Blackmagic Camera for iPhone
blackmagicdesign.com
blackmagicdesign.com
Kudos to Blackmagic.
(Resolve can also work 100% offline, with the license dongle, and is buy-once, not subscriptionware like Premiere. I am a very happy Blackmagic customer.)
This just looks like it’ll drop the low end of that range even lower.
They made true interoperable raw video format a selling point of their BMPCC lineup, only to irreversibly cripple units later by removing CinemaDNG support after the fact. This dramatically narrowed toolchain options (mostly to Blackmagic’s own software suite), effectively making cameras useless for enthusiast FOSS videographers. Furthermore, the hush-hush way they pulled it off using a firmware update says something about their ethical standards, so as a rule I’m not using their products anymore.
The fact that they offer a cheap software product of their own (even with a free version) in no way justifies removing features (especially support for an open format with a thriving FOSS ecosystem) in a camera that they already sold.
It's not clear if this was a choice. RED has a patent on in-camera loseless RAW that is compressed, and have been aggressively going after other camera makers (including Nikon) for offering the feature.
To my knowledge, Nikon and RED are the only brands that offer in-camera compressed loseless RAW, and Nikon settled with RED [1].
BRAW is okay as it is lossy (not loseless).
Other RAW formats from brands in video are not compressed in-camera.
[1]: https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/04/28/red-patent-lawsuit-ag...
CinemaDNG doesn’t have to be compressed.
> BRAW is okay as it is lossy (not loseless).
BM chose to go not from compressed CDNG to uncompressed CDNG, but from compressed CDNG to no CDNG at all. This is a significant reduction in processing pipeline options for those using open-source or truly free raw photography software in their work.
> The CEO confirmed it was due to patent infringement claims by Nikon
Assuming that’s true, what they have done is they made their customers pay for their legal snafu. Perhaps it’s legal in your jurisdiction to sell a product advertising a specific feature and then remove that feature post-fact (in hardware people already own!), but it’s certainly not a great look. Based on their course of action and their (almost nonexistent) communication on this issue, it’s very difficult to have any sympathy towards the company.
This is the downside to patents and patent infringement. It happened with Google home speakers and Sonos, where I used to be able to tell google to play a song "whole home" and now I cannot do that any longer. I think this might be a bit of a new normal, and I'm sure this is allowed by the license agreement to ensure that patent infringements are not death sentences.
On the other hand, capture format is a principal consideration when audio or photo equipment is concerned. Decisions are literally based on whether, say, an audio recorder supports WAV and whether it’s 24 or 32 bit.
It’s hard to draw a parallel with a consumer device, but imagine if Sonos completely removed Google Assistant, Alexa, or AirPlay 2 support (based off the specs section of Sonos One). Their legal department didn’t do their research, they didn’t feel like paying licensing fees, so they thought they’d just implement a similar platform themselves. They’d issue a firmware update where they wouldn’t mention this at all, you’d apply it and lo and behold. Would you be sympathetic to their cause? Knowing that they were also in the business of selling high-margin, very expensive professional-grade equipment to Hollywood studios, would you consider this kind of treatment something other than a ripoff? Would you still consider them “awesome” and their CEO “fantastic” if they just provided you with a free version of their commercial closed-source software (some features behind a paywall)?
That feature was advertised on the in-store endcap display where I bought the google speaker. It was the only reason I bought five of them.
The rest of the story is identical. Ship an infringing product, be forced to retract the feature to mitigate damages and so on.
> Would you be sympathetic to their cause?
I'm not sympathetic to Google or any other company that takes a feature away for customers to mitigate damages in a patent dispute. It really sucks to be a customer when it happens. But I do understand how it happens, and why, ultimately Google had no choice but to remove the feature. I'm also glad they did the right thing because in the case of Google, Sonos could have went after Google's customers, too... and I don't ever want a free patent lawsuit with my $29 speaker.
This is like saying that an ad for a camera means you will be granted pretty models to take photos of.
Again, it is not a tech spec for a smart speaker, and never was. If you sincerely believe so, I am sympathetic; modern life is hard. If you don’t then try responding to my analogy instead.
> I'm not sympathetic to Google or any other company that takes a feature away
Again, in this case RED did not take any feature away after the fact—BM simply didn’t do their research ahead of time. They made a buck selling cameras by advertising a specific feature, then took it away when things got hot. Meanwhile, another camera manufacturer keeps selling cameras with this exact feature for years. There’s just nothing to be said and no passing the buck can make it look good.
