OT: Building a broadcast studio with Blackmagic and Bob Zelin

[Tim Wilson]

[Ryan Holmes] “Tim, I’m no spring chicken here at the COW. There’s no way you don’t have an opinion about this! 🙂 I’ve been around long enough to know better….”

Hey, I admitted that it might be a first. LOL

I actually don’t have an opinion. I know a lot of facilities that have gone all-in, or nearly all-in, with Blackmagic, including the three Bob mentions. I know of a couple of Major Motion Picture Studios whose in-house is all-in with Blackmagic. I know of a couple of sports and concert arenas who are all-in. I haven’t heard a peep from any of my peeps in any of those places that anything is amiss.

But folks here say they’re having issues, so I asked. But I certainly don’t have any opinions on anyone’s reports of their own experiences! I mean, it’s one thing if I don’t respect the person’s understanding of the products or processes, but that’s not at all the case here.

[Ryan Holmes] “Maybe there’s room enough in the industry for both? Low margin player like BMD vs higher margin players like Canon/Apple/AJA?”

I think there is. I know that Canon is going great guns right now. You can see it in the ads here, but I also see it in the forums and out in the world. I’ve asked a number of consultants, resellers, etc, and they agree, Canon is on a massive roll.

But once they arrived, I’ve heard good things about the BMD cameras. And that’s certainly the reports from Bob’s clients for the Studio Camera. He mentions its limitations of course, as have others on this thread…but the price-performance ratio seems pretty compelling.

So, buyers being wary notwithstanding, that’s the kind of question I’m asking. Okay, disk recorders and some I/O have AJA alternatives. I asked about switchers — what about studio cameras?

And yeah, BMD’s first Teranex releases shipped late and with issues, but now? 12G-SDI up to UHD for $1395? Wow. And are people still having issues? And, seriously, who’s your alternative vendor? And for how much?

Again noting, I’m not passing judgement for once. (Or technically, now twice.) I’m just asking. Sure, pay more for security…but I’m really not aware of meaningful alternatives in a price range just a little more expensive. I think you have to get a lot more expensive…yes? Or…?

[Ryan Holmes]

[Andrew Kimery] “The rise of mobile devices and app stores were supposed to open the door for the little guy, and they did, unfortunately the door generally leads to a giant abyss. According to the following link the average iOS app price is between $0.99 and $1.50, 94% are free to install, and only 1% will be financially successful. Ouch.”

This was exactly what I was thinking about when I posed my original questions. It’s tangentially related to our discussion here. And much credit to Walter Soyka as I’ve found a good deal of smart critique in reading his posts. So I don’t claim to be original by any means…

But in looking at the App Store, as a user, if an App is priced at $9.99 or $4.99 I typically bypass it immediately. Too much money. So I drive towards the lowest cost app I can find and deal with the shortcomings. Overall in the app store market then those apps that are trying to hold on to make a profit by charging for better interface, more features, or better support get relegated to being unprofitable because another company is chewing the bottom out by offering a $.99, or more typically a free app.

Bringing this around to BMD, what is the cost 5 years in or 10 years into this model for our industry in terms of hardware or software? The effects do already seem to be playing out – Apple, Adobe, Avid, and Autodesk have all drastically lowered their costs for software. Apple – $299 one time purchase, Adobe – $50/month for the entire Master Collection plus additional goodies (Lightroom, Candy, Kuler, etc), Avid Media Composer – $50/month or $1600 outright, Autodesk (which is a mess right now) – Smoke $1,470/year. Those are drastically cheaper prices. And I don’t want to argue that BMD’s business model is the result of this. There’s a confluence of factors driving business decisions. But I do think BMD’s approach is at least one of the factors other companies are considering when building and marketing products.

[Tim Wilson] “I think there is. I know that Canon is going great guns right now. You can see it in the ads here, but I also see it in the forums and out in the world. I’ve asked a number of consultants, resellers, etc, and they agree, Canon is on a massive roll.”

Yep. Canon has a lot of my money right now. C100, C300, 5D3, and just yesterday purchased a set of Canon CN-E primes from Duclos Lenses (great lens shop by the way!)…so basically I’m a Canon homer at this point, I guess. But for so much of the work I do their product offerings nail exactly what I need – sharp image, high/clean ISO, portable, fast menu access via outboard buttons (I’m looking at you Sony and Panasonic), good run ‘n gun ergonomics, etc.

[Tim Wilson] “So, buyers being wary notwithstanding, that’s the kind of question I’m asking. Okay, disk recorders and some I/O have AJA alternatives. I asked about switchers — what about studio cameras?”

I don’t know that there are cost comparative options for BMD’s studio offerings either. Like you say, there aren’t moderately more expensive products on the market. Typically you have to spend a whole lot more or modify an existing camera to “act” like a studio camera. But that by itself doesn’t mean that BMD’s products are good, only that they are inexpensive. Again, if money is the driving factor for the purchase then BMD wins nearly every time.

