Tutorial: Blackmagic URSA Broadcast and URSA Mini Pro 4.6K

The main SDI, which is the back 12G-SDI port, is typically going to be used for an external recorder or a main monitor, so a lot of times you would want to have a clean feed turned on and you might want to have a display 3D LUT turned on as well because that way whoever's looking at that monitor will see some idea of your final image rather than the very flat monochromatic recording that you're actually putting on the card that will be graded later in post-production.

The Audio menu (Figure 17, below) has fairly typical settings. You can control which XLR port is which channel. You can control the gain here, and on the next screen over you can control your headphones and speaker volume depending on whether you're actually monitoring in camera or not. You can also pad your audio sources with either -15 or -20dB gains.

Figure 17. The Audio menu

Setup (Figure 18, below) is where you'll change most of the main camera settings, including the date and time, language, timecode, whether it's drop frame or not, and then your shutter angle versus shutter speed, the cycle rate of the shutter, whether your battery display is percentage or voltage, and then the ND filter, whether you want it to show the fraction, the stop count, or the number that you're on, which is, of course, as we said before, 1-4.

Figure 18. The Setup menu

The next screen over has to do partly with using the URSA Pro or the URSA Broadcast in a multicamera switched environment. You’ll find a camera ID number here that you could set that will send to an ATEM switcher that will tell the ATEM switcher this number (Figure 19, below). Since I have this one assigned to camera number five, it would show up on the ATEM switcher as number five. You can also turn on color bars, and whether you have program audio coming through the camera or not. If you're using headsets for a multi-camera shoot, you can control your mic volume here.

Figure 19. Here you can set the camera to send the captured video to at ATEM switcher. 

The next screen over allows you to customize those two function buttons that I showed you on the front. The fourth screen allows you to toggle the status LED on or off, and control the brightness as well as several other master camera functions including playback, which allows you to choose whether when you hit play it plays a single clip or all of the clips that you've recorded so far.

The final screen allows you to set up Bluetooth for some camera control. Presets allows you to import your own presets for custom setups for the camera, so all of your settings can be set very quickly from a saved file. LUTs allows you to choose whether a LUT is displayed on your monitor or not.

Almost all the screens in the URSA Broadcast’s menu systems are identical to the URSA Mini Pro menu screens shown in the previous several images. The biggest exception is right under the record screen. Both cameras will record in a RAW format should you need that, but the URSA’s sensor is only a 4K sensor, so it maxes out at the Ultra HD standard of 3840x2160, whereas the URSA Mini Pro goes to 4.6K. Of course, most broadcasters aren't broadcasting in Ultra HD yet, so they'll typically be using the HD recording standard. If you switch to ProRes, it allows you to switch back to 1920x1080.

Once you've selected your recording format, you'll notice the next screen over also has different dynamic range options (Figure 20, below). The way these were explained to me is as follows: Film will give you a relatively flat, unaltered look for your recording, so this will be close to what the cinema camera would typically produce. The Video dynamic range on the left is going to add some of the color back in, and then the Extended Video option in the middle is going to be for the typical quick-turnaround news broadcast, so this puts the maximum color correction back in and gives you a nice overall pleasing image right out of the camera without having to do any grading in post.

Figure 20. Dynamic Range options

There are a few key differences between the URSA Pro and the Broadcast model. The Pro is a 4.6K sensor and comes with a Canon EF mount by default. The Broadcast camera shoots up to UHD, 3840x2160, and it comes with a B4 mount by default. Blackmagic developed the URSA Broadcast so that newsrooms had access to not only a great broadcast camera that could shoot the formats that they need but also be able to provide them with a higher level of production value for promotions and commercials.

Be sure to watch the video that accompanies this article, which concludes with some relaxing footage shot with the URSA Mini Pro.