Thank you Ray. I have the 4k camera and I guess the main reason for asking about VPX is familiarity. But I take your point about DaVinci resolve and will take a look tomorrow.
By the way, I am going to film a what amounts to a visitors' guide to our county for (hopefully) release on DVD/BluRay. I had planned to use 24fps to get that cinematic look, but would that work on a documentary?

MARK

Sorry... my laptop is fairly decent and has a UHD screen.

@MCK

Hi Mark.

It depends on what you mean by 'Cinematic look'.

Do you mean the use of shallow depth of field or the effect of using a slower frame rate? Using LUTS?

You are really going to have to take notice of your histograms on the screen of the camera and possibly use some of the inbuilt ND filters if filming at 24 fps. What you don't want happening is short exposures of each frame due to excessive light as that will ruin the 24fps 'look'. The fluid nature of shooting at 24 fps needs an amount of blur in each frame where there is motion. Too short an exposure time from each frame will ruin that effect. I am not one to talk though as setting up a camera can take some time without practice and for me at least, an amount of note taking.

So the wider the aperture, the more light and the quicker the individual light cells saturate, even at the 13 stops of light you have to work with. That may require the use of the inboard ND filters to prolong the exposure. If you are an experienced stills photographer it shouldn't take long to figure out the best settings for a given amount of daylight or the ND filter to use to reduce the correct amount of light for a given ISO setting.

Although the use of auto settings can help in an emergency, for consistency of grain / noise I think some planning should be involved and rely more on manual settings for best results.

My main large sensored camera is now just under 6 years old so may be more susceptible to changes in noise due to ISO fluctuations than your camera. It's hard to tell. I'm also not sure how well the auto-focus will track with a wide open aperture. If you have an external mic I would also try to get it well away from the camera body as some lens motors can be quite loud or their vibrations can travel through the camera body. These are things I feel you should get used to before any serious filming.

Ray.

@MCK

Hi Mark

. . . .  Blackmagic RAW 4k footage . . . .

What is the encoding codec for video and file format?

If you do not have the info - analyse a clip with MediaInfo and and post the results, see this tutorial on how to setup MediaInfo and analyse a video clip for all the data required.

. . . . planned to use 24fps to get that cinematic look . . . .

If the recorded video is progressive then I would suggest recording at a higher frame rate eg 50/60 fps, especially if you have panning shots.

. . . . my laptop is fairly decent and has a UHD screen . . . .

4K DCI and 4K UHD put high demands on the hardware for smooth editing and performance - what is the laptop specification and program version, see this topic for what is required and please quote processor and graphics card make/model in full?

John EB

@MCK, learning Resolve Studio will take a lot of time, but it will be worth it having another video editing tool in your toolbox. What other 4K formats does the camera shoot in? I see only ProRes and BRaw. Also remember that DVD and a lot of bluray does not support 4K.

There is a lot of great information posted above on how to get the "cinematic" look. It's not just using 24P, but also DOF, lighting, panning, LUT's, color grading, etc.

I can understand using RAW to color grade, which can also give you that "cinematic" look. It will also give you the most dynamic range to work with. It all depends on the "look" you want. There is no "one button" press to get it.

Curious as to the country you will be showing?

Maybe provide a small sample of any footage shot with BRAW and ProRes to see if it can be imported?

@MCK, @Reyfox

Hi Mike

Looking at the camera recording options it is limited in that it appears not to have any option for 4K AVC/XAVC encoding which will load into VPX 8 without issues.

The RAW formats are not supported and the ProRes will need Quicktime installing, however given that Quicktime for Windows is an old version, it may not support the current ProRes formats as has been evidenced by other users having issues from with this format.

. . . . a lot of bluray does not support 4K. . . . .

BluRay and 4K UHD discs are two different incompatible disc formats, creating a 4K UHD disc is not possible - the encoder is proprietory and not available for non movie industry users, nor is there a disc burner or 4K UHD format discs available for burning 4K UHD. those that do support 4K UHD are read only.

There is some software that claims to be able to write 4K UHD to a BD disc, however when I tried it it created a standard DVD disc not a 4K UHD disc.

John EB

I would love to try a BRAW sample in VPX, but doubt if VPX can import it because a codec would have to be installed. I'm not sure about the ProRes file from the camera.