Having owned the 4K Production Camera I’m very leery of BM’s quality in that segment. Every time we shot the camera my crew would say, “Well….it only cost $3K” in order to justify whatever inadequacy it was presenting us. I’m sure they’re getting better at cameras, but I’m currently not willing to “find out” by placing my cash there. In the year plus I owned that camera (just sold it off about 3 weeks ago) the firmware strides that they made were remarkable. And to their testament, they did seem to provide continuing support for the product via firmware updates. That’s something I don’t think the Japanese camera makers value nearly as much. Sony/Panny/Canon treat their camera like a car. You buy that year’s model and that’s it. If you like the new model, sell the old one and buy the new one. But they’re not going to unpack additional functionality via firmware updates (though Panasonic has addressed the GH4 market pretty well with firmware updates…so maybe positions are changing?).

Quite possibly BMD don’t need to “support” the products the way an AJA does because they don’t cost enough. So if your breaks, just go buy another one. If BMD is selling commodity hardware they may figure it’s not worth dumping millions into fast, reliable support workers because they expect the end user to just buy a second one because the costs are so low. And honestly, that’s what I’ve done with their products. I don’t treat them like a long term investment. I treat them like a one off product that will be replaced in 2-3 years time when it fails. Buy a $995 ATEM today, when it burns out in a year or two, buy another one for $995. And even then, I’m still no where close to the cost of a Ross, Grass Valley, Tricaster, etc price tag. For some of my builds, cost pushes me towards BMD products.

[Tim Wilson] “Hey, I admitted that it might be a first. LOL”

Fair enough. I just didn’t want some new video person reading this thread be under any disillusionment about who The Tim Wilson is! It could be dangerous for them thinking Mr. Wilson has no opinions! ha ha

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Shawn Miller]

[Ryan Holmes] “Every time we shot the camera my crew would say, “Well….it only cost $3K” in order to justify whatever inadequacy it was presenting us.”

Hey Ryan,

Just out of curiosity, what kind of issues were you running into with the BMPC 4k?

Shawn

[Ryan Holmes]

[Shawn Miller] “Just out of curiosity, what kind of issues were you running into with the BMPC 4k? “

Persistent problems – internal electrical grounding issues when running off of an external battery which resulted in static being recorded on the audio track, horrible internal battery, sensor dynamic range was poor in terms of ISO (200, 400, or 800, and 800 being unusable due to fix-pattern noise) and overall usability (about 8 stops, similar to the AJA CION because they share the same sensor), and ergonomics are non-existent (like the Cinema Camera so we knew that going in). And not so much a problem, but an aesthetic choice…the footage from BMD looked a bit too sharp for my taste. And not sharpness as in focus but the look and feel of the footage does appear different when compared side by side to our C300. I tend to enjoy the look of Canon more than BMD (but see above…I’m a homer 🙂

Things that drove us nuts until the firmware was updated – not being able to format a SSD in the camera, not having multiple choices of ProRes (not everything needs ProRes HQ), not being able to delete clips from the SSD from within the camera, not telling the shooter how much space/time was left on the disc, the LCD screen on the back being absolute garbage in any environment beyond a dark room (though this is still a problem as it’s just the hardware they sourced).

6 months into owning the camera we added a C100. Once that happened the BM Production Camera just started to collect dust because nobody took it out. So after using it a couple times this year, I decided we should just cut our losses and move on. One benefit is that I got a full copy of Resolve out of it… 🙂

DISCLAIMER: This is not to say the camera is junk or awful or unusable. Far from it. We shot some great stuff with it (and the built in time lapse feature is totally killer and should be included by more manufacturers). For our workflow and our style it didn’t fit. It needs a lot of light to work well and it needs time to be setup properly. As a corollary it doesn’t do well with quick run ‘n gun style shooting, which can be a part of my corporate work life.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Shawn Miller]

[Ryan Holmes] “Persistent problems – internal electrical grounding issues when running off of an external battery…”

Thanks Ryan, those are serious issues. I’ve had great experiences with the Pocket Cinema Camera and the 2.5k Cinema Camera, so I was on the fence about the Production Camera 4k, so much so that BMD announced the Ursa Mini at just about the time I made up my mind to try it. Now, I think I’ll wait to see how the 4.6k Ursa Mini shakes out.

[Ryan Holmes] “As a corollary it doesn’t do well with quick run ‘n gun style shooting, which can be a part of my corporate work life.”

Same here. I use the more conventional AF100 in my corporate day job, but I use the BMD cameras for personal projects. The downside is that I seem to be losing my tolerance for 8bit, 4:2:0 images. So much so that I frequently find myself wondering why Panasonic, Sony, Canon, et al can’t seem to deliver 10bit, 4:2:2 compressed or 12bit raw images for less than the cost of an economy car.

Shawn