"BIG" URSA 4K MAGENTA SCREEN OF DEATH?

My first issue experienced with the big URSA was failure to start from attached battery after a period of about a week of sleep. Powering via the 4pin XLR would wake it up then it would work off the attached battery just fine.

The camera has been sleeping for several months. I powered it up and it started off the attached battery but it seems the computer or sensor is not waking up. The large screen displays white with a magenta hue. The other display screens when switched to image also display blank. That much of the control system is operating along with choices of codec, ISO etc..

In failing after a long rest, my suspicions as to cause lie with some connection somewhere having gone resistive.

Given that the "big" URSA is now out of realistic product support, does anyone have any clues as to a home remedy?

If you are in the US, you might give Louis Rossmann a try:
https://rossmanngroup.com

He is a large advocate for the right to repair and very resourceful.

Although he has specialized in computer and mobiles repair, he is a very knowledgeable guy and might like a new challenge.

Standard electronic failures like faulty capacitors or cold solder joints should be no problem to repair.

He also has a huge YouTube channel where he shows and explains his repair procedures.

I am in Australia. I have opened up the camera to look for dry joints dislodged cables. Looks like they didn't go far beyond the been prototype as there are subassdmbles on the body which could have been integrated. The motherboard as such and some sub boards are connected by ribbon cables and not intended to be disonnected. My guess is that like modern shoes, there are built enough units priced to allow for a percentage failure rate and no argument replacement. Except for detachables like screens, these things were built with no deep maintenance or repair intended. There appears to be some corrosion on some pin joints on the motherboard. That might be a cause of past power issues. It also looks like the turret has beenvoff at some point. There was big dag of heatsink material in the fan. I guess that's why it ran so quiet. It was also coated with dust and fluff. It would be good for URSA Mini owners to be advised of a means of getting fluff out of those cameras as it won't be helping with overheating. I am hopeful it will only dry joints but if the turret was taken out and the heatsink jointing material was not refreshed, then the sensor may have roasted itself over time and given up. A pity it has dropped dead. It was good while it lasted. A local DoP preferred the skin tones from the camera and the global shutter. Know if back to the P+S SI2K. there's no other affordable options for me out there.

Their are still some of the Ursa Mini 4K available at good prices, same sensor same Global Shutter, slightly smaller package, with more integrated circuits. We have a big Ursa which we use for chroma key interview type shooting in the studio, great camera for this. I also just picked up a Pocket 4K, so when the Ursa dies, we are covered.
Cheers

There are several Ursa 4k bodies on Ebay in the USA right now, prices were decent on some of them. Not sure about shipping for you though, import taxes might make them far too expensive.

Nothing is affordable for me presently. Have other things financial to deal with presently. I had hoped it would last longer. I have a SI2K which still goes. However at the price those originally sold for it would want to. Fortunately I did not get burned by the record breaking depreciation as I bought it used. I'm just a bit vexed as I got the big URSA set up with a focal reducer just the way I wanted it and it has laid down after sleeping for three months. There's no assurance a used URSA Mini 4K won't do the same thing. I sometimes wonder if the conspiracy theory about suicide circuits which clock down to fail the appliance after a period of fair use has validity.

Further examination found some soldered joints for the BNC outputs to the rear which appeat to have been reworked. That should not be affecting image but reworked them again as they appeared shabby. Reassembled the camera and tested with same result - no image. Playback of recordings is fine. All menu items work. Sound on vision also plays back.

Any other clues to investigate will be appreciated.

The only other connection failure I can think of is the strip connector behind the turret. It is impossible to see if the plug on the turret inserts deep enough in its socket. Beyond that, it looks like the sensor or the portion of the camera computer which manages the image is no longer with us. That I do not have the skill set to fix. So it looks like the big URSA becomes a monument to my folly in buying it. It is a bleak contrast to other obsolete heat I have. It all still works. Age and storage has not wearied the stuff.

Well the verdict is in. To repair the camera at an approved dealer will require an entire motherboard assembly and maybe the sensor assembly if there has been a cascade failure. The cost would be in thousands. It is therefore uneconomic to repair even if I could get all the parts and install them myself. The camera did just two worthwhile jobs, one was a PSA shot by Gavan O'Sullivan for prostate cancer awareness and interviews for a corporate documentary in an environment when only global shutter would do. I bought in costly recording media, battery systems, invested of time and effort engineering a unique Nikon mount and focal reducer system and complementing Nikon and PL-Mounts, then the thing lay down before I could realise on my time and effort. I think I am about exhausted with the Blackmagic Design camera ecosystem. It was an enjoyable challenge but ultimately a waste of time and effort. At my number of years on this earth, life is too short.