What I did was import successfully a ProRes UHD 4K 422 24P file I rendered out in Vegas Pro into VPX12. The import was successful and timeline playback was smooth. Of course, file sizes are HUGE. Strangely though, Resolve Studio 17 doesn't export to ProRes.....

I must note that I do have the last version of QuickTime for Windows installed on my computer, but only the player. I do not know if this would affect the loading of the file and playback of it at all. I did not install the browser extension. I have QT installed because I have media that is QT based. AFAIK, there has not been one attack/breach on my computer. I do have Bitdefender and Malwarebytes (both paid) running on my computer.

@Reyfox

Strangely though, Resolve Studio 17 doesn't export to ProRes.....

Neither does VPX13 - see my comments in:- https://www.magix.info/us/forum/video-pro-x12--1295349/?page=7#ca1773852

Peter

@Reyfox

Hi,

AFAIK, there has not been one attack/breach on my computer. 

As far as I know, having QuickTime on your computer does not pose a security problem; running QT does. All we are doing is using the CODEC, which does not pose a security problem.

John CB

@johnebaker @browj2 @Scenestealer @Reyfox @MCK

Hi John.

As you know I have been using Boris Particle Illusion quite a bit recently and there is the option to export to Pro Res 422 which I have used and although Windows can't give me a preview Thumbnail so subsequently can't be directly viewed in MEP or VPX as thumbnails, they can be imported and used.

A ProRes file created by PI.

General
Complete name                            : G:\Boris Effects particle renders\clear cloud.mov
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : QuickTime
Codec ID                                 : qt   2005.03 (qt  )
File size                                : 81.6 MiB
Duration                                 : 6 s 220 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 110 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2022-03-17 02:59:17
Tagged date                              : UTC 2022-03-17 03:01:23

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : ProRes
Format version                           : Version 0
Format profile                           : 422
Codec ID                                 : apcn
Duration                                 : 6 s 220 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 110 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 50.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:2
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.265
Stream size                              : 81.6 MiB (100%)
Writing library                          : bofx
Encoded date                             : UTC 2022-03-17 02:59:17
Tagged date                              : UTC 2022-03-17 03:01:23
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709

Other
ID                                       : 2
Type                                     : Time code
Format                                   : QuickTime TC
Duration                                 : 6 s 220 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Frame rate                               : 50.000 FPS
Time code of first frame                 : 00:00:00:00
Time code, striped                       : Yes
Title                                    : Tape
Encoded date                             : UTC 2022-03-17 02:59:17
Tagged date                              : UTC 2022-03-17 02:59:17

In use in VPX 12. (VPX 11 could also do this)

And MEP 2022.

Whether this is true for all ProRes 422 files or not I cannot say.

Ray.

Thanks to all for these informative and helpful posts. If I've learned one thing above others is that my knowledge is too scant for me to make the best use of the BMPCC... certainly for now. So if anyone wants to buy a Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 4k (barely used)... ?!?

@MCK

Hi Mark.

Looking at the camera manual it seems to mainly focus on editing with Resolve but equally from page 137 onward it explains how to edit the footage in other editors which although not mentioning VPX MS (MEP) I think the information would hold true. The main information I glean from the manual is if you are not using Resolve but wish to use other editors it is best to shoot the camera in ProRes 422 HQ for the best user experience.

I'm fairly certain VPX will cope with that codec.

While it won't have the flexibility of shooting Black magix RAW, that may be a blessing as raw in general needs much more work on the files to get them to look right than using a codec with a less flexible output and would be a great way to gradually get to grips with the cameras basic functions.

When I started out with still photography in 2009 I started with a camera with very limited capabilities and subsequently got frustrated pretty quickly as I got better and ended up getting a more capable camera within a year. While a better and more complicated camera can make things seem difficult it will in the longer term give you more flexibility when you eventually need it. There are also a lot of helpful YouTube videos out there to help the starter get to grips with things. Don't be put off by having more functions than you can use. I doubt I ever use more than a 6th of my cameras capabilities. Possibly even less than that.

The main question though should be, if you get rid of the camera, what would you replace it with?

That may be a tougher question than you think.

Ray.