A7IV can't shoot 30fps h.265? is this a joke?

[Niber]

According to the manual for A7 M4:

XAVC HS 4K (H265) can do:

*60p/50p
*24p

XAVC S 4k (H264) can do:
*60/50p

*30/25p

*24p

In other words, if you want to shoot 30fps, you have to either use the intra compression or h264. Please tell me I'm just having a bad dream over here?

If I've understood it right, Intra is good for slow computers, as even though the filesizes will be large and inefficient, as least a slow computer can edit with it well.

But for people with fast computers, Intra is just a waste of space.

 

[Wordsmith9091]

It's true, and a little odd. It's hard to understand why they omitted 30p in the HS (H.265) format, when it can do 50/60p in that format just fine. Maybe they'll add it in a firmware update.

That being said, multiple tests I've seen of H.264 and H.265 recording with both the a7siii and a7iv show very little practical difference in quality at high bitrates and 10-bit 4:2:2 (where dropping down to 8-bit, predictably, is much more consequential). So I wouldn't sweat it, even if it is a head-scratcher.

 

[Niber]

It's true, and a little odd. It's hard to understand why they omitted 30p in the HS (H.265) format, when it can do 50/60p in that format just fine. Maybe they'll add it in a firmware update.

That being said, multiple tests I've seen of H.264 and H.265 recording with both the a7siii and a7iv show very little practical difference in quality at high bitrates and 10-bit 4:2:2 (where dropping down to 8-bit, predictably, is much more consequential). So I wouldn't sweat it, even if it is a head-scratcher.

I was thinking firmware too, but then I found out that a7Siii has the same issue and that camera has been around for a long time with Sony showing zero interest in fixing it.

Some might argue that H264 isn't bad, but H265 was one of my main reasons for wanting to upgrade from my A7C. If A7IV can't do H265 anyway then I'm starting to lose interest in this upgrade.

 

[Wordsmith9091]

I'm spitballing here, but I suspect most of the key advantages of 265 over 264 would be at lower bitrates. That's often true of lossy compression. Once you get bitrates high enough, it becomes awfully difficult to tell the difference between formats (try and distinguish between a 320kbps mp3 and aac, for instance). The more efficient ones often pull out much further ahead at low bitrates than high ones.

That would explain a lot of what I've seen suggested, where 200mbps 265 for 60p (for instance) isn't really perceptably better on these cameras than 200mbps 264 - just harder to process.

Worth noting that the a7c can't do better than 8-bit 4:2:0. In any format, there are decisive advantages to going to 10-bit, and lesser (but still significant) advantage to going to 4:2:2. I think you'll find that much more meaningful of a quality difference than which compression format is used.

 

[LoneReaction]

I am also extremely annoyed at this. It is so stupid. Hate having to switch formats if I want to shoot between 30p and 60p. Dumb as hell.

 

[Bassman2003]

Strange. 30p is in the middle so unless you are delivering in h.265 30p straight to the client, you can shoot 60p and edit on a 30p timeline. They both are at home with a 1/60th shutter speed. I know h.265 offers smaller file sizes but as stated, at decent bitrates & 10bit 4:2:2, h.264 material is not that different. So not a replacement but shooting in h.264 is good as well.

 

[Mr_Win]

this is definitely #1 bullshizzle

Cant stand this limitation, and in fact, the A1 and A7siii ALSO have this limitation, makes zero sense...... because h265 in sony is spectacular.

 

[Mr_Win]

Strange. 30p is in the middle so unless you are delivering in h.265 30p straight to the client, you can shoot 60p and edit on a 30p timeline. They both are at home with a 1/60th shutter speed. I know h.265 offers smaller file sizes but as stated, at decent bitrates & 10bit 4:2:2, h.264 material is not that different. So not a replacement but shooting in h.264 is good as well.

I do this with my S3, but with the A7iv, you're stuck in crop mode..... I simply eat it and use XAVC S, but I sure dont like it.

 

[Bassman2003]

Yes. Sorry, I forgot about the crop mode on the A7IV. Kind of a head scratcher and hope they will fix it.

