NZVN May2016

MAY 2016

Vol 224

NAB 2016 Part One

A

nother year, another cornucopia of new and exciting technology. I couldn’t say that there was any outstanding, overarching breakthrough that pervaded the exhibits, but there certainly were a number of developments that have legs.

The move from SDI to IP as a means of device connection grows as does the reduced light capability of cameras. LED has become the dominant light source though the offers ranged from the remarkable to “why bother.” I guess that the real excitement for me was the companies who have taken new technology and have used it in a way that has real value in our industry. Find out for yourself by reading on through the following excitement bulging pages.

Ed

Datavideo for Protel For Protel, we are at Datavideo with Justin Strazdas and Ken Brooke.

Ed: Right Justin, the show hit – you’ve not only got the Video Innovation Award for this, but the 2016 NAB prize pic hit or something, game changer, just everything.

Everybody loves it … what are we looking at?

Justin: The New KMU-100 is a 4K multichannel unit. It will take two 4K / UHD video sources, via either HDMI 2.0 or Quad SDI ie. 6G-SDI or 12GSDI, and converts each input into four 3G-SDI outputs up to 1080p 60. So it takes a 4K input UHD up to 60 and you Ken and Justin with Datavideo’s award. are able to pick 4 shots and crop to suit using our software or a PTZ control with a Ed: And I guess this is quite a hefty price for something joystick to select your shots live and output them to a so capable? video switcher.

feeds take your pick of the shots out of the two cameras and output to HDSDI. So you basically have 8 cameras from the two 4K cameras.

If you put that scenario on a rugby field, you can effectively cover the game with two cameras and zoom in on the action, zoom in on someone up in the audience and still see the whole field with the other shots.

Shots can also overlap existing ones if you get my drift.

Justin: I don’t know the exact price yet but it’s going to be about US$5000, shipping in July 2016.

Ed:

So this is going to be good for you Ken?

Ken: Like they say, it’s a game changer and unique technology, because you can take your two 4K cameras

Ed: And while one picture is being taken, the other one can be reframed?

Ken: Correct.

Ed: And you still keep the high definition resolution?

Ken: Absolutely, the software doesn’t allow you to zoom in all the way so you keep full HD-SDI picture

Go to https://sites.google.com/site/nzvideonews/ for more news.

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output for each of the 8 outputs. The KMU-100 also has 2 x HDMI and 1 x Display port output.

Ed: So with this you could use any 4K camera or combination of 4K cameras?

Justin: Yes, you could have a combination of 4K cameras – BlackMagic, Sony, Canon and just bring in your 4K footage and you’ve basically effectively 8 camera shots which you dictate.

Ed: So every OB truck should have one?

Justin: This could certainly reduce the number of cameras required and revolutionise their operation.

Ken: The KMU-100 is software controlled from a PC or MAC via Ethernet GUI. An optional Datavideo RMC-180 enables you to move around each of the 4K feeds and position and zoom on the screen accordingly to each of the created outputs.

Ed: And moving on to the Datavideo vision mixing area of the stand at NAB? Justin: We’ve got the SE-1200MU which is a 6 HD input rack mounted version of the 1200 which they built last year and so it’s got a new optional ( new RMC-260 ) remote control panel.

Ed: And here is a very nice little flyaway kit, the HS1200 6 input Portable Production Studio?

Justin: Basically they’ve created the HS-1200 and they’ve taken the intercom system out of it which was a cable intercom system, just to reduce the cost, and put some switching for the built-in 17.3” monitoring instead. Datavideo have split up their products on the booth into four; they’ve grouped them together to basically provide a total solution for the customers, so you’ve got your live events, your education, worship

and broadcast and that’s how they’ve been getting into the marketplace. Customers buy a vision mixer, but they need other bits and pieces and so they can provide a total solution.

Particularly in China where it’s a tendering process for everything, Datavideo come up with a total solution, which assists when we’re selling their products, because they come up with a book of instructions, the whole bits and pieces to make the thing work.

Ed: Is that normally the case with you Ken, do you sell Datavideo product in groups, rather than just single items?

Ken: Sometimes depending on the project, we sell a bundle of Datavideo product, however we generally mostly sell single items because the New Zealand market is almost completely HD-SDI now and New Zealand customers pick and choose various items to suit their application from all brands.

Ed: And here we have the Datavideo Streaming products, including the DVS-100 Stream Server, encoders and decoders?

Justin: So basically you’ve got an encoder which is the NVS-25, that takes your video in, encodes it, pumps it up into the Cloud and then you’ve got the streaming software DVS-100 or the DVS-100P which is a Pro upgrade, and what you can do with those is you can actually stream for free to I think up to 100 receivers in the Cloud, anywhere in the world. So say if you’re in education or something like that, you could have a lecturer streaming to 100 students anywhere in the world provided they have an IP Video Decoder NVD20/25 or a Network player NVP-20.

Ed: So this is Datavideo providing the Cloud service for free?

Justin: Ed:

No not quite.

So you buy their box and you get free streaming?

Justin:

Well you still pay for your Telco data.

Ken: But you can obviously stream to 100 receivers using the DVS-100 or DVS-100P software stream application. If you go for the Pro you actually have to start paying for the more advanced features.

The quality of the streaming looks very impressive.

Ed: So it would also be very good for corporate people who wanted to send information out to their satellite stores?

Justin: You could have it for retail, you could have the promotion of the week, that sort of thing coming up on it, yes, so I think there’s potential there for that.

Ed: And the resolution of this is – well if that’s an example of it, what we’re seeing here, it’s really, really great quality.

Ken: The NVS-25 uses H.264/AVC video CODEC, up to a high profile level 4.0 and up to a maximum bitrate of 6Mbit.

Ed: And of course any visit to Datavideo would not be complete without talking about the DAC converter range and I have to tell you, my DAC-10 is still working Ken, I’m sorry. I don’t need to buy a new one.

Ken: That’s alright, but we’ve been having some success obviously with the DAC-70 in New Zealand, it’s a very popular product, because it converts SDI/ HDMI /VGA up, down and cross to HDMI /SDI, so it’s a very useful product.

Ed: And this is basically a range of little mini converters to convert from SDI/ HDMI /VGA into and out of XLR – the whole gambit is covered really with this range of little converters?

Ken: Yes and they are built tough.

