As such, it requires constant re-compression during editing, one of the things that places high demand on the system. There’s additional generational loss involved with heavily edited H.264.

It also doesn’t hold up well to grading or other post processing. While transcoding doesn’t add color information that wasn’t there to begin with, it does inhibit further breakdown of the image that can occur when it remains in the H.264 compressed color space.

Also, unless your sequence is 422 or better, titling or other additional effects in the H.264 space are awful. If you do work in a mixed timeline, the demands on your hardware are even greater.

Yes, it can be done and it’s getting easier all the time but that doesn’t make it a good idea for highest quality results.

bmcc is a cinema camera, canon is a stills camera that shoots stunning video.

It would be fun to use both cameras, but seeing how one of these cameras doesn’t exist to the public, I’d go with the camera I can actually use.

By the way, I note on the Canon website that the 5D is a “consumer home & office” product – not part of the professional line. Again, why compare these two? It makes no sense! You might as well be comparing a Lincoln Town Car to a Ford F-150 pickup!

How is a BMCC *not* better for these things?

Hate hate hate the small latitude, especially for day exteriors…for indoor interviews with a bunch of lights, sure, but when you have to cover events (this is a music doc with live shows, some of which are outdoors in direct sun)

Blackmagic all the way, for features or docs…for it’s price range.

I’m not entirely sold on it…the jacks sticking out in my face on the smart side is gonna drive me crazy, and I’m not looking forward to the smaller sensor (for the features…for the doc, I welcome it—especially since my subjects are twins and I try to keep them both in the shot whenever possible b/c it’s often about how they interact with each other.) When I rack focus to chose one over the other, I don’t want to be the one making these decisions (I think it’s better for the director and the audience to do that).

Anyway, until something better in it’s price range comes along, I’m all for it.

Someone said something about it taking like $6K to make it actually *work*…well, isn’t that what everyone has already been doing—on board recorders…external monitors to actually focus it, batteries to power the external monitors…cages to give it some weight and balance… I’ve long exceeded $6k with that stuff long already. I’ve even got the SSD’s from using the Hyperdeck Shuttle (which has equally annoying jacks/buttons sticking out on opposite sides)…SSD is a smart move away from the obvious limits of SD/CF. Red left behind CF because of it’s obvious bottlenecks.

I’m still not seeing anyone on these threads mention the fact that we’re getting HD-SDI instead of crap HDMI for a $3k camera. The AF100 is the cheapest other option I can think of in this ballpark to offer it, and this far exceeds what that camera can do, natively or with external add-ons.

BMCC is a no brainer.

But raw obviously doesn’t change bad lighting or poor production design by itself. It just makes those things easier to see ;-). Given the size and cost of raw cameras I have chosen to avoid them on certain jobs, indepenent projects and even some commercials if I thought the money could be better spent on a location, or design or lighting – or time needed to get a variety of coverage.

That’s why the bmcc is so promising. It’s rental cost will be minimal and purchase could be amortized on a single job. Plus it’s small and simple enough to use with the smallest crew. A game changer.

Second generation of Intel i5 / i7 quad core CPUs are also faster and capable of real time playback of Full HD H.264 clips.