Some news on BMPCC - Bloom clip & blooming artifacts

[Axel]

...not trusting that company any time soon. Really surprised people are not giving up on them already.

Because, many who own the BMCC (and were aware of it's, er, challenges) don't stop praising it. And from day one, they produced images, not possible with any other camera for a roughly comparable price. Because even now, a few weeks after the first shots of the Pocket were published (some of which showed no orbs, making the calibration theory somewhat believable), you can as well see the limitations as well as the potential. No one can produce a camera like this for this price and have no issues. Of cause, smart people lean back and wait until the worst issues are cleared.

[Bioskop.Inc]

Because, many who own the BMCC (and were aware of it's, er, challenges) don't stop praising it. And from day one, they produced images, not possible with any other camera for a roughly comparable price. Because even now, a few weeks after the first shots of the Pocket were published (some of which showed no orbs, making the calibration theory somewhat believable), you can as well see the limitations as well as the potential. No one can produce a camera like this for this price and have no issues. Of cause, smart people lean back and wait until the worst issues are cleared.

To add to this, i haven't seen any footage where people aren't trying to get the Orbs.

Everyone seems to have gone out to highlight the problem, but no one has actually tried to solve it/find a solution whilst filming. 

The image quality of the Pocket shits all over DSLRs & we all know how many problems we had to endure/circumvent to get acceptable footage - i've got a laundry list of things/situations that i simply won't/can't shoot because of these problems.

I'm just hoping that they will recalibrate all future Pockets before they ship anymore - they can probably minimise the problem, don't think they'll cure it 100%.

[Axel]

Found the venice clip. Compare it to DSLR footage of the same location by searching for 'venice 5D' on youtube, and you won't find any comparable DR - it's all clippy, at least in bright sunshine. I'm not sure how the Mark III raw would do under the circumstance, but it's another price tag already and definitely needs more add-ons.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pnNn0059ltI&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpnNn0059ltI

[Jacek]

Looks like blooming is SOLVED:

 

http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12250&sid=01cf1c37243432523d21a4c97680e1ae&start=150#p77566

[Axel]

Looks like blooming is SOLVED:

http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12250&sid=01cf1c37243432523d21a4c97680e1ae&start=150#p77566

Yes, seems that simple and fast calibration did the trick. A very attractive 10-bit-codec, resolution much better than expected, with a promise to get raw some day, for under 1000 bucks - and still lamenting? Reminds me of a song from the 90's. I just can't get enough ...

[Jenkly]

Very nice, and they have now said that this calibration will be for anyone who wants it and there will be no termination on the service.  

 

"Essentially, once we have the stuff required to do it, we can do it whenever. So, there's no real termination to how long we can offer the service."

[Bruno]

...with a promise to get raw some day...

 

A "promise of raw some day" is far from acceptable for any camera at however pricetag  that says "raw recording" in the website specs and in the box. Yes the camera would still be a great deal as it is, but that's not the point, and they should get their shit together asap.

[markm]

A "promise of raw some day" is far from acceptable for any camera at however pricetag  that says "raw recording" in the website specs and in the box. Yes the camera would still be a great deal as it is, but that's not the point, and they should get their shit together asap.

Of course its the point and what is seemingly acceptable to you is very acceptable to those who buy it. You would only buy this camera for its prores ability and hope RAW comes along soon. Even in the unlikely event RAW never came along this is a major bargain. However RAW will come along its almost a certainty as those who have the camera and the promise would probably bring the company down. If someone for whatever reason didn't realise it didn't have RAW and it was going to be a future update then there is a case for looking at the description more closely..

[richg101]

if only all these so-called film makers had it in them to put the same effort into shooting something creative and worthwhile rather than just shooting f%%king tests.

[Bruno]

Even in the unlikely event RAW never came along this is a major bargain.

 

I also said that, but that's not the point of my post.

 

It was announced as a raw shooting camera, prores was a secondary shooting mode.

Sony have released cameras saying they would be adding raw support later on, but that's a different thing.

The box of the Blackmagic Pocket Camera says it shoots raw, I'm sure they could get in a lot of legal trouble for that, but the point is it's just plain wrong and deceitful business practice.

 

I'd even be supportive and understanding if they had been clear about why it doesn't come with raw and when we can expect it, and explained that they released the camera without it to avoid longer delays, but the fact that they're remaining silent and selling a product that's not what was advertised is just not acceptable.

[Sean Cunningham]

Why is easy, at least to guess.  It's shooting to SD cards.  

 

Even hot-rodding MP4 shooters are limited to only a few expensive cards and they're only shooting at  ~20% of the bandwidth (using high quality All-Intra patches) needed for uncompressed RAW shooting @ 1080P.  The lossless CinemaDNG of the BMPC is reported as only about 1.5:1 compression on the same amount of data.  

 

Where are these cards that will handle that?  Is there more than one?  Is it bigger than 64Gb?