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Ian: I use the products 6 days a week, sometimes 7.

Ed: So you must know what you’re talking about and we’re going to start off with something called … well what is it?

Ian: This is Mevo.

It’s the newest camera from Livestream – it’s our first camera, our newest product.

It’s a livestreaming, live editing camera. The camera itself has a 4K sensor, it then comes with a companion app that allows you to have 9 different 720 frames within that 4K field of view and cut what looks like a multi-camera show from one fixed camera. You can go wide, you can zoom in, however long I hold the fingers there for, that's how long the move will take, so by holding it for 3, 4, 5 seconds, we get a nice slow push in to the subject matter. Same thing with pans. I can cut to you, I can pan over to me really quick, or if I drag it and hold it – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 I get a nice slow pan over to me.

Ed: And I can attest to the longevity of the product.

Mine is one of the very earliest and you plug it in, you switch it on and it works every time.

Ken: Glad to hear, please call Protel for your Datavideo NZVN products.

Livestream for Protel For Protel we’re here at Livestream and we have Ian McCoy, a producer.

Ed: Now Ian, you’re obviously using Livestream product yourself?

In addition to that, the face detection’s on, so by looking over the camera you see it places little trackers on our faces, or you can come in here and cut a preset multi-view show. So it really gives you the power of a multi-camera show in one camera.

It streams to Livestream.com or Facebook live. You can also use it to just record if you have a situation where you don’t stream, but still want to use it, so the video’s stored on your phone or a micro SD card on the camera.

Ed: Wow that really is amazing. I didn’t understand initially when you said “this is a camera and editing system in one” but this is the value of 4K, that …?

Ian: You’re streamed and recorded in 720p, it’s just capitalising on that extra pixel density of the 4K sensor.

If it was a 720p camera and you cut in, it would be super pixelated.

Ed: Do you have presets that are 720p in terms of when you crop that image, are the presets at 720p, that’s the full resolution?

Ian: You can’t push past 720p. The reason I can’t take that any closer is because it keeps a 720p safety frame on.

Ed: That’s very sensible. It’s a very hard thing to show in a printed medium, but we’ll try and take some pictures to demonstrate this. And I understand that it’s a really good price point?

Ian: Yes. The camera by itself is US$400 for shipping in July. If you already own an iPhone, which half the world does, you download the free app, you’ve got a camera for $400 and now you’ve got a little TV studio in your pocket.

Ian McCoy with Mevo camera (insert).

Ed: Or I guess this is a very sensible solution as a camera for other Livestream hardware applications?

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Ian: Exactly. The livestreaming aspect is kinda the "cherry on top" of the whole thing. Is it going to replace 5 real cameras with 5 camera operators and a TD? No. Is it infinitely better than you holding your phone up at an event? Yes.

the inputs have been put into it, you can open up the software now in the Cloud and cut from anywhere. So if you had a studio at home …

Ed: But it’s going to have an application in the current trend, for example of radio stations to bringing TV into their mix, or smaller regional stations?

Ian: Exactly, or big stations that want to add extra content. We just had a TV group order a large number of them, they’re not going to use them in their actual studios, but they have all these digital online reporters who will use them. They want to give these to all their online reporters so when they’re out doing a story for the web, they can also make a quick video piece to add more video content.

There’s also a ton of people who want to buy them to do their kids’ basketball matches, because the video they’re going to get from that is going to be way better than holding their phone up, and they don’t want to hold their phone up for 2 hours on the court you know.

There’s a million different ways to use it.

Ed: Show us something this will plug into from the Livestream Studio package that’s new since last NAB?

Ian: As long as the cameras were turned on, you could cut it completely remotely now with Studio in the Cloud.

Ian: This was actually new last year, but we’ve beefed up how well it works, and that’s the ability to do remote interviews. The studio software can create a custom link that you can then send to anyone else in the world that has a webcam, they open that link and now you can bring their webcam into your studio software. So it’s great if you’re producing a panel discussion but one speaker is across the other side of the country. You could send them that custom link and then bring their webcam in, add it into your mix of cameras and graphics etc, etc. So very good for providing remote sources. You can now do RTMP inputs …

Ed: And you were at the beach and you decided you wanted to make a commercial …?

Ed: So you can work 24/7?

Ian: Yeah, cos we don’t work enough already! That’s not even a new feature … actually, our higher end items have always streamed any platform.

The Mevo is restricted to streaming Livestream and Facebook live.

The higher end stuff can go to Ustream, YouTube, anything like that, but the Mevo is one of the first few things that can stream to Facebook Live. So that’s the big thing, Facebook Live is becoming more and more popular. Some people don’t have a big online following, but they do have a couple of thousand followers on Facebook, so now the ability to push to video direct through their Facebook page helps a lot. Studio now supports 4K, so 4K cameras can come into it if you have a 4K capture card. And then within the 4K software you can do that same cropping feature that we basically saw over in the Mevo camera within this software …

Ed: A lot more controllable, but still using the Mevo camera?

Ian: Exactly, or any 4K camera. This is a custom unit we built with 4K capture cards that show off the 4K video coming in from that JVC camera actually. And that’s pretty much the new stuff on the Studio side. I guess the newest thing on the platform side is that ability to get up to Facebook Live, and then the Mevo has really been the star of the show for us. That’s what people are the most excited about.

Ed: What about in the small transmitting features?

Ian: We still have the Broadcaster but there’s nothing new about this. This is our single camera encoding solution. You can plug into any camera via HDMI; you can review your Livestream account, hit “Go Live” and it instantly starts streaming to your Livestream account.

No new updates here. We’ve just revamped this last year, so that was the old Broadcaster and this is the Broadcaster Pro, which is the second generation of it.

Ed: What’s an RTMP? Ian: There are lots of other devices out there that can push an RTMP stream basically – it’s just a certain type of streaming protocol. So now if you have any type of RTMP camera or server, you can remotely bring those in as well. So again, just the ability to help you get more inputs into the Studio hardware.

Ed: Is this in one particular hardware product?

Ian: It’s in anything running the Studio software. The Studio software can be bought as a standalone item, but any of our switchers, the 550, the 51, the 31, the 1710 all come with this same Studio software. The difference in the hardware is just basically it’s down to inputs importability and processing power.

