The rise of 4K and the Conundrum of the 1DC

Just a few years ago, I darkened the door of my first broadcast exhibition.  There have been many since.  Back in those days the big beast striding the halls was 3D.  The massed ranks of the electronic industry were desperate to convince you that you needed a 3D strategy.  If you only cared about 2D then your market was about to be flat.  As I wandered the shiny things and flashing lights of this year's BVExpo in London 3D was notable mainly by its absence.  So what are the cool kids playing with this year?  Well that would be 4K sir.  I wouldn't say that it had quite the same razzmatazz behind it as 3D did, but there was definitely an underlying theme.

 

Like 3D, 4K is not something you can easily see at home without the right equipment.  So a show like BVE is the best place to get your own eyes on the effect.  What 4K is about is resolution.  With at least 4x the number of pixels as 1080p, 4K or UltraHD is a big jump in resolution.  Technically it presents fewer curve balls than 3D, it is mainly a question of data and how to deal with it.  However, there are still a lot more unknowns than there was with 3D.  Even in those early days of 3D we knew a lot more about how it was going to reach our screens whether that was at the local multiplex or in our own lounge.  Most of the cinemas I frequent are already projecting in 4K but the domestic arrangements are still barely pencilled in.

So if you are not producing your output for the Odeon or Vue, should you care?  Is this another fad?  My own feeling is that it is more than a fad.  I personally think it is inevitable but that its rate of advance is far from certain.  These are my latest thoughts based on the show floor and attending Philip Bloom's presentation on the Canon 1DC.

On the show floor, a number of stands had 4K monitors of around 50inches or less.  The did look good but then so does a high end 1080p monitor.  Even very close its very hard to see a pixel and this has a benefit on disguising noise.  The problem is that you don't have to move very far from the screen for that to be also true of HD.  I am not sure that I would be able to tell them apart on a 50in screen at say 4m - roughly what I have in my lounge.  The same was pretty much true when I moved up from 720p to 1080p.  This is very typical setup in the UK.  Love it or hate it, 3D does offer an alternative experience.  The gain from 4K in the living room seems marginal.

Philip Bloom made his presentation in the 4K theatre.  This featured a commercial 4K projector but the screen was on a more domestic scale.  It can be hard to judge in a much larger room but it looked quite similar to my own 8ft screen.  All the 4K material Philip showed came from the Canon 1DC of which more later.  So we are still at a domestic scale albeit a much higher end source.  It didn't really change my opinion, once again it looked good, but not a huge upgrade over a good HD projector.  I am sure 4K has a lot more in hand but I am still unconvinced the domestic scale quite warrants it.  At the moment that is academic as there is still a gap which is the delivery mechanism.  Sony have something planned to support their devices but I haven't seen any firm details.  Just as I write this there are stories breaking about 4K streaming on the PS4 and talk of 100GB files.  If you live in the sticks like I do then it might as well be delivered on gold bricks.  RED also have plans but again details are sketchy and I wonder about what content they will have the rights to deliver.  This is a notoriously difficult area to navigate, especially internationally.  The data rates I have heard mentioned for RED are much lower, almost in the too good to be true bracket.  They have some clever guys there but I have seen instances in the HD realm where data rates have not expanded to match resolution multiples to the detriment of overall image quality.  There is a lot of hard maths involved in balancing data rate, resolution, frame rate, colour and compression. Any compromise here would undermine the 4K advantage and put me off entirely.  I don't want to seem negative, I just have high expectations.  I have seen films at the cinema recently like Skyfall and Lincoln projected in 4K that have looked sensational.  Skyfall was not even acquired in 4K but it did not seem to impact the end result to my eyes.

Acquisition is perhaps the area we know most about.  Available on RED from its inception and increasingly appearing in camera systems from Sony, Canon and others.  The Canon 1DC is more or less the entry level option available now.  There is this strange dichotomy where it is "cheap" for a 4K camera but very expensive for a DSLR.  It is twice the cost of its very close relative, the 1DX.  One advantage it has is that 4K recording is on board - something its more expensive relative the C500 can't manage.  The downside is that the codec used is more limited.  Compression is higher than alternative products particularly when it comes to colour space.  So is it worth the money over the 1DX?

