Chris McMahon

Hello all, I'd like to share some exciting news with you all: ftrack is now part of Backlight, a new media technology company that has acquired ftrack alongside four other fast-growing media technology brands: Celtx, Iconik, Wildmoka, and Zype. Read a message from our CEO and Founder, Fredrik Limsater, about this news. You can find plenty of information in the blog above, but here's a few FAQs to answer any immediate questions you may have about our acquisition: What is Backlight? Backlight is a media technology company that provides award-winning products to enable excellence in video content ideation, production, post-production, publication, distribution, and analysis. Backed by leading growth equity investment firm PSG, Backlight has scaled its revenue, talent, and solutions rapidly with the acquisition of five fast-growing media technology brands: ftrack, Celtx, Iconik, Wildmoka, and Zype. You can learn more at backlight.co. Who are the other companies in the Backlight family? ftrack is accompanied by four other fast-growing media technology brands under the Backlight banner, which also received a strategic growth investment from PSG. Across Backlight’s business units, the primary customer base is composed of video-first organizations that are part of the media and entertainment ecosystem and are involved in everything from pre-production to live-production to digital management and distribution. Backlight also has video-intensive customers that are not part of traditional M&E. Iconik is a cloud-native, SaaS media management solution that allows users to share files from any storage, collaborate on video, and enrich media with AI for high searchability—all with great ease and the ability to scale to serve solo creators or large global teams. Celtx’s all-in-one solution for writing, planning, and managing media production is used by millions worldwide. Celtx provides pre-production planning software, including scriptwriting, storyboarding, shot-planning and budgeting, to in-house production teams, agencies, film schools and universities, game studios, and media & entertainment companies. Wildmoka is a leading platform for the creation of live and near-live content in Sports, News and Entertainment. Its cloud-native Digital Media Factory aims to empower broadcasters and rights owners to produce and deliver content from any source, to any destination, in any format, at speed and at scale. Zype provides infrastructure for digital video with a cloud-based platform to manage and distribute enterprise-grade video across the web, mobile, TV, and social media. Offering both developer-friendly tools such as customizable APIs as well as turnkey solutions for OTT apps and linear/FAST channels, Zype’s SaaS solutions enable video creators or distributors to quickly build, launch and manage superior video products at scale. How will this impact ftrack Studio, ftrack Review, and cineSync? Our Backlight acquisition will improve these products across the board. In the years to come, you will continue to work with the ftrack representatives you’ve built relationships with, your support experience will remain available and responsive, and your day-to-day experiences in ftrack Studio, ftrack Review, and cineSync will be as familiar as ever. ftrack will operate as an independent business unit of Backlight and Fredrik Limsater will remain CEO of ftrack. Our PSG investment and ftrack’s standing under the Backlight banner only mean that we now have more resources to work towards building the world’s best production tracking and media review ecosystems. If you have any questions at all, please ask them below!

We had a great schedule of webinars lined up this year, featuring creative discussions, industry panels, product tips, and updates. You can watch past webinars and panel discussions via the link below. This includes our three-webinar run on remote creative workflows, a close look at cineSync, and features on ftrack Connect, Actions, and remote workflows. See all ftrack webinars If there are any topics you'd like to see covered or ftrack functions you'd like to learn more about, don't hesitate to let us know. We'll see if we can add something to the upcoming webinar schedule.

We are incredibly pleased to announce that today, Cospective, creator of the Academy Award and Emmy-winning synchronized remote review tool cineSync, has joined forces with ftrack! We have enjoyed a close working relationship with Cospective since 2015. During that time, we’ve developed a deep integration that links cineSync with ftrack Studio, and a working relationship with the Cospective team that has flourished over the years. We’ve partnered with Cospective at industry events, shared many meals, and grown as both friends and colleagues. For us, Cospective was the natural choice for a partner. The company mirrors ftrack in its professionalism, creative aspirations, and spirit of innovation, and in cineSync, Cospective has built a robust and industry-changing product that continues to find new ways to simplify and streamline workflows for creative professionals all around the world. Cospective’s ambitions align very firmly with our own, and we are extraordinarily proud to bring both its people and products under the ftrack umbrella. You can learn more about this landmark acquisition and what it means for this new chapter in the ftrack (and Cospective!) story below. Read the full story about ftrack's acquisition of Cospective

