Blackmagic Design Talks With Marc Franklin About Their Latest Cameras, Switchers, and Resolve

Bob Caniglia, Director of Sales Operations, North America, Blackmagic Design, talks with Marc Franklin, Streaming Media Contributing Writer and President, Franklin Creative Media, about Blackmagic’s latest cameras, switchers, and Resolve in this presentation from NAB 2023.

The new Blackmagic 12K OLPF

“The new OLPF model is Netflix certified,” Caniglia says. “Also we have a new version of software for the pocket camera, so you can shoot vertically, and it tags the files. It doesn't matter which way you rotate the camera; it'll properly frame it for vertical insertion if you're going to use it out to TikTok or something like that.”

The new Blackmagic family of ATEM television studio products for HD

“On the ATEM side, we introduced this new family of ATEM television studio products for HD,” Caniglia says. “So we had the HD 8 and the HD 8 ISO, and now we have a new 4K 8. So it's got eight inputs, but it's 4K, it has 10 aux outputs, so you can run it out to hyperdecks to do ISO recording, things like that. But it's a 4K model all built in one unit [and] it has some optional internal storage. You can record and program internally.”

“How much storage does it have inside?” Franklin asks.

“You can add up to two terabytes to it,” Caniglia says.

“Is that through NVMe (nonvolatile memory express) that you install yourself?” Franklin asks.

“Yes, NVMe storage in the original units, the HD units…the first few of them have internal storage, but we'll offer that as an option down the road,” Caniglia says. “And then the camera control has gotten a lot better with certain lenses and things like that. But on the HD 8 ISO you can actually transmit from one of our new studio cameras or the URSA broadcast, and through IP you can send the signal to the switcher because it has ATEM streaming bridges built in. And you can have full control of that camera remotely as well.”

“So no cables, just all streaming?” Franklin asks.

“Yes,” Caniglia says.

“I'm doing a project this weekend and my tech is bringing one of your Constellations and he's really excited to bring it in,” Franklin says, “He said the reason he got it was for the eight inputs, universal resolution, basically. So it's no longer like it was with the earlier versions?”

“Right,” Caniglia says. “There's standards conversion on every input, and that's all the new models. And we actually just announced a new 4 M/E Constellation 4K model. So it's 40 inputs and 24 outputs, but each of them has that standard converted input, which is very helpful for all the new switchers that we've been putting out.”

“Is the quality the same as a Teranex?” Franklin asks. Caniglia says yes, and Franklin asks him if they have a Teranex on each input.

“That’s basically what you have on there,” Caniglia says, “That's [a] pretty cool leveraging [of] that science we had from those products, being able to put it inside the switcher.”

Blackmagic’s latest Resolve features

Franklin asks to hear about some of the new features with Blackmagic’s Resolve.

“Resolve 18.5 went into public beta yesterday,” Caniglia says. “It has some cool tools and different pages. On the cut page we added split audio editing. We rearranged some of the menus, so it's a lot less clicks to get into different features. On the edit side, there's a new way to do audio to text. You highlight some audio and then you use the menu and it'll analyze the audio and convert it to text for subtitling or close captioning. But then you can also search by words, and you'll find those words in other places. And you can edit right on the point…it'll mark to the point that you're the word, so you can edit straight to it. Really good for documentary-type stuff.”

“Does that do it locally on your computer or do you have to upload it?” Franklin asks.

“It's done locally on the computer,” Caniglia says. “We're using our own advanced neural engine AI to be able to pull that off.”

“Now that’s a part of Resolve itself, or is it part of Fusion?” Franklin asks.

“It's part of Resolve,” Caniglia says. “You do it from the edit page, actually. [With] Infusion, we actually added some new tools including the ability to use Universal Scene Descriptor, which is a universal thing that people use for rendering out on other render farms and things like that, so it opened that up. Fairlight has got all kinds of new tools for helping eliminate noise and things like that. In the color page, we actually had this new relight option where t generates a 3D mask for a scene, and then you can position a light globally. So if we take this interview, [and] we decide we needed a light over here or something, you can add that. A lot of things have been added, including in our Blackmagic Cloud service. We have a now available. So you can load up a file to show people a clip or a finished project, and then you can share with the other people that are part of your group that you have with the Shared Library.”

Blackmagic’s Netflix certifications

Franklin asks how many other Blackmagic cameras along with the 12K are certified for Netflix.

“The URSA 4K was,” Caniglia says. “But not only the cameras [but] also Resolve is Netflix certified. The optical low-pass filter (OLPF) was the necessary thing to get this camera put onto the list.”

Franklin asks Caniglia to further explain OLPF. “Where it really helps us to eliminate moray and things like that,” he says. “So when people are shooting large LED walls for virtual production and things like that. Now Resolve has been optimized to recognize footage that's been shot with that OLPF, so that it can maximize the image while eliminating any of the artifacting. So that’s in conjunction with Resolve’s release, so that it knows that that footage was shot on that camera.”

“What is the procedure like to get Netflix to approve a camera? How long does it take?” Franklin asks.

“It's a variable process,” Caniglia says. “There's a lot of coordination between both teams as to what their expectations are and what we can deliver. Fortunately for us, we were able to work with them prior to the announcements [so] that we could announce it at the same time. And that worked out very well. So our relationship with them is very strong.”