kye

I use dual channel recording all the time. The problem isn't that the F6 isn't great, it's that by comparison, everything else is shit. The F6 could have 4000 bit recording, but if you have a bad signal source then your 4000 bits won't help, because the limitation will be elsewhere in the signal path. Unfortunately, in comparison to the F6, everything is a bad signal source.

I think you have to patch the input to the track so that when you hit record it knows which input you want to record from. It sounds like you might have already done that, but if so then I'm not sure. This might help?

Good summary. I'm a bit skeptical about the usefulness of it. Not to say that it won't be more useful than a normal device, but my question is how much more useful. I think that noise may play a big part in limiting how much extra dynamic range there is. The idea is that in traditional system you want to keep the levels in the sweet spot where they are below the clipping point, but above the point where the noise starts to become audible. An audio engineer will adjust their equipment so that the signal is in that sweet spot through every piece of equipment in the signal path. The problem comes if we don't adjust the levels when we go from one situation to another. Here is how different situations can be from one-another: So, if you set the gain for a noisy street scene where the levels were in the 80-90dB range and then didn't adjust it when you shot the two people talking quietly in bed scene, the bedroom scene would be 60db quieter than what an engineer would set it to. We set the street scene so that the peaks are at -20dB, and we're good to record 70dB of dynamic range because the normal system is fine to about -90dB. We probably don't need the full 70dB, so there's some wiggle room in there. But now were in the bedroom scene and the peaks are at -80dB (because 60dB quieter than our -20dB peaks is -80dB) and with a normal system this means we have less than 20dB of dynamic range there, assuming that at -100dB is where the noise floor is. A normal 16-bit system would be awful quality here, but let's put that aside, because we're now talking about the F6. The Zoom F6 may very well be able to go down to (let's say) -200dB. This is my estimate, but if 16 bits can do -96, 24 bits can do -144, 32 bits should be around -200dB. The problem we're going to have is noise. I'm not sure that the F6 will have input circuitry that has a noise floor of -200dB (that is very very very low noise levels), but let's assume that it does. The problem is that your microphone probably doesn't. Anything that needs phantom power requires it precisely to run its own internal amplifier circuitry, and every microphone on the planet is built for the -96dB levels of 16-bit. For example the Sennheiser 416 has a signal-to-noise ratio of 81dB. If you used this mic then your lovely F6 would be making a very high quality recording of your actors mixed with a very high recording of the microphone noise, and both your actors and the microphone noise would be at the same volume level! Win!! I don't know if the 416 is that good a microphone, but even if we had a mic with SNR of 100, or 120dB, that's still only putting your noise floor of the bedroom scene 20dB or 40dB lower than your actors, and that's not a great end result. If I've done some maths wrong in here please sing out, but I believe the logic stands. And if anyone thinks that my example is extreme, just imagine a shot of two people walking in the doors of their NY apartment, up the stairs, into their apartment, getting undressed and then into bed. Not only might you have level problems in one scene, you might have it IN ONE SHOT!

True, but the videos have a shelf-life because BM pumps out new versions all the time and you'd have to re-make all your videos!

Don't worry, once gimbal technology has matured and all gimbals look the same and there's no point upgrading they'll release the first auto-balancing ones and everyone will have to upgrade all over again!

Only film things out the window... boom - solved!

Yes, I was thinking of that and knew I'd seen it somewhere but couldn't remember where, so punched a few terms into google image search and found the above one instead

