2024-08-10T08:23:12
Rated 2 out of 5
Limited utility, poor design.
I'm a big fan of Blackmagic products, but this product is a big miss. For most users, this accessory is rather unnecessary. The main problem is that it does not connect the camera directly to the PCIe interface of the SSD. Instead, there's a PCI-to-USB bridge inside the unit and there's an external USB cable interconnects the recorder and the camera. This creates three problems:
- The USB-cable does not have a locking or retention mechanism. There is just a short loop of cable at the rear of the camera that is very easy to snag. I am also concerned about torquing the USB port on the camera and damaging it.
- The recorder is VERY picky about the USB cable used. I was not able to use the included cable for recording resolutions above 4k without dropping frames. I switched it an expensive third-party cable specifically sold for writing video to SSDs and it was even worse. After trying five other USB-C cables, I finally found one that allowed me to consistently write 12k, Q3, 24fps without dropping frames. I recommend using the shortest Thunderbolt-certified cable you can find.
- The Samsung enterprise SSD that I am using is capable of 2,700 MB/s write speed, The URSA 12k can generate up to 1,618 MB/s of video. However, the USB-C interface itself is only capable of a real world throughput of 1,000-ish MB/s. The USB interface is the bottleneck here. If this was a multi-lane PCIe bus, it would likely support the full capabilities of the camera.
- Bonus issue: as far as I can tell, there is no active cooling inside the recorder. And the slot does not accommodate the taller SSDs that have a built-in heatsink. The drive gets very toasty and I am concerned about longevity.
In practice, I have found it to be impossible to use Q0 with either 8k or 12k resolution, and Q1 is too much of a hit or miss. Q3 is mostly usable with the right USB cable, though I don't know that I would try to use it for filming anything important at 120 FPS.
For my workflow, there is very little utility over just using a standard USB-C SSD externally mounted on my rig. I do have a Blackmagic MultiDock 10G that I use to offload my footage to my NAS, which is why I bought this thing in the first place. However, I could nearly as easily just move an external SSD from from camera to the NAS and saved myself a few hundred dollars.
JAMIE B.
