The Road to 4K YouTube Videos - Our Camera
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,181 words · ~10 min read
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there are a few things that stand out to me when i go back and look at the first
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video that we ever made about the primary Linus media group camera our
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sony fs700 first i'm amazed at how many
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of the comments on that video are about how stupid it was to buy and how
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overkill the camera is for the type of content we produce
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second i'm amazed by how right those comments were i mean i knew absolutely
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nothing about this device and how to unlock its capabilities all i really had
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was these hopes for how we could use it
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to evolve our content and grow this brand new company that i was starting as
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long as we could find and keep the right talent around who did know how to use it
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and then third i'm amazed at in spite of me not really understanding this
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stuff very well when i made the call to spend eight thousand dollars on this
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based on the promise of affordable 4k recording in the future i mean it's
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still the most expensive piece of equipment that we've ever purchased as a
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company how well it has kept up with us as our
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needs have changed and how it continues to adapt with us a mere few days ago it
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actually finally got the easy flexible
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4k capability oh by the way if you think 4k is for chumps and are more interested
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in triple surround curved 34-inch
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monitor gaming rigs that video is coming soon make sure you're subscribed anyway
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the 4k capability that i always wanted from it so i figured now would be a
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great time to show you guys how it got there and some of the other ways that
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it's changed over the last two years
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the cooler master neptune 240m features an exclusive pump design and their new
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celencio fans to provide impressive near silent performance click now to learn
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more our early camera wig was very basic we
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had decent audio from day one with a sennheiser ew 100 g3 and the kit
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lavalier mic but mounted to our pretty simple tripod and head we just had the
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camera body the wussy battery that comes with it the
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hand grip that comes with it the built-in screen which is in the least
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ergonomic position possible by the way sony the bundled zoom lens that can't
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even maintain a constant aperture when zooming and the built-in sd card
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recording slot that's responsible for many of the cameras early limitations
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there wasn't an upgrade for that at the time though so we kind of had to live
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with that but the first thing that we did change was to upgrade the battery to
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some cheap third-party high-capacity ones for all-day operation at trade
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shows and edsel and brandon i guess also got so frustrated with the kit lens that
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they started bringing their own lenses in for us to use at work something that
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we actually didn't address by buying our own company lenses until less than a
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year ago lol the next upgrade was one that caused
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some pretty heated conversations internally especially between me and
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brandon because it represented not just a 400 plus
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dollar investment into this listtech teleprompter but a significant stylistic
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change in our content i mean a move away
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from the off the cuff product impressions with a dynamically moving
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camera that made Linus tech tips Linus tech tips to this premeditated scripted
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content with a static camera placement and then b-roll i caved eventually
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and honestly it and the redrock mount
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something we originally bought to fashion a ghetto shoulder rig for show coverage and a galaxy tab 10.1 tablet
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have turned into a symbol for what i think was a huge
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turning point for us as content creators i mean youtube has changed and by
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adapting to this more professional style
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when we did we put ourselves on the leading edge of web tech review
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production quality rather than allowing ourselves to fall behind even if it
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means i'm reaching for my little remote at my hip here all the time i know quite
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a few of you are wondering what the heck is he doing down there next up was another upgrade that brandon
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pushed really hard for but that i didn't want to get you can probably see a
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pattern developing here and we picked up a small hd ac7 external HDMI video
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monitor i figured well there's a screen
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on the camera why do we need another one but once again brandon was right because
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not only did it help keep images in focus it's and a flexible ARM mount were
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a huge ergonomic improvement especially
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when shoulder mounting the camera so you can put the screen right in front of you
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or shooting from awkward angles now glam b-roll adds production values
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to your video but it also adds a lot of time especially when you're manually
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screwing and unscrewing mounting plates every time you move the camera from
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tripod to slider or shoulder mount or whatever else so brandon asked for
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another tripod and a few sets of quick releases from kessler for fast camera
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relocation and i kind of went yeah no problem you know i looked at the tripod
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it's cheap no big deal but what these freaking plate and release combo
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units are almost a hundred and fifty dollars a pop i mean what did they make
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them out of he was right about the time savings though and they've probably paid for
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themselves and saved pocket change that we would normally have had to use to
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swap out camera plates but uh man
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i don't even know what to say about those they were too expensive but i also
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wouldn't return them because men are they ever handy it was around this time that sony
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released their firmware update for the fs700 finally that would give it 4k
