Ursa sensor upgrade

I thought I had already posted this, but I can't find it anywhere. If I posted this twice, please forgive me.

This is perhaps a stupid question, but I'm not an electrical engineer nor a computer science major so I was hoping perhaps someone on here can shine some light on this. The new Black Magic Ursa's selling point is that it's going to be upgradable so it will (theoretically) never go obsolete. I know the sensor can be changed out. For example, if some day 6K becomes the next "big thing", many people assume you're just going to be able to purchase a 6k sensor for an upgrade.

I would imagine if you upgrade the sensor, you would have to upgrade the processing power for the upgraded resolution and I see nothing mentioned about that. Any thoughts?

The replacement of the lens mount and processor turret on the URSA does give some future proofing of the investment you have in the URSA body to a point. It is certainly conceivable that you would be able to support an upgrade to a 5K or 6K sensor but BMD have not been very specific about what upgrades the body will be able to handle so no guarantee. The processors and features in URSA will easily support UHD frame rates up to 120 fps as stated at NAB 2014. And perhaps additional processor or other changes can also be accommodated with the current body.

Other developments or refinements to the body of a future version of the URSA body may mean in a few years that you will want the latest processor and a new body.


Rick Lang
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The reason that they used liquid cooling is apparently to allow them to include more processing power and bandwidth than it needs right now so that it can handle higher data rates in the future.

It would depend on just what is inside that little sensor housing that pops off the front. If it is just the sensor, then you have a point- it would be limited. But if the processor that is reading the sensor's data is also inside that little gizmo that pops off the front- then it is probable that it would be "future proof". I suppose if a 10K, 10cm X 5cm super awesome ridiculously huge film-o-rific sensor came out, you could build a housing for it to contain its size and processor so it would plug into the URSA body.

It would be nice to know if there is a processor inside the little sensor thingy that plugs into the "box".