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Blackmagic’s reputation took a major hit after their infamous CinemaDNG bait-and-switch. They made true interoperable raw video format a selling point of their

Blackmagic’s reputation took a major hit after their infamous CinemaDNG bait-and-switch. They made true interoperable raw video format a selling point of their BMPCC lineup, only to irreversibly cripple units later by removing CinemaDNG support after the fact. This dramatically narrowed toolchain options (mostly to Blackmagic’s own software suite), effectively making cameras useless for enthusiast FOSS videographers. Furthermore, the hush-hush way they pulled it off using a firmware update says something about their ethical standards, so as a rule I’m not using their products anymore. The fact that they offer a cheap software product of their own (even with a free version) in no way justifies removing features (especially support for an open format with a thriving FOSS ecosystem) in a camera that they already sold.

dannyw 3y ago
Edit: The CEO confirmed it was due to patent infringement claims by Nikon: https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/19/the-obsolescence-of-cinemadng-from-digital-negative-to-blackmagic-raw/ https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/19/the-obsolescence-of-cinemadn... It's not clear if this was a choice. RED has a patent on in-camera loseless RAW that is compressed, and have been aggressively going after other camera makers (including Nikon) for offering the feature. To my knowledge, Nikon and RED are the only brands that offer in-camera compressed loseless RAW, and Nikon settled with RED [1]. BRAW is okay as it is lossy (not loseless). Other RAW formats from brands in video are not compressed in-camera. [1]: https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/04/28/red-patent-lawsuit-against-nikon-dismissed/ https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/04/28/red-patent-lawsuit-ag...
- strogonoff 3y ago
  > in-camera loseless RAW that is compressed CinemaDNG doesn’t have to be compressed. > BRAW is okay as it is lossy (not loseless). BM chose to go not from compressed CDNG to uncompressed CDNG, but from compressed CDNG to no CDNG at all. This is a significant reduction in processing pipeline options for those using open-source or truly free raw photography software in their work. > The CEO confirmed it was due to patent infringement claims by Nikon Assuming that’s true, what they have done is they made their customers pay for their legal snafu. Perhaps it’s legal in your jurisdiction to sell a product advertising a specific feature and then remove that feature post-fact (in hardware people already own!), but it’s certainly not a great look. Based on their course of action and their (almost nonexistent) communication on this issue, it’s very difficult to have any sympathy towards the company.
  - indymike 3y ago
    > Perhaps it’s legal in your jurisdiction to sell a product advertising a specific feature and then remove that feature post-fact (in hardware people already own!), but it’s certainly not a great look. This is the downside to patents and patent infringement. It happened with Google home speakers and Sonos, where I used to be able to tell google to play a song "whole home" and now I cannot do that any longer. I think this might be a bit of a new normal, and I'm sure this is allowed by the license agreement to ensure that patent infringements are not death sentences.
    - strogonoff 3y ago
      Your speaker didn’t come with a promise that you can tell Google to play a song. This particular feature may have been your low-key expectation, but it’s unlikely it was your principal consideration. The best illustration would be that it did not warrant a line in technical specs. On the other hand, capture format is a principal consideration when audio or photo equipment is concerned. Decisions are literally based on whether, say, an audio recorder supports WAV and whether it’s 24 or 32 bit. It’s hard to draw a parallel with a consumer device, but imagine if Sonos completely removed Google Assistant, Alexa, or AirPlay 2 support (based off the specs section of Sonos One). Their legal department didn’t do their research, they didn’t feel like paying licensing fees, so they thought they’d just implement a similar platform themselves. They’d issue a firmware update where they wouldn’t mention this at all, you’d apply it and lo and behold. Would you be sympathetic to their cause? Knowing that they were also in the business of selling high-margin, very expensive professional-grade equipment to Hollywood studios, would you consider this kind of treatment something other than a ripoff? Would you still consider them “awesome” and their CEO “fantastic” if they just provided you with a free version of their commercial closed-source software (some features behind a paywall)?
