Tag Archives: Blackmagic

Blackmagic Rolls Out a New Range of Ultra HD Products

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Blackmagic Design logoBlackmagic Design brought a whole new range of Ultra HD products to NAB 2014. It includes converters, routers, DeckLink cards and much more. Here is a quick look at some of the new products from Blackmagic.

Blackmagic URSA Camera is the world’s first user upgradable 4K digital film camera. Its DOP station has a 10 inch fold out on set monitor and separate 5 inch screen for settings, camera status, and scopes. It includes an upgradable Super 35 4K image sensor with global shutter, 12G-SDI connections, XLR audio inputs with phantom power and dual Cfast based RAW and ProRes recorders.

DaVinci Resolve has had over 70 new editing features upgraded and added. This includes the dual monitor support, dynamic JKL trimming, audio crossfades, and a fully customizable keyboard for faster editing. The color correction features have been upgraded. Apple Final Cut Pro X is part of the enhanced editing features.

Blackmagic Studio Camera features a very large and bright 10 inch viewfinder, built in 4 hour battery, talkback, tally indicators, balanced XLR phantom powered microphone connections and built in optical fiber and SDI connections. There are two models of this camera to choose from: the Blackmagic Studio Camera (which is an HD model) and the Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K.

Blackmagic Cintel Film Scanner supports real time scanning of both 35mm and 16mm negative and positive film and it diffuses the patented Cintel diffuse light source to reduce dust pickup. It features Thunderbolt 2, which allows you to plug it in and run the control software on a Mac.

The Blackmagic Mini Converters are upgrades that replace the old models. The new models are Mini Converter SDI to HDMI 4K, Mini Converter HDMI to SDI 4K, Mini Converter SDI to Analog 4K, and Mini Converter SDI Distribution 4K.

BlackMagic’s Pocket Cinema Camera and Production Camera 4K

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BlackMagic BlackMagic is introducing a lot of great products in 2013 including

The two products that has me looking at my finances are the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K . The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is extremely small. It is 128mm across, 66mm high and 38mm thick and weighs only 355 grams. It has an extremely high-resolution 3.5″ LCD screen. At the bottom if the screen the camera status is displayed including record status, shutter angle , time-lapse interval and more. Despite its small size this is a true digital film camera. It produces a true film look with high-end television commercials and feature films quality. It has a super 16 size 1080HD sensor with 13 stops of dynamic ranger. It offers various lens mount options including a Micro Four Thirds™ for low-cost lenses and an adapter for Super 16 Cine lenses. By using the Super 16 lens plus the Super 16 sensor size and the 13 stop dynamic range you can shoot like you are shooting Super 16 film. Switch to larger lenses and you are ready for bigger jobs too. It has a built-in 3.5mm stereo mic and headphone jacks. You also get a 2.5 mm jack connection for LANC remote control. The micro HDMI output lets you connect to electronic viewfinders, monitors, external disk recorders and more. The Blackmagic Pocket camera has a built-in SD card that captures stunning ProRes 422 (HQ) and lossless compressed CinemaDNG files to SDXC cards. The solid grip handle holds a removable Nikon EL-EN20 battery. The battery charges within about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera supports true open file formats so you can use what ever editing software you want. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera will be shipping in July for $995.

The Blackmagic Production Camera 4k is the first ultra HD products this year. It has a Super 35 size sensor with global shutter. It offers great shallow depth of field and the ability to shoot fast motion shots. It has an EF compatible lens mount. It records to solid state disk using CinemaDNG RAW and ProRes 422 (HQ) formats. It has built-in Thunderbolt and 6G-SDIoutput allowing Ultra HD video out. It’s sensor features 12 stops of dynamic range. With the Blackmagic Production Camera 4k you can use 6G-SDI output to allows for monitoring on an Ultra HD displays. The user can down convert to regular HD for viewing on a smaller monitor. The Blackmagic Production Camera is great when used with the new ATEM Production Studio 4K. The Blackmagic Production Camera will be available in July for $3,995.

