Blackmagic Forum

Hi all, first time Blackmagic owner and first time posting here.

I have been building out my new URSA 4.6k G2 and come to the point of buying my first CFast cards.

Question: What is the best/safest option for Cfast cards size wise for the G2?

I am looking at the Angelbird CF 2.0. Tossing up between one 1T card or two 512gb.

Have cinematographers here found using one 1T card better or is it better to have two 512gb or even two 256gb cards?

Thank you in advance

I’ve used the 1TB Angelbird for years and it’s great. You’re gonna find that with the 4.6K you will get anywhere from 1.87 hours in BRAW 3:1 to 7+ hours in BRAW 12:1 on a single 1TB card. So 2 1TB Cards is more than you’ll need in a single camera for a day.

Most often I stick a 256 GB in my second slot and never go to it. That’s how good the 1TB is with the 4.6K.

But traveling you could buy a card pouch for 6 cards and have 6 1TB cards to keep shooting and filling up on a trip. This means you could record up to 1 Day 4 Hours worth of material in 6 TB at BRAW 8:1. Say you did a two week trip and filled up only 512 GB per day then you’d be able to shoot for 12 days without worry. Dump when you get home. The only thing you have to do is charge batteries.


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Sky_Wulfe wrote:Question: What is the best/safest option for Cfast cards size wise for the G2?

It really, truly depends on what you're shooting and how you want to shoot it.

For narrative work, my opinion is that a higher volume of smaller cards is a better solution. If you get these massive cards and record a whole day with one of them, you've just put all your eggs in one basket. If something goes wrong with that one large card, you run the risk of losing a lot of footage. With more and smaller cards, you're reloading more frequently and are less likely to risk a massive, catastrophic failure.

If you're doing long interviews at high data rates, travelling without a way to offload your media, or you rig your camera in ways that make it difficult to do reloads, then obviously a larger card is going to be helpful. I still think you're running a big risk putting that much footage on one single card, but sometimes you've just got to take that risk. Hell, travelling with a few 1TB mags probably makes things more manageable than travelling with dozens of 256GB mags.

Me? Although I'm still working with a BMPCC4K and my data rates are lower than yours, if I was going to get an Ursa 4.6K G2 I would honestly just load up on Sandisk 256GB mags. 27min/mag is kind of a sweet spot for me; they're reasonably affordable so I can own ≥8 or so; and they still support all the same codec settings.

Blackmagic posted a while ago that there have been problems with the new 512GB and 1TB Angelbird cards viewtopic.php?f=2&t=191353
Edit - ignore that, it was problems with the 12K and broadcast G2 not the 4.6K
Cheers, Mike

Alex Mitchell wrote:

Sky_Wulfe wrote:Question: What is the best/safest option for Cfast cards size wise for the G2?

For narrative work, my opinion is that a higher volume of smaller cards is a better solution. If you get these massive cards and record a whole day with one of them, you've just put all your eggs in one basket. If something goes wrong with that one large card, you run the risk of losing a lot of footage. With more and smaller cards, you're reloading more frequently and are less likely to risk a massive, catastrophic.

From experience, I can’t agree more. My 6 card caddy has 4 x 256gb and 2 x 512gb Angelbird CFs.

We have been using SanDisk cards in 256 GB with no problems in the UMP G1.
But you should never use a Lexar reader.

Thank you all,

I decided to buy two Angelbird 512gb Cfast cards for my URSA 4.6K G2

Uli Plank wrote:We have been using SanDisk cards in 256 GB with no problems in the UMP G1.
But you should never use a Lexar reader.

Same story here, used those SanDisk 256GB Extreme PRO cards for years but the reader was crap