So what to do? The recording media for the dead Blackmagic Design "big" URSA camera was worth about half as much as the camera and is now orphaned. It doesn't work with the old SI2K camera which is itself wedlocked to a now near-obsolete file type. Some shits broke in last year and stole the one-off Letus Extreme 35mm filmic adaptor I had re-engineered to work with the EX1 camera type. I think I perhaps should stick to writing and let others fret about camera craft.

Understand the frustration, Robert. Think about the BMPCC4K or the BMPCC6K. I think the BMPCC4K is fantastic value and it’s perfect for interiors with the Tokina Cinema ATX 11-20mm T2.9. It might win you over and the entry-level price for a real cinema camera is like a Siren call no Argonaut can resist.

If you already have CFast 2 media, the BMPCC 4K is a very easy camera to live with, and is much more affordable than the Ursa line.

And you can get a PL mount Metabones focal reducer (Speed Booster)!
I know how it feels to build up a camera kit and loose it after just two shoots. I had to give up my Ursa Broadcast Kit, after I got it just where I wanted it accessory wise.
Cheers

Footnote to above.


In for a penny, in for a pound.

Assuming the camera may be beyond affordable recovery versus replacing it with another, I removed the turret containing the sensor from the camera body, then reconnected a battery and restarted the camera.

The same white screen appears when the image is selected to the small side displays plus the slight magenta cast white screen appears on the large display.

It seems that the white screen is being generated within the motherboard ---- or ---- the image signal from the turret is being interrupted or not generated.

The motherboard's normal state when displaying and not being supplied an image signal may be displaying bright white not black as one might assume.

Short of installing the turret to another body and risking damaging that body there is not a mug's way of knowing which is what. With the sound not being displayed when the in-camera microphones are selected, this suggests the motherboard may be faulty.

I have sent BM a message asking for circuit diagrams so I might be able to at least identify a power regulation or power supply fault. The company may want to keep its intellectual property close and/or not sideline its various vendors and approved repair centres by dealing with an owner direct, however asking can do no harm.

I had another visitation inside the gizzards of the beast and have found its beating heart.

URSA GUTS.jpg (302.63 KiB) Viewed 15939 times

So far no signs of burnings of parts or obvious trauma. So it looks like I am going to hit a wall.

It appears that this motherboard carries a memory battery. I just wonder if the battery goes dead flat over an extended period like the three plus months this thing slept, whether the embedded operating system can become corrupted by the next start-up and the appliance knows no longer its raison d'être, whether it is a hospital IV drip controller, an electric toaster or an URSA camera's guts.

It was rare but possible for the SI2K camera to lose its mind. It was running on a stripped down embedded Windows XPe and the hardware was up to critical medical equipment standards. If the memory battery went flat, it would do weird stuff to the recorded file order. For it, there was a recovery tool on a USB stick which reconstructed the operating system from scratch.

If that memory battery on the URSA motherboard is done for, then maybe replacing it, then attempting to put the latest firmware in again might help it mend its ways. Then again if there was doubt it was a brick, there may remain no doubt afterwards.

I would dearly like to get my greasy fingers on some service notes, which can warn me off such folly or tell me how to go about it.

Suggestions -
1. Look for and note down all the IC’s you can.
2. Lookup the datasheets.
3. Find the switching regulators ( look for chips with between 6 and 14 pins )
4. Look at the datasheets for the switching regulators and the typical circuit
5. Identify the likely candidates for voltages to the sensor - check if they are there.

I’ve fixed a few BM devices in the past ( and still have some on the bench ).

Notable problems appear to be.
1. Dry joints. ( still got a 4k 1m/e waiting spare time for that one )
2. Water damage ( not a BM fault )
3. Dead switching mosfets ( 2 4K recorders with this fault )
4. Most common fault is snapped cables on 2.5k cameras from people trying to open them to fix dry joints on 12v inputs. ( 3 of those )

I’ve had success tracking down dry joints with either firm pressure or freezer spray.

I really doubt the ‘battery’ is the problem ( I think this was previously reported to be a supercap )

Good luck.

Andy.


Thank you for your helpful response.

I am minded to reassemble everything in the open with all earth points connected and do the pressure test on components as you suggest.

In the centre of the motherboard, there is what looks to be a small wristwatch button battery under a clip.