Philip Bloom at BVE London

One person who thinks so is Philip Bloom.  Philip explained that he had all the reservations I have shared before using the camera.  He had already been converted by the performance of his 1DX, used very effectively here in this Olly Knights music video.  He still regarded himself as a 4K skeptic.  However, after trying a 1DC he found himself trading up.  The primary reason was the detail in the image.  Comparing images from a still frame (say, from a time-lapse sequence) with a frame from a video sequence can be depressing.  So much detail is lost in the moving frame.  This is just not the case with 1DC.  Philip equates the moving frame quality from the 1DC in 4K with a medium jpeg.  This was very clear in the image blow-ups that Philip shared with us.  This was the killer feature that convinced him, bolstered by the advantages of being able to reframe for HD or high quality masters.  It's not the perfect camera, it still has most of the DSLR foibles and the codec is limited in speed and gradability.  However, Philip feels that its improvement in image quality combined with traditional DSLR strengths of size, low light capabilty and stills ability is worth the investment.  It was hard to disagree looking at a new music video project shot on the 1DC.  Though I must admit that I soon forgot to pixel peep and just enjoyed the images and the song - just how it should be.

4K interface unit and recorder for FS700

For me personally the 1DC doesn't really fit my needs.  Some time in July (allegedly), Sony will release the 4K upgrades for my FS700.  Like with Phil's move from the X to the C there will likely be a substantial investment required.  An investment difficult to justify on the basis of need (stop laughing - I know thats never stopped me before).  It may also be sometime before I can even enjoy the full benefits of the improved acquisition.  Even discounting my early adopter nature, I still have a nagging doubt that I may regret not adopting 4K in the long term.  This coming from a man contemplating ordering a skip to dump my VHS tapes and driven to distraction by accidentally watching the DVD of Skyfall before he discovered where they had hidden the Blu-ray disk in the box.

It's Raining Cameras

Last year, I went to NAB for the first time.  After a couple of years of watching my social media contacts having a much better time than me I decided I would join them.  It was a great trip and it was great to meet everyone.  If there was a disappointment for me, it was that NAB2011 was more notable for the cameras that were not released than it was for those that were.

This year, I was not able to make the show so Murphy’s Law has kicked and we have loads of new large sensor cameras making their NAB debut.  Many of these are not brand new at NAB but there is a distinct flavour to the latest announcements.  There is no doubt that the early buzz was all around 4K.  This prompted a veritable twitter frenzy about whether you needed 4K.  I have covered this ground before in so I will move on to the cameras themselves.

First up is Canon.  Despite recently having given us the C300 and the 5D Mk3, Canon still had some new toys to tempt us with. 

The more expected of these two is the Canon 1DC as Canon teased it at the C300 launch.  Unlike the C300 this is a proper convergence device.  As a stills camera it has the same spec as the 1DX which means it is a full frame, professional grade DSLR.  As a video camera it has some significant upgrades over the 1DX.  The most significant and its ticket to the NAB in-crowd is a 4K capability.  This is recorded to the CF card in good ole MJPEG at 24p.  This is an odd choice and I am guessing that what we are really getting is an image sequence rather than a movie file.  Its more like the stills shooting being sped up to 24fps rather than the movie resolution being doubled.  It is also the first Canon DSLR with a clean full HD resolution video out (8bit 4:2:2). HD recording has the same codec options and speeds as the 1DX/5D3 but adds 1080p50/60.  Canon has also added Canon Log Gamma.  UK pricing is a slightly speculative £10,000 inc VAT which would make it twice the cost of the (now very delayed) 1DX.    There is no doubt that it is the king of DSLR convergence as it out features everything in a DSLR shell.  No lesser man than Shane Hurlbut did the demo shoot for NAB and the twitter consensus was it looked great on the big screen.  Personally, I am just wondering who it is for.  By 4K standards it is not particularly expensive but unless you need 4K you can have a couple of D4s or four D800s with only a small drop in feature set.  More significantly, you can also have the much more shooter friendly C300.  If you do want 4K, it is significant that the recording is onboard.  With cameras like the FS700 we don’t know when 4K recording will come or how much it will be.  The 1DC is 4K out of the box but you have just that one way of getting it.  Its also worth noting that the eurotweeters were unhappy about the lack of 25p.  You lose many of the current advantages of 4K if you can’t downscale to HD easily.