 

I think they miscalculated hitching their wagon to that storage format, unless they know something we don't that hasn't materialized yet.

[Jacek]

Where are these cards that will handle that?

 

Here: http://www.toshiba-memory.com/cms/en/products/sd-cards/exceria/exceria-pro.html

And maybe here.. : http://www.toshiba-memory.com/cms/en/products/sd-cards/exceria/exceria-uhs-2.html

 

Is there more than one?

 

Yes.

 

Is it bigger than 64Gb?

 

No.

[Bioskop.Inc]

Firstly, ProRes would be the Primary shooting mode & Raw would be secondary - Raw is a luxury that you would only use for a handful of shots where you really needed the DR.

Secondly, the SD card problem is exactly that & I would hazard a guess that BM are in the throws of making a new version of their Shuttle that will handle the recording of Raw - it could just be a firmware update to their existing product (which is reasonably priced).

 

It just seems so obvious & great business sense that they can't have ignored this gap in their product line!

My guess is that when Raw is ready to be implemented to the Pocket (i'd lay down money it already is ready), they will have already announced an external recorder that can handle its capture or an announcement would follow shortly afterwards.

[cantsin]

The larger BMC cameras write 5 MB per frame for 2.5k uncompressed raw. The equivalent for the 2k Pocket would be 4MB/s, but since it will write compressed raw, the net bit rate will be 2-3 MB/frame, resulting in 60-90MB/s for 30fps recording and 48-72 for 24fps.

[Bruno]

If they ran into that card speed problem nothing would stop them from increasing the compression ratio, they don't have to be limited to the constrains of the Internet rumors.

In a "cinema camera" I'd say raw is the main shooting format...

An external solution would still not be what was advertised, a "raw shooting $995 pocket camera".

[Axel]

I bet at the end of the year there will be raw fitting on SD-cards. I read somewhere that some Sony 95 MB/s cards (64 GB ~ 60 €) work best. In the meantime, the haters can hate some more, and I have more to look forward.

[Sean Cunningham]

Firstly, ProRes would be the Primary shooting mode & Raw would be secondary - Raw is a luxury that you would only use for a handful of shots where you really needed the DR...

 

Nah.

[cantsin]

Nah.

 

Have you ever practically worked with raw/DNG video, for example from a hacked Canon EOS, a Nikon V1, or one of the bigger Blackmagic cameras? It's a major pain in the neck, with multiple conversions, major roundtrips (often via XML import/export) required between a raw development/grading program (such as After Effects or Resolve) and your NLE (such as Premiere or Final Cut).

 

No NLE can sensibly edit raw DNG footage at this time, Premiere even dropped this feature altogether. RED and Cineform have good workflows based on lossily compressed raw (in the case of RED, with expensive hardware acceleration). I don't think that anyone who's already tried to edit raw DNG video wants it as their daily life bread & butter workflow, at least not with the soft- and hardware we currently have.

 

Or let's say, it's a pain in the neck for people shooting as one-man-bands, the ones who're likely to be on this forum. In team production, you'd likely generate ProRes or DNxHD rushes from the raw camera files, edit them without color correction/grading, and once the edit is done, send the original DNG files along with an EDL or XML file to a colorist who'll grade the edit in Resolve. 

 

As soon as it will arrive in the Pocket, I personally would reserve raw DNG recording for beauty shots or shooting in mixed light situations where choosing the right preset white balance is tricky.

[Bioskop.Inc]

Nah.

I love these discussions we have!

I was wondering, any relation to Sean S. (Friday the 13th etc...)?

 

I do love Raw, but I was never buying the Pocket exclusively for this.

I think cantsin summed it up nicely - time & money!

I'm glad you have both!

[Sean Cunningham]

Have you ever practically worked with raw/DNG video...

 

 

Yes.   In fact I'm working on a project right now that's R3D based.

 

Have you ever worked with scanned VistaVision?  Super-35mm?  You have a very narrow idea of what "pain in the ass" is because you've been spoiled by fairly new, entirely compromised, mostly irrelevant experience with consumer formats and methodologies which have copious amounts of ass-wiping built into them, I'm guessing.

 

The problem is this: you're doing it wrong.   That or you have unrealistic expectations.

 

If you're editing with raw, you're doing it wrong, most of the time.  R3D is kinda cool though because even without fancy schmancy hardware its built in proxy technology allows it to be edited in realtime on less-than-state-of-the-art hardware.  I'm playing back realtime RED edits off a FW800 G-Drive that's not even a striped array.  From a Premiere timeline.  Booya.

 

Folks who have been working in digital non-linear since its inception will instantly recognize the need to shift back to the the proxy->lock->conform model and they won't really lose sleep over it.

 

People who are getting messed up over raw are in over their heads.  It's a problem largely of their own making.

 

 

edit: that's written too harsh.  Sorry, I'm in a bad mood.