2) Google had to remove the patented feature. I don’t know how many times it should be reiterated in this thread that Blackmagic did not have to remove CinemaDNG support—again, it’s not a patented feature, there are cameras using it just fine. This move (removing support for the only open raw video standard) is anti-FOSS and designed in order to lock users into their proprietary ecosystem.
People keep drawing parallels with other patent lawsuits (and I for some reason keep wasting time looking into it—try doing own research, please), yet inevitably it only highlights how bad Blackmagic’s move was. There’s just nothing to be said and no passing the buck can make it look good for them.
[0] https://completemusicupdate.com/google-restores-functionalit...
I just did a hey google, "play my favorites playlist whole home"
Google's reply:
"Sorry, I can only play music on one speaker at a time."
Neither Nikon nor RED are mentioned in the source you link.
While I wish they would have been able to keep the compressed CDNG, BRAW is great to work with. Sigma FP (great camera too), as you mentioned elsewhere, does uncompressed CDNG. The data rates fo 4k 12bit uncompressed CDNG are pretty shocking - 2400Mbit/s. At that point you can't record it internally anymore and can only record on a fast SSD. It could be nice to have that as an option on Blackmagic cameras too, but to be honest I don't miss it since BRAW arrived - the files get huge.
It's a shame RED was awarded a patent for in-camera lossless compressed RAW video. Even Apple tried to sue them and lost.
> forced by RED patents - they for some obscure reason have been able to patent compressed raw video
RED’s patent is a travesty, but no one forced BM to drop CDNG. They could go for uncompressed CDNG, or pay RED (like what I assume Apple has done in order to implement ProRAW). Perhaps they could even do their research before they advertised and sold all those units. Their haphazard decision to drop CDNG post-fact in favour of their own proprietary format without any communication shows lack of forethought at best, scammy tendencies at worst, and in any case blatant disregard for their paying customers.
> the files get huge.
The files are huge either way. BRAW doesn’t mean you don’t have to buy that new HDD if you want to work with raw video. Besides, converting a DNG to a compressed DNG without any loss would have been a trivial production step.
What matters is losing an open format and the entire software toolchain that works with it. Even if you personally didn’t use FOSS raw development software, it was an option with a lot of potential. BM silently took away such option, leaving only BM’s own proprietary toolchain.
We can thank Microsoft for this clause in modern licensing agreements, because that little "it's a free product, you get no royalties! haha!" is what Microsoft did to the original 3rd party developer of Internet Explorer, when Microsoft introduced the concept of free web browsers, and then free enterprise class corporate software in a competitive move against their competitors.
Furthermore, BM’s software is not free. It is a commercial suite that currently costs $300 (an inexpensive price point, likely subsidized by selling $xxx–$xxxxx hardware controllers without which Resolve is moderately painful to use). They do offer at no cost a limited version where certain features spawn a “please buy” pop-up; in return for that limited version they collect plenty of personal data including your full name, email, phone number and the company you work for. I know this all because I have in fact used Resolve (frankly it’s been somewhat buggy on macOS though), have you?
From what I remember from when this was happening, new 4K Pocket units started shipping that could not be downgraded a few months after the change. Many people were upset because the product pages or boxes still advertised CinemaDNG, but the cameras were incapable of it.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app-privacy-details/
The only caveat is that it's developer-published information that Apple doesn't verify.
Well you can guess what would happen if you get caught lying or cheating. Apple didn't hesitate to remove Epic's or Facebook's apps in the past.
Been a user of their hardware and software for years, nothing but good things to say about it.
If every little kid trying to edit game clips or home movies does so in Davinci Resolve because it’s easier and safer than cracking Premiere or Final Cut, it eventually becomes cheaper for companies to also use Resolve, rather than retrain people.
For the same reason, Microsoft never really aggressively curtailed Windows piracy. Better to have a pirated user demanding Windows at the workplace than a user demanding macOS.
And question for others, while I'm at it. What was it about Blackmagic cameras or software (or company) that "broke the curve of what you could get for the same $" versus like RED or whoever expensive studio cameras? Did they do something clever with the hardware and controls to get much more out of consumer grade sensors? Or did they make tradeoffs that you eventually hit against when you try to use their cameras for real professional high-duty purposes?
They pack a lot of features for cheap that usually are found in more expensive cameras. Check feature comparisons for the Pocket 4K or 6K with pricier cameras like the A7S III or later. Their camera UI is by far one of the best designed ones compared to Sony or Panasonic. You get to use their efficient BRAW codec. And they include a copy of the Studio version of DaVinci Resolve.
