A highly trusted source told me Panasonic will release a new GH4 firmware update soon. Likely along the new GM2 (4K camera) release. I have no detailed info about the new freatures and fixes but I have been told the firmware will add RAW video recording (on external recorders).
In the meantime other sources confirmed there will be a new E-M1 firmware update too. it will be big but like I told you the past days it’s highly unlikely it will add 4K video recording.
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GH4 North American store links:
GH4 camera at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Ritz Camera and Panasonic. Price: $1,698. In Canada at Vistek.
GH4 camera with interface unit at Adorama and BHphoto. Price: $3,298
Interface unit only at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto and Panasonic. Price: $1,998
GH4 Europen store links:
Germany: Wexcameras, Marcotec-shop.de.
UK at Wexphotographic, CameraWorld, UKdigital, CVP, TipTop.
Holland at Fotohanskeuzekamp.
Belgium at Fotokonijnenberg.
Norway at Fotovideo.
Sweden at Cyberphoto, Skandinavianphoto.
Finland at Telefoto, Topshot, Verkkoauppa.
France at Photocineshop.
Spain: Fotoboom.
Asian store links:
Digitalrev and Digidirect Australia.
4K cards
Kingston 16-32-64 GB SDHC UHS-I Speed Class 3 at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Sandisk 16-32-64 GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-II Memory Card at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Transcend 64-128 GB High Speed 10 UHS-3 at Amazon (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Panasonic 16-32-64 GB SDHC-UHS-I U3 Card (90MB/s) at Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
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Rumors classification explained (FT= FourThirds):
FT1=1-20% chance the rumor is correct
FT2=21-40% chance the rumor is correct
FT3=41-60% chance the rumor is correct
FT4=61-80% chance the rumor is correct
FT5=81-99% chance the rumor is correct
83 Responses
Is that implying that the GH4’s HDMI our is currently compressed? Or are they upping the quality to 10bit 4:4:4?
No, it could still be uncompressed even if it’s not raw, just like a TIFF image.
someone think hdmi clean out was raw video format ,please rethinking
RAW is something else, it contains the information before demosaicing (debayering). Imagine working with 24-30 images of 8-9 MB each per second. This will be very useful for cinema productions but useless to any other field, for me included. You need a mainframe computer to edit something like this :).
But what mechanism is there for getting RAW data out of the camera, if this requires an external recorder? Not HDMI if it’s true RAW. Don’t think you can output anything more than 10bit 4:2:2 over that, which it does already.
Assuming it has HDMI1.4 support, it can push out a 4K signal. Maybe what they are doing is that trick that’s been doing the rounds on the internet, taking a 4K video and downsampling to the equivalent of 10bit 4:4:4 1080p? Ok, not ‘treu’ RAW, but that’s pretty close to sort-of-raw as you have croma and luma per pixel and more latitude than a final production 8bits per channel.
Perhaps they’ve got a way of doing that out of the box now?
I really don’t know how they are planing to do it, we shall wait and see.
There is uncompressed raw, lossless compression (like blackmagic, works like winraror winzip) and lossy compression (like Red, looses quality but not visualy).
So they could simply compress it alot more. The 5D can record Raw to a CF-card and they arent super fast.
Mattias, the point is the rumor says external recording. I can believe a camera can write RAW data to a CF or SD card, but what mechanism is there for getting raw data to an external recorder? This RAW data has to go over HDMI presumably, meaning it must conform to HDMI 1.4 spec, i.e. it will be at best a 4K 10bit 4:2:2 signal, i.e. not true RAW. You can stream RAW bayer data over HDMI!
*can’t
Maybe that’s why the headline says ‘some sort of “RAW”‘, implying that it’s not true undemosaiced data.
If I where to take a guess I say its a language missunderstanding where someone used the word Raw to say clean uncompressed hdmi out.
They have own proprietary port below camera, what has enough pins like with E-M1 to cover more than just shutter and dial.
