Black Magic Designs Camera- Status Anyone

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I get that delays are annoying. I get that it doesn't give great confidence. But Black Magic is bringing a camera with 13-stops dynamic range RAW and HDSDI out, Thunderbolt into a price range no one has seen before.

I'm not going to buy it, as we have a Scarlet at work, but that's just very impressive. RED also had delays when they started. It happens when you do something for the first time. It happens when you do stuff no one has done before. I think Black Magic is as annoyed as you are about delays and problems.

There are drawbacks to the camera from what I've read (battery and form factor being one of the biggest), but it seems Black Magic is doing a lot of things awfully well with their first release.
The company is listening to users to make the product, to make it better. Has anyone forget that they bought a 200.000 dollar piece of software, and made it available for 1000 dollars + a free version that has a LOT of features of the full version? Of which they recently released a new version with better UI, 64bit support and a lot of other professional features?

I think they deserve some credit for what they are trying to do. Have you seen the footage of this camera? It's very nice, especially considering the price point (did I mention you also get a DaVinci Resolve license included?).

DSLR's often had more limitations than this camera AND a lesser flexible format and image quality, still they were (and are) used on higher end sets also. If those were used on sets, I'm sure the Black Magic camera will finds it's way too.

[Chris Barcellos]

My confidence in Black Magic is based on other products I have used from them too.

Looking forward to the day things start moving.

[Shaun Roemich]

As someone who has a significant investment in BlackMagic Design products on the converter, monitoring and live switching front, one thing I CAN tell you is that most of their stuff never QUITE leaves permanent Beta status...

I expect the same from the cinema camera...

Remind you of another small form factor ciné camera manufacturer that SERIOUSLY pushed the boundaries of what to expect at a cost figure? (hint: their name is a colour...)

It's another tool in the arsenal. Don't think I'd trust it on anything mission critical for the first while but I'll soon have access to one through my buddy Dylan Couper, a moderator here on DVInfo, who runs a rental house out of Vancouver (you may see them listed in the sponsors/approved vendors box at the bottom of DVInfo from time to time)

The Scarlet didn't ship working quite right either.

$3k is pretty aggressive.

Screw that, it borders on revolutionary, even if the sensor is smaller than I would like...

Fan boy? HARDLY. But I have to acknowledge a manufacturer that is putting it out there as aggressively as BMD is.

They have changed the marketplace tremendously, especially from the position of a guy who has been doing this for a while...

Like it? Buy it/rent it/borrow it.

Don't like it? Don't.

Haven't tried it? Don't make assumptions. RAW workflow doesn't really work for the majority of my projects (I have access to a Scarlet quite easily) but again, another tool IF I should need it.

After 14 years, I've become format agnostic. This is just one more format available to us.

Thus endeth the sermon.

[Frank Glencairn]

Having tested the BMC since quite a while now, I’m musing about the different options of post workflow. There are different ways to skin the cat in the moment, and – as usual – all of them have their pros and cons. Speed, convenience, storage space, quality and the balance of those are only some of the decisions you have to make. So here are my thoughts so far:

Post workflow for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera Frank Glencairn

And here is a Dynamic Range Stress Test

Blackmagic Camera Dynamic Range Stress Tests - YouTube

[Chris Barcellos]

The latest on the Black Magic shipping wars is this post by company in the Forum:




Grant Petty

Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2012 7:55 am

Camera Shipping Update: 10/19

PostFri Oct 19, 2012 10:36 am
Hi,

I was going to do an update today, but I still have not quite got the latest info I need to update everyone accurately. However what I do know is there is a small amount of cameras shipping again, but its slow because some of the testing software needed to qualify sensors before they ship to us was completed later than we expected. However things are starting to move. I hope to have more info next week.

The supplier is quite upbeat though and expects a lot more sensors next week to ship so that is good.

Sorry I cannot provide more accurate info, but I hope to get more details soon and then will update everyone.


Grant

[Chris Barcellos]

This is latest update from Grant Petty at Black Magic Design:


Grant Petty

Posts: 27
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2012 7:55 am

Camera Shipping Update: 10/29

PostMon Oct 29, 2012 1:35 pm

We are going to give an update in a few days, however we are shipping cameras, but less than we want to be. We are trying to get more schedule information from the supplier and will have an update once they can give us some numbers. We are only getting sensors in small batches, but they are working to improve speed. So we are shipping cameras, but just need to get it faster.

