with their SD cards....  wow.

[noone]

You know you can get an adapter for your micro SD card slot. and they are not expensive (or should not be)? 

That will give you a lot more choices for the card you use as you need a particular card to shoot 4k depending on camera (and in some cases like Sony XACVs you need particular cards for better 1080).

[Defleur]

On 8/22/2020 at 8:46 AM, ac6000cw said:

I'd also seriously consider a used Panasonic G80/G85 if you are thinking about a used EM-10 III - below the 'GH' level cameras, it's probably one of the best all-round cameras Panasonic have produced. Only real downsides are the crop in 4k and noisy audio from the internal microphones (but it has a mic socket so that's easily solved).

Thanks for that suggestion! To be honest, the Panasonic lineup of cameras just confused me - although I'm a bit better now! I know the GH range but they have so many cameras with so many different numbers that's it's a headache to sort through - & most of them have 4K! To give an example: after your comment I googled the g80 & the g85 - I just assumed they were different cameras! It took me a while to realise it was the same camera, just with a different name in different territories! After your suggestion I've been seriously looking into them as I would much prefer to begin with a Panasonic camera to get used to them because I can see myself staying with Panasonic for a long time & upgrading through their line-up.

But again there are still things that confuse me - for example, this "crop." Again, forgive me for the stupid question, but does this mean that when you're filming 4K through the LCD screen you are not going to get everything the LCD screen shows you? Do you have to "guess" what you are actually filming - how do you do this? Do you put masking tape on the screen? (a genuine question)

I had an external monitor for my Canon & absolutely hated it: I used it with an extremely long HDMI cable which was finnicky & would come lose & it wasn't showing me everything the camera actually recorded.

Again, because I'm thinking a lot about workflow, the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III was actually on sale last week NEW on Amazon for 400 euros but I didn't get it because there are 3 things preventing me: 

The screen:
I want a flippable screen - it's really helped me shoot solo in tight angles.

The SD card is in the battery slot:
Filming solo, it's nice to set up the camera on a tripod, take some test footage, pop out the SD card at the side & have a look at it on my computer first, to check framing, &c. before starting the proper filming. This would be impossible with the Olympus as I would have to unscrew the camera from the tripod.

Battery grip:
I can't see any battery grip for this camera - although I think I found one weeks ago on the official Olympus store for about £250. But there are no generic models on Amazon - like there are for any other camera models.

Now, I know that $K files are going to be massive beside HD video files - & this is where I'm paying more attention to the codec of the camera.
Has anyone checked out this Cinestudy website for 4K video to download & edit yourself? Link: Edit Challenge

They have 4K video there which is 1.6gb & 22 minutes long. That's a lot better than I thought it would be! Is that normal? Cos I can easily work with that.

Thanks for all your help! I'm just wondering if I should start a new thread for ABSOLUTE BEGINNER 4K QUESTIONS as it might be of more benefit to beginners like myself & more people might come in with suggestions!

[ac6000cw]

Quote

They have 4K video there which is 1.6gb & 22 minutes long. That's a lot better than I thought it would be! Is that normal?

That's very low bitrate for 4k (only about 10 Mbit/s) - 4k25p files from the camera are about 100 Mbit/s for the EM10 and G80, so 22 minutes would be about 16 GB.