August 2011 NZVN

AUGUST 2011

Vol 172

NZ’s Pro Audio Show 2011 It’s been many years since we had a television industry show in New Zealand, but our audio side continues to be represented in the bi-annual Pro Audio Showcase. There is one venue ( Auckland ) and it runs for 2 days. One of the key exhibitors this year and every year is Sound Techniques represented by Steve Buckland.

Ed: Steve, this is an important thing for you to do, to have a show every couple of years in Auckland that attracts people to come along and have a look not only at your products, but everybody else’s?

Steve: Yes, this event arose from a group of 4 or 5 companies that saw the need to do an exhibition of some sort, and the fact that it’s happened every two years has been kind of ad hoc. But it is good to see key industry players in the same room and all of us hopefully presenting ourselves in a professional manner and showing an array of equipment which normally you wouldn’t get to see unless you visited each place individually.

Ed: That’s good, customers get that comparison?

Steve: You get that comparison and you’re not threatened by aggressive sales people …

Ed: Oh what – there aren’t any of those in our industry surely?

Steve: Well, no, I suppose there aren’t but you know you get to see a range of equipment, including stuff you wouldn’t necessarily see day-to-day.

Ed: Also of benefit to attendees are the seminars and at 1 o’clock we’re going to listen to you and Haresh talking about what’s left in spectrum for radio microphones. It’s important for people to keep up-todate with events in our industry?

Steve: That’s right. We’ve found the seminars bring people along – it gives them another reason apart from

just looking at equipment. It’s also good for the exhibitors to look at other exhibitors’ products which we don’t necessarily know about, and we find things that might be of interest to our clients.

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Ed: And is this an iPad here?

Steve: Oh yes, I’m sorry, we succumbed to the “iWorld” – we call it the “wePad” because we have to share it.

What that does is gives a visual interface between … well from that, and that allows us to control the Sound Devices 8 channel 788T recorder.

It’s a lot easier than using the small LCD display on the front of the recorder itself.

Ed: Are you finding more and more of that in the industry – that people are providing apps for the iPads?

Ed: So what have you got special on show today that people haven’t heard about since NAB? Steve: Well most of the stuff was at NAB I think, but …

Ed: Not everyone was there?

Steve: That’s right, not everyone was there and not everyone got over to SMPTE last week. What we’re finding very popular is the 2 channel Sound Devices MixPre-D which is basically a 2 channel mixer that will interface with everything from a Canon 5D up to a fully fledged production setup – lightweight, small, versatile.

Steve: Yes well of course the iPad ( he says sceptically ) was a device which really didn’t have any purpose when it first came out. Now people in the audio industry are slowly latching on to uses of it, especially as a controller for other devices, because it’s got a decent sized screen on it and it looks nice.

Ed: So if anyone happens to miss the show here and is interested in Sound Techniques products, they can always come and see you at your normal location?

Steve: That’s right, just give us a day or two to reset it all back up. Our current location is looking a bit NZVN bare at the moment, all the gear’s out here!

Page 2

At the Syntec stand we have Daniel Rowe, professional products account manager for New Zealand.

Ed: Daniel, I guess what might confuse people about Syntec in New Zealand is that you don’t actually have a showroom do you?

Daniel: Not at the moment, no.

Ed: Oh, okay, but Syntec’s operational plan is that the products you represent in New Zealand – Sennheiser, Neumann and Rycote products – customers purchase these from resellers?

Daniel: Absolutely, yes.

Ed: And your job is here to support those resellers?

Daniel: That is exactly the plan, yes.

Ed: So if somebody has a problem with a product, or wants to know more about a product, they don’t see you, they see a dealer?

Daniel: Yes, that’s it. We direct sales to our dealer network, and my job is to support those guys and help them grow their business, not fight against them.

Daniel with some Syntec product.

Ed: What does “support” mean?

What do you actually do for them?

Daniel: It could be product training; it could be making them aware of new markets for them to start attacking with our products.

Essentially assisting wherever possible to ensure they are able to grow their business.

Ed: These are pretty sophisticated products that you’re offering, so people need training, they need to understand how each works so they can explain that better to their customers?

Daniel: Absolutely. We need to stay on top of the technical aspects of the products, but also maybe making, like I say, dealers aware of other areas that they can move into, because products change all the

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time, the market changes all the time and part of my role is to help my dealer base get as big a cut of the pie as possible.

Ed: So what about product that hasn’t actually come from a dealer within NZ – do you look after that?

Daniel: If it has not been purchased via an authorised New Zealand dealer then we have no obligation to support the warranty. Warranty is applied to all locally sourced products from our authorised dealers only.

Ed: So the sensible option is to always get your technical product from a local source so you know it’s supported?

Daniel: Local back up and support is critical; to have someone on the end of the phone to answer problems, to find solutions is difficult to measure in price.

The dealer network in New Zealand is experienced and passionate and if it was my wallet I NZVN wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Rob: A long time, yes, Avid and Protel go way back and we’ve seen it go through multiple generations from version 1 up to version 9 today, so we have Pro Tools 9 and Pro Tools 9 HD installed on two of these Apple workstations. We also have two Avid product specialists here for this show and to run clinics and training.

Ed: So quite a big stand here, quite a range of product?

Rob: Yes, possibly the largest stand at the show it seems, so a big range of products. Starting with PA speakers from Kv2 Audio at one end through to Apogee (interfaces), Furman (power conditioners), Zaxcom (location sound) and CalDigit (AV storage) at the other end.

