BM 8K 60FPS camera is coming...

[Dunkan Wolf]

Just a rumor... from a reliable source.

BMD is currently testing 30FPS 8K and 60FPS 8K cameras. Both of them will likely be introduced at NAB 2016. URSA camera (the big one) is already capable of processing 30FPS at 8K. The price will be somewhere in the 10k$ to 20k$ range. No clue on the sensor size. Probably a scaled up Full Frame VistaVision version of their 4.6k fairchild sCMOS sensor.

 

[Elsie N]

ARRI better get with the program or they will get passed by BMD for second place. '-)

 

[Saumene Mehrdady]

ARRI better get with the program or they will get passed by BMD for second place. '-)

i hope youre joking

 

[DJ Meyer]

8k CinemaDNG is what, a tera per minute?

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

who buys BMD cameras?

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

who buys BMD cameras?

Their current line up is targeted at low budget productions - indies - prosumers but they're slowly moving up to the higher end. URSA Mini is said to be an incredible camera. QC and customer service have dramatically improved over the past few years, although still no match for Red and ARRI. Hoping it'll put a dent in Red's CF 8K pricing.

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

Their current line up is targeted at low budget productions - indies - prosumers but they're slowly moving up to the higher end. URSA Mini is said to be an incredible camera. QC and customer service have dramatically improved over the past few years, although still no match for Red and ARRI. Hoping it'll put a dent in Red's CF 8K pricing.

Yeah keep dreaming

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Maybe Dunkan's being a realist.

An early move to 8k, not too difficult, especially concerning rumors of them dumping money into development of the latest sensor. I can't remember the heritage of the Fairchild sensor technology, but I think it was very good. Red, and this alleged upcoming BM pricing is on a high rate of return to cover investment stratergy. After they recover their costs Red will likely introduce something better and drop their price on the old 8k tech. BM will likely then have a more similarly priced competitor and may or may not drop their price.

Something that happens in compression, is as you go up in resolution and framerate, your footage becomes more compressible. I think it is likely BM will simply move to a better compression scheeme that halves the data rate (still double the current). We are also waiting on some lower cost higher speed storage technologies. If they have the sense They may already on on top of that. BM will likely simply aim at Eng and Scarlet levels. They will leave anything higher likely for future generations, if at all...

Red can move to 16k holo sensor technology, but I don't know when that would be as we here no talk about it and there are limits to what current technology can handle, but Sony has been working on it and may come first by at least a generation or two. To get to A holo 16k p59/60 might be 4-5 years, or next with a 4x bigger camera (so don't hold your breath)

 

[Sergio Perez]

For me, if red introduced a 6K Full Frame Vista Vision Weapon with the best possible color science, low light with noise level at 3200 similar to MX at 800, 100FPS at 6K full frame and maximum 240 FPS at 5k or 4.5K Mirrored, while keeping the current 19K upgrade price from Epic Dragon, that would be really a dream come true for me. I wouldn't need more.

 

[Marc Wielage]

The data rates for 8K are fairly intense:

8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 10-bit: 1.012 Gigabytes per second – 60.75 Gigabytes per minute – 3.645 Terabytes per hour
8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 12-bit: 1.215 Gigabytes per second – 72.9 Gigabytes per minute – 4.374 Terabytes per hour
8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 16-bit: 1.620 Gigabytes per second – 97.2 Gigabytes per minute – 5.832 Terabytes per hour

I know very few feature productions that could cope with shooting (say) 15TB of material every day, assuming 4-5 hours of material. Multiply that times 40 days of shooting, you've got 600TB. Plus backups. Plus dailies. Plus more if you do A&B camera. And it will create an enormous speed and storage bottleneck for most editors, post houses, VFX houses, and colorists. And to my knowledge, there's currently no easy way to actually watch 8K video.

I think 8K could be useful for very, very high-budgeted Hollywood projects with significant resources, but not for many others. You can draw many apt comparisons to the companies that shot 65mm film in the 1980s and 1990s -- not a lot of indies, shorts, or documentary people doing that, as I recall.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Not even large hollywood productions would really justify the use of such extreme data storage needs. There's far better things to put the money into.
I can shoot a feature, edit, grade and master on my Dragon 6K with what I own right now without any really problems, but if I were to choose that camera, the storage needs would probably cost more than my Dragon, post productions equipment, apartment, life... :tongue_smilie:

People who buy BM cameras to shoot RAW haven't done their homework on workflow.

 

[Antony Newman]

I think this is great news.

