A7Rii Overheating Problem Solved

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

This could be the reason behind a new Sony A7SII, the capability to record long videos plus some HFR...

They were honest when they said the A7s couldn't record 4K internally due to heat issues. So why would they be able to solve that in the next A7s? With the A7rII, their latest just released camera that's substantially bigger and heavier and has better heat management they still can't record 4K in it due to heating issues, which makes it pretty clear it's simply an impossibility to physically be able to record 4K from a FF sensor with IBIS inside a body of the A7 size. It'd be pretty strange if they found a magical solution for overheating in the next a7s. That's why it's almost clear to get FF 4K from Sony with IBIS (the camera we wanted from the A7rII and A7s/II) the body will just have to be bigger and have a larger heat sink and larger heat management system. Not an A7 series style body. 

Notice how Canon in the XC10, which has a 1" sensor recording 4K internally has vents and an actual fan, a pretty big heat management system, therefore it's reliable to record 4K continuously forever while on an RX10 (1" 4K also) without that heat sink and fan and vents has overheating issues when used for extended times, the RX1000 records for 5 minutes and needs to cool down a while before starting again!

Also remember the recent Masaya Maedya (High end Canon JP. guy) where he said they can't implement 4K in the 5D due to heat management issues and that they're still ''working on it''. And also note how the 1DC, even with it's huge body, required a large heat sink to be modified from the 1DX to record 4K internally reliably. 

It's obvious that recording internal 4K ''reliably'' from a larger FF sensor (and even smaller 1" -RX10, RX100, XC10) for non-restricted professional-ready use introduces a major heat issue that's present for all camera manufacturers, it's just some companies take it more lightly that others in terms of overheating and recording reliability. It's the reason why all professional video camera, FS7, FS700, F5, F55, C300II, XC10, C100, Varicam, Scarlets, Alexas have huge fans and vents and major heat management systems, to be able to record 4K reliably forever. 

The thumbs up here goes to Samsung, the only people who could record 4k internally from a large s35 sensor in a standard consumer DSLR/M size body without heat issues and without fans and vents, it's probably due to their cutting edge technology knowledge, and also the thumbs up goes for Panasonic although to a lesser degree as it's a 2.4x crop 4K sensor in the GH4, but it's not a small sensor and it records 4K internally forever in a small body. 

I always thought overheating was just a marketing thing to delay features, but now I believe it's true, these companies just CAN'T make a 4K 5D or a 4K A7s/r, they have to go bigger. I quite understand the reason why the a7r overheats now and don't blame Sony as much as at first glance, they just should have mentioned that recording 4K for more than 20 minutes can cause overheating before people buy the camera and shouldn't have marketed it as a professional 4K video camera. 

This is a major downer for doc work. Interviews often run up to and over 30 minutes. Has anyone here tested the LCD solution?

Yup people on DVXuser tried it and it doesn't fix it, doesn't make a difference unfortunately. 

However they found a real fix, the Shogun records continuously just fine (but as long as you press record on the shogun and not trigger it from the camera, which in the A7s introduced face softening and selective masking issues when used that way so it might even not be a fix if the a7rII acts as the a7s in standby while sending an HDMI feed)

[Gregormannschaft]

They were honest when they said the A7s couldn't record 4K internally due to heat issues. So why would they be able to solve that in the next A7s? With the A7rII, their latest just released camera that's substantially bigger and heavier and has better heat management they still can't record 4K in it due to heating issues, which makes it pretty clear it's simply an impossibility to physically be able to record 4K from a FF sensor with IBIS inside a body of the A7 size. It'd be pretty strange if they found a magical solution for overheating in the next a7s. That's why it's almost clear to get FF 4K from Sony with IBIS (the camera we wanted from the A7rII and A7s/II) the body will just have to be bigger and have a larger heat sink and larger heat management system. Not an A7 series style body. 

Notice how Canon in the XC10, which has a 1" sensor recording 4K internally has vents and an actual fan, a pretty big heat management system, therefore it's reliable to record 4K continuously forever while on an RX10 (1" 4K also) without that heat sink and fan and vents has overheating issues when used for extended times, the RX1000 records for 5 minutes and needs to cool down a while before starting again!

Also remember the recent Masaya Maedya (High end Canon JP. guy) where he said they can't implement 4K in the 5D due to heat management issues and that they're still ''working on it''. And also note how the 1DC, even with it's huge body, required a large heat sink to be modified from the 1DX to record 4K internally reliably. 

It's obvious that recording internal 4K ''reliably'' from a larger FF sensor (and even smaller 1" -RX10, RX100, XC10) for non-restricted professional-ready use introduces a major heat issue that's present for all camera manufacturers, it's just some companies take it more lightly that others in terms of overheating and recording reliability. It's the reason why all professional video camera, FS7, FS700, F5, F55, C300II, XC10, C100, Varicam, Scarlets, Alexas have huge fans and vents and major heat management systems, to be able to record 4K reliably forever. 