URSA GUTS 2.jpg (308.29 KiB) Viewed 15927 times

Would this be instead a supercapacitor as you suggest. I have no idea what one looks like.

It could be - but the picture is quite poor.
Try and read a part number.

Also - big warning - BM use a lot of FPGA’s - there is a possibility that any battery is used to retain encryption keys ( some FPGAs have encryption using RAM keys ).
If you replace the battery it could be game over ( if thats the case ).

As you have user interface - then it seems that at least one of the FPGA is working ( those two big chips are probably Xilinx FPGA ).

Ahh yes - I Kintex 7 FPGAs

Xilinx 7 series can use battery backed keys for encrypting the configuration bitstream.
BM would have to state if this feature is used to be certain.

Andy.


Thanks again for responding. If the memory battery maintains an encryption key, then one might assume that in the event of the memory battery expiring completely, then the key would be lost and the camera would become bricked. Would I be barking at shadows in this assumption. If that is the case, then the camera essentially has a built-in death circuit and they all die with the battery.

The SI2K maintains a registration/licence key in the camera head itself. That camera head might be similar in principle to the "turret" on the URSA in that respect. On the SI2K, it is written to non-evaporative memory and travels with the camera head no matter what recorder unit you have the camera head connected to.

I have reconnected everything from the URSA outside of the camera case and started the camera again with the same result. I cannot run it any length of time without a heatsink which limits available time to look for dry joints. The heatsink covers the entire face of the motherboard rendering access impossible. That may be why BM does not repair but replaces entire cameras when returned faulty.

The front processor warms up a lot faster than the rear one. To look for dry joints "live" would require that I find some temporary heatsinks, bond them thermally to the processors and keep the operating times short.

Looks like I may have upset the applecart by gutsaching on the BM and BMCuser forums.

The BM support page jumps to phone numbers when I choose the "send email message" option. It did not do that last time I sent an enquiry message. However I might be jumping to conclusions. It is after all now the weekend.

I cannot ask for info on whether there is a memory battery or whether changing it out for a new one will brick the camera if some sort of licencing or encryption code is evaporated from memory by doing so.

Measure the voltage on the ‘battery/supercap’ ?
The series 7 xilinx can also use permanent e-fuse for keys , or not use keys at all.

Andy.

Thanks for your further info. I sent a message request on the BM world website. They handballed it back to the Australian vendor/repairer New Magic whom I have already been in contact with.

There will be no technical information forthcoming from BM. Their tech must be their worst enemy.They are even holding the EOL/obsolete stuff close it seems.

I might have to see what I can discern from the demo appliances mentioned on the Xilinx website. Will probably be on a hiding to nowhere.

I am totally not up to date with modern digital tech, only old analogue radio stuff at a basic level.

Purely for the sake of the curious, here is a pic of what appears to be a memory battery secured by a spring clip. The ability to remove the battery has been defeated by the clip being pinwelded to the battery body or it may be a variety of the battery with a tag attached top and bottom to enable solder points. It is delivering 0.7V.

URSA MEMBATT 1.jpg (765.06 KiB) Viewed 15803 times

0.7v that does seem too low. ( minimum for Xilinx battery is 1.0v )

I presume that was measured without main power applied.
I suppose we would know if its a supercap if it charges with main power applied.

Andy.

The battery voltage was measured some 24 hours after power was last provided to the camera.

Robert, at this juncture I applaud you for your bravery to explore the guts of the URSA and attempt to repair it. However, indulge me with my observations on the back and forth you have on this thread. I don't mean no disrespect.

1. At this point, I think you are more interested in being a technician and in the electronics and working of a dead URSA than being a cinematographer who would spend time making movies with a working camera. The latter will already junk the camera and if money is an issue, would have gotten a P4K to replace the dead URSA. Your time and money spent to revive it by now probably cost more than a new P4K.

2. BMD is and has no obligation to provide you with anything on the URSA 4K now. It is an obsolete camera that they no longer produced for a long while. As far as they are concern, it is a door stopper. A minute they spend helping you is a minute that cost them money (in terms of time) that they will be unwilling to shell out.

3. You will not be able to sell that camera at all. It is a sunk cost. It's probably neat as an electronic hobby project to learn what make it tick.

4. Last, I doubt anyone in this forum will be of any additional help beyond "give this a try my friend" idea.

From this observation, I can only conclude that it will be wish to move on. When you feel the need to leave the technician hat in your garage and wear the cinematographer's hat, get a Pocket 4K which will equal or even better experience than you have had with the URSA 4K. If you are uphauled by BMD product, look somewhere else then. There's a lot of options these days.

