Blackmagic Forum

our URSA Mini 4.6K was on a shoot last saturday
the camera was in RAW , 4.6K resolution, 4:1 compression
I dumped the CFAST2 on the server today for editing

on the last 7 takes of the day only the audio was recorded on the cards
not a single DNG file inside the folders
and the last take with pictures ended prematurely

on the set the DP had pictures on the LCD and VF and didn't noticed anything unusual and did't changed any settings on the camera

even this morning, before we found that problem, I was playing with another card in the same camera trying to figure how the reel number worked and I did a few takes with the exact same setting and I have pictures

Saturday was hot and humid
could it be related ?

never had such failure on the big URSAs (we own 3) and the mini under the older firmware

we will need a reshoot , not funny

btw I already wrote BM about this
this message is a warning for others

"This is a public beta for trial and testing purposes, customers working on commercial productions are encouraged to continue using the current shipping camera software.

Customers with issues or bug reports should email 4.0beta@blackmagicdesign.com with the following information:

• Steps to reproduce
• Result(s)
• Expected Result(s)
• Any relevant setup information (camera settings, lens, etc)"

It sounds a little like a problem I had on set where heat and humidity likely caused the camera to stop recording any picture, and files were not openable in resolve, but this was on the previous firmware, and I think it did record DNGs, they were just blank/corrupted. But it does seem that the camera doesn't do well in heat.
There is a dropped frame indicated by a flashing of the recording indication, if the operator had overlays on his/her monitor. If not, this is very very worrying! Issues like this, however rare, make you hugely loose faith in a camera. It would be great to get an official response of sorts to this - let me know if you hear anything from support!

Edit: there is a setting to stop recording on dropped frames - it could be related to that, in terms of not recording any DNGs after the potential heat/corruption issue, perhaps interesting to see if that was turned on or not?

the feature to stop recording when a frame is dropped was not turned on
and on each take with missing raw dng I have the full audio wav file

This is why you always "check the gate" and always offload and check your footage (or have your DIT check) before wrapping or really ending the day's shoot.

I have the setting to stop recording on a dropped frame turned On at all times and then it's fairly easy to monitor that the camera is recording. Not sure if that would have helped though when there were zero frames in the folder and just a .wave file. Can you comment on whether or not the recording light was On (red) on these bad clips?


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Hi, how were the cards formatted?

Sorry to hear you are having that issue. I hope this was not a paid gig and was just for fun? Not sure why anyone would run a BETA firmware on a paid gig.

CaptainHook wrote:Hi, how were the cards formatted?

we always work in ExFat , the cards are 256 Gbs
I'm sure it's not related to the cards

I have the setting to stop recording on a dropped frame turned On at all times and then it's fairly easy to monitor that the camera is recording. Not sure if that would have helped though when there were zero frames in the folder and just a .wave file. Can you comment on whether or not the recording light was On (red) on these bad clips?

I can't tell for the red light I wasn't there but the camera WAS recording since I have folders with the full audio wavs of the takes in them and Stop recording on dropped frame was off but not sure if it would have change anything to turn it on since the camera didn't even recorded a single first frame
when was the last time that shooting at 24 fps = dropped frame on CFAST2 card anyway

Alain Bourassa wrote:

CaptainHook wrote:we always work in ExFat , the cards are 256 Gbs

Formatted in camera or elsewhere? What brand/model cards?

CaptainHook wrote:

Alain Bourassa wrote:

CaptainHook wrote:we always work in ExFat , the cards are 256 Gbs

Formatted in camera or elsewhere? What brand/model cards?

always formated in the camera
brand: angelbird.com av pro cf 240 gb
probably a relabelled chinese bwin

never had a single problem with these cards , we used them in RAW 3:1 and 4:1 since we bought the Mini last April

232 gb of good takes before the problem came

I'm sure it's not related to the cards

Alain, you may be right that they should have worked as always, but I suspect the cards didn't pass BMD's stress testing as they're not on the approved list. Once again, for the record and probably the 100th time, BMD does not list the cards they have tested that failed so we are in the dark about the viability of various cards that people use (which may even have been approved previously but no longer work well).


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rick.lang wrote:Alain, you may be right that they should have worked as always, but I suspect the cards didn't pass BMD's stress testing as they're not on the approved list. Once again, for the record and probably the 100th time, BMD does not list the cards they have tested that failed so we are in the dark about the viability of various cards that people use (which may even have been approved previously but no longer work well).


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you know what I think about the BMD card list ....

all my Sandisk are working perfectly since we bought our first 2 URSA october 2014 , the very first 2 delivered to Canada, over 80 big shoots with them flawless , they are not on their list

the Wise card , which is on their list, is dead on my table, used less than 20 times, no camera or computer could mount and format it luckily it was free from B&H when we bought Ursa number 3

I have perfect takes on the card and I have takes without any traces of a single frame of video and perfect audio that's not the behavior of a bad card
a card doesn't know and choose what they record
they just try to record what's coming from the camera, if it's fast enought it's there and it's perfect if it's not fast enought you have something bad, BUT you have something , not nothing at all

the extra cooling of the big ursa is a slight bit of peace of mind.

Alain Bourassa wrote:we always work in ExFat , the cards are 256 Gbs
232 gb of good takes before the problem came
I'm sure it's not related to the cards

"232 gb of good takes before the problem came."
On a 240 gb card???

I'm wondering if the card was nearly full, had the room to record the audio file but not the larger video files and flushed 'em as they came in, for lack of room . . .

I had a similar issue with a clip that was unreadable after power ran out under beta 4.0, which never happened with the older firmware.

David Regenthal wrote:

Alain Bourassa wrote:we always work in ExFat , the cards are 256 Gbs
232 gb of good takes before the problem came
I'm sure it's not related to the cards

"232 gb of good takes before the problem came."
On a 240 gb card???

I'm wondering if the card was nearly full, had the room to record the audio file but not the larger video files and flushed 'em as they came in, for lack of room . . .

the card doesn't flush anything it just record what comes from the camera ..
obviously the camera stopped sending pictures