Another big name for us here is Genelec studio monitors. You can see them all over the place, and that particular very large pair there is the first time we’ve had the new 8260A 3-way dualconcentric DSP monitors in the country. They sound unbelievably good and have scooped six major industry awards to date.

Another major player in our “audio for video” scene is Protel and we have Rob Paris.

Ed: Rob, you’re normally in Wellington, but you’ve come to Auckland?

Rob: Well, I’m often in Auckland, I’m National Audio Sales Manager, so I’m up and down the country all the time but based in Wellington.

Ed: So you’re moving around, you’re the audio special -ist and you’ve got somebody from overseas here?

Rob: A number of visiting specialists – from Lawo we have Philipp Hey. Lawo is a console and audio router manufacturer in Germany and there are a number of Lawo systems here in New Zealand. Philipp’s just come over from SMPTE last week, and brought his demonstration broadcast consoles with him before they go on to the next show.

Ed: And one of the things I understand it’s got, that is quite new for these consoles, is a loudness meter?

Rob: Yes, we’re showing a pre-release version of software that is able to display in the metering section, an average loudness level. This is a world first for digital audio consoles.

Ed: So what has been the interest in loudness amongst the broadcasters in New Zealand? Are they coming to the party?

Rob: I can’t really comment, I’m not a broadcaster.

Ed: But you must have talked to them?

Rob with Genelec speakers.

Rob: There are a lot of on-going discussions being had within the industry and I understand that all broadcasters are very actively investigating solutions to try and move toward a standard.

Ed: But if anybody misses the show here, they can come and see you either in Auckland or Wellington?

Ed: But that’s not the only product you’ve got on here today. I see an “Apple Authorised Dealer” sign there?

Rob: Yes, they certainly can. We encourage people to call us up and maybe take some of this equipment for evaluation in their own studios.

Rob: Yes, we’re an Apple Authorised Reseller and we have Apple solutions across the stand for audio creation, editing and mixing, etc.

Ed: That’s a pretty important thing isn’t it – once you’ve designed yourself a studio, then if you change the speakers, the sound could be quite different?

Ed: So they’re continuing with good product in the audio editing side are they?

Rob: We have done this for a long time, and plan to continue to.

Rob: Yes it is. We like to get involved in the actual design or placement of equipment in a studio when it comes to audio monitoring and then we can advise accordingly.

One of the best ways is to take the equipment onsite, to where it’s going to be used. It’s very hard to evaluate something properly at a trade show like this.

Ed: There’s also a big Avid sign here and really Protel has been associated with Pro Tools for an awfully long time?

Rob: Yes, and a lot of other noise.

Luckily the NZVN motorbikes next door aren’t running today!

Rob: Well Apple make great host computers for us to base our systems on.

Ed:

Oh, okay …

Ed:

Page 7

With a big concrete floor and a tin roof?

Our Vanishing Spectrum A seminar at the show by Haresh Bhana and Stephen Buckland on behalf of WUNZ (Wireless Users New Zealand) “Where are Radio Frequencies Going?” should be of interest to most of us. Here are some highlights.

SB: The area that we use for radio microphones is being reassigned and between now and late 2013, when New Zealand switches to a fully digital terrestrial television service, the frequencies that we commonly use for radio microphones are going to have to change.

This affects everywhere radio mics are used, from schools and gymnasiums through to broadcasters.

voice is now being listened to. This information is all available on the WUNZ website <www.wunz.co.nz> We have asked the Ministry to be notified in advance of any changes that are coming up. This is happening in an ad hoc kind of manner, although we’ve been caught out by the Ministry saying these frequencies are going to change at a particular date, and then finding that, due to other reasons, they haven’t. Another thing

Radio microphone usage and usage of the radio spectrum, has been expo-nential in growth and I know some of you more senior members of the industry will remember when you had to buy your first two radio mics for feature film work.

Now commonly, a person getting into television work needs at least that many.

We all operate under a General User Licence and that means we accept limits to the transmitter output power, there’s a limit to the amount of spectrum or pieces of spectrum we can use and we do it on the basis that we don’t interfere with the fee paying TV broadcasters.

As a result of digital television being switched on in Wellington, there was an opportunity for public submission, and WUNZ was formed to present our concerns about the effect of digital terrestrial TV to the government. Some of you might have signed a form to address Radio Spectrum Management people about your concerns of the switch to digital television.

Until such a time as WUNZ existed, the people who own the estimated 100,000 radio microphones here had no input into the Government’s thinking.

What the government declared, and the minister has said this even more recently, is “oh no, these people just operate on the fringes of the spectrum, they don’t pay for a licence, therefore their rights are minimal.” WUNZ has been able to improve that situation and our combined

which we were very concerned about is situations where there were going to be a lot of radio microphones being used – how was this going to be administered? Under a General User Licence, everybody has the same rights as everybody else, so when radio microphone frequencies conflict I can’t tell you not to use your radio mics, and you can’t tell me that I can’t use mine. Management of such situations needs to be done by someone with some authority, and we see with the Rugby World Cup that a person was appointed to administer the spectrum and it’s probably the model that we would support for the future. Haresh will talk more about some of the difficulties in these sorts of events and the way the spectrum is being allocated.