This isn't even remotely true. Nobody at that scale just hacks it together. That sort of approach works for articles on various hardware hacking websites, not for real-life design and manufacturing of products.
> such as image sensors designed for other uses (such as smartbombs and guided missiles)
I'd assume comment above was satire
They're hacking together extremely professionally, but I'd imagine many engineers at BMD consider themselves hacking and what they do to be hacking, but I don't have access to any. I'd say my general premise is true though.
I am amazed...by some of the comments.
This isn't a garage operation with a bunch of dudes hacking on a plywood workbench. This is a real engineering organization with a well-optimized process and enough vertical integration to deliver excellent products at scale. That's how you do what they do.
It is always interesting to watch people on HN, who obviously know very little about anything outside of hacking software, talk about making physical products. There's another thread on the first page about the realities of making a single plastic part. Read it. <sarcasm>It was obviously hacked together.</sarcasm>
Good for you. Don't confuse an optimized process for "hacking". Don't diminish their accomplishments that way.
I have lots of history with this company, including being personal friends with one of the founders for the last twenty years (as in, I stay at his home when I visit). They don't hack shit together. They have optimized an efficient engineering and manufacturing process.
There's a simple reality in physical product engineering: The engineering process is directly related to product quality and reliability, which, in turn, is directly connected to failure rates and support/service load. A product that is hacked together will, at scale, invariably result in a bad quality and reliability along with a massive support load. This is not a financially viable approach at scale, not at all.
Sure, one can hack things together during initial ideation and product definition. This, in the context of a solid product development process, is a normal aspect of almost any engineering organization, from consumer to aerospace. However, once enough is learned about the available solutions and approaches, not entering into a well-run engineering process is a costly mistake. No successful organization at scale hacks products together, it just doesn't happen.
Hacking something together - and then refining it - is how many good products are designed.
"Blackmagic just hack it together and make it work"
That is patently false.
An effect of BMD's "hacking" is that on occasion obvious bugs have crept into their products, such as the infamous "black hole sun" issue in the early cameras, whereby extreme overexposure caused by pointing the camera at the sun resulted in the capture of it showing it as black rather than white - https://neiloseman.com/blackmagic-production-camera-field-re... Issues like this can be avoided with more rigorous testing in development rather than fixes in firmware and in Resolve after the fact, which was what was suggested. No doubt an artefact caused by the hack-y nature of the products at the time.
Plus the clue is in the name - it's Blackmagic.
Finally, go into the office if you're such an intimate. "a garage operation with a bunch of dudes hacking on a plywood workbench" will be pretty close to what you find. Just once those dudes have banged their heads together, they write phenomenal code late into the night to get the thing made.
Interesting. Do you have any sources on this? Afaik smart bombs don't use cutting edge professional cinema camera class sensors but aerospace ones which are much older, lower-res and rudimentary but well tested over the years.
When BMD bought Da Vinci, they got a huge acquihire leg up on color science. Recording RAW at the sizes cinema cameras do requires fast storage that just wasn't cheap when RED/Alexa came about. Even with cheap storage, neither of those companies are going to debase themselves by lowering prices. There's a lot of technical reasons why BMD cameras can be cheaper, but the main reason is corporate ethos at BMD is totally different than other players.
I mostly work in Resolve so I'm partial to BM and appreciative of their work if it helps to establish neutrality (though I'm also experienced in baselight, flame, etc).
Reach for the tools you can! BMD can create great looking imagery when treated properly.
They make the sensors found in nearly every Blackmagic camera and are now taking a large part of the market with Venice and the FX9. No one has ever accused Arri of being arbitrarily expensive because their product is simply the best, perfectly manufactured, and totally reliable
Blackmagic is excellent for the industry and I use Resolve professionally
It's hilarious to read this since the opposite was true in the beginning; Red was the one cutting corners to reach really low prices.
really low when compared to what? $50k USD for a camera body is not really low prices. $1500 USD for a memory card is not really low.
What they're doing with pricing today, I have no idea, but when Red hit the scene in 2007, not only did the price get a lot of attention, but it motivated the entire industry to take 4k digital video seriously. Every major manufacturer of professional cinema cameras would soon release their own competitive cameras with similar features to the Red One.
The BMPCC4k prioritised having RAW, 4k, and being affordable. They cost 2-3k new at the time, competing with cameras that cost 15k and up. Raw is a massive, massive deal, and I argue is the thing separating pro gear from amateur.
