NZVN November 2013 by Grant Cummuskey

NOVEMBER 2013

Vol 197

Behind The Cup coverage Like the proverbial falling tree in the forest, you wouldn’t know that there had been a yacht race in San Francisco if it wasn’t for the coverage. What was special this time was that it was better than ever – more action, more cameras, more sound, more graphics and all delivered on more platforms. Other than us having a starring role in the race, another reason to be proud of being a New Zealander was that a great proportion of the coverage was provided by New Zealanders – not only through TVNZ, but also as part of ACTV, America’s Cup Television, the host broadcaster. Sadly, my resources did not stretch to my being there but I was very ably substituted by TVNZ senior cameraman, Raymond Moore. As well as his obvious camera proficiency, Raymond shows promise in the journalistic art although he has a long way to go to reach the “take no prisoners” attitude of this seasoned hack – and he’s probably the better for it! So, apart from removing references to numerous cups of coffee and cream cakes, the following is mainly all Raymond. Forward together we go. Raymond: I’m talking with Wayne Leonard, the TV live director for America’s Cup Television. Wayne: I direct the world feed which everyone sees. Previously, this job would only have involved doing the race coverage itself but here we are producing a completed output with feature stories which runs for about two hours. Broadcasters have “join points” to our schedule; we allow break opportunities as well – it’s obviously a commercial world, but if you wanted to take the product and play it, it would be two hours continuous, no problem.

Raymond Moore and Martin Tasker.

Raymond: Tell me about the sources you’re able to play with? Wayne:

We’ll start with the boats.

On each boat you’ve got seven cameras; six of them are what we call “agile” they can be zoomed, panned,

anywhere near the shore, there’s marine areas that we aren’t allowed to fly in … too much noise for the seals and whatever else, the birdlife, etc. There’s a lot of administration involved around covering races above San Francisco Bay. And then of course the other reason why we have two chase boats is that fog is a problem here and if the fog gets too low then we can’t fly the helicopters. So far, touch wood, it hasn’t affected any races, although there’s been occasions when the helicopters had to fly across the top of land and of course when they’re across the top of land, they have to fly much higher, so the shots tend to be wide shots and no detail. Raymond: It’s all been going well? I mean it just looks fantastic on television. Wayne: I think it’s set a fairly high bar for sailing coverage. I think it’s fair to say it’s probably the most exciting America’s Cup I’ve worked on, and I’ve worked on five – three as a director. I Vincent (front), Wayne Leonard (middle) and Leon Sefton (back). think it’s because of the boats themselves … I know there was a lot of tilted, colour balanced, controlled from onshore and one anti over the AC72’s, they’re very expensive and 132 is a fixed camera which is underneath and it’s there to people to put one in the water and all that sort of show foiling. The camera configuration is so that we carryon, but they just look beautiful on the water and have two cameras that can cover the skipper or crew at the foiling and the speed. all times, these are around the base of the wing; there’s It’s exhilarating – I don’t know how you would go back a camera which we call camera 1 which is our safe shot to monohulls after this. at the end of the bowsprit; there’s cameras 4, 5 and 6 Raymond: Have you had any new toys to play with? which go across the back of the boat. They are getting Wayne: Well there’s the LiveLine which was crew shots mostly, and also “boat to boat” type shots. developed specifically for this event by the guys that did Clearly, they’ve been a lot closer than people the first-down line for the NFL – Stan Honey and his anticipated they would get, so at times the shots are quite exciting. Then on the water, we have two chase boats, which can do 40 knots. They should be faster than the racing boats, but they’re not, so hence the reason for having two, and they work in a “push me, pull you” type setup where they do half the course each. Then we have three helicopters – two of them have live line possibilities that we can put graphics on so, from a director’s point of view, it’s pretty good, he’s spoilt for choice. The third helicopter operates as a tight helicopter – it gives you the shots over the boats, gives you the more “arty” type shots, and as we progress through the coverage, we’ve formulated our pattern for cutting. The two live line helicopters again work in tandem with the chase boats and the tight helicopter does the entire course. There’s lots of restrictions round here – there’s “no fly” zones which is another reason why we’ve had to employ two live lines, especially around Alcatraz and Operations were all in containers.

Go www.finnzed.co.nz and follow the link to NZVN for more news.

More on-board electronics.

technologically on the water with the race teams and the yachts themselves and I think, over the years, there’s always a similar ambition in the way we cover it to try and develop and keep pushing ourselves and make the sport more understandable. It’s not an easy sport for viewers to pick up if they’re not used to it; it’s an easy sport to lose people. We can confuse them visually, they can get discombobulated in terms of which direction the boats are going and why – and so for us the breakthrough this edition has been the LiveLine technology. That’s been an ambition and something that’s been on our radar for a long time in terms of not having to cut away from the live pictures in order to add the graphic information to keep people fully informed and to give them bearings. So this time round, we created boundaries to the racetrack – essentially a field of play, so that people understand where the end zones are and where the side

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lines are; and also we’ve added the ladder graphics so like in American Football you can see at all times how far up or down the racecourse the boats are at a given time. To have that graphic information on the pictures is a huge leap forward. That was no mean feat; it was a pretty robust kind of a process of technological development over the years to do it. Stan Honey and his guys developed LiveLine … the big breakthrough was to take the data that was coming out of the Cineflex cameras, the gyro stabilised cameras flown on the helicopters, and to be able to take that data, interpret it visually and turn it into graphic data. The interesting part of that story is that that’s something that’s been done in the past with stationary cameras; to do that in a camera which is moving three dimensionally all the time, and panning and tilting, that was a huge evolution and a big step forward. That’s the first time it’s been done and hats off to the guys who managed to achieve it, because it’s a brilliant breakthrough for us. Raymond: Are these specialised cameras …? Leon: The cameras themselves are specialised. They are leading edge gyro stabilised cameras – there’s the FLIR and the Cineflex brands. They’re not brand new to use in sailing or indeed sport and television in general – they’ve been around for a number of years, but it’s the first time we’ve really managed to tap into the data coming out of the back of them and coordinate it to create a combined package which becomes a really powerful interpretative tool. Raymond: And you use that in combination with the GPS and all that sort of stuff as well? Leon: Yes, Animation Research Limited, Ian Taylor’s company who have been heavily involved in sailing and the America’s Cup for a number of years and have been at the forefront with a lot of the technology breakthroughs, have been with us for every step of that journey.

