Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

[Jonesy Jones]

On 2/9/2019 at 12:21 PM, MurtlandPhoto said:

Yes 128GB 95MB/s ones. UHD ProRes HQ no problem. You can even do raw 4:1.

So my client decided to go over and above and buy the 256GB sandisk sd's instead of the 128 ones that I recommended. Thoughts or experience with the 256 cards? Think there will be stability issues? Should we return them and just go with the 128 ones?

@Jim Giberti @Emanuel @xzobinx

[drm]

1 hour ago, Jonesy Jones said:

So my client decided to go over and above and buy the 256GB sandisk sd's instead of the 128 ones that I recommended. Thoughts or experience with the 256 cards? Think there will be stability issues? Should we return them and just go with the 128 ones?

@Jim Giberti @Emanuel @xzobinx

Two things:

1. I have about a dozen of the 256GB SD cards from a couple of different brands. The 256GB cards perform as good as, or better than, the 128GB cards, so there should not be an issue with your client purchasing the 256 cards instead of the 128 cards. According to testing in the GH5, the avg. write speed for the Sandisk Extreme Pro SD card is 40MB/s on the 256 and 38.8 on the 128. These cards are V30 cards.

2. I know that people on here have had good luck recording various formats on the P4K with the Sandisk Extreme Pro SD cards, but given the data rates in the camera specs, you will likely have to use the CFast cards or external SSDs to record at some of the highest resolution/bit rates.

I just made a few recordings on my P4K using the Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB V30 card.

• Cinema DNG Lossless 4K DCI -- the recording stopped after 3 seconds
• Cinema DNG 3:1 4K DCI -- the recording stopped after 6 seconds. 
• Cinema DNG 4:1 4K DCI -- the recording stopped after 21 seconds.
• Cinema DNG 4:1 UHD -- the recording stopped after 42 seconds
• ProRes 422 HQ 4K DCI -- the recording stopped after 16 seconds.
• **ProRes 422 4K DCI -- the recording lasted 26:27:13 and filled the entire card. So, you may be able to record ProRes 422 on your card too.

According to the specs, even V90 cards should not be able to record the highest resolution/bit rates. We use the T5 1TB disks and have not had any trouble recording to them. Best of luck!

[vgsmedia]

5 hours ago, drm said:

According to the specs, even V90 cards should not be able to record the highest resolution/bit rates. We use the T5 1TB disks and have not had any trouble recording to them. Best of luck!

I am using the "ADATA SDXC UHS-II U3 Class 10 256GB Premier One V90" for months now with 4K DCI RAW 3:1 (24fps), 4K DCI RAW 4:1 (30fps) and 4K DCI ProRes HQ (30fps) without any problem at all.

[drm]

49 minutes ago, vgsmedia said:

I am using the "ADATA SDXC UHS-II U3 Class 10 256GB Premier One V90" for months now with 4K DCI RAW 3:1 (24fps), 4K DCI RAW 4:1 (30fps) and 4K DCI ProRes HQ (30fps) without any problem at all.

Thanks for the info on the ADATA card. It sounds like your card performs really well. We have found a lot of variability in performance across the brands of SD cards that we have used.

Here are the listed data rates from BM:

Cinema 4K: (30 fps)

• CinemaDNG RAW - 270 MB/s
• CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 - 128 MB/s
• CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 - 96 MB/s

4K: (30 fps)

• Apple ProRes 422 HQ - 110 MB/s
• Apple ProRes 422 - 73.6 MB/s

The V90 rating guarantees a minimum sequential write speed of 90 MB/s. At those rates, I would expect a V90 card to maybe handle 4:1, but RAW, 3:1 and ProRes 422 HQ may not work, depending upon the performance of someone's particular SD card.

Prores is a variable bit rate codec, not fixed rate. So, it might work on some scenes. But, just because a particular SD card recorded one scene, it doesn't mean that it will always work (with ProRes 422 HQ).

[Kisaha]

I asked the BM importer again today, and he told me that if I pre order now, I may have the camera in autumn, but he can not even guarantee October!

This is kind of ridiculous..on the other hand, this camera is a bigger success than most people believe.

[mercer]

16 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

I asked the BM importer again today, and he told me that if I pre order now, I may have the camera in autumn, but he can not even guarantee October!

This is kind of ridiculous..on the other hand, this camera is a bigger success than most people believe.

That’s unbelievable. I wonder how many cameras are actually out in the wild... for all we know there could only be a hundred cameras shipped and the preorders are paying for each manufacturing run. 

[Kisaha]

51 minutes ago, mercer said:

That’s unbelievable. I wonder how many cameras are actually out in the wild... for all we know there could only be a hundred cameras shipped and the preorders are paying for each manufacturing run. 