Their image quality and color science is arguably "less good" than Arri or RED, but the difference is imperceptible for 99% of people.
Unless you're shooting someone juggling fire in a pitch black room, the images coming out of their cameras are as good as you can hope for.
I shoot documentary, and I just do not see a reason to buy another camera. It's just "chefs kiss"
Also, Resolve Studio¹ is just a $300 one-time payment. So far, updates have always been free.
¹ https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/stu...
Something that makes a video look amateurish, it's the phone trying its best to prioritise a 'clear image', but that means changing parameters mid-recording.
Now, this isn't bad, it's ideal for someone who doesn't want to lose the moment without worrying about choosing the right setting (imagine a parent recording their child's recital or soccer game). But the trade-off is that it looks choppy.
But if you're in a controlled environment, you can set a fixed exposure (balance between ISO, shutter speed and aperture), framerate, bit-depth, focus distance, colour temperature and microphone gain depending on your intent.
As an example, image you want to have a high-contrast image with a dark silluette of someone and a bright background like a sunset, the default phone camera app will try to guess whether you want to focus on the subject or the background, and will switching between the two randomly. With manual control, you can chose, whatch you want.
A prime example of this is leaving autofocus on when you're moving about. There's many YouTubers who haven't yet learnt this lesson and it can make the video unwatchable.
But it's a slow and smooth motion without any focus breathing intended to highlight an object or an actor, not just autofocus hunting to find something
A dedicated person, called a focus puller, has a remote with a wheel on the side. By turning this wheel the focus puller can remotely control the focus ring of the lens.
The remote usually allows the focus puller to set the maximum range of motion with A/B points. The system doesn't automatically execute the focus pull, but with the hard stops at the A/B points the focus puller can make sure they don't overshoot the target.
Back then the focus puller would use a remote connected by a cable, which is why you see a focus puller running behind the steadicam op in that video.
That's why while you've got A/B points set and marks set on the focus control, you still need a human.
Focus can be controlled manually on the iPhone (in 3rd party apps).
Depending on various conditions (lighting, lens choice, etc) there might be a very large distance range that is in focus - or it might just be a few inches. Even if the focus puller isn’t doing any big focus swings, they are likely making small adjustments.
Read the Foreword written by Gerald Sussman (SICP author) of the book The Little Schemer.
The most beautiful Foreword I have ever read so far.
¹(The Foreword talks about photography a little bit).
I''m sure modern neural nets would do a decent job of simulating what a frame taken with one iso/shutter/focus would look like with a slightly different iso/shutter/focus.
Second, modern neural nets are good, but not perfect. I can reliably tell if something was shot with real bokeh, or simulated via software. For serious productions like a commercial shoot, nobody wants to change the shutter speed, aperture, etc in shoot: the DP already knows what look they want before they start filming.
I'm sure it would quickly learn to add/remove motion blur on moving things as appropriate.
This video explains it nicely I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAh83khT1no
If you are starting out with good data (e.g. 32bit exr workflow), you would be amazed how powerfully and easily you can control what you want and what the possibilities are, with tools like MagicBullet (which offer presets to get you the cinema look with just a mouse click). But if you work long enough in this area you can discover your own workflow and pull it off without these tools, e.g. play with hue&sat, white balance adjustments, the curves, introducing an S-curve for example, color wheels, etc.
to my (literal) perception, using a framerate of 24 frames per second is an even more significant requirement to get the "cinematic Hollywood look".
The overall frame rate gives you the distinction between a typical movie vs a TV-style documentary. The overall frame rate stays fixed across a movie and should normally not be changed.
I can't wait when Hollywood moves to 120fps or better.
I guess it is similar for higher frame rates - it just shows the shortcomings.
I think if the film industry committed to higher frame rates we would have seen massive improvements over the years.
Personally I'm not enough of a film buff to notice the difference. Apparently film enthusiasts do notice, and care a great deal, though.
For whatever psychological reason, 24 fps "suggests" reality but without "being" reality, kind of like being in a dream, and our brains pay attention to story and action.
While 60+ fps "approaches" reality and it simply starts to feel both uncomfortably real and uncomfortably fake. Uncomfortably real because it feels too much like real-life and we don't have enough of a mental distinction between fantasy and reality, and uncomfortably fake because it looks like a bunch of actors acting and moving in ways that aren't the ways people act and move in real life. It's uncanny valley.
Nobody really knows why our brains respond this way psychologically. They just do.