Blackmagic is showing off these and their other products off at NAB and will be releasing them all this year. Allowing independent film makers to produce great quality products.

BlackMagic Intensity Extreme with Thunderbolt Connection [Review]

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Blackmagic Intensity Extreme
Blackmagic Intensity Extreme with Thunderbolt Connection

Two weeks ago, I wanted to bump up my live camera action. Knowing that camera companies like Canon have decided to remove DV and component video connections on their newer lines of cameras, I had to find a solution to pull video from the HDMI output. Therefore, I bought the Intensity Extreme.

BlackMagic Intensity Extreme Advantages

The biggest feature on this device is that I can connect directly to the Thunderbolt™ port on my MacBook Pro. This is the machine I do the majority of my video, using Wirecast to record and broadcast.

The BlackMagic Intensity Extreme can also get video from a composite source, using the breakout cable (included). Therefore, it’s a perfect way to stream your gaming session to uStream or Justin.tv. If you have an SD camera, you can also connect to the Intensity Extreme to broadcast. Therefore, I could connect my Kodak Zi10, or a Flip camera using the composite cable.

Intensity Extreme is compatible with Avid, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier, DaVinci Resolve, Wirecast, and many other programs. You can even use it for a program like Screenflow, to enhance the video with your face in the corner.

No Windows Drivers – Yet

The Intensity extreme does not have Windows drivers just yet, so you Bootcamp users out there will want to use your Mac for recording. It doesn’t mean you cannot get it to work in Windows, but you will not have support just yet. You will have to purchase the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle to have Windows support.

BlackMagic Intensity Extreme – Overall

The device is simple to set up (camera to Intensity to computer). There is no external power, so you don’t need to worry about a battery or plug. The Thunderbolt cable does not come with the Intensity Extreme, so you will have to drop another $50 for that.

The BlackMagic Intensity Extreme is $284, and is a perfect way to add a 16:9 camera to your mix (like the Canon VIXIA R20 I used). This can give your recordings more depth because you will have focus, white balance, exposure, zoom, and other features a webcam cannot offer.

The Blackmagic Intensity Extreme is also part of Todd’s new High Definition Mobile Broadcast Studio.

Intensity by Blackmagic Design

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Despite the fact that Apple is not present at CES 2012, it is clearly having an impact. One of the areas where that impact is being felt is with the introduction of Thunderbolt enabled devices. In September 2010 Intel showed off Thunderbolt at the Intel Developer’s Forum.  Apple introduced the first Thunderbolt enabled computer in February 2011, the Macbook Pro. However there has not been a lot of third-party Thunderbolt enabled devices appearing in the market. Well if CES 2012 is any indication the wait for Thunderbolt enabled devices maybe over.

One such device that is being shown at CES is the Intensity Shuttle by Blackmagic Design. The Intensity Shuttle uses Intel Thunderbolt technology and connects to a Thunderbolt enabled computer using a single wire. It is capable of up to 10 GB of transfer speed, which is 20x faster than USB 2.0 and 12x faster than FireWire 800. It is a full featured video capture and playback solution. It features all the video connections needed to connect video cameras, set-top boxes, gaming consoles and projectors to Thunderbolt enabled computers. This would include HDMI, component, composite, and S-Video. It uses the same high quality electronics that are available in Blackmagic Design’s high end broadcasting capture and play back solutions. You can capture live game play, archive family movies and create full broadcast quality 1080 HD video. If you capture video directly with the Intensity Shuttle it by passes the camera’s compression by recording directly from the camera’s image sensor. This allows low-end consumer video cameras to capture full HD resolution in broadcast quality.

“Using Intensity Shuttle with Thunderbolt™ technology combines the quality and speed that videographers demand”, said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “It’s incredibly exciting when technologies come together and create new opportunities for the way people work with video. The barriers of working with broadcast quality video have gone forever and everyone can create amazing looking work!”