 

[Wordsmith9091]

Sony gave another user an answer to this, but it doesn't make much sense. Why would they assume the use case they are? And even if they do, why wouldn't they then also omit 24p?

https://us.community.sony.com/s/question/0D54O00007B6m2ISAR/why-sony-a7s-iii-doesnt-support-25-or-30-fps-in-h265-codech265-is-available-for-24-50-60-100-120-fps-but-not-the-once-ive-mentioned-aboveplease-sony-update-this-h265-is-going-to-get-more-and-more-popular-with-new-powerful-laptops-coming?language=en_US

 

[Mr_Win]

Sony gave another user an answer to this, but it doesn't make much sense. Why would they assume the use case they are? And even if they do, why wouldn't they then also omit 24p?

https://us.community.sony.com/s/que...th-new-powerful-laptops-coming?language=en_US

That was the silliest answer

keep things simple Sony

btw, you can probably film 30p h265 in S&Q with no audio, one of Sony’s silliness, it’s possible.

 

[Niber]

Worth noting that the a7c can't do better than 8-bit 4:2:0. In any format, there are decisive advantages to going to 10-bit, and lesser (but still significant) advantage to going to 4:2:2. I think you'll find that much more meaningful of a quality difference than which compression format is used.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems 10b 422 does not hardware decode ( https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...-is-Supported-in-DaVinci-Resolve-Studio-2122/ ).

So while my Mavic 3 supports 10b 420 (which can be hardware decoded), Sony does not, which would force me to use 8bit anyway.

You might argue that 422 is better quality and therefore it's worth software decoding, but unless you're doing a lot of unfortunate crops in your video, or doing greenscreen work, I don't see the 422 really being worth the 50% extra filesize it takes.

 

[Niber]

I'm spitballing here, but I suspect most of the key advantages of 265 over 264 would be at lower bitrates. That's often true of lossy compression. Once you get bitrates high enough, it becomes awfully difficult to tell the difference between formats (try and distinguish between a 320kbps mp3 and aac, for instance). The more efficient ones often pull out much further ahead at low bitrates than high ones.

That would explain a lot of what I've seen suggested, where 200mbps 265 for 60p (for instance) isn't really perceptably better on these cameras than 200mbps 264 - just harder to process.

I think it depends a bit how you shoot, I think the old days of shooting is to take out your camera when you have a very noteworthy event to shoot, but the new style of shooting is to take way more/longer videos than you would ever dream of taking in the analogue days.

For example, let's say your kid plays basketball 3 times a week and for fun I want to record the entire games from a tripod, that might be an hour, that would be 500 hours of footage over the course of 3 years. at 200mbs(25MBs) that would be 45 TB of harddrive space for just 1 single hobby.

If you're just shooting something "for a client" and then few days after delivery you remove the source files, then yeah not much matters other than quality. But if you actually want to save the source files and you want to encourage yourself to use the camera as much as possible, then bang for the buck (quality vs filesize) becomes a lot more important.

My experience with H265 has been that it's incredibly remarkable. I'm intrigued by your theory that it might be less impressive at higher bitrates, but I would have to make a careful test to verify. And I'm not really interested in 60p, so if Sony had supported 30p it would probably have been at 100mbs so I'm not sure if you're categorizing that as high

 

[Jb502]

Who cares. Shoot in H.264 or 24p. Nobody will know the difference either way. Hell shoot 1080 30. Nobody will care.

 

[Steve_tEkGuY]

I am also extremely annoyed at this. It is so stupid. Hate having to switch formats if I want to shoot between 30p and 60p. Dumb as hell.

here is one other reason

FFMPEG can NOT use H264 10 bit GPU during decoding only encoding where it can when its H265 10 bit.

I have scripts with FFMPEG working well with GPU for both decode and encode for Canon H265 10 bit and now I cant use it with Sony because 30 fps missing

 

[Mr_Win]

I am also extremely annoyed at this. It is so stupid. Hate having to switch formats if I want to shoot between 30p and 60p. Dumb as hell.

here is one other reason

FFMPEG can NOT use H264 10 bit GPU during decoding only encoding where it can when its H265 10 bit.