As soon as the Bleeding edge becomes the Leading edge - technical challenges gain additional solutions that benefit all.

Long Term Storage

If a new storage codec was created that took the R3D, removed chromatic aberrations and other optically correctable features to create a file that was 1/3 the size, but took 3 times more effort to decode in real time ... would this interest us?

What if a monster of a CPU / ASIC attached interfered the storage, and could return a R3D file - or whatever format you wanted?

November will bring us 384 core ARM sleds with attached storage (based on the 48 core Thunder Xs).
As the cost of storage associate compute reduces, I suspect that we'll end up with active archive systems that maximally compress files not frequently accessed, and 'cache' file (maybe through regeneration) when they need serving.

AJ

 

[Ryan Hamblin]

BMD now has 4:1 compression which is about 108MB/s in 24fps. That is about 40 minutes for a 256gig card. So your looking at about 390GB/hour. To me that's pretty manageable and with very little compression

Not even large hollywood productions would really justify the use of such extreme data storage needs. There's far better things to put the money into.
I can shoot a feature, edit, grade and master on my Dragon 6K with what I own right now without any really problems, but if I were to choose that camera, the storage needs would probably cost more than my Dragon, post productions equipment, apartment, life... :tongue_smilie:

People who buy BM cameras to shoot RAW haven't done their homework on workflow.

 

[DJ Meyer]

I've got one of their 2.5K cameras and from a post standpoint transferring the files is a pain. Not so much in data amount necessarily but transferring 2 million small files is a hell of a lot slower than .r3d or prores.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Not even large hollywood productions would really justify the use of such extreme data storage needs. There's far better things to put the money into.
I can shoot a feature, edit, grade and master on my Dragon 6K with what I own right now without any really problems, but if I were to choose that camera, the storage needs would probably cost more than my Dragon, post productions equipment, apartment, life... :tongue_smilie:

People who buy BM cameras to shoot RAW haven't done their homework on workflow.

Besides this:

BMD now has 4:1 compression which is about 108MB/s in 24fps. That is about 40 minutes for a 256gig card. So your looking at about 390GB/hour. To me that's pretty manageable and with very little compression

I find these data storage arguments against BMD a little disingenuous coming from Redusers. 4tb drives are $139 - the original red 8GB red cards were $300 (2 4tb drives with $20 left over) and Soderbergh shot his first RED movie by just buying 200 of them so obviously thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars of storage isn't a deal killer on hollywood budget movies.

Data storage used to be the argument against 4K and Redusers pooh poohed it and now your using it against a possible Blackmagic 8K camera (that certainly will also have other resolutions as well as 8k) - seems like if Red does something it is okay and everybody else is an idiot for not doing it and then when the rest of the world does something similar all of a sudden it's wrong. - WTF.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

The data rates for 8K are fairly intense:

8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 10-bit: 1.012 Gigabytes per second – 60.75 Gigabytes per minute – 3.645 Terabytes per hour
8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 12-bit: 1.215 Gigabytes per second – 72.9 Gigabytes per minute – 4.374 Terabytes per hour
8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 16-bit: 1.620 Gigabytes per second – 97.2 Gigabytes per minute – 5.832 Terabytes per hour

I know very few feature productions that could cope with shooting (say) 15TB of material every day, assuming 4-5 hours of material. Multiply that times 40 days of shooting, you've got 600TB. Plus backups. Plus dailies. Plus more if you do A&B camera. And it will create an enormous speed and storage bottleneck for most editors, post houses, VFX houses, and colorists. And to my knowledge, there's currently no easy way to actually watch 8K video.

I think 8K could be useful for very, very high-budgeted Hollywood projects with significant resources, but not for many others. You can draw many apt comparisons to the companies that shot 65mm film in the 1980s and 1990s -- not a lot of indies, shorts, or documentary people doing that, as I recall.

Speaking in general (not really Marc)

Antony's view is realistic. People misjudge things based on the past and present, this is high technology, it is about what is possible in the future. We don't know what technology deals BM has up it's sleave. I took a running guess at what 16k would require based on memory of expected performsnce growth forecasts (plus new ways of doing things can add a bit or a lot of heft). Simply saying it impossible based on past performance dies not do it justice. I know everything that Red has achieved so far in terms of video processing performance is only a drop in the ocean at what maybe possible. The stuff I was working on was aimed at a 10x speed up on today's technology plus lower power consumption per unit of performance, and this was only the stuff on today's technology. Another technology I was looking at is maybe snother 10x (guess) if possible on today's calculation circuites but that nerds new development and verification. Just changing the way you calculate things (algorithms) can add many times to the video performance. We shouldn't just assume BM can't do it.

