PODCAST EXPO 2026 Recorded Using Blackmagic Design Workflow
Conference featuring 24 sessions over two days recorded using a Blackmagic Design live production system.
Blackmagic Design today announced that its products, including the Blackmagic Studio Camera 6K Pro and ATEM Mini Extreme ISO G2 live production switcher, were used to record the 24 session conference held as part of the podcast event PODCAST EXPO.
The event was organized by Zatsudan Inc., a creative team involved in everything from planning, producing, and distributing podcast programs to event management. In addition to operating a podcast studio in Higashi-Nakano, Tokyo, the company organizes PODCAST EXPO and Podcast Weekend events, and is helping drive the growth of Japan’s audio content market.
At PODCAST EXPO 2026, sessions were recorded on two stages throughout the venue. Blackmagic Design products were used as part of the production system, with a workflow designed to complete as much of the post production process as possible on site, in order to make approximately 24 hours of recorded content quickly available online .
“I’ve been doing podcasts for about 20 years. At the time, it was simply an extension of my hobby. Most podcasters didn’t have the mindset that podcasting could become a business,” said Suguru Shibutani, podcaster and producer. “However, Google, Amazon, and Spotify entered the market, and audio content started gaining significant momentum around 2017. I began to think, ‘maybe this really can work as a business,’ and decided to turn the audio content I had been creating as a hobby into my full time career.”
After turning his podcasting hobby into a business, Shibutani founded Zatsudan in 2022. The creation of the studio was both a natural progression and a response to his own needs.
“When I wanted to record a podcast in Tokyo, there simply weren’t any studios that were quite right for the job. Rental studios designed for musicians and bands were overkill for podcasts, which can be recorded with just one microphone. On the other hand, general purpose rental spaces often don’t provide sufficient soundproofing or sound absorption, resulting in poor audio quality. There wasn’t really a suitable place, so I decided to create Zatsudan,” he noted.
In the same year that the studio was established, the company also held its first podcast event, PODCAST WEEKEND. The event has now been held four times, growing in scale each time as the number of participants and exhibitor booths has increased.
Shibutani explained, “This year, we took inspiration from the London Podcast Show, which I visited last year, and introduced a conference format. We decided to hold two types of events simultaneously: the ‘market event’ that we had built up over the years and the new ‘conference.’ We also changed the name to PODCAST EXPO.”
The conference featured 64 leading creators and experts from the podcast industry across a total of 24 sessions. Two conference areas were each equipped with an ATEM Mini Extreme ISO G2 live production switcher, HyperDeck Studio HD Plus broadcast deck, and three cameras, made up of Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K, Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro G2, and Blackmagic Studio Camera 6K Pro, with SmartView 4K and Video Assist 5” 12G HDR used for monitoring.
The recorded video was made available for purchase as an archive for people who were unable to attend the event in person and for fans of the presenters.
“We have been using Blackmagic Design cameras and ATEM switchers for recording and streaming since the first event. We had two streaming operators assigned to each stage at all times, while I directed the overall production. In addition to handling the audio and camera operations on the stages, we also provided a private stream so that staff in another room could monitor what was happening. Since we were already very familiar with Blackmagic Design products, the setup was extremely smooth. Another advantage was that we were able to capture sufficiently bright images even though the stages were quite dark,” said Nobuhiko Ueno, who oversaw the recording operation.
Since the team wanted to make the archive available as quickly as possible, the production was designed around the concept of completing the editing process as close to real time as possible.
“We decided in advance to record the switched program feed in a form that could be used almost as is, so that only color and audio adjustments would be required afterward. As a risk management measure, we also recorded ISO feeds as a backup, saving them to SSDs connected to the switchers. We used DaVinci Resolve for editing. Because we applied LUTs during shooting, the footage was already close to its final look at the time of capture, which made the process very efficient,” explained Ueno.
“Video podcasts have become mainstream overseas, and more and more podcasters in Japan are also producing video. At the moment, most people simply use smartphones for easy recording, but for shows featuring multiple speakers, a production style in which each presenter has their own camera and the footage is switched between cameras is becoming increasingly common. Going forward, I think more people in Japan will use video equipment such as Blackmagic Design products for podcasts as they place greater emphasis on production quality,” said Shibutani.
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