Blackmagic Design today announced that leading news organization Agence France Presse (AFP) broadcast their live coverage of the 65th Cannes Film Festival award ceremony using Blackmagic Design’s ATEM 2 M/E Production Switcher, Smart Videohub and UltraStudio 3D.

At the festival, television reporting teams from AFP captured the first reactions of winners and discussed the films that had been entered into the 2012 competition. Customers of AFP in Europe and the Middle East were fed a live HD broadcast feed from the AFP OB van via satellite, while fiber link was used to transmit the broadcast to those in Asia.

With the support of France based Atreid, AFP built its SNG van around Blackmagic Design’s Smart Videohub, which routed all incoming SD and HD signals. The upstream video signals to the van were converted from HD-SDI to fiber optic using Blackmagic Mini Converters, before content was fed into the ATEM 2 M/E Production Switcher.

“The feature rich broadcast switcher allows for live direction of complex shows, making Blackmagic’s ATEM 2 M/E the perfect switcher for broadcasting live news, television shows and corporate programs with motion graphics thanks to powerful DVE and keyers built in,” said Yves Tassel of Agence France Presse.

Tassel adds: “Blackmagic Design’s new audio mixer feature on the ATEM 2 M/E arrived just in time for Cannes. Before the audio mixer feature came out, we had to extract audio from the HD-SDI streams in order for us to mix sources with an analog mixer, then route the audio mix into the analogue XLR inputs. With the audio mixer, play out sources were setup and manual mix was configured on the voice over from the journalist.”

Additionally, Blackmagic’s UltraStudio 3D Thunderbolt based capture and playback device, connected to a MacBook Pro and Final Cut Pro 7, was used by AFP to allow news teams to edit reports via the SNG van on location to broadcast time sensitive content as it happened.

“The addition of the audio mixer to the ATEM 2 M/E makes this a very powerful piece of kit given that space is always something of a premium. The small form factor, coupled with its intuitive design and broadcast quality features make this a very powerful and cost effective piece of technology,” concluded Tassel.
About ATEM Production Switchers

Empower live creativity with the new ATEM Production Switchers! For the first time extremely powerful broadcast grade features, incredibly small size and low cost have been designed in a live production switcher! ATEM Production Switchers include 4 upstream keyers each with independent chroma, shaped and linear keying, 2 downstream keyers, stinger effects, graphic wipes, media players for stills and clips and a built in DVE for amazing DVE transitions or key repositioning. For portable use, the built in Multi View showing all cameras, preview and program can be viewed on a single SDI or HDMI monitor.

ATEM Production Switchers also include loads of HDMI and SDI inputs allowing professional SDI cameras as well as consumer HDMI cameras and computers to be connected. Only ATEM Production Switchers allows low cost HDMI consumer cameras in a professional switcher so it’s easy for customers starting out in live production! ATEM Production Switchers include a free software control panel and media pool management software for Mac OS X and Windows 7. ATEM Production Switchers are sold independently of the hardware control panel, allowing lower initial cost and greater customization. ATEM Production Switchers retail for only US$2,495.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagic-design.com.