Raptor: First impression

[AndreasOberg]

Hiya, we just got our Raptor today so thought I would write a few impressions so far.

1. It is smaller and lighter than I thought. I thought in the end it would not be so much smaller but it really is smaller.
2. Zooming on the screen is extremely useful. I could do this all day. Next thing would be to figure out how to zoom and not nudge the camera while recording. I have used 2 monitors for this purpose in the past successfully.
3. Fan was a bit louder than I thought inside, but later when we filmed outside I did not think of it at all.
4. The monitor was a bit tricky to fixate. Bit concerned how to keep it stable in the future.
5. I was not sure about getting the monitor because we often need brighter monitors, but I'm really happy we got it, it just works very well to control the camera with it.
6. the new memory cards are great so far. I got 500-600MB/s read speed on the computer.

We filmed our local friendly geese in the sunset and it was a lot of fun. A few things that I noticed:
1. I have never seen this little noise in dark areas. I'm so used to noise from MX and Helium, but now there was just no noise. I have only shot a little with Monstro so I would think it would be similar. With Helium I'm always very careful with getting enough. Here it felt as it can be ok that topics can be a bit darker and I will still be able to recover them in post.
2. Being able to zoom while recording. Finally. Waited for this for 10 years so great to finally have it. As I understand it is half debayer? Very useful.
3. Pre record feels more solid. Very happy about that.
4. I do miss the lack of HDRx. It would have been even more useful on this camera since you have so good slow motion. HDRx on Helium would give you 30fps in 8k, but on Raptor you would get 60fps which is very useful. In this case I had to chose, do you want to expose for the dark birds or the bright sky since I was shooting backlit. Hope it can be added in software some day. We would also use HDRx when filming the moon. Basically HDRx is the only way that I know that makes it possible to film clouds and the moon at the same time since their exposure is so different.

The firmware is 1.2.7. What firmware do you guys recommend we upgrade to? The beta firmware 1.3.1?

Cheers,
Andreas

 

[AndreasOberg]

Just went through the files on the laptop.
1. Its cool that I can playback a 4k timeline with full debayer and it just plays well.
2. Backlit seems to be better dealt with. No artifacts so far.
3. Colors seem better than Helium. Just looks very natural straight out of the camera.
4. Also nice that there is audio.

 

[AndreasOberg]

Tested reviewing more material in the new Resolve 18.
Playback is good. Full Debayer on UHD timeline is possible on my loaptop. 8Core 4.5GHz with RTX 3080 16GB Mobile (normally I edit on workstations).
It seems like more GPU memory is used with these new Red files. if I have a UHD timeline and run Full Debayer GPU memory will go above 16GB on my laptop and then freeze or crash resolve. At half debayer with a 1080p timeline it is better. Not sure if this is a Resolve bug or just the way things are.

Wrote down some data rates. This was filmed in 8K UHD.


120fps 8K UHD - Start 300MB/s then it drops to 160MB
HQ Fps25 8k UHD - 620MB/s then 360MB/s
Skimming . Up to 500MB/s

360MB/s means a normal spinning drive will not be able to cope. That means the only solutions is either having solid state disks or RAID systems.

On another note. We both got full tech diver systems, wet suits the whole kit, next thing is underwater house, wet lenses etc. Should be fun.

Best,
Andreas

 

[Phil Holland]

AndreasOberg - Remember if you overcrank at 120fps the camera needs to pump like 800MB/s to the media, but for your timeline if it's at 24 or 25fps it's only reading at that frame rate. HQ, MQ, LQ, and ELQ I have up on my framesToDataRate tool at phfxtools.com so you can figure out what your hardware needs are and likely where overprovisioning is a good idea.

If you are editing off a single spinning drive in 2022 I'm going to scream. 4X-8X+ RAID for spinners. 2X-8X+ RAID for SATA SSD. If you can afford to go NVMe, your life will be a lot simpler, but more expensive and you will be replacing media if you are a heavy worker.

My mobile workstation notebooks are using NVMe drives in 4TB and 8TB capacities, one of those has a RAID 0 16TB volume internally. My big boy workstations use 32TB and 64TB NVMe RAIDs now, overkill for many, but literally nothing I can't do. Externally I do run some Thunderbolt 3 4X and 8X Spinning RAIDs for very large projects.

 

[AndreasOberg]

AndreasOberg - Remember if you overcrank at 120fps the camera needs to pump like 800MB/s to the media, but for your timeline if it's at 24 or 25fps it's only reading at that frame rate. HQ, MQ, LQ, and ELQ I have up on my framesToDataRate tool at phfxtools.com so you can figure out what your hardware needs are and likely where overprovisioning is a good idea.

Yes, that is right. I thought it good to measure what Resolve actually uses.

The last years I edited on a 12x16TB Raid with 10GBE. Was not super happy with the experience though. Sometimes the data would just slow down and I wuold begin to stutter, then faster again. Did a lot of tests and configurations but it was always a bit random.

We have some very beasty computers since we render quite a bit. I am considering getting another NAS, but maybe when I edit actually copy to internal m.2 disks. Maybe having say 4x8TB nvme disks for local videos. That way I use the NAS more as a storage. Any advice for nas. We had the QNAP 1685 before but moved abroad and did not bring it yet.