We were also fighting to stop auctioning off what’s called the 700 MHz band, as has happened in the United States and is happening in Europe and England. This was never going to be a goer on our behalf because that spectrum is worth a lot of money ( or so the Government figures ), so the one thing we do know is that radio microphones that operate in that spectrum are going to become redundant by 2015.

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We have been recognised as an affected party and we’re actively involved in dialogue. Where in the United States, 100 MHz of spectrum, the digital dividend, was going to be auctioned off, in New Zealand somehow Vodafone and Telecom, because they are such big organisations and probable bidders, managed to convince the Government that they need 120 MHz of spectrum. What the spectrum is going to be used for is so-called long term evolution devices ( LTE’s.) Even though since June last year in the United States, the spectrum has been closed off to users such as ourselves, at Lectrosonics, the chief of marketing there sits in his office with a scanner and he’s yet to notice any activity on that bit of spectrum. So in many ways, the cart has come before the horse, there are no devices to use the spectrum, but boot radio microphone users off it anyway.

That’s a rather brief introduction; I’ll pass you to Haresh who actually has the sort of detail of what this is going to mean to all of you.

HB: Thanks Stephen. I work as a live audio broadcast engineer, mainly for live sports and live entertainment from the television side of things. I tend to use a lot of radio mics in the areas in which I work.

Where are radio frequencies going and what exactly is happening?

Well firstly, as we’ve pointed out, the spectrum has actually been reassigned – so the frequencies themselves aren’t actually going anywhere, but the spectrum has been reassigned, or is going to be used with a different technology.

Some of that technology is digital terrestrial television ( DTT ), which obviously we’ve already been working with for the last couple of years; and the other technology is going to be some of the long-term evolution devices, but that will not occur until after the digital dividend or the auctioning off of that 700 MHz band spectrum.

How does digital terrestrial television affect radio mics?

Well first of all, before we get on to DTT, we need to understand how television broadcast operates in New Zealand.

As we all know, all of our UHF radio microphones operate somewhere in between that 518806 MHz band. There are some others up in the 900 MHz, but for this seminar we’re just looking at that 518806 MHz band, because that’s what’s going to be affected. That 288 MHz of spectrum allocated for TV is divided up into 36 different TV channels – they’re named channels TV27 through to 62 and therefore each TV channel has an 8 MHz bandwidth. In Australia it’s 7 MHz and in other places it’s down to 6. So sometimes when you’re using your radio mics and it’s got a TV block like 40 something, 50 something, that probably refers to the overseas TV channels, it doesn’t quite reflect the New Zealand channels.

troughs happening along the way, so like through here – 55 MHz, we’ve got a couple of TV channels in there, but as you can see, there’s lots of what we call “white space” and that white space is where we typically operate all our radio microphones. Now if we just break

that down into 8 MHz chunks of an actual TV channel … an analogue TV channel is made up of a video carrier and an audio carrier, those are the two things which generally make up an analogue TV carrier. As you can see, even within a TV channel, there’s still white space in there that we can use for radio mics and there’s other spectrum outside of that, that we can use.

When we get to digital TV, this is what we’re faced with.

A digital TV transmission occupies the entire 8 MHz chunk of that bandwidth. It looks totally different from an analogue signal, and that’s the problem that we have. Obviously, as you can see, there’s no white space at all. Now this scan is an actual scan from one

If we have a look at analogue TV and how it would look if you ran a spectrum analyser across it, this is what you would see.

You would see lots of peaks and

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of the areas in New Zealand down in the Waikato, and what they receive is a digital signal from two transmitters on two different sites – a site on Mt Te Aroha which services most of the Waikato area, and another infill transmitter on top of the City Council building within Hamilton City itself. When we’re doing the scan, this is the signal that’s coming from Te Aroha ( the lower level ) and this is the signal ( the higher level ) that’s coming from the City Council building. So as you can see, if we had a radio mic operating in that block of spectrum, we’ve got nowhere to go. So that’s digital terrestrial television in a nutshell. The other technology, as we said, is going to be part of digital dividend and the long-term evolution devices that could go in there. None of that will happen until after the digital dividend is auctioned off.

What the Government has requested, is all the spectrum from about 686 all the way up to 806 MHz is to be cleared by broadcasters by the end of 2013. The DTT transmissions using that block will be re-channelled to a lower part of the spectrum and any analogue transmissions switched off creating a space free of UHF transmissions.

That’s all in preparation for digital dividend. They’ve earmarked the spectrum from 686 MHz to 806 MHz to form the digital dividend. So that’s going to be the spectrum up for auction. For that to happen our current licence for that 686-806 band will expire in 2015 and therefore from 2015 they’re going to say no radio mic usage in that area. We’ve been given that notice and we’d obviously better start passing that word around. It’s around March 2015 that we’re all expected to vacate or stop using any radio mics in that 686-806 MHz band. There are 3 current channels for Freeview – there’s one that belongs to TVNZ, another

one belongs to MediaWorks and the other one belongs to Kordia, and when they licensed a channel they’re actually given a licence set. Normally that licence set is for 2 bands ( ie 16 MHz of spectrum ), so they can have nationwide transmission up and down the country on the main band, and then they use the second frequency block for any infill services. In Auckland we have our main transmitter site up in Waiatarua and then we have infill sites up at Pine Hill, Sky Tower and Remuera, just to give local infill. For the broadcast to work, the transmissions are from Waiatarua and the infill sites have to work on different frequencies, but the infill sites can all work on the same frequency.

