Another Black Dot Complaint

Fix it, it ruins shots, or at least put in the next firmware update (whenever that is) to make clipping turn white, it is really frustrating.

BM reads the board right?

here, watch us eat dinner for reading this post

Was that as much beer as it looked like?

it was only one

Fix it, it ruins shots, or at least put in the next firmware update (whenever that is) to make clipping turn white, it is really frustrating.

+1

Fix it, it ruins shots, or at least put in the next firmware update (whenever that is) to make clipping turn white, it is really frustrating.

BM reads the board right?

here, watch us eat dinner for reading this post

It's a pretty easy fix in post.

Many cameras do it with extreme overexposure. Arri Alexa's still do it. RED EPIC does it too. It's already been improved a little from a couple of firmwares ago.

jb

It is not that easy for an amateur like myself to. Which the price point is now aimed at, far different the a red camera or such. If anyone would like to school me on how to fix this in fcpx that would be great. I am guessing just a mask?

Make a little white circle and place it over the black dot. Key frame it if you have to. It's super, stupidly easy. Even easier: QUIT SHOOTING DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN!!!

QUIT SHOOTING DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN!!!

No need to scream, Jason, sometimes you want to do this. Or maybe the sun is behind some trees in a forrest.

Not to do something is no choice with a creative tool, I guess, and if they can fix it they should, as easy as it might be in post. One thing less to take care about. Besides other quirks like low-end-roll-off on audio.

Make a little white circle and place it over the black dot. Key frame it if you have to. It's super, stupidly easy. Even easier: QUIT SHOOTING DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN!!!

Uh, I was doing time some time lapse and the sun creeped in. If it is that easy to fix in post I am sure that is would be just as easy to make the sensor go white when clipped

If it is that easy to fix in post I am sure that is would be just as easy to make the sensor go white when clipped

It's actually not. When the sensor clips, the raw data maxes out. When the sensor overloads (considerably more light than just clipping), the raw data drops to zero. As I understand the electronics there is nothing one could do to the sensor to stop it from overloading (except not shooting directly into sunlight...).

Removing the black spots is easy (just turn them into whit spots) - once you identified them. But the latter is the difficult part, at least for "dumb" firmware. The human eye (or actually our visual cortex) "understands" the image and can easily decide which black spots inside white areas shouldn't be there. But how does an algorithm know not to "fix" the 101 dalmatians ?!

All I know is my gopros don't do it. Maybe then can call
Them collect, ha. Joking

All I know is my gopros don't do it.

jb

Back in the early 90's, I shot a series of safety videos for pipeline welders. I used a one chip Ikegami (HR200C IIRC) and never once noticed a black dot in any of the many arcs that I shot. I also had some shots with the hot Texas sun in the background and no black dots. The reason it was noticed was because our three tube Ikegamis would have totally fried their guns with welding arcs and/or the sun.

All I know is my gopros don't do it.

jb

I wonder if the reason the current BMD cameras do this is because there's a trade-off (or "wise design decision") being made.

Perhaps it's something like ...

===

In part, because the current BMD cameras are designed to deliver relatively high-quality, wide-latitude video at a relatively low cost, one of the design trade-offs is to allow extremely bright objects to go black.

===

I have no idea if the above is true, but if it is (or close-to), it makes sense to me. Maybe designing-out the "black sun" artifact without negatively affecting the cam's latitude would've increased the cost of the current BMD cameras beyond BMD's target pricing. Again, this is a guess on my part; I could be wrong.

Meanwhile I'll be very interested to see whether or not the BMPC-4K features the black sun artifact.

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Can't watch the video now, but I am assuming there is some black dot. All I can say is used my 2 go pro 3 silvers all summer pointed directly into the sun and no black dots. First time I did it with my bmcc I had unusable footage without applying editing. We can dance around it and do comparisons as much as everyone would like. But this should be fixed. Sorry but I consider not being able to shoot in the general direction of the sun not ok.

Just watched it, that video is from 2009, it's 2013 and $3k later

It's surfing footage with an SD GoPro (at least the footage is SD) and yes, there's a whole lotta black dottin' goin' on. I'm not sure what they're trying to prove here...that black dots are inevitable maybe? Like BMD delays because Red did it?

you knew the black dot existed before you made the purchase, if you didn't know of the black dot before the purchase you didn't do enough research, and further research will lead you to how simple a fix it is.

what gets me is BMD makes a professional camera at a prosumer price and every little flaw gets picked on.

Back in the early 90's, I shot a series of safety videos for pipeline welders. I used a one chip Ikegami (HR200C IIRC) and never once noticed a black dot in any of the many arcs that I shot. I also had some shots with the hot Texas sun in the background and no black dots. The reason it was noticed was because our three tube Ikegamis would have totally fried their guns with welding arcs and/or the sun.

Was it a CCD or CMOS? I think CCD. Those behave differently, I think. I think in CCD overload must "spills over" to neighboring elements, causing the famous CCD light streaks.