to leave the live pictures, but when we need to we can get back to the animations and really examine things up close. Now for the TVNZ side of the story, I’m talking to John West, Manager of Sports Events. John: My role has basically been onsite producer for TVNZ, co-ordinating activities on the ground in San Francisco, taking the coverage provided by the host broadcaster and then adding the specialist elements that deliver it specifically to a New Zealand audience – so our own commentary using Martin Tasker and Peter Lester, and then organising specific video tracks around a highlights programme and co-ordinating the coverage that we’re using for News. Raymond: Audience-wise, back in New Zealand, this would probably be one of the most successful things we’ve done in quite a while? John: Absolutely. I think the first race of the America’s Cup rated higher than the All Blacks match and rated higher than the coverage from Valencia in 2007 … okay, Valencia was in the middle of the night, but certainly it is attracting a very high audience. One difference from 2007 is the advent of the On Demand streaming site, so not only are we delivering traditional television, we’re also delivering to iPhones, iPads and desktop computers. As the races are progressing, those numbers are exponentially increasing as well. Raymond: Are the servers holding out back in New Zealand? John: It’s proving an interesting exercise. As the demand increases, then obviously they’re having to do some more work shaping and reshaping the bandwidth to accommodate that, but it’s been a very good learning

They probably could have achieved the same breakthroughs themselves if they’d been given the budget to do so, but their technology is still being used in step with us as a backup and also in kind of a parallel to the LiveLine technology, so that we have another way of looking at what’s happened on the water. That’s particularly strong in a replay sense so that we can really examine in detail what’s been going on, the play by play moves out there. So, yes, we’ve made a big breakthrough in that we don’t have

FLIR stabilized gyro camera. Page 10

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exercise in terms of, if you like, the shift from traditional television into delivery over a variety of different platforms.

inception of New Zealand’s involvement in the America’s Cup, so there’s a long history there and I’d like to hope that it will continue.

Raymond: So from your perspective, how has it been – the whole event?

Time to talk with Rodney Haugh, the TVNZ Project Engineer for Events.

John: I think it’s gone pretty well you know; we’ve tried to do this with a lot less resource than we had in 2007, so we were set some pretty significant challenges in terms of the way we put this together and made it work. We tried to make use of some of the newer streaming technologies – it’s the first event we’ve done that for a path back to New Zealand.

Raymond: Now Rodney, what does TVNZ get from ACTV?

Raymond: So you’re saying that most of it’s coming back via the Internet – more than it used to? John: It’s the first time we’ve used the Internet as a delivery path for unilateral content. Traditionally we’ve taken satellite capacity or fibre capacity at significant cost, but with the advances in encoding technology and compression, the opportunity arose for us to trial some Internet technology, which by and large has worked reasonably well. Raymond: The future – do you think we’ll be involved? John: That’s not for me to say. I’d like to think so. TVNZ has had a history of being involved with the America’s Cup really from its inception … or the

Rodney: It’s quite simple, we take the host pictures and we substitute our audio. We also get a number of the host’s isolated feeds so that our commentators can get a “heads up” as to where the boats are on the course, where they’re headed and where the boundaries are – while everybody else isn’t seeing the boundaries. We then use those pictures and overlay our own audio. The commentators are in a little cabin on the Pier 23 and they sit with headsets on and do a commentary which we mix with the effects audio, which comes from ACTV. We send that all back to ACTV and they put it on tracks 7 and 8 going to the satellite. Raymond: Is the satellite system that TVNZ is using?

the

only

transmission

Rodney: No, it’s not the only way. The satellite that we receive in New Zealand is AsiaSat 5 but there’s a double hop to get in – that means it goes from one satellite over Europe and then to another satellite over Asia which we pick up. Alongside that, we also have a separate encoder, MPEG4 of course, and that encoder would normally have been on a fibre but we had major problems getting that, so we’re actually using that encoder to stream over the Internet. We get very good quality pictures, occasional hits on it, so we keep our fingers crossed and at live cross times we hope for the best, and so far it’s worked well, no hits. I suppose it’s quite leading edge technology, particularly as the coder company loaned us the encoder and let us try their Beta software, so it could be the thing of the future. Didn’t he do well! Now, at last, it’s my turn to interview Raymond as to what he was doing there. Ed: Raymond, as well as your beautiful camera shots, I for one was impressed by the quality of your interview lighting – how did you achieve that over the range of bright sun, sunsets and night shots?

John West (back) with Rodney Haugh (front). Page 12

Raymond: During the day, I used 2 x Arri 1200 Watt hired HMI lights with my

warm up gels to help combat the hideous contrasty sun they have in California. I used Soft Frost together with a slight warm up gel (1/4 SUN) as HMI’s tend to be a bit cold. I programmed a colour balance that I kept for all of my links or lives when using these lights. As for my live crosses at night, I always used the same lights – 2 x LED front lights and 1 x LED backlight. At night, it's all LED's, backed off and camera on 6db gain and wide open to bring up the background. The lights are set to just have the zebra flickering on the face. I check the colour balance of the background and tweak front light for my desired balance. The post

Extreme location shooting.

Martin to sling across his shoulder as he cycled. I also used this across at the Mixed Zone for 1 on 1 post race interviews. Lives and Links were always shot with the 500. By the time we reached the AC Finals the mixed zone changed into one big presser with the broadcast cameras pushed to the back of the room. I reverted back to the PMW-500 as I needed the pulling power of my Canon 17x lens. For any complex story, I would revert to the 500 as the EX1 is a bit of a struggle – the viewfinder for one…. very difficult to see an image in the bright sunshine when using the flip-out LCD screen and trying to focus via the rear viewfinder was not much fun! Audio was the other reason for switching to the PMW-500 as I could record 4 separate audio feeds. This meant I could employ 2 radio mics for interviews as well as still having access to my camera mic for effects when editing. Ed: I believe that you did a bit more than just taking pics though?