The software running on all of them is the same. Another very cool thing – and one of the cooler things we did this year, is Studio Cloud edition. Now you can open up your Studio software from a remote location on your laptop via the Cloud and cut a show completely remotely if you’re not around your switcher. As long as

The easy way to stream.

Ed: Great stuff. requirements.

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But it’s a hit and people like hits, so we didn’t need to make it any better. You know it works for what it works for, very popular for houses of worship and stuff like that, because they already have one camera and they are filming their services, they put this on top and now they’re streaming them at the same time as well.

Call Protel for all your Livestream NZVN

Neumann at Protel Just because NAB is such a big event, life does not stop in Auckland. Some days ago, Protel held a Neumann event.

James Waldron from Sennheiser Australia came over to show some new product and to explain the difference between Neumann and everything else.

Ed: Jam es , yo u spo ke abo ut microphone diaphragm construction but what did you mean by a “quiet” microphone?

James: There’s a very low “self” noise, so the actual noise level that comes out of it is very low.

Ed: Why do microphones make their own noise?

James (on left) with some of the evening’s attendees.

James: Well there’s active electronics in them.

Ed:

So a good microphone has a low noise?

James: It’s all active electronics. measures of performance is noise.

One of the

Ed: Now I would imagine that a pretty active piece of electronics is a valve, but valves seem to be de rigueur for high quality microphones?

James: Well people like the acoustic signature of the valve because it has a certain harmonic content that is generated by the valve that is fairly pleasing to the ear.

Ed:

But then the trick is to keep it low noise?

James: Yes, you need it to be low noise as well.

Like all electronics, you want the highest signal to noise ratio, so you want the lowest noise floor you can and, as well, the highest headroom capability.

Ed: And “headroom” is like in video where you’re talking about dynamic range for the video signal … in audio you’re talking about headroom …

James: Dynamic range of an audio signal – so how quiet is it, what’s the noise floor, and how loud can it go.

Ed:

Before it distorts?

James:

Yes, that’s right.

Ed: Well that’s a good comparison. Now another good point you made which hit home to me, was the value of digital. People talk about having a digital microphone, we’ve got “digital this” and “digital that” in audio, what you said tonight made sense in that, of course, your microphone pickup is always analogue, your monitor is analogue diaphragm, but it’s the bits in between that are best suited to a digital transfer, correct? Getting from the analogue microphone to the analogue monitor, the pathway is best if it’s digital?

James: Digital gives you lots of advantages in terms of keeping the signal clean, minimal interference coming in on your microphone lines and minimal distortion.

Also these days, where everything’s recorded digitally and cut and pasted and edited, having an original digital signal to put into the system is really good. If I can give you a quick example; the Sydney Opera House has quite a few Neumann and Sennheiser digital microphones. There are 2 different applications – they have a stereo pair in every performance space that goes straight onto their digital audio network around the Opera House and, at any point around that network, they can tap in and have a listen to what’s going on in any of the performing spaces; a very simple interface for them. The other thing they do is they

have some digital microphones in the concert hall on very long cable runs that go through a cable winch.

The cable winch is quite old and can be subject to noise and interference that just gets put onto the microphone lines.

Digital microphones solved that, and those mics that hang over the stage in the concert hall in the Opera House now are absolutely silent, because there’s no opportunity for noise to be put onto those lines – and there’s a 600-700 metre cable run, so it’s quite a long cable run, interference free. So there’s nothing induced into the microphone cables in terms of noise.

Ed: And if it is induced then it’s easily removed by digital processing?

James: Well no because the digital signal is inherently robust against noise, you don’t get hum or buzz induced into it, so it stays clean.

Ed: Now one thing that didn’t quite make sense, you talked about the Abbey Road studios in London having very high standards and I was intrigued by your pie chart showing over 35% Neumann mics in there. You said that some of those have been there since the 1950s, the M50, but they’re still performing as they did when they first were made?

James: Well they maintain them, they look after them. It’s like owing an Austin Healey, right. You can’t just leave it and keep driving it; you need to look after it. So they’re regularly cleaned and maintained and they get looked after. And if you maintain it, it’ll last you that long.

Ed: How does that work with upgrading – for example you talk about the digital microphones. Is there any way of taking those 1950s analogue and using digital technology to keep them going?

James: You heretic!

Fancy having a classic analogue microphone and wanting to make it digital Grant!

Ed: Aaah so there is some difference there, and they keep them because it’s a different sound?

James:

Correct.

Ed: That’s why people keep all those VHS cameras you know, because they want that grainy look.

James: Well that might be true for a grainy look, but all of the large diaphragm microphones have a sonic characteristic – they have their own character. We used the analogy of painting with sound earlier and different microphones can give you a different tonal palette to work with.

Ed:

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And you say microphones are built for a purpose?

James: Yes they are. Some of them are omnidirectional only; some of them have a frequency response rise at a certain point or a dip at a certain point, and they’ll be for different applications. Some will be for orchestral recording where you just want a pair in a big reverberant space. Some like the U67 are a spot microphone, designed to pick up a particular musical instrument; whereas others are designed to be way, away from an orchestra and to hear the orchestra in its environment.

Things like that.

Some are designed to be really accurate in flat response; some are designed to have a particular characteristic. So lots of different microphones designed for different jobs.

Ed: And that’s why it’s important to have a professional dealer who knows what they’re talking about, has the stock, and is able to demonstrate this, because you just can’t buy a microphone on price?

James: Oh no, you certainly can’t buy it on price … well you can, but you saw the slide, the disappointment of low quality lingers long after the excitement of a low price.

Ed: Does it make sense to pick a microphone for a particular job?

James: Or typical applications, yes. I was talking to a guy tonight who said you don’t always have the time to select a particular microphone for a particular job, and you’ll use one that works 90% perfect for most work, and that becomes your workhorse and you just put it up everywhere. So a U87 is often that mic, because it will work equally well on a voice or on an acoustic guitar, or a bass guitar, or a drum, or brass.

You can do almost anything with it.

Ed: Now another big part of tonight’s demonstration were the monitors – a very hard item to qualify?

James: A tricky thing to demonstrate to a group of people in a showroom environment, as we found out tonight. René and I tested the monitors and set them up nicely beforehand but when the room filled up with people, most of the sound was absorbed and it didn’t sound anything like what we had set up. After folk started moving around, and there were fewer people right in front of the monitors it all sounded like we expected again.