I think people associate vlogging with mobile filming (like with a gorillapod) but I would say that the vast majority of "people who upload videos of them talking to a camera" are in home studios with the camera on a tripod. In this genre jump cuts are the most common edit type, and having the extra resolution will allow them to create different zoom-levels and cut between them to hide jump-cuts. If you need to publish in 4K (which is a topic that we can debate another day) then having 8K to crop into can really help. In practice you can do mild scaling of 4K without visible artefacts, however if you're doing something where you want to crop in severely to create several virtual cameras, then 8K can be a real help. For example if you have a cooking show you can have a wide angle lens, and turn that into a wide, a medium of you, and various close-ups of what you're doing on the bench. Anyone presenting anything like this would benefit. If you had a 16mm lens you could have a 16mm wide, a 35mm mid of you, and up to a 70mm FOV for details and still be in 1080, 100mm if you're willing to rescale a bit. Yes, 8K will be a pain to edit, but if you're using one 8K camera and one lens instead of 4 cameras, 4 lenses (or more), and all the associated media management, syncing, colour matching, etc, 8k could still be ahead for a lot of people. It's a different mindset - in the new world we 'over capture' and frame in post, just like a 360 camera. @BTM_Pix has already mentioned this. In the old world we based our capture format on the publishing format, but this was a technology limitation that we have now been freed from. Yes, it has attractive and nostalgic aesthetic aspects to it, but that doesn't mean that those limitations work well for everyone or all types of film-making. Saying that no-one needs an 8K camera because no-one needs to publish in 8K is like saying the only point of buying an 8K camera is to publish 8K, which is also like saying the only point in buying a Ferrari is to drive at 300kph.

I bought my Resolve license (the dongle version) when Resolve 12.5 was the latest and it's still good. I've heard others say they bought at v8 and their dongle still works. BM haven't promised that licenses will get free upgrades forever, but they've been delivering exactly that for many years now and there's no signs they'll change that strategy. Welcome to the Resolve club!

I love this topic! The way that audio circuits work are actually very simple, and the audio industry has taken some principles, applied them in slightly different ways and made new words for them ("gain control", "fader", "input levels adjustment", "microphone/line level switch", etc are all electrically the same function) and so they take a new product, re-arrange the gain structure, and now they get to make spectacularly stunning statements that sound groundbreaking but are actually almost irrelevant. One of the main jobs of a professional audio engineer is to select audio equipment, connect the devices together in the right way, and adjust the settings on each of them so that the levels all the way through the signal path are high enough that noise doesn't creep in, and low enough so that nothing clips. Depending on how many devices you use, the signal path can have half a dozen or so different controls and another dozen amplifier circuits designed by the manufacturer. In this device it looks like Zoom took two of them, adjusted the gain on one of them, made the second one more accurate, changed the names and are calling it a revolution.

Well, he gets 10 points for shock value. But so does every Apple iPhone marketing campaign.. I think comparing it to a RAW photo is an excellent comparison. Imagine I showed you that you can shoot a raw image really dark and then I can bring up the levels in post and it looks fine, well, that's one thing. Imagine then that I said you never need to adjust exposure - that would mean that if you used it in the way that a normal photographer used it then you'd be fine, but that's not what I said, I said never.. which wouldn't actually work in some situations. 32-bit recording is probably really great, and the noise of the preamps in it is probably very low, but I suspect there are limits and although it's just not very likely that someone will hit them, that's still a very big difference to them not actually being there, which is what he implied. The legal disclaimer for that claim would be very long and have much fine print to go along with it.

And then it wouldn't be so bad when you accidentally put your foot in your mouth!

One quick hack to turn ANY cinema camera into a low-light MONSTER!!!!!1

And with an MFT mount to boot! Fantastic if you want to adapt manual lenses.

Ah, yes, OIS is fine I agree about using a fisheye and reframing, and also that the 180 shutter is less of a rule than perhaps it used to be. In fact, I have been watching the latest season of Peaky Blinders (great show BTW - fantastic in pretty much every way) but there was a scene where a ceiling fan was operating and the fan blades were appearing about every 90 degrees of their rotation with no visible motion blur, so even that level of production seems like it didn't stick to the 180 shutter, for one shot at least, which I thought was interesting Dave mentioned a price range in the Kinotika video, but it didn't sound like it was confirmed yet, and I think the Sharp guy in the Cinema5d video said they hadn't decided.

Stabilisation in post only works with very short shutter speeds, so goodbye 180 shutter! Sure, you can stabilise slow shutter clips, but the motion-blur that occurs during the frame makes the image just have instantaneous blur turrets syndrome, which is probably more distracting than mild camera movement. If you want to use a slower shutter then you need OIS or IBIS to stabilise during each frame being exposed and then you can stabilise in post. That's my approach to how I shoot handheld with my GH5 and stabilising in Resolve.

