KnightsFan

Those new capsules look fairly interesting. It would be neat if Zoom transitioned to a modular recorder system, without compromising quality, durability and form factor. Being able to just add 4 more XLR's with phantom power, or an ambisonic capsule, is actually pretty cool. They're in a position to make a Zoom F1 sequal that is small enough to be a beltpack recorder, has remote triggering from bluetooth, but can also turn into a recorder with 4-5 XLR inputs when needed. That would be great for people at my budget/skill level who need a swiss army knife for lots of different uses.
Since their new capsule can do 4 tracks apparently, it would be nice to see some capsules with, say, two XLRs plus stereo mics, though I don't know how many people would ever use those. I wonder if it's bi-directional? Could they make an output module for live mixing?
It seems like they've put some effort into improving their OS as well. Touchscreen control is... not ideal, but moving towards a modern UI with more functionality is a good direction. When they say it's app based, I assume there are no 3rd party apps--but it would be REALLY interesting if they could get a Tentacle Sync app.

@dgvro Resolve can't use AMD hardware acceleration at all on Windows. It just isn't implemented, according to blackmagic forum posts from 2019. So you're stuck with CPU decoding if you're on a Windows system.

The other part of HEVC decoding is that it's not a simple question of whether your GPU supports it. Last year I upgraded my CPU from an i7 4770 to a Ryzen 3600. My GPU remained the same, and yet my HEVC decoding performance in Resolve jumped from barely usable to really smooth. This was editing the same exact project with the same exact files on the same version of Resolve studio. I don't know if it was the CPU, the new motherboard/chipset, whether Resolve just doesn't like 7-year-old systems, or what--but it's certainly false that the GPU is the only factor, even on GPU accelerated performance in Resolve.

I think Intel supports 10 bit 4:2:2 decoding, but I have AMD so I'm not sure. @gt3rs was the one who started our attempts at smooth playback with 4:2:2 files, and I'm not sure if they found anything else about CPU decoding. Fwiw, I don't see any options in Resolve for CPU decoding on my Ryzen 3600, so if it has any they aren't implemented in Resolve.
Edit: actually, I did try 1Dx3 4:2:2 files on an 8th gen Intel i7 processor. With QuickSync enabled, the files didn't even show up, and with QuickSync disabled they played at ~10fps. So either Intel doesn't support 4:2:2 on that processor, or Resolve doesn't implement it.

In my experience any 10-bit 4:2:2 that is competently implemented with sufficient bitrate for the resolution is excellent. ProRes just has a benefit of being easy on the computer.
I don’t see much difference from 150Mbps AVC and 400Mbps AVC All-I on Panasonic cameras. The All-I has subjectively better motion, but it’s so slight I only use it in the edge cases.
I don’t see much difference between 400Mbps ALl-I and ProRes or ProRes HQ unless you are just pushing sliders all over the place, especially the white balance. Just get it right, or close to right, in camera like you should.
Having said all of that, I would still like to see a mirrorless camera that records internally to ProRes flavors if only to speed up workflow.

ProRes is factually a derivative of MPEG-2, that's why it's so light on CPUs. It compensates its old codec technology through high bitrates, thus the generally good quality.

h264 and h265 will always be better than ProRes at the same bitrates, provided that a decent codec implementation (with high profile and 10bit color depth) is being used.
So the question is whether 400 Mbit/s h265 (in the case of the Fuji XT-4) for 4K/25p video is visually as good as ProRes HQ at 737 Mbit/s for the same resolution and frame rate... 
 
EDIT: The real issue with h264 and h265 are not the codecs themselves, but that manufacturers - treating them as consumer codecs - bake all kinds of overdone image processing (aggressive denoising, artificial sharpening, pushed contrasts) into material recorded with them. ProRes, being conversely treated as a "pro" codec, doesn't get those over-processed images. This is why we think that ProRes is better...