Ellory.


I respect your opinion and the spirit in which your comments are made.

I have no interest in being a technician. I primarily write scripts and secondarily shoot images. The camera is there to shoot infrequent concept trailers in order to flog the scripts and hopefully make some money.

Personal intervention into the guts of the machine has been driven by the lack of finances to do otherwise.

I have been reasonably successful in fixing appliances which have given up due to something coming loose inside or an obvious injury has occurred. That has been the direction of my examination this time round.

BM appears to have striven to eliminate many opportunities for mechanical failures such as plugs and sockets by making the internals of the cameras as unitary as they can be made. This also helps reduce cost. It makes the appliance potentially more reliable.

The downside is, when something dies in the BM unitary assembly style of doing things, that's pretty much it. - New camera. - A modular style of construction enables less costly sub-assemblies to be swapped out when they fail but also introduces more possibilities of failure.

BM is not the only manufacturer to present this dilemma. JVC were pretty good at it too with their GY-HD*** camera family. A blown firewire port meant new motherboard and JVC was despised for this. JVC also went to market too soon with an immature product and got burned badly with the"split screen" problem. Does that sound familiar? JVC's reputation was permanently tarnished.

They also got cheap and glued their sensors onto the splitter prisms without the other mechanical support of their older offerings. It was faith-based engineering at its worst as the glues failed and sensors fell off the prisms.

The prism, three imagers and lens mount were a sub-assembly analagous to the "big" URSA's turret or the front end of the URSA Mini camera family. That was also a total and expensive replacement which according to JVC could not be repaired but needed to be replaced.

As for the dead URSA, the investment thus far has only been of my time. As an asset iinvestment in itself, two small projects, a probono PSA and small corporate interview, plus a short trailer shoot have consumed the lifetime of a camera.

It was hardly a worthwhile spend but that's on me for being an involuntary tightarse and buying secondhand. ( I wonder if I can coin a fancy definition "intarse" for that. I bags the royalty rights if it catches on ).

I am thankful I did not buy a new camera and have that lay down after warranty expiry and be even deeper in the red.

It is just a pity that there is so much good remaining hardware in clean condition which is now scrap for want of affordable replacement parts.

I come from a less moneyed generation where we did not just chuck stuff out for sake of something becoming damaged or worn that could be fixed.

As for moving on, it likely will not be another BM product I move on to.

I'm with you on the modularity. I wish too that BMD engineered their products in a much more modular fashion. Good luck with it and hope things turn out in your favor.

I skipped a bunch of this... Yes that is a battery, and probably a rechargeable battery. In many cameras if that battery goes flat, the camera fails. And once that battery goes flat, they do not recharge again. Our JVC cameras do this (though the camera stays working) and GH2 cameras seem to completely fail when it goes dead. They are super cheap, but can't be certain the camera will work after it is replaced.

I would contact Dave at the EEV Blog and see if he would be at all willing to take a look at it and make a video about the repair, he might give you a decent price if he thinks he can fix it.

https://www.eevblog.com/ under "ABOUT" is a contact page with some emails, you can also find him on Youtube. Good thing is that he is closer to you than some other paces.

After that, it is probably a brick. One thing we've been having with our JVC cameras is condensation under the BGA chips, that's a $900usd service to replace the main board. Or at least they say it is condensation, typically under the JVC branded encoder chip.

The lack of service manuals will stop me from ever buying BMD cameras for work. If they don't respect me enough as a tech., then I won't put my stamp on the cameras. Never had an issue getting or buying service manuals from JVC, Sony, or Panasonic. But these are always cameras in their professional or broadcast product lines. And we are looking to buy 12 new cameras in the next couple of years.

Greg E and Ellory Yu.