Great video - thanks! I, too, am a fan of negative rights

I can understand that. Only relatively recently was Resolve a colour grading tool you would round-trip to, which is a concept that took some getting used to, let alone knowing how to actually troubleshoot the process and get it to work properly. Now Resolve has become something equally confusing - it does everything! So on a journey from being difficult to understand because it was too technical, to now being something that is difficult to understand because if you're a FCPX or PP user it sounds like it's too good to be true!

There's an interesting thing here in Australia where there's a type of business called Sole Trader, which means you can trade as an individual. You don't need to register a business name or anything. It's kind of like how you can get a job, which is essentially a business deal, and reflects the fact that you as a person are a legal entity. Back in the day the company that controlled the .com.au domain had a rule that you could only register a domain name that reflected your business name (to prevent domain squatting) and my dad applied for his name (in the format firstnamelastname.com.au) and was refused, but appealed on the basis that you can trade under that name, and ended up with the domain name on that basis. Australia does require quite a lot of occupations to be registered and qualified, and I think the basic idea is that it protects consumers from buying services from people that don't know what they're doing. I think it's probably a bit overdone now, as there are restrictions on occupations that don't seem to be so dangerous, and there are likely all sorts of certification rackets too, but in the sense that it protects consumers there is a good idea behind the principle. There's a fundamental problem with 'freedom!' as a goal, because not all freedoms are compatible. The right to live in safety requires that other people do not have the right to kill, rape, rob, or otherwise hurt my possessions or myself. A society where people are freed from all rules is anarchy, not nirvana.

This question comes up a lot. Here's an answer I prepared earlier..... please excuse the first paragraph (it was directed at the post I was replying to, not your post). In terms of people actually doing it, everyone who shoots 4K and publishes 1080 is doing it.

Resolve is still routinely absent from conversations about video editing options. I still see film-making you tubers making PP vs FCPX videos and not even mentioning Resolve. I think it's a combination of commercial interests, a dated mindset, lack of awareness of what non-indy film-making is like, and new thing overload where there are so many new cameras / audio devices / lighting products / YouTube algorithm updates / social media marketing branding promotional everythings that following new editing packages just never makes their priority list. That's ok.. when they finally catch on we can all say "we've been here for years - where have you been??"

This is a great addition, and possibly is a nod to how FCPX/PP users might operate. One thing I always thought was a bit clunky was if you had two cameras/lenses which needed to be matched, and two scenes which needed to be graded differently (eg, day scene then night scene). In a sense you can now grade the clips in the Colour page to colour match and put in Adjustment Clips for different scenes and one across the whole timeline as a final grade. Absolutely. It kind of delivers on the "editing revolution" promise, the UI improvements requests, the people wanting to work without BM hardware, etc. I am noticing a trend within Resolve now of having the 'easy/fast' way to do something and the 'slower/powerful' way. I first noticed it with the stabiliser when they created the one-touch version but kept the old one with the more features, but it's now there for editing too. I suspect BM is chasing both ends of the video production market: Making a feature with UMP, external audio, heaps of clips with slates, large editing team with collaboration and multiple simultaneous users and industry leading grading facilities, frame.io integration, etc etc etc Making a fast-turn around piece with P4K, internal audio, single person post-production on a laptop in the field in the new Cut page, grade with the auto-match feature and a LUT, put in a Fusion title and end sequence and upload straight to YT Obviously most people will be somewhere in-between, but making something that works for both ends of the spectrum is a real challenge and they seem to be doing a pretty good job at it.

Yes - that's a better way of saying it!

I have a GH5 and I shoot home and travel videos in available light and I must say that having a 0.95 lens really makes a huge difference. I just turned off all the lights so the room was only lit by the monitor and at f0.95 in HLG the 400 base ISO and 1/50th shutter is almost as bright as my vision. I'd love an extra stop or so, but in terms of practicality being able to shoot whatever people can see is a good reference point for low-light performance. The P4K should be a bit closer to that limit.