Nighttime lighting.

race press conference was another colour balance I kept because of the mix of lighting.

Raymond: Martin and I were the main reporter/ camera team right up until the last month when the actual AC race between Oracle and ETNZ began, at

As the Sony PMW-500 has 8 programmable memory colour balances available, I ensured these three settings were maintained using the remaining memory for all other colour balance requirements. Ed:

Your PMW-500 was your main camera?

Raymond: My superb Sony PMW-500! This was a situation where it came into full play. As well as great picture recording features, I was able to record HD-SDI straight from our router rather than having to dub huge files from our Blackmagic SSD recorder – we assisted ETNZ by giving them a copy of their races, so the much smaller file size generated on the SxS Card size by the PMW 500 was easier to transfer quickly to their USB Drive compared to the massive 250GB file from the Blackmagic SSD device. While in San Francisco I used two cameras – a Sony EX1 and the Sony PMW-500 – both recording in the MP4 format – Full HD 1920 x 1080, 50i @35 Mbps. The EX1 could be packed into my back pack for ease of use when Martin and I had to cycle down to Emirates Team New Zealand for various interviews. Its accompanying Miller tripod was also light enough for Page 14

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log material I had shot. I would set up a new project every day. Our MacBook Pros have SxS Card readers so the shot material was quickly ingested and Martin could read that project on his MacBook Pro to log material as required. Editing was with FCP 7. A huge bonus was the Sony full HD LED monitor Rodney, our engineer, brought along for me to use, which connected to my MacBook Pro via a Matrox device thus allowing me to view all my visual material in stunning HD!

Martin and Peter Lester (back).

which stage extra crew were added. This was a very busy period and, as Martin has reflected, “I don’t think I’ve ever generated that much video content in such a small space of time.” Martin, of course was expected to blog and tweet in addition to this as well. Some of the days were extremely long and it was rather hectic I must admit. My workflow progressed a bit over the 3 months in San Francisco. Initially I worked to a networked NAS central storage device so Martin could

As other commitments eventuated, the load on the network increased and viewing became difficult. I was loaned a 6TB LaCie drive from Sundance Productions who are producing the “34th Americas Cup” movie to ease the load so just backed up material to the NAS, not working constantly to it – I had Martin log directly off my SxS cards in his MacBook Pro using Sony Content Browser. I recorded everything with timecode set to “Time of Day” which meant any time Martin could glance at his watch, note the time and that grab could easily be located. I did all of the onsite editing for Martin’s tracks, the Links and Interviews for Highlights Package and the Team Toyota section up until the finals, when TVNZ HQ took on a fair bit of the edit load. Ed: TVNZ used satellite links for live races and Breakfast crosses but other News items were streamed in non real time?

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Raymond: Yes and No. In the early stages, we only used the streaming circuit for any live requirement, then towards the end of the finals everything was sent via the Sat with Breakfast, Midday and 6pm crosses via the streaming CCT. Finally, due to interference on the Internet, extra Sat time was purchased to meet Breakfast’s requirements before and after the race. As the streaming circuit was subjected to the vagaries of the Internet, nearly all of our cut stories or clipped interviews/voice overs were sent via FTP. I encoded at a 6MB setting to achieve the maximum quality possible. For techo’s, that generates a 72MB file for a 1min 38 sec story. This normally took about 5 minutes to send, and about another 5 to 10 minutes to transcode across to the News Quantel Server. There was no onsite compile team in San Francisco.

Very bright daytime lighting balance with HMIs.

Ed: So are you ready to do it all again in 4 years’ time? Raymond: Pass me another cream cake and I’ll think about it. NZVN

Photos by Raymond helpful friends.

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Moore,

Hugh

Scott

and

Datavideo at IBC The IBC stories continue starting at Datavideo for Protel with Mark Ederveen. Ed: Mark, you’re going to tell us what’s new since NAB. I guess first my impression of Datavideo over the shows is that your stands just keep getting bigger and better. It’s obvious you’re doing okay, and the overall impression I get is “mobile”. It’s outside broadcast and it looks like it’s affordable outside broadcast. Is this where Datavideo is making a niche for itself? Mark: Yes. We have been focusing for a couple of years now on all kinds of mobile video solutions, not just for small OB vans, but also broadcasting for houses of worship, all kinds of communities, colleges, schools, etc. etc. Everywhere where you need an affordable live production setup, Datavideo can offer a solution to you.

Mark with fully equipped OB van.

Ed: And this can be for broadcast I guess, or web? Mark: Web broadcast, live broadcast, on national television or local TV stations, yes, it is all available at the full professional level. Ed: And it’s also, I’m assuming knowing the Datavideo story, very flexible – that you can connect up a range of cameras, you can have a whole range of feeds into here, and you don’t have to be any particular format specific? Mark: Well nowadays of course, everybody is focusing on high definition SDI – HD-SDI – that’s the new standard of course, but still we have quite a lot of

products which can support composite video so you can use one of our converters to digitise your composite video into SDI and with some SD-SDI to HDI upscalers, you can integrate your old-fashioned composite video cameras. With Datavideo products you can still connect a very wide range of cameras and other live feeds to our vision switchers. Ed: Now this isn’t a market that you have all to yourself – there are quite a few others in this ballpark. How do you see yourselves being differentiated in the market? Mark: Well we’ve been in this particular part of the market for many, many years and we were alone there, but now you see more companies coming back into this market. Sony is coming back strong, Panasonic, of course NewTek TriCaster is very tough competition, Blackmagic Design, but on the other hand Datavideo still offer a very affordable and easy to operate device. With the other brands, I think you need some high skilled training on the products before you can work with them. We believe that when you put somebody with a little knowledge of technique behind a Datavideo switcher, within 10-15 minutes they will totally understand the concept without the need of extra computers, without the need of extra user interfaces. Just take a Datavideo product out of the box, put it in front of you and you can work with it within 5-10 minutes no problem. Ed: And again it might be just an impression, but it seems as though you have a broader range than many of your competitors. They will provide a solution in a particular area, but you’ve got it all? Mark: Yes of course we have the vision switchers, we have the chroma key application, we have the high definition recorders, we have the monitors, vectorscope solutions, we have talkback systems, we even have our own cameras … so from camera to recording; we have the webstreaming solution … from camera to broadcast, everything is here. Ed:

You have your own cameras now?