Ed: Yes, it sounded lovely I must say. But then I was thinking, the value of a monitor in a studio is that you want to hear the imperfections, you want to hear when something’s not right?

James: Correct. Like I had that little cymbal piece at the end of that Joe Jackson track, where it went “chick chick chick chick chick kick-a-chick” …

Ed: And if you have a monitor bought from a local appliance store, you’re not going to be able to hear that and so it will get through?

James: Quite possibly. A monitor is a tool you use to critically evaluate the audio you are producing. It needs to be accurate otherwise there is no point.

There’s lots of things that you’ll hear in a good monitor that you won’t hear in a lesser one.

Ed: And if you want to soften it, you just stick a pillow in front of it?

James:

That’s right. Or a big group of people.

If you want pillows, go to Briscoes but for professional sound, Protel should be your destination.

Correct Tyrone?

Tyrone: Correct Grant.

We’ve been offering Neumann microphones for quite a number of years and we’ve seen there are lots of people out there who have been asking about them, there’s a little bit of a mystique about the microphones in some respects.

We’ve seen an interest in quality that comes in waves and our experience in the marketplace has shown that there is now a keen interest out there for quality products that will last.

Ed: I understand today James and René have spent the whole day setting things up for this particular evening, but here at the Protel office, you have microphones, monitors, everything set up for people to come in and listen at any time don’t you?

Tyrone: Yes we always have microphones set up here. We hope to have more Neumann in-house for people to come in and pick up and put in their hands if they want to, but there’s pretty good information on the internet as well about Neumann products, so quite a few people go there first. When they come in here, they really want to see what it physically looks like and to hear the proof themselves.

Ed: I understand you also have some Apogee gear which enables you to record from the microphone and play that back through the monitors at the best possible quality?

Tyrone: Oh absolutely. We’ve got a couple of the new Thunderbolt Symphony’s which have just been released by Apogee. They’re top of the range products in the Analogue to Digital converter market and they certainly complement Neumann gear very well. When you put two market leaders together it is very hard to go wrong!

Ed: And that’s it – like in television where you used to talk about workflow and having all parts of your workflow right otherwise the weakest link is where it falls down, it’s the same with audio?

Tyrone:

Absolutely!

Ed: Well we’ve all learnt something tonight haven’t we Tyrone?

Tyrone: That is why we’re delighted to see you and our customers come along to these evenings and hopefully walk away with a better understanding of the products and capabilities.

René is waiting for you to listen for yourself.

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Please ask your readers to call Protel for all their professional audio requirements.

NZVN

Aladdin Lighting for PLS We are at Aladdin for PLS with André Kurtz.

Ed: Now André, just to keep people informed here, the Flex panels are going really, really well. You’ve now gone to production of the 4 panel variety and we’ve got one showing here.

Now who would use this – this is obviously not something that you carry round in your News crew kit but applicable to a fixed location?

André: The 4 times 200 Watt is more for movie productions, so it fits onto a 4x4 foot frame and you get 800 Watt of LED power with a tremendous output of light.

André with four Footlites.

Ed: But for that, you don’t need the panels to be flexible?

André: No, but lightweight and still I think it’s one of the most lightweight solutions to put the 4x4 frame together with LEDs on it. Because the panels are flexible, they’re very lightweight. So we have a very high colour rendition on it with a CRI from over 97 and bicolour so you can adjust daylight-tungsten and the frame just gives you a huge soft light.

Ed: Okay, now one of the questions that has come up about the Aladdin Flex panel is cooling. Because we know LEDs get hot at the back, when you’re a News person, you’re only having it on for maybe 10 minutes, possibly up to half an hour, it shouldn’t be a problem.

But in a studio situation or out on a movie set, you might have it on all day. Does it become a problem because there’s no metal to provide a heat sink?

André: Till now, we didn’t face any problems with this, because the LEDs are distributed on a big surface and it’s not getting very hot actually. We built some studios with the lights and, up until now, they’re working. That’s not just movie production, it’s like fixed installed TV studios with the Flexlite and therefore, we have special frames to fix them in with a U-shaped holder to put them up on the ceiling. Also, on the single colour version, we only have half of the LEDs on it, because of the heat management.

André: It could have holes in it, but then you get problems with dirt and dust and water …

Ed: Alright, you’ve obviously thought about it, that’s good, so we’ve counted that one off. Now, something more for the studio?

André: So now for small studios, because when you look on the market right now, bigger companies like insurance companies, banks, they all have internal communication through video today and they always build small studios. It’s always the same problem – the ceiling is too low. So we built a very slim light called the Footlite. It’s a hard, solid body about 3 inches wide and about two foot long and it’s a bicolour version, goes also daylight-tungsten and freely dimmable. It has built -in DMX and the very impressive thing about it is that you can put single units to the ceiling so you lose like about 3 inches I would say; it has barn doors on the front and you could put 4 together to light up a background.

Because you can adjust them asymmetrically, you can get a very even background.

Ed:

So we could put double … for instance when we take like the 1x1 bicolour, we could put all LEDs on daylight and have a lot of light output, but that would be a heat problem, so we put more space in between the LEDs to have actual cooling on it.

Ed: Is there any air movement through the fabric that you put them substrate … no?

André: Ed:

Can you explain to me adjusting asymmetrically?

André: Especially in smaller studios, where you don’t have a lot of space to the background, there’s always a problem. You take a light and you light up the background, you have double the light on the top than on the bottom. So we designed the light that has 4

No.

You could put holes in it surely?

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panels in it and each panel can be adjusted by itself and controlled by itself – so dimmed. You can then adjust the lights to have an even light distribution on the background. That’s especially for white backgrounds or chroma key backgrounds, so you can use 4 lights or only 2 lights together when you have low ceilings, to light up a background. That’s an idea we thought up about 5 years ago when we did the first version, we built a compact studio and it worked perfectly to light the background evenly.

Ed: So what is the angle of spread on this?

André: At the moment, the LEDs have 120 degree angle output. We have barn doors on the front to adjust it.

Ed: Okay, but how even is that across the 120?

André: This one is very even. I mean, when you face it straight to the wall, it’s going to be even all the way. But when you light from an angle, then you always have more light on the top than on the bottom. So with the barn door, you can turn the lights, you can fight against the inverse square law.