      - indymike 3y ago
        > his particular feature may have been your low-key expectation, but it’s unlikely it was your principal consideration. That feature was advertised on the in-store endcap display where I bought the google speaker. It was the only reason I bought five of them. The rest of the story is identical. Ship an infringing product, be forced to retract the feature to mitigate damages and so on. > Would you be sympathetic to their cause? I'm not sympathetic to Google or any other company that takes a feature away for customers to mitigate damages in a patent dispute. It really sucks to be a customer when it happens. But I do understand how it happens, and why, ultimately Google had no choice but to remove the feature. I'm also glad they did the right thing because in the case of Google, Sonos could have went after Google's customers, too... and I don't ever want a free patent lawsuit with my $29 speaker.
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  > Edit: The CEO confirmed it was due to patent infringement claims by Nikon: https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/19/the-obsolescence-of-cinemadn https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/19/the-obsolescence-of-cinemadn... Neither Nikon nor RED are mentioned in the source you link.
dharma1 3y ago
I have both the original BMPCC and the 4k Pocket. When the BRAW firmware came out (forced by RED patents - they for some obscure reason have been able to patent compressed raw video) I did extensive tests - there is no discernible difference at the higher BRAW settings. And you can always keep your old firmware or downgrade to it later - there was no crippling of units. While I wish they would have been able to keep the compressed CDNG, BRAW is great to work with. Sigma FP (great camera too), as you mentioned elsewhere, does uncompressed CDNG. The data rates fo 4k 12bit uncompressed CDNG are pretty shocking - 2400Mbit/s. At that point you can't record it internally anymore and can only record on a fast SSD. It could be nice to have that as an option on Blackmagic cameras too, but to be honest I don't miss it since BRAW arrived - the files get huge. It's a shame RED was awarded a patent for in-camera lossless compressed RAW video. Even Apple tried to sue them and lost.
- strogonoff 3y ago
  Yes, I am a happy fp user now. I edited that out from the original comment as I thought it’s not that relevant, it merely demonstrates that a camera with a larger sensor in a smaller (AFAIK) body can record CinemaDNG in 14 bit FHD to an SD card (and UHD to an SSD) just fine. > forced by RED patents - they for some obscure reason have been able to patent compressed raw video RED’s patent is a travesty, but no one forced BM to drop CDNG. They could go for uncompressed CDNG, or pay RED (like what I assume Apple has done in order to implement ProRAW). Perhaps they could even do their research before they advertised and sold all those units. Their haphazard decision to drop CDNG post-fact in favour of their own proprietary format without any communication shows lack of forethought at best, scammy tendencies at worst, and in any case blatant disregard for their paying customers. > the files get huge. The files are huge either way. BRAW doesn’t mean you don’t have to buy that new HDD if you want to work with raw video. Besides, converting a DNG to a compressed DNG without any loss would have been a trivial production step. What matters is losing an open format and the entire software toolchain that works with it. Even if you personally didn’t use FOSS raw development software, it was an option with a lot of potential. BM silently took away such option, leaving only BM’s own proprietary toolchain.
  - 3y ago

