Tom Ford broadcasts 1500 hours of live content with Blackmagic Design solutions

Chuangyang Culture (Shanghai) has used a workflow based on Design Blackmagic solutions to broadcast 1500 hours of Tom Ford promotional content.

Chuangyang Culture offers a wide range of services, including creative design, short film production, and live broadcasting for clients such as GAC Group, fliggy.com, Douyu, Huya, and Netease Games. His latest project, for luxury brand Tom Ford, consisted of a total of 1,500 hours of live broadcasts that could be viewed via Taobao Live (Alibaba) and which were broadcast at a rate of 12 hours per day.

According to Fan Hua, director of Chuangyang Culture, it was clear from the start that their Design Blackmagic-based workflow would be a perfect fit for this project: “We got to know Blackmagic Design when we started using DaVinci Resolve, which was powerful but affordable, and that made us have a very good feeling about this brand. Afterwards, we learned it was also a maker of various products such as cameras, switchers, converters, video routers, recorders and the like, so when building our multicam live production system, we chose Blackmagic Design’s URSA Broadcast cameras, ATEM Television Studio Pro 4K, Video Assist, Teranex and Mini converters.”

The workflow for the live webcast consisted of two Transmissão URSA cameras connected to the ATEM Television Pro 4K mixer, which, through SDI connections, transmitted the audiovisual signals and controlled aspects such as the pilot light. The mixer also automatically performed format conversions and frame synchronization. The main signal was picked up by a DeckLink SDI 4K card installed in a webcast workstation.

Platform limitations

One of the challenges the production company faced was that the client wanted high image quality, but the Taobao Live platform only accepts up to 1.5 Mb/s bitrate. Chuangyang Culture tested all the film and studio cameras available to them and found that the Transmissão URSA model’s images looked “spectacular” even after being highly compressed by the streaming platform. Still, they made an effort to enhance the images with a custom conversion table compatible with the camera, so the result was better than expected and lived up to the client’s expectations.

Hua, satisfied with this production together with Tom Ford, hopes to repeat the experience in the future using Blackmagic Design: “This Blackmagic Design workflow worked for 1,500 hours in total, 12 hours straight every day, with no problem at all. This reliability, combined with its broadcast quality, enabled us to complete the task confidently. Also, compared to traditional multicam setups for broadcast studios, Blackmagic Design’s live production solutions allow our employees to familiarize themselves much faster, reducing the training costs. In the era of surging demand for live broadcasts, Blackmagic solutions really fit the bill for us.”