Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K gets BRAW in extensive FFPGA hardware update delivered via software

[marcuswolschon]

3 minutes ago, Eric Calabros said:

Why not ProresRaw? Apple is asking too much money? 

That's just ProRes for non-debayered data. Less efficient (He claims that higher frame rates are possible with BMRaw then ProRes) and has less features.

[amanieux]

is bRAW 3:1 lossless ? how effcient is braw compared to other lossy codecs ? for example braw 12:1 (32MB/s)  it is about 2x smaller than  h265 4:2:0 10 bit 400mbits found in xt3 but has it better image quality ?  i know it is hard to compare a distribution codec to a acquisition codec but it is fair to compare them as xt3 is using h265 as an acquisition codec to grade in post and xt3 is the same price as bmpcc4k so who made the best compromise for best gradable footage vs smaller file size (fuji or bm) ? i have a hard time believing the few blackmagic design engineers developing braw over 2 years can come close to the efficiency of open standard codecs such as h265 that come from the work of thousands of engineers over decades .

[Video Hummus]

5 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I think I remember Grant Perry saying he was not impressed enough with ProRes Raw to bother with including it. Plus do you really want to pay Apple.

I also think it’s a tools thing as well. Blackmagic is trying to build marketshare by releasing free tools to entice people to use their stuff. Once they start using it they might stay in the platform, thus maybe buying a BM camera in the future. It’s what Apple does with their ecosystem.

Look at Davinci Resolve. It has morphed into a full feature NLE that rivals premiere in features and Final Cut in performance.

[AaronChicago]

The BRaw update on the pocket 4k has some really interesting OLPF-like softening of false detail and over sharpening. I personally love it. 

[sanveer]

2 hours ago, amanieux said:

 i have a hard time believing the few blackmagic design engineers developing braw over 2 years can come close to the efficiency of open standard codecs such as h265 that come from the work of thousands of engineers over decades .

Don't go by numbers and figures. When DaVinci entered the market everyone was already huge. I remember one of the Blackmagic guys saying that their NLE was developed by a student during his Computer Engineering days, which means he handled the job of many different people, maybe even hundreds of them. The purpose of resolve and all of the various suites was to get rid of the elitism and monopoly of the prohibitively overpriced editing (they were priced in hundreds of thousands) suites.

Most of the large corporations handicap their features and performance to save their high end lineup. So instead of lacking talent, they probably lack willpower. 

[SR]

Just updated it for the first time since I got the camera a few months back. I'm unable to change the aperture on my viltrox (firmware, I read) but the issue with weird softness wide open is gone. It looks quite natural.

[sanveer]

I remember someone saying that after the BRAW on their Ursa Mini, they got another stop of usable ISO. Could someone test whether there have been improvements to low light (another usable stop ISO). 

[graphicnatured]

1 hour ago, SR said:

but the issue with weird softness wide open is gone. It looks quite natural.

Really?? I have to try this later. 50 1.4 wide open is totally unusable with my Viltrox Nikon adapter.

[SR]

35 minutes ago, graphicnatured said:

Really?? I have to try this later. 50 1.4 wide open is totally unusable with my Viltrox Nikon adapter.

Will do doing more tests tomorrow. I assume that the lens was at 1.8, since the adapter wouldn't communicate with the camera.

[Mokara]

On 3/6/2019 at 5:56 AM, BTM_Pix said:

I would hazard a guess that it might be to do with the method to construct continuous video from it rather than specifically the file format for individual frames, which would make me suspect it was the same company that were suing Atomos until very recently before a licensing arrangement was done.

Whether the same license arrangement was not offered due to BM being a rival camera manufacturer or BM decided to turn it down would be a question if it was who I suspect it was.

CinemaDNG is an open format, but BM was using a modified extension of it. It was likely those modifications which ran foul of other people's IP, not cinemaDNG itself.

[BTM_Pix]

3 minutes ago, Mokara said:

CinemaDNG is an open format, but BM was using a modified extension of it. It was likely those modifications which ran foul of other people's IP, not cinemaDNG itself.

Yep, that was the point I was rather clumsily attempting to make as the scope of some of the patents that the company most likely to be the ones that have been infringed are broad enough to make you wonder how anyone gets away with actually making a camera without getting sued by them for one aspect of it or another 

[leslie]

well its arrived ?

the whole box feels light, however after opening and holding it in one hand and my canon 60d in the other. they kinda feel the same weight, terribly scientific i know. it comes with 6.1 update installed, there's two cards one with full resolve on it the other has software and manual on it but yet to look at it. i did install resolve already no issues and unlike the free resolve it opens gopro4 footage no problems. yet to try the 6 as i think its.265. the battery was fully charged but its dark now, may try to film the kitten shortly and see how that goes. any questions i'd like to answer if i can. it may not show but i'm very excited

[leslie]

well thats embarrassing posted to the wrong thread and i cant find away to delete sorry

[BTM_Pix]

41 minutes ago, leslie said:

well thats embarrassing posted to the wrong thread and i cant find away to delete sorry

Closest you can get to deleting it is just edit it to remove all the content and replace it with a single line to say misposted or whatever.

Then put all the content in a new post on the other thread.

Congratulations on it showing up by the way !

[leslie]

2 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Closest you can get to deleting it is just edit it to remove all the content and replace it with a single line to say misposted or whatever.

Then put all the content in a new post on the other thread.

Congratulations on it showing up by the way !

i'll do that thanks...seems i left it too long its permanent now ?

 

[cpc]

15 hours ago, Mokara said:

CinemaDNG is an open format, but BM was using a modified extension of it. It was likely those modifications which ran foul of other people's IP, not cinemaDNG itself.

I am pretty sure there is nothing patent breaching in BM's lossy take on DNG: it's all common techniques which have been out there for ages. The problem is likely with another company's patents, which are so broad, that they cover a lot of ground in in-camera raw compression (no matter what method or format you use), and if anything, BM's DNG specifics actually appear to be circumventing some details in these patents. I am not a lawyer, and I haven't read all the patents of that other company, but I think BM doesn't actually breach the ones I've read (due to  a certain important detail in BM's implementation). Whether BM are aware of this, or this is simply a battle they don't want to pick, is a different story.

In any case, it is definitely not a coincidence that BRAW is not raw in the first place, despite its name, -- it is a debayered image with metadata, think ProRes + metadata.

[amanieux]

any flavors of lossy compression is by definition not RAW, RAW can only be uncompressed or lossless compressed to justify the RAW qualification. q0 has of course less details than the lossless cinemadng RAW they removed in 6.2(as expected from any lossy compression).would i dare to say that BRAW stands for BullshitRAW ? if only q0 was 90% as good as  lossless cinemadng RAW it could have been an acceptable compromise for 90% video shooters and we could not care less about this confusing and far fetch marketing concept  of "lossy RAW" but it is clearly not the case so as camera conspiracy would say in music "why did you do it ?"

[Mattias Burling]

The definition of raw isn't that its uncompressed. Its that its not yet processed and is just a file with the code needed to create the image. So no, compressed raw, lossless or lossy is not bullshit raw. Its still raw.

(BTW, its not "RAW", its "raw" or "Raw" if its in the beginning of a sentence.)

[Emanuel]

I shoot 4K (B)_RAW and am a proud fanboy now! LOL ; -)

[jgharding]

FFPGA is very interesting technology.

Antelope Audio use it to deliver real-time emulation of microphones and more

https://en.antelopeaudio.com/hardware-based-fpga-effects/