So for fictional movie/TV content, higher fps is not better. 24/30 is chosen for a very good reason.
(On the other hand, news and sports do great with higher fps, because there's nothing fake trying to be passed off as real.)
Its actually fairly neat and cool that they put time and money into this app to further their ecosystem. I guess theres a large overlap of people that film with iphones and also want to buy a legitimately good, budget cinema camera in the pocket 4k/6k.
I don't know HN's opinion of blackmagic, but they do some pretty cool stuff. With the purchase of a camera they include Davinci Resolve which is a fully featured Adobe Premier Pro rival. For reference premier pro is $21 a month, and the cheapest blackmagic cinema cam is the pocket 4k which comes in at $1200, after 5 years you have a free camera (thats still actively updated) if you consider Resolve to be equivalent to Premier Pro. Also they've constantly pushed the industry to be more affordable. They were pretty much the first that let you use a consumer usb c SSD to record raw formats. When the camera released, you could get 1tb samsung T5's for around $100, while one of their rivals RED cameras made you purchase a proprietary SSD that still costs $1500 for 480GB. Also in terms of affordability, it wasn't unheard of for a cinema camera to charge thousands of dollars to be able to use a cinemaDNG raw or ProRes, yet blackmagic cameras came with multiple raw recording options for free.
That's also included with the speed editor, which is ~$400 and provides an awesome input device for Resolve.
Lightning:
- Edge or back lightning, if dramatic
- Wraparaound (cradle) lighting, if for pleasantness
- Low key look for interiors (no white walls)
- Artificial light needs to be motivated as much as possible
Set design
- Add bankers light for any money related film, normal table light for anything else
Lens
- Anamorphics to avoid perspective distortion typical to spherical lenses, also for the "rich depth of field" effect
- Surprisingly the best lens technically don't give the most "pleasing" (at least in "hollywood" terms) image. They are even called "clinical" or too sharp. A lot of DP's like lens with a "character", altough some artifacts are regarded universally ugly (like the longitudinal chromatic aberration, which pukes green and cyan fringes around the image)
Camera
- High dynamic range camera, no clipping of highlights or blacks (add light, if necessary)
- Must be able to retain true image details, any digital sharpening in the source footage immediately puts things off
Color grading:
- Good tone mapping: should look "good" in black and white, mostly solved with lighting
- Pleasing color palette: color harmonies, gradients in good perceptual color space, like okmap. Mostly solved by set design, character and dress design
- Even saturation: previous point should cover "nice colors", but the saturation is one of the most overlooked aspects. It can be highly or sparingly saturated, but too much variation in a single frame quickly makes for a garbage image. Also, one has to fight most software color manipulation tools, which tends to brighten up highly saturated parts, where in reality, they should go darker
That's a whole package of things, for a camera control specifically, typical operator or AC wants:
- Manual focus pull
- Way to judge "exposure", measured in IRE
- Some way to approximate highlight to shadow exposure ratio; 2:1 for "happy" look, 4:1 for dark, 5:1 or more for Batman
- Highlight clipping warning (especially important on talent's skin)
- Shutter angle control (typically 180 or 90 degrees), instead of the shutter time used in photography
Is there an app that can take footage without oversharpening?
That's main reason, why cinema cameras are picked.
I suspect that it could be possible now, to an extent. We have quite good image restoration tools, some based on neural networks. Maybe one could be trained for iPhone specifically.
Movie cameras work differently with a shutter speed fixed at 24 fps, except for some scenes with specific requirements (for example slow motion). The light is controlled using the ISO, the aperture, the lighting, and ND filters.
A nice trick people are using with smartphones to get the cinema look is to use an app like Blackmagic Camera, lock the shutter speed at 24 fps, and mount a variable ND filter on the smartphone to control how much light is received by the sensor, since we can't control with the aperture.
2. The "cinematic look" comes from a combination of things:
- good lighting (using professional lights in most situations)
- 180 degree shutter angle (aka "24fps"), or slow motion where appropriate
- careful and artistic color grading
- taking time to set up the scene in advance & good framing
- good lenses
- good camera sensors (mainly, high dynamic range)
- holding the camera still or moving it smoothly through the scene (except when deliberately not, as in for instance The Office)
- music
- and, more important than you'd think: very high quality audio (good mics, appropriately mic'd, low noise, dubbed in post if needed, SFX added)
3. In short, what creates the "cinematic look" is many factors (and, usually, people) coming together as a system. This app lets your phone be part of that system.