We would like to invite you to join us for our upcoming ftrack London user group. It’s taking place on Thursday 7th November from 6.30 pm onwards at MPC’s fantastic studio Sky Bar in Soho. Register for the ftrack London user group We’ll discuss all things ftrack – from existing features and best practices to the latest updates, as well as some exciting things we have planned for the ftrack product roadmap over the coming months. There will also be talks from two of MPC’s creatives. Marcus Dryden, Creative Director of 2D and Josh Parks, Senior Compositor at MPC will discuss their workflows, what it’s like to be part of the MPC team, and more. You can also expect nibbles, drinks, music and plenty of opportunities to meet with other professionals who use ftrack daily. If you’re in the Soho area and want to get more familiar with ftrack, then please sign up. Spaces are limited, so RSVP quickly to guarantee your space. We hope to see you there 🍻 Learn more and register for the ftrack London meetup

We’re pleased to announce that ftrack is heading to Adobe MAX in LA this 4-6 November! We’ll be on the show floor at Adobe’s Partner Pavilion. You can find us there on booth 741-T. We work closely with Adobe to creative native ftrack Studio integrations for several of its Adobe Creative Cloud products. These include Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and – as of September 2019 – Adobe Illustrator! We'll be showing off these integrations and recent workflow improvements, as well as all the latest in ftrack Review, our new Unreal Engine and Unity integrations, and much more besides. Be sure to stop by and say hello! You can find us in the Partner Pavilion on booth 741-T on the following days: Monday, 4 November Tuesday, 5 November Wednesday, 6 November If you’d like to schedule a meeting with the ftrack team at Adobe MAX 2019, please use the calendar available via the link below. Meet us at Adobe MAX 2019

We’re pleased to announce that ftrack is heading to IBC this 13-17 September – and we’d love to meet you there! IBC remains one of Europe’s most exciting broadcast events, and we can’t wait to show off all that’s new in ftrack. We’ll be on hand to discuss (and show!) the latest improvements to our Adobe Creative Cloud integrations, what’s new in ftrack Studio 4.2, our recent developments in ftrack Review, and our integrations with Unreal Engine and Unity for real-time animation. We’ll be available for meetings at IBC 2019 from 13-17 August. We’d love to meet up to discuss all that’s new in ftrack Studio and ftrack Review and how the platform can help your next project over the finish line. You can find us on the AWS booth in hall 5, stand C80 at the following times: Friday, 13 September: 10.30am – 6.00pm Saturday, 14 September: 9.30am – 6.00pm Sunday, 15 September: 9.30am – 6.00pm Monday, 16 September: 9.30am – 6.00pm Tuesday, 17 September: 9.30am – 4.00pm If you’d like to schedule a meeting with the ftrack team at IBC 2019, please use the calendar available via the link below. Learn more about ftrack @ IBC 2019

We’re pleased to announce that ftrack is heading to devcom 2019 this 18-19 August at Germany, Cologne’s Koelnmesse devcom is an annual conference dedicated to the developers that create video games both large and small. While devcom’s partner event, gamescom, is very much focused on the games themselves, devcom is all about the people who make them. We’re extremely excited to attend this year’s conference and to learn from such an interesting group of developers. We’re also excited to show off our new Unreal Engine, Unity and Perforce HelixCore integrations. Each integration has been designed from the ground up to make real-time animation and game development simpler, easier and more effective. We’ll be available for meetings at devcom 2019 from 18-19 August. We’d love to show you how our Unity, Unreal and Perforce integrations can improve your daily game dev workflow. To schedule a meeting with the ftrack team, please use the calendar available via the link below. Learn more about ftrack @ devcom 2019