mitteg wrote:Hello,
I have some questions regarding the new Ursa Broadcast G2 camera:
The HD video is pixel binning or pixel skipping or oversampling (best technique)?
Is there an Auto Tracking Whitebalance (AWB)? That is, the camera continuously adjusts for the best WB? AWB seems to be Manual White Balance where you just point a white area and then the camera adjusts it
In PLAY mode, is there a way to see a thumbnail grid?
I find it weird that there is no way to record interlaced footage when almost 99% of the broadcasters are based in interlaced workflow
I find that the camera is very power hundry at 40W of consumtion. Do you agree? Similar broadcast cameras from Sony or Panasonic are between 23W to 28W.
What is the latest firmware available? I cannot find it on the web.
Thank you all!
Hi Robert, here are some answers to your questions:
1. BMD cameras do not pixel bin or line skip. To get full sensor readout HD, it is oversampled/processed to HD, but only when recording ProRes. You can not record full sensor to HD in BMD BRaw files, so HD is a HD window crop of the full sensor.
2. Not sure about the new Broadcast camera, but none of the previous cameras had tracking AWB on the fly, which does not work ver accurately anyway with most cameras, background lighting can throw off thr WB. When I was shooting for TV, we always did a proper white balance with a WB card.
3. No, you do not get a thumbnail or menu list of recorded clips. Camera operators in Commerical, Broadcast and Cinema shooting do not edit or delete their recordings. The media is passed to editing team for that. You can quickly p,ay back the last clip recorded by pressing
Playback, and
Back button for reviewing clips in opposite order they were shot. That said, you need the camera set to the same recording settings/codec as the clips were recorded in.
4. Interlaced Broadcast use went out with SD, while 1080i is still in use, the transition is going to progressive, with several networks using 720p (ABC). Some community cable TV operations, still using SD are interlaced. Interlaced was needed for CRT TVs, but the moderne flat screens are not interlaced display screens, they are native progressive displays, which convert interlaced signals on older units to progressive to display them.
5. Larger sensors, and more in camera processing takes more power. Sony or Panasonic are between 23W to 28W cameras are 2/3rds sensor cameras, not S35 like the new BMD Broadcast 2 camera. Thankfully the new LiPro compact camera batteries pack more watts into the same or smaller packages as lower wattages batteries did a few years back.
6. BMD Camera Update 7.5 is the only firmware update available, which adds support to the new Camera for future firmware updates. Yiur camera was shipped with the latest firmware. Upload and Run 7.5 to get the updater support added to your computer, and to set correct time/date on the camera.
Cheers