4. What makes this app unique: (1) it integrates directly with Davinci Resolve in a way that's probably more convenient than Filmic Pro for that workflow and (2) it's free.
People have been making films and TV shows on iPhones for years, so this is more of an incremental event in the industry.
Also a further fragmentation of communication platforms for any collaboration simply makes me not want to collaborate unless I'm paid handsomely to use the yetannotherchatplatform. (just finishing some project and getting rid of several chat platforms i was forced to use because of them)
Though I guess the productions recorded with an iPhone might not have so big and logistically complicated crew. But back to my original point: I think these small projects are organized on other, more personal channels already, so the in-app chat is redundant. For larger projects, like those I was pondering in the previous paragraph: they are already beyond this in-app chat, so the in-app chat is redundant.
I think these in-app chats are very rarely used, and are generally not worth the effort to develop, or from a user/organization standpoint to learn and adopt. (Not to mention the closed nature of them).
And this does not want to belittle this app and its chat feature, I'm just generally wondering about the phenomenon this app has particularly made me think about.
We have 4 Blackmagic cameras at xTribe studios and they are great, but when Gen-Z podcasters come in, they'll often just put an iPhone and a Rode shotgun mic on a SmallRig cage.
Things like the parameters for the optical image stabilization algorithm aren't settable.
I'm therefore surprised a 3rd party can make a camera app that 'beats' the built in one.
Second, for high-value developers like Blackmagic, Adobe, etc, there are very regular communication between engineers and product managers in both respective companies. I wouldn't expect private APIs (although they have certainly happened in 3P apps over the years; just check undocumented entitlements of IPAs from major developers), but these apps can be years / iOS releases in a making with a lot of Apple support.
I’m wondering if this was done by the copywriter or the UI person who needed to add more text so that every section has the same amount of “content”. Node.js/NPM devs do this too
I suppose this is the same case as every other camera app I've ever tested on Android and iOS, such granular settings like ISO are just not accessible by the system APIs available to the app. In that case though, I'd expect the app to at least not lie to me.
Can someone confirm or deny this? I don't know much about photography nor iOS so I might just be confused.
Moving from ISO 1500 to ISO 3000 doubles the sensor's sensitivity to light, but doesn’t inherently make the scene appear twice as bright.
Also, how does this even work on a digital camera? Surely we can't actually adjust how sensitive the sensor is to light, so is it just a simulation?
Remember that "digital" sensors are mostly analog devices (dealing in continuous voltages).
It’s signal gain of the sensor.
“In digital camera systems, an arbitrary relationship between exposure and sensor data values can be achieved by setting the signal gain of the sensor. (…) For digital photo cameras ("digital still cameras"), an exposure index (EI) rating—commonly called ISO setting—is specified by the manufacturer such that the sRGB image files produced by the camera will have a lightness similar to what would be obtained with film of the same EI rating at the same exposure.”
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_speed#Digital_camera_IS...
Or think of it like changing the gain on an microphone pre-amp before going into a Analog-to-Digital convertor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law#:~:t....
...what? Every non dumbified enough app has ISO and shutter controls in the manual mode since forever.
Eg:
So I assumed...
> this is iOS. A system where apps can't
picard.jpg
Why would you think that it would be?
Apple: "ProRes files are up to 30 times larger than HEVC files." [1]
They also both have inter and intra frame compression modes.
HEVC or H264 at the same bitrate in interframe mode would produce the same size files as Prores.
Regarding the comment that Apple Prores on iPhone is huge... We aren't discussing an Apple product here unless Apple bought Blackmagic while I wasn't looking.
Prores has it's use cases, go look them up, if you really just want to quickly shoot family vacation videos and not have it take up a ton of storage open the Apple camera app and hit record, the blackmagic app and Prores is likely not for you.
Whathahuh? BMD just released an iOS app to use their software on an iPhone. So, which device are we talking about that isn't an Apple device?
>Prores has it's use cases, go look them up
Thanks, but I'm well aware of what ProRes is. At this point, I'm just assuming you're a troll.
As I said in the other comment in this thread, if you don't need prores you probably don't need to use the BMD app since the footage captured in HEVC on the stock app is likely good enough for your use case.
Sounds like scope creep not targeted at their intended audience.
Likewise what would be the difference between adding a 45mbps ProRes option vs adding a 45mbps hevc option? That fact it is hevc? They would take up the same storage space.
Compared to what? An Arri? Bebause on its own, as far as smartphone video goes, it's quite fine. You can also trivially shoot a higher bitrate (not ProRes) in Filmic Pro and other apps.
