Blackmagic Design is an Australian digital media company that was founded in 2001 and is based in Melbourne, Australia. Its inaugural product was a capture card for macOS called DeckLink. It was the first of its kind to be able to capture uncompressed 10-bit video. Since then, Blackmagic Design has continually been on the frontier of innovation in the cinema hardware and video editing software space. Today, it boasts an annual revenue of nearly $600 million, employs 1,500 people, and its products are widely used across the TV and film industry.
In this article, we'll dive into all things Blackmagic Design. We'll look at how it all started, its current offerings and goals, and its numerous accolades and achievements through the years.
Blackmagic Design
Prior to founding Black Design, Grant Petty was working as an engineer in the TV industry in Australia. During his tenure, he was struck by how expensive it was to purchase and hire equipment—to the point that he believed this was a fundamental flaw that needed to change.
Thus, Blackmagic Design was born out of Grant Petty's passion, vision, and desire to change the TV industry. Founded in 2001, Petty's vision for the company was to offer accessible, affordable, high-end post-production tools.
Humble Beginnings
With Grant Petty’s vision as its starting point, he and Blackmagic Design got to work in a garage. Its initial focus was set on video editing software and hardware. In 2002, the company came out with the first capture card to offer uncompressed 10-bit video, dubbed DeckLink. The product was an instant success, selling 163 capture cards in its first month. This marked the beginning of Blackmagic Design's rise in the world of digital media creation.
As the years progressed, Blackmagic Design expanded its portfolio to a broad range of products spanning the content creation workflow. Today, the company is synonymous with cutting-edge solutions, from cameras and switchers to live-production equipment and post-production suites.
Blackmagic Design's Range of Products
Blackmagic Design's repertoire includes a wide range of software and hardware suited to the full spectrum of the film, television, and broadcasting industries. Let's take a closer look at some of the various types of products it has on offer. This list spans various editing software, capture cards, and cinema-grade cameras.
Capture and Playback Devices
Beginning with its inaugural DeckLink series in 2002, Blackmagic Design has since expanded its product stack. It has added capture and playback devices such as the UltraStudio range, as well as the Intensity Pro capture card.
Additionally, the DeckLink series has come a long way since its original macOS-only release, offering far greater support and functionality than ever before.
On-Air and Post Production Software
In 2009, Blackmagic Design acquired the company Da Vinci Systems, along with its flagship color-correction products DaVinci Resolve and DaVinci Resolve Studio. Following the acquisition, the company branched out into the on-air, post-production, and chroma key space.
The growth continues. Since then, Blackmagic Design added a wide range of software and hardware to its on-air and post-production stack. Some of its offerings include the Fairlight Advanced Consoles, Fusion Studio, the DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel, and the Ultimatte range of chroma keyers.
Professional Cameras
Blackmagic announced its entry into the camera business in 2012 at the National Association of Broadcasters show that year. At the convention, it unveiled the first of its range of high-quality cinema cameras, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5K.
It has since expanded this offering to a range of cinema cameras, advanced digital film cameras, and studio cameras.
Recording, Duplication, and Storage
Blackmagic Design's expertise is not limited to what we've already covered. The company also deals with disk recorders, disk arrays, and professional recording and monitoring hardware.
Its key line of products in this area is the HyperDeck range, which lets users record and playback media files of various formats and fidelities. With the Blackmagic Duplicator, users can clone their media in real-time, or simply extend their storage for long-form recording.
The Blackmagic MultiDock, with its 4-slot SSD dock, offers a way for professionals to edit media directly from their drives. Additionally, Blackmagic offers a range of network storage solutions such as the Blackmagic Cloud Pod and the Blackmagic Cloud Dock range.
Film Scanners
Since acquiring Cintel in 2014, Blackmagic Design has been at the forefront of 35mm and 16mm HDR film scanning. Having inherited the wildly popular Cintel Film Scanner, the company has since put out two updated releases of the product.
The current iteration, the Cintel Scanner G3 HDR+, has been revamped to offer the highest quality output to meet today's growing video quality standards.
Audio and Video Monitoring
Blackmagic's impressive range also covers several innovative audio and video monitoring solutions. For instance, the SmartView lineup can be installed on a rack or monitor arms, while the Blackmagic Video Assist line mounts directly onto a camera. For users who want to monitor several independent sources simultaneously, the Blackmagic MultiView offers a seamless way to do so.
Blackmagic's Industry Impact
Today, Blackmagic Design has been at the forefront of digital content creation for over two decades. Its products are widely used throughout the industry; indeed, 80 percent of modern-day feature films utilize its technology.
Blackmagic Design has undoubtedly made enormous strides toward its initial vision of making high-end filmmaking tech more accessible. The Blackmagic RAW video codec, for instance, was a game-changer. It offered a previously unseen ability to record with smaller file sizes and significantly streamlined post-production workflows, all without compromising on image quality.
Going back to its creation, Blackmagic Design's intent was always to democratize the television and film industries. It's not all about growth and innovation, though. The company has also shown a remarkable altruistic streak.
One example of this is the Blackmagic Collective. Formed in 2020, the Collective is a nonprofit that provides resources, mentorship, and opportunities for emerging filmmakers.
Blackmagic's continuous efforts to make filmmaking tools and knowledge more accessible to a broader audience is a testament to its commitment to the industry. Financially, the company has seen tremendous success. However, its impact goes far beyond that.
The company has torn down barriers to entry and played a key role in the industry's growth, reflecting a genuine passion for supporting and advancing the art of filmmaking.
How Secure Data Recovery Helped
In the digital content creation space, unforeseen challenges can pose significant threats to data integrity and security. Even an industry behemoth like Blackmagic Design isn't exempt from potential data loss crises.
In a recent incident, Blackmagic Design did indeed fall victim to one such data loss disaster. John Parenteau, Blackmagic's Hollywood Corporate Communications liaison, had been collecting several years' worth of footage from projects that used Blackmagic products.
Unfortunately, the server that housed these massive stores of data crashed. Without a backup of this data, John was left uncertain about how to go about recovering it—or if it was even possible.
Corrupted hard drives are one of our many areas of expertise at Secure Data Recovery, and luckily, John reached out to us. Given the years of irreplaceable footage here, this was certainly a far larger set of data than we typically work with. Regardless, we were able to quickly recover all of Blackmagic's lost footage soon after John got in touch.
If you've experienced a similar data loss situation, be it from a corrupted or malfunctioning drive or another issue entirely, get in touch with us today. We offer a free diagnostic and boast a “No Data, No Recovery fee” guarantee. If we don't recover your data, you don't pay a penny—but our success rates tell us that we can do it!
Give us a call today at 800-388-1266 to get started!