Ed: And you’re getting this evenness because of the diffusion in the front panel?

André: No, we’re getting the evenness because you are able to adjust the panel like tilt the panel, each panel by its own.

André: We saw some copies, but it’s less light output than most of them, and I think we have a very good dimmer system.

We made them out of aluminium; we have very strong connectors and I think that’s a big advantage to using them professionally.

Ed: And also I’m sure the customer can be assured, if it’s got the Aladdin brand, that they’re good LEDs on there, they all fit on the Planck Curve?

Ed: Yes, that’s in the 4 panel – I’m just talking about a single.

André: Yes of course. We’ve got a very high colour rendition, they are very tight on the Curve actually and you can choose any light on our booth – we’re going to be both 95 CRI or TLCI.

André: No, the evenness only works when you have 2 or 4 together. When you only have one, it doesn’t work, that’s the difference.

Ed: So that’s what you pay for, because it’s not a cheap option, but you know you’re getting quality product?

Ed: Okay, at the moment we’re looking at a 4 panel version, but a 2 panel version is coming and again, because of the arrangement, you can adjust the angle of the actual frame, so that you reduce again your ceiling height. A very flexible arrangement. And how have sales been going?

André: Oh very good. We were behind schedule with production because we had such a big request for the lights – especially on the Flexlite 200 where we built several big studios for space lights and the request is just growing and growing.

Ed: Have you been flattered by some companies copying your panels?

André: Exactly. It’s the quality of how we build the product and it’s also the customer service because we build up a worldwide distribution and if there is a problem with a product, we usually exchange them, so we have a very good warranty and customer service on the products.

I think that’s one of the important things that compares us as a Korean company to let’s say Chinese manufacturers.

Ed:

What’s that – looking after the customer?

André: Yeah – looking after the customers, taking NZVN care of our customers.

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Dedolight for PLS We are at Dedolight for PLS and we are talking with Todor Malkanov, Engineer.

Ed: Now Todor, in some of the smaller LED lights, you’ve come up with Active Cooling.

This obviously involves a fan, but I can assure you I’ve just put my ear to the fan, and I couldn’t hear a thing, even when it was on full, so it’s a very quiet fan?

Todor:

Yes it is.

Ed: What’s it enabled you to do, putting a fan on these lights?

Todor: When I designed the DLED9, the big light, I was thinking of it for studio use, but I saw that many people are also using it in mobile situations and it’s big and heavy for that job.

Our best seller, DLED4 with 40 Watt inside, is a good light but sometimes there’s not enough light output.

So, we decided to take the big LED chip from the 90 Watt light and put it in the 40 Watt body, but then I need to cool down this LED chip, otherwise it’s going to die from the temperature. However, I need this fan inside to be the quietest and long lasting. I don’t have experience at the moment after 10,000 hours whether the fan is going to be noisy or not. When we show this new DLED7 light, there are many people who like it and many people are okay with the fan inside. Maybe in a studio, if we put lots of them in there, maybe it’s not a good idea, but for mobile use and interview, the ambient noise is much more than what comes from the fan.

Todor with one of his designs.

diffusion or softbox in front and with the DLED12, we can use focusable light. We have a case of a studio with glass windows and LedRamas were being used against the sun and they worked. It gives us a lot more light output than from, let’s say ARRI SkyPanel, because we have optical elements in front of the panel

Ed: So it does give you a good choice – if you want the passive cooling, if you want absolutely no noise, well you’re going to have a bigger body, because you’ve got to disperse that heat somehow, but if you want to have more light from a smaller package, you put in some Active Cooling. Then you choose a really high quality fan so you’re not getting that bearing rumble or the barn doors vibrating in synchronisation with the fan.

So it’s always a compromise?

Todor: Yes, a compromise between the noise and the weight – that’s an engineering problem.

Ed: Okay, that’s over a number of models – it’s not just one model you’ve done this for, it’s for the 40 Watt and also the 20 Watt?

Todor: Ed:

Yes.

And the panels?

Todor: The panels I cannot tell you so much about because I’m not the designer of the panels, but from what I know, we also have new “turbo panels”. They also have a fan inside and, for many years, Dedo was very famous in mobile use in interview kits, portable studios. Now with the big panel lights like LedRama and DLED12, we can also have a good offer in studio lights. With the LedRamas, we can put a honeycomb or Page 13

light. It’s not just LED and people can see every LED here with a lens in front.

This makes a 45 degree angle and gives us the possibility to have a lot more light output than from the other companies.

The same for the focusable Dedolight – they have a double aspherical optic system, it’s not Fresnel.

Ed: Now just something I’ve noticed here, the Ledzilla – there is a new Ledzilla which is now bicolour?

Todor: Yes. Before it was only daylight, Ledzilla 2, and if you want to have tungsten you can use the tungsten filter in front. Now we have Ledzilla bicolour and people can change. We have normal rotatable barn doors in front and you can change the colour from 2700 Kelvin up to 6300 Kelvin. For onboard use, that’s a very nice tool because in the morning, you can have tungsten up in daylight, or everything in between.

I could not actually hear the fan.

Ed: Now this is a 10 Watt light but you were saying you have a 20 Watt version?

Todor: The 20 Watt is the DLED2. The DLED2 can be with inbuilt electronics like Ledzilla, or the electronics can be separated from the light kit.

Ed: But you can use it in the same configuration – that is onboard on the camera with its own battery supply?

Todor: Yes. It’s a little bit more heavy, but for big cameras, of course people can use it.

Ed: And it’s just a slightly larger form factor, but still focusable and bicolour?

Todor: Yes, you can focus, you can have bicolour, it can still use the small batteries …

Ed:

Or you can tap off the camera’s battery?

Todor: Of course, everything between I think from 6 to 18 Volt is acceptable here.

Ed:

That’s a good range.

Todor: Then also in 40 Watt, our best seller, people also can use the battery that we’re selling – it’s 95 Watt hours which means you can work for about 2 hours with battery power. The battery has a holder for a stand or for a belt; if you don’t have time to put on the electricity, or no time to lay cables, just put the battery on the belt and that’s all. Very small, portable, battery operated kits.

Ed: Okay, now with the kits, there are a couple of new ones. There’s a very fine trolley bag here and then there’s a very full hard case, so let’s look at the KLT7-3B1 hard case?