When broadcasters bought their analogue TV licences, they were given the option of converting those analogue licences into digital licences. Now we know that Sky had 5 UHF TV channels in the past, which are obviously all switched off, but they still hold those licences and they’ve still got the option of converting those to digital licences. Likewise, Maori Television may also take up their option of converting their analogue licence into a digital licence. So if we start to factor them into the overall plan … now what I must say here now, is none of this is confirmed by the Ministry, this is just our own interpretation of what is likely to happen in the future if they do convert their licences to digital.

It’s our reckoning that Maori Television is likely to go into that fill gap there, that’s why they’ve got that little gap. So again, 2 adjacent channels to give them their licence set; then if we carry on and allocate the 5 licence sets for Sky, as you can see it starts occupying a fair amount of the spectrum, and what’s left isn’t very much. ( See WUNZ website for the full graph. )

Page 12

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Now for a lot of us, for radio mic users, particularly for those of us who are travelling up and down the country, what we are relying on is a free block all the way up and down the country just so that, if we’re working on a show in Auckland and then we go to a show in Hamilton, then a show in Wellington, we want to know that we can use the same radio mics. If we’ve got to carry lots of different radio mics and try and juggle them around for different areas of the country, then that’s quite a logistical nightmare and obviously quite a bit of a capital spend as well.

That’s what we’re looking for, but there are not many spaces that are like that. Even within Auckland, you won’t find a completely clear band as you travel round.

As I’ve said before, all radio mic usage in that 700 MHz band would need to cease by March 2015, because that’s when that licence expires. As the 700 MHz band is cleared, the availability of spectrum over the next two years is actually going to improve while all that rechanneling happens, and all the analogue gets switched off. It’s going to be a big huge playground for us. It’s going to be quite good, but then we’re going to get hit hard.

A couple of things – in some environments your choice of antenna could help you operate radio mics in the DTT environment, so maybe some directional antennas in order to try and reject unwanted signals … like in Hamilton, you know if you have maybe a helical type antenna and are able to position it so it’s facing away from Te Aroha, you maybe have a better chance of trying to receive your signal. Obviously if you can keep your signal up above the RF coming in from Te Aroha, then that’s better, but again, we try not to compete with other RF signals around, because invariably we

know with the mobile transmitter that most of us seem to work in, RF is going to go up and down. If it dips below the RF you’re getting in from an external source, then you’re going to end up with problems.

Radio mic users again will need to carefully co-ordinate the usage around digital terrestrial television, and keep abreast of what’s happening with digital TV. Again, with all that rechanneling as well, if you are using some radio mics within the mid 500 MHz band, then you need to be aware of what’s happening with the rechanneling process, because you could get affected as this rechanneling process happens.

If you are looking now for a radio mic, what should you buy? We are probably encouraging more of the outer part of the usable UHF spectrum, so anything down towards the bottom end of the spectrum is 518 MHz, so down at 518 or up above 680 MHz. We know what is definitely happening as per information available at <www.rsm.govt.nz> or WUNZ website; this is happening as we speak because the licences are already issued. But there are some unknowns at this stage.

We won’t know until maybe 2013 as to whether or not broadcasters like Sky TV are going to take up their option of converting their licences to digital, and once they do then I believe they’ve got a 2 year “use it or lose it” type arrangement in place.

As far as any of the radio mic gear up in the 1.8 GHz or whatever, not an option really. A lot of that would probably tend to be digital I’d say. There has been some talk about digital radio mics, but when you come down to digital radio mics, we have to be concerned about latency issues or delays – and range as well. NZVN Keep informed, visit <www.wunz.co.nz> regularly.

Page 14

How the Aussie’s do it On a recent visit to Sydney, I had an opportunity to visit a busy production house called Eden Creative and talk with the owner, Adam Eden.

Ed: Adam, you have an apple as a logo, but it’s a red apple as opposed to a stylised apple?

Adam: Well that apple was actually around a long time even before “Apple” was invented.

Ed: Oh, so you own the copyright more than them?

Adam: My father is a very famous surf photographer ( Jack Eden ) and he was in advertising most of his life and this was his logo. One of his friends in the early 60’s by the name of Steve Kulmar drew it when he was a junior – he owned and sold a company called “IdeaWorks” which is one of the biggest creative agencies in the country. The apple sort of stuck and I took it on as it has history to my family.

My background is that I’ve grown up being a photographer, a cinematographer and a film editor all my life. I’m a broadcast engineer as well … I sound like I’ve done a lot, but growing up in the industry as a child, I hated it by the time I left high school. I hated developing film, I hated editing on a Steinbeck, it was horrible. Your finger tips were always burnt off with the bloody acetone and stuff.

My father’s 80 now, I’m 40 in a few months, but I come from a generation that grew up with a black and white television. I was fascinated at school where the teacher would pull out a huge JVC U-matic videotape. By the time the ‘90s came along, I was a broadcast engineer but we couldn’t fix things – everything was throwaway.

However, I’d repair a video camera or a recorder and get it down to a component level where the components were about 2mm in size. I could trace it down to that and replace that, and it would work again, and that was very satisfying.

As a hobby, I was out shooting wedding videos and making little corporate videos and things like that, and I made my cameras out of spare parts, out of the old broken ones that customers couldn’t afford to get fixed! Sometimes there were cameras that had been flooded in theIr underwater housing and I was one of the few guys who actually had a machine – an ultrasonic cleaner – where you could drop stuff in there with a special fluid and it would just disperse everything and get things going again … well sometimes!