To be fair, I know 3 people locally that own one, which is exactly 3 times the people I know that own a Nikon or Canon full frame mirrorless camera, and 2 more than a Fuji X-T3, so it can't be that bad!(true story).

In all seriousness though, I was expecting a better roll out of the product. It definitely will hurt sales, but not as much as for BM to care about it.

This is a huge success, I know so many people that have pre-order that is crazy.

If a good C100mkiii or a competitive A7siii is being announced soon-ish, will cut a lot of their sales though.

[mercer]

28 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

To be fair, I know 3 people locally that own one, which is exactly 3 times the people I know that own a Nikon or Canon full frame mirrorless camera, and 2 more than a Fuji X-T3, so it can't be that bad!(true story).

In all seriousness though, I was expecting a better roll out of the product. It definitely will hurt sales, but not as much as for BM to care about it.

This is a huge success, I know so many people that have pre-order that is crazy.

If a good C100mkiii or a competitive A7siii is being announced soon-ish, will cut a lot of their sales though.

Well, I know one person that owns a Canon (myself) one person that owns an Olympus and one person that owns a Panasonic, so obviously only Canon, Olympus and Panasonic have sold any cameras in the past year... ?

But yes seriously... I really wonder how many units have been delivered. If I were to use this site and online videos as a metric... it could be in the hundreds or low thousands.

Either way what BM produced here for the price is pretty spectacular... I’m just curious if maybe they were using preorders to finance production and that is the reason for the hold up?

I mean, for a niche product, I would think 10,000 preorders would be a respectable number and I cannot imagine why it would take more than a month or two to fulfil those preorders. We’re almost 6 months out since September. It just seems odd. 

The good news is that most people that received theirs is really happy with it.

[BTM_Pix]

In a funny way, as we are coming up to the first anniversary of its announcement, it would be more understandable if they hadn't shipped any yet or had only just started shipping.

I agree that it seems unusual that they actually started to get them out of the door not far off on schedule but are still not readily available almost six months later.

I'm hoping this is just a perception thing and that they've actually shipped a gazillion as I've got an app to sell for it next week  

 

[wyrlyn]

is it possible with the new braw codec that the Pocket 4k will able to shoot 120 fps in less crop?

[drm]

2 hours ago, mercer said:

Well, I know one person that owns a Canon (myself) one person that owns an Olympus and one person that owns a Panasonic, so obviously only Canon, Olympus and Panasonic have sold any cameras in the past year... ?

But yes seriously... I really wonder how many units have been delivered. If I were to use this site and online videos as a metric... it could be in the hundreds or low thousands.

Either way what BM produced here for the price is pretty spectacular... I’m just curious if maybe they were using preorders to finance production and that is the reason for the hold up?

I mean, for a niche product, I would think 10,000 preorders would be a respectable number and I cannot imagine why it would take more than a month or two to fulfil those preorders. We’re almost 6 months out since September. It just seems odd. 

The good news is that most people that received theirs is really happy with it.

Perhaps Blackmagic just has a weird way of generating their serial numbers, but I have three P4Ks that I purchased at the same time. The three serial numbers are tens of thousands apart. The first is 502xxxx and the other two are 509xxxx. By the way, the 502xxxx camera is the one with the glitching screen, which is back for repair. One of the 509 cameras had a battery door that wouldn't close. I gently filed the catch with a nail file and it works properly now.

So, I suspect that Blackmagic had produced 100,000 cameras by October or November of 2018. I think they just have a popular product on their hands. It may also be that they are constrained by a component, like say...the sensor. 

[kye]

44 minutes ago, drm said:

Perhaps Blackmagic just has a weird way of generating their serial numbers, but I have three P4Ks that I purchased at the same time. The three serial numbers are tens of thousands apart. The first is 502xxxx and the other two are 509xxxx. By the way, the 502xxxx camera is the one with the glitching screen, which is back for repair. One of the 509 cameras had a battery door that wouldn't close. I gently filed the catch with a nail file and it works properly now.

So, I suspect that Blackmagic had produced 100,000 cameras by October or November of 2018. I think they just have a popular product on their hands. It may also be that they are constrained by a component, like say...the sensor. 

They may also use the third digit in the serial as an identifier of some kind, like if they had multiple production lines, or something like that.  Of course, 100K cameras might be right too.  It is a spectacular camera if it suits your needs.

