Luc

Also, apparently full control of the camera through Bluetooth (I was hoping for a regular remote control port like on  other Blackmagic cameras, but that's ok).

From the BM site: (since same OS as Ursa, it should work)

"You can even enter the slate information wirelessly via Bluetooth from an iPad using the Blackmagic Camera Control application!"

I saw a demo of the trailer processed in HDR from the source material, on a 4k Sony hdr compatible TV. Quite a show case for the technology. The landscape and skies looked great. I just hope they don't push the tech too far with some horrible tone-mapping. 

Very nice video. It looks good on a 4K display. Downloaded the 1GB MP4 file from Vimeo (just need a free login account).

Quicktime struggles a bit with it (it might be the 50Mbps bitrate), but VLC plays is smoothly.

Can't wait to have a GH4 at the office.

Interesting.

 

VLC not working for me (2013 iMac 27")

 

What graphics does your mid 2012 MBP retina have?

 

What version of VLC?

I think it didn't work for me at first, then I trashed the preferences ("Reset All" I believe) and then it worked.

No scrubbing though.

Just about any modern display these days IS a "retina" screen, whether it's on a mobile phone or laptop or PC. Apple seems to have created an amazing mystique around the term retina, when all it really means is moderately high pixel density compared to viewing distance.

I think the key element that people are missing is the 'retina rendering mode' (basically supersampling the UI and text elements, and native resolution for content). Maybe they haven't experienced it. Actual resolution of computer screen will become irrelevant, you just chose the quality of the rendering you want (or can achieve). I think on the Mac, it's nicely done. On windows, the UI scaling is always kind of clunky (at least when I tried it on a yoga levono tablet or a desktop with a 4K panel attached).

What is the point of 15Mbs 4k? Show of hands, how many people are sitting at a 4k screen right now?

I do, for 11months and it's great. Till someone hasn't sat in front of a 4K panel, take their opinion with a grain of salt.

39" 4K on a desktop is great, driven in 'retina rendering mode' it's even better: i.e. text and UI scaled to the size HD and retina enabled applications rendering their content in native resolution: editing HD video in FCPX, it means your HD video is in native resolution in a quarter of the screen, and the UI elements are rendered beautifully at correct size.

The same for Adobe softwares: editing D800 pictures in Lightroom and PS CC in retina mode is great.

And the new generation of displays available now are making it easy to drive them at 60p (see Dell, Samsung, ...).

Blackmagic has been mostly a production company, providing gear for broadcast people for a long time (way before any camera or buying other companies to provide a complete worflow). You can't blame them too much for providing to their original user base.

See they even bought Cintel for their film scanner, sold now at $30K.

How is that possible? AFAIK, HDMI is only specified for transferring an 8bit video signal at 1080p and the other two bits of the interface are reserved for control information?!?

HDMI 1.3:

• Deep Color: HDMI 1.3 supports 10-bit, 12-bit and 16-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depths, up from the 8-bit depths in previous versions of the HDMI specification, for stunning rendering of over one billion colors in unprecedented detail.

I don't think you have any idea BMD works.. They aren't looking to be bought out and they definitely won't go belly up. The BMD cameras are only a small part of their business and have been a respected company for a long long time for other products they make at also highly competative prices.. How do this? By buying other businesses with tech they want and then bribging a highly polished product to market at insanely low prices compared to the competition.

They aren't going anywhere an it's funny how several prople question their business strategy when it's been highly effective for so long.
 

Exactly ! That annoys me too.

It's an approach they've done before. They disrupted the market where people are making insane margins.

They bought Davinci, and made it affordable. They bought Teranex  and made their products affordable. They regularly decrease the price of their SDI switches. They regularly decrease the price of their capture cards and adapt to their customers with new models. You get video production equipment for half or a third of their competitors.

They are just building a whole ecosystem for movie and broadcast production...

Today, in the BM forums, from their spoke person:

"The team tells me that we are still on track to start shipping before the end of July. I'm not sure if there will be more of an official update than that within the next week, but for anyone in the LA area, we will have cameras at our event on Thursday if you want to check them out"

I'd have appreciated if BMD's communication would have been more like "our ideal plan is to start shipping in July and we will keep you updated on how production progresses. We would like to avoid the situation we have encountered with the first camera by any means and, even though we've taken all necessary measures, we prefer to be a bit on the reserved side with our announcements."

BM's CEO has done that several times over the last year in blackmagic's forums, with great details on why the delays exists and how they try to solve them.

Luc

I love BM products and use them for a long time (capture card, converters, sdi switchers, ...), but the delay on their first camera is in no way their first ! Ask people who waited on the H264 encoder or the 4K capture/playback card. People have been waiting over a year for these too.

Also, they have been buying out small companies, and realeasing their products for much cheaper, to complete their offering (Teranex, DaVinci, ...).

It's really an engineering company trying to shake things down, and they are learning along the way.

Really wish the small camera comes this summer, and might even get one !

Luc