NAB 2018: Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[Savannah Miller]

I do question their post workflow on that video. 2-2.5 stops highlight might be a little exaggerated but the Ursa mini does have a considerable shadow bias. Shoot at 1600 and it would be much closer although the color might be a bit different. I would save 1600 for only daylit scenes as it's clearly an 800 iso camera.

 

[Misha Engel]

Ursa Mini =/= Ursa Mini Pro.

When we went shopping for new camera's we first looked at the UM 4k and it was not good enough, same thing with the UM 4.6k.
With the UMP4.6k things changed completely(we rented them all first), the picture quality was very good(color and latitude 14 stopish), no IR polution, no magentas, build in ND, Dual media (now triple), B4 mount for our current eng lenses, ready for life shooting, easy interface, lots of (user)buttons, etc.. For us it was the perfect "poor mans AMIRA" that can shoot 4k natively, has an external raw recorder that cost only $ 400 and also has a very good viewfinder for only $ 1.500. When we need more storage we use our DIY RAW Recorder (Upto 2 standard cheap sata 600 SDD's).

It looks like the new pocket 4k will only have competion from the GH5s with the same sensor when it comes out and shouldn't be compare with big bulky expensive camera's like the UMP, RAVEN, Alexa Mini, etc...(yes they are compared to the pocket and the GH5s).

 

[Alex.Mitchell]

...please stop with the "baby alexa" marketing speak. It is an attempt to gain credibility by using another top manufacturer's reputation. But there is a real, legitimate and concrete set of reasons why that manufacturer is at the top.

I wish there was some way to make this a sticky at BMCUser. If I had a nickel for every time I read about this or that BMD camera having Alexa imagery...

 

[jordan levy]

the only reason why, and i said this before, BM pockets are so good to shoot as a second or third camera on alexa jobs is because of the capturing files through the post work flow for production. the only way b cam or c cam stuff makes it in there is if there is no challenge with converting the footage. the DIT or post producers on shows dont want me shooting two different types of files, they hate that. im shooting alexa, prores log, the BM pushes out the same, every one is happy. i shoot the raven as a b cam on a alexa job, everyone complains. thats the reason i see people saying baby alexa, nit because it mimics the exact quality, but because it able to be used on alexa jobs with no fuss.

 

[Alex.Mitchell]

the only reason why, and i said this before, BM pockets are so good to shoot as a second or third camera on alexa jobs is because of the capturing files through the post work flow for production. the only way b cam or c cam stuff makes it in there is if there is no challenge with converting the footage. the DIT or post producers on shows dont want me shooting two different types of files, they hate that. im shooting alexa, prores log, the BM pushes out the same, every one is happy. i shoot the raven as a b cam on a alexa job, everyone complains. thats the reason i see people saying baby alexa, nit because it mimics the exact quality, but because it able to be used on alexa jobs with no fuss.

So any time a camera captures ProRes with a Log encoding scheme all of a sudden it’s a “Baby Alexa”? ಠ_ಠ

 

[jordan levy]

So any time a camera captures ProRes with a Log encoding scheme all of a sudden it’s a “Baby Alexa”? ಠ_ಠ

i guess you didnt bother reading, i said that is the reason people are saying that, i didnt say it was one. but the fact it can be used in the same work flow on the production and in post and has decent quality makes it more acceptable on alexa jobs, which are 90 percent of the industry.

 

[John Brawley]

I'm getting a "Sorry, these files are no longer available." on the Blackmagic footage link.

Sorry Aaron, I think the link has archived.

I'll take a look again when I get home and try re-activate it. It's likely not as relevant to THIS thread as the sensor family is different. I was only trying to furnish some camera original RAW from Alexa and UM footage shot in the same controlled conditions.

In my experience (just like RED) how you process the files has a lot to do with how close you can grade them.

I've been using them for nearly three years and know the differences between the two. It's better when you can just use one camera for what it's good for instead of trying to make it look like a different camera.

But this is what often happens, you're in a situation where it's used alongside other platforms, so you have to make them match as much as you can.

But I can say that for me, in my work, they're more similar than they are different. Certainly closer than trying to match RED to Alexa.

