Blackmagic Design buys Fairlight

[Shastapete]

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20160909-02

I wonder how long it'll take before they make moves towards production sound

[Jesse Flaitz]

Hopefully never.  Blackmagic has a sordid history of production issues, false promises, delayed releases, buggy products, illogical designs, etc. Though I will admit, their dual rack monitor system is a bargain for the ages.

They might end up some kind of competition for the new and improved Zoom products or something, but I doubt much else.

[Philip Perkins]

BM cards are pretty good.  BM cameras, a mixed bag.  Resolve, quite useful for my DIT friends.  What will they do with Fairlight?  If the Prism acquisition of Sadie several years ago is any guide, the priority will be to get the Fairlight app to work on BM hardware, I'd guess, as well as natively  (not the current somewhat dumbed down native Fairlight version).

[Jim Feeley]

In my circles, Blackmagic cards are OK but breakdown...And Blackmagic's support is nowhere near as good as AJA's (AJA will at least sometimes ship a replacement card before they receive your card). And the software with the cards is kinda flaky. However, Blackmagic cards (and monitors and just about everything) are cheap; just throw away and get another. If you're ready for that, then fine.

I haven't really been paying attention to Fairlight. Are they widely used anywhere (like perhaps Australia and neighboring countries)? Or is Blackmagic partly buying them because they're Aussie pals, maybe have some good IP and/or engineers, or?  

And looking at Blackmagic's pricing strategies can you just imagine what the price of this will now be? US$5000? :-)

[Mungo]

Fairlight is a small company who listened to it's customers wishes, even if the customer had only a very little amount of their units in service. Their stuff was expensive and of high quality. They were the only company who could make multitrack audio files follow a timecode VTR machine absolutely direct and smooth even in Jog/Shuttle mode. File based video with multitrack audio worked even better. The operation on fairlight systems is not at all intuitive, but if you have understood and been trained, you can work with them faster than with any other machines. Like a secretary typing with ten fingers. All in all professional and nerdy.

Black magic is a big company who sells products that may look worthy to unknowing buyers but signal quality is mostly way beyond other professional stuff. Their stuff is inexpensive and of low quality. Their cameras are a joke - on the first look they seem impressive - but the picture becomes unusable when the sun comes into frame which is hilarious. After an undefineable failure an engineer recently joked: "Maybe there was black magic in the air".

 

Puhh, let's hope the best!

[Jay Rose]

Quote

They were the only company who could make multitrack audio files follow a timecode VTR machine absolutely direct and smooth even in Jog/Shuttle mode

Beg to differ: The Orban Audicy could not only follow a timecode VTR smoothly, it could even be the master and make a 9-pin machine follow it smoothly. Performance on a mechanical BetaSP was pretty darned good... pix locked in a few seconds and of course audio was stable from the moment you pressed play. During editing, it almost looked like a Steenbeck when you scrubbed the audio (smoothly across all tracks) and the pix would advance precisely one frame whenever you crossed a boundary. You could also set Audicy for half-speed play for checking sync and the pix would stay with you. Performance on a 9-pin HDVR (I used Doremi) was absolutely perfect... it looked like sound and pix were on the same perf'd sync block.

Unfortunately, higher-ups at Orban decided not to pursue marketing in the TV/post space, but just stay in their radio comfort zone. OTOH, the dealers sold video-enabled Audicy. My clients were blown away at how much faster and smoother the thing worked, compared to PT.

This all fell apart when Harman sold Orban in 1999, and the new owners decided to ax everything except the transmitter processors. Development stopped short. I kept on using Audicy for TVCs, corporate, and short indie films until 2005. Then I had to switch, to keep up with technology...

 

[Mungo]

39 minutes ago, Jay Rose said:

Beg to differ: The Orban Audicy could not only follow a timecode VTR smoothly, it could even be the master and make a 9-pin machine follow it smoothly.

Sorry, didn't known that system. That was before I got familiar with post machines.

Sorry about Orban. I too had known them only as the maker of that compressed FM sound.

 

[RadoStefanov]

Regardless of false promises Black magic is a very successful company. And putting all their problems aside they revolutionized the camera world especially with their pocket camera and micro camera that is being used by everybody from indy film makers to blockbuster films.

They also revolutionized the software world by giving Resolve for free.

 

 

[IronFilm]

Well said RadoStefanov, for all their many detractors who want to hate on BMD, you can't deny the hugely massive impact Blackmagic Design has had on the industry at all levels