Anyone else notice something special about firmware 3.3.3 for Scarlet....

[Sam Gordon]

I seem to remember one of the first Scarlet unboxing videos where they demonstrated EPIC 5k playback on the Scarlet. Unless my mind is playing tricks on me. Which has been known to happen.

 

[Jaakko Rinne]

And second, do we really get a full debayer on our preview-devices and hdmi/sdi? I'm not sure about that.

Yes, it's full debayer.

BTW, third thought... Has anyone ever tried to playback a few R3D-files made with EPIC that are out of Scarlet's specs?

5K footage shot on an Epic plays back just fine on a Scarlet. But then again, you can also set your project fps to 24 and shoot 12fps varispeed at 5K on the Scarlet and that plays back at 24fps just as well, no need for an Epic to test the playback.

 

[Mike P.]

EPIC and Scarlet both have 3GHz HD-SDI - which supports 1920 x 1080 true progressive at up to 60 fames per sec. The HDMI output can support up to the same frame size / frame rate. Whether any specific recorder also supports 3GHz HD-SDI you will need to check their specifications. If they don't then select either 1080p @ 24 fps or 720p @ 60fps as we don't support 1080i or PsF interlaced output formats.

Sweet lord jesus. 5k-to-1080p/60 ProRes has to look as good as 2k/60p (if not better, as it'd have higher MTF and better noise-handling), and would give you 2.5x the FOV.Can someone with a Samurai and/or a PIX test this out. I emailed ATOMOS, but their official specs say 59.94i (no mention of progressive past 30fps), so I doubt it supports it -- maybe a firmware update to the Samurai (or PIX) could do it... Does 3GHz SDI support anything higher than 60p? ALSO, since REDraw compression (and the processing needed to do it) is what's limiting framerate, does that mean if an official RED ProRes/DNxHD recorder were released it could, potentially, capture 400fps (highest of EPIC/MysteriumX) of the entire sensor on both Scarlet and Epic (if you choose to forego REDraw)? That'd be a worthwhile compromise in my opinion -- giving up RAW for 400fps of the full sensor... Plus an official module may be able to create 4k ProRes files instead of just 1080. That'd trump every other camera out there.

 

[Dane Henry]

Can someone with a Samurai and/or a PIX test this out. I emailed ATOMOS, but their official specs say 59.94i (no mention of progressive past 30fps), so I doubt it supports it -- maybe a firmware update to the Samurai (or PIX) could do it... Does 3GHz SDI support anything higher than 60p?

Sadly, The Samurai does not support a progressive signal above 30p, it doesn't recognize Scarlets 1080 60p...I tried, I had the same thought when I first plugged it in to the camera

-Dane

 

[Mike P.]

Sadly, The Samurai does not support a progressive signal above 30p, it doesn't recognize Scarlets 1080 60p...I tried, I had the same thought when I first plugged it in to the camera

-Dane

Looking at the PIX specs, it doesn't look like it does 1080 progressive at anything higher than 30fps either... What about 720p/60fps? How does that look (both the Samurai and Pix say they support it... I hate cutting down that much resolution as it nullifies the whole benefit of the 5k supersample. 1080p isn't much different than 2k... 720 is though.)

 

[Thommes Ulfeng]

Sadly, The Samurai does not support a progressive signal above 30p, it doesn't recognize Scarlets 1080 60p...I tried, I had the same thought when I first plugged it in to the camera

-Dane

If this is the case, could someone enlighten me if I'm making a bad move choosing the Blackmagic HyperDeck field recorder?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/18069280970...AX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649#ht_2820wt_982
It does DNxHD compressed, or prores uncompressed, at 4:2:2, no 60p recording only 30p. No 4:4:4

And now it comes with a cheese plate, no more welcro

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Stuart, am I understanding correctly that if I set my camera to 2K 60fps with lookaround enabled and set the HDMI or SDI out to 1080p60 I would be able to record to an external recorder a downscaled 5K image at 60 frames per second (provided the recorder can take in 1080p60)?

It wouldn't be 5k downscaled. I think 2k with lookaround gives you the same sensor area as 3k. I played around with this a bit the other day to see how much extra sensor realestate we get using hdmi/sdi out with lookaround and its never more than one step up, making 3k 4k and 4k 5k. Best case with this method you get 60fps at 3k, 48fps at 4k and 30fps at 5k. In the end its a small improvement considering it can only be done with external recording and only done with a 1080p downscale, but it could be useful for some. I'd consider getting an external recorder just to get the greater coverage and less noise that 5k allows. 60fps 3k downscaled to 1080p is interesting as well if it works since 2k tends to be a bit soft and noisy anyway. Then again with the FS700 coming out, jumping through hoops just to get useable 48-60fps at 1080p seems a bit silly nowadays.