And yes, ProRes is a thing. I recently was testing Helium and DXL for a network pilot and was "told" in no uncertain terms it had to be ProRes. They wouldn't permit RAW origination. Now DXL and Helium can both do ProRes but at the time I tested, you didn't get access to IPP2 if you shot ProRes in camera.

JB

 

[Misha Engel]

And yes, ProRes is a thing. I recently was testing Helium and DXL for a network pilot and was "told" in no uncertain terms it had to be ProRes. They wouldn't permit RAW origination. Now DXL and Helium can both do ProRes but at the time I tested, you didn't get access to IPP2 if you shot ProRes in camera.

JB

Can any one explain in which way ProRes is better than DNxHx or CineForm, the only thing I can think of is that our UMP's can shoot ProRes and sadly not DNxHx or CineForm, because when given the choice I would go CineForm.

 

[John Brawley]

Can any one explain in which way ProRes is better than DNxHx or CineForm, the only thing I can think of is that our UMP's can shoot ProRes and sadly not DNxHx or CineForm, because when given the choice I would go CineForm.

It's not that it's better.

It's what everyone wants for their workflow. And when we say workflow we mean SPEED.

Last three shows I've done have been in Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago. Post is always in LA. Dailies from three cameras have to get turned into edit-able footage in LA overnight. Sometimes the final colour vendor isn't the dailies colour vendor. They need to be able to blaze through 6 hours of dailies (much more if there's second unit working) and send the files over the internet.

The post vendors have all optimised their dailies workflow to be FASTEST with ProRes. So it's self-fulfilling.

I personally find 12 Bit ProRes to be very very good.

I have been able to get TV productions to shoot RAW (RED, SONY and ARRI) but in TV, that's really really really hard. The post facilities will always charge a lot more for RAW processing.

I don't care about RAW. I care about bit depth. So for me, this camera only doing 10 Bit ProRes, is a bit of a disappointment.

And cineform.

It's dead.

No one wants it.

The horse has bolted.

GoPro SAT on it for a couple of years.

They wanted too much money and now they've finally realised they need market to work and are open source, but the world has moved on. It doesn't matter that it's better. It's not what the workflow is optimised for and it requires messy handling.

JB
(first shot Cineform back when the Si2K was a thing)

 

[Misha Engel]

It's not that it's better.

It's what everyone wants for their workflow. And when we say workflow we mean SPEED.

Last three shows I've done have been in Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago. Post is always in LA. Dailies from three cameras have to get turned into edit-able footage in LA overnight. Sometimes the final colour vendor isn't the dailies colour vendor. They need to be able to blaze through 6 hours of dailies (much more if there's second unit working) and send the files over the internet.

The post vendors have all optimised their dailies workflow to be FASTEST with ProRes. So it's self-fulfilling.

I personally find 12 Bit ProRes to be very very good.

I have been able to get TV productions to shoot RAW (RED, SONY and ARRI) but in TV, that's really really really hard. The post facilities will always charge a lot more for RAW processing.

I don't care about RAW. I care about bit depth. So for me, this camera only doing 10 Bit ProRes, is a bit of a disappointment.

And cineform.

It's dead.

No one wants it.

The horse has bolted.

GoPro SAT on it for a couple of years.

They wanted too much money and now they've finally realised they need market to work and are open source, but the world has moved on. It doesn't matter that it's better. It's not what the workflow is optimised for and it requires messy handling.

JB
(first shot Cineform back when the Si2K was a thing)

Yep CineForm is as dead as AMD 1.5 years ago was and look what happened...

VLC-player is supporting it now, KineFinity use it as their codec, DaVinci Resolve is starting to support it and who knows who will follow (I hope BMD camera's as an answer to closed ProRes en closed ProRes-RAW).

We will see what the future brings

 

[jordan levy]

It's not that it's better.

It's what everyone wants for their workflow. And when we say workflow we mean SPEED.

