Fremont, CA, USA - Thursday, 8 August 2019 - Blackmagic Design today announced Blackmagic RAW Speed Test, a new performance measurement tool for Mac OS X that tests a computer’s CPU and GPU speeds using full resolution Blackmagic RAW image decodes making it possible for customers to get a real world estimate of their computers performance.

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is available for download now from the Blackmagic Design website.

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is a CPU and GPU benchmarking tool that customers can use to test the speed of decoding full resolution Blackmagic RAW frames on their system. Multiple CPU cores and GPUs are automatically detected and used during the test so that customers get accurate and realistic results. Simply select Blackmagic RAW constant bitrate 3:1, 5:1, 8:1 or 12:1 and the desired resolution to perform the test. Although Blackmagic RAW Speed Test will run multiple resolution and frame rate tests on their system, customers can also select a specific test resolution to run on the main meters and the test will continue to run constantly, allowing stress testing of host computers.

Results are displayed in an easy to read table that shows customers how many frames per second their computer can decode for all supported resolutions. Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is currently available for Mac and can be downloaded from the Blackmagic Design website.

Blackmagic RAW is a revolutionary and modern new codec designed to capture and preserve the quality of camera images so new workflows in television and film production are possible. Video formats such as H.264 are highly compressed, plus add noise and weird artifacts, causing original sensor detail to be lost forever. Blackmagic RAW eliminates this problem and gives customers stunning images with incredible detail and color throughout the production pipeline from camera to edit, color and mastering. It also saves camera settings as metadata so customers can set ISO, white balance and exposure in camera or override them later while editing, all without any loss of quality.

Advanced operating system technologies are supported including Apple Metal, OpenGL and CUDA. Constant bitrate is also supported and this keeps data rates constant for recording to slower media cards, but varies the image quality to achieve this constant bitrate. Customers even get support for 3D LUTS embedded in Blackmagic RAW files so LUTs don't have to be "burned in”. This ensures the 3D LUT from the shoot travels with the media file itself and it also lets users disable the 3D LUT if they want to grade film gamma images or use a different 3D LUT to the one used on the shoot.

The Blackmagic RAW Developer SDK lets any software developer add support for Blackmagic RAW to their own applications and the Blackmagic RAW SDK can be downloaded from the Blackmagic Design website free of charge.

"We felt that computer performance measurement tools did not really perform the types of testing we needed in the film and television industry, because they operate very differently to the kinds of processing we do," said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. "So we thought using Blackmagic RAW decode speeds would be a good estimate of real world computing performance because it’s doing the exact same processing the computer is doing while editing, color correcting and doing visual effects rendering."

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test Features

• Tests system performance of both CPUs and GPUs using Blackmagic RAW.
• Blackmagic RAW based testing ensures more accurate performance results.

Availability and Price

Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is available now as a free download from the Blackmagic Design website.

Press Photography

Product photos of Blackmagic RAW Speed Test, as well as all other Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.