Ed: So when was the turnaround? You said that in those early days you got blisters on your fingers on the Steinbeck, but there must have been a point where you actually turned that hate into love?

Adam: It was when I was in my very early 20s and people started saying “you’re really good at this, why don’t you edit this for me, why don’t you chop that up for me” and for me, I had to do everything right. My first proper camera was a Sony 537, which was the best two-third inch camera I could buy at the time.

I couldn’t afford a proper Betacam SP video recorder, so I hooked it up to a Sony DHR 1000, the very first DV deck ever made, on a shopping trolley and ran it off batteries. I used to go round filming with that, until I got enough money to buy a 637 camera, with a Sony

DSR-1, the very first DVcam back, because Sony and Panasonic ( and this is about ’95 I think all this happened ), had a big race between DVcam and DVCPRO. As we all know, Sony won the race with that particular one, and then it just kept on going from there … I was editing stuff on the DFS-500s which were the very first vision switchers, and they were great. I’d basically get one of them out of the dump and fix it up.

I had 3D Page Turns and stuff and that was pretty cutting edge in those days – I hooked it up to an RM550 edit controller which I think from memory did about 20 edits. My first one of those was hooked up to a couple of one inch machines, but the problem was, if you didn’t have your Genlock set correctly, you’d do a dissolve and it’d just pop off. If you did that more than 3-4 times, the tape would wear out and you’d have to start your whole layers again.

So I’ve come from that history, then getting into Avids.

My first Avid was Avid MC Express version 1.5. That was the very first Avid made on a PC using a Targa 2000 card, and the Truevision cards and it was like “wow, you’ve got a Targa card.”

For me, it was editing and cinematography that was paramount, because half the stuff I’d do, I’d edit it in camera.

I’d come back and wouldn’t have to do anything, especially shooting weddings and things and learning those techniques; how to light, using NDs and polarisers and all that sort of stuff, well that was all from my photographic days.

My father showed me a little bit, and reading magazines and stuff, but it was a lot of trial and error, and then pretty much in the mid-90s I went back to film school, just to get a bit of paper. I went to Metro Screen Television at Paddington, and I went to AFTRS and did a few courses over there, just so people would think I had some qualifications in this, but I didn’t really learn anything, because I’m pretty much self-taught with all this sort of stuff.

Ed: So how are you able to let go? You’ve gone from doing it yourself to today where you’ve got quite a production facility and you’ve got people working for you? Do you keep an eye on them all the time?

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Adam: Yes, everything that goes out the door.

The secret to my business is that I’ve got to have my hands in everything. If you rely on other people … like I’m only a small business, I’ve got about 10 fulltime employees and I’ve probably got the same in subies and that, but you’ve got to look at everything that goes out the door.

You can’t just rest on your laurels and go “okay that’s great, see you later” because the number of times that you might stuff up a little job worth a couple of thousand bucks, the next time that client comes back, they’ve got real money, and you stuffed it up … you know what I mean.

Ed: It’s got your name on it, whoever’s put it together?

audience and make them want to see more.

I’ve worked in long-form TV, TV commercials, music videos and I am currently working two low budget features.

One is shot entirely on a Canon 5D with specific gamma curves loaded into the camera to enable me to work in a logrithmic workflow for final output at 2K DCP ( Digital Cinema Print ); the other will be shot on both the RED MX and also the new RED EPIC M ( if it turns up in time ) and will be finished at 4K DCP. The 4K workflow is very different to what I am used to finishing with and it is a very steep learning curve compared to finishing on a HDCAM SR 4:4:4 1080p to then finish on a laser scan 35mm print.

I really enjoy being a colourist and conforming and finishing projects( Onlining ), but I really like telling stories in 30 seconds, ie TV commercials and that’s my passion, that’s my forte, and I know that’s what I am good at, and that’s why I specialise in them.

Ed: But how do you get that across to your staff – I mean, they’ve got to be able to do some of these things in the way that you have envisaged them?

Adam: I have my hand in everything. I’m the creative director here – even though I’ve got directors and producers who work out of here, if I’m not happy with what a director or a producer is saying, that’s it, because I’m the Executive Producer of the production.

We make a lot of top end TV commercials – we make a lot of cheap, shitty ones as well, so you’ve got to have that level of quality across the whole board with things.

You can’t just compromise on something. Really, for me, I can do any single job in this whole building here, except for complicated 3D stuff, because I have worked on Adobe After Effects since version 3.1. I actually think I prefer version 3.5 or 3.2, that’s where I started.

Like original Adobe Premieres I worked on, because I can do all this sort of stuff, and that’s why if someone’s sick or whatever, I can always just jump in and take over.

Ed: You manage to sleep do you – you’ve got hours in the day for that?

Adam: Correct, and it’s got to have attention to detail in it. For me, I don’t care whether I’m shooting on a Canon 5D or a DVcam or a Betacam or a RED or whatever, you’ve got to light it the same, you’ve got to treat it the same. It doesn’t really change, only what camera’s in your hands. It’s the same with editing. I personally love a format called XDCAM, that’s our main system and format here and we shoot with Sony PDW700s and 800s – I’ve got one of each, and why I like the format so much is you’ve got all the takes and we work in low res proxies, and editing-wise sometimes half the problem is getting one of the junior kids to go through and log a tape. I never want to do that because you might have 10 DigiBetas and they may miss a good shot. But these days, the technology actually helps you get through those barriers. The only thing is though, a lot of people still don’t know how to edit. They just think throwing a few shots together is editing, and they don’t care about the story. Editing is simply the art of storytelling … the director and director of photography make beautful images and also talent direction, but the editor is the one that makes the story work and good editing should always engage an

Adam: Mate I’ve got four kids – four kids and an ex-wife and a current wife, so look, I’m doing alright!

