Blackmagic Design Buys DaVinci

Blackmagic Design announced the purchase of all assets of DaVinci Systems at IBC 2009.
This purchase means Blackmagic Design will now offer DaVinci Resolve DI color correction systems and DaVinci Revival film restoration products for sale worldwide.
DaVinci Resolve working with stereoscopic 3D and 4K, and DaVinci Revival film
restoration were demonstrated at IBC 2009 at the DaVinci booth 7.D08.
Since 1984 DaVinci have been, and continue to be, the standard in post production. There are thousands of colorists worldwide who understand the performance, quality and workflow of DaVinci color correction systems. DaVinci is the name behind more feature films, television commercials, documentaries, episodic television production and music videos than any other grading system.
DaVinci Resolve is unique in supporting more real time color correction than
any other system. This advantage is because DaVinci Resolve is not limited by
the computer it's running on. DaVinci Resolve is based on a cluster of computers
with high performance GPU cards, so all processing is always real time.
This means DaVinci Resolve has the power of a super computer for the real time
performance of all color grades even when using dozens of primaries, secondaries, power windows, multi point tracking, blurs, and more. With DaVinci Resolve, this is all real time, and if customers need more power for higher resolutions or more "nodes" of color correction, they can add more computers or GPU cards for the additional power.
Blackmagic Design has also initiated a wide ranging restructure of the DaVinci
business. The new focus will now be on the DaVinci Resolve color correction and
DaVinci Revival film restoration products. The company believes these products represent the future of color correction and film restoration and the company has many exciting ideas for future developments.
DaVinci Resolve already has the power to handle complex color grades in real
time even at native 4K resolutions and in stereoscopic 3D. These are the features that are vital on modern post production workflows. To accelerate development, DaVinci Resolve and DaVinci Revival engineering teams have already been expanded and further expansion is currently underway.
Due to the age of the DaVinci 2K systems which were originally launched in 1999, Blackmagic Design will cease marketing 2K systems immediately. Support for 2K systems will continue and plenty of spare parts are available for customer repairs.
Engineering will be dedicated to bug fix updates and small feature releases.
Annual support contracts will also immediately cease, and a new "pay as you go"
system will be initiated so customers only need to pay if a fault occurs. Blackmagic Design believes this will save customers thousands of dollars of unused support payments. Customers can pay for any repairs required, and purchase and repair of second hand DaVinci products will be supported when possible. This will greatly improve the resale value of second hand DaVinci products.
"I remember back in 1988 to the first day I started in post production and was
shown the telecine suite with DaVinci. I could not believe the quality of the
images on the monitor, and that was the moment I fell in love with high quality
imaging and color correction," said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. "I worked hard to become a telecine engineer, and for me it was the most exciting job in post production. It's been a while since I was a telecine engineer, however it's incredibly exciting to be back involved with DaVinci again! We have a lot to
live up to and many fantastic ideas, so it's a very exciting time!"
Blackmagic Design's DaVinci products will also get improved marketing and this includes a new website already posted at: www.blackmagic-design.com/davinci/.
(KMcA)