Will have more news soon.


Regards,

Grant

[Chris Barcellos]

Here is the latest on the chip issue from Black Magic's Grant Petty:



Grant Petty

Blackmagic Design


Camera Shipping Update: 11/7

PostWed Nov 07, 2012 11:46 pm
Hi,

I have another update on the camera shipments.

First a bit of a background in the issue.

As I have explained in earlier posts, we have been dealing with an issue from our sensor supplier where the glass that covers the front of the sensor has been contaminated and they have been working on that issue. They realized they had a contamination issue that turned out to be caused by the packaging of the glass was shipped to their factory and so that contaminated glass was used on the sensors and sent to us.

Now there were a few fundamental problems with this. Firstly we should never have received parts that had contaminated glass. It turned out their quality control software at the sensor company was poorly designed. Secondly it had taken them months to work out what was going on and to get new packaging to ship the glass to the factory mounting it on the sensors. It's been months.

However a few weeks ago things were looking good and the supplier got glass that was clean, they updated their test software to correctly test the sensors and could start shipping sensors to us again.

Now as I mentioned last week, the problem is while we did start getting sensors that passed our quality control when used in building our cameras, a lot of sensors did not pass. This was confusing because the sensor’s supplier was supposed to have fixed their test software and had new clean glass.

Working out what was going wrong is what we have been busy doing over the last week. It's going to get a little technical here, however I think everyone wants to know what’s going on, instead of platitudes.

In our frustration over still getting sensors that would not pass our quality check, we decided to move in and completely audit the sensor supplier’s process in detail using our engineers. We wanted to fully understand what was going on.

We wanted to know how the supplier could the fix to get clean glass not be working 100% and how could the sensor supplier still let bad parts through their quality control process and ship them to us, in the belief that they were "good" parts? This was very confusing. I mean, fixing the contaminated glass should have been a quick simple job so how could they still not get it right after months of work?

What we found when investigating their processes was quite surprising. Of course we had known the original problem with their quality control checks was their test software had not been modified for color sensors. In the past their sensors were used for scientific use and used in black and white. Also their glass was never used as other customers bonded the lens optics onto the sensor itself. In our case we use the sensor in a conventional way and the customers change lenses. We need the glass on the sensor like all other cameras do.

Also, they had never built a camera using the sensor they make for us. We are the only camera that’s used this sensor and glass combination. It's like designing and building cars but no one at the company has every driven one.

So it turns out their quality process is really only good at testing the semiconductor die. It's no good at testing the quality of the overall sensor product with the glass in front. This meant they could not even see the problems we were seeing, so that’s why we were getting bad parts. We sent them the information on how to build our test setup and yesterday they started testing using it. Now they are seeing the same quality problems we are seeing. This is good as it means we should not get any more bad sensors.

The problem left is that out of a test batch of 30 sensors, only 4 worked well enough so we can build cameras using them. This is bad. So while the good news is they can now see the same problems we see, the question is why is there still contamination on the glass.

The reason is the contaminated glass issue in many ways distracted them from the problems their manufacturer is having bonding the glass to the sensor itself. The sensor supplier now has two sources of glass, and both of them are showing the same problems. The parts without glass are ok, and the problems appear when the glass is bonded to the sensor. If the glass is clean then it's really the company bonding on the glass that are introducing contamination.

Now the amazing part is that the first batch of sensors we got that we used for developing the camera and that were fine when we started production were manufactured by a completely different company to the second and subsequent batches of sensors. I could not believe this news when I heard it today as it explains a lot.

Our current understanding is that the company that has been bonding on the glass is crap and they have been contaminating the glass when bonding it. Because the sensor suppliers test process was also bad, it meant that no one really knew what was going on and it's been weeks and weeks of confusion.

The sensor supplier is getting some new sensors made at the original supplier, which we should get test data back on late this week. Once we see this we will know if the original supplier can make the parts without contamination and so we can start building cameras again. I don't know why they changed glass bonding companies.

I am sorry this is a really long way of explaining what’s going on. It's a complex issue and the only way to explain what’s going on is to actually explain what’s going on in detail. It's been hard to update at times because there has been so much confusion at times about these issues and if they have been fixed or not. We don't know until we build a bunch of cameras.

