Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera User Manual Recording

Recording Clips

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera features two record buttons. The primary record button is located on the top of the handgrip for triggering with your index finger when holding the handgrip of the camera with your right hand.

The second record button is located on the front of your camera to allow you to begin recording while holding the camera with one hand in situations where you want to record yourself. The button is located in an easy to reach position, ideal if you are recording yourself for video blogs.

Press one of the ‘record’ buttons on your camera to begin recording immediately. Press ‘record’ again to stop recording.

The ‘record’ button located on the top panel of your camera

The ‘record’ button located on the front of your camera

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Before you start recording, tap and hold the name of the media at the bottom of the touchscreen to select the memory card or USB-C flash disk you want to use. The bar over the media type you have selected turns blue to indicate the camera is set to record to this media. To record to a different card or drive, tap and hold the name of the media. While recording, the bar is red.

Choosing the Recording Format

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera records using Apple ProRes codecs including ProRes 422 HQ, ProRes 422, ProRes 422 LT and ProRes 422 Proxy. ProRes codecs let you fit more video on your SD card, CFast card or USB-C flash disk. ProRes 422 HQ provides the highest quality video with the lowest compression. Alternatively, ProRes 422 Proxy gives you far more recording time with greater compression. Your camera can also record with the Blackmagic RAW format. You may decide to experiment to see which format best suits your workflow.

It’s important to note that Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera can use Blackmagic RAW for full sensor and windowed sensor formats, and must use ProRes for scaled formats.

For more information on windowed and scaled formats, see the ’maximum sensor frame rates’ section.

Blackmagic RAW

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera supports the Blackmagic RAW file format. This format offers superior image quality, wide dynamic range and a broad selection of compression ratios. Blackmagic RAW features all the user benefits of RAW recording, but the files are very fast because most of the processing is performed in the camera where it can be hardware accelerated by the camera itself.

Blackmagic RAW also includes powerful metadata support so the software reading the files knows your camera settings. If you like shooting in video gamma because you need to turn around edits quickly and you don’t have time for color correction, then this metadata feature means you can select video gamma, shoot in video gamma, and the file will display with video gamma applied when you open it in software. However underneath, the file is actually film gamma and the metadata in the file is what’s telling the software to apply the video gamma.

So what all this means is if you want to color grade your images at some point, then you have all that film dynamic range preserved in the file. You don’t have your images hard clipped in the whites or the blacks, so you retain detail and you can color grade to make all your images look cinematic. However, if you don’t have time for color grading, that’s fine because your images will have the video gamma applied and look like normal video camera images. You are not locked in on the shoot and you can change your mind later during post production.

Blackmagic RAW files are extremely fast and the codec is optimized for your computer’s CPU and GPU. This means it has fast smooth playback and eliminates the need for hardware decoder boards, which is important for laptop use. Software that reads Blackmagic RAW also gets the advantage of processing via Apple Metal, Nvidia CUDA and OpenCL.

This means that Blackmagic RAW plays back at normal speed like a video file on most computers, without needing to cache it first or lower the resolution.

It’s also worth mentioning that lens information is recorded in the metadata on a frame by frame basis. For example, when using compatible lenses, any zoom or focus changes performed over the length of a clip will be saved, frame by frame, to the metadata in the Blackmagic RAW file.

Recording to Blackmagic RAW

Blackmagic RAW works in 2 different ways. You have a choice to use either the constant bitrate codec, or the constant quality codec.

The constant bitrate codec works in a similar way to most codecs. It tries to keep the data rate at a consistent level and won’t let the data rate go too high. This means even if you are shooting a complex image that might need a bit more data to store the image, a constant bitrate codec will just compress the image harder to make sure the images fit within the space allocated.

This can be fine for video codecs, however when shooting Blackmagic RAW you really want to ensure the quality is predictable. What would happen if the images you were shooting needed more data, but the codec just compresses harder to make a specified data rate? It’s possible you could lose quality, but not be sure it’s happening until you return from a shoot.

To solve this problem, Blackmagic RAW also has an alternative codec choice called constant quality. This codec is technically called a variable bitrate codec, but what it’s really doing is allowing the size of the file to grow if your images need extra data. There is no upper limit on the file size if you need to encode an image but maintain quality.

So Blackmagic RAW set to the constant quality setting will just let the file grow as big as it needs to be to encode your images. It also means the files could be larger or smaller depending on what you are shooting. I guess if you leave your lens cap on the lens, you won’t waste space on your media!

It is also worth noting that the quality settings for Blackmagic RAW are not obscure names, but are more meaningful as they are derived from what’s happening technically. So for example when you have selected the constant bitrate codec, you will see quality settings of 3:1, 5:1, 8:1 and 12:1. These are the ratios of the uncompressed RAW file size vs the file sizes you should expect when shooting in Blackmagic RAW. 3:1 is better quality as the file is larger, while 12:1 is the smallest file size with the lowest quality. Many users of Blackmagic RAW find that 12:1 has been perfectly ok and they have not seen any quality limitations. However it’s best to experiment and try various settings for yourself.

