Online Weather Segments Use Ultimatte 12 4K

There is more to video creating equipment than simply making movies or films, or TV commercials, or documentaries.

Alex Garcia, chief meteorologist and president and CEO at Storm Science Network Inc., incorporated Ultimatte 12 4K real time compositing processor to help produce weather webcasts for KABB Fox San Antonio, as well as livecasts for the National Tropical Weather Conference (NTWC).

KABB Fox San Antonio offers local news to viewers in the area, while the NTWC offers meteorologists the latest news regarding the weather, as well as in person events. With a Blackmagic Design workflow in his home studio, Garcia has been able to offer viewers a high quality experience as if he was broadcasting from a professional studio.

“I’ve built an incredible workflow at home, powered by Blackmagic Design’s ATEM switchers and panels, Web Presenter and more, and incorporated the Ultimatte 12 4K to produce select webcasts for KABB Fox San Antonio focused on foliage and a recent lunar eclipse, as well as for the NTWC livecasts we do every Wednesday,” Garcia explained.

Using the Ultimatte 12 4K to key the foliage and eclipse webcasts, Garcia was able to showcase foregrounds and backgrounds of changing leaves and the moon while he presented, all while keeping the colors and shadows rich and intact. During his NTWC segments, he relied on the Ultimatte 12 4K to create backgrounds during the intros and presentations.

“The Ultimatte 12 4K was very easy for me to start using. You just look at the back of the unit and you can tell where the foreground goes and where the layer goes,” Garcia said. “It was also very interesting to use the new Ultimatte Software Control, which allowed me to tweak and build compositions as needed, all from my computer.”

He continued, “Because my home studio is small, I relied on the software to work on a wider field of view. I was able to open the image as much as I could to get everything in, as I wanted and scale it back down to where it was just me. Then, I could mask it off and get out of the picture, capture the image and clean it up. All of a sudden, it looked like I’m in a 30 foot studio.”

The Ultimatte 12 4K’s 12G-SDI connections have also proven beneficial for Garcia, as they allowed him to keep a clearer image. He commented, “Everything just looks sharper. You’re getting a lot more data coming through the line, as opposed to eight bits. The detail around you is just amazing.”

In addition to Ultimatte 12 4K, Garcia is using HyperDeck Studio HD Pro broadcast deck to record all his webcasts for both KABB and NTWC.

“The HyperDeck Studio HD Pro is so easy to use; I just record all of my content, move it to my laptop and edit what I need,” he said. “Not only have I been using it for KABB and NTWC, but I’ve also started recording biweekly video weather clips for national broadcasting. It’s really been a lifesaver because I do a lot of recordings with it, and it has made my whole workflow simpler.”

“As a regular customer of Blackmagic Design, I have to say the Ultimatte 12 4K and HyperDeck Studio HD Pro have both been incredibly impactful in my workflow, and the results in the content we’ve created really showed and exceeded expectations,” he concluded.