Hi Marc: Maybe it's not that the "black sun" thing is inevitable, but rather that eliminating it in a camera with BMCC/BMPCC specs in 2013 would make the cameras significantly more expensive?

Again, I don't know if this is true, but it seems possible.

For example, cameras that don't record black sun, have 13-stop latitude, and which officially shoot RAW (according to the manufacturer) don't exist?

Cameras which don't record black sun either don't have 13-stop latitude, or don't (officially) feature RAW recording, or sell for >$2K.

Again, the reason for the black sun question could be as simple as "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two."

Note: I'm not making excuses for BMD. I'm trying to figure out why the cams work the way they do.

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I am 100% satisfied with my purchase. However there is always room to improve. I have we'll over 100k in audio gear. None has a blatant deficiency like this. It needs to be fixed. It won't be fixed if we do not voice out issues with it. If not here then where? Bm customer service does not exist in the us.

Also a prosumer price means prosumer knowledge of editing which doesn't entail automating masks.

I hear you aren't happy about the black sun thing, Steve.

But there's at least some chance that it's not "fixable" in a <$2K 13-stop latitude RAW camera in 2013.

Jury's still out.

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Was it a CCD or CMOS? I think CCD. Those behave differently, I think. I think in CCD overload must "spills over" to neighboring elements, causing the famous CCD light streaks.

You're right Dmitry...it was CCD for sure. But since we were comparing problems from 5 year old SD GoPros with the BMCC, I thought it was appropriate.

Hi Marc: Maybe it's not that the "black sun" thing is inevitable, but rather that eliminating it in a camera with BMCC/BMPCC specs in 2013 would make the cameras significantly more expensive?

Note: I'm not making excuses for BMD.

I wonder if they charged $1,000.00 more for the BMCC, they could afford VUs and a black dot fix? Lots of folks would pay $3,000.00 for a BMCC with pro audio, wouldn't they?

Note:

All I am saying is this. We shouldn't stop asking for improvements to firmware just because they dropped the price or even what is out there in the same price range. Being in the bleeding wage is what brought mention BM, I accept that, but I don't have too be happy with the black dot issue. Sorry. Take raw and give me no black dot. I can't edit it anyways on any 2013 computer I own. Prosumer pricing, pro problems.

Here's what we've learned then....

The BMCC has a black sun problem.

It's not unique to BMD. It's related to the current generation of sensor technology.

Alexas have it. http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=56191

RED have it.

So do some older GoPros.

There are post fixes for it. It's not a new problem or specific to this camera.

After time, improvements can made to reduce the effct. it's already a lot less on the BMCC than it was in firmware V1.

jb

John I am totally aware that this exist in other products. And I really appreciate your demos. Just saying it needs to stay on the front of BMs mind

It might be too processor intensive to fix in software firmware and the BMCC architecture might not have the headroom for it. After all it would have to check around 100 million pixels a second (2432x1366x30)

Maybe could have been built into the hardware of the sensor in the first place, but I guess that would raise the price, but that's a guess.


Jules

This is for the most part a really simple fix, I wish I had the time to make a few tutorials using AE, NukeX, and even Resolve, I have had to fix this spot on many cmos cameras over the years.

Example:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9598&p=60508&hilit=halogen#p60508

Resolve does not work on current macs, I was thinking about buying premiere to edit raw, anyone have an opiniom

Resolve does not work on current macs, I was thinking about buying premiere to edit raw, anyone have an opiniom

Resolve was made for MAC, It is your MAC that is not configured to run Resolve, So I'm not sure what your talking about, It seem you have not done any research about these cameras or Resolve, and you really should since you are making claims that are not true.

As of Now you can not edit Cinema.dng raw in Premiere,
it doesn't even recognize the file format, go figure.
http://nofilmschool.com/2012/10/adobe-e ... miere-pro/

I did purchase my current computers before deciding to buy a blackmagic product. I have an i5 air, i7 Mbp and a mini server I use to run my studio, the problem is all intel gpus.

I did plenty of research as my brother in law has had one of the first bmcc to hit my area about 4 months ago.

Don't be so quick to judge. I configured studios that have been in the cover of mix magazine ect. That is not what is on question.

I just want the black dot issue fixed, jeez.

Also you can edit raw on primier. I just did it on the trial version. You have to edit a frame and apply to the remaing frames. Sooooo

Also you can edit raw on primier. I just did it on the trial version. You have to edit a frame and apply to the remaing frames. Sooooo

I think you are wrong, in AE yes, not Premiere Pro CS6.

Sorry you are right, my mistake, all adobe products merge into one big rip off on my mind, sorry for the aggresivenes

Hi Steve: What you posted above is a bit confusing.

It's true that Resolve doesn't run on some current Macs, but Resolve can indeed run on more than one current Mac model.

Related info in BMD's Resolve configuration PDF:
http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/4 ... -10-10.pdf

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Again I did not purchase a Mac to run resolve. But I did not purchase the lowest end models either. In think you need a retina mbp with Nividia card on the current.