I have scripts with FFMPEG working well with GPU for both decode and encode for Canon H265 10 bit and now I cant use it with Sony because 30 fps missing

it's a video card issue, nvidia's list only 10 bit 4:2:0 as hardware support

it's buried deep on their site, found it in the past when shopping video cards years back

 

[LoneReaction]

I am also extremely annoyed at this. It is so stupid. Hate having to switch formats if I want to shoot between 30p and 60p. Dumb as hell.

here is one other reason

FFMPEG can NOT use H264 10 bit GPU during decoding only encoding where it can when its H265 10 bit.

I have scripts with FFMPEG working well with GPU for both decode and encode for Canon H265 10 bit and now I cant use it with Sony because 30 fps missing

I think the GPU decoding thing also affects my 1080TI. A real "kick in the nuts", you can't use a more efficient codec, waste hard drive space and also decode it way slower

Sony please . _.

 

[SafariBob]

I think it depends a bit how you shoot, I think the old days of shooting is to take out your camera when you have a very noteworthy event to shoot, but the new style of shooting is to take way more/longer videos than you would ever dream of taking in the analogue days.

disagree.

For example, let's say your kid plays basketball 3 times a week and for fun I want to record the entire games from a tripod, that might be an hour, that would be 500 hours of footage over the course of 3 years. at 200mbs(25MBs) that would be 45 TB of harddrive space for just 1 single hobby.

This is a highly unrealistic scenario. For one recording a match from a single tripod makes no sense, second there is no way anyone is gonna watch 3 kid games of basketball, and then those 3 matches all over again at a later date, x 52 weeks, or 500 hours, which btw is nearly a month of continuous watching. I am a film enthusiast and have watched 1000 films in 15 years, on that metric you would spend 4 years watching those 500 hours

 

[Niber]

I think it depends a bit how you shoot, I think the old days of shooting is to take out your camera when you have a very noteworthy event to shoot, but the new style of shooting is to take way more/longer videos than you would ever dream of taking in the analogue days.

disagree.

For example, let's say your kid plays basketball 3 times a week and for fun I want to record the entire games from a tripod, that might be an hour, that would be 500 hours of footage over the course of 3 years. at 200mbs(25MBs) that would be 45 TB of harddrive space for just 1 single hobby.

This is a highly unrealistic scenario. For one recording a match from a single tripod makes no sense, second there is no way anyone is gonna watch 3 kid games of basketball, and then those 3 matches all over again at a later date, x 52 weeks, or 500 hours, which btw is nearly a month of continuous watching. I am a film enthusiast and have watched 1000 films in 15 years, on that metric you would spend 4 years watching those 500 hours

In this modern style of shooting you don't necessarily sit there any watch it all one day. I record every entire kayak trip I go on (2 angles), every motorcycle ride (2 angles), bring my drone everytime I go to certain beaches, record every basketball game (we play halfcourt so a tripod is fine), record some entire hikes.

..I can do this because all of my 3 action cams and my drone can record h265, so it's really efficient yet still retains the quality if I later decide to make something out of portions. It's only my Sony camera that's collecting dust, partially because my A7C doesn't do h.265, and partially because of all the other Sony baggage that comes with it.

but am I'm planning on doing a kayaking-marathon where I sit down to watch 40 hours of kayaking in realtime? no, but I still want to keep the video, either for memories or for later on deciding that maybe I want to make some sort of compilation video for Youtube

 

[Niber]

Who cares. Shoot in H.264 or 24p. Nobody will know the difference either way. Hell shoot 1080 30. Nobody will care.

It really does a world of difference, the reason many people think that 4k isn't that much different from 1080p is because they haven't tried an OLED monitor yet, on OLED's the difference is insane. I was considering mixing my 4k footage with 1080p so that I can do the occational 120fps slowmo, and yes on a regular monitor you could probably get away with that, but on the OLED the difference is just too massive.

24p is unusable, it works for hollywood where panning is rare, but if you bring your camera out on a walk on a gimbal (where you're pretty much constantly panning around), if you set it to 180 degree shutter speed the result is just way too motion-blurred. You can set it to 90 degree shutter speed but then the movement looks choppy instead. 30p really is the perfect balance.