MultiCAM: world-class video switching solutions powered by Blackmagic Design posted: 22/05/2020
by Andrey Okunev
MultiCAM Systems, founded in 2003, is a French company that offers video production services and builds easy-to-use video production systems shipped throughout the world. I had a conversation with co-founders Stan Walbert and Prasad Ramassamy, both of whom are now self-isolating: Prasad in his apartment in Paris and Stan in a country house out of town. Stan, who is also a world-class VJ, had his performance at the Dubai Expo cancelled, which now leaves him with more time to do marketing and product development for MultiCAM, as well as to discuss how a Medialooks Video SDK and hardware by Blackmagic Design have helped develop their business.
When Stan and Arnaud, also a co-founder, were 17 years old, they started a pirate radio and had a lot of fun broadcasting whatever they wanted. Later, with Prasad, they started a web TV channel, which eventually led them to offer video production and live streaming services to customers in France.
We started the company with the production services background. We had to record and livestream city councils at first, and we didn't find any all-in-one solution that would meet all the requirements for very low-cost and very small demands of technical crew.
Stan's team kept running into inconveniences because it had to manage a lot of different equipment, which was expensive, difficult to carry and operate.
We had to simplify the setup in order to reduce cost. We wanted to have one solution with everything in it. This way we could send minimum people with minimum training and technical knowledge. If you have a lot of different equipment, you need to make it work together, and you take the risk of failures and misconnections. As a production company we needed something simple for people to operate with less support needed.
At some point, Prasad began his own coding in order to solve this problem. Having discovered Medialooks, he found it was the easiest way to prototype a new solution, which was designed to control and to recall camera presets, have a video preview, perform switching, recording and take snapshots.
We were using manufacturer panels, something that has buttons with numbers on it. But if you look at the numbers, you don't know what is the shot behind. We wanted to develop something where we could identify a camera shot with a certain name and preview thumbnail We didn't want to use a stack of devices and we believed that one piece of software can deliver switching, recording and streaming at the same time.
Since MultiCAM wasn't transforming an existing solution, trying to make it more user-friendly for the inexperienced user, it started from a blank page and went on to design a completely new user experience: by analyzing specific user segments and their behaviour patterns.
This approach, along with the fact that MultiCAM had their own team to provide instant feedback, led to the fact that ease of use is ingrained into the DNA of each product. A distinctive feature of the company's solutions is a touch screen interface, which is not very common in the industry.
Stan clearly describes his customers as those who need to broadcast and engage online, but don't want to have a dedicated crew, technical knowledge and go through a long learning curve:
Our customers are people who want to create video but don't want to know about the process.
Today, the company serves four distinct markets, where it helps organizations produce quality content: visual radio, education, conferences and medical. Each system was designed to fit specific needs and work well within the constraints of specific environments: depending on what resources people have to manipulate the system, the product is adapted for fully-automated, semi-automated or manual operating modes.
With semi-automation, you don't control, but you influence the system.
For instance, radio stations have no budget for a team to produce their visual program, they want a fully automated solution, driven by automatic speaker detection - availability of such solutions has formed a booming trend with more and more radio stations making content available on live and on-demand platforms such as YouTube.
The conferencing solution is similar to that for visual radio: it is integrated with the room's audio system and reacts to the microphone activity and automatically chooses the best shot. In the e-learning solution, image tracking is used instead of audio detection: the system switches between the speaker and his PowerPoint presentation depending on where he stands, how he moves and whether he had switched to a new slide. Medical institutions use MultiCAM systems to produce video training materials, which allow them to quickly focus and highlight a specific situation.
In order to provide customers with a predictable experience, MultiCAM ships integrated ready-to-use systems equipped with up to 9 branded PTZ cameras:
We don't sell separately software and hardware because we provide full support It's really important that we deliver the hardware as this is the guarantee of performance.
Several kinds of capture and playback cards - all from Blackmagic Design - are used for input and output. For example, a 4-camera setup would use a combination of DeckLink Quad 2 (8 SDI inputs) and the DeckLink Studio 4K (embedded audio input and audio & video output via SDI). The e-learning solution is usually a two-camera setup, so the DeckLink Duo 2 is used.
It's great that we have a choice of cards from Blackmagic to pick from depending on how many inputs and outputs we need. It's cost-effective and really versatile to combine and build the solution for every use case we provide.
MultiCAM also works with other Blackmagic devices, such
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
20/11/2025
LONDON The winners of the Rise Awards 2025, which recognize women and companies whose achievements have stood out in the media technology industry, have been an...
20/11/2025
SANTA MONICA & NEW YORK Lionsgate's Worldwide Television Distribution Group and Debmar-Mercury have launched MovieSphere Gold in more than 30 million homes....
20/11/2025
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has introduced its four-channel HelixNet beltpack, a next-generation advancement of its widely used two-channel model, and anticipates...
20/11/2025
NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. Streaming technology and services provider Kiswe has launched Kiswe Core, a next-generation cloud-based platform designed to simplify the s...
20/11/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Dolby Laboratories has signed on as an official signature partner of the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC) for the 2026 Super Bowl and the we...
20/11/2025
STUTTGART, Germany 3 Screen Solutions (3SS) has announced that the Canadian multiservice operator Telus has launched its Telus TV+ entertainment platform on Sam...
20/11/2025
Major League Baseball has announced deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix covering 2026-2028 that make ESPN the exclusive rightsholder of MLB.TV, see regula...
20/11/2025
Berklee Presents Holiday Extravaganza: Duke Ellingtons The Nutcracker Suite and ...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Martin Freeman, Jessie Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Eddie the Eagle and ...
19/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...
19/11/2025
Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...
19/11/2025
November 19 2025, 08:00 (PST) BAY AREA HOST COMMITTEE AND DOLBY PARTNER TO DELIVER IMMERSIVE FAN EXPERIENCES
During the Week of Football's Biggest Game...
19/11/2025
Michael D. Higgins: Ireland's Ninth President features RT Archives footage and interviews across seven decades
Watch Wednesday 19 November at 9:35pm on RT...
19/11/2025
Scripps Research scientists receive $1.1 million to advance AI modeling for HIV vaccine development New AI system helps scientists rapidly pinpoint the most pro...
18/11/2025
Independent media across Central America are operating under intensifying financial pressure, yet there is a clear appetite for models that can sustain both ind...
MultiCAM: world-class video switching solutions powered by Blackmagic Design posted: 22/05/2020 