All what is required is that the sensor signal is sent after gain amplifier to external recorder like their grip.
I just looked around a bit and I found a discussion about rumors saying that Atomos could have figured out a way to record raw via HDMI instead of just the SDI like today.
Atleast nobody in the thread totally dissmissed it and some of them should know.
Any who, if true great, if not oh well.
Atomos have obviosly worked on the shogun together with Sony and Pana so…
5D mark 3 can record full HD RAW, not 4K RAW (which is 4 times bigger) and all of that because of ML, not Canon, of course.
Of course, never said it was any other way.
a 4K uncompressed raw file may be about 9 MB. If we ad the 24 frames per second it results in a 216 MB of data for an uncompressed RAW 4K video recording. If we ad a compression factor of 8 (lossy compression like RED) it will result in 27 MB/sec of data. Now that will be something. I strongly dislike the idea of an external recorder.
I think if they want, Panasonic can introduce 4K compressed RAW recording even now, internally on the SD card.
Think you can push it a bit more. The lossless compression in my camera spits out roughly 8MB/frame.
I agree, that would be something 🙂
Wonder about heat, the bmpcc gets pretty darn hot and its cooling drains the battery. The bmpc4k has a fan. Could the GH4 cope?
I bet the internal H.264 4K compressor consumes similar resources to a RAW compressed data so I wold not worry. The entire body of GH4 forks as a cooling fan.
The only thing stopping this from happening may be Panasonic, not other technical reasons.
It is technical reasons. You just don’t understand them.
“I think if they want, Panasonic can introduce 4K compressed RAW recording even now, internally on the SD card.”
No they can’t. You can’t even record compressed cDNG on a Sandisk Extreme SSD…it requires the new Extreme Pro model which has a throughput of about 550MBps.
I edit 4K Raw today on a Mac Mini with 8Gb ram so it isnt mandatory to have a super fast computer. Less compression is easyer on the computer not the other way around.
4:2:2 prores will flow better on a slow computer than AVCHD from a camcorder.
I dont use it for Cinema Productions but find it verry usefull and its one of the reasons I have passed on the GH4 and A7s.
Hard drive space is something many also worry about, but I edit straight from the SSD that its recorded on and if I want to archive all the unedited footage I convert it to a smaller version of Prores when its already been corrected so it doesnt take up that much space.
/M
Actually higher compression is often faster than lower compression. Computer processors are very good to compress and uncompress data, it is example faster to compress data and then stream it and decompress it on receiver end back to original.
That is example what we do on WWW where we compress the text and images before transferring.
GOIng are very good for graphics, it is cheaper to compress a textures before being manipulated where it gets uncompressed, processed and shown, than try to feed GPU with RAW material without compression.
There is limited I/O throughput in everything and to get trough “bottlenecks” we can do compression and decompress again on other side.
That can be the thing what Olympus has been developing to get it work. We can do lossless image/video compression (like with TIFF) and gain much improved bitrate throughout system while we save clock cycles and battery.
It sounds silly, but can be very VERY effective.
Like we can get CPU to compress data in 440MiB/s and then decompress in 1800MiB/s. Now think what it means if we have to push that trough pipe what can handle only a 400MiB/s? If we get compression ratio 2x it basically doubles our data stream width and lowers battery consumption as CPU is actually spending less clock cycles to transfer data (CPU cycles being low Hz or high spend as much power when CPU bridges opens and close anyways) so it is “quickly in and out”.
What is your method of archiving unedited footage? You mention you convert to smaller ProRes… do you import all clips into FCPX then store the folder FCPX creates on the HD? Currently I just keep all the MP4s. Not a problem now, but eventually…
Dont use FCPX. I use Media Encoder or my Acrok converter to batch convert them to something smaller.
But also, I throw away alot. Most people feel the need to save evertything becuase they might need it one day. But all the good footage should have made it to the final film and you always have that.
So if it isnt something of great affectional value or something that would be easy to reshoot I try to delete it, but its hard.
