Blackmagic Design
More info
- Creator
- Grant Petty
- Released
- 2001
- Type
- Video equipment
- Website
- blackmagicdesign.com
An Australian manufacturer that kept cutting the price of professional video gear until competitors had to rethink their price lists.
Grant Petty founded the company in Melbourne in 2001, and its first product was DeckLink, a card for capturing uncompressed video into a computer. The business model has stayed the same ever since: take equipment that used to cost as much as a car and sell it for a fraction. In 2009 it bought da Vinci Systems, whose colour-grading suites cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and DaVinci Resolve became effectively free.
Its own cinema cameras followed from 2012, along with the ATEM switchers that became standard kit for live streams and churches broadcasting their services. The company is privately held, spends little on marketing and announces new products by having Petty talk for hours in front of a grey wall.