4K upgrade

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

$2000 upgrade coming Spring next year. Will allow seamless interface with AXS-R5 Recorder


4K Raw Recording Interface Solution For NEX-FS700

[Peter Corbett]

I think this all makes the 4K "capability" a bit ridiculous considering the price of the adaptor and recorder pushes it into F5 territory or even the F55. The 4K-ready $8000 FS700 could end up costing $20K to $25K to deliver the 4K promise. Why not just buy an F55 and be done with it.

[Chris Medico]

The recorder is going to be $2k. There may be an extra charge to buy the interface kit for the recorder. Also waiting to see what the media for that recorder is going to cost. Crossing my fingers the total with media is under $5k.

[Alan Brazzell]

From my understanding, the HXR-IFR5 interface unit is going to be $2,000. The actual price of the Sony AXS-R5 RAW recorder is, as of now, unreleased. Rumors are pointing towards the recorder actually costing upwards of $10,000 (with the additional cost of the proprietary media)... although I'm personally hoping for much lower price.

Things are not looking good (and by "good" i mean "affordable") for 4k acquisition.

I'm personally hoping that the last report I've read is accurate and that the FS700 firmware upgrade will work with the AJA Ki Pro Quad so that we can get 4K acquisition for much less - even though it cannot do raw without being tethered to a laptop via thunderbolt.

At this point, it's all speculation - but I am a bit disappointed in the potential high-cost of this upgrade.

[Chris Medico]

I misread that. Yea it is only the interface that is going to be $2k. Bummer.

[Robert Wall]

yeah I read it that way too. Unfortunately it looks like $8k for fs700 +$2k for interface + I heard $19k for recorder. Not sure if media is included. So not good news at all.

[Charles Papert]

So, I'm just curious--what exactly do you guys need 4K for at this point in time?

[Chris Medico]

I am not really interested in the 4k part of it but I am interested in seeing how the camera renders images in RAW.

I've been hoping for a 2k or 1080 RAW but figured worse case the 4k can be downrezed to 1080.

[Alister Chapman]

Once the FS700 starts outputting a raw signal from its HDSDI port then I would be very surprised if someone like convergent design or AJA didn't adapt one of their products to record that output. In which case your looking at $4k to $6k for a recorder. I don't think the AXS-R5 will end up more than the current SR-R1 which is a much more complex device that has to encode and decode footage to and from SR SSTP an can currently be purchased for less than $10k.
The AXS-R5 I think wil cost between $5k and $8k, but that is a guess and I could be grossly wrong.

[Robert Wall]

Yeah, as Chris said, not interested in the 4k really, but having the option of RAW (at any resolution) was the thing that was interesting. It would make this camera extremely versatile from day to day do everything shooting with the internal codec to very high quality images when needed via the RAW recording.

[Mark Kenfield]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

Once the FS700 starts outputting a raw signal from its HDSDI port then I would be very surprised if someone like convergent design or AJA didn't adapt one of their products to record that output. In which case your looking at $4k to $6k for a recorder. I don't think the AXS-R5 will end up more than the current SR-R1 which is a much more complex device that has to encode and decode footage to and from SR SSTP an can currently be purchased for less than $10k.
The AXS-R5 I think wil cost between $5k and $8k, but that is a guess and I could be grossly wrong.

If it does become possible to simply feed the raw 3G-SDI signal into a Gemini that would certainly make for a cleaner and simpler option than whatever adaptor-type device would be needed to jerry rig the new R5 recorder on to the FS700.

What would be REALLY nice, is if that 12-bit raw signal could then be processed into DNxHD 4:4:4 or 10-bit 4:2:2 by the Gemini (circumventing the 8-bit output of the camera currently).

[Alister Chapman]

Well we have the price of the R5 now, its £4k/$6.5k, so not the cheapest of options when you add on the interface kit.

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Charles Papert

So, I'm just curious--what exactly do you guys need 4K for at this point in time?

Heard in my local rental shop last week: "2k??? That's only good for YouTube, isn't it?"

<Insert Charlie Brown scream here>

My response was "well, 1080 was good enough for George Lucas..."

[Matt Davis]

So, the FS700 outputs its 4K stream not as a video signal per se, but as a 'data stream' that just happens to travel down the HD-SDI port, having nothing to do with HD-SDI in and of its self. The interface costing $2k has the bits of an F5/55 that do all the work of making a recordable 4k 12 bit Raw image, thus presenting whatever an F5/55 would present to the recorder, and the $6k recorder it's self.

As for the economics of going for the F5 over the FS700 + 4K, you'll need the recorder in both instances. But the F5/55 ecosystem has $1k battery chargers, $650 batteries, $4k viewfinders, $7k OLED viewfinders - we are into Epic Accessory Costs (pun intended).

In the grand scheme of things, I'd have preferred access to the 12 bit raw part of the FS700 more than the 4K resolution, but the subtle art of the Marketing Department is at work here - after all, if the FS700 could do even 10 bit out, what would that to to the F3?

[Robert Wall]

Is this new information (about the R5 being required for the output of the 3G SDI to be anything that a recorder (either sony or 3rd party) can understand?)?