A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

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MDPharaoh

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A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostWed Dec 30, 2020 4:19 am

Hello all,

I wanted to share with you what I've found to be a compatible ssd enclosure for our beloved cameras.

The Current Viable Solution

https://amzn.to/38OPPrk

The Pursuit of a Better Option

Over the last few months while I've owned the camera, the one thing that significantly disappointed me was the media offerings out there as they're both expensive and slow in comparison to what modern NVME drives can provide us. This led me to begin my hunt into other solutions (and I had some NVME drives lying around from PCs that had been upgraded). Ultimately what I wanted was an enclosure that would get me the faster transfer speeds I wanted as well as not be stupid looking and bulky like most enclosures I came across. More specifically I wanted something without any branding and that would fit into the Tilta Wise SSD holder, since all m.2 drives are in the same form factor as the Wise SSD. I ended up purchasing quite a few enclosures and the one I linked above performed consistently while meeting my desire of a logoless slim design, unfortunately although it seemed like it would fit into the tilta ssd holder, it ended up being 13mm too wide. I did come across a second enclosure that is actually the same dimensions as the Wise SSD (in fact I'm sure they're made by the same supplier and they just toss whatever cheap ssd into the enclosure and ship that out since there is only one manufacturer for an enclosure of that exact dimension), while performing identical to the viable solution I've already linked above, unfortunately it does not get detected by the camera (the compatibility issue lies in the difference in controllers used). It's a real shame because that would have been my ideal solution because even the color of the enclosure is identical to tilta gray.

Details On The Enclosure

The enclosure ships with 2 cables, one USB-C to USB-C and one USB-C to USB-A (they work with the camera so no need to find a compatible cable). The cable is also nice and short coming in at 12 inches. Also included is a thermal pad for your NVME drive, to make sure it doesn't overheat. In terms of transfer speed I saw anywhere between 950-1010 MB/s which is pretty much double of all the other compatible media formats out there, I wish we could get closer to the full potential of the NVME drives, however we are bottlenecked by the IO interface (USB 3.1 Gen 2) and using a different interface type would not allow for the enclosure to be compatible with our cameras (Perfect example Samsung T7 which is USB 3.2 Gen 2).

What This Doesn't Solve

Just because the transfer speeds are more than sufficient to handle 6K at Q0 does not mean that you will be able to do this, the bottle still is and always will be the camera itself and the fact that the USB-C Output is a 3.1 Gen 1 output which pretty much halves the output. For what it's worth I did test this and I got as far as 1 minute and 9 seconds before the first dropped frame.

Quick Recap As To What You Have To Gain

I know that there are alot of you out there that are T5 die hards or CFast die hards who will say "why are you trying to use media that's not on the approved list" or "T5 and CFast already work, stop trying to fix something that's not broken" and honestly anyone who thinks this way and feels the need to expose themselves for thinking this way is a moron. No one's saying that this is THE solution, it's just A solution, and one that happens to be pretty darn good and objectively better than what we already have. We're getting better transfer speeds, more flexibility, and better value when recycling drives we already have.

What I'd Like to See In The Future

I'd really like to see Blackmagic add comptibility with the AM8180 controller that way we can use the other mentioned enclosure: https://amzn.to/3rEdcg4 This would be pretty much perfect and really deliver on that functional excellence a lot of us are probably looking for with being able to get a perfect mounting solution to one of if not the most popular cage manufacturer for our pocket cameras.

Anyways, hope this was able to provide some value to you guys, I likely won't be posting often or even checking back in here, unless I have something else cool to contribute. (The way this forum was setup is super unintuitive when it comes to finding things by topic and the search functionality is abysmal as well, so I prefer to seek info elsewhere)
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MDPharaoh

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostTue Jan 05, 2021 7:56 pm

:roll: post was stuck in approval for a week so it got buried so I thought I'd bump it and share a new finding as well.

I wasn't aware and still am not 100% sure if the Samsung T5 has been discontinued or if it's just having supply issues, but I found another external SSD alternative, that will also be able to use the Tilta Wise SSD holder. https://amzn.to/3olL8fe it comes in variants of 250gb to 2tb and is priced more or less the same as the T5 was.

I have yet to receive it, should be here thursday, so I'll test compatibility then. For most of you if it works, it's best to get the highest capacity possible, but for me since I'm a lunatic, I want to figure out how to take it apart and drop my own faster ssd in there and see if the board supports nvme or not. My (hopeful) assumption is that it will since it's using usb 3.2 Gen 2 and that they just stuck in some cheap slow m.2 ssd in there and that we can upgrade to a faster drive. If that's the case I'd opt for buying the 250gb for $40 and then buying my own faster and larger nvme SSD.
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Phil999

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostWed Jan 06, 2021 6:22 pm

interesting topic. I was searching for a NVME enclosure/drive recently, but couldn't decide what would work or not. Your findings are of great value, thank you.
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robedge

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostWed Jan 06, 2021 6:51 pm

MDPharaoh wrote:
I wasn't aware and still am not 100% sure if the Samsung T5 has been discontinued or if it's just having supply issues...


