New Sony E-mount video cam for IBC

[Andy Wilkinson]

Regarding if the FS5 has a Wave Form Monitor or not...

Originally Posted by David Heath

Saw one at a demo yesterday, Andy, and the answer is "yes".

Thanks for this clarification David as I've read several conflicting reports about this - Fantastic news!

[Ray Lee]

That is great news!, hope its a normal production feature and not only on a demo unit I also have read several reports waveform is not a feature

[Ray Lee]

No waveform, Scott Hui did an unboxing vid and answered some questions on FaceBook and unfortunately said it has no waveform



https://www.facebook.com/groups/Sony.FS5/

[Andy Wilkinson]

Damn! Bad news.

[Mike Watson]

If I shoot XAVC, then archive a project, then need to use that raw video again in 10 years... what are my chances of finding something to play/edit XAVC at that time? AVCHD feels so much more... un-proprietary.

[Dave Sperling]

Originally Posted by Mike Watson

If I shoot XAVC, then archive a project, then need to use that raw video again in 10 years... what are my chances of finding something to play/edit XAVC at that time? AVCHD feels so much more... un-proprietary.

Ten years-- ?? - I'd guess that your chance of at least being able to read (play) the xavc data are pretty good. In my opinion, Sony and Microsoft are the two companies who really maintain backward capability in their products the best. Will edit systems still support it? -- that's a whole other question. Every time a new apple operating system is released I have something that won't work properly with it anymore. Not to mention the thousands of dollars of computer peripherals I've jettisoned because canon never wrote new drivers (for new operating systems) making their old hardware useless.

Plus of course the really important part of the question -- how are you archiving to make sure the data stays good for 10, or 15, or 25, or 50 years. Time flies and hard drives can die when sitting on the shelf...

[Mike Watson]

I copy the data on to an external hard drive mirrored onto a separate external hard drive. Every time capacity increases significantly, I copy multiple drives onto one new drive. I recently copied all of my 500gb drives and one of my 1TB drives from ~8 years ago onto one (er, two) 4TB drives. It's not foolproof, but it works.

Point being, the avi files and the .mov files from back then are all still readable. The more obscure the codecs get, the less likely that is. If XAVC is the next h264 we're in the clear. If it's the next Jaz drive we're in trouble. ;-)

[Steven Digges]

Since you guys brought this subject up......What do you think is going to be the next, or if ever, universal (or close to it) connectivity platform/protocol. We have gone backwards since the days of firewire. I loved firewire. Granted it was not robust and a few issues but EVERYTHING worked with it. Cameras, computers, switchers, hard drives, and a ton of other peripheral devices.

Now we are back to a plethora of connectivity with no clear winner. There is a great divide between HDMI and SDI with SDI supposedly being the pro standard. But even if you pay dearly and go that rout HDMI is still a necessity. And on computers HDMI is output only, not I/O. Thunderbolt looked promising for a while, but Mac started it and is now dropping it from their lightweight air platforms as soon as PC computers started using it. USB 3.0 seems to be promising for high speed computer peripherals but no camera I am aware of has it integrated into a camera.

I made a mistake and bought a Black Magic Intensity Shuttle just to give me a device I could hook a camera up to my lap top on set for many reasons. Supposedly it had plug ins for all of the Adobe software I wanted to use plus its own proprietary capture software. What a joke, almost nothing works except the BMD software that causes problems with other Adobe software. It is absolutely useless. It came in thunderbolt or USB 3.0, I chose Thunderbolt and I now think USB 3.0 would have been a better choice. It is six months old and destined to never be used again.

So....codecs, hard drives, and archiving for storage and playback ten years from now. Good luck predicting that one. But I understand exactly what Mike is saying about AVCHD feeling less propitiatory. But it is not exactly VHS or DVD. I have an AV bone yard of old stuff that will never be resurrected, anyone remember Zip Drives? But there is still a VHS deck and two DVD players integrated into my editing suite.

I will give Sony credit for the FS5. It is obviously not a cutting edge UHD camera. It is a work horse camera with options for those of us that work in current standards and also has the upcoming standards that will become more prevalent. I hate the term future proof, it is a marketing term that insults my intelligence. I see the FS5 as a great camera for today's working pro that has options for him to deliver in formats that his clients want.

Did I say I miss FIREWIRE? One cable, one protocol, and everything from cameras to computer peripherals worked with it. Yes I know it went through three evolutions. I don't think we will ever get that lucky again, there is to much money at stake to keep us buying new gear.

Steve

[Mike Watson]

I found firewire to be flaky, so I can't say I share your longing for it. Always felt like you'd ingest an hour long tape as one clip and the dog would brush against the cable 52 minutes in, and the clip would be unreadable and you'd have to start over from the beginning and waste another hour. When they came out with the ability to "auto clip" shots from HDV, always felt like I'd lose a single clip from the middle somewhere, and then thoroughly freak out when I couldn't find a line of crucial dialogue, only to find it was still on the tape but didn't ingest.

I moved from HDV to 5DMkII and being able to deal with individual clips from the camera straight through the edit and into export was the most glorious thing ever. I loved the images from that camera more than any cam I've ever had, but the usability (audio in particular) is the worst.

But I digress.

My hope, Steven, is that codecs (particularly widespread ones) will become easy to come by in the future... try and load up that XAVC on your 2034 Mac Pro and it won't load, just a few keystrokes will download the driver. It seems like storage is cheap, information is vast, it won't be like trying to find something in 1988 when you had to dial 50 BBS's to find a file... it'll be much quicker and easier.

Interface-wise, HDMI is a terrible idea and every year I am more and more surprised that camera and peripheral mfr's choose it, but it is as close to a standard as we have right now. I expect SDI to persevere, but HDMI's successor will be wireless, not cables.

Outside of that, I feel like USB3 is a decent idea (although adoption is slow), I'm particularly intrigued by USB-C (which you can insert either way) that I expect to see more of.

I was thrilled to learn the FS5 would use SD cards and not some crazy-expensive hard-to-find card only available online. I like the idea that if I fly out of town and need 3 cards and only bring 2, I can buy one at basically any drugstore for a reasonable price.

Overall, I'm celebrating nearly 30 years as a computer nerd, and I've never seen a time with so few cables and so much convergence. Computer-wise, everything connects with USB, and as far as cameras I feel like it's as good or better than it's never been. Even codecs I don't feel like I have the problems I used to, and backwards compatibility is built-in like it has not been in the past.