Todor: Yes, we have our 3 light kits, bicolour with DLED7 lights inside. I’ve already talked about the fan inside and the lot more light output and everything that’s inside – the projection attachment, barn doors, softboxes, stands, cables – so really a perfect kit which gives a lot of light output.

At the moment for DLED7, we don’t have a battery operated option, but we are working on that. We want to use 2 batteries, because I like 90 Watt power consumption for batteries. We also take care that the battery can fly in the plane.

Ed: So if you had this kit and you were currently using it with mains power, when you come out with a battery supply, you could use that with the same kit?

Todor: Yes. You can use it, but of course it’s a 90 Watt, it’s taken all the power.

Ed: Okay and now there’s a nice little kit that’s very portable, very handheld, a 20 Watt kit?

Some of the Dedolight kits available.

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Todor: Yes and that’s with battery and softbox and everything, very small like a woman’s bag and soon we’re going to put inside the DLED3. It’s going to be in the new kit with the new 40 Watt LED and fan inside, but we’re going to keep it the same size. You can even take it in the plane not as checked luggage only.

NZVN It’s perfect, it’s really nice.

Ensemble Designs for Gencom For Gencom, we are at Ensemble Designs with David Wood and David Barnard from Gencom.

Ed: David, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve been at Ensemble and you’ve been continuing to be busy with product lines in 2 categories I understand. Can you explain those 2 categories for me?

David: Certainly.

Our primary category of products is Avenue, a modular card system that goes in a 3RU frame. In Avenue, a lot of our product development over the last 2 years has been for 4K and Ultra High Definition.

We’ve produced test signal generators, automatic programme protection switches, video effects and layering, all used in 4K. Ed: And the benefits of the Avenue system to a major facility?

David and David (not related) at Ensemble.

David: Well, because in Avenue we offer an extremely wide range of functions and modules, they can build in a given frame an extremely flexible implementation of the features they need.

Ed: That would be especially valuable in an OB truck?

David: Yes, very valuable in an OB where space is at a premium and because we offer so many different modules in a single frame, we can cover a wide range of functionality and get it all down to one frame.

Ed: Alright, so if you’re not into modular mounting?

David: Then we offer our BrightEye product line.

BrightEye products are compact, they’re about the size of a box set of CDs and the functionality that we have compressed into that tiny space is pretty remarkable.

We were talking about OB application, and we have a lot of interest in these products in OB because they are so densely featured, and the functionality that can be provided in the small space is so high. Our latest work in the BrightEye product line has been to expand the family of compact routers we call NXT. These routers cover a whole variety of input formats, not just SDI formats for SD, HD and 3G, but inputs and outputs in HDMI, fibre, analogue composite, and even support for the new encapsulated IP standards, like ASPEN and SMPTE 2022.

Ed: Do you need an NXT router for each one of those?

David: We make 3 fundamental NXT routers, all of which have the ability through the use of SFP modules, to enhance the connectivity that can be supported by that router. One of the routers is a 50-50 mix of HDMI ports and SDI ports; the next group is almost exclusively SDI. In both of those products, in addition to just the routing functions, what really makes these products stand out is the built-in test signal generators, frame synchronisation and automatic format conversion – built-in up-conversion and down-conversion, between SD and HD formats, cross conversion within the HD format world. Then 1½ years ago we introduced – and this year we are enhancing with new features – the NXT 450 product, which is a compact router that has SDI ports, plus SFP support for fibre, HDMI and more, and built-in H.264 encoding and decoding.

Ed:

So this is all in the one router?

David: All in one router – literally in something the size of a box set of CDs. Looking here at the block

diagram, we can see SDI ports, SFP ports, a built-in encoder which is driven from the router, but it’s all in one package. So any source can be delivered to the encoder … a built-in decoder that operates independently and simultaneously with encode, that can take a returning transport stream and decode it back to baseband. As I mentioned, these products have built-in plain switching and automatic format conversion. It lets you connect sources without any regard to their format, without needing any Genlock, and to switch between them and deliver that switched signal in baseband or as an IP TV stream.

Ed: There’s got to be a catch David?

David Barnard: Not really. It is a very remarkable unit. You’ve got an amazing amount of functionality in a very small package. It’s a one third rack unit, so it’s one RU high and you can squeeze 3 of them into a single rack unit space. It’s got live preview monitoring on the front panel; it’s got the ability to control it via an iPad or an iPhone or a web GUI; it’s got the standalone control panel that’s more of a traditional 1RU router panel for a fixed installation. It’s really amazing what you can do in these little devices.

Ed: Well it’s got to have some latency then – there’s got to be something?

David: Well there’s certainly latency involved with MPEG encoding, I’ll grant you that. The encoding that we’re performing in this product is able to reproduce a 1080i HD signal at only 8 Megabits of data bandwidth, essentially identical to the original source and the encoding latency is less than one half of a second.

You could put one box in Auckland and one in San Francisco to decode, and the end to end latency, including across the Pacific on a fibre, is less than one second. I want to put you in the seat of your new News OB truck, so you can see this for yourself. Come with me, I’d be happy to take your picture.

Ed: Okay, hang on, we’re just talking latency … but for anything else, if you were just using this as a pure router and you’re routing SDI camera signals, no latency?

David: Zero latency. Now let’s say that you want to not just route the camera signal, you want to switch between them perfectly so you could take that switched signal on air. To do that, we would assign this clean

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switch to the output that you’re using.

Once that assignment is made in the configuration menu, then the operator still just switches camera 1 to the output, camera 2 to the output and the control system will automatically pass the camera through the clean switch, which will synchronise it and allow perfect cuts and mixes between sources and now the latency is one frame, because of the frame synchroniser.

Ed: Wow, so for a small OB truck, it would be a nobrainer to have one of these?

David Barnard: Yes absolutely, you can’t find anything else that would fit that amount of capability in one space. You can replace what, a few years ago, would have been an entire rack full of gear in one third RU. David: Here in the US, one of our good customers is the ABC ( American Broadcasting Company ) affiliate in San Francisco. They have a number of News OB

Driving was really easy.

trucks – there are 15 of them - and they’re upgrading this year from SD to HD. They’re doing it by putting in an NXT 450 and because it has encoding built-in with an

Page 17

ASI output, that is a transport stream output, they can reuse their existing digital microwave path, simply bypass the SD MPEG encoder that was on the input, feed ASI into that microwave system, and the upgrade to their truck to go from SD to HD is just replace that box in the truck, because that box includes synchronisation, switching, test signal generators, Genlock reference to other devices – so it’s extremely cost effective for them.

