At the BVE Expo in London this week we interviewed Blackmagic Design’s UK distributor Holdan about the new Web Presenter which we previously reported on. It is a tiny box with the ability to take a signal up to SDI or HDMI up to 4K and down convert it to 720 HD for web streaming. To do this it uses Blackmagic’s Teranex scaling technology resulting in a very high quality real time down conversion.
The clever part is that this signal is then output to a Mac or PC over a standard USB connection and the computer sees it as a Webcam. This means that the signal can be used by a huge range of live video streaming apps including Skype. In practical terms you can now record in high quality up to 4K in your camera and stream 720 HD at the same time at a much lower cost than before and without any expensive software.
A very clever touch is that Blackmagic’s companion software on your computer is able to see how fast your connection is and optimise the date rate of your video stream to make bust use of the available speed.
The Web Presenter can either be used as a stand alone product, or in a rack mount. You can also add a smart panel to the front of the unit that offers some hardware controls and a small preview screen.
For more details visit the Blackmagic Design website.