The thumbs up here goes to Samsung, the only people who could record 4k internally from a large s35 sensor in a standard consumer DSLR/M size body without heat issues and without fans and vents, it's probably due to their cutting edge technology knowledge, and also the thumbs up goes for Panasonic although to a lesser degree as it's a 2.4x crop 4K sensor in the GH4, but it's not a small sensor and it records 4K internally forever in a small body. 

I always thought overheating was just a marketing thing to delay features, but now I believe it's true, these companies just CAN'T make a 4K 5D or a 4K A7s/r, they have to go bigger. I quite understand the reason why the a7r overheats now and don't blame Sony as much as at first glance, they just should have mentioned that recording 4K for more than 20 minutes can cause overheating before people buy the camera and shouldn't have marketed it as a professional 4K video camera. 

Yup people on DVXuser tried it and it doesn't fix it, doesn't make a difference unfortunately. 

However they found a real fix, the Shogun records continuously just fine (but as long as you press record on the shogun and not trigger it from the camera, which in the A7s introduced face softening and selective masking issues when used that way so it might even not be a fix if the a7rII acts as the a7s in standby while sending an HDMI feed)

Well this is one big hot mess.

Perhaps this new rumoured A7sII form factor will help with the heat. Shame, as I, like many others, was looking out for a cam that could work for stills and video in one device.

[DBounce]

Well this is one big hot mess.
Perhaps this new rumoured A7sII form factor will help with the heat. Shame, as I, like many others, was looking out for a cam that could work for stills and video in one device.

 Don't worry, I'm sure Samsung will make one.

[JurijTurnsek]

It's quite simply really - A7RII has to deal with a lot more pixels for processing than the pure 4K (8mpx) A7SII. This means video recording is a lot less CPU intensive.

[Francesco Spiezia]

I think overall Sony is being super aggressive and hopefully forcing Canon and others to choose better combinations of ability and camera model. The 1DC in this form factor is awesome but not only is the body more expensive you have to buy a decent amount of high speed cards. I think overall any camera that overheats easily is a major problem if you make money with your gear. If you don't get paid to shoot than the A7Rii is a great option. 

[Xavier Plagaro Mussard]

They were honest when they said the A7s couldn't record 4K internally due to heat issues. So why would they be able to solve that in the next A7s?

Maybe because it's their job?? Because it's the only way to sell more cameras?? It's a race and every company needs to win...

It'd be pretty strange if they found a magical solution for overheating in the next a7s.

You can bet it won't be magical, it will be an engineering solution! But probably not in a couple of days! 

A lot of years ago, a neighbour of mine studied IT engineering at university and CPUs run in the 500-800Mhz range at that time. He told me that from 1Ghz+ copper is not linear anymore, a piece of copper was not only resistive, it developed capacities/inductivities (?) and that they teached him that CPUs would never run over the 1Ghz reliably... We all know that nowadays CPUs run up to 3.5-4Ghz. I am sure it wasn't easy, but when men wants to do something they find the way!

Now about littleness, Sony offers the FS7 for pros in search of camcorder and the A7S for pros in search of a small camcorder. Maybe in between there could be A7S II, maybe call it A9 if it's bigger! ;-D

 

 

[Emanuel]

[DBounce]

Here's a test performed by Tony Northup on the A7Rii. He also did overheat testing.

[nipaph]

One solution to the heat, could be the samsung way, h265 codec. With that, they were able to put 4k in a tiny body like nx500 at 70MB/s with great quality. It's far less CPU intensive. And if more brands do that, NLE software houses should accelerate their support to that codec.

[agolex]

One solution to the heat, could be the samsung way, h265 codec. With that, they were able to put 4k in a tiny body like nx500 at 70MB/s with great quality. It's far less CPU intensive. And if more brands do that, NLE software houses should accelerate their support to that codec.

Far less CPU intensive? It should be quite the contrary, see here for instance: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/x265-hevc-encoder,3565-3.html On the decoding side it's several times as CPU-heavy as h264.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were just Samsung's software skills that allows for the unproblematic 4K encoding.

[dafreaking]

That's why many companies are pushing dedicated HEVC encoders/decoders

[nipaph]

i meant less cpu intensive if you have optimized hardware-software of course.

[JurijTurnsek]

One solution to the heat, could be the samsung way, h265 codec. With that, they were able to put 4k in a tiny body like nx500 at 70MB/s with great quality. It's far less CPU intensive. And if more brands do that, NLE software houses should accelerate their support to that codec.

NX1 is a huge body and NX500 heavily crops the image since the CPU cannot handle all those mpx. They did not find the magic solution, but they did manage to harness the more CPU heavy h265. You should also note that Samsung makes their own CPUs and that it took them 3 years to finally be able to do it (4K).