When using Blackmagic RAW in constant quality, the options are Q0, Q1, Q3 and Q5. These are the compression parameters passed to the codec and they are setting how much compression is applied in a more technical way. This setting is different because the codec operates differently between constant bitrate vs constant quality. In this constant quality setting, you really cannot tell what the file size ratio will become as it varies a lot based on what you are shooting. So in this case the setting is different and the file will become the size needed to store your media.

Constant Bitrate Settings

The names for 3:1, 5:1, 8:1 and 12:1 represent the compression ratio. For example, 12:1 compression produces a file size roughly 12 times smaller than uncompressed RAW.

Constant Quality Settings

Q0 and Q5 refer to different levels of quantization. Q5 has a greater level of quantization but offers a greatly improved data rate. As mentioned above, the constant quality setting can result in files that grow and shrink quite a lot, depending on what you are shooting. This also means it’s possible to shoot something and see the file size increase to beyond what your media card can keep up with. It could result in dropped frames. However the benefit is that you can instantly see if this happens on a shoot and then investigate your settings vs quality.

Blackmagic RAW Player

The Blackmagic RAW player included in your Blackmagic camera’s software installer is a streamlined application for reviewing clips. Simply double click on a Blackmagic RAW file to open it, and you can quickly play and scroll through the file with its full resolution and bit depth.

When decoding frames, the CPU acceleration in the SDK library supports all main architectures, and also supports GPU acceleration via Apple Metal, Nvidia CUDA and OpenCL. It also works with the Blackmagic eGPU for extra performance. Blackmagic RAW player is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Sidecar Files

Blackmagic RAW sidecar files let you override metadata in a file without overwriting embedded metadata in the original file. This metadata includes the Blackmagic RAW settings as well as information on iris, focus, focal length, while balance, tint, color space, project name, take number and more. Metadata is encoded frame by frame over the duration of the clip, which is important for lens data if the lens is adjusted during a shot. You can add or edit metadata in sidecar files with DaVinci Resolve or even a text editor because it’s a human readable format.

Sidecar files can be used to automatically add new Blackmagic RAW settings to a playback simply by moving the sidecar file into the same folder as the corresponding Blackmagic RAW file. If you move the sidecar file out of the folder and reopen the Blackmagic RAW file, the changed settings are not applied and you see the file as it was originally shot. Any software that uses the Blackmagic RAW SDK can access these settings. Changes made are saved in the sidecar file and can then be seen by Blackmagic RAW Player or any other software capable of reading Blackmagic RAW files.

When shooting video gamma, the file stays in film gamma, and the metadata tells the Blackmagic RAW processing to display using video gamma. Video gamma is great when you don’t want to grade the image and want to deliver content quickly, however if you want to pull up the black parts of the image, or pull down the white areas, all the detail is retained. You never clip the video and all the detail is still there if you want to access it at any time.

Blackmagic RAW in DaVinci Resolve

Settings can be adjusted for each Blackmagic RAW file, and then saved as a new sidecar file from the ‘Camera RAW’ tab in DaVinci Resolve for creative effect or optimized viewing. This also means you can copy your media for another DaVinci Resolve artist and they will have access to your modified gamma settings automatically on import. In addition to the other metadata your camera files contain, DaVinci Resolve can read your selected dynamic range, so your clips will automatically display in DaVinci Resolve with ‘film’, ‘extended video’ or ‘video’ dynamic range.

You can then customize these settings by adjusting the saturation, contrast and midpoint, as well as the highlight and shadow rolloff. Any adjustments can then be saved as a sidecar file, so the changes can be seen by anyone else working with the files in post. You can always return to the original camera metadata at any time.

You can also export a single Blackmagic RAW frame from the ‘Camera RAW’ tab in DaVinci Resolve, which contains all adjustments, metadata, full resolution and color information so it is easy to share a single frame grab or reference file with others.

For more information on how to use Blackmagic RAW in DaVinci Resolve, see the ‘Using DaVinci Resolve’ chapter in this manual.

Blackmagic RAW Software Development Kit

The Blackmagic RAW Software Development Kit is an API developed by Blackmagic Design. You can use the Blackmagic RAW SDK to write your own applications to use the Blackmagic RAW format. This SDK library can be used by any developer to add support for reading, editing, and saving Blackmagic RAW files. The Blackmagic RAW SDK includes all the generation 5 color science so you can achieve organic cinematic images across any app that supports it. The Blackmagic RAW SDK supports Mac, Windows and Linux, and is available as a free download from the developer page of the Blackmagic website at

The following diagram illustrates the components of the Blackmagic RAW API:

Maximum Sensor Frame Rates

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 Maximum Sensor Frame Rates

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K Maximum Sensor Frame Rates

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NOTE The 2.6K 16:9 shooting format has a sensor area optimized for use with Super 16mm lenses and high frame rates.

