From the course: Raw & Log Video Production Workflows

Recording video in-camera or with an external recorder

From the course: Raw & Log Video Production Workflows

Recording video in-camera or with an external recorder

- [Narrator] You know, Rich, one of the biggest decisions that you have to make on set, when you're recording, is whether you're going to record in the camera or you're going to record externally. Now, years ago, this wasn't even a choice, right? Put a tape in the camera, and you're done. These days, the choice of whether you're going to record in the camera or externally, to an external recorder, is dependent on a few different things, right? - Yeah, what we really have to consider here, is what we want to record. Now, many cameras have the ability to record in camera but those formats tend to be more highly compressed, in general. That's not to say that pro formats don't exist, it's just that cameras traditionally have to record at a higher compression rate. But when we switch to the external recorder, this gives us more potential data to work with. So we'll talk more about these recorders in a second, Rob, but sometimes more data is really important. Like with RAW, none of these cameras we have here can really record RAW internally with the exception of the Black Magic here and that's still using a slightly compressed RAW. - Right and one of the things that you're going to really have to figure out, depending on the camera that you're using, is what your camera manufacturer says that you can do internally and what they say that, well you got to do that externally. And that is really something that's always constantly changing too, depending on firmware updates, depending on how fast the card slots go. You know, we've seen over the time cameras going from version one of the camera to version two of the camera. All of a sudden, they then get support for RAW format, internally. So you just always have to check those tech specs. - A good example of that is Panasonic, which keeps releasing updates for their GH4 and GH5 series. Originally, the Panasonic GH4 did not contain Log, but then they added it as a picture profile. Additionally, the ability to record in camera is capped at eight bit, but the ability to record outside of the camera, goes out to 10 bit. However, sometimes when you are doing that external recording, internal recording might be disabled. So for example Rob, right here you have the Odyssey Seven Plus, connected to the Sony FS7. - Yeah and down there, you have the Shogun Flame and there's a variety of recorders that are out there now. From the Black Magic Assist to the Odyssey line to the Shogun line. Everybody's getting into this market because not only are these recorders, they can obviously record into VIP formats, like ProRes and DNxHD and in some cases, even RAW formats like CinemaDNG, they're obviously a monitor as well. So they allow you to do things like put scopes up and false color displays and that kind of stuff. Most of the time, you're going to find either SDI connectivity like this Odyssey 7Q+ has. You might also find HDMI connectivity. And that's actually another distinction. Some cameras are going to let you do different things, depending on how you're connected going externally. Sometimes you'll only be able to do things over the SDI stream, sometimes you'll only be able to get certain format over the HDMI stream. So again, checking the tech specs is important. - And one of the things that you also need to realize is that with this, different functionality exists for different cameras. For example, I'm using the Shogun Flame here, which is a very versatile field recorder, the ability to do both HD and UHD in recording, takes HDMI and HDSDI. Well currently, at at the time of this recording, the RAW recording capabilities aren't yet activated although it's promised to be coming in a future update. So this sort of points to the fact that often times, what you hear about products or perhaps as new camera models roll out. Like, we're using a very new camera here with a C-700, and that camera isn't fully supported on this yet, because it's brand new and they have to catch up. - And this is not a, you know, if or that kind of scenario, right? You don't have, it's not mutually exclusive. In a lot of situations, it will benefit you to, if possible, record in both places, right? You might be able to pipe a signal out to record or to record into a more edit-friendly format like ProRes or Connex HD or even CinemaDNG, and then still record internally with whatever the internal codec of the camera is. That way, you sort of get the best of both worlds. If something should go wrong with your external recording, you have the internal as a backup or vise versa. - And additionally with these units, keep in mind that many of these are available for rental if this is something you only occasionally need or when you're putting a camera package together, for example, we have several packages here, we went through a company called Lens Rentals to put together the packages that we needed for the project. Renting a recorder is an option there and you can get these things bundled together. So keep in mind that as you move into the RAW space, this is at the high end of recording. The flip side of that, and we'll discuss more about Log, and we've already talked about it a bit, this doesn't really add any significant quality changes but Rob, I think you would argue that, even though we could record Log to the internal recorder, sometimes going to a higher bitrate with the external recorder, will give you some benefits repost, right? - Yeah it's not just the higher bitrate of the codec that you're going to externally. It could also be things like how much compression's being applied, right? You might have a heavily compressed, but Log and be able to record Log but have a heavily compressed internal codec, whereas if you pipe it out, you're still getting the same Log signal, the same curve, Log curve but you're getting it much less compressed and a higher data rate, that kind of thing. And Rich, as I said, having the flexibility to record either internally or externally, or both is a nice option to have when you get on set. Sometimes you want to record externally, sometimes you want to record internally and sometimes you'll want to do both and that's why these days, I usually budget having an external recorder on a shoot. Just because it gives me that extra flexibility.

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