The T5 is apparently still in production. In the U.S., at least, it was heavily marketed from late November (Black Friday) through the Christmas holidays. There appears to be an ongoing market for it.
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MDPharaoh

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostWed Jan 06, 2021 9:48 pm

robedge wrote:
MDPharaoh wrote:
I wasn't aware and still am not 100% sure if the Samsung T5 has been discontinued or if it's just having supply issues...


The T5 is apparently still in production. In the U.S., at least, it was heavily marketed from late November (Black Friday) through the Christmas holidays. There appears to be an ongoing market for it.



That's great for all of us, I still see it available from bestbuy and amazon, but going to samsung directly it's out of stuck.
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MDPharaoh

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostThu Jan 07, 2021 11:08 pm

So the Netac on amazon works with our cameras!

250 GB https://amzn.to/2LwkiCy
500 GB https://amzn.to/38pFOlD
1 TB https://amzn.to/3noqjP2
2 TB https://amzn.to/35mET3z

The dimensions arent exactly the same as the wise ssd, it's a tad shorter, like 2 mm narrower, and a hair thicker. It still fits in the tilta wise ssd holder but it's not flush like the Yehua Nvme enclosure that unfortunately does not get read by our cameras. Will attach photos for context, only downside I see so far is that it doesnt bring a usb c to usb c cable.
Attachments
Image20210107180552.jpg
Netac SSD
Image20210107180552.jpg (238 KiB) Viewed 11754 times
Image20210107180548.jpg
Yehua Enclosure
Image20210107180548.jpg (227.52 KiB) Viewed 11754 times
Image20210107180545.jpg
Image20210107180545.jpg (174.42 KiB) Viewed 11754 times
Last edited by MDPharaoh on Thu Jan 07, 2021 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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MDPharaoh

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostThu Jan 07, 2021 11:09 pm

More pics. Will try to tear it apart next to see if we can put our own ssds in there to increase speeds.
Attachments
Image20210107180604.jpg
Image20210107180604.jpg (327.74 KiB) Viewed 11753 times
Image20210107180559.jpg
Image20210107180559.jpg (201.77 KiB) Viewed 11753 times
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MDPharaoh

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostSat Jan 09, 2021 4:01 pm

It appears that the netac will not come apart despite my efforts. So great external ssd alternative, but the search for the perfect fitting enclosure continues. Unless Blackmagic provides better compatibility, with the already perfect found enclosure.
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lidaize

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostTue Jun 29, 2021 3:26 pm

Guys, I have a weird test with my 6K pro

According to the nvme with type c Enclosure which able to run on 10Gbps which is more than enough for the BMPCC 6K type c port's bottleneck 5Gbps data rate, thus I think this combo at least should record 6k 50p in 5:1. However longest clip I can record are 1mins 45s then stop record due to drop frame.

I also test to record 6K 50p in 5:1 on a very very old samsung 850 Evo 2.5 inch ssd + cheap enclosure, this combo works without any problems, I can keep record until fill up the 1TB drive.

After these two test above, I also test some other old 2.5 ssd like 850pro and 840pro with 128G/256G/1TB capacity, they all work without any stop by drop frame issue.

So my questions is BMPCC 6K Pro / 6K seems like work with SATA SSD very well, even up to 5:1? (bit higher / bit lower than the bottleneck)
which means our lovely camera have issue to communicated with nvme SSD? (speed more than the bottle neck)

Does anyone have samsung T5 and able to record 6K 50p in 5:1 ?
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antoine

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostWed Jun 30, 2021 8:33 am

Great idea. Might be interesting to have recording max length tests for different resolution / framerate and quality / BRAW compression ratio
BRAW Studio FREE and Premium for Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, with a brand new Desktop .BRAW Player and Color Grader, as well as an automatic White Balance Color Picker tool
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lidaize

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostWed Jun 30, 2021 3:19 pm

antoine wrote:Great idea. Might be interesting to have recording max length tests for different resolution / framerate and quality / BRAW compression ratio


Do you have any recommand budget nvme drive which works for 6k 50p 3:1 ?
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MDPharaoh

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostSun Jul 04, 2021 10:18 pm

lidaize wrote:Guys, I have a weird test with my 6K pro

According to the nvme with type c Enclosure which able to run on 10Gbps which is more than enough for the BMPCC 6K type c port's bottleneck 5Gbps data rate, thus I think this combo at least should record 6k 50p in 5:1. However longest clip I can record are 1mins 45s then stop record due to drop frame.

I also test to record 6K 50p in 5:1 on a very very old samsung 850 Evo 2.5 inch ssd + cheap enclosure, this combo works without any problems, I can keep record until fill up the 1TB drive.

