Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K gets Blackmagic RAW

Today, Blackmagic has announced the Blackmagic Camera 6.2 update that will give the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K support for Blackmagic RAW. Blackmagic Design claims Blackmagic RAW is the “world’s fastest RAW format.”

“Blackmagic RAW, a revolutionary next-generation codec that combines the quality and benefits of RAW with the ease of use, speed and file sizes of traditional video formats,” says Blackmagic Design. “Blackmagic RAW is a more intelligent format that gives customers stunning images, incredible performance, cross-platform support and a free developer SDK.”

Pocket Cinema Camera 4K gets Blackmagic RAW

With this update, owners of the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K can record using Blackmagic RAW. The company claims this will allow users to capture the “highest possible quality image” in smaller files than what you often get with RAW file formats. Say you record a 2-hour video in 4K; with the Blackmagic RAW format, you’ll be able to save that file onto a 256GB SD card.

Blackmagic says that users using Blackmagic RAW 12:1 can even record 4K DCI to SD card.

“Traditional RAW codecs have large file sizes and are processor intensive, making them hard to work with.” says Blackmagic Design. The company claims Blackmagic RAW solves these problems. How? By providing customers “with much better performance and smaller file sizes than most popular video codecs.”

Two types of file compression

There are two types of file compression when it comes to Blackmagic RAW. First, there’s constant quality. The other is constant bitrate encoding. You can choose which one you want to use depending on the kind of work you are doing.

Users will have to choice between 3:1, 5:1, 8:1 and 12:1 constant bit-rate recording or between constant quality Q0 and Q5 recording. Essentially, the camera is letting you choose whether it should prioritize image quality or file size. Also, the image data and the characteristics of the image sensor are encoded and saved into the Blackmagic RAW file.

“Blackmagic RAW has been incredibly successful since we introduced it last fall on URSA Mini Pro,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “The new Blackmagic Camera 6.2 update is exciting because it makes this incredible new technology available to Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K customers absolutely free! They get the visually lossless image quality of RAW with the speed of traditional video workflows!”

Availability

Blackmagic’s Camera 6.2 update is out now and it’s free to download from Blackmagic Design’s website.