At IBC 2016 Blackmagic Design announced, today, it acquired the world’s number one realtime blue and green screen compositing solution, Ultimatte.
Ultimatte is known worldwide for delivering broadcast quality compositing results that make virtual sets indistinguishable from real sets. Ultimatte creates realtime blue and green screen removal hardware that is used in broadcast studios around the world to seamlessly composite reporters, talk show hosts and more into virtual sets. Almost every newscaster and weather reporter stands in front of a green or blue screen while delivering the news and weather. For the past 40 years, Ultimatte has been the industry standard hardware or software responsible for keying these people in front of weather maps, stock charts, and other info graphics. In fact, many of these newscasters are using Ultimatte to place them into completely virtual sets.
Ultimatte uses advanced 4:4:4:4 image processing and provides enhanced matte controls that lets customers accurately separate the subject from the background. Customers also get matte correction features, indirect and direct lighting features, spill suppression tools, edge artifact controls and more, all in realtime.
Ultimatte was founded in 1976 and has won an Emmy for their realtime compositing technology, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as an Oscar.
“Ultimatte’s realtime blue and green screen compositing solutions have been the standard for 40 years,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “Ultimatte has been used by virtually every major broadcast network in the world. We are thrilled to bring Ultimatte and Blackmagic Design together, and are excited about continuing to build innovative products for our customers!”
During IBC 2016 visitors have a chance to see the newest solution from Ultimatte in action. In the same year the company celebrates 4o year in the market, it shows that although Ultimate 11, introduced in 2006, represents the pinnacle of quality matting devices, there is still space or improvement.The Ultimatte 11 stands alone in the industry for its longevity, and that’s what makes Ultimatte 12 so remarkable. The improvements are clearly visible, even to the untrained eye. Spill suppression artifacts, edge artifacts, uneven lighting, floor glare, suppression noise, color integrity, clean-up loss, were insurmountable problems with solutions considered to have hit a wall in real-time keying. The Ultimatte 12 tears down those walls and proves green-screen technology was not a mature science after all.