By Andrew Collings | April 29th, 2018

External Recording with Atomos and Odyssey on the Panasonic EVA1

Shooting with an external recorder is something akin to a handshake deal between your camera and your recorder. Both the camera and the recorder need to agree on the terms of the deal, and you need to mediate their respective needs. Now with the newly announced firmware update from Panasonic, the deal is about to get a whole lot sweeter.

Frame Rate

When recording to an Atomos Shogun Inferno or an Odyssey 7Q+ via SDI, you can expect to see only 30fps in 4K. However, simply by switching to an HDMI connection you can push your performance up to 60fps in 4K. Panasonic has promised up to 2K/240p over SDI with a sensor crop in upcoming firmware. Keep your eyes peeled.

RAW Video

At the time of writing, the EVA1 outputs a 4:2:2 10-bit signal via both HDMI and SDI, with RAW video output currently under development. Panasonic has just announced Firmware v2.0, which among other things enables RAW recording at 5.7K with the full Super35 sensor, and 4K RAW up to 60fps in Four Thirds crop mode.

In Conclusion

All of these features should be delivered to your EVA1 in a free update by the end of March 2018 - assuming all goes according to plan. But that is only the first step in the process. In the days or weeks following, Atomos and Convergent Design will have to update their own recorders to accept the signal that the EVA1 will be putting out. It won't be instantaneous, but soon and very soon you will be able to record raw video at blistering speeds from your EVA1.