Mark: We do have one model PTZ-100 which is a remote high definition camera. Next year we will have PTZ-150 – this model will phase out quite quickly now, Page 19

but the new one will be introduced at NAB … it is PTZ, so pan tilt and zoom camera controls remotely, so even for your cameras, yes, you can come to us. Ed: Right, but the DAC products – really that’s something that started Datavideo off many, many years ago, and now you’re up to 70. So what does the DAC70 do? Mark: The DAC-70 is just one of the converters that we currently offer. The DAC-70 is a standard definition to high def upscaler or even downscaler as well if you have a high def camera and you need to connect it to a standard def switcher. Anything in, anything out, it has auto detection on the input, so you only have to take care of what kind of signal you want to have as an output, just make the dipswitch settings and you can have PAL NTSC out, 1080i in 60 Hz, 1080i in 50 Hz, 720p in all kinds of formats … anything in, and we can have it as an output as well. The DAC-70 is a very versatile converter. Ed:

And that’s a very small form factor?

Mark: A very small form factor; it’s very easy to mount to a tripod with some extra mounting plates, or

we can also have it in a rig mount so that you can combine more converters in just one 19 inch rack mount. Here you can add all kinds of converters, like the DAC-70 which is the upscaler, or the DAC-60 which is an SDI to VGA converter, where you have your high definition switcher but only still have VGA projectors, we can convert HD-SDI to VGA, so you always can make the right connection with the DAC-60. We have DAC-8, we have DAC-9 – one is HDMI to SDI, the other is SDI to HDMI, so we have many different solutions for all the different needs in the market. Ed: Because these camera manufacturers keep coming up with new connectors and outputs don’t they? Mark: They’re changing every couple of years because they want to bring something new to the markets and we then we have to build new converters. We’re so happy to do this for them! Ed: For the readers, Protel in New Zealand are the exclusive distributers for Datavideo so if you are looking at setting up a low cost OB truck or production facility or just need a converter or assistance call Protel – Auckland 09-3798288 or Wellington 04-8019494. NZVN

Caldigit at IBC For Protel we are here at CalDigit with Kosta Panagos. Ed: Now you’re saying Kosta, that there’s nothing new since NAB but I see here a Thunderbolt station. Now this is not something that has yet been released, but soon? Kosta: It will be shipping November, 2013. It is a Thunderbolt expansion dock; it adds extra connectivity via a single Thunderbolt port. It adds three USB3 ports, a HDMI port, audio in and out and a LAN port. It has dual Thunderbolt ports so you can daisy chain it as part of six devices. The HDMI output supports resolutions of 2056x1600 – so much higher than 1080p and much higher than other equivalent devices on the market. The USB3 ports, unlike other devices on the market, will actually charge your phones and tablets. As I say, it will be available towards the end of the year and the price is $199US or including freight to New Zealand about ($275NZ+GST). Ed: Wow, that’s not a lot at all and certainly a lot cheaper than the Apple laptop that it’s connected to that only has one Thunderbolt port in their wisdom? Kosta: Well that’s the thing … as computers are getting thinner and thinner, they’re losing a lot of their ports, so you need a device like this to be able to add those things that you need to connect. And it’s also great for people who have, say, a 2011 Mac that has Thunderbolt but doesn’t have USB3 and you want to be able to attach USB3 keyboards, mice, external storage. The USB3 ports will also bus power your devices – again, other devices on the market can’t draw enough power to be able to bus power devices – storage for example. Ed: Now this is it, because in fact we know and love CalDigit because of the storage so are there any developments in that area?

Kosta: Yes, we have a new device – the CalDigit T3. It’s a unique 3-bay RAID with dual Thunderbolt ports, so again you can daisy chain it as part of six devices. It has three hot swappable drive modules and again, uniquely, it will accept either 2½ inch SSDs or 3½ inch hard drives, so storage capacities up to 12 terabytes with the 3½ inch drives; if you daisy chain six, that’s 72 terabytes. With SSDs it’s 1.4 terabytes, but it gets incredible speeds, so 850 megabytes a second read, 800 megabytes a second write, and to put that into context, you can buy 4-bay RAIDs that can only get 500 megabytes a second; you can get 6-bay RAIDs that only get 800 megabytes a second. This will do 850. The unique function of this drive is that you can actually mix and match SSDs and hard drives in the same unit, so you could have, say, two hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration and then have one SSD at the bottom,

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say as your scratch disc that you can work on. You can also mix and match RAID and JBOD, so you don’t have to RAID all three drives, you can actually just RAID two drives and then have a spare JBOD drive. Ed: Wow. And it’s a very nice looking little unit? Kosta: Yes, it’s aluminium closure, robust, solid and it’s great for airflow. It’s got a fan at the back, so your hard drives won’t heat up. Ed: The question I ask every time is that obviously, you can go into a local PC supply shop, buy a box and stick some drives in and RAID them, but this is a bit like choosing between a Lada or a Porsche isn’t it? Kosta: Yes, exactly. I mean we’re a single vendor company, unlike other manufacturers, so we make everything that’s in the unit apart from the hard drive. So, if you ever have a support related issue, we can always get to the heart of the matter much quicker. It’s always better to buy from a company that’s a single vendor company – a company that OEMs a product and then stamps their name on the top of the box and allows you to put their own drives into it, which is great if you just need something quick that you want to back-up your data on, but if you’re a professional and you need fast drives, dependable drives, then you really need to buy an all in one solution that is backed by the company you buy it from. Ed: If it’s mission critical and, in the scheme of things, it’s still a very inexpensive part of any system that you want to set up? Kosta: Exactly, I mean if you’re spending thousands and thousands of Euros or Dollars on a production and you’ve got all your data backed up onto a drive that isn’t, say, a RAID 1 where you have three automatic backups, you’re risking the chance that you could lose all that data. Ed: Anything else – any other new device? Kosta: I could talk you through this one. Ed: Now a product that has been around a wee while, but we’ll just give it a bit more of a plug here, because in these days of data wrangling, where you have a hard drive given to you from a job, you need to put that data into some other form of storage, so you need a removable case – and CalDigit has the answer? Kosta: Yes, this is the CalDigit AV Pro. It’s a single drive solution, but what’s unique about it is that