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recording too bad that it unexpectedly cost hundreds of dollars and required
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you to send your camera into a sony service center in order to have them
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perform the upgrade fortunately they have a location about 15 minutes from
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our office so aside from the inconvenience and cost the only really
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annoying thing about the whole experience was that they refused to service our broken hand grip record
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button claiming that it was normal wear and tear on the button and i was over a
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month out of warranty i mean it turns out that they diagnosed it wrong anyway
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so i found some other eighth inch cable
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with a jack on the end soldered it onto it and it works like a charm now in fact
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i think it even gives our camera a bit more you know character but it was still
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a little frustrating the next one was a big upgrade the
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second most expensive item for us yet including all the accessories so we
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picked up some eneloop pro xx batteries for our wireless mic so we wouldn't have
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to change out the batteries as much that was no big deal but then we got the
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recording unit that we needed to finally record in 4k
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or so we thought it cost five thousand
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dollars for our convergent design odyssey 7q recorder an anson bauer
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battery charger and mounting plate two 512 gig ssds with proprietary firmware
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to work with it and a couple cables and it was only when our pre-order arrived
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that i realized i hadn't really read the fine print and 4k recording wasn't even
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enabled yet i mean we did get higher bitrate 1080p recording a slightly
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bigger and noticeably better OLED external display with more onboard
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diagnostics and stuff and the firmware update to record 4k raw including
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continuous 240fps raw recording did come
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pretty quickly and that did come in handy but i'd have probably held off if
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i'd known that the 4k prores firmware was going to take a year after that time
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because the 4k raw workflow is terrible
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it's so much data it takes up so much space it's really hard to work with
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it was at this stage that i finally bought some lenses so that brandon and
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edsel wouldn't have to bring their own to work there wasn't a real quality
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upgrade to the content or anything at this time though because we've replaced
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brandon's tampon 24 to 70 with our own
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tampon 24 sorry did i say tampon just a
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bug brandon because i meant tamron and then we
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picked up tamron's 90 millimeter macro lens for close-ups as well
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the next round of upgrades has some pretty cool stuff in it our sennheiser
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kit lav cable started fraying for the
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second time so we preemptively picked up a countryman b6 lavalier
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pretty sweet it sounds better than our old one it is so small that i can just
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tape it to anything with tuck tape on the inside of my shirt or hide it in a
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buttonhole and it's actually waterproof something we took advantage of when i
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did the ice bucket challenge and it was also around this time that we finally
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upgraded our old tripod head to the manfrotto 509 hd and man
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i'm not a camera dork but
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even i can tell the difference it makes smooth tilts and pans so easy that i'm
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not convinced we even need brandon around anymore and unlike our old one
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which in its defense did serve us well and has seen so much overburdened action
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that the rubber on one of the knobs like came right off the lock is much more
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conveniently placed on the left side of the tripod so a right-handed shooter
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doesn't always have to be reaching around the tripod which is pretty nice
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which i guess brings us to wrap-up time and the reason for us to do this video
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now out of the box two years ago the fs700 could record 1080p at up to 60
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frames per second continuously with audio and up to 240 FPS slow-mo with an
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8-second burst and up to 960 FPS in a
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2-second burst if you were willing to sacrifice three quarters of your
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resolution the issue was that for both continuously
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recorded and slow-mo burst footage
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the sd card media was simply not fast
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enough for high bitrate video files that are suitable for color correction and
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while physically the camera has been rock solid other than that time we got it wet
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and it wouldn't turn on until i disassembled the housing and dried it out for the weekend some significant
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upgrades were needed for it to stay competitive now and moving into 2015 but
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they pulled it off and i've got to hand it to sony i don't always like their way
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they run their business but through their partnership with convergent design
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they really delivered and we love this camera it was a great investment which
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leads us to the last upgrade one we actually didn't have to pay any extra
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for now while you may have noticed that we've done some 4k uploads in the last
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little while we were actually using an older firmware that
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took 4k raw footage and then down sampled it to 1080p prores
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i mean we did discover that it looked really good even when you re-up
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converted it to 4k so that's why some of our videos have been in 4k but it's
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actually been kind of feco4k two days ago though the proper 4k prores
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firmware dropped and now we are ready to go full 4k whenever we shoot with our
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fs700 because we've also got our brand new secondary camera a panasonic gh4
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that does internal 4k recording to high-speed sd cards and we've got our
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upgraded workstations from the whole room water cooling project so
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bring on the 4k baby we are ready
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guys thanks for watching this behind the scenes look at the gear that we use like
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