Last three shows I've done have been in Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago. Post is always in LA. Dailies from three cameras have to get turned into edit-able footage in LA overnight. Sometimes the final colour vendor isn't the dailies colour vendor. They need to be able to blaze through 6 hours of dailies (much more if there's second unit working) and send the files over the internet.

The post vendors have all optimised their dailies workflow to be FASTEST with ProRes. So it's self-fulfilling.

I personally find 12 Bit ProRes to be very very good.

I have been able to get TV productions to shoot RAW (RED, SONY and ARRI) but in TV, that's really really really hard. The post facilities will always charge a lot more for RAW processing.

I don't care about RAW. I care about bit depth. So for me, this camera only doing 10 Bit ProRes, is a bit of a disappointment.

And cineform.

It's dead.

No one wants it.

The horse has bolted.

GoPro SAT on it for a couple of years.

They wanted too much money and now they've finally realised they need market to work and are open source, but the world has moved on. It doesn't matter that it's better. It's not what the workflow is optimised for and it requires messy handling.

JB
(first shot Cineform back when the Si2K was a thing)

couldnt of said it better myself, oh wait, ive been saying this on this forum for years, i came to the conclusion that its incomprehensible if you dont actually work in this part of the industry. you always get, but why? but its 8k, but raw! none of that really matters, it's all about what gets adapted into the majority of work flows and sometimes the proceeding post producer has no idea why, but this is the next job on their list and we are not changing what we do.
for example, the show im doing in chicago now, wouldnt even let me shoot 2k on an alexa, they want 1080 prores XQ 4444. it was too much of a battle to say im shooting 2k, so whatever it wont change anything else i do lighting the show. I am doing my second netflix show soon and they demand 4k of course and im shooting sony f55's for that, highly preferred by the EP's, but other then netflix, i cant even shoot 4k for any network so far, its been 2k max. once for a few visual fx shots i suggested 3.2k on the alexa and it took 3 days to get it approved.

 

[Savannah Miller]

If you mean 2K as in the 2048x1152 option, I find that looks worse when you downscale to 1080p. If you window from the 1080p image from the 2K option and use the extra resolution for paint/roto vfx fixes or the occasional stabilization then that has some benefits.

RED tries to win every spec contest by offering redcode, 16bit, 8K, 16.5+ stops of DR, high frame rate, etc. People are sane and test the cameras for themselves and come to the conclusions the want about the images they produce, but in reality, the Alexa for TV makes everyone happy. It's exactly what everyone wants. So the "baby alexa" phrase is pretty fair considering, what other cameras shoot internal prores/ cinemadng raw and target a similar feature-set as the most popular network TV camera?

 

[Misha Engel]

couldnt of said it better myself, oh wait, ive been saying this on this forum for years, i came to the conclusion that its incomprehensible if you dont actually work in this part of the industry. you always get, but why? but its 8k, but raw! none of that really matters, it's all about what gets adapted into the majority of work flows and sometimes the proceeding post producer has no idea why, but this is the next job on their list and we are not changing what we do.
for example, the show im doing in chicago now, wouldnt even let me shoot 2k on an alexa, they want 1080 prores XQ 4444. it was too much of a battle to say im shooting 2k, so whatever it wont change anything else i do lighting the show. I am doing my second netflix show soon and they demand 4k of course and im shooting sony f55's for that, highly preferred by the EP's, but other then netflix, i cant even shoot 4k for any network so far, its been 2k max. once for a few visual fx shots i suggested 3.2k on the alexa and it took 3 days to get it approved.

Cars: V8 > V6 turbo > straight 4 dual Turbo > straigt 4 dual turbo + electric > electric > ???.
Telecom: Telegram > wired telephone > wireless telephone > Smart Phone > ???.
Resoution and Codec: SD DV > HD(2k) DV > HD(2k) ProRes > UHD(4k) RAW(compressed) or ProRes > 8k RAW > ???
Moving Pictures: Cinema > Linear TV > On-demand > ???.

ProRes is dying and Apple knows it, that's why they came with ProRes-RAW, to stay in the game. Let it work on every system and it might become the new defacto standard as an intermediate codec.

