Convergent Design, the US-based manufacturer of external video recorders, announced its Odyssey 7Q+ and Apollo recorders to be discontinued. This might mean Convergent Design leaves the external recorders market altogether leaving the ground free for Atomos and Blackmagic Design. Why External Recording? When Canon 5D Mark II kicked-off the DSLR revolution in the video industry in 2008, more and more filmmakers (inspired by the full-frame image aesthetics) started experimenting filming with DSLRs (and later mirrorless) cameras, abandoning large size video cameras for certain types of work. Obviously, shooting shallow depth of field videos with a camera designed for photographers brought some challenges with it. Apart from ergonomics and audio capture issues, these cameras mostly did not offer high-quality codecs for internal video capture. In fact, we have seen 10-bit internal and intra-frame recording modes come to mirrorless cameras only quite recently. Because the cameras offered a video output connection, external recording devices started to appear on the market. They offered an alternative to the camera’s internal recording bringing better codecs like Apple ProRes or DNx with better color depth. This (Budget friendly) market segment, however, never got filled with many companies – the only players in this field till today are Atomos, Blackmagic Design, and Convergent Design. The latter now announced its recorders as discontinued. Convergent Design Discontinues its External Recorders Convergent Design started as a manufacturer of SD/HD signal converters in Colorado in 2000 and throughout the years they started to focus on video recorders, RAW data video capture...
Published By: CineD - Wednesday, 12 August, 2020