But for me that’s all it really is, it’s just keeping your hands on things and keeping up-to-date with technology. I know a lot of guys who say they update their gear every five years. Well, that worked 20 years ago but you can’t do that these days. I’ve got a slush fund every year that I throw a percentage of business …

GST is one big problem that everyone’s always got, and then the “pay as you go” taxes and all the rest of the stuff, but out of my profits, I’ve always got money sitting there.

I’m about to upgrade my Avid Symphony DX into a 4K DCP workflow, because I’ll be colouring in and finishing a few features here at the end of this year, and they want to finish them at 4K. At the moment, I can only finish at 2K on HDCAM SR. So that’s what I want to do, I need to learn this new technology that’s around. Look, I know how film works pretty well, because I’ve come from that background, but in digital film with DI it’s totally different; it doesn’t work how I’m used to seeing things at the moment, so we are looking at totally new workflows. That’s what I’m looking at, at the moment.

Ed: Just going back to the staff – do you have problems retaining staff, or do they understand that your name is on the programme and they appreciate your involvement, even though sometimes they might not? more on page 22

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Ed: But you don’t send the tape into the broadcaster on Digital Betacam do you?

Adam: You can if you like.

Ed: But aren’t you uploading it to the site?

Adam: No, we don’t do that at all, because the picture quality isn’t as good.

We couldn’t anyway because if we send out 25 dubs today, how long is that going to take us to upload? It’s still quicker for us to put them on a bit of tape, Adstream is in the next suburb, so it takes five minutes to drive there. They wanted me to put in a fibreoptic cable direct connection a few years ago, and that was going to cost me 30 grand to put it in and 5 grand a month. Well, we’ve got 10 Adstream tapes which keep on rotating, because I haven’t been able to kill a Digital Betacam tape yet. I think I’ve got tapes here recorded over 100 times on the same tape and we are still using it without a dropout. Digital Betacam’s a great format, but that’s what I do in Australia anyway.

Ed: So all this hype about all these high def television stations in Australia, the programmes might be high def but …?

Adam: The ads aren’t, that’s 100 percent correct.

All the ads are being upscaled. Unless you send a specific dub to Channel Nine, they’re the only people who we’ve ever sent an HD dub to, and to me, when I’m looking at my monitor here on a normal LG 61 inch JB HiFi special, I can’t pick the difference.

Ed: Exactly, and you’ve chosen that because?

Adam: Oh look I just bought it because it was cheap and the colour space was okay, because I could put a SpyderPRO on it and give it a rough colour setup.

Downstairs we’ve got the Sony Bravia XBRs and all that sort of stuff and in our 3D room, we’ve the Samsung LED ones in there because we find they give less headaches, but again, trying to edit with glasses on, it just does your head in. You can’t do it. So we normally turn off one of the eyes and away we go.

Ed: Well let’s have a look around. Now I see that, in terms of workflow, it’s very heavily Avid. You’ve got a Media Composer 5 logo up here.

Adam: I really like the entire Avid workflow. My whole business has been built and based around Avid and if it wasn’t for Avid, I wouldn’t be here today, and I wouldn’t be owning a really nice house and driving an expensive car, honestly, because my alliance is with Avid and Sony products. I know a lot of guys who went down different paths, went down DVision, Media 100 – what else was out there – there’s been heaps of different things come and go. But for us, I make my money by versioning, so I can pull up a TV commercial or a programme that I made 10 years ago, de-archive it off DLT, have it back in the Avid within about an hour. Most people can’t do that, and that’s why my workflow’s always been about the backups and the media management, and for us Avid’s always been key. Seriously, I have been able to expand because of Avid and suppliers like them.

Ed: How many of them have you got in this facility?

Adam: There’s about seven in here I think.

Ed: And they’re all linked through a Unity system?

Adam: Yes, all through Unity ISIS media engine.

This suite here is called Media Composer 2; this is a 3D suite, so we’ve got the Samsung 3D TVs, this is running Mojo DX. For us, look there’s some new ones now – we actually only ingest downstairs, but for these computers here, we’ve got a patched panel racked into every single room in the facility, so if the main online downstairs is being used, we can still run dubs off here,

Page 23

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know – $50 or $100 an hour or whatever it is, well we can’t compete like that. My point has always been to have a good clean facility with all the best gear in it, but it’s not the fanciest looking place in the world.

Ed: I have noticed in New Zealand that many TV ads have got burnt skin tones and I’m assuming that this is because people …?

Adam: orange?

You

mean

just

bright

Ed: Yes … and this is not necessarily a function of the camera, it’s a function of …?

The audio booth.

Adam: This is an Avid Symphony DX and an Avid DS, and my Sony grade 1 broadcast monitor, that’s a calibrated monitor …

Ed:

Oh, it’s a CRT monitor?

Adam: Yes, that’s the last of them. That one’s about 4½ years old. When that one goes, I don’t know what to do, I really don’t, because that’s the best monitor ever made.