So let us assume that BM starts compressing raw Bayer data by 4x lossless, 8x movie studio. What happens to those big 'uncompressed' data rates then? Not so big now.

Let us remember the big market is not cinema, 16x compression will do. But h265 will do for Eng purposes (32x+) 8k is coming soon, and 8k displays as well. Every generation nocks what is new as grandiose, but really being elitist, 1080i, 4k, etc, but credible use of these things and the displays follow. 8k displays have been possible for years and what you shoot canbr enjoyed by a mass market tommorow. Even home movies can be viewed on your new screen x years time. But I must admit, 8k is a bit of overkill in some situations. Sure, if you have good vision and have a wide enough screen view it will be of benefit, but something more for the big boys big budget than we actually need. Though there are a coullr of big markets that need more than 8k cameras and displays. Curb side projected advertising can use up to over 8k per 20 inches. Teleconferencing can as well, where a person can walk up to the image if another person on screen on a full wall. Such things should not be discounted as markets. Red has an excellent sensor for board room teleconferencing on their books already.

It is the 16k+ holographic sensors where post 4k resolutions become more interesting. I don't know what resolution they need to archieve 4k or 8k real resolution to the eye, but it is staggering. So 4k is just the beginning, a long way to go guys.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

The data rates for 8K are fairly intense:

8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 10-bit: 1.012 Gigabytes per second – 60.75 Gigabytes per minute – 3.645 Terabytes per hour
8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 12-bit: 1.215 Gigabytes per second – 72.9 Gigabytes per minute – 4.374 Terabytes per hour
8K RAW (8192 x 4320), 24fps, 16-bit: 1.620 Gigabytes per second – 97.2 Gigabytes per minute – 5.832 Terabytes per hour

I know very few feature productions that could cope with shooting (say) 15TB of material every day, assuming 4-5 hours of material. Multiply that times 40 days of shooting, you've got 600TB. Plus backups. Plus dailies. Plus more if you do A&B camera. And it will create an enormous speed and storage bottleneck for most editors, post houses, VFX houses, and colorists. And to my knowledge, there's currently no easy way to actually watch 8K video.

I think 8K could be useful for very, very high-budgeted Hollywood projects with significant resources, but not for many others. You can draw many apt comparisons to the companies that shot 65mm film in the 1980s and 1990s -- not a lot of indies, shorts, or documentary people doing that, as I recall.

Contrary to 6k I'm not (yet) a big fan of 8k, but I think this is another logic. Shoot 8k if you need more details or stabilise or zoom in for a 4k master. Shoot cropped to 6k if you don't need more pixels, use your S35mm glass, and if you want to save some HD space.

Wasn't there the talk that BM has a RAW compressed codec? Wich could make the 8k RAW viable and a real RED competitor. Give us RAW compressed to 5:1, 10:1, 15:1.

Pat

 

[Dunkan Wolf]

Not even large hollywood productions would really justify the use of such extreme data storage needs. There's far better things to put the money into.
I can shoot a feature, edit, grade and master on my Dragon 6K with what I own right now without any really problems, but if I were to choose that camera, the storage needs would probably cost more than my Dragon, post productions equipment, apartment, life... :tongue_smilie:

People who buy BM cameras to shoot RAW haven't done their homework on workflow.

Intel will be releasing cheap(ish) 10TB+ SSDs in the very near future. I think 8K RAW will be a non-issue by the time this camera gets released. There's always ProRes and perhaps some extra compression schemes in addition to 4:1.

Anyway, I'm not sure how cost is going to be a problem when the camera itself only costs 10 to 20k$. That's the price of a single Masterprime. or 4 1TB REDMags. Or upgrading your Red cam to Weapon. (not including the Dragon upgrade)

What's even more interesting is that the LTN4625A sensor allows you to switch between Global Shutter and Rolling Shutter mode incamera. No Motion Mounts or workarounds needed. Only drawback is that it halves the FPS rate.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

There was an article somewhere doing blind tests between "cheap" EF lenses and expensive primes, the conclusion is that it did not make much of a difference if you where not wide open (which people in the old days said you rarely had to do) and you could pull focus a bit better on.the more expensive lens. Looks like the big budget arguments are falling into a heap over the years. Eventually, you never know, we might be filming on a holodeck with no crew, just a step away from how writers write stories in their heads.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Just a rumor... from a reliable source.

Reliable source missed a few math classes. 4.6K APS-C pixel density cut to FF would be in the 7K range.