The problem with working out how many of these have been made or sold is that the typical buyer for something like this would basically be invisible.  They are busy shooting real work, aren't visible on social media, or if they are then it's not to geek out about cameras, and when the footage ends up in something you'd never know.  If every person with a RAW-shooting cinema camera bought two P4Ks then they'd sell a bunch of them and there would basically be no ripples to show it.  This is the problem with the XC10, the people who wanted it as an A-cam found the fixed lens and high-ISO NR to be too restrictive.  The people who use them for C-cameras or as BTS don't go online talking about it a lot, so it seems like they don't get used at all, but Cinematography Database YT channel kept seeing them in BTS pictures of big Hollywood productions and Canon said they sold more than they expected.

The cheaper cameras that can create great images could be 10% of all shots in every movie and TV series and we'd never know.  The GH5 can be made to look like an Alexa, the P4K should be able to match basically anything.

[drm]

5 minutes ago, kye said:

The cheaper cameras that can create great images could be 10% of all shots in every movie and TV series and we'd never know.  The GH5 can be made to look like an Alexa, the P4K should be able to match basically anything.

I agree. Most people with any product are not online talking about it, unless they are having problems with it  

I do a lot of live broadcasting from events and a good bit of corporate work. I have yet to see a P4K in the wild (other than mine). The P4Ks also still cause a bit of a stir. I have had several people come over to see them and want to geek out and talk about them while we have been broadcasting. One wedding videographer swore he was dumping his Canon gear to switch to P4Ks (C100Mkii's). I am sure that will die down when you can actually buy the things in stores

Speaking of color matching, I created LUTs that match the P4K film to GH5s natural profile. My editor prefers to start with the colors from that profile, so the LUT for the P4K makes them match almost perfectly. My clients all seem to love it, so I don't care what colors they use  

[graphicnatured]

11 hours ago, mercer said:

That’s unbelievable. I wonder how many cameras are actually out in the wild... for all we know there could only be a hundred cameras shipped and the preorders are paying for each manufacturing run. 

If that's the case I'm a very lucky man. ?

[Shirozina]

18 hours ago, drm said:

According to the specs, even V90 cards should not be able to record the highest resolution/bit rates. We use the T5 1TB disks and have not had any trouble recording to them. Best of luck!

It's a 'no brainer' - why waste your money on very expensive internal cards when there is a faster, larger capacity and vastly cheaper external solution. 

[Anaconda_]

11 minutes ago, Shirozina said:

It's a 'no brainer' - why waste your money on very expensive internal cards when there is a faster, larger capacity and vastly cheaper external solution. 

Portability, reliability, size, not risk of damaging cables or ports, no risk of a cable snagging on your thumb as you reach to focus. Just a few reasons why many people might want to use card internally.

[xzobinx]

20 hours ago, Jonesy Jones said:

So my client decided to go over and above and buy the 256GB sandisk sd's instead of the 128 ones that I recommended. Thoughts or experience with the 256 cards? Think there will be stability issues? Should we return them and just go with the 128 ones?

@Jim Giberti @Emanuel @xzobinx

sorry mate. I have no experience with the 256gb card. I shoot ssd only for faster editing workflow and sometime same day edit. 

[BTM_Pix]

Oh hello...

 

[drm]

4 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

Portability, reliability, size, not risk of damaging cables or ports, no risk of a cable snagging on your thumb as you reach to focus. Just a few reasons why many people might want to use card internally.

I much prefer internal cards and media as well. Having things sticking out from the camera is just an opportunity for problems.

One of my cameras had to be sent out for repair a couple of months ago because the HDMI cable got bumped somehow and broke the HDMI port on the camera. The bad thing is that I was carrying the camera from one location to the next on a shoot and I broke the camera but I have no idea how it happened. I don't remember anything touching the camera hard enough to break something. Now, I have HDMI clamps on all of my camera.

[Emanuel]

On 2/18/2019 at 12:01 PM, Jonesy Jones said:

So my client decided to go over and above and buy the 256GB sandisk sd's instead of the 128 ones that I recommended. Thoughts or experience with the 256 cards? Think there will be stability issues? Should we return them and just go with the 128 ones?

@Jim Giberti @Emanuel @xzobinx

Just read now. I stand drm's input : )

 

18 hours ago, Kisaha said:

I asked the BM importer again today, and he told me that if I pre order now, I may have the camera in autumn, but he can not even guarantee October!

This is kind of ridiculous..on the other hand, this camera is a bigger success than most people believe.

Makes no sense at all. Reason why I've struggled from past with these BMD guys, tiptop hierarchy included. Seems they don't like to listen, it is what it is though.

 

16 hours ago, mercer said:

(...)

The good news is that most people that received theirs is really happy with it.

Well, a game changer and a no-brainer as matter of fact. You simply won't want to shoot with anything else. Hope this helps! : -)