Blackmagic Design announced the launch of Camera 1.9.7 software which includes dashboard on-screen menus and high-performance disk formatting for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. The free software update is available on the company website.
The new disk formatting feature allows customers to format SSD’s and SD Cards in camera so they don’t need to use a computer to prepare disks for recording. Unlike computers that format disks for general storage use, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Pocket Cinema Camera can format disks optimized for high-performance video use. When formatting, the camera confirms the brand of disk and other parameters and then formats for the highest speed video data recording and playback for that specific type of disk.
This also means that as new disks are released in the future, new software can be released to take advantage of unique features of disks for maximum performance when recording high data rate RAW 4K images.
Customers can choose between two disk formats, ExFAT and HFS+. The ExFAT is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS X so is a good choice when customers are working on Windows or working between Windows and Mac OS X platforms as both platforms natively will read the disk. When customers are working on Mac OS X exclusively, the HFS+ format is the native Mac OS format and this allows higher performance for Mac users as well as better error protection because HFS+ supports journaling.
The update also includes a new dashboard menu that allows camera functions to be selected quickly. Customers can choose to format disks, enable focus peaking, go to the settings page and other camera operations on big, easy-to-use buttons.
“Following on from the popular release of in camera disk formatting on the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K last month, we are very happy to now release this feature for all models of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Pocket Cinema Camera,” said Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design. “Having this new formatting feature in the camera means customers get increased convenience as well as getting the most out of the SSD’s and SD cards so they can record higher data rate but extremely high quality RAW formats easier than ever before!”