And even ignoring the limitations of the sensor, the iPhone isn't even the best smartphone. Due to the fact that it can only record variable framerate video it's basically unusable for professional work, even with the Pro model in ProRes.
Interesting, I've always thought the iphone camera produces extremely good results. Subject to the obvious limitations like not being able to replace the lens! What sort of benchmarks should I be looking at, to really measure the camera's limitations?
The quality difference is massive, and not in favour of the iPhone. Apple has awesome algorithms to post-process these images, but garbage in, garbage out, you can only fix so much.
A larger sensor means you naturally get much better low light capabilities, much better bokeh, and the ability to increase the dynamic range without losing resolution.
What e.g. Google Pixels call "HDR+" is what high end Canon cameras can do at 24 frames a second, due to the higher dynamic range of their sensors and the integration of two independent gain circuits.
The main problem that I see is compression artefacts, especially in complex scenes with a lot of motion. For example filming a person or pet moving against a background of grass or gravel, or the camera panning across complex terrain. I even got it really badly just filming waves going in and out on the beach.
I know these are tough situations for to handle but it feels like bumping the bitrate would help a lot.
Dude this isn’t 2011. The “average YouTuber” these days is shooting on full frame Sonys, Blackmagic, or even RED.
YouTube is not a shoestring operation anymore, filmed with whatever point and shoot digital camera is at hand, and for most even semi-popular creators it hasn't been like that for some time now.
I thought it would be constructive to point out that most pro or semi-pro YouTubers are now using top of line kit, with full post-production pipelines tailored to YouTube.
If you know this already and yet still expect your iPhone to match up, then ok, perhaps you're right and there isn't a constructive conversation here.
If you don't have video experience, then you might find it subpar when actually you compare it to impossible standards and 10x more expensive gear and lenses.
The iPhone has incredible video quality, but you're right that the default Camera app botches it (or requires you to shoot ProRes HQ which is objectively overkill). I've been using Blackmagic Camera to shoot 4K Apple Log into a 10bit HEVC file, and it works really well. The files are easy to grade, and the bitrate is enough for everyday use. Footage from the Blackmagic app is clean, clear and not over sharpened. I really hope Apple adds an HEVC Log option!
They support other raw formats, so continued ass-dragging on this is just... petty.
I'm a native Firefox with extensions away from moving to iPhone after never having one, so every further bit of support by third parties is good.
I really hope the EU forcing the opening up of Apple brings Firefox
It's the contrast between an ecosystem on a decline, and one still being invested in by others.
Not that Apple are perfect, the single biggest blocker to my cohort of friends all replacing their Android with iOS within a few weeks remains the lack of a native third party browser with adblocking extensions.
Would pay good money for an app that accomplish that.
What I found strange is the images on their website have an AI generated look to them, rather than looking like they were shot with a real camera. Am I the only person who's seeing it that way?
Take this image for example: https://images.blackmagicdesign.com/images/products/blackmag...
Notice the side table leg next to the coffee cup? It's wrong because it shouldn't go over the foreground table. Looks like a composite mistake to me. The woman is also looking over the monitors not at them. Perhaps there is some elements of AI-generation used in the image.
I was referring more to the snowboarding photos.
You're right, there is something strange about the leg in that table. There is a reflection, which I think is causing part of the problem, but also looks like a cut-line which shouldn't exist.
i didn't see a pro/paid version - unless they're planning to offer a post-processing cloud subscription later on...
Another comment earlier mentioned how Davinci resolve may start gaining market share for the very reason that it's free and kids learning to edit are more likely to go with them instead of cracking adobe these days (and then using the former when they enter the workforce).
I like that :)
It doesn’t really matter if upvoters are honest or not. If you can cheat in a way that makes your post reach and stay on the front page, it’s very likely that people are interested in discussing the topic.
So far HN system has been working pretty good. Not for all topics of course, some result in really toxic exchanges or annoy some people. But you almost never see spam or obviously astroturfed content in the front page (at least compared to Reddit and other places).
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I, for one, was excited to see a BM product available on my iPhone now so I can see why others are just as excited. Google has made the front page for less noteworthy apps before I’m sure.
Blackmagic has great, mostly professional hardware (cameras and more) with high-quality, stable software again focused on pro-market. They also have amateur or entry-level stuff, but even those have excellent quality.
So Blackmagic deciding to create an app for iPhone might say they consider the iPhone camera good enough for them. And this is a message worth considering.