@thebrothersthre3 Thanks for the files. I've played around with them a little bit. It's so close, I can't definitively say one looks to have more DR than the other. I do think that, although the FPN is subjectively displeasing in motion, the actual amount of noise looks slightly less on the Ursa... though it's obviously hard to say. One really interesting thing is just how different the colors are. The Ursa is very magenta. I can definitively say that from these images, I like the P6K version better.
Just to go back against the other measurement, C5D puts the P6K at 11.8 in 6k at ISO 400, and the Ursa 4.6K at 12.5 when the 4.6k is downscaled to UHD in ISO 800. That's gotta be really close if you also downscale the P6K to UHD. Also worth noting that they measured at 400 instead of 800. I don't know which way that would change things--you'd expect worse DR in a non-native ISO, but it could also have different noise reduction. So overall I'd caution against saying this disproves the other measurement, but it is evidence against the Ursa having more DR than the P6K at any given setting.
 
The other thing I will say about latitude is that while latitude does not equal DR, its is true that if Camera A has both more over- and under-exposure latitude than Camera B, then Camera A also has more dynamic range (discounting subjective opinions on one having a "nicer" noise pattern).

The info outside the window was because I pulled down the highlights on the Ursa CDNG footage. With the Pocket 6k BRAW there is no option for highlights so I left it alone. 

Its a very unscientific test. Both cameras were set at 800 iso, 180 degree, F2.8. Then I blasted a 300w LED directly at my face 7 feet away. The idea was just to dramatically over expose and see which could bring back more detail. Same deal with the under exposed image. 

Post adjustments were just using the exposure slider. I believe I brought down the over exposed image 5 stops and brought the under exposed image up 4 stops. I didn't use the highlight recovery box. 

I am uploading the RAW files to Google Drive right now. I'd like to do a more scientific test and also use my XT3 in photo mode to see how they pair against those RAW files. But this test shows me what I was looking to see, which holds more highlight information and has more usable shadows.
 
Don't dynamic range and latitude directly correlate to each other tho? A sensor with more dynamic range will have more latitude and vice versa?

This is a very strange one to me. I've seen online tests as well as examples from shoots I've been on of the Pocket 6k having really great dynamic range. Yet Blackmagic claims it has less dynamic range than the Ursa Mini and the same dynamic range as the Pocket 4k. Cinema 5d measured it at 11.9 stops while measuring the Ursa at 12.6. 

I tested the Pocket 6k against the URSA, both at 800 iso and the Pocket had more highlight and shadow information, by a good amount. If the Ursa has 12.6 stops of dynamic range the Pocket 6k has got to have over 13 maybe 13.5. 

I'll probably post the tests if anyone is interested. 

I've been shooting the E2 with anamorphics for over a year now, it's an amazing package for the price. I mostly shoot in 48fps Zlog2 Pro Res for the best of both worlds. A lot of what I do is sports.

Here's the latest thing I did with mostly 2x anamorphics, the waterhousing stuff is 1.33x GH5. Just scrub through and you can find some shots. Very happy with the camera.
 

I don’t think it’s a software problem. It’s a hardware one. H.265 or AV1 won’t become mainstream or useable unless there is some serious hardware encoding and decoding acceleration AND for all the major profiles.
FCPX has been overhauled under the hood on using Metal 2. I think we are going to see a major push by Apple for performance improvements and integration with their accelerator cards and maybe future acceleration chips in MacBook Pros (think next gen T3 chip).
It also appears camera companies have chosen HEVC as their next codec of choice future generation cameras...especially since its in Canons new cameras.

The new firmware (v0.95) enables ProRes RAW over HDMI to Atomos recorders on all E2 models. This includes the $800 E2c. This means that the E2 series now has not one, but two different Raw formats.
I'm sort of surprised the Z Cam is still barely talked about here. It checks a lot of boxes that people complain about with the P4K. The entire series now has H.264, H.265, ProRes, ZRAW, and ProRes RAW recording capabilities, plus incredible frame rate options at full sensor width on the E2, multiple crop options and aspect ratios, low rolling shutter, long battery life, and incredible build quality. I recently got one, though probably won't have any projects to use it on for a few months.