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

If this is the case, could someone enlighten me if I'm making a bad move choosing the Blackmagic HyperDeck field recorder?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/18069280970...AX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649#ht_2820wt_982
It does DNxHD compressed, or prores uncompressed, at 4:2:2, no 60p recording only 30p. No 4:4:4

And now it comes with a cheese plate, no more welcro

I'm considering that as well. I've heard mixed reviews, but the new firmware apparently supports additional input types and timecode triggering so it might work out. Hopefully they will enable OSD soon as well so it will be possible to see how much record time we have left. Then again i doubt I'd ever worry about recording times if I showed up on set with a clean 512GB SSD plugged in. Would be nice to have a way to format the SSDs without a computer though.

 

[Jaakko Rinne]

It wouldn't be 5k downscaled. I think 2k with lookaround gives you the same sensor area as 3k. I played around with this a bit the other day to see how much extra sensor realestate we get using hdmi/sdi out with lookaround and its never more than one step up, making 3k 4k and 4k 5k. Best case with this method you get 60fps at 3k, 48fps at 4k and 30fps at 5k. In the end its a small improvement considering it can only be done with external recording and only done with a 1080p downscale, but it could be useful for some. I'd consider getting an external recorder just to get the greater coverage and less noise that 5k allows. 60fps 3k downscaled to 1080p is interesting as well if it works since 2k tends to be a bit soft and noisy anyway. Then again with the FS700 coming out, jumping through hoops just to get useable 48-60fps at 1080p seems a bit silly nowadays.

Ah. And seeing how there don't seem to be many (if any) external recorders than can handle 1080p60, even the possibility of 3K at 60 becomes kind of moot.

EDIT to add: If anyone tries BMD's Hyperdeck or has tried one with an Epic or a Scarlet, I'd be interested in hearing their thoughts on it. Been thinking of getting one as well.

 

[Scott C]

I've got one. Will be running some tests next week trying out this new firmware.

Ah. And seeing how there don't seem to be many (if any) external recorders than can handle 1080p60, even the possibility of 3K at 60 becomes kind of moot.

EDIT to add: If anyone tries BMD's Hyperdeck or has tried one with an Epic or a Scarlet, I'd be interested in hearing their thoughts on it. Been thinking of getting one as well.

 

[Jaakko Rinne]

I've got one. Will be running some tests next week trying out this new firmware.

Great! Looking forward to hearing how it goes.

 

[Mathias Erichsen]

I've got one. Will be running some tests next week trying out this new firmware.

Any news regarding this test?

 

[Scott C]

Any news regarding this test?

This week has gotten a bit hectic but I finally got a chance to put together a test-rig last night. Gonna be shooting some run-n-gun this weekend, should have a good idea next week =)

 

[Jaakko Rinne]

This week has gotten a bit hectic but I finally got a chance to put together a test-rig last night. Gonna be shooting some run-n-gun this weekend, should have a good idea next week =)

Did you have a chance to test yet?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I just shot last weekend with the Blackmagic Hypderdeck shuttle. Worked great. But having no storage meter screwed me when it stopped in mid take. Also it requires HFS formatting which is annoying.

The other two feature downsides are that you have to manually record once before it'll pick up the SDI trigger. Also clip names aren't auto configured.

 

[Scott C]

Alright so this update has taken a while, life gets busy as you all know. Just wanted to update with some thoughts after giving it a run last weekend:

- If you're going with the shuttle, definitely get the mounting plate, it will make your life 10x easier.
- It has a few things to nitpick, but I believe they are solvable with a firmware update. Namely, you have to manually start/stop recording the first time before it starts picking up the SDI flags. Once you do that though you're golden.
- Enabling look-around does indeed pipe out the full sensor area via both SDI and HDMI. Brilliant.
- I elected to shoot DNxHD in the mov wrapper, which is fully functional in basically all popular NLEs by downloading the Avid LE Codec pack here: http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Download/en392959
- In my opinion it stands up to grading quite well, and anecdotally I can say noise seems to be much less of an issue coming out of the SDI than it is in the native .r3d footage.

Examples -- (these were either 1280 or 1600 ISO, I'm not sure off hand. 720p. Grade wise I literally changed 3 points in the RGB curves in Premiere CS6. Nothing else.):
(imgur did something strange with the image sizing, not sure what that's about. I uploaded as tiffs and these are jpegs so the quality is not quite the original, but i'll put originals in my dropbox later)

 

[Ryan Emanuel]

I just shot last weekend with the Blackmagic Hypderdeck shuttle. Worked great. But having no storage meter screwed me when it stopped in mid take. Also it requires HFS formatting which is annoying.

The other two feature downsides are that you have to manually record once before it'll pick up the SDI trigger. Also clip names aren't auto configured.

does the sdi trigger mean that it auto start stops with the camera, and if so whats your workflow to reconnect media to the r3ds

 

[Mike Garrick]

Yeh I second that Ryan,

@ Gavin how are you reconnecting the files ? Or is this a one way process ie. record to the BM shuttle & never look back at R3D's, unless there is an error.