What has really shocked me is how long it has taken our sensor supplier to fix this. They have been very bad at moving quickly and really thinking about what's going wrong. If we had not moved in with our engineers, they still would have no idea what was going on. It's taken months and driven us crazy with frustration.

So the current plan is to get some sensors from the original glass bonding company and based on their upgraded testing we should know more at the end of the week if we are going to get a good supply of sensors starting to ship using that new company.

I will let you all know later this week or early next when we get some of these sensors to build cameras with and will know if we can start production full speed again.

Lastly, please take it easy on our PR folks. They want more regular updates and it’s me personally that are stopping that, because I don't want to do fluff updates that don't say anything and I don't want to lie to people.

Of course PR people want to do regular updates, but each stage in solving this problem has taken our supplier more than a week or so of work before we hear anything new, and then often we get more questions, not answers. It’s been frustrating, but our PR guys are only trying to help. There is some really crazy stuff being said, but at this point can only provide the info to you as we get it.

Sorry for the long update but I am just brain dumping the situation as it is today so you know what’s going on. I hope it helps.


Regards,

Grant Petty

[Chris Barcellos]

I just checked the shipping thread over at Black Magic, and nothing of any significance is being reported. There was some indication that sensors were starting to come in clean to the factory, but nothing more has been said there.

[John Richard]

Getting old!
Ordered in April after NAB from B&H and still nothing going on.
Seems like they are spreading the low volume of available units around to get the "buzz" going.
But it is getting real old man. Nothing but speculation reported.

[Chris Barcellos]

Seems like Black Magic has come to a resolution of their suppliers situation. This post made at Black Magic Forum on the 14th of December:





Grant Petty

Blackmagic Design
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2012 7:55 am



Camera Shipping Update: 12/14


Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:55 pm

Hi,

Ok good news everyone as the test run of sensors have just been built into cameras and they look good. Very good. So we have just given the sensor supplier the go ahead to commence volume production of the sensors and we hope to start getting them within the next week to start building cameras. How many cameras? I am not sure, as we have all stopped production and so we all need to restart production and see how many they can produce. However we will be working hard to build as many cameras as possible over the next few weeks.

I hope people start to see more cameras shipping, but it might be a good idea if I post another update early January to update everyone on how production is progressing.

As for the micro four thirds model, it's ready to go, however the problem is I feel until we are shipping a whole bunch of EF model cameras, there is little point building any of the MFT model. So we will ship as many as we can and then perhaps see where we are mid Jan and do a few MFT models then.

It is sure a relief seeing this problem coming to a close. I cannot believe this happened and it's been an incredibly frustrating delay. However I am feeling really positive now.


Regards,

Grant
Blackmagic Design

[Kris Zimbelman]

could someone explain to me the minutes per gigabyte that this camera consumes at its highest resolution and MPS?

[David Chapman]

Originally Posted by Kris Zimbelman

could someone explain to me the minutes per gigabyte that this camera consumes at its highest resolution and MPS?

When shooting Raw, each frame is around 5MB. I worked up some data for Raw vs ProRes HQ at various shoot times:

Raw
5MB per frame
7GB per minute
140GB for 20 minutes

ProRes HQ
220Mbps
27.5MB/s
1.6GB per minute
32.2GB for 20 minutes

[Lee Mullen]

Can prores be imported to Premiere CS6 on PC?

[Jeff Pulera]

Yes, CS6 handles ProRes nicely on the PC. Just need to have the free QuickTime installed and you will have the codecs.

Note that on the PC, there is no ProRes export option in CS6 (there is a convoluted way using third-party software hacks to create a ProRes file from a PC, but is not a simple task). But playback/editing is fine.

Thanks

[Kris Zimbelman]

Originally Posted by David Chapman

When shooting Raw, each frame is around 5MB. I worked up some data for Raw vs ProRes HQ at various shoot times:

Raw
5MB per frame
7GB per minute
140GB for 20 minutes

ProRes HQ
220Mbps
27.5MB/s
1.6GB per minute
32.2GB for 20 minutes

thank you sir! I intend to use this information to purchase a solid-state drive for my laptop. My thinking is when my laptop reaches the end of its service life, I want to be able to pull out the solid-state drive and use it as media in one of these cameras. I plan on getting one of the newer units that are pretty fast such as Kingston HyperX 3K SH103S3/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III .