So FT3 (41-60%) now means “highly unlikely”?
Yes. Olympus adding better videos to E-P5 and leaves E-M1 out. Why? Because Olympus will abandon m4/3 and make a 35mm 4k video camera. Olympus will abandon still photographers and jump to video purely offering 8:4:2 with double-RAW in 2000 FPS.
Actually do not update your E-M1! The next firmware will overheat your sensor so it will burn ashes and you are required to buy new Silver “Full Frame” OM-V1 what stands for Video.
You mean, E-V1. I assume it’s still ‘D’, or does it take film again?
Forget about all these firmware updates. What we all want to know is, how are Panasonic and Olympus going to respond to the Sony Kawai curved-sensor selfie camera? It will conquer the world!
isn’t Panasonic is co-develping organic sensor with fuji?
Yes they are 🙂 Something I’ve been keeping my eye out since last year…it is quoted to have at least 16 stops of Dynamic Range. They are supposedly working on an APS-C and M4/3’s of the same spec’d out sensor. Should be awesome if they go through with it. I am sure we will see that sensor in the next lineup of Fuji ‘ s and high end Panasonic lumix.
No zoom? No variation of focal lengths? Thanks, no thanks. Tele centric design fix that already.
You don’t need a zoom for selfies. This is all about tapping into the huge market of young women who like to show off (or take off!) their panties and bras in social media.
Sorry for the sexist comment, but I find the whole idea of making cameras explicitly for women to be sexist.
I don’t see how that’s sexist. Are we supposed to pretend there are no differences between Men and Woman? They’re just giving them what they want, it’s no secret that they do. (well, apart from the taking off panties part that may not be for everyone.)
In the same way as making razors and clothes specifically targeted at women?
Do you wear a dress?
It’s implying that women can’t learn to use the same cameras as men, so they need special dumbed down cameras made for them. Also, taking selfies is by no means exclusive to women. There are lots of male selfies on Instagram, Facebook etc.
So glad to see we have a white knight standing by to protect the poor defenseless ladies of the Internet. I’m sure they will all seek you out for courtship knowing how much you care about defending their “selfie honor.” If you’re not already aware, there’s something even more offensive than sexism – people who constantly turn over rocks trying to find it.
It is called Kilt and not a dress…..
they make a camera for a possible market (that consists of mainly of women)
Don’t tell Anthony Weiner it’s women only
Nokia are rumoured to be about to release the 730 which will feature a high performance front camera to cater to selfists.
Am I the only one who hates selfies?
But your the only one here that uses one? 😉
Nope! 🙂 a girl took this photo when we met at the station in Venice. She wanted to try my camera and here it is, just a street portrait. 🙂
Ahh.. 🙂
I wish they ad 10 bit and 4:2:2 internal video recording and a log profile. I personalty don’t care about external video recording.
Nonsense, on external recorders you can record any format supported by them from any camera having clean HDMI out already. No special firmware necessary.
Not for Raw.
Wrong, the camera must output raw in order for a recorder to be able to record it. Uncompressed HDMI out is not necessarily raw, just like a TIFF image is uncompressed but not raw. Raw video output is not demosaiced until afterwards, just like raw still images.
Also ‘clean HDMI out’ is not the same as ‘uncompressed HDMI out’. Clean HDMI out just means that there are no graphical overlays, just the recorded video feed.
There is no such thing as “compressed HDMI” – the signal is encoded (in either YCbCr or RGB) but not compressed.
For Bayer patterns, YCbCr is essentially RAW – 4:2:0 is one pixel of sensor corresponts to one pixel of video (like it is now with 4k on cameras), 4:4:4 if 4 pixels of sensor correspond to 1 pixel of output (like most often for 1080p without line-skipping) – because R and B values only present in 1/4 of the pixels each.
Still, what you describe is not quite undemosaiced raw data. And clean HDMI out is, as I said, not the same thing. It means that the video feed is clean from graphical overlays.
