Shoot the best quality 200fps available using Odyssey 7Q and Sony FS 700/C500

The Convergent Odyssey 7Q is a new off board 4K recorder with 8” OLED screen that offers outstanding slow motion capability at very high image quality when used in conjunction with HD Cameras and in particular the Canon C500, Sony FS-700 and ARRI Alexa.  

Some of these new functions require already announced firmware updates which will come into effect quite soon (April 2014). 

One benefit of the Odyssey 7Q over other recorders is that it is easy to understand and use with a crew friendly touch screen GUI and simple BNC I/O.  As many of you are aware, we at VMI understand and share your pain of having to configurate and use an off board recorder instead of just being able to use on board codecs and the Odyssey addresses as much as is possible the operational issues.

It has three main camera interfaces at the moment- Canon C500, Sony FS700 and ARRIRAW (and distinctly more useful than using an XT-more of which next month). So no completely impractical 4 BNC feeds and dense engineering menus needed to set the Odyssey up. Whilst spec sheets inevitably list endless supported resolutions and fps, the headlines for Canon and Sony are as follows

Canon C500: 4K raw or UHD onto 256GB SSDs giving 12 mins per card and all other codecs down to HD 4:2:2 10 bit giving approx. 100 mins per 256GB.  It will also permit 4K @60p and HD/2K @120p in the next firmware release.

Sony FS700: 4K 10 bit YCC and  currently 2K to 200fps across the 2 drives-giving 12  mins of high quality slow motion. Please note it is important to understand that this does not use the clunky buffering system that the FS700 records slo-mo internally, but uses the BNC feed out of the camera as both data stream and HDSDI not a broadcast locked pal or ntsc HDSDI picture stream and records in a RAID style alternate frames to A and B drives which can be stiched together on an NLE with a simple bit of free Convergent software. This will be upgraded to a 4K stream in time and is therefore the highest quality slo-mo available across any cost effective package.

The Odyssey will also be available with the new ProRes 4K codec for using ARRI Alexa when it is released.

However the recent firmware release of the Convergent Odyssey 7Q external 4K recorder offers a lot more options when shooting 4K with the Sony FS-700 recorder.  This details the functionality now available.

Odyssey7Q Firmware 1.1.105 Released

Convergent Design releases the long-awaited firmware update for the Odyssey7Q. There are improvements to old functions, fixes to some issues, and numerous new features.

Highlights of the firmware update include:

New Features

• Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) 1920×1080 recording/playback up to 30p
• Mix file types on SSDs (raided, non-raided, RAW, ProRes, etc.)
• OLED Pixel Zoom frame drag (move window around frame)
• Improved/Added reference marks to Waveform, Histogram and False Color tools
• OLED automatic screen flip (defeatable)
• Audio meters
• Headphone volume control
• Hide video function (blackout OLED)
• 1.33 Frame Guide added
• Overlays on/off for SDI & HDMI outputs

Sony FS700 Record Option

• FS700 4K RAW recording up to 60p
• “4K2HD” FS700 4K RAW to Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) 1920×1080 recording up to 30p. This feature supports either SLOG2 or IT709 (REC709) Picture Profiles. 1080p super-sampled from 4K RAW for a superior image.

Canon C500 Record Option

• QuadHD RAW (3840×2160) recording up to 60p
• 2K & 1080p 12-bit RGB recording up to 30p in .DPX

Fixes & Improvements:

• FS700 false triggering reduced
• FS700 RAW white balance tracking corrected
• Monitored image tearing corrected
• Intermittent lines in image corrected
• Cinema DNG files improved for greater post software compatibility
• Improved SDI signal detection