BlackMagic Design Production Camera 4K

[Doğa Zeren]

Hello, as everyone knows BM offers great quality with low prices. But still it brings it's own problems. Especially with the post pro and processing the media. Now considering that i'm just a film student right now i'm a bit scared to invest such money on a camera like this with the lack of professional post pro support. What alternatives do i have? What is your opinions. Thanks everyone.

[Aapo Lettinen]

you can always consider shooting prores with the camera, it helps the post prod a lot.

if your budget is about 10k max then maybe sony fs7 would be good option, or cion/ursa .

if you can base your post around Davinci Resolve it may help a lot if shooting raw with the blackmagic cameras.

 

I think that the basic file naming system of the blackmagic cameras is just plain stupid for large projects (long prefixes listing the full camera name and containing lots of spaces which may complicate backup systems, adding the random numbers and date before clip number, etc.)

[John E Clark]

Hello, as everyone knows BM offers great quality with low prices. But still it brings it's own problems. Especially with the post pro and processing the media. Now considering that i'm just a film student right now i'm a bit scared to invest such money on a camera like this with the lack of professional post pro support. What alternatives do i have? What is your opinions. Thanks everyone.

 

 

What would be some of the 'post pro and processing' problems. While shooting 'raw', perhaps one has to perform conversion to a more convenient media type, one can shoot ProRes, and that feeds right into most NLEs and other tools.

 

Re: Long clip file names with spaces... one can change that default and either put in text that is more appropriate for a given project... like the film name, and one can use '_' characters to make separated text, but not use a 'space' character.

 

The other way to do that is to capitalize each word, and that will allow the words to break up for easier reading.

 

Example

 

"John_Clark_BMPCC_...."

or

"JohnClarkBMPCC"...

 

Either format works.

 

Otherwise, for 'student' work, I'd recommend looking at the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. for 'under $1K US', I think it is a very good solution for getting images that one can learn the art with.

 

And then rent as required more technically sophisticated cameras...

Edited January 28, 2015 by John E Clark

[Tyler Purcell]

Every camera needs post processing in one way or another; REDCODE, MPEG 2, AVCHD, RAW… these are the formats MOST cameras shoot in and editors don't like any of them. Most people consider MPEG to be "Friendly" but it has the same problems as all the other formats.

 

What separates the blackmagic camera's is their ability to shoot Pro Res WITH Cinema DNG color space. This means you can edit immediately after capture by AMA linking in AVID or simply dropping them into any other Quicktime compatible editor. Once edited, you can easily export an EDL to be used with DaVinci for applying a lookup table and then doing the final color. I never shoot in RAW because what's the point? This "film" mode of Pro Res works fantastic and saves a great deal of time in post production. Sure, if I were going to shoot a narrative feature, I'd probably shoot in RAW… but for most all other projects, it's not worth it. Heck, I've even turned the cameras down to standard Pro Res capture, you get a bit more then an hour off a 64gb card and it doesn't look any worse then Pro Res HQ.

 

Shameless plug about the Blackmagic Pocket camera… :)

 

[Will Montgomery]

Great and helpful video Tyler.

 

I never shoot in RAW because what's the point? This "film" mode of Pro Res works fantastic and saves a great deal of time in post production.

The point is of course more flexibility...I was just working with a colorist today that pulled some miracles on some raw footage shot on a BMPCC. The Cinema DNG color space on ProRes is definitely a great option but it is about halfway between raw and the non-film mode. On the time side, since I'm still spending roughly the same amount of time in Resolve on either but have the RAW tools at my disposal I kind of prefer the RAW. But I'm a film guy so I'm used to having a negative to go back to.