Watching videos on Apple Vision Pro is one of the few use cases that early adopters of VR headsets found, but Apple has only created immersive videos that can be viewed on VR headsets. Blackmagic’s new camera could change that. The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive is the first camera that can shoot in Apple’s immersive video format and is available for pre-order now for $29,995 and will ship in “late Q1 2025.”
Blackmagic first announced at WWDC 2024 that it is working on developing hardware and software for Vision Pro content creation. As promised at the time, the camera can capture 3D footage at 90 fps with a resolution of 8160 x 7200 per eye. Blackmagic says the URSA Cine Immersive uses a custom lens “designed for URSA Cine’s large format image sensor with highly accurate position data.” It also has 8TB of built-in network storage, and the company says it can “record directly to the included Blackmagic Media Module” and sync live to the DaVinci Resolve media bin, allowing editors to access footage remotely.
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In addition to URSA Cine Immersive, Blackmagic has also updated DaVinci Resolve Studio to work with Apple’s Immersive Video format, allowing editors to pan, tilt, and roll footage while editing on a 2D monitor or Vision Pro. We also have new tools to help you.
The whole package seems pricey at around $30,000, but you get a lot more features out of the box than a regular Blackmagic camera. A typical 12K URSA Cine camera costs about $15,000, but that doesn’t include lenses or internal storage. These come standard with URSA Cine Immersive.
Apple has shot several short documentaries, sports clips and at least one short film in immersive video format, but has not released its own cameras for third-party production companies to produce content. Also, while the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16 can capture 3D spatial video, they cannot produce immersive video with a 180-degree field of view. Blackmagic’s cameras allow you to create more immersive content for Vision Pro and other VR headsets. Now, Apple just needs to make Vision products that more people are willing to pay for.
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