Some more thoughts after using Raptor
+ I love the new power switch. Much better than reusing the Rec button
+ Really happy that the media is inside the camera. Nearly had a media falling out in -20C driving on a snow mobile filming once so this is better
- I think the record button placement could have been a bit better. But I'm sure we will get a side arm or similar.
+ Really like that the camera is so small. Normally do not care, but this makes it more of a walk around camera I can just take with me where I go.
+ New touch interface feels good. Smallhd does clever UIs
+ I think the focus peaking felt better than with Red. Need to double check.
- Fans are a bit loud and a bit odd that you cannot turn them off for a while by recording, but its not very important for me. This feels like a possible future feature. Otherwise the fans are really well made.
+ Like that the storage media is large and quite cheap vs before. Copy speed was 500MB/s which is a bit slower than I thought on a thunderbolt connection. Anyone else got faster?
+ Natalie is excited that you can stream the video to say an iPad. Have not tried yet, but should be useful for placement in odd places. We have the Terradek for more long setups.
- HDRx I miss since I think Red make the best timelapse cameras in the world and the HDRx was unique. We would film the sunrise and moonrise in say 5fps in HDRx. It was very cool.
+ I checked a bit and 120fps should be very useful for underwater filming. First I was a bit unsure if you need that high fps but have seen some good examples where it really worked so looking forward to testing. Really happy about the extra fps.
+ Canon EF lenses like EF16-35 F2.8 III and EF24-70 f2.8 cover VV really well. I compared with RF lenses and they seem to have quite a bit smaller image circle (Checked on The Digital Picture which is a great resource for still lenses), but of course has the image stabilization so both are good at different things. In general the RF lenses often seem to have a bit less quality than the last EF lenses which I'm not so happy about. Smaller image circle, more chroma, less sharpness. Examples are RF 600MM IS f4 vs EF 600mm f4 IS II and to a lesser degree 24-70 and 16-35.

 

[Robert Hofmeyr]

Hi Andreas, I also recently got a Raptor. I took it to Zimbabwe and Botswana and it worked flawlessly over 3 weeks - shooting mostly from vehicles and boats. Some notes:
It took some time to get used to the wider FOV - maybe I'll trade in for the 8K s35 at a later stage.
8K files also not too difficult to work with on my M1 macbook.
Pre-record is a life-saver (though I do wish it could be a bit longer, even if this puts some extra stress on the cards).
Multiple screens of shortcuts is wonderful.
Boot time is not too bad.
Shutdown time seems pretty lengthy.
Camera still does not lock my IS element on shutdown and I think it gets a bit confused by the built-in 1.4x teleconverter on the Canon 200-400.

A couple questions: is there a way to show the current mm of the zoom lens on the screen, and is there a way to lock all the smallHD stuff on the monitor so it just acts more like a DSMC2 monitor?

 

[Robert Hofmeyr]

And I definitely agree regarding the low noise. Shooting after sunset can now continue for much longer (sincere apologies for the vertical format video).

 

[Phil Holland]

AndreasOberg - The key to rather speedy offloading via CFexpress Type-B relies heavily on the media, the connection type, what you are writing to, and bus configuration on the hardware. Get all this sorted to max and you'll be pushing 800-1200MBs depending on variables in realistic conditions. Faster perhaps in very extreme cases.

And yep, RED Control on IOS and Android is slick for camera control and live wireless monitoring. Pretty amazing app actually. You can also configure a browser window to just receive a video feed if that's your thing too.

Robert Hofmeyr - Agreed shutdown is a bit long, but not scary long. It's just that safety countdown and then the process I think that makes it feel that way. I'm a big, big fan of the new power switch. For several of my filming applications that is very nice to have built-in rather than using the Jetpack on DSMC2, which was also a pretty big deal when it that dropped.

Fan stuff. I'm not scary bothered by it, but yeah, it's there and still a thing if you are looking for a whisper quiet experience. But I've rolled audio, etc. Short of having mics close to camera or directionally pointed to camera, it's better than before. But they can go rather high in hot conditions if pushing the camera at full bore. XL will likely have the ability to muffle that out more with more material and different cooling, just like Ranger did essentially.

 

[Robert Hofmeyr]

Fan stuff. I'm not scary bothered by it, but yeah, it's there and still a thing if you are looking for a whisper quiet experience. But I've rolled audio, etc. Short of having mics close to camera or directionally pointed to camera, it's better than before. But they can go rather high in hot conditions if pushing the camera at full bore. XL will likely have the ability to muffle that out more with more material and different cooling, just like Ranger did essentially.

Yeah, I'm not too bothered by fan noise. I find my shotgun does pick it up. Not a huge deal because I'm usually not recording sound, but it sucks a little when I have to shut down just to grab some sound. It would be cool if there was an option to leave the camera running but turn off the fan for 30 seconds or so to grab some audio.

 

[AndreasOberg]

Yeah, I'm not too bothered by fan noise. I find my shotgun does pick it up. Not a huge deal because I'm usually not recording sound, but it sucks a little when I have to shut down just to grab some sound. It would be cool if there was an option to leave the camera running but turn off the fan for 30 seconds or so to grab some audio.

Yes, to be able to turn it off for a short while would be really useful. Often you just need to record some sound and I dislike turning off the camera since you will surely miss the shot then!