SSD recording has become quite popular in the film and video community. This is probably due to the incredible success Atomos has had with their monitor-recorders, which have become commonplace mainly with the DSLR-shooting crowd. But while RED was pretty early to adopt SSDs (albeit proprietary ones) into their workflow, other manufacturers haven’t been following suit throughout their whole range of cameras. Blackmagic has released a recorder to take steps and change this (see announcement here). So is SSD recording on the URSA Mini now a thing? Blackmagic Design’s SSD recorder for the URSA Mini cameras Some context Blackmagic has come a long way since the introduction of their first URSA-branded camera in 2014. Following the introduction of the URSA Mini 4K, the URSA Mini 4.6K and more recently the URSA Mini Pro and Broadcast have garnered a tremendous following, both, among professionals as well as enthusiasts and the short-film-low-budget-crowd. Of course, this has partly been due to the more affordable price tag, compared to other offerings like the Canon C300Mk II, RED Raven and Canon C200, but also the ability to shoot CinemaDNG Raw in 12bit natively, without the need for an additional recorder. Yet, where the recently announced Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K offers the innovative ability to record to external SSDs via USB-C, the URSA cameras still have to rely on CFast 2.0 cards, which despite all price drops, still break the bank for more frugal filmmakers. Although Blackmagic’s own recorder fits the URSA Mini nicely, the...
Published By: CineD - Monday, 27 August, 2018