After the Apple Vision Pro came out, I sold my Lumix GH6 and got a Canon R5C with this dual fisheye lens so I could shoot “immersive” (180 degree, 3D) video.
It’s pretty impressive. It shoots 8K at 60fps. The 3D video it produces is 4096 pixels X 4096 pixels per eye. So like 2, 4K movies stacked on top of one another per eye. but it’s not like watching a 4K movie. It’s actually more like watching 1K/1080p movie because those pixels are covering a much larger area.
The immersive videos that Apple’s produced are also not as clear as a 4K movie but they’re a good deal closer.
Then today during Apple’s WWDC announcement they quickly mentioned a collaboration with Blackmagic Design on a professional, immersive video workflow comprised of a new Blackmagic camera, Davinci Reslolve Studio, and Apple Compressor.
There’s no info on their website yet, but they did post about it on Instagram. This thing will have 8160 pixels X 7200 pixels per eye at 90fps. That’s about 4X what you get from the Canon R5C! Wow.
“Today at WWDC, Apple referred to a new camera we’ve been developing called Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive. This camera is still in development, but we wanted to share some more details here.
We are developing a full end-to-end workflow with DaVinci Resolve to produce cinematic Apple Immersive Video on Vision Pro. Together, we think Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive and DaVinci Resolve will give filmmakers the workflow to be able to shoot, edit and deliver Apple Immersive Video. It’s quite exciting and the future of entertainment.
Based on the new Blackmagic URSA Cine platform, the new Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive model features a fixed, custom lens system with a sensor that features 8160 x 7200 resolution per eye with pixel level synchronization. It has an extremely wide 16 stops of dynamic range, and shoots at 90 fps stereoscopic into a Blackmagic RAW Immersive file. The new Blackmagic RAW Immersive file format is an enhanced version of Blackmagic RAW that’s been designed to make immersive video simple to use through the post production workflow.
The Blackmagic URSA Cine also features a custom lens system designed specifically for Blackmagic URSA Cine’s large format image sensors with extremely accurate positional data which is calibrated at the time of manufacturing. Plus the immersive lens data is mapped, calibrated and stored per eye into the Blackmagic RAW file so it travels through the post production process in the Blackmagic RAW Immersive file itself. That eliminates the need for multiple files to capture an immersive scene.
The new updates to DaVinci Resolve make it the world’s first immersive video editor.
There are a lot of updates and changes to support immersive workflows including a new immersive video viewer which will let editors pan, tilt and roll clips for viewing on 2D monitors. But what’s most exciting is we can even allow clips to be adjusted and monitored on Apple Vision Pro itself for a complete immersive editing experience.
We are working hard on the new Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive and the new version of DaVinci Resolve, which will be released later this year.”
Please don’t let it cost a million dollars 🤞🏼