Record Duration

These tables show approximate record duration in minutes and seconds based on format, project frame rate and media size. It’s important to note that available resolutions and codecs differ for different models of Pocket Cinema Camera.

The maximum recording time for your storage media can vary depending on the data capacity your CFast card, SD card or USB-C flash disk, and the recording format and frame rate you choose. For example, the storage rate for Apple ProRes 422 HQ at 3840 x 2160 is approximately 880 Mbps. At 24 frames per second, you can record approximately 47 minutes of video on a 256GB CFast 2.0 card. At the same settings you can record approximately 23 minutes of video on a 128GB CFast card, which is approximately half the record duration of a 256GB CFast card.

It should be noted that recording duration of media can vary slightly between different manufacturers. It can also vary depending on whether the storage media is formatted as exFAT or Mac OS X Extended.

Simple scenes containing less detail tend to require less data than more dense compositions. The values in these tables assume shots with a high complexity, which means you may get slightly longer record times depending on the nature of your shoot.

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NOTE It’s important to note that Blackmagic RAW is available for shooting formats that use a full or windowed sensor scan. For all scaled formats, select a ProRes codec.

6K, 6K 2.4:1, 5.7K 17:9, 4K DCI, 3.7K Anamorphic and 2.8K 17:9 formats are available on Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and 6K G2 and use the Blackmagic RAW codec. These cameras use ProRes for 4K DCI, Ultra HD and HD formats.

4K 2.4:1, 2.8K Anamorphic and 2.6K 16:9 formats are available on Pocket Cinema Camera 4K only and use the Blackmagic RAW codec. Pocket Cinema Camera 4K uses Blackmagic RAW or ProRes for 4K DCI, Ultra HD and HD formats.

Constant quality settings for Q0 and Q5 will display varying record time remaining durations. The estimated duration for Q0 is similar to constant bitrate 3:1, and Q5 will display a similar duration to 12:1, however, as the estimated duration updates every 10 seconds while recording, the best way to gauge how much recording time you have is to record for 20 seconds and monitor the duration in the media area of the touchscreen display.

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Choosing Frame Rates

Your camera is able to shoot video using many different frame rates and you may be wondering which is the best one to use.

Generally, when selecting a sensor frame rate, there are some common items to consider. For many years, there have been presentation standards for film and television. These have set frame rates that differ between countries, but all share the same purpose; to display an efficient number of frames every second that portrays pleasing and convincing motion.

Cinema, for example, uses a standard 24 frames per second and while there have been recent experiments with faster frame rates, 24 frames per second remains widely accepted for international audiences.

Television frame rates have generally conformed to technical broadcast standards for each country. For example, if you were making television content you would typically record using 29.97 frames per second for North American distribution, and 25 frames per second for Europe.

However, as technology has improved, today we have more choices and broadcast standards are changing. It is now common for sporting events to be recorded and broadcasted at higher frame rates. For example, some sporting events are recorded and broadcasted at up to 59.94 frames per second in North America, and 50 frames per second in Europe. This provides smoother motion on fast action and appears more lifelike.

Alternatively, streaming and online broadcasters normally use frame rates similar to television, however there is more freedom to experiment due to user selectable viewing formats, and being limited only to what the audience’s screens are capable of displaying.

Generally, when choosing a frame rate for a project, let your delivery format guide your choice. This means your clips will play back at the same speed the event happened in real life. To achieve this, you will need to turn off the ‘off speed’ option on your camera.

If you are looking to create an interesting effect, for example slow motion, then you can set the sensor frame rate to a higher setting. The higher the sensor frame rate compared to the project frame rate, the slower the playback speed.

For more information on using off speed sensor frame rates to achieve creative effects, refer to the ‘touchscreen controls’ section.

Trigger Record

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera automatically sends a signal via the HDMI output that will trigger recording when connected to equipment that supports the trigger record feature, such as Blackmagic Video Assist.

This means that when you press record on your camera, your external recorder also starts recording and stops when you stop recording on the camera. Your camera also outputs timecode via HDMI, which means the clips recorded on your external recorder has the same timecode as the clips recorded in your camera.

If your external recorder supports trigger recording, you will need to enable it. This can usually be enabled via its settings menu.

Recording Motion Sensor Data

Your Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera automatically records gyro data from the internal motion sensor. DaVinci Resolve can then use this data to stabilize clips. For more information refer to the ‘gyro stabilization’ section in this manual.