Canon’s second camera is a big brother for the C300 - the C500.  Back on their shared birthday, the RED crowd mocked the C300 for being “only HD” and lacking RAW or high 1080p frame rates.  The C500 is here to kick sand back in the face of RED for only twice as much money as the C300.  OK, maybe that loses some of the impact.  Since its launch, the C300 has built a enthusiastic following.  Its picture quality and ease of use have given it a kind of baby Alexa reputation.  The C500 takes the same sensor but significantly beefs up the picture processing to give 4K out and is the first implementation of Canons own RAW format.  Speed has also been enhanced to up to 120fps.  I know that Canon has been working with Codex on a recorder.  Codex is the Rolls Royce option for external recorders (the worked with Arri too) with all that implies.  This is the first major manufacturer to venture into RED Epic territory, although technically its probably more of a baby Sony F65.  Its taken years for the industry to be get up to speed on RED’s RAW workflow.  How will Canon fare?

RED haven’t produced a new camera for NAB, the Scarlet is making its NAB debut but the real news is about a new sensor called RED Dragon.  This is the fulfillment of REDs main theme for NAB2011.  Its not a new camera but a new sensor which is inline with RED’s commitment to modularity and upgradability.  Resolution is up to an unprecedented 6K.  This may seem excessive given the debate about 4K but logically some of the advantages 4K acquisition has for HD delivery pass on up the line once you hit 4K delivery.  Of more immediate use is improved low light performance and dynamic range (without HDRX).  The cost for an Epic is expected to be around £4000 which is not exactly cheap but is a lot less than, say, trading in your C300 to get a C500.  Availability can be REDs achilles heel and the upgrade process won’t kick off till October.  Scarlet owner have an upgrade path too but they will have to wait longer which will give them more time to save.  Scarlet will be dearer because you effectively have to swap in Epic parts to get to Dragon.  Note that this is not the long awaited Monstro chip.  It is a touch bigger than the Epic but it is not yet full frame.

 

Sony’s only new large format camera is the FS700 I talked about recently.  The F65 was at NAB2011 last year if only in concept form.  Am I still enthusiastic about this camera now its in the context of all its piers?  I think the answer to that is yes.  It still represents what passes for value for money in the pro video market.  The upgrades from the FS100 are worthwhile and, in the case of the high speed, innovative.  It’s not upgradeable in the RED sense but the 4K 12bit RAW out shows some potential.  I just can’t think of many projects you might want to shoot that you couldn’t with the FS700.  I think Sony predicted the FS700 launch would get lost in the noise at NAB and launching before was a smart move.

Canon may have thought that launching 2 cameras would guarantee them the show buzz and for about 24 hours they were right.  Then the Aliens landed! 