dannyw 3y ago

Edit: The CEO confirmed it was due to patent infringement claims by Nikon: https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/19/the-obsolescence-of-cinemadng-from-digital-negative-to-blackmagic-raw/ https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/19/the-obsolescence-of-cinemadn... It's not clear if this was a choice. RED has a patent on in-camera loseless RAW that is compressed, and have been aggressively going after other camera makers (including Nikon) for offering the feature. To my knowledge, Nikon and RED are the only brands that offer in-camera compressed loseless RAW, and Nikon settled with RED [1]. BRAW is okay as it is lossy (not loseless). Other RAW formats from brands in video are not compressed in-camera. [1]: https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/04/28/red-patent-lawsuit-against-nikon-dismissed/ https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/04/28/red-patent-lawsuit-ag...

strogonoff 3y ago
> in-camera loseless RAW that is compressed CinemaDNG doesn’t have to be compressed. > BRAW is okay as it is lossy (not loseless). BM chose to go not from compressed CDNG to uncompressed CDNG, but from compressed CDNG to no CDNG at all. This is a significant reduction in processing pipeline options for those using open-source or truly free raw photography software in their work. > The CEO confirmed it was due to patent infringement claims by Nikon Assuming that’s true, what they have done is they made their customers pay for their legal snafu. Perhaps it’s legal in your jurisdiction to sell a product advertising a specific feature and then remove that feature post-fact (in hardware people already own!), but it’s certainly not a great look. Based on their course of action and their (almost nonexistent) communication on this issue, it’s very difficult to have any sympathy towards the company.
- indymike 3y ago
  > Perhaps it’s legal in your jurisdiction to sell a product advertising a specific feature and then remove that feature post-fact (in hardware people already own!), but it’s certainly not a great look. This is the downside to patents and patent infringement. It happened with Google home speakers and Sonos, where I used to be able to tell google to play a song "whole home" and now I cannot do that any longer. I think this might be a bit of a new normal, and I'm sure this is allowed by the license agreement to ensure that patent infringements are not death sentences.
  - strogonoff 3y ago
    Your speaker didn’t come with a promise that you can tell Google to play a song. This particular feature may have been your low-key expectation, but it’s unlikely it was your principal consideration. The best illustration would be that it did not warrant a line in technical specs. On the other hand, capture format is a principal consideration when audio or photo equipment is concerned. Decisions are literally based on whether, say, an audio recorder supports WAV and whether it’s 24 or 32 bit. It’s hard to draw a parallel with a consumer device, but imagine if Sonos completely removed Google Assistant, Alexa, or AirPlay 2 support (based off the specs section of Sonos One). Their legal department didn’t do their research, they didn’t feel like paying licensing fees, so they thought they’d just implement a similar platform themselves. They’d issue a firmware update where they wouldn’t mention this at all, you’d apply it and lo and behold. Would you be sympathetic to their cause? Knowing that they were also in the business of selling high-margin, very expensive professional-grade equipment to Hollywood studios, would you consider this kind of treatment something other than a ripoff? Would you still consider them “awesome” and their CEO “fantastic” if they just provided you with a free version of their commercial closed-source software (some features behind a paywall)?
    - indymike 3y ago
      > his particular feature may have been your low-key expectation, but it’s unlikely it was your principal consideration. That feature was advertised on the in-store endcap display where I bought the google speaker. It was the only reason I bought five of them. The rest of the story is identical. Ship an infringing product, be forced to retract the feature to mitigate damages and so on. > Would you be sympathetic to their cause? I'm not sympathetic to Google or any other company that takes a feature away for customers to mitigate damages in a patent dispute. It really sucks to be a customer when it happens. But I do understand how it happens, and why, ultimately Google had no choice but to remove the feature. I'm also glad they did the right thing because in the case of Google, Sonos could have went after Google's customers, too... and I don't ever want a free patent lawsuit with my $29 speaker.
formerly_proven 3y ago
> Edit: The CEO confirmed it was due to patent infringement claims by Nikon: https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/19/the-obsolescence-of-cinemadn https://ymcinema.com/2019/03/19/the-obsolescence-of-cinemadn... Neither Nikon nor RED are mentioned in the source you link.

dharma1 3y ago

I have both the original BMPCC and the 4k Pocket. When the BRAW firmware came out (forced by RED patents - they for some obscure reason have been able to patent compressed raw video) I did extensive tests - there is no discernible difference at the higher BRAW settings. And you can always keep your old firmware or downgrade to it later - there was no crippling of units. While I wish they would have been able to keep the compressed CDNG, BRAW is great to work with. Sigma FP (great camera too), as you mentioned elsewhere, does uncompressed CDNG. The data rates fo 4k 12bit uncompressed CDNG are pretty shocking - 2400Mbit/s. At that point you can't record it internally anymore and can only record on a fast SSD. It could be nice to have that as an option on Blackmagic cameras too, but to be honest I don't miss it since BRAW arrived - the files get huge. It's a shame RED was awarded a patent for in-camera lossless compressed RAW video. Even Apple tried to sue them and lost.

strogonoff 3y ago
Yes, I am a happy fp user now. I edited that out from the original comment as I thought it’s not that relevant, it merely demonstrates that a camera with a larger sensor in a smaller (AFAIK) body can record CinemaDNG in 14 bit FHD to an SD card (and UHD to an SSD) just fine. > forced by RED patents - they for some obscure reason have been able to patent compressed raw video RED’s patent is a travesty, but no one forced BM to drop CDNG. They could go for uncompressed CDNG, or pay RED (like what I assume Apple has done in order to implement ProRAW). Perhaps they could even do their research before they advertised and sold all those units. Their haphazard decision to drop CDNG post-fact in favour of their own proprietary format without any communication shows lack of forethought at best, scammy tendencies at worst, and in any case blatant disregard for their paying customers. > the files get huge. The files are huge either way. BRAW doesn’t mean you don’t have to buy that new HDD if you want to work with raw video. Besides, converting a DNG to a compressed DNG without any loss would have been a trivial production step. What matters is losing an open format and the entire software toolchain that works with it. Even if you personally didn’t use FOSS raw development software, it was an option with a lot of potential. BM silently took away such option, leaving only BM’s own proprietary toolchain.
- 3y ago