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At the monthly meeting of the ‘Society of Television Engineers’ held in Burbank on January 16^th, 2014, LumaForge and Blackmagic Design presented the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K attached to the new Apple Mac Pros running DaVinci Resolve 10.1.

LumaForge set up a demonstration using the following technologies:

Two Apple new Mac Pro cylinders

Blackmagic Design 4K Production Camera

Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 4K Thunderbolt 2 breakout box

Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve 10.1

Corning optical Thunderbolt 30 meter cable running at 20 GB/s

Apple FCP X 10.1

ARECA Thunderbolt 2 8 bay RAID

Magma ROBEN 3 Thunderbolt 2 expansion chassis

Fusion-IO ioFX MLC memory card running in ROBEN 3

RED Rocket-X card running in ROBEN 3

SEIKI 65 inch 4K UHDTV

Thunderbolt 2 Bridging using OSX Mavericks

NanoTech NP1 4K streaming set top box

CEO of LumaForge, Neil Smith and Matt Jefferson, Blackmagic Design’s World Wide Director of Developer and Partner Relations presented the Blackmagic 4K camera and infrastructure products to a packed crowd at the monthly meeting of the ‘Society of TV Engineers.’ in Burbank. Smith covered Apple’s new Mac Pros with Thunderbolt 2 storage and Thunderbolt 2 connectivity while Jefferson covered Blackmagic’s 4K, 6G and Thunderbolt 2 enabled product lines.

Smith had this to say about the Blackmagic Design’s technology demonstration:  “We’ve been working closely with Blackmagic and Apple to help bring this new 4K ecosystem to market. The combination of Apple’s new Mac pro cylinder with BMD’s 4K camera and Thunderbolt I/O boxes is awesome. The price/performance that BMD are able to deliver to the production and broadcast market with their HD SDI, 6G, Thunderbolt and 4K technologies is quite outstanding. No other company offers what Blackmagic offers with same level of affordability and functionality. They really are one of the innovators along with Apple in the brave new world of 4K end-to-end content creation and delivery.”

The "Dynamic Duo" of Smith and Jefferson entertained the TV engineers with their detailed explanation of Thunderbolt 2 architecture and connectivity and how deeply it’s embedded into Intel and Apple’s 64-bit engineering efforts. As well as demonstrating the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K in action, Smith also showed the new optical Thunderbolt cabling from Corning connecting two Macs at opposite ends of the large dining room. With optical Thunderbolt cabling, IT staff can now connect machines and storage up to 30 meters apart with a sustained throughput of 20 GB/s.

Smith added. “The TV engineers came up after the presentation and prodded around at the back of all the computers and Thunderbolt 2 boxes we had on display. At one point I even had to take off the cover from the Mac Pro so they could see for themselves how it was designed. These are the engineers that run the TV studios and post-production facilities in Burbank and Hollywood and they always want to know what's happening in the rapidly changing IT world. There’s an interesting convergence taking place in the Media & Entertainment industry between ‘IT driven Hollywood’ and ‘Content driven Silicon Valley’ around the emerging market for 4K content and delivery.  IPTV and IT Hollywood are drawing closer and closer. Companies like Blackmagic Design, Apple and LumaForge are showing how easy and affordable it is to implement a cost-effective end-to-end 4K content pipeline.”

LumaForge specializes in configuring and implementing fast, secure and robust 4K workflows for Film and TV productions and post-production. Based in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, LumaForge offers workflow consulting and optimization services as well as systems integration, training and support. Neil Smith is a Certified Apple Consultant specializing in networking, storage and workflow. www.lumaforge.com