Hi,

We have just announced some new products and I would like to update you on what’s new. We have been working hard to help solve some problems for broadcasters and we think these new products will help.

We have announced:

• Blackmagic URSA Broadcast camera
• Blackmagic Fiber Converters for SMPTE fiber
• ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K switcher
• ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel
• Free upgrade for ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K switchers
• ATEM Camera Control Panel

These products have been designed to help broadcasters upgrade to Ultra HD and they include higher levels of features and industrial design. Broadcasters have dramatically reduced budgets these days, and so are finding it difficult to update to Ultra HD, so we believe these products will help. Plus, web broadcasters also want the same professional features that high end broadcasters use, so these new products will help them move up to true professional products.

I have more details below on each of the new products.

Introducing URSA Broadcast

The new URSA Broadcast is an Ultra HD professional broadcast camera that’s affordable so it will help broadcasters upgrade to Ultra HD. It’s based on our URSA Mini Pro design so it has all the traditional camera controls and features broadcasters expect, and it can also use URSA Mini Pro accessories. Unlike our digital film cameras, the sensor size is designed for URSA Broadcast’s B4 lens mount so it has a very wide depth of field, meaning much more of the image remains in focus. It also has wide dynamic range so it can produce nicer images and it integrates into HDR workflows.

However URSA Broadcast also solves 2 other big problems. First, it is two cameras in one. It works as a regular shooting camera but it's also a studio camera. It’s also a fantastic HD camera which means you can upgrade your camera and use the lenses and batteries you already have. It uses regular SD and CFast cards so you don't need to use expensive custom media, and its file formats are regular DNx145, DNx220X, ProRes and even RAW so it integrates into editing and media management workflows without any file transcoding.

Blackmagic URSA Broadcast also includes studio camera features so you can use it more often as it can be moved between shooting and live production workflows. It’s very affordable and is available now for US$3,495.

Learn More ^>

Blackmagic SMPTE Fiber Converter

If you are using cameras such as the new URSA Broadcast as a studio camera then you will want to move the camera much further than the distance SDI can normally extend. The new Blackmagic Fiber Converters let you extend cameras using common SMPTE fiber cables. Plus these converters will also let you fully power the camera up to 2 km away.

There are 2 products in this new family, the first is the Blackmagic Studio Fiber Converter and it includes a power supply and all the video, audio, talkback and tally connections to interface to a switcher as well as traditional third party talkback and tally systems. It also works with the SDI talkback, tally and camera control protocols used on our ATEM switchers.

The other product is for the camera end and it's called the Blackmagic Camera Fiber Converter. It mounts to any camera that supports a standard battery plate, as it attaches to the camera in place of a battery to power the camera. What's exciting about the Blackmagic Camera Fiber Converter is that it also adds a lot of controls for audio and talkback and this means it transforms a normal broadcast camera into a studio camera. It allows the operator to work from behind the camera.

The Blackmagic Fiber Converters use the extremely reliable SMPTE fiber cable which is a global broadcast standard. It performs constant safety checks to ensure the cable is not damaged and the camera can be safely powered. It also includes multiple talkback channels for production and engineering as well as a main Ultra HD camera feed to the studio and 3 HD return SDI feeds back to the camera. It supports standard 5 pin broadcast talkback headsets and there are 2 headset connections. It also supports PTZ, tracker interface, outputs, tally, talkback, camera control and additional DC outputs for accessories or box style lenses.

The Blackmagic Camera Fiber Converter is available now for US$2,995 and the Blackmagic Studio Fiber Converter is also available now for US$2,995. When combined with URSA Broadcast or URSA Mini cameras, Blackmagic Studio Viewfinder and an ATEM live production switcher, these converters let you build the world’s most affordable and most professional high end broadcast camera chain!

Learn More ^>

New ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K

Live production switchers let you create television programs in realtime, including effects, transitions, graphics and more. We have a popular range of live switchers, however our biggest switcher was limited to 2 M/Es and some customers working on big jobs wanted a more powerful switcher.

