- Posts: 376
- Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:54 pm
- Real Name: Donald Austin
Storage Rates
Storage rates based on 30 frames per second.
4096 x 2160
Blackmagic RAW 3:1 - 135 MB/s
Blackmagic RAW 5:1 - 81 MB/s
Blackmagic RAW 8:1 - 51 MB/s
Blackmagic RAW 12:1 - 34 MB/s
Blackmagic RAW Q0 - 81 to 203 MB/s *
Blackmagic RAW Q5 - 21 to 58 MB/s **
Apple ProRes 422 HQ - 117.88 MB/s
Apple ProRes 422 - 78.63 MB/s
Apple ProRes 422 LT - 54.63 MB/s
Apple ProRes Proxy - 24.25 MB/s
Remember that the 300MB/s spec quoted for your cards is the reading speed when transferring data off the card. The write speed is only guaranteed to be U3 (i.e. reliable at 30MB/s) but is likely to be much more. I have tested my Sandisk 170MB/s cards on a fast USB3 reader and they consistently get write speeds of around 80MB/s - yours may do better. If so, then you will probably be OK (subject to testing!) with 5:1 or Q5 or ProRes 422 but will almost certainly need an SSD or CFast card for the top spec write speeds on the BMPCC4K, especially if you also need UHD 60fps.
Also, you will find 64GB to be nowhere near big enough if you really need Q0 or 3:1, which will give you around 9 minutes minutes recording time for UHD at 24fps for a 64GB card, which improves to around 37 minutes for Q5 or 12:1. Of course a faster fps will proportionally reduce those estimates accordingly.
I concluded personally that I needed CFast cards, but I keep the old SD cards handy as emergency overflow storage only to be used for UHD with Q5/12:1 at 24fps.