Blackmagic Studio Camera User Manual Storage Media

Your Blackmagic Studio Camera features two high speed USB-C expansion ports that allows you to record video directly to USB-C flash disks.

USB-C Flash Disks

USB-C flash disks are fast, high capacity drives that can record video for long periods. This can be important when filming events with long durations. You can connect two USB-C flash disks to your Blackmagic Studio Camera at the same time.

When recording has ended, you can then connect the USB-C flash disk directly to your computer for editing and post production without having to copy media across.

To connect a USB-C flash disk to your camera:

1. Plug a USB-C cable into your USB-C flash disk.

2. Plug the other end of the cable into the ‘A’ or ‘B’ USB-C port on your camera.

The USB-C flash disk will occupy the corresponding media slot on your camera’s LCD touchscreen.

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TIP If you have two USB-C disks connected, your camera will automatically start recording to the second disk when the first disk is full. Prior to recording, you can choose which one your camera records to by pressing and holding on the storage indicator on the LCD touchscreen.

Choosing a fast USB-C flash disk

USB-C flash disks are designed to offer fast, affordable storage for a wide range of devices and are readily available from a variety of consumer electronics outlets. It’s important to note that film making is only one part of the USB-C flash disk market, so choosing the best drive is vital to making sure you have enough speed to record 6K and 4K footage.

Many USB-C flash disks are designed for home computing and aren’t fast enough to record 6K and 4K video.

For the most up to date list of recommended USB-C flash disks please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com/support.

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Important Notes About USB-C flash disk Speed

Some models of USB-C flash disk can’t save video data at the speed the manufacturer claims. This is due to the disk using hidden data compression to attain higher write speeds. This data compression can only save data at the manufacturer’s claimed speed when storing data such as blank data or simple files. Video data includes video noise and pixels which are more random so compression will not help, therefore revealing the true speed of the disk.

Some USB-C flash disks can have as much as 50% less write speed than the manufacturer’s claimed speed. So even though the disk specifications claim a USB-C flash disk has speeds fast enough to handle video, in reality the disk isn’t fast enough for real time video capture.

Use Blackmagic Disk Speed Test to accurately measure whether your USB-C flash disk will be able to handle high data rate video capture and playback. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test uses data to simulate the storage of video so you get results similar to what you’ll see when capturing video to a disk. During Blackmagic testing, we have found newer, larger models of USB-C flash disk and larger capacity USB-C flash disks are generally faster.

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test is available from the Mac app store. Windows and Mac versions are also included in Blackmagic Desktop Video, which you can download from the ‘capture and playback’ section of the Blackmagic Design support center at www.blackmagicdesign.com/support.

Preparing USB-C Flash Disks for Recording

You can format USB-C flash disks using the ‘format’ feature on your camera’s storage and formatting menu, or via a Mac or Windows computer. For best performance, we recommend formatting USB-C flash disks using your camera.

HFS+ is also known as Mac OS Extended and is the recommended format as it supports ‘journaling’. Data on journaled media is more likely to be recovered in the rare event that your storage media becomes corrupted. HFS+ is natively supported by Mac. exFAT is supported natively by Mac and Windows without needing any additional software, but does not support journaling.

Preparing Media on Blackmagic Studio Camera

1. Tap either storage indicator at the bottom of the LCD touchscreen to open the storage manager.

2. Tap the ‘format’ button at the bottom of the screen.

   

3. In the ‘format media’ menu, select the drive that you want to format and tap the ‘format drive’ button at the bottom of the screen.

   

4. Tap ‘edit reel number’ if you would like to manually change the reel number. Use the keypad to enter a new reel number and press ‘update’ to confirm your selection.

5. Choose OS X Extended or exFAT format and tap the ‘format drive’ button.

   

6. A confirmation screen will allow you to confirm the drive to be formatted, the selected format type and the reel number. Confirm your selection by tapping the ‘format drive’ button. Tap ‘cancel’ to cancel the format.

   

7. Hold down the ‘format drive’ button for three seconds to format your media.

   

8. The camera notifies you when the format is complete and your drive is ready for use. Tap ‘ok’ to return to the storage manager.

When formatting USB-C flash disks using your camera, the camera ID that is generated from the slate and reel number are used to name the media. Your camera automatically adjusts the reel numbers incrementally each time you format. If you need to manually enter a specific reel number, tap the ‘edit reel number’ and enter the number you want to format the card as. When you start a new project, reel numbering will reset to 1 when you tap on ‘reset data’ in the ‘project’ tab of the slate.

Preparing Media on a Mac

The Disk Utility application included with the Mac operating system can format your USB-C flash disks in the HFS+ and exFAT formats.

Make sure you back up anything important from your media as all data will be lost when it is formatted.

To format your disk:

1. Connect the USB-C flash disk to your computer and dismiss any message offering to use your media for Time Machine backups.

2. Go to applications/utilities and launch Disk Utility.

3. Click on the disk icon for your USB-C flask disk and then click the ‘erase’ tab.

4. Set the ‘format’ to ‘Mac OS extended (journaled)’ or ‘exFAT’.

5. Type a ‘name’ for the new volume and then click ‘erase’. Your USB-C flash disk will quickly be formatted and made ready for use with your camera.

   

Preparing Media on a Windows PC

Windows PCs provide a ‘format’ option when you right click on the drive. Make sure you back up anything important from your USB-C flash disk as you will lose everything on it when it is formatted.

To format your disk:

1. Connect a USB-C flash disk to your computer.

2. Open the start menu or start screen and choose computer. Right-click on your USB-C flash disk.

3. From the contextual menu, choose ‘format’.

4. Set the file system to exFAT and the allocation unit size to 128 kilobytes.

5. Type a volume label, select ‘quick format’ and click ‘start’.

6. Your media will quickly be formatted and made ready for use with your camera.

   

   Use the ‘format’ dialog box feature in Windows to format your camera’s storage media in the exFAT format