Your New Camera is Worthless

Why a Strong Technical Foundation Needs to Come First

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It's impossible to scale your production on a shaky foundation

Imagine unboxing the latest cinema camera with all the bells and whistles, the kind that could capture every single detail in breathtaking clarity. It’s expensive, sleek, and promises to make you into the next big shot Hollywood DP. But here’s the catch: that fancy camera on its own is basically worthless. Sure, it can capture stunning footage, but it also demands much more than its price tag.

Cinema-style cameras are notorious for capturing high quality footage at jaw-dropping data rates. How jaw-dropping you ask? The BlackMagic URSA Cine 12k can chew up to 1.2 gigabytes (yes, gigabytes) per second at 24 frames per second full resolution (that number drops to 199MB/s with BlackMagic RAW 18:1, but those savings come at the cost of recording quality). So how exactly can you take the most advantage of your brand new (and quickly depreciating) investment? You have to have a solid foundation of storage, compute, and network bandwidth to support the onslaught of 0's and 1's your camera is about to churn out.

Here's a few things to consider:

1. Power: How do you plan to use your new camera? Will it remain in studio? If yes, find out how much power it consumes. If you plan to bring it on location, find out what battery options are available and make sure you account for enough portable power to cover your shoots. Your new camera is worthless if you can't turn it on. 2. Storage, storage, and more storage: Lets use the previous example of the URSA Cine 12k and consider how much data you'll need for 10 minutes (600 seconds) of footage. Assuming you stick with 24fps full resolution and quality at 1.2GBps, you're looking at approximately 720GB of storage for those 10 minutes. That number increases with time of course, and even more if you don't have a computer that can easily handle 12k footage, which means you'll need to figure out a proxy editing workflow (aka more storage for lower resolution copies). Make sure to do your math and figure out how much storage you'll actually need before you get that camera. 3. Network Infrastructure: Not only can your camera's footage put a strain on your storage infrastructure, but it can completely bog down your network if you're not careful. Planning on editing collaboratively? Most wired networks today provide 1Gb/s (125 MB/s) connectivity to each computer. That cinema footage is going to require approximately 10x the bandwidth across each link between your storage and editing workstation. You'll need a fast NAS (network attached storage) like the Synology 1621xs+ to make the footage available to your team and at least 1 10Gbps switch like the the Netgear M4300-16X to move that high quality video across the network in real-time. These are entry-level devices for this spec, but you can always scale further if you have the budget.

4. Backup and Redundancy: Anyone that's worked in media long enough knows what it's like to lose important footage (hopefully only once). You know how important it is to keep a backup of your content, and it's much more painful to consider when your camera can write 4+ TB/hr. So I highly recommend you invest in a system that can backup your data before purchasing that fancy new camera. Luckily enough, the Synology I mentioned earlier has the ability to withstand drive failures, which can deliver a little more piece of mind. The ultimate backup of course is to store an entire copy of your data off-premises. Whatever you do, make sure you plan for something to break ahead of time so you're ready when it actually happens.

5. Cooling and Environmental Controls: Rarely considered and a nightmare when ignored. Your camera's manual contains information about the environmental conditions your camera was built to handle. Even if you plan to use the camera in studio, make sure it doesn't have a loud fan that can be picked up by microphones during production. Here's an extreme example of the sound IMAX cameras make while recording:

Ultimately, any advanced piece of equipment is only as good as the system supporting it. Without a reliable, well-planned technical foundation, even the best gadgets will fall short of their potential. Before splurging on the latest shiny gizmo, make sure to take a hard look at your facility’s technical infrastructure. Investing in power, network, storage, and environmental systems will allow you to leverage your tools to their fullest.