Ed: And all the space they save, they could put in a coffee machine?

David: They could, and San Francisco has good coffee, so maybe they would.

David Barnard: Another thing to mention about these in OB applications, flyaway kit applications, helicopter applications – these things are designed to be very rugged, very durable. They use them in a number of helicopter applications specifically …

David: This is basically the default gear in helicopters in the United States. We’re crazy here for News helicopters. Every News channel has one and the mechanical construction of the product, which is a continuous aluminium extrusion, the circuit boards are held around all edges, it’s mechanically, as David B was saying, extremely rugged. The aluminium is a great conductor of heat and so it stays cooler and helicopters are in tremendously challenging environments. Our customers in Phoenix, Arizona, the helicopter is sitting there on the tarmac and its 45-50 degrees Celsius in the side bay where the gear is. They jump in the helicopter and they take off and 10 minutes later it’s 20 degrees below zero and our equipment worked the whole time.

Ed: And vibration?

David: Vibration is a huge topic, and again, that mechanical connection is very good. We worked with an American company that does customisation of electronics for helicopter installation, who designed a shock-mounted mounting system for the BrightEye products and that’s used heavily in the United States in all of these systems.

Ed: Now you want me to sit somewhere and show me something … okay, we’ll just hope that David’s taken a reasonable picture of me sitting in this mock-up truck and we’re showing here the NXT 450, but also there’s the larger version, which is the router and action centre, and what’s the model of that one?

David: That’s just a control panel for the NXT 450.

Ed: Ahhh … so you can add a larger control panel that’s obviously got more buttons that some people like, but really the guts of it is still the NXT 450.

away by this, I’m sure they’ll find other things and they need to come and talk to you about what else is available?

David Barnard: Absolutely, they should come and talk to us about the Mitto products as well. A lot of the other BrightEye products integrate very well with this system, including the Mitto which allows you to take computer resolutions that may not be normal video resolutions, but can be handled in HDMI upscaled, downscaled, cross-convert those to an SDI compatible format and then clean switch them and route them through the NXT. Ed: So who are the people who should be coming to talk to you about this range of product?

David Barnard: Anybody who has a need for a low cost portable and very high functionality solution – people who are doing OBs, people who are doing flyaway kit work, people who are working in post suites where they may have limited space, people who are looking to very easily and simply create a programme, produce and stream to the web.

The other thing we didn’t touch on is that the NXT 450 also now has RTMP encoding which means that you can stream that H.264 signal directly to U-stream or YouTube or potentially even now Facebook video.

Ed: And also concert people, live events, anything where you’re doing a bit of mixing?

David Barnard: Yes, it’s a very versatile unit and NZVN very easy to use as well.

But along with that, there’s an iPad sitting here in a little rack and you can do all of your switching by just touching one of the screens on the iPad and I’ve preselected “mix” and it’s mixing and there it is, it’s done. So you can control this on the front panel of the 450 itself or with an iPad controller. This lets you have a very small OB truck.

Very cool David, but this isn’t the only BrightEye product, there are lots of other products from Ensemble that are really valuable and, if they’re actually blown Page 18

Plura Monitors for Gencom Now we are at Plura for Gencom with Ray Kalo and we have Reimund Baeuerle from Germany. But first we’re going to talk with Ray and David Barnard from Gencom.

Ed: Ray, we’re here looking at monitors and I guess what I really want to see is your new 8K monitor?

Ray: We don’t have an 8K monitor.

Ed:

You don’t! I thought everybody had 8K monitors?

Ray: Oh really … I haven’t seen one, but maybe you’re right. Not yet.

Ed: I have to tell you at this point readers that I was just trying to put Ray on the spot, because for almost all the years I’ve been interviewing him, I’ve asked him “so, 4K monitors Ray, where’s your 4K monitor?” and he’s said “oh no, we don’t need them just yet.” But here we are with a very beautiful 4K Plura monitor?

Ray: Yes indeed. What I meant at the beginning was to tell you that the standard was not in place. We wanted to wait until there is a standard so we can develop the monitor based on a standard.

Ed: 4K?

I’m surprised you believe there is a standard for

Ray: Well there is a SMPTE 2082 2022 however, of course, there are still multiple IP standards – ASPEN, AIMS and so forth, and we still don’t know what will be adopted in the long term.

Ed: So there still are a lot of people calling things “4K” that don’t fit the SMPTE standard?

Ray: Well yes, the IP in particular, but also there’s a difference between 4K which is the film 4K and in our case, we should call it UHD, which is Ultra High Definition, because 4K is a different resolution than UHD is. The UHD standard is 3840 x 2160.

Ed:

Right, that’s still sounding complicated, but …

Ray: It is, it is, but it will clear out.

Ed: But this is a big one and obviously a bit too big for a studio apart from client viewing. I imagine you have smaller 4K monitors?

Ray: Well we do 84, 49 and 24 inch, but the 84 and 49 we are targeting for multiviewer applications because you have a better resolution with multiple images, or backdrop for a studio, reception areas with a beautiful image on the background.

Ed: That’s it, with a 4K monitor you can have 4 high definition pictures within that?

Ray: Of course, and then you can have 16 pictures with maybe 480 if you do the maths. So you’re going to get a better resolution, and that’s what the UHD or 4K monitor technology was meant for, multiple images with higher resolution.

Ed: Now I’m intrigued by your numbering system, that you call things “PBM” and so on … can you tell us a bit about that Ray? Ray: Basically the PBM is a Plura Broadcast Monitor, that’s how we started and then the PRM is Plura Reference Monitor. Then we do have PBM 4K which means Plura Broadcast Monitor 4K. It’s just a random numbering, it wasn’t meant to interfere with any other competition at all, it’s just to make it simple for people to remember.

David: But it does distinguish the different lines.

So for different applications – if you’re doing very, very high end colour reference monitoring, you want the PRM series; for general purpose reference monitoring, where colour precision isn’t quite so critical, the PBM is

Reimund and Ray with Plura’s 4K offer.

perfectly good in general master control type applications, QC applications; and then the LCM is more of a general purpose monitor.