you can actually remove the hard drive inside and it can accept either 3½ inch hard drives up to a capacity of 4 terabytes or 2½ inch SSDs for much faster performance, up to 480 gigabytes. And again, we have the removable drive, which is unique to this product – other single drive solutions tend to have an enclosed hard drive and you can’t upgrade it, it can’t expand. So you can actually remove the hard drive – and we sell extra drive modules as we call them, between 1 and 4 terabytes, or 240 gig SSD or 480 gigabyte SSD. It’s hot pluggable and you can actually remove the drive, put in a brand new drive and it’s great if you’re using it – you need to move data from one location to another, maybe you have multiple edit suites and you want to be able to just remove a drive and put it into another one in another location. Also, if you’re using an SSD, you can actually be bus powered, so you don’t need any external power. Ed: Okay, for this to work you also need to have the CalDigit drive with the various connectors on it, but it does come in a very nice cushioned orange durable case? Kosta: Yes, we call that the CalDigit Archive Box which is great if you need to move the drives from location to location and you want to make sure if your drive accidentally gets a knock, that it’s going to be protected. And also these drive modules work with our other products. So like the product I talked to you about earlier, the CalDigit T3 Thunderbolt RAID, if you’re using it in a RAID 1 or a JBOD mode, you can actually take the drive out and put it into our other products such as the AV Pro. So it’s very flexible if you needed to move from location to location and you need to take data out and use it in a different edit suite. Ed: So if anyone would like to purchase CalDigit products contact Protel – in Auckland (09-3798288) or Wellington (04-8019494.

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Sony at IBC We are here at Sony and we have Chris Grey from Sony’s Professional Solutions office in Hong Kong – that’s the nearest to New Zealand that we could find at a moment’s notice. He’s the man to tell us the latest things from Sony since NAB starting with wireless. Chris: Okay Grant, let me explain to you the CBKWA100 wireless adapter. This is a little unit that goes on to the side of our camcorders. The issue for shooters has been how to get material back to the station in a reasonably cost effective way without bringing microwave or satellite trucks behind them, and of course, we’ve had GSM networks and now we’ve got 3G and 4G with much higher bandwidth capabilities. So this little unit goes on the side of the camera, it takes the SDI out of the camera, and then it makes a proxy file of the material that’s been recorded and it can store that, but it can also forward that through the WiFi network back to the station and you can have some dedicated server for that. After you’ve done the recording, you can also do some rough cut editing and decide for that rough cut to send the high resolution back to the station as well. So it has low res and high res capability. Ed: So we’re doing a rough cut in the camera on location, not back in the studio? Chris: That’s right. You can have the choice of sending the proxy back, because that’s a lower bit rate, but obviously for the high res, it’s going to be non-real time because it’s much higher capacity. So that’s quite a useful tool in the field we feel, for getting material back. The WiFi part has an app that runs on a mobile phone or a tablet, so you can have some of the camera settings setup from your phone or your tablet, or additionally the WiFi will stream what the camera is shooting onto the tablet. If there’s an assistant who

Chris with the WA100 and other Sony accessories.

wants to do some logging, or somebody else wants to see exactly what the camera is shooting, or the camera is up on top of a dolly somewhere, then you can get the video stream to your tablet and see what’s being shot. Ed: Now it looks similar to some third party product that I’ve seen around over the last year or so, but I assume, in any situation, having the Sony badge on it means that you could actually trust it, that it’s going to work with a Sony camera? Chris: Yes Grant, it works with Sony cameras. There’s two versions … for third parties we have to be able to accept a signal from anywhere, so typically they have an SDI output. But we’ve also made provision on our cameras like the PMW-400, so moving forward there will be a dedicated connector, you don’t need to have that SDI, it will pick up the uncompressed signal directly without having to re-encode. Ed: And that’s taking internal power is it? Chris: Yes, it’s run off the internal power supply so you don’t have to carry around a separate box, a separate power supply, normally you have a belt pack or something. The cameramen already have enough to carry, so we think this will be a nice compact solution for them. Ed: So any of the Sony cameras that have that particular connector will work with it, but if not, such as an older camera, what are the requirements? Chris: There are two versions … there’s the one version that fits on the new connector, which is for new cameras such as the PMW-400, but there’s another version which needs power and SDI and it gets that from the camera. Ed: Okay, so it just needs any camera that’s got an HD-SDI output and it will work? Chris:

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Yes, DC power and SDI, that’s it.

Ed: And a neat little compact unit. Right, next … and now we’re at the very popular section of the Sony stand, 4K and it’s not a big 4K. There are some big 4K cameras and we know well the F65 and the F55 and F5, but this is a little one, with a rather complicated number?

upgrade, because it’s similar cost but it gives you a higher level of picture? Chris: Yes, a little bit more expensive, but much higher picture quality. Ed:

Well, we’re talking Є6,500 – it’s only a little bit more than the EX1 was when it first came out? Chris:

Yes that’s right.

Ed: Have you heard from people as to what they think of the camera? Chris: Well they’re quite amazed to have this level of technology in such a compact size, so I think people are thinking now how they can use it. Ed: And certainly what we’re seeing here on the monitor, the colours and the definition are quite incredible? Chris: Yes, of course 4K has a wider colour gamut than HD, so that’s reflected in the pictures we’re seeing. Ed: And that’s it, not only do you get sharper images and that ability to zoom in, if you want to make it an HD production, you can reframe in post, but you’re getting better colour rendition? Chris: Yes that’s true. We’re still saying 4K might be better for HD than HD native for that reason.

4K in a small but beautiful package.

Chris: Yes this is the PXW-Z100, a compact-form 4K camcorder. It’s using a 1/2.3 inch sensor, so that’s between a third and a half inch size, and it’s a full 4K recording using XAVC compression at 422 10 bit with an MXF wrapper, which is what we use for broadcast applications. Its recording media is the new XQD card because the data rate that the camera is producing needs to have suitable memory to record that data speed. That’s it in a nutshell. Ed:

Ed: Well that follows also that HD is better than SD if you record HD and then down-sample to SD?