If you go to any sort of postproduction facility in Australia, in their final online conform rooms you’ll always see one of those. The new Sony replacements at NAB look the same, but they’re LED and they not much chop. Apparently there’s a brand new one coming out.

Ed:

There’s a new OLED now.

Adam: Oh no, that’s been out for a while, but they’ve just bought out a bigger version of that, so I’ll wait and have a look at that at SMPTE and see what it looks like, but for me, this does 444 RGB, there’s duallink HD-SDI, and this is it, and if you notice something, there’s no noise in this room is there?

There are no computers in here, because we do audio mastering in here. So again, this is a sound “good” room. So I’ve got fibreoptic cables into all my monitors and everything controlling everything.

Ed:

Adam: Well it’s a function of the colourist, and if they allow people’s skin tones to go out orange, then they should be shot. Look I see ads on TV which look like video ( Interlaced ) and the skin tones are either orange or teal – do you know what I mean, it looks terrible.

That’s probably what you’re describing with the burnt out colours. That’s why when I colour grade, I’ve got a grade 1 broadcast monitor, plus I’ve got a Sony plasma on the wall, or LED whatever it is, right, and I grade somewhere in between both. Because if I grade the programme to look awesome on the broadcast monitor, by the time it ends up on the plasma or the LED whatever it is, it’s going to look blown out because the backlight’s too bright on most people’s TV sets. So I never let the whites go past 95% and I measure this on a Waveform monitor.

Some people say why, because you can go to 100%? Well that’s fine, but it won’t look any good on people’s plasmas.

So I don’t clip anything, I just bring all my levels down and make sure all my highlights and everything all sit at 90% and then I’m fine.

And that’s what you’re probably finding, that you get these guys – the EX1s, the EX3s and the cameras actually record to 105% and then they clip it, but they don’t bring it down or anything, and that’s why they look terrible on TV. I need a case of beer for that gem, by the way!

Adam’s Aussie story concludes in September.

A well thought out facility?

Adam: Yes well, for that sort of stuff.

We don’t do Dolby 5.1 in here because I don’t really need to do that. If I do, I’ll just go up the road and get them to make a master. I don’t have the fanciest looking office in the world, but I have the best gear in the world in here and I’ve made it comfortable. You can go somewhere else and pay $500-600 an hour and be like the fanciest place in the world, but for me, I don’t charge by the hour, I charge by the project, so I try to keep people here as little as I possibly can, and give them the best job I possibly can, because that’s the only way I can make money out of this industry.

If someone’s got a Final Cut for – I don’t Page 30

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More from the PAG Battery Factory (see July issue for part one) Ed: Okay, charger design – PAG I guess for years and years was known as the pulse charger. What was the value in pulse charging David?

David: Well it wasn’t just the pulse charging, it was the algorithms that we used to model the battery charging curve, and that was unique to PAG and we significantly improved the lifecycle of the batteries used on that charger. That’s still the case; we still make what you would call “pulse chargers” for nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride batteries. But, of course, a pure lithium ion battery charger is a much simpler beast in principle, because it is just a constant voltage charger, and some of our chargers are of that new type and you can feel the difference in the weight and size of the charger.

Alan: It wasn’t just a pulse, it was an analytical device and we made measurements between pulse widths, frequencies of pulse and the computer, it went silent, shut down and made drop away measurements and curve measurements, and then it did it at all different frequencies, and it could tell what the chemistry was up the end of the line, how many cells were connected, what it should be. That was the clever thing – well it still is.

Ed: So you’re obviously making a range of chargers, you’re making ones for just your pure lithium ion batteries, but you also make ones that do a multirange?

Alan: No, all of our chargers will do all chemistries.

We don’t make a “single chemistry” charger. Maybe life would be easier if we did make a single chemistry charger, lithium ion, because as David said, it’s a much less complex device, but because potentially a battery with a PAGlok Connector, whether it’s a nicad, nickel metal hydride or lithium, can go on the side of a charger, we feel that it’s good if we had a multichemistry charger.

Ed: And it’s the charger that knows what sort of battery is connected to it?

David: That’s right. Sometimes I think it’s a rod for our own back, because we keep looking over our shoulder. A battery that we produced 10 years ago, well someone’s got that and if we don’t make that charge on our new charger, people are going to complain. The downside is that, by insisting on this, it

does compromise the simplicity of the charger that we could make.

Alan: Yes, and people don’t like spending a lot of money on something they’re not actually going to use, so that’s the rod I’m afraid.

Ed:

But it makes your chargers more versatile?

Alan: Oh absolutely, and not only that, I mean that charger is really intelligent. People have talked about “I’ve got an intelligent charger” but we just chuckle, because they don’t know what they’re talking about when they say “intelligent”. Our charger really analyses what’s on the line, what its impedance is, it knows what its age is, it knows exactly where it’s at, what its capacity is at the time – and it modifies the charge regime to suit it.

David: The other thing that we try to do is, when a new product like the L95e came out, it wouldn’t charge on our old chargers. So then we made an upgrade kit, so you could change the chip on the older charger, so it would charge the later batteries. By doing this, we’re trying to keep everybody, from new to old happy, so that they can have the new battery, even though their charger is 10 years old.

Ed:

Keep them in the PAG family?

David: Yes, that’s often, again, a problem for design, but we feel that if you’re a PAG customer, you need support and we try to do everything we can to support you.

Ed: One of the strap lines I’ve seen is “PAG – made in the UK.” This is something that you’re proud of?