Video processing specialist turned software guys Blackmagic Design lived up to their name and made Canon’s buzz disappear and reappear at their own stand.  Blackmagic’s last trick was to make the cost of getting hold of the feature film class grading software Resolve they acquired first shrink from $100,000 first to $1000 and then disappear entirely.  OK, that is a slight over-simplification but it shows they know have to think outside-the-box and drive value.  Blackmagic debuted some Thunderbolt connected SSD recorders last year at an attractive price.  This year they decided that as they do processing, recording and software all they really needed to do was find I nice sensor and they could make a camera - so they did.  What they have come up with is the most blue sky thinking camera I have seen.  Its a camera designed to be as filmic as possible.  It is not a convergence device, its not going to replace your 5D in that regard.  It has a Johnny Ive-like singularity of purpose.  They knew their customers wanted a camera with excellent grading capability and wide dynamic range (13 stops).  This meant shooting RAW.  Rather than go proprietory as the majors have they used the open CinemaDNG format.  It shoots at 2.5k and 12bit which gives scope for cropping but you can also shoot HD in ProRes (Apple) or DNxHD (Avid) formats.  As befits the makers of Resolve, your Colourist will love you for shooting on this. To cope with all this data the camera has an integrated SSD slot.  Again this is just a standard 2.5” SATA drive you can buy down at PC World.  To get the data into your NLE or Resolve you can just pop the drive in an enclosure or use the integrated Thunderbolt port.  This can also be used to connect your laptop to use the Ultrascope monitoring package that is bundled along with a full copy of Resolve (over £1000 value).  For more traditional forms of monitoring and audio there is SDI out and 1/4 jacks.  To top it off is a high res touch screen  monitor with an iOS-like interface that should make the designers of the major’s menu interfaces hide in shame.  So here we have a piece of gear with a hat full of ground-breaking tech and it costs £2300.  No really, I meant to type that.  OK then, don’t believe me - google it yourself.  When everyone picked themselves off the floor and hit the twitters there was a huge buzz.  This was shortly followed by the kill joys and fanboys chiming in.  

So where do I stand.  A week ago I was happy to imagine buying an FS700 (currently my camera budget is imaginary).  Now, here is a camera which I can buy three of for the same number of (imaginary) pounds stirling.  As I said earlier, the Blackmagic is a very focused device which will get you as close to film as you can for £2k.  The sensor is slightly less than MFT size, close to Super 16mm film.  This means a 2x crop.  As it uses EF or ZF 35mm lenses this means a struggle to find good wide angles and a increased depth of field.  Its also no speed merchant, frame rates span 24 to 30fps.  Its OK in low light but not exceptional.  It has a native ISO of 800 but early indications are it goes up to 1600ASA.  It does not take stills.  In fact it is almost the polar opposite of my 5D Mk II.  The FS700 is much more of a workhorse.  If you are not shooting a movie the AVCHD codec is perfectly adequate.  You have all the niceties of built in ND, XLR, decent AF, peaking, zebras etc and a long shooting time.  If you want to pimp up the image by recording externally (8bit 4:2:2) you can, but bear in thats going to cost you about a third of the cost of the Blackmagic on top of the base price.  Expect much more than that to enable that 4K RAW option.  I expect a new breed of 4K recorder to appear but the current ones cost more than the Blackmagic on their own. So, in summary, if you are working professionally on a mix of jobs and you want something that blends Sony EX3 convenience and versatility with a DSLR aesthetic then the FS700 still has the best feature set for the money.  If you were waiting for REDs 3k for 3k Scarlet and feel disenfranchised by how things turned out then Blackmagic has delivered it for you.  Just don’t sell that 5D MkII you bought while you waited just yet because it fills in a few gaps in the feature set.  If you just want carry round one device to shoot stills or video to a high level of quality then a DSLR like the D800 or a compact interchangeable like the GH2 or NEX7 would be a better bet.

I think the Blackmagic is the first camera worthy of the woefully overused term “game changer” since the Canon and Vincent LaForet shocked us with Reverie.  You can pick holes in its feature set but the real revolution is that Blackmagic set out to design a set of features in and the costs out.  They have not skimped on the technology, much of it is a step forward at any price.  Then they have decided on a price that presumably makes them some money.  They have not chosen to position it in a range or in a market and it came out at 2 grand.  If your allegiance is to another brand, how will it make you feel the next time you cough up 3 grand for a piece of firmware or £15 per Gb for proprietary media.