After these two test above, I also test some other old 2.5 ssd like 850pro and 840pro with 128G/256G/1TB capacity, they all work without any stop by drop frame issue.

So my questions is BMPCC 6K Pro / 6K seems like work with SATA SSD very well, even up to 5:1? (bit higher / bit lower than the bottleneck)
which means our lovely camera have issue to communicated with nvme SSD? (speed more than the bottle neck)

Does anyone have samsung T5 and able to record 6K 50p in 5:1 ?


Perhaps thermal limit? I had one of my drives cut off around two minutes because it would get too hot, adding a thermal pad resolved the issue.
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carlomacchiavello

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostMon Jul 05, 2021 5:07 am

lidaize wrote:So my questions is BMPCC 6K Pro / 6K seems like work with SATA SSD very well, even up to 5:1? (bit higher / bit lower than the bottleneck)
which means our lovely camera have issue to communicated with nvme SSD? (speed more than the bottle neck)


No, no problem with ssd or nvme, the problem born with chipset of box controller. Most of people forget that ssd Sata or nvme Are not controlled directly from camera, but there is a chipset that communicate between ssd and camera, and when ssd provide enough real speed the real problems born all here.

Also sata ssd often fail due bad controller (usb3.x protocols are full of bugs).
I founded many controllers bugged that give me problems with the same ssd extreme pro that work fine with ursa g1 on uncompressed cdng and today work fine on star tech boxes.
Actually I continue to use on pocket4k, 6k and ump g1 the ssd on star tech controller and not migrate to nvme exactly for this reason, I can trust the controller of my boxes.


Inviato dal mio iPhone utilizzando Tapatalk
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Shaoyan

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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostFri Jul 30, 2021 5:08 am

https://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Enclosure ... 25&sr=8-66

this NVMe enclosure works for me. I can record 4k DCI braw 3:1 60fps in a B4K camera
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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostFri Nov 26, 2021 2:05 pm

Important update:
While my initial tests worked well, I had dropped frames today and I assume that I would have to test the drives in nice wide dynamic range scenes. My first test recordings were rather dark and gray and that probably needs much less data throughput.
As it stands, I can NOT recommend my combination mentioned below :(

Hey there,

since I just recently joined BMPCC family and read through the useful info in this thread to try out some SSDs and enclosures. I would like to share my 2 cents:

As some of you encountered lower write speeds with NVME drives, I decided to try out an enclosure for my older SATA SanDisk Ultra 3D 1TB SSD.

I picked this one using the included USB C cable:
https://www[dot]amazon[dot]de/gp/product/B07Y825V4N/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I was able to record 6K 25p raw 5:1 for an hour (I stopped manually) and 3:1 for another 30 mins (stopped manually again as I didn't expect it to fail after this long).
No hiccups.

Currently waiting for a replacement cam, though, since it rattled when tilting ~. ~ Once I have the new cam, I can try higher fps as well.

A note to the NVMe users: besides possible thermal throttling resulting in lower speeds, also be aware that those usually use a smaller cache (often around 42-72GB) to reach their advertised speed but once the cache is full, the speed drops to 80-160MB/s. That's why most NVMe's are not so great for continuous writing of files. The best I picked up so far is the Kingston A2000 which can sustain speeds above 500MB/s even after the cache is used up. I didn't try this one with the cam, though, as it is already in use elsewhere:)
This info is not very easy to find when shopping for drives and can lead to frustratingly poor performance in some use cases.

I picked up a second SanDisk for now as they are priced nicely at 78 Euros/TB :)

UPDATE:
Got the exchange cam now and recorded 6k/50fps braw 3:1 for 50mins, no problems encountered:)

If I run into issues, I will update this message.
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Re: A Viable NVME Enclosure for BMPCC 4/6K

PostSat Sep 17, 2022 6:23 am

I have ordered and tested some new USB-C m2 enclosures, with the majority of them working with the Blackmagic 4k Pro Studio Camera

I have tried and confirmed working the following ORICO products, and they have a wide variety of selection:

https://www[dot]amazon[dot]com/dp/B0B14QCH74?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

This one is pretty fast at 20gbs and has a built-in cooling unit, which will help for longer recording sessions!
https://www[dot]amazon[dot]com/dp/B08P1B5FQ9?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

https://www[dot]amazon[dot]com/dp/B08G14NBCS?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

I also confirmed working the following enclosures as working, though not extensively tested:

From ANKER
https://www[dot]amazon[dot]com/dp/B08M3JD266?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

From SSK
https://www[dot]amazon[dot]com/dp/B0892BK5L6?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details


I will update the list with other units that I have tested sooner than later.

The majority of them are easy and fast to swap out M2 cards and support a variety of form factors.
The 20gb/s from Orico with a built cooling unit above requires more effort, though minimal to install or swap m2 storage units.

Hope this is helpful!! Followed advice about chipsets that are supported from this forum, which was super helpful, so thought I should also contribute to it.

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