I've been working on this. It's pretty tough. I have mounted an Oculus controller onto my camera and tried to simply record the movement and rotation. I think that it will take some sitting down and doing some math to figure out the exact X, Y, and Z axes of the controller because it doesn't line up quite right "out of the box". I think those "puck" things from the HTC Vive would be better suited, but the Rift is what I have so I'm trying to get it to work with that. I'm not even sure the tracking is accurate enough anyway. The Rift only samples movement at 30 FPS.

@FranciscoB x264 is a specific set of libraries that encodes h.264 files, it's not an either or. I'm not sure what library Resolve uses under the hood to encode h.264 if you use the internal encoder. You can also use Nvidia's NVENC. To clarify, NVENC and x264 are different algorithms that both end up with an H.264 video. I haven't compared them myself.
In the past, I have seen better results from ffmpeg compared to Resolve when exporting to h.264 and h.265. One thing that I have noticed is that Resolve does much better if you give it a quality preset rather than a max bitrate. Use the dropdown instead of a number and you'll have fewer artifacts even at comparable bitrates.
Yes, you can still get better quality up upscaling to 4k and uploading that instead of HD--but only if the user watches in 4k. I never watch YouTube in 4k so if I was your target audience then it wouldn't make any difference. My phone doesn't even stream 1080p most of the time, and honestly I watch as much on my phone as a PC.

You can read YouTube's upload guidelines here.
YouTube reencodes everything to a very low bitrate (~8mbps for HD). So while you do want to maximize the quality that you upload, keep in mind that viewers watching on YouTube will see worse quality than the file you created. So for example, if you are worried about a quality difference between 50 mbps and 25 mbps on your HD file before uploading, well, that's a moot point since the actual stream will be much lower than either of them.
 
I always upload in H.265. I haven't uploaded much to YouTube in the past year or two, but when I did I couldn't see any benefit or downside between H.264, H.265, and DNxHD uploads. So I picked the one that was easiest for me, which is a high quality H.265 file.

Thank you.  This wasn't the specific issue but it lead me down the right path.  The issue has been solved.  Your suggestion that I hook the camera to my computer monitor to figure out if it was the monitor or the camera helped a lot.  The computer monitor was able to tell me my HDMI output wasn't supported by the monitor.  Which was strange because my computer monitor is way newer than my camera.  When I lowered the HDMI output settings (down to 1920x1080p from 3840x2160 (24p)clean out) of the NX1 when the monitor wasn't plugged in, both the computer monitor and the Feel World F5 became usable and the buttons on the camera became functional.
I had set the HDMI out settings to Clean Out do to a recommendation from youtube, but it turns out that this lowers the functionality of my camera with this monitor.

Thanks for the help.  Hope this helps someone else in the future.

You didn't, I was just having a little fun while also making a point.
I think that the RAW vs compressed comparison doesn't align with still images at all because of the way that compressed stills handle DR.  Compressed stills clip the DR of the camera, which is why many people shoot RAW.  Personally I think that's blindingly stupid when it's just as easy to make a JPG from the whole DR of the RAW image, like any free image editor can do but somehow cameras costing thousands of dollars can't do.  If shooting log h264/h265 cut off a couple of stops of DR then we'd all be lusting over RAW and having t-shirts printed about it as well, but thankfully, we're not.

I find the F4 relatively easy to use on the go. I think that audio equipment in general has UI/UX issues since the general convention is to use a little knob to twiddle your way through expansive menus. You kinda have to memorize where things are, but it's not worse than other recorders. (I think the DSLR convention of a wheel built on top of 4 directional buttons is simply easier to use).
But the main UI of being able to toggle channels on/off with 1 click, adjusting gain directly on a knob, and soloing a channel with 1 click are nice. I like having all the controls on the front panel so that it's easy to see when hanging from a neck strap. The one thing I miss from the DR60 Mk2 is that little Mic/Line/Phantom switch. You have to enter the menu on the F4 to get to that. But you can press a button on the F4 to immediately access a channel's options, so day-to-day I don't have to hunt around. It's things like switching from 48kHz to 96, or changing the routing matrix, that are a pain because I only do them once every few months and forget where the options are.
The biggest issue F4 has for me is that battery life is quite bad using 8 AA batteries. I affixed a large 12V battery on top, but it's an ugly, heavy solution. However, most recorders have pretty bad battery life in my experience, especially older ones. The F6 is very attractive to me for the simple reason of having a built in NPF battery sled and (supposedly) really good battery life, along with 32 bit recording of course.