Timecode makes this a gamechanger, especially for the casual filmer.
I've been messing around with crappy action cams for things like recording my kids performances and the like. I've been using two cameras (it's nice to have a second PoV, especially when someone walks in front of the camera), but it is a world of pain on these cameras.
I came *this close* to buying a pair of GoPro Hero 12s this past week because they finally have fully baked timecode into the firmware, but it seems like they also have problems with overheating when recording for 25 minutes inside (let alone in the sun).
This release means I can use a couple old iPhones I have retired, and likely get pretty good timesync out of it, automatically, without having to go into the videos and spend literally hours syncing multiple camera angles and dealing with drift from different cameras.
The free version of Resolve is still limited for more serious / professional applications; e.g. not making use of hardware acceleration, not having certain effects, and not processing certain professional workflow codecs.
With this strategy, Resolve is essentially the "go-to" for newbies into video editing.
What's so great about Resolve licensing is their lifetime license. Pay $295 once, get it forever. For commercial productions, Blackmagic gets their $$$$$ from their cameras, physical control panels and hardware, etc. These, again range from good value (for entry and mid level) to expensive.
Within 2 minutes, I was running into features i needed to pay for. Within 20 minutes I had bought a home copy because of how integral it is to my workflow.
They get people in by being able to do the basics, but anything remotely complex, you pay for.
They get people in the door with a really powerful free editing software, and once you've invested time into learning it and made it part of your workflow, you want to pay the £300 to upgrade because it's too much hassle to learn a new editor, and Resolve is awesome, but you reallly don't want to keep waiting 3hrs to generate 1/8th res optimized media for your whole project before you can preview at more than 10fps on an i7 Extreme Edition (that's how they got me, if you couldn't tell).
It's an effective free -> paid product-led conversion path to acquire customers. Being on HN and presumably working in tech/SaaS, this is a familiar and effective business strategy.
This one adds pro-like controls (with similar layout and features to expensive professional Blackmagic cameras), and control of the more professional features like log recording, various prores options, 10bit color, LUT preview, and so on.
Why is it called "camera" and tied to the iPhone?
Shouldn't this be a website where you upload a photo, adjust it, and then download it again?
It’s mostly aimed at getting the right shot in the first place, and giving skilled users enough control to make better shots.
So that’s why it’s called camera.
This is the latter, handing back control of the camera settings to the user, which is what you want for consistency of the look of a video whilst subjects move, the camera pans, etc...
Surely if you want to shoot professional footage, you use a professional camera, with an actual lens, with a full frame sensor - not something which has been scaled down to the extent that it relies on digital hallucinations to make an acceptable looking image.
Surely if you want to watch movies, you go to the cinema, with an actual projector, with a full frame film - not something which has been compressed down to the extent that it relies on digital trickery to make an acceptable looking image.
^ that
And while the image quality definitely doesn't compare to that of cinema cameras, 90 % of the time, it doesn't have to.
This kind of hyperbole isn’t exactly helping your argument. Smartphone cameras have very sophisticated lenses.
why? I mean, with film, anamorphic Super35 is a thing, but so is Super16. With digital, why would all the footage taken on professional MFT cameras be "not professional"?
Gyroscopic stabilization for iPhone is cheap and doable: DJI Osmo is <$100. 2 axis ones that run ~$200.
Real microphones with dead cat wind covers also improve indoor and outdoor interview dialog quality immensely. ~$100 item per person.
Most indoor lighting is shit for still or motion digital photography. Get real lighting and flood the scene. Lights are cheap, but take time and coordination to setup and tear-down.
The other thing is consistency: if you do use the big ones, but have a shot where the big camera simply cannot be used, allowing an iPhone to stand in with processing defaults defaults set up to make the footage as consistent with the regular takes as possible can be worth a lot. Sony has created the RX0 line essentially for that, as a support gadget for their film cameras. Sales to consumers are merely opportunistic side income.
Same (super convenient to easily get consistent setting) for takes that are what in software development would be considered a bugfix, takes that happen when primary filming is over. All the rental equipment has been returned, the order of the day is getting least bad results with what you have. If blackmagic has tools for this contingency and competitors don't, blackmagic will be more attractive.
"Anybody going to see this movie who has no idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on the phone. That’s not part of the conceit... There’s a philosophical obstacle a lot of people have about the size of the capture device. I don’t have that problem. I look at this as potentially one of the most liberating experiences that I’ve ever had as a filmmaker, and that I continue having."
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/steven-soderbergh...