[The Chris]

Having a little fun in the sun today experimenting with the 10-18 on the A7rII - so I let the 4k roll until it hit the 30 min time limit - again no problem so for my needs this is a non-issue. Forgot to change the WB from fluorescent in the screencap below. This is about 14mm in FF. As long as your subject is in the center this lens is great, if its on the edge of the frame its only ok to bad depending on where you are in the zoom as it only works from 12-17mm without severe vignetting. If you go with something like 2.35:1, the worst part of the frame (extreme corners) is cropped off. Still debating this, the CV15mm vIII or the 16-35 as a UWA.

[AaronChicago]

This guy has a solution. Buy 2.

[Francesco Spiezia]

I really don't hate the idea of two bodies. It still is cheaper than the 1DC (including cards) and really you can rent this camera when you know it's a 4K shoot and you have long record times. Not a terrible idea at all....

[Don Kotlos]

iFixit did a teardown:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Sony+a7R+II+Teardown/45597

Some observations:

There is indeed a heat sink just behind the back of the camera. So indeed opening the LCD should help. Although the image processing chip lies on the internal side of the motherboad with its heatsink directed towards the sensor it might still be able to remove some heat. 

The sensor on the other hand as expected does not have any heat sinks. It seams that the base of the camera is directly attached to the main frame so that might be an alternative place to cool down with some fancy attachment. 

Battery compartment looks far away from any heat sinks so I guess it is out of the way.

General observations from across the internet:

1. For 4K FF is better than S35. More data to process? 

2. For HD there is no problem. 

3. External recording helps only when triggered from the recorder and not by the camera. Image processor does not do stuff?? 

4. Battery/External power does not seem to affect anything

5. Lower bitrate helps? That would indicate that processing larger amounts of data is more intensive for the image processor than the the extra compression needs. 

The conclusion would be that the sensor and the image processor both are producing the heat that forces the camera to shut down. I am sure they had the reasons for not placing the image processor on the other side of the motherboard but I hope they do something different for the A7sii. 

It would be great if somebody can verify that triggering the recording from an external recorder is not causing any heat problems even in 4K s35 XAVC-S mode. 

I ll test mine next week in my very warm weather. 

 

[Andrew Reid]

As Don pointed out, if you want to put a pack of frozen peas anywhere on the A7R II put it on the back behind the LCD.

Copper piece is the heat sink.

To be honest it is quite a basic solution and not that clever considering the warm LCD screen blocks it entirely when closed.

If they make a pro body it could have a heat pipe down into the grip, problem solved.

 

General observations from across the internet:

1. For 4K FF is better than S35. More data to process? 

It is the other way round, unless you count rolling shutter.

2. For HD there is no problem. 

Yeah all the 1080p modes look the same but the HD 120fps has heavy moire & aliasing.

3. External recording helps only when triggered from the recorder and not by the camera. Image processor does not do stuff??

Very true. External HDMI recorders are still at the mercy of the camera's image processor. 10bit 422 doesn't mean anything.

If you want to see a real boost in image quality from an external recorder, record raw onto the Odyssey 7Q+ from the FS700.

4. Battery/External power does not seem to affect anything

5. Lower bitrate helps? That would indicate that processing larger amounts of data is more intensive for the image processor than the the extra compression needs.

I doubt that helps the heat issues, though a slower card might run a few degrees cooler.

The conclusion would be that the sensor and the image processor both are producing the heat that forces the camera to shut down. I am sure they had the reasons for not placing the image processor on the other side of the motherboard but I hope they do something different for the A7sii.

It looks to me actually like the low power ARM processor faces the sensor block along with likely just a tweaked A7 image processor (JPEG?). Hot chips like the memory chip, 4K processor / system on chip seem to back onto the heat sink side.

It would be great if somebody can verify that triggering the recording from an external recorder is not causing any heat problems even in 4K s35 XAVC-S mode. 

I ll test mine next week in my very warm weather. 

Enjoy!

[Don Kotlos]

 

It is the other way round, unless you count rolling shutter.

Yeah all the 1080p modes look the same but the HD 120fps has heavy moire & aliasing.

Very true. External HDMI recorders are still at the mercy of the camera's image processor. 10bit 422 doesn't mean anything.

If you want to see a real boost in image quality from an external recorder, record raw onto the Odyssey 7Q+ from the FS700.

I doubt that helps the heat issues, though a slower card might run a few degrees cooler. 

 

Sorry for the confusion but the 1-5 points were only referring to heat and the information came from observations of people that have tested it. I can't be sure whether all these are actually true, like the bitrate effect. 

It looks to me actually like the low power ARM processor faces the sensor block along with likely just a tweaked A7 image processor (JPEG?). Hot chips like the memory chip, 4K processor / system on chip seem to back onto the heat sink side.

Well you might be right since I can't think of a reason why they would not place the hot chips closer to the external heat sink. 

Enjoy!

Oh after sticking with my low res E-M1 until now, most certainly I will enjoy it no matter how hot it gets. 

[TheRenaissanceMan]

It's so funny how people did so much complaining about how big the NX1 and GH4 are and how the small size of the A7R II shows how much further ahead Sony is. Just goes to show that there's no free lunch. Every feature and improvement will come at a cost.