And it’s about the size of my Z5?

Chris:

Yes it’s about the size of a PMW-200.

Ed: Where do you see this being used – obviously not in the next Lord of the Rings? Chris: We’re trying to broaden the affordability of 4K, so it could be corporate, education, medical, producing content for large screen displays, who knows. It could be all kinds of things, but we’re trying to broaden the 4K application. As you know, there are a lot of 4K displays coming onto the market already, so people are saying “where’s the content?” So with content these days, people can access anywhere, right? YouTube now has a 4K channel, so there may be some people who would be happy to buy this and use it for almost anything. Ed: And really the development with the CMOS sensor has been such that it is now capable of handling that sort of picture size? Chris: All the F series cameras you mentioned have a CMOS single sensor inside them, so the technology has now come down to be affordable at this level, so I think that’s good for the market. Ed: it?

But the sensor’s not the same size as the F65 is

Chris: No, no but the technology has progressed down to be at this affordable level now. Ed: And so again, something like this, if you were shooting on an EX1, EX3, this would be an ideal Page 25

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Chris: Yes that was the similar story then. You knew then you were going to have HD in the future, so you might as well start shooting 4K now so people can make a decision; if they think they need 4K for the future, then they’ve got the opportunity to shoot it now at an affordable level. Ed: And if you follow that reasoning then SD off 4K must be absolutely fantastic? Chris: Maybe, but I personally haven’t seen it. Ed: And now into the format agnostic “AV over IP” interface and routing. Chris: What we’re showing here is some prototype technology, some R&D that is about moving from SDI to total IP connectivity for things like cameras, switchers, servers, monitors, graphics and so on. So of course, in our industry, we’ve seen the move from SDI to IT in certain areas – obviously servers are IT components, we have desktop editing, we do lots of streaming, but in terms of live production from cameras to switchers to recording on servers and replay, it’s all in the SDI environment at the moment. Everyone’s comfortable with that, but we see a lot of benefits with IT, especially from a cost performance point of view.

“There’s a record button somewhere.”

Ed:

Well you shouldn’t.

Chris: No, we shouldn’t, so we have to make sure that the level of quality is satisfactory for people’s day to day operations. Anyway, the debate has started. Ed: So this is a bit of a discussion board, that you want your customers to come and have a look and then fill in a little form on a clipboard there and if you get enough “yes” votes you might make it? Chris: Well we could get a lot of “yes” votes, but this needs to be an industry initiative, because if everyone’s got an Ethernet connector and a cable – not just Sony, but all the other devices that people use need to be compatible, so eventually this will have to be standardised by the likes of EBU, SMPTE and so on. Ed: That’s it, because on our list here, at the centre is an IP switch and you can feed into that a camera, server, production switcher, the graphics workstation, output to monitors, your computers for your network management – it’s all there, and if it’s all connected by Ethernet then way to go? Chris: Yes, so exciting times ahead, lots of retraining for all the broadcast engineers.

Ed:

Cheaper cabling when you’ve got a large facility?

Chris: Cheaper cabling, more compact and energy saving and size saving – especially important for OB vans, this could be a real advantage. So the idea we’re proposing is whether all these bits of equipment could be IT equipped and connected through an IP switch and then have a network manager controlling things like bandwidth and so on. But of course we’ve got signals such as audio, video, control all needs to go down the cable, and also as an industry we don’t accept latency at all.

Ed: Are they up to it do you think – there’s some fairly old dogs out there? Chris: Ed:

Yeeees …

You can always be hopeful?

Chris: It seems the broadcast engineers are better at learning IT than the IT engineers learning broadcast, so that’s the general comment. Ed: That sounds like a very sound comment and makes a lot of sense. Chris:

Page 27

So we’ll see.

NZVN

Matrox at IBC For DVT we are at the Matrox booth with Wayne Andrews from Matrox Systems. Ed: Wayne, since NAB – I mean 4K, you’re there? Wayne: We’re here thank you Grant. Yes, so the Mojito 4K is now shipping. Ed: Mojito – that’s a good name? Wayne: Yes, it’s a single card with 4 HD-SDI connectivity to bring it up to 4K P60 real time monitoring with the Adobe Creative Cloud, our WCC Premiere. It’s priced at US$1995 and, like I mentioned earlier, it’s now available. We also have now reduced the price of our Convert DVI Plus to US$995; that’s also new since NAB. The Monarch HD which you saw at NAB is also now shipping next week, so it will be available worldwide. It’s a standalone streaming and recording appliance, so it doesn’t need to be tethered to any computer; it’s built on Linux so it’s a very robust operating system. It can be discovered from any internet browser, so you just find the IP – if you knew the IP of your box you could be here at IBC in Amsterdam and communicating to your box in New Zealand through an iPad for example or an internet connection. It gives you up to 30 megabits bandwidth so you can apply for example 10 megabits to streaming and 20 megabits up to 1080p on your recording side, realistically it’s you know about 2 megabits on a stream and you can have 28 megabits on your recording, so you get up to Blu-ray quality in H264 in an MP4 or an MOV wrapper. Ed: Where does it do the recording, on board or …? Wayne: Well it can be to an attached storage, such as a USB drive or a USB key or even an SD card, a class 10 SD card, or if you have on a local network a computer, you can record to a network attached storage device. It has an HDMI input and then Ethernet and then HDMI loop through, so if you have a camera you can connect a monitor and monitor what’s coming in, just like your embedded audio in the HDMI or you can go with analogue audio through a mini one-eighth jack. You also have monitoring on it; and then on the front you have just these touch buttons, so if you have to pre-programme the box you show up on site, you just push the box, it would start streaming, push the record button and it would start recording through two USB ports or an SD card reader, or like I mentioned earlier to attached storage. Ed: So just say again, what level of recording … so you can record this from the HDMI output of your camera, but to what recording format, what level? Wayne: So it’s an H264, up to 30 megabits a second in recording and you decide on if you want it in an MP4 or an MOV wrapper. Ed: But it’s not just a recording box, it’s live streaming at the same time? Wayne: Correct. You can set it up for it to be a standalone streaming box, a standalone recording box or a streaming and recording appliance. Ed: And where is it taking its power from? Wayne: Through a 5 Volt power plug, just click it in. Ed: But you can use battery power? Wayne: I guess if you created something that would give you 5 Volts at up to 3 amps. Ed: Okay, so we’re not battery powered at the moment, but we’ve just had a word with the product manager and they’re seriously thinking about making this a little bit more sort of “field friendly” shall we say. I think the Matrox Monarch system is something to keep any eye on for the future. Now, continuing?

