- Posts: 15
- Joined: Sat Jun 27, 2015 7:19 am
Hi,
Firstly I have been a DP for nearly 10 years and have spent 25 years in the television and film industry. In that time I have owned a lot of cameras. A couple of months back I bought into the idea of the URSA for the corporate arm of work that I was doing and a couple of weeks back the camera was put through its paces on relaxed but busy, fully crewed corporate shoot. Now a few of these issues will hopefully be addressed in new firmware updates, most of which should have been applied before the camera was launched but a couple of issues are unacceptable and Ill cover those first.
CAMERA SET UP:
FIRMWARE: V2.3
SHOOTING: 1080p Prores 422
CARDS: Lexar Professional 3400x 64GB CFAST 2.0
1) Pink noise corruption on clips: This happened at the tail end of the shoot, we were running behind a little and the camera had been on a crane for an opening piece. Only by chance did I ask for a playback check on the next set-up did we discover that the last four shots had pink screens. Without this fluke playback I would have got back to the edit with no opening shot to a film and have had to re-shoot costing thousands.
Now to make matters worse, the engineers report said that Black Magic are aware of this issue and have issue a work around. WHY WERE WE NOT INFORMED OF THIS?
There should have been an emergency mailing stating this to every owner, at least then we would be able to do what we could to stop this happening on expensive professional shoots.
For your information here is the workaround sent to me by the engineers to stop this issue.
'The workaround for this corrupted footage is to perform a short recording after every power cycle, and then to playback in camera. If the footage looks fine then all subsequent recordings will also be fine until the next power cycle of the camera.
In the real world, doing a playback test every time you power down is ridiculous!!!!!
2) The pull out screen is near useless in a daylight environment. The screen is so reflective that the DOP for the day spent the entire shoot on a hot, sunny day under a black drape just to operate the camera. The screen brightness isn't horrendous but the reflectivity make stye screen unusable.
3) We had an issue with the camera fixing to two separate VCT14 camera plates, the camera had to be forced onto both and then strapped down.
4). We could not get a LUT out of the Sdi’s, the agency were constantly asking why the image looked so poor.
5). No timecode control. This is a page one issue, why can we not control timecode, jamming to a sound recordist was hit and miss as the TC out never locked with the recordist kit properly and we only had time of day which was never viewable on any screen. I could set timecode on a camera 25 years ago...
6). The battery indicator doesn’t work with either IDX or SWIT batteries, the indicator said full until the camera died unexpectedly. BM replied by saying the indicator just indicates a battery is attached.....great so we have no warning when shooting until the camera dies. Once again 25 years ago we had a battery indicator.
7). No thumbnails or control over playback is a huge issue for playing back to director. Having thumbnails would have highlighted the corrupt files as well. My 6 year EX3 has thumbnails why not this camera?
The general opinion was, although the pictures are nice enough, the URSA is nowhere near ready for real world shooting, and the corruption issue is a complete no no. The basic timecode, battery indicator, LUTs issue should be addressed asap and large screen is a waste of time outside. Thankfully a viewfinder is on its way, but in all honesty unless I see a considerable advantage by swapping out to the mini, I will be asking for a refund and taking my money to Sony again.....
Sorry to be so damning on what could be a great little camera but playing Russian roulette on my shoots is not for me and it shouldn't be for you.
Kind regards
Jamie
Firstly I have been a DP for nearly 10 years and have spent 25 years in the television and film industry. In that time I have owned a lot of cameras. A couple of months back I bought into the idea of the URSA for the corporate arm of work that I was doing and a couple of weeks back the camera was put through its paces on relaxed but busy, fully crewed corporate shoot. Now a few of these issues will hopefully be addressed in new firmware updates, most of which should have been applied before the camera was launched but a couple of issues are unacceptable and Ill cover those first.
CAMERA SET UP:
FIRMWARE: V2.3
SHOOTING: 1080p Prores 422
CARDS: Lexar Professional 3400x 64GB CFAST 2.0
1) Pink noise corruption on clips: This happened at the tail end of the shoot, we were running behind a little and the camera had been on a crane for an opening piece. Only by chance did I ask for a playback check on the next set-up did we discover that the last four shots had pink screens. Without this fluke playback I would have got back to the edit with no opening shot to a film and have had to re-shoot costing thousands.
Now to make matters worse, the engineers report said that Black Magic are aware of this issue and have issue a work around. WHY WERE WE NOT INFORMED OF THIS?
There should have been an emergency mailing stating this to every owner, at least then we would be able to do what we could to stop this happening on expensive professional shoots.
For your information here is the workaround sent to me by the engineers to stop this issue.
'The workaround for this corrupted footage is to perform a short recording after every power cycle, and then to playback in camera. If the footage looks fine then all subsequent recordings will also be fine until the next power cycle of the camera.
In the real world, doing a playback test every time you power down is ridiculous!!!!!
2) The pull out screen is near useless in a daylight environment. The screen is so reflective that the DOP for the day spent the entire shoot on a hot, sunny day under a black drape just to operate the camera. The screen brightness isn't horrendous but the reflectivity make stye screen unusable.
3) We had an issue with the camera fixing to two separate VCT14 camera plates, the camera had to be forced onto both and then strapped down.
4). We could not get a LUT out of the Sdi’s, the agency were constantly asking why the image looked so poor.
5). No timecode control. This is a page one issue, why can we not control timecode, jamming to a sound recordist was hit and miss as the TC out never locked with the recordist kit properly and we only had time of day which was never viewable on any screen. I could set timecode on a camera 25 years ago...
6). The battery indicator doesn’t work with either IDX or SWIT batteries, the indicator said full until the camera died unexpectedly. BM replied by saying the indicator just indicates a battery is attached.....great so we have no warning when shooting until the camera dies. Once again 25 years ago we had a battery indicator.
7). No thumbnails or control over playback is a huge issue for playing back to director. Having thumbnails would have highlighted the corrupt files as well. My 6 year EX3 has thumbnails why not this camera?
The general opinion was, although the pictures are nice enough, the URSA is nowhere near ready for real world shooting, and the corruption issue is a complete no no. The basic timecode, battery indicator, LUTs issue should be addressed asap and large screen is a waste of time outside. Thankfully a viewfinder is on its way, but in all honesty unless I see a considerable advantage by swapping out to the mini, I will be asking for a refund and taking my money to Sony again.....
Sorry to be so damning on what could be a great little camera but playing Russian roulette on my shoots is not for me and it shouldn't be for you.
Kind regards
Jamie