Blackmagic Cloud Price Reduction

Blackmagic Design today announced a dramatic price reduction for storage on Blackmagic Cloud. Until now the price has been USD$30 per TB per month, which at this cost, reduced the number of people who could use Blackmagic Cloud services for global post production workflows. Now the new price has been cut by half and will be USD$15 per TB. This reduction has been made possible by improvements in our data center backend and should allow more people to access Blackmagic Cloud storage for media sync.

This reduced price will be available from today. All customers currently using Blackmagic Cloud storage will see their bills immediately cut by half going forward.

Blackmagic Cloud lets people share DaVinci Resolve products worldwide, so they can work with some of the best editors, colorists, visual effects artists and audio engineers. It allows a truly global workflow.

Not only is Blackmagic Cloud built into DaVinci Resolve, but it’s also built into most Blackmagic Design cameras as well as the free Blackmagic Camera app on iPhone and Android phones.

The secret to Blackmagic Cloud is the ability of the latest Blackmagic cameras, such as the Cinema Camera 6K, PYXIS, URSA Cine and URSA Broadcast G2, to record a full resolution HD proxy in H.264. These files are live synced to Blackmagic Cloud as they are recorded, and then also live synced down to all DaVinci Resolve workstations that are connected to the same cloud project. All the cinematographer needs to do is connect to the project which they can see in the camera user interface. It is all automatic!

On the camera, the customer simply logs into Blackmagic Cloud and selects a DaVinci Resolve project before recording. Then the recording will start live syncing to all connected DaVinci Resolve workstations. Editors can edit while colorists color correct. Plus if customers have multiple cameras recording at the same time, then the new multi sync feature will show all cameras in a multi view, so the editor can pick the best angle.

This workflow is similar to live streaming into the edit software. If the user starts playing, the playback will never end as the media is syncing into the viewer just in front of the play head. The editor can see the play indicator jump back as each segment of clip arrives and the clip continues to grow in length. Plus the clip icon in the bin will show a red record indicator to show this clip is still recording on the remote camera.

This means when a camera starts recording, a remote DaVinci Resolve system can start editing and color correcting as the scene is shot, then a DaVinci system back on set can see the color grade the moment the camera stops rolling. It means you don’t need a complex color grading setup on set, as a post production facility can do it on a large DaVinci panel with color accurate monitoring. Then the on set DaVinci Resolve system can be used for playback of these color graded shots the moment the shot has been completed. It’s concurrent post production and shooting, where both happen on the same shot at the same time.

For news workflows, a camera such as URSA Broadcast G2 can start recording and syncing into the editing system the moment an historical event starts to unfold. The editor doesn’t have to wait for the camera to stop recording, as they can edit a news segment the moment the camera starts rolling, getting the segment to air in seconds.

If a broadcaster wants to get the media to air as it records, they just have to go back a few seconds in the DaVinci Resolve viewer and press play. DaVinci Resolve will then play back the media as it arrives in a very similar way to live streaming. DaVinci Resolve becomes the media decoder and player!

“This new lower price for Blackmagic Cloud storage is exciting and should allow a lot more customers to use cloud workflows,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “We cannot wait to see talented people come together and create amazing television shows, feature films and online content, no matter where in the world they live. This is the core of what Blackmagic Design stands for. The engineers have done a great job in helping reduce the cost of Blackmagic Cloud. It’s a lot of fun to do this!”