David: Yes, I think sometimes we wish we got more support from the UK, the government …

Ed: Yes, we governments.

Page 32

all

have

problems

with

our

Special Investigation at PAG One of the strong points about PAG and one of the reasons why I went to London to have a look at the factory and talk to the people, is their Research & Development programme. While I was there, I was privileged to see a new product secret at the time. It is a battery but a very special battery, because it does something that nobody else has yet done. To tell us all about it, we have Paul Lavender.

Ed: Paul, I understand that this particular new system has the codename “PAGlink”?

Paul: This is in response to a customer requirement for batteries that can be carried in an aeroplane, that are lithium ion. We produced the 190, but transportation is an issue for that. People like the capacity, so by having two separate batteries that link together, you get round that legislation problem.

Ed: Now other people have done this, but you reckon you’ve come up with a cleverer way?

Paul: Yes. Our contact system is replaceable, so that if you drop the product and smash it, you can replace the external components that would be damaged.

Ed: That means that you’re not actually going into the battery itself, it’s an external contact arrangement?

Paul: Yes, the contacts on the rear of the battery can be undone and removed, including the mechanical latch, so should you break that, you can replace it.

The contacts are high current capable, they’re MultiContact and rated at 24A each. You can use them in conjunction with the other set of contacts if you want to pull more current.

Ed: One of the things that interests me is that there actually seem to be four contacts there, whereas with DC current you really only need two. What are the other two for?

Paul: One’s for the communication between the batteries, and the other one is the output to the camera of the battery status.

Ed: And I guess the key thing is that the connection between these two batteries is a clever connection.

Can you explain that?

Paul: The two batteries are networked and either is able to opt out of delivering power. The batteries talk to each other. One battery will be elected as master, and that’ll be the one talking to the camera. It will say what batteries are and are not connected. It’s aware of the status of all the other batteries, and it will add up the total capacity and the current capability and report it to the camera.

Ed: And this is something that the batteries do without any camera op interference?

Paul: No, you’re not aware of it. You shouldn’t need to be.

Ed: So this means that you can actually infinitely change the back battery and keep your power on?

Paul: Yes you can add a third battery, or change the back one.

Ed: So when the back one goes down, you can replace that one and you can do it “hot”?

Paul: Yes, you can keep swapping.

Ed: Now just going back to the clip arrangement … it seems to be a multi-point clip arrangement. Where the two batteries connect is not just on one little piece of plastic?

Paul: Well it uses the main V component for most of the mechanical strength, although it does pull up quite tight on the contact arrangement as well.

Ed:

So it’s really a triangulated connection?

Paul: Yes, the strength of the V-Lock is the “V” and we’re utilising that primarily.

Ed: Now one of the other interesting things is that you’ve made use of a 3D printer in producing these?

Paul: Yes, we have one of our own and we also use one outside company for producing the components. This enables us to develop prototypes a lot quicker.

Ed: Would you use the 3D printer in production, or is this just for prototypes?

Paul: We’ve talked about it.

You could use it for internal components, but you’ll notice if I show you this one here, that there is a texture to it that the product will have and it’s not something we’d want to see on a finished product.

Ed: So really the 3D printer is ideal for these research projects, but once you go into final production, you get a mould made and do it the normal way?

Paul: Yes, the idea is that you get the mould made once, rather than keep tickling it.

Ed: Right. Now any other features of this battery pack you’d like to mention … it is lithium ion obviously?

Paul: Yes, it’s lithium ion, 95 Watt hour, at the moment it’s utilising either a Sanyo or an LG cell. It has a five light display which has six battery levels –one light for each 20% and then the bottom light will flash as it goes below 10%. There’s a rudimentary time display; if you press the button twice under load, it will show you how many hours and minutes it has to run. It’s SMB (Smart Management Bus) compliant, which is Sony’s standard for reading batteries and displaying capacity in the more on page 39

Page 36

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45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland

Ed: Nigel, do you want to add any marketing points you see for this battery development?

Nigel: Well I think it means that now camera operators have got the added run time, the added capacity, without breaking any international transportation regulations.

camera viewfinder. It will also automatically work with other viewfinder communication systems, such as Red One, IDX and Anton-Bauer.

achieve that product.

Ed: These are pretty well standard features though of current PAG batteries?

with

an

I think that a lot of the newer cameras, the Alexa and the RED, they need more power, and ideally they would like 160-190 Watt hours and we can easily legally-transportable NZVN

CLASSIFIED

Paul: Yes, those features are the same as the L95e.

Ed: And, along with many of the other PAG batteries, this is true to form that you can use your previous PAG charger to charge them, although obviously not one that’s too old. I guess any PAG charger that takes a VLock?

Paul: I think any PAG charger we’ve made in the last 15-20 years will be able to charge these batteries, with an upgrade, but only the newer chargers will charge them whilst stacked.

Ed: So it has potential for multi-stacking batteries and providing either a very large current draw or a very long time to provide continuous power?

Paul: Yes, the batteries individually we’re rating at 8A continuous. When they’re stacked – if you’ve got two on there and they’re of a relatively similar state of charge, they’ll output 12A quite easily and continuously.

Ed: And this could go up to as much current as you like?

Paul: No, 12A is the maximum. You’re limited by the mechanical plate and the contacts.

Ed:

Still, 12A is quite a current draw?

Paul: Yes. It really is limited by the contacts on the camera side rather than our cells.

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