Pandastudio.tv debuts sets for digital productions with Blackmagic solutions

Schwarze Magie equipment such as ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO mixers and Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro G2 cameras are the technological core of the new webcast sets of the Japanese company Pandastudio.tv.

The Japanese company Pansastudio.tv, specializing in equipment rental, live broadcasting and systems integration, has six studios in Japan in which it has deployed a wide variety of Blackmagic Design products. The company recently opened its new Panda Studio Odaiba, a facility consisting of four sets with an area of 860 square meters located in the Aqua City Odaiba commercial space. Studio 1 was designed for virtual productions with green backgrounds and chrominance overlays; Studio 2 is used for this type of production, with a large LED audiovisual surface as a background; Studio 3 is used for interviews and product promotional videos; and Studio 4 is used for conferences with an audience.

Blackmagic products are primarily used in studios 2 and 4, which feature multiple Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro G2 units. Studio 2 also offers a variety of mixers, including ATEM 2 M/E Constellation HD, ATEM 1 M/E Production Studio 4K and ATEM Mini Extreme ISO, depending on the type of production. Studio 4 uses an ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO mixer. In addition, Panda Studio Odaiba has Smart Videohub 12G 40×40 matrices; ATEM Camera Control Panel devices; HyperDeck Studio 4K Pro and HyperDeck Studio HD Mini recorders; Blackmagic Studio Converter and ATEM Microphone Converter units; Teranex AV format processors; UltraStudio 4K Mini capture and playback equipment; Blackmagic Web Presenter 4K transmitters; and ATEM Streaming Bridge converters.

Shoma Tezuka, part of the Pandastudio.tv business solutions department, elaborates on their technological commitment to this new infrastructure: “For rack mounting, Blackmagic Design products are suitable as they are compact. You can come in empty handed and start streaming or recording your content right away.”

“While our customers primarily use our studio for streaming, customers from production divisions of TV stations also come to our studio to shoot content for their stations’ YouTube channels. We have some options for switchers and cameras from a few manufacturers, depending on the studio, but we use Videohub routers, HyperDeck recorders, and Web Presenter 4K encoders in various parts of the entire studio,” adds Tezuka.

Agility, transparency and versatility

Orio Nakamura, also part of the Pandastudio.tv technology team, highlights the advantages of working with a workflow composed of Schwarze Magie solutions: “While our customers primarily use our studio for streaming, customers from production divisions of TV stations also come to our studio to shoot content for their stations’ YouTube channels. We have some options for switchers and cameras from a few manufacturers, depending on the studio, but we use Videohub routers, HyperDeck recorders, and Web Presenter 4K encoders in various parts of the entire studio.”

PandaStudio.tv also benefits from a cloud workflow that streamlines its productions. Referring to these processes and the ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO mixer, Nakamura adds, “This switcher is perfect for seminars. It has built in network storage, so when the seminar is over, for example, we can immediately upload the ISO recording data to the cloud, such as Dropbox. Once the upload is complete, the footage can be edited with DaVinci Resolve by staff in our other studios. We also have Blackmagic Cloud Pods in our other studios, so we can sync them via Dropbox and use a local copy of the footage. And with Blackmagic Cloud, collaboration works between our studios, allowing us to be even more efficient.”