This will be my last post on this forum, it was fun while it lasted, and I will continue to post on the !ive Production forum on issues I can comment about. I have sold most of my BMD Cinema equipment, going instead with the Ursa Broadcast, as must of my work is for Broadcast these days, aside from a few personal projects I will continue to work on.
When it first started, this forum was great, with everyone trying to help each other about using the new advanced designed BMD Cinema Cameras, starting with the BMCC. Working together to so,be issues and shortcomings using these new wonderful cameras. We even tried pushing them to do things BMD did not have in mind when they were designed, like using the Micro camera as a stand alone small production camera, instead of the action camera BMD thought they were making. The Pocket Cinema ground broke new ground with a very lost cost (consumer level $) camera that was very capable for more than it was designed for. I do have all the answers, and do not even presume to know them.
Unfortunately, this forum has become like every other consumer camera forum, a place to complain about shortcomings in equipment, complain why this or that is not fixed by BMD, and ask for features not part of the original design specification, with no view in in mind to offer solutions. Very few of the original posters here are around any more, except for Rick and the occasional input from John Brawley and others who helped start this forum. John B is one of the more knowledgeable users here about BMD and their gear, but most of you are too busy saying what you think BMD should/could do, without any real knowledge of what is involved. This has come to a head over the BMPPCC and Micro Cinema Camera SD card issues. Sometimes, you need to stop and listen to the birds sing.
When BMD designed the BMPCC, only a handful of SD cards worked then. The issue is. It the camera firmware, but the large data rate this camera needs to record ProRes and RW CDNG files at video camera frame rates. Compared to AVCHD/h.264 compression, this is huge! When the ca era was being developed, the fastest cards available then were SanDisk UHS 1 Extreme Pro cards (95Mbs) that could sustain a fast enough continuous data write speed, and BMD built this camera around those fast cards from SanDisk and Lexar. No other camera being made then required this kink of continuous write speed, and very few (non BMD) cameras today need this kind of a data rates. Those that do, like Red Cinema Cameras have their own media made.
BMD has no control over SD card manufacturers, who end up changing the specifications of their products, like SanDisk did with the Extreme Pro 95Mbs cards, nor is it likely SanDisk notified the camera makers, like BMD using their cards, that they were going to change the way the card writes fast data rate files to its cards.
Their is Not any firmware patch that BM could make to the camera, short of replacing ProRes with a compressed AVCHD codec to reduce the required data rate, to make it work with a SD card that can not sustain a continuous write speed fast enough to record the data rate. This would require adding a hardware buffer to take the fast data rate from the sensor and spool it to the recording media, which is what some camera makers do. This is not possible with just a firmware update to the camera.
The issue Sony had with some of its cameras is not the same issue as BMD is having with SD Card Support. The only other solution if a replacement SD card is not available, is to have one built to BMD specifications, like Red does with their recording media, and sell it directly through its distributors. This would no doubt drive up the cost of said SD card above what SanDisk sold them for, by two to three times.
SD cards as a recording media for Prosummer and professional video is on its way out the door, soon to be replaced in two or three years (Camera manufacturing cycle) by CFExpress format cards, which can produce the required sustained write speeds for professional recording codecs like ProRes and other raw formats. Sony’s solution was to be involved in the development and manufacturing of XQD cards, that use the same interface as CFExpress cards will use. To upgrade a XQD card slot to use CFExpress cards, is a firmware update change, that was already part of the existing hardware.
You can rant on about what you would like BMD to do, but most of this is just plain unrealistic and is not going to solve the problem. I saw this coming with the change to UHS2 SD cards, and knew the days were numbered for compatible SD cards for the BMD HD cameras and the VA, and sold the VA, Pocket Cinema and Micro Cameras last year, while I could still get some $ for them.
The only other solution for recording ProRes (not Raw) is to use an external recorder monitor (not a VA 5-inch) to record from the camera output. This is what I am doing with the Micro Studio Camera, recording ProRes to a PixE 5, and even this recorder has been discontinued, along with the entire Pix line. So nothing lasts very long in this business, time to move on...
Cheers
Sun Jun 09, 2019 6:03 pm