In what significant way it is not a raw data? At 4:2:2, reds and blues are sampled as exactly red and blue pixels in the Bayer filters. Each pixel can be presented in 8 or 10 bits, exactly as modern sensors read the data in video sensor readout modes (12 or 14 bits reserved for slow still modes). What’s a practical difference?
The practical difference may be small, but the fact remains that YCbCr is not raw, it’s a result of demosaicing. A raw image have not yet had a color space defined for it, not RGB, not YCbCr or any other color space.
Chroma subsampling is a form of compression.
On a Bayer sensor, 4:2:2 subsampling is not compression. There is simply no more chroma info to begin with.
How does that even make sense?
The Panasonic GH4 wins on size. As soon as you start bulking up this system, the Sony A7S becomes more compelling as a video capture device.
Yes, because full-frame lens plus an external 4K recorder really pwns on size.
I read a lot that the A7S’s 8 bit recording is a let down.
How important it really is, I’ll leave that to videographers..
As a videographer, my money is on the GH4 and all the auto focus lenses that are available.
Nah, it’s not possible, not via fw upgrade, they need new hardware for that, otherwise they would have done it looong ago, and the sensor will overheat, bla bla bla :o)
😀 😀
Yeah, a camera manufacturer would never cripple a camera. Not in a million years 🙂
the sensor gives the raw anyway why would it overheat??
I wish they add “waveform”, then I might get rid of Ninja blade.
automatic start/stop and raw to an external recorder would be fantastic. I’ll be shopping for a recorder if this is true.
This is BS if true. A firmware made only for the rich kids…..pathetic
It’s not true, but how is adding features BS? Even if it doesn’t directly benefit you, it’s a good thing overall.
What exactly are you waiting for in a firmware update anyway? There’s only one feature I’m really waiting for on the GH4, and it’s coming soon. In fact, I’m wondering if the source that mentioned RAW was confused about some terms, because there are a few things in here that are almost right but not quite.
Which feature is that where you’re waiting for?
gh4 will add pizza making button. with 3 toppings option.
start to love.. okay?
if anybody makes a selfie..let him.. if you are democatic in mind.
if you are an idiot…tell it to our b.m.c.companie and within 24 hours
we will implant you the new r.a.m.p-super-explosive chip in your
hyperthalamus ( if it exists)..okay..
or do you live in a world, whre people make war and..oh soory..you are from usa…
you need a 30mm Steelplate instead of a selfie cam..
What a weird thing to say!
Panasonic Presse in Paris told me 30 minutes ago that this rumor was not true. They just speak that it’s possible to have 10 bit 444 but not RAW.
They should implement 4k 60fps or 96fps 1080p with a better quality, that would be sick.
I would instantly buy a external recorders for that!
Question, what can the GH4 do with raw, its my understanding that a high dynamic range was needed to really take advantage of recording raw.
It does have a high dynamic range. If you ever play with Raw files in LR or Photoshop you’ll immediately see the advantages of raw. They can be pushed really hard.
Also, another advantage of RAW is being able to set / fix white balance in post.
I myself am not interested. I get it all done in camera and speed production.
yep, the ultimate is getting it right in camera in the first place.
No need for raw. Just give me in-camera 10 bit ProRes. The $500 bmpcc can do it too!
That’s just pure BS.
Raw = PRE-debayering. A raw cannot be seen on its own, or you need an on-the-fly transcoder (like in a BMPCC for reviewing clips)
A specific debayering algorithm is made for each sensor : see the lightroom update for new cameras, none of any external recording can do that.
And I don’t even talk about bandwidth issue with HDMI.
You have to have a DATA connection, not a VIDEO one for recording proper raw data. (thunderbolt would be a good candidate)
I wouldn’t believe your sources are proven a pathetic joke
At first I thought that it is impossible, but look at the blackmagic 4k. You need 8 mb for every frame in 4k dng, it means that 1 second will be about 200-240 mb. UHS-II can write 312 MB/s. So technically it is possible.