Today we introduced the ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K, which is our most powerful and advanced live production switcher ever! It replaces the 2 M/E Broadcast Studio model and like the older model also features 20 x 12G-SDI inputs, DVE, SuperSource compositing engine for picture in picture effects, dozens of transitions and effects, Ultra HD multi view output, full re-synchronization on all inputs for super clean switching, and much, much more!

However this new model includes 4 fully independent mix effects rows, making it an incredibly powerful switcher. It also includes 4 of the completely new designed ATEM Advanced Chroma Keyers per ME row. That’s 16 of these new keyers in total. It’s a massive improvement and will allow some extremely large and complex live events to be covered.

The ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K is available now for US$5,995.

Learn More ^>

ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K Upgrade

If you own the ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K model, then we have some very good news. Because the designs are similar internally, we have been able to upgrade the older 2 M/E model to the same features as the new ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K. This means any 2 M/E model will now upgrade to 4 M/Es and the switcher will increase from 4 of the older design keyers to a total of 16 of the new ATEM Advanced Chroma Keyers.

We are really happy we can do this update and we think it's a nice way of saying thank you to all the customers who have purchased our ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K model. It’s a massive software update that will completely transform your switcher. It’s available today, free of charge from the support page on our web site. Please download it to update.

Download ATEM Switchers Update 7.3 >

New ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel

When you’re using a switcher on a complex live program, you need the speed and power of a dedicated hardware control panel so you keep up with the action and can operate quickly and without errors. With a nice range of Ultra HD live production switchers, we felt the previous mode of hardware control panel did not show the modern design of the switchers. So we have a whole, newly designed hardware control panel.

The new ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel is a compact hardware control panel featuring a built in LCD, dynamic customizable buttons, professional T-Bar fader, joystick, updated layout and more. It has LCDs for source labels so you can use labels longer than 4 characters and each label can be multi language as well as custom colored for clarity. The system control is now done on a large clear to read LCD and you can access a lot more features than the older model.

The new advanced panel lets you program and trigger macros as well as do aux switching and many other functions. There’s also a new M/E selection button that gives you total control of up to 4 mix effect rows, all from a 1 M/E panel! That means you can even use it with the new ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K! The new ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel will also work with all Blackmagic Design ATEM switchers, even the older models.

The ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel is also lower cost than the older model control panel and is available now for only US$2,995.

Learn More ^>

ATEM Camera Control Panel

With all these new products, there is a need for a professional CCU style camera control panel so you can match and color balance cameras live. All Blackmagic Design studio cameras have remote lens and camera control via the SDI program return feed and all our current model switchers generate this protocol. There is even a DaVinci primary color corrector built into all Blackmagic Studio cameras, URSA Mini and URSA Broadcast cameras that can be remote controlled!

To complete the whole live production workflow, we are announcing the new ATEM Camera Control Panel that features traditional CCU style camera controls. It is desktop mounted so it's portable and it also includes 4 independent camera controllers in the one panel. This means you get an elegant design, but it's also very portable. This panel has amazing quality controls and the master iris knob can also be rotated for master black adjustments and pushed to select the camera to camera monitoring. There are also controls for camera gain, setting camera numbers, bars, RGB gain and black adjustments, and much more.

What this means is a single person can remotely monitor and adjust a wide range of technical parameters such as black levels, gain, color balance, shutter speed of cameras, leaving the camera operators free to operate the camera. The ATEM Camera Control Panel will be available in May or June this year for US$2,995. Even though it's not shipping today, we wanted to show it so broadcasters could see the entire live production and broadcast workflow.

Learn More ^>

So that's all we have for today, and we’ve been working hard to bring you some powerful and professionally designed new products that we hope will creatively inspire and empower you to handle the large and complex jobs you might not have been able to do before. We hope you enjoy these new products and we can’t wait to see the new programming that's created with them!

If you’re in Europe, please come and see these new products at ISE in Amsterdam from the 6th to the 9th of February. Our booth is located at 3-C140. If you’re in the US, we will also be showing these products at FMC’s Blackmagic Design Conference and Expo in Los Angeles from 11th to the 13th of February.