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BMD URSA - they finally got it.


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Saw the camera at NAB.  In my opinion it has a fatal flaw.. The media they chose to record on is not proper for the market they want to sell in.  Here is a $6000 (list price) camera that only records on C-Fast Memory cards.  Those cards are very rare and only used on High End Cameras and Scientific recorders.  The cost of a 120  GB CFast card (currently the biggest one made) is $1200 and records in raw mode all of about 6 minutes.  They tout the fact that it has 2 card slots so you can just keep swapping in new empty cards when one fills up and it moves to the second card on those longer shoots..... Well why would they switch from the commodity priced SSD Sata drives that are going for about $110 for 240GB to a CFast that would cost you $2400 for 240GB?. 

 

So on a typical shoot you would want to have at least 6 or more cards to make it through the day and that is if you are constantly dumping them to hard disk.  That means that media would cost $7200 which is more than the camera  and that is a sale killer in this low priced camera category.  I don't believe C-Fast cards will ever come down in price because they are not used in consumer products and therefore don't have the economy of scale to bring down costs.   Besides the C-Fast buss is just a SATA 6 interface in a Compact Flash case.  There is a limit to how much Flash they can cram into that small footprint.

 

I predict doom for this camera unless they come to their senses and make one with a SSD SATA interface for media.

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I predict doom for this camera unless they come to their senses and make one with a SSD SATA interface for media.

That'd be a good idea. Or they'll bundle the camera with their $345 HyperDeck Shuttle that works with SSDs:

http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/hyperdeckshuttle

Or BMD knows something about coming price drops in CFast cards (ya, seems doubtful, but since the camera isn't shipping yet...).

Or they expect most users to use it as a studio camera connected via HDSDI to any external recorder or facility.

No idea really. There are some design choices in the URSA that makes it less likely that I'll see on in my work (the big size that makes handheld/shoulder-mounted use unlikely). But it seems to be closer.

I'm not a polyanna about this or any camera. But it is nice to see companies like BMD and AJA making cameras that are interesting and inexpensive... gotta wait until the ship to see if they're practical and useful. :-)

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Arri Amira records to CFAST cards...

Yeah I know BMD is trying to copy the Amira in size and ergonomics, However they are in completely different price markets.

The Amira will be around $40,000+.   When you pay that much for the camera body you can afford $7000 in media cards.

 

When you are buying into the BMD Ursa for $6000 you don't expect the media to be priced the same as the $40,000 cameras.

 

The SXS cards that the Alexa and Sony High end cameras  use are still quite pricy and they haven't come down much in price in the 5 years that they have been out.

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Those cards are very rare and only used on High End Cameras and Scientific recorders.  The cost of a 120  GB CFast card (currently the biggest one made) is $1200 and records in raw mode all of about 6 minutes.  

 

IIRC the URSA camera doesn't do "true" raw, but rather "Lossless compressed CinemaDNG RAW" which I think will fit about 30 minutes of 24fps 4K or UHD material onto a 120GB card... I think.

 

But if you're recording as Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) at 3840 x 2160 at 880 Mbps, that's about 18 minutes per 120GB card, and spanning to two cards, that's 36 minutes. ProRes 422(HQ) at 220Mbps at 1080 works out to about 70 minutes per 120GB card.

 

Or buy 60GB cards for $650, and cut your record times in half. Or don't record to the cards and take advantage of the HDSDI output...

 

Still not the perfect camera for me or most of my tribe, but better than six-minute loads.

 

I think I have these numbers right...

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http://news.doddleme.com/equipment/cinegear-atomos-announces-affordable-cfast-cards-for-digital-imaging/

 

New Cheaper C Fast cards just announced $230.00 for a 128GB or Atomos is bundling two 64GB Cfast cards and a CFast card reader for $300. 

Those are C-Fast 1 cards which are 100MB/sec and are far too slow for the URSA which requires C-Fast 2 (450Mb/Sec) cards.

Atomos had to start making the older C-Fast 1 cards because their recorders use them and nobody makes them now.  Their recorder only records compressed Pro-Res files so it doesn't need the faster data rate that the URSA would require for RAW recording.

 

Sure you could record in Hi Def ProRes 422 at lower bit rate and get more on the expensive cards. But the whole idea of using RAW is so you can utilize the full dynamic range of the 12 stops and do your Grading in post rather than baking it into the files in the camera or recorder.  The 6 Min record time per card was given to me by the BM product manager for the URSA at NAB...  Although it is a number they don't mention in any of their prelim documentation.

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  • 7 months later...

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