NAB 2024: Blackmagic Design Talks URSA Cine 12K, DaVinci Resolve 19, Constellation 4K Switchers and More

Blackmagic Design Director of Sales Operations Bob Caniglia discusses key features of Blackmagic Design's new URSA Cine 12K, DaVinci Resolve 19, 4K switchers, and more in this interview with Streaming Media's Marc Franklin from the Blackmagic Design booth at NAB 2024.

Marc Franklin: Streaming Media Magazine is now in Blackjmagic Design's booth and we have a lot of new and exciting announcements for this year's NAB. So I'm here with Bob Caniglia, Director of Sales Operations, who's going to tell us all about it.

Bob Caniglia: We have some new announcements in the cameras. We have a new URSACine 12K camera. It has a new body design as well as a new sensor that we're using. It features 16 stops of dynamic range. It has multiple lens mounts. You can have an EF, PL, or LPL mount. We even have a new Media Module that we use to record that we're making on our own because it has 8TB of storage, so it can record four hours of 12K. So it's really very dense. And we have ethernet port as well as Wi-Fi or USB-C to tether in order to move the data from the camera through the Blackmagic Cloud service. So this way, you can actually pull the media off using the 10 gig Ethernet. It's our biggest camera in terms of the sensor size and things. We're even also showing a new camera that'll come later and hopefully by the end of the year, which is a 17K 65 millimeter.

So we are definitely showing that we want to be firmly implanted in the high-end cinema world. And in addition to that camera, we also introduced our new PYXIS 6K camera, which is a box camera with a 6K full-frame sensor. So these are large-format sensors and the suitcase camera can be obviously rigged out any way people want. We even have an optional rosette to put on one side of it. It has a monitor there, so you can go through the menus, you can use it as a confidence monitor or camera system, those kind of things. And that camera is going to be available in three different mounts: an EF, PL, and an L mount.

Marc Franklin: Now with that 8 TB media, is that just like an external flash drive?

Bob Caniglia: Right, so it's a custom module that has the data on it and it pulls in and out of the camera itself. And then we have a new media dock that you can use to mount it to your system.

Marc Franklin: Do you need the dock for it to work or can you wire it like USB-C also?

Bob Caniglia: You'd either use the dock itself or from the camera directly. You could connect through the 10 gig.

Marc Franklin: So all you need is an ethernet cable and you can record directly to it.

Bob Caniglia: So you can use the ethernet cable to pull the data off of the camera.

Marc Franklin: Okay, so it can't record to it, but you can transfer to it.

Bob Caniglia: Correct. You transfer the data. But also you can use the Wi-Fi connection to move files, because it records Blackmagic RAW at the same time on both of the new cameras,

Marc Franklin: Are there any similar updates of that functionality in your older cameras?

Bob Caniglia: We recently enabled the Pocket Cinema Cameras as well as the new Cinema 6K model, which is a handheld model of the 6K sensor to be able to do the proxy and Blackmagic RAW recording as well as being able to use the Pocket cameras as a webcam. So you can take the SPC out and show us there's a webcam.

Marc Franklin: Outside the cameras, any other interesting things?

Bob Caniglia: Da Vinci Resolve 19 has a host of new features including some new AI tools, but also we're using it for replay with the ATEMs using a combination of the Hyperdecks and our cloud storage. So it's using Da Vinci Resolve software now to do multicam for replay. So that was a big announcement there.

On the AI side, we have this new IntelliTrack AI that is actually across several of the tabs in the program. So Fusion Fairlight audio and the Color page, obviously. In the Fairlight page, one of the unique new tools is to pan sound by. So if you have, say, a plane going across, you can track the plane and it'll automatically pan the audio to match. So that way you're not having the keyframe does it automatically and you can spend more time being creative rather than having a key frame thing. So that's one of those devices where the AI is helpful so it speeds up the process so you can spend more time doing more creative things.

Marc Franklin: Anything else as far as the Studio?

Bob Caniglia: In the ATEM area, for the live production switchers, we have the new ATEM 1 M/E and 2 M/E 4K Constellation 4Ks. So they mirror the HD versions from last year in terms of inputs and outputs, but now it's in 4K. We also came out with a ATEM Micro Panel that is a small switcher panel that has the same buttons as our larger panels, but it's designed to work with any of our switchers even up to the 4 M/E switcher. And as I tell people, that is great for any of the small switchers, so you can at least direct punch instead of having to use the software. But even if you have a larger panel on an M/E switcher of ours, you can still use the small ones, say maybe to switch monitors off of a different bus, things like that.

So it's a cool little panel ($675) and I think that people are really going to like the idea of having that option. It's very low profile, but we also have some new products, SMPTE 2110 products that the IP products are there. It's designed to sort of build out our ecosystem. We're using 10 gig ethernet to move 4K. Now we have our own codec that conforms to the 2110 standard, but we're making it open source so everybody can implement it. We have several products, like a small 16-input app router that we have that works like a video router for IP. And then we have some other end-to-end products where you can mount one of them on the back of a TV and take a 10 gig signal in and turns it into HDMI. So you can run with just standard CAT6+. It's a great way to move images to long distances that obviously it would exceed SDI.

Marc Franklin: Very interesting stuff as always. Does that cover it all or is there more?

Bob Caniglia: There's always more. The one thing that I will say is that in the Cintel scanner we have a new 8mm gate that we announced the check display and now it's officially released. So that's pretty cool.

Marc Franklin: When you have the 17K camera out there, do you actually think people are going to have displays that high resolution, or do you think it'll just be for cropping in and giving you that multi-camera option, like what we're doing with 4K and making it 1080?

Bob Caniglia: Right. So where the 17K really comes in is that a lot of the virtual production with the LED screen, they're using very high-resolution images, so they'll use a 16K image out of that. So you'll have some framing for that. But I think it's one of those things where the 65 millimeter is where, so if you want to do IMAX-type stuff, that's also where we can use it. But people definitely overshoot to have the ability to reframe. And that's just another example of where we'll be with that.

Marc Franklin: How many terabytes would it be per minute for the 17K?

Bob Caniglia: There'll be a calculator online like we have for the 12K. I don't know what the math is on that one yet.

Marc Franklin: What is it for the 12K?

Bob Caniglia: Well, the 8TB module rather can record four hours of 4K, which is pretty good. And there's all sliding scale calculus we have, depending on the resolution and what not, it'll give you an accurate readout for how many terabytes per hour depending on the settings because you can still use an SSD drive to record on the Cine 12K.

Marc Franklin: That is it for Blackmagic Design at NAB 2024.