The new Blackmagic Duplicator 4K was designed to solve the biggest problem many people in the television production industry face: how do to get UltraHD content to customers and let them more completely utilize their big screen Ultra HD TVs.
The Duplicator 4K solves this pesky problem by letting users record the content in real-time, high-quality H.265 onto 25 separate SD cards they can then sell to customers. Blackmagic Design is showing the product at its NAB booth this week.
Also See: Here’s What HDR Means to 4K
“Real-time recording means that the Blackmagic Duplicator 4K solves another big problem, and that’s how to pay for your production work,” according to the press release announcing the product’s launch. Customers can sell the high-quality content the moment the event is over, according to the press release, “when the customers are most excited to buy it.”
Here’s more about the Blackmagic Duplicator 4K:
The Blackmagic Duplicator 4K features 25 SD card slots along the front panel with record controls located on the right hand side. There is also an LCD for monitoring input video and audio levels. On the back panel, there’s a 12G-SDI input with loop-thru output plus power and remote connections. The remote out lets you daisy chain duplicators so you can keep adding extra capacity and start them all recording at the same time.
The Blackmagic Duplicator 4K is packed with powerful features such as its H.265 hardware encoder. Ultra HD has four times as many pixels than HD, so if you try to use the older H.264 compression format, the files would become four times as large and the storage cost would be much more. To deal with the higher resolutions of Ultra HD video, the new H.265 compression was developed specifically for Ultra HD distribution.
What this means is that we can save Ultra HD, even at high frame rates, into files that are not much bigger than HD files in H.264. The SDI connections on the Blackmagic Duplicator 4K are the latest 12G-SDI so the duplicator supports recording into all SD, HD or Ultra HD formats and even high frame rate Ultra HD up to 2160p60.
To help with compatibility, we are also working on adding a H.264 codec into the duplicator for HD and that will be available later in the year as a software update.
Another powerful feature is the append record feature, which lets you start recording onto the end of the previous recording so customers get a single file that’s easy to watch. Append record is vital to make sure you don’t pass customers a mess of separate recordings. Instead they get one nice single media file.
The SD cards are very thin so each duplicator can fit more of them across the front panel, plus you can make them look professional to customers by presenting them in a printed wallet. SD cards are very compatible as virtually all modern computers have SD card storage slots built in. Any cards you don’t sell after an event can be formatted in the duplicator so they are clear for your next job.
The Blackmagic Duplicator 4K is available today for $1,995.
Click here for more information about the Blackmagic Duplicator 4K.
