Sony X-OCN - What Exactly Can It Do?

X-OCN has passed a lot of people by, and was hidden in the release of Sony’s new AXS-R7. X-OCN has passed a lot of people by, and was hidden in the release of Sony’s new AXS-R7 RAW recorder, and XAVC 4K Class 480. To get to use X-OCN takes some investment, you need the R7 and to use its full potential you’ll need the new AXS Black Cards.  The older blue cards have a write rate of 2.4Gbps the new black cards are 4.8Gbps. Depending on promotions that are running you can buy the R7 and two 512Gb Black Cards for a bit over £8K. The R7 allows 120fps in 4K and 2K in RAW and XOCN and has Picture Cache in the fixed frame rate. Now, what is XOCN? It’s 16 Bit, the same as Sony RAW;  like RAW it retains all the sensor information, unlike RAW the file sizes won’t break the bank. XOCN comes in two flavours, ST and LT. LT (light)  is about 60% lighter on data than RAW so is about the same data rate as the new XAVC 4K Class 480 which is only 10 bit! and will go up to 120fp, where XAVC is restricted up to 60 fps. XOCN ST ( standard) is indistinguishable from Sony RAW but is 30% lighter on data. How does it do that? RAW is exactly that, unprocessed data from the sensor. XOCN is processed and optimised for the F5 and F55 sensors. XOCN is still 16 Bit where Codex V RAW is only 12bit/10bit. 16 Bit XOCN allows the maximum latitude of the sensor, meaning post has the best options for ACES and HDR colour grading. So, at the end of the day XOCN has the same properties as RAW but at much lower file sizes. *4K/120fps in RAW & XOCN is only available when the R7 is used with the F55.