At the end of the day you can always convert your high quality RAW files to any form of ProRes (Yes (AMD and Intel) Hackintoshes with 4 NVidia GPU's also works these days).
When a client doesn't (want to) understand that, just give him the crap he wants as long as he pays.

Glad our clients just want a good end result and leave the how to us.

 

[Savannah Miller]

American TV is maybe different (not sure) from other countries in that it's an exceptionally high level of production executed in a short amount of time. A lot of post departments have their own ways of working and likely their own automation and presets as well. If they're all built around Prores then that makes everything run smoother. A common VFX practice is to receive all the reels (Prores), use the EDL provided from editing to auto-generate necessary DPX plates with specified amount of handles. Return completed DPX frames back in colorspace/gamut that they were originally received and then convert back to Prores for delivery. Anything else makes things break.

 

[Frank Glencairn]

It's not that it's better.



And cineform.

It's dead.

No one wants it.

The horse has bolted.

GoPro SAT on it for a couple of years.

They wanted too much money and now they've finally realised they need market to work and are open source, but the world has moved on. It doesn't matter that it's better. It's not what the workflow is optimised for and it requires messy handling.

Yeah, the CineformRaw workflow was always a bit strange - but "non-raw" Cineform is IMHO still a great intermediate, archive, and delivery codec.

Having said that - now we have IMF as the new delivery standard, wich is also based on wavelet/JPEG2000 like Cineform and r3d.

 

[Alex.Mitchell]

Yep CineForm is as dead as AMD 1.5 years ago was and look what happened...

The two are not even remotely comparable. I’m with John on this; whatever marginal increase in quality is there is completely overshadowed by the simplicity of entrenched ProRes workflows.

 

[Frank Glencairn]

American TV is maybe different (not sure) from other countries in that it's an exceptionally high level of production executed in a short amount of time. .

Yeah, I think I haven't shot anything but raw (Blackmagic/Arri/Red) in the last 6 years.
Not only feature film or commercials, but also 2 part international high glossy docus.

But we do our own postproduction, from editorial to color, so we have a workflow that is even faster than ProRes.
If you are a small company, you can easily do this kind of things, without spending a ton of money.
But a big production, or postproduction houses, it takes them a long time, and a lot of $$ to change their workflows.

 

[Daniel Kelly Brown]

I have some snowfall timelapses set against black. PM me if your interested and I will send them your way to check out.

 

[jordan levy]

Yeah, I think I haven't shot anything but raw (Blackmagic/Arri/Red) in the last 6 years.
Not only feature film or commercials, but also 2 part international high glossy docus.

But we do our own postproduction, from editorial to color, so we have a workflow that is even faster than ProRes.
If you are a small company, you can easily do this kind of things, without spending a ton of money.
But a big production, or postproduction houses, it takes them a long time, and a lot of $$ to change their workflows.

not only that, they are passing it around to other companies for different aspects of the project. one company is doing the edit, another is doing color, another is doing graphics, another is doing vfx, and there is a post producer that is working with all his clients to get it done. like i said once before, it took 3 days to get 3.2k approved to shoot one shot.
yes, all people i know with 8k cameras doing productions, basically do it on their own or with their own little company, all in one shop.
though network tv shows dont work that way.

 

[jordan levy]

Cars: V8 > V6 turbo > straight 4 dual Turbo > straigt 4 dual turbo + electric > electric > ???.
Telecom: Telegram > wired telephone > wireless telephone > Smart Phone > ???.
Resoution and Codec: SD DV > HD(2k) DV > HD(2k) ProRes > UHD(4k) RAW(compressed) or ProRes > 8k RAW > ???
Moving Pictures: Cinema > Linear TV > On-demand > ???.

ProRes is dying and Apple knows it, that's why they came with ProRes-RAW, to stay in the game. Let it work on every system and it might become the new defacto standard as an intermediate codec.

At the end of the day you can always convert your high quality RAW files to any form of ProRes (Yes (AMD and Intel) Hackintoshes with 4 NVidia GPU's also works these days).
When a client doesn't (want to) understand that, just give him the crap he wants as long as he pays.

Glad our clients just want a good end result and leave the how to us.

and there you go. thanks!