Editing and Grading - Reassuringly Inexpensive

When I started editing again a few years ago editing packages came in 2 flavours.  There were consumer ones aiming to suit the person wanting to cut out the foot shots from their 2 weeks in Majorca and add a few cheesy titles.  Then there were the Pro ones which added a nought to the end of the price tag and came with stern and complicated looking interfaces.  Most of these came with some form of colour correction built in.  Apple Color in the Final Cut Studio Suite was atypical being a hard-core grading suite.  At the lower end many of bought plug-ins like Red Giant’s Colorista or Looks.  More up-market productions would turn to applications like DaVinci Resolve which was a hardware/software solution capable of making a 6 digit hole in your bank account. 

On Tuesday all eyes were on the Supermeet to see what Apple might bring to the table.  Apple had been under-pressure from a strong, modern offering from Adobe and a returning to form and increasingly agressive Avid.  The rumour mill was running 24 hour shifts.  Was it going to be iMovie Pro, was it going to be 64bit and just a few short weeks ago even did Apple still care?  I was at the FXPHD party when the presentation started and the party went into suspension whilst the revellers turned to the blow-by-blow account on Twitter.  Well it turns out Apple did care - FCP X (at least what we saw of it) turned out to be more than most people expected.  It is a radically changed UI but not in a consumer direction.  Apple is looking for a paradigm shift in working and its clever and well-thought out.  There is still a lot we don’t know.  Experienced cutters in FCP with shortcut keys hard-wired into their brains are going to find it a shock but not as big as the price sticker.  $299 is what that last slide said which brought the room (and it was a BIG ROOM) to its feet at the Supermeet.  The vibe I got in the days after from people I spoke to was.  “It looks cool but I don’t know whether I can get used to it but for $299 I am going to give it a go”.

On the Colour grading front, two vendors announced free versions of their software.  Red Giant announced a free light version of Colorista.  Even more surprising was a free light version of Resolve.  Coming in July this will lack some features but is still a remarkable journey from super-high end through $1000 Mac version to gratis.  It should run on a laptop according to BlackMagic but remember Resolve really likes Nvidia Quadro cards, a fast raid array and a grading panel.  No-one is giving those away free but at lease Resolve is now supported on the lower cost panels from Euphonix.

Las Vegas

This was my first trip to Vegas.  This is at least partly deliberate.  I don’t really drink very much and the same goes for gambling.  It’s not a deep seated revulsion or based on principle - I just don’t.  So there has never really been a strong desire to go there.

Dawn view from Signature - damn you jet lag!

NAB finally gave me a reason to go - did it live up to my low expectations.  I think the answer is probably yes.  Las Vegas is aptly nicknamed “Sin City” as it is like a corrupted Disney World.  It is just as impressive, well-conceived and efficient and with the same talent for parting you from your cash.  However, whilst Disney blends a spirit of optimism and traditional values with a dash of sentimentality (OK, more than a dash). Las Vegas is set-up to live for the moment and to hell with the consequences.  It’s not a hidden agenda - its right there in the open.  It is unashamed and it is relentless.  It has the same level of sincerity that I see in Disney World that only seems to exist in America.  Its why you couldn't transport either resort to the UK without it ending up a bit rubbish.

I suppose part of my prejudice comes from growing up in a seaside town in Wales.  It’s fair to say that my hometown was not a resort that pitched itself at the upper echelons of the holiday market.  Seeing the massed ranks of slot machines in the Casinos took me back to the amusement arcades of my youth. So when I wander through the Bellagio shopping arcade where every top-line designer is represented to emerge into a giant hall of slot machines is just plain disconcerting.  Especially, when you see rows of people in Guccipradior playing.  That would never happen in Rhyl - well, not real designer wear and they would be trackies.

Ornate ceiling at Bellagio

So would I warn you off going to Vegas?  No, I wouldn’t go that far.  It is worth seeing.  Even if you are viceless, there is a lot to do and the architecture is monumental and the interiors are opulent if not always tasteful.  Its also a reasonably priced placed to stay as the gambling subsidises the rates and there are just huge quantities of rooms available.  Just don’t say I didn't warn you if you come home broke.