Blackmagic Announces Camera v 1.9.9

Blackmagic Design has announced Blackmagic Camera 1.9.9, a software update with multiple new features for the URSA digital film camera.

One of the new features is support for higher frame rate recording combined with the new menu control of recording frames rates for URSA cameras. This increases the recording frame rate up to 80 frames per second, which allows enhanced slow motion shooting.

The frame rate settings in URSA have been changed and now the record frame rate is not limited by the video frame rate. Users can select the frame rate they want and then independently select the recording rate from 5 all the way up to 80 frames per second. The URSA can shoot slow motion or fast motion shots, but all recorded video files are always set to the video rate. Users can see the effect of the higher or slower frame rate when playing. This means they can playback the exact same look on the cameras as the clips will play in a time line of editing software.

The update includes a new CinemaDNG 12 bit RAW format that uses 3:1 compression to allow RAW files to be recorded in one third of the size of uncompressed RAW files, allowing double the storage capacity on the same sized CFast card. This allows higher frames to be recorded in the CFast cards, while retaining the advantages of RAW recording.

Blackmagic Camera 1.9.9 also includes in camera formatting of CFast cards so when on a shoot, a computer is not needed to prepare CFast cards for use. The Blackmagic URSA camera technically analyses the CFast card's memory storage structure and will optimise formatting to allow best performance when used for real time digital film data recording. This means a card formatted in URSA can get better performance than a card formatted on a computer.

The update also adds multiple new user interface changes to the Blackmagic URSA camera, including the new Dashboard menu screen, allowing features such as formatting and other settings to be selected. Also included in the new user interface is scrolling menus, which enable customers to slide their finger on the touch screens vertically to scroll through a longer list of settings in the menus.

New menu settings include on screen framing guides, allowing a range of common feature film aspect ratios to be displayed on the fold out monitor, such as 2.35:1, 1.85:1 and more. These framing guides are displayed as translucent letterbox overlays and the opacity can also be adjusted by the user. Multiple other framing assistance guides can also be displayed.

"This is a massive update for all URSA customers," said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. "There are so many new features in this software, it's like having a whole new camera, just by updating the software. We have worked hard on this update and we think this software update is really showing off the power of the URSA hardware design and what it's capable of doing. There is more to come!"

www.blackmagicdesign.com

(IT/JP)