Thank you for your responses. I will have a visit to that vlog site. Greg E. From a curiosity standpoint, did you ever try re-attaching blue sensors that fell off the prisms of the JVC GY-HD*** camera family. There are parts on the sensor boards which appear to have doubled as heatsinks and as location points for an assembly jig. By mechanically bridging from the remaining two sensors to the detached sensor, it is possible to relocate it. Re-attaching using an adhesive bond to the prism glass is another matter. The failure mode seems to be heat-related. The adhesives do not harden entirely but remain just that little bit compliant or they would flake off polished glass. There is a little fan in the prism/sensor array but no systematic ducting. Despite the little fan being there to stir the air up and move it around inside the casework, it is likely that hot air gathers in the top, grows downwards to the uppermost sensor ( blue ) which becomes heat-soaked and the glue deteriorates. The remaining glue was quite soft and came off the prism quite easily when I cleaned it. Contributing to the failure is spring tension introduced by the ribbon cable to the motherboard. It is barely long enough. A piece of packing between the ribbon cable and the structure about 5mm above to convert that drawing force on the sensor board into a pressing force can fix that. A pity the cameras became so old and obsolete before I could tinker with them. I could have been a rich man by now fixing that one of JVC's achilles heels. The "big" URSA is another thing entirely. What to do? Take the time to learn the engineering, get out there and clear the block for the coming fire season, write more scripts, grow older. I wish I was as sharp in the brains as the folk who nutted these things out and built them.

INT. BLACKMAGIC DESIGN R & D CLEAN ROOM - NIGHT

Blackmagic's R & D B-team is leaning back in swivel chairs having a coffee break, reading the forum pages on a large internet screen and grinning.

TECH ONE
Take a look at this bloke on the forum. He's off
on a hiding to nowhere and he doesn't know it.

There is a slight change in the lighting ambience of the room which prompts a sudden panicked jostle. A coffeecup hits the floor as the technicians feverishly get stuck into their work - too late.

THE BOSS
Haay you lot. Get back to work. If you like your
coffee so much you can go and get yourself a job
at Dome.

The boss sniffs then rolls his face in anguish.

THE BOSS
Jeez. This place smells like a burning mattress.

He turns to a long-haired kid eager whose white lab coat wears a pattern of spreading coffeestains. It looks like a rohrshach test on roids

THE BOSS
And you. Buy yourself some Selsun and do something
about that dandruff. It's getting on the heatsinks
and burning off.

He turns to each of the labrats in turn and fixes each with a stern expression. An errant whisker in one nostril quivers as he draws breath.

THE BOSS
I want that URSA 70 up and running yesterday
already. C'mon. Chop-chop. The sun's coming up
in another hour".

CUT TO:

EXT. BLACKMAGIC DESIGN R & D CENTRE - DAY.

The dawning sky begins to glow orange to the east and urban bird calls reverbrate back and forth through the crowded brick walls of the industrial estate.

-----------

Yeah I know. Like musicians who spontaneously break into chorus, it is something writers are known to do sometimes.

We've had JVC cameras for a long time, but never had the imager fall off the prism yet, I even have an imager block sitting on my desk. One of the FFC says dead pixels, though I think it was the entire channel that failed. I've poked and prodded this one more than a few times and still stuck down.

But our cameras are only used for student projects, they are typically very low hours even though they are now about 9 years old (GY-HM700u). We keep talking about what we might buy in the next year or two to replace them, but no serious talking about begging for money yet. Probably end up with something that has the lens permanently attached this time. Smaller, lighter, cheaper. Do more with less is the campus motto right now.

Too bad the 1/3 inch lenses are pretty much worthless on any mirrorless camera, won't even cover enough of the original Pocket or Micro cinema camera to be worth adapting.

Greg E.

I have three JVC cams here, two HD111s and one HD251, all obtained for peanuts for a tape archive recovery of oral histories from WW2. I have one which has good firewire, one which has an intact sensor array but a dead green channel on one half of the image from the sensor array, two sensor arrays which have a detached blue sensor. I used the intact one as an exemplar template to make up the bridgepieces.

It seems with the HM series, JVC got the sensor glue problem sorted then.

How soon they all become feather dusters.

I have carefully prised the spotwelded tag off the battery body. It turns out the "battery" is an ELNA 3.3v 22f supercapacitor. It would have been very helpful to have shop information but BM keeps its intellectual property very close. It would have been handy not to go down this particular dead-end. Getting it desoldered is going to be a bit of a mission. It now has to come out because the spotwelds have bulged the metal case of the supercapacitor and it likely is now ruined.

Further to the preceding posts, with the "memory battery" unsoldered and removed, I was able to identify it by the stamped printing as an ELNA 3.7V 22uf supercapacitor. It would have been nice to have studied a basic circuit to know this before going down a dead-end and doing the deed.

I have probably stuffed the mainboard. After desoldering the battery base, the conductor pad on the PCB had lifted. It blew off when I was shifting loose solder motes. There are no signs of feedthrough conductors in the PCB or severed tracks across the PCB. If they exist they must be spiderweb thin.

The camera starts and operates with no vision displayed as before. The external mic inputs work and the travelling waveform displays normally.