Convergent issues major Apollo and Odyssey firmware update

Convergent's Odyssey 7Q+: now even more capable

Convergent Design has released firmware v2016.06 for its Apollo, Odyssey 7Q+, Odyssey 7Q and Odyssey 7 monitor-recorders.

This is a major upgrade which adds significant functionality to the Apollo while Odyssey sees additional camera RAW support, dual-HD recording, 8-channel audio recording, bug fixes and other features.

Convergent Design recently reduced the price of the Odyssey 7Q+ to $1795 and Apollo to $2995. The RAW bundle for the Odyssey line remains at $998. Originally, RAW options were sold on an individual camera basis but last year Convergent Design bundled all RAW options together. With the 2016.6 firmware, previous owners of individual RAW options are now granted access to all RAW options at no charge.

The Apollo multi-camera recorder switcher sees the most new features with the update. These include:

• Double Master Recording – capture simultaneously to 2 SSDs
• Apollo A/V Align – Mix cameras with different signal latency while keeping both audio and video in sync
• 3:2 Pulldown Removal – Mix cameras that output 24p as 1080 60i with embedded pulldown along with cameras that output 1080 24p
  Live Switching Dissolves – Three dissolve speeds are available in live switching or just cut
  Up to 8 tracks of audio per SDI channel. All Odyssey models also receive this audio update

Odyssey Specific updates include

• Sony FS5 and IO Flare RAW
• 8 audio tracks per SDI input
• Dual HD recording – This requires two SSDs

Convergent Design lists over 20 fixes and improvements for both Apollo and Odyssey. Most notable among these are improved debayer algorithms for Sony FS7 RAW, ProRes frame rate issues with Canon RAW, faster boot-up time and other rare file corruption and artifacting issues.

The Apollo update features are sufficiently extensive that Convergent Design has posted two videos on their site detailing changes to Apollo.

Finally the CD ProRes Transfer Tool software has been updated to version 2.4 and allows selection of which tracks of a multi-track Apollo recording to transfer. And the CD LUT Converter software for converting user LUTs to load in the recorders has a minor change in allowable name characters.

Both firmware and software updates are free and may be downloaded from the Convergent Design site.