It's definitely worth differentiating opinion vs. fact. But I'll second the opinion in this case: be wary of old pro audio equipment, modern engineering has done marvels at a low price. I tried out an FR2 back when I owned a DR-60D mk2. The FR2 was noisier using the same mic in a sound proofed studio. Granted, @independent 's numbers are for the FR2LE (which is supposed to have better preamps) and the DR-60D (which has worse preamps than the Mk2). also keep in mind that if your problem is too much wind, then you are certainly not going to be hearing the noise floor of the recorder. The difference between self noise in any of those recorders is negligible in any normal outdoor recording.
And, to bring it back to the original suggestion, I've had a Zoom F4 for a few years now. It is superior audio quality to either the FR2 or the DR60 Mk2 by a significant margin. Even more importantly, it has better ergonomics than the FR2. The headphone preamp is much cleaner than Tascam's rather terrible one, and the construction is another league from the DR60.

My EF and F lenses follow me from camera to camera, so it will be a long time before I buy anything other than EF. I'd love to see Rokinon get some competition for affordable EF cine style lenses. It's great that they also have mirrorless mounts as well.
Gotta love the #vlogger on Meike's tweet about manual focus cinema lenses though.

Same here. Would be cool if they offer nice PL to EF adapters to go with them, super versatile then.

It's definitely worth differentiating opinion vs. fact. But I'll second the opinion in this case: be wary of old pro audio equipment, modern engineering has done marvels at a low price. I tried out an FR2 back when I owned a DR-60D mk2. The FR2 was noisier using the same mic in a sound proofed studio. Granted, @independent 's numbers are for the FR2LE (which is supposed to have better preamps) and the DR-60D (which has worse preamps than the Mk2). also keep in mind that if your problem is too much wind, then you are certainly not going to be hearing the noise floor of the recorder. The difference between self noise in any of those recorders is negligible in any normal outdoor recording.
And, to bring it back to the original suggestion, I've had a Zoom F4 for a few years now. It is superior audio quality to either the FR2 or the DR60 Mk2 by a significant margin. Even more importantly, it has better ergonomics than the FR2. The headphone preamp is much cleaner than Tascam's rather terrible one, and the construction is another league from the DR60.

My EF and F lenses follow me from camera to camera, so it will be a long time before I buy anything other than EF. I'd love to see Rokinon get some competition for affordable EF cine style lenses. It's great that they also have mirrorless mounts as well.
Gotta love the #vlogger on Meike's tweet about manual focus cinema lenses though.

I doesn’t work this way. We are talking about 5.000 gigabytes of footage that have to be uploaded and pass the curation process. And you are wondering why this would take months?
I can see your point of view. But these are the same words that they are using to justify their actions. The truth is that the stock footage industry saw a significant growth during the pandemic and while other stock footage agencies like Dreamstime decided to help the community by increasing their royalties with 10%, Shutterstock saw a chance to make more money and attract new investors.
Of course this is their service and they make their own rules. This is true for all companies after all. But If we where all so cynical to accept this as a justification for any injustice against working people then i guess we would have more serious issues to deal with.

There's one on ebay from Adorama at the moment. I think it ships internationally
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zoom-F4-Multitrack-Field-Recorder-with-Timecode-6-Inputs-8-Tracks-SKU1256834/254610621129?hash=item3b47f9c2c9:g:q2gAAOSw0Yxez7qE