Okee finnaly was able to put my Ursa Broadcast to the truck today.. Played a bit with it and found a few quirks..
First off, Tryed to get the camera into 2160P50 mode.. But it did not want to go there.. I was like why not? 30P was the maximum i could get out of it.. After searching for a while in the camera menu i found out that not all codecs allow you to go 2160P out.. DNxHD only allows for 1080P HD mode.. Prores only allows up to 30P. When set to RAW recording. Then 2160P 50/60 gets unlocked..
Guess it has to do with encoding of the data that it does not allow 2160P50 while running Prores or DNxHD(HR) But i was quite disapointent to find out i'm not able to record other then RAW when running 2160P50 live setup.. (Guess this will change when other codecs come trough.. DNxHR )
But would be nice that if you try to set a setting that is not allowed by the codec that you would just get a popup warning you that is not possible.. Instead of guess why not.. **Could have read the manual.. But hey i'm a tech guy
It is my flaw to test and play before RTFM....
Then i connected it dual SDI to run Shading.. I had switched the Atem to 1080 because of what i wrote above here..
Set my Atem 4ME to 3G Level A because of my SDI > HDMI converters don't handle level B very well..
Only to find out my Return did not work at all at the camera.. So level A on the input is not supported (FW5.0 out of the box) I have to wait for my USB-C cable to come in to do the latest FW update.. Which mentioned something about Level A support.
Alright set MV outputs to a different standard and gone back to Level B.. Camera did not react yet.. While having return video on PGM.. It did not do shading.. So back into the menu.. Only to find out that for some reason it did not save the Camera ID to 1.. But was at Cam ID 99..
Not sure how that happend.. I was quite sure that i put it back to ID 1 before leaving the menu.. But OK. 1 it is again and yes the cam imiditaly gone into purple overdrive..
Yes i had set the colors very purple to see a difference.. haha..
What is quite strange is that you can go as high as ID 99..
Would that mean something is coming that need that much channels? Some way of routing Control ID's ?? Who will know right..
Okee then tryed a couple of different analog lenses.. All seem to suffer from the choppy Iris function.. Which is not good at all.. Hope they will fix this soon.. As of now it won't work for anyone used to shading broadcast cameras.. As Sony, JVC, Panasonic all do this very very smooth..
Also i do hope they will integrate the Continues Auto Iris function soon.. With B4 lenses you have a little bit of light loss at the end.. Not that strong as with a photolens.. But when i have it at F4 You can see when zooming in all the way it will get a little bit darker at the end.. It should in fact compensate for this in stand alone mode to keep the lighting level the same by opening up the iris a bit.
Then some things to note on the Software Shading panel.. I already thoughed this was a issue when i was working on my Shading converter for Sony Panasonic and JVC.. But now with the Ursa my issues are confirmed..
- Color wheels are way to coarse.. The image of the camera turns too rapid to a huge color difference.. With a correction of 0.05 you already have a very tint of color over your image..
In the middle the level of correction migh be a bit less to have a better change of subtile corrections.
- Iris Control Black level changes to easy when tring to adjust iris.. Ofcourse you can push CTRL or SHIFT button to hold fix 1.. But it would be good to have a blacklevel lock button. So when Black Level is locked only the iris is going..
- The Coarse slider next to the Iris slider does not make sense at all.. It only limits / reduces the top level of your iris control. At a sony RCP when you kick down the coarse slider (turn a knob) It will narrow the level you can change with a full swing of the iris handle.. But it does based on where the Iris slider is at that moment. So if you say oke this is my default iris value for today.. Then go from coarse to fine.. And from that piont on your full iris swing will do +50 -50 maximum instead of +1000 - 1000.. The current Coarse to fine does reduce your level from Iris closed to F12.. What can i do with that ??? Because you are already pushing the Cam to +6db for most venues.. And then i can i get a range from F12 to F18/closed... Not very usefull.
- When openend up the 3 wheel color corrector.. The 4 sliders below it (Contrast, Saturation, Hue, RGB) dont have a reset on them.. To reset them to default you have to reset the whole Channel. A simple right click while hovering above the control would be enough to reset the value to factory default.. This is how they do it on 90% of the software i know..
So far my conclusions on the Ursa Broadcast on the Atem 4ME for so far.. Next friday we have a full day of playing and testing with the Ursa next to a Grass Valley LDK8000 to compare shading and light sensivity.. Could be fun to see..