Wayne: And then the final product that we’re demonstrating here that’s been updated since NAB is our Matrox DS4. The DS4 works with Wirecast to provide four inputs HD-SDI. We went with HD-SDI so we can run long cable lengths. If we were HDMI you’re limited to like about 30 metres. With HD-SDI you can go 300 metres in standard def, 100 metres in high def. So what we’re showing here is Wirecast 5.0 which was announced also at IBC, and what you’re looking at right now is we’ve developed a standalone recording application, called the VS4 recorder which allows you to provide labels on file names and inputs. You can display them, you can have up to eight channels of VU meters, you can select the high def codecs such as DVCPRO HD or Matrox MPEG2 I-frame. The standard def codecs are DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, and you predefine your settings – it’s got auto detection so you can have 720 standard def, 1080 and 1080p all connected at once, and with a single button you can record all four channels and we have a session time, and you can embed either the session time into the file or embedded SDI timecode into the file. We also are capturing all the metadata that’s stored in there and we’re going to export it as an XMP file and import it in Adobe Premiere and you get all your labels, your timecodes and other metadata that you had in your Premiere. And once you’ve finished recording, you can then turn the app into a playback app and you can view your multicamera shoot or whatever postproduction that you’re doing a live production … Ed: And do a very quick replay with cuts in all the right places? Wayne: Correct. You can have monitor to full screen or you go back into quadrant view. It’s scalable or resizable; if you notice the live windows are very, very clean so we have a very unique proprietary IP that we applied to our MXO family. Ed: That’s very Matrox isn’t it? Wayne: Yes. So we’ve actually been driving this progressive monitor in interlace right now, because it’s an interlace field, so if you notice there’s no aliasing or artefacting … Ed: I must say at this point that, for a quad display on a monitor, each of the quad displays is very, very sharp and very good colour rendition? Wayne: Yes, thank you. It’s like I was mentioning, it’s our MXO technology that we ported over here on the DS4 for exactly that reason, to provide the highest quality possible when viewing interlace material on progressive monitors. Ed: Well that’s a few good things since NAB and some more things to look forward to Matrox for the next NAB – hopefully battery powered? Wayne: that. Ed:

Page 28

Hopefully – I’m not the product manager of

No, no, we won’t put your name to that one.

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Ensemble Designs at IBC For Gencom we are at Ensemble Designs with Cindy Zuelsdorf. Ed: Ensemble, you’re doing lots of good things because we saw some product in action at KTVU in Oakland and they were all very happy there. Cindy: We love them, they’re amazing customers. Ed: But you love all your customers don’t you? Cindy: I do – I love people and customers are fabulous. Ed: And you’ve got something new for them? Cindy: We’ve got new product here – at IBC we’re introducing a brand new video router that switches instantaneously between HDMI signals.

Cindy will sing “Bright Eyes” on request.

Ed: Has this been thoroughly tested by focus groups? Cindy: Haha … well we’ve been holding our focus group, but we were waiting for you to arrive so that we can kick that off properly. Ed: So I’ve got to come up with a good number? Cindy: A good number and a good name! Ed: Aaaah you’re evolving into names now? Cindy: Well like I said, we’re waiting to kick off our latest focus group, The Grant.

Ed: Ooooh I don’t know if that’ll excite many people – too much attitude. Okay, so you’ve got a router? Cindy: We do, a new router and it switches HDMI signals. It also can take SDI signals and fibre if you like. What’s interesting about this is that you can integrate all those signals and it will switch cleanly between all of them, no pops, no glitches on the output. We have built-in frame synchronisers that let you switch cleanly. I took a look at how some other companies are dealing with HDMI switching and they just have a

Page 32

different approach, they’ll sometimes go to black briefly between the switch, going from one signal to the other; or freeze on a frame of video and then do the switch. We actually take the HDMI in and frame synchronise it just like you would with an SDI signal. Ed: Because it is tricky isn’t it. I mean technically, switching an HDMI signal is not as easy as an HD-SDI? Cindy: HDMI doesn’t have the timing per se in it like an SDI signal would, that is true. It is a different animal, and people are wanting to use them together, so we want to be sure they have a good and proper output that can be used in professional and broadcast and presentation, where it’s completely seamless. Ed: Fantastic … and it’s just a little box is it? Cindy: Yes, you can put it in the palm of your hand and hold it there. On the front you can see all of your different signals. Just by pushing through the buttons here you can see all the different HDMI or SDI inputs and look at them before you take … I really haven’t seen anything else out there like this that combines the HDMI and that great confidence monitor on the front of the unit. Ed: So how many inputs? Cindy: Great question … there’s 14 ports on it. Now some of them are defined specifically as an input or an output, but some of them you get to decide if you want more inputs or more outputs. You decide on a connector by connector basis what you’d like. Ed: Look it’s your own party? Cindy: Yes! The Grant Party! We’ve had customers coming in, for example, looking at ways to increase the inputs for their production switcher or vision mixer. Ed: Sell them too. Cindy: They like these, they put them upstream in front of their vision mixer, for example, the NewTek TriCaster is one of them that we have got customers that want to integrate with that and add more inputs and more different types of inputs. Ed: So you’re fixing other people’s problems? Cindy: Well we like to add equipment so that the Ensemble is greater than the individual pieces, you know the whole is that much better. Ed: Hey, you must be in marketing? Cindy: Well my favourite part is demo’ing really. Ed: I thought it was cooking? Cindy: Yes, we love to cook at Café Ensemble and we’d love to have you and all your readers come and visit our café because in addition to the fabulous food there, we design and manufacture everything right there in Grass Valley, California, so I hope all your readers come, have a tour and have lunch. Ed: Fantastic, so you can actually see Ensemble product being “ensembled”? Cindy: You can see it all being ensembled and assembled there, yes. Ed: Marvellous. And continuing the grand tradition of Ensemble support, you’ve recently come out with a product, but you’ve already made some changes to it? Cindy: Indeed. The Avenue Multiviewer is working great for folks in broadcast and for sports applications. We had a customer come to us and they’ve got eight camera views they want to have at a sporting event, all on one multiviewer output, and that’s all well and good, that’s what a multiviewer does of course. In addition, they wanted to have two channels of audio per camera view embedded in that multiviewer output, and we came up with this great audio mosaic super easy way to integrate that audio, so that that broadcaster can take the embedded multiviewer out with the 16 channels of

audio and then pick off the two channels for the different camera views as they wish downstream. Ed: And this is available as an upgrade to anyone who has already bought a multiviewer? Cindy: Yes. When the multiviewer starts to ship, this will come with it. Ed: Aaaah, so it’s actually not in production yet? Cindy: We do have a couple of customers using it and it’s really just starting to go out the door now. Ed: Now in terms of confidence in Ensemble product, I know there are a number of manufacturers out there who come to these shows and they announce that there’s a new product coming out and it’s going to solve everybody’s problems, but unfortunately it makes all the previous ones obsolescent. Ensemble doesn’t follow that mantra does it? Cindy: We’ve got our own approach as to how we take care of our customers. We’ll ship that product and it works right out of the box and when customers call up and have a change they’d like, an addition, something we think is fabulous, we do a software upgrade and that’s free to every customer out there. They don’t need to buy it, they just go to the website, get the software, and that makes the life of the product that much longer for the customer. They’re going to use it for years and years with the latest and greatest functionality. Ed: And they know that if they buy something that these upgrades are very likely to happen or it’s a product that doesn’t need any changes? Cindy: That’s right, they get free software updates forever and we’re always improving and honing and making it better for our customers. NZVN

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ARRI Lenses at IBC We are at ARRI and we have David Green. David’s been nominated to talk about lenses because one of the big, big announcements here today was the UWZ – Ultra Wide Zoom, 9.5-18. Ed: David, this is to go on the ALEXA or …? David:

Any PL mount camera.

Ed: And certainly, from what we saw at the workshop yesterday, the images are stunning and I guess it is German engineering that was able to do it? David: Absolutely, I mean this lens has been specifically commissioned by ARRI as the first wide angle zoom. It’s a very low distortion, at 9.5 we’re talking about less than 1% distortion and 18mm we’re talking about less than 0.1% distortion, which for a wide angle lens is pretty unheard of. Ed: That’s why people normally go to primes isn’t it?

David with a very large lens.

David: Absolutely. If you look at the image – we’re looking at the monitor now – we’re panning out to an edge and there is absolutely no distortion on that edge at all, no bowing, it looks absolutely straight, so it’s a very high quality lens. Ed: I was intrigued to know that it’s what’s called “future proof” because the circle is actually larger than the sensor circle in the ALEXA? David: That’s correct. In fact this will cover a 5K sensor as I understand. It’s a very wide lens and it will fit most cameras. Ed: Now I thought cinema people didn’t like to use zoom lenses – they are purists and they like prime lenses, so how are you going to convince the cinema photographers to use a zoom? David: That’s a very good question. Basically, it is a prime quality lens and it gives you from 9.5-18; there are no prime lenses currently available at that lower range. Ed: You’d have to buy a lot of primes to cover that wouldn’t you? David: Absolutely, the cost of this lens – it’s Є45,000, so it’s an expensive lens, very premium compared to the rest of our zoom range, but you are covering a very wide angle from say 9.5-18mm. Ed: And it’s a very valuable area of the visual spread really, to cover that wide angle? David: I think it’s a great lens for VFX, again we’re looking wide, it’s great for tight shots and I think you really need to see the lens and put it onto a camera to actually appreciate what we’re currently seeing here on the monitor. Ed: It’s certainly not something you could handhold on a DSLR? David: No, it’s certainly a studio zoom. We now have five zooms in our range, this is obviously the widest zoom, we have two lightweights, two studios, and this could be classified as a studio lens. It does require a lens mount and certainly it’s not designed to be a handheld lens. Ed: But you haven’t given up on primes have you – there’s still prime development in the ultra prime range?

David: Absolutely, master primes and ultra primes are our select core sets of lenses; we’re still selling these consistently and again, any PL mount camera is capable of accepting those lenses. The master prime lenses are obviously our premium brand lenses and they can be used on most large sensor cameras and will cover the full sensor. Ed: Now, what’s the difference between a spherical lens and the anamorphic lens? David: Spherical lenses have traditionally been used in the industry and they will fully fit a 16x9 sensor giving optimum quality. So a 16x9 sensor is traditionally for HD television. The anamorphic lenses will give you the anamorphic look, and they’ve been specifically designed to fully fill the new 4x3 sensor, which is currently on the ALEXA XT and the ALEXA 4x3 models. Ed: So it is the anamorphic primes that are undergoing a bit of a roadmap in terms of getting some new lengths? David: Correct. We’ve just started shipping the first of the new anamorphic lenses – the T1.9s, very fast anamorphics, again very low distortion, no mumps effects on those lenses, so very, very high quality. We’ve just shipped the first eight sets of lenses ( one of those has gone to Australia ) and basically the 35, the 50 and the 75 lenses are shipping now. We then have the master anamorphic 100mm which ships in October, followed by three further lenses – the 35, the 40 and the 135 which are shipping in February-March of next year, and that will complement a full set of seven master anamorphic lenses. Ed:

That will be good to see.

David: Yes, they’re great lenses. Roger Deakins is currently shooting with them on his latest feature film, so he has the first three lenses with the ALEXA XT camera, so basically the combination of the ALEXA 4x3 with master anamorphics, it’s a perfect fit … you’re not cropping into the sensor, you’re filling the full sensor, and it’s a perfect squeeze for an anamorphic lens. Ed:

It’s what one would expect from ARRI.

David:

Page 34

Absolutely.

NZVN

Finally. Editing Meets Effects.

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