Ray: Correct.

It’s for preview application, preview monitoring without any measurement tools, without audio – very cost effective, affordable.

Where customers don’t need all the extra PBM features and don’t want to pay for them, they could go with the LCM. Ed: Right now we’re going to bring Reimund from Germany here, because there was a bit of an integration two years ago with a company and that now really is embedded within the Plura range?

Reimund: Alpermann+Velte is a company based in Germany, one of the leading companies for timecode.

Timecode solutions means generating timecode using a reference signal like GPS, like NTP, like PTP now, and we channel that timecode.

Timecode signals like LTC, VITC, DVITC, are needed all over a studio environment. That’s what we do here with the M-Series Module. It’s a modular system, we have different modules for every need you have.

Ed:

So is this something that is exclusive to Plura?

Ray: Well it’s a Plura product.

We purchased the company, we purchased the technology …

David: With Plura’s acquisition of Alpermann+Velte a couple of years ago, they’ve managed to now start providing an entirely different range of products.

Outside of video monitoring they can now provide timing solutions for timing application through a facility, master timing reference clocks, putting timing information, timecode information onto their monitoring systems. And now with PTP and more facilities looking at IP around their facility, you can actually deliver a linear timecode or VITC level of synchronisation over an IP network.

Page 19

Tiffen Filters for Panavision For Panavision, we are at Tiffen Filters with Michael Cassara.

Ed: Now Michael, since last NAB, I understand that Tiffen have continued to make new product including a couple of new diffusion filters?

Michael: Yes. We came out with our Black Pearlescents, our Black Soft/FX and our Black Glimmerglass line of filters. Those are brand new – we did announce them briefly last year, but now they are readily available for purchase and they’re really well received. They’re helping take the edge off of 4K …

Ed: Tell me, why do you need to take the edge off 4K?

Michael with the black Pearlescent filter.

Michael: Well, we don’t want to see every detail of a model’s face – we don’t want to see every little pore or every crevice and the resolution of 4K is so sharp, it’s ultra-sharp. What these filters do is just take the edge off of 4K, so just subtly soften the skin.

The Pearlescent adds some halation which is very nice and pleasing to the eye, and it adds a little bit of a different look to the image.

Ed: Alright, so why wouldn’t you go slightly out of focus and achieve the same effect?

Michael: Because people still love a sharp image in terms of you want to see those eyes in focus, you want to see the hair crisp and sharp and that’s what the filters do. It still keeps the fine detail sharp in terms of the eyes, the hair, everything still retains sharp except the skin, and the skin diffuses which is really nice and that’s what people want to see. It’s essentially like having Photoshop for a motion picture camera.

Ed: So it’s selective in the way it works, it’s not like just slightly out of focus?

Michael: Yes, so like selective resolution sharpness essentially.

It’s interesting how it works, I almost couldn’t tell you how it does it, but it actually works very well in that regard.

Ed:

And the second of the filters?

Michael: This year, we are coming out with our first ever filter holder. It’s not a matte box per se, it’s actually really designed for photographers looking to adapt Tiffen motion picture glass to their DSLR or mirrorless systems, so really nice in that regard. It’s going to adapt 2 Tiffen 4mm thick filters onto a DSLR based system up to 82mm. It works really well, keeps the filters nice and steady, but it’s just a quick “run and gun” solution, so really vital for landscape photographers looking to shoot long exposures where they want a robust piece of glass, you know a high end quality piece of glass. That’s going to be available later this year … I’m very excited about that, being a photographer myself, I think it’s an excellent product.

We actually are showing it on the Cooke Mini S4’s right now and it’s excellent to see that you could even adapt these to motion picture lenses.

Ed: You mentioned that the filters are 4mm thick.

Why such a thick piece of glass?

Michael: Well that’s what our motion picture filters have been at for as long as I can recall. So with our ColorCore process, you’re actually taking 2 pieces of

glass and laminating the effect in between. You can’t actually scratch off the effect, you can’t damage the effect … so that’s why our filters are second to none.

With a thick piece of glass, it keeps that in and we grind and polish those down to have a nice smooth edge.

Before, a lot of filter companies used resin based glass which is easy to make the thin pieces of glass.

With regular glass, it’s very difficult to make 2mm thick glass and not have a high reject rate. Cutting down glass that thin you’re bound to have it break and crack and have some issues. So with the 4mm glass, which is really the motion picture industry standard, it’s a more robust piece of glass and it’s not going to break.

What’s nice about it, is it’s been used in motion picture television for such a long time, and photographers have demanded it, and now they’re going to get motion picture glass onto their DSLR based systems without having to buy a matte box.

Ed: So that’s for the square filters as well as the round filters?

Michael: It’s going to be for 4x4s and 4x5650s, so it will hold those 2 filters. It’s really designed for 4x4s but it doesn’t mean you can’t adapt the 4x5650s if you have them, so it’s a really nice filter holder in that regard.

Ed: You could use it also for moving images from a DSLR? Michael: Absolutely yes, you could use it for moving images from a DSLR. Just think of it as a nice run and gun solution, as opposed to a matte box. Now granted it doesn’t have the sunshade-esque kind of look to it and it’s not that good in that way – it will be sealed from edge to edge so no light leak will come through, but it’s not going to prevent flare or anything like that, so it’s really meant for the hard core landscape photographer more than anybody else.

Ed:

Now, are you looking forward to 8K?

Michael: I’m sure everyone here at Tiffen is excited by 8K for the sheer fact that diffusion filters will be alive and well for a long time to come, helping diffuse the image – especially 8K. 8K is ultra-sharp. I haven’t wandered over to the 8K theatres yet, but I’m anxious to see these ultra-resolution televisions and cameras and lenses and see what we could do to help diffuse that situation and help really save some subtle skin tones and things like that. Really smooth out skin. NZVN

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Freefly Systems for Panavision For Panavision, we are at Freefly Systems with Justin Brown.

Ed: I guess one of the largest items here on the Freefly stand is this drone which is carrying a pretty heavy camera and it looks to have a very sophisticated control system.

Are you licensed to fly this Justin?

Justin: I’m not an aerial pilot myself, but I am an aerial camera operator and movie operator, so when Mike or Tab do the flying, I’m handling all the framing.

Ed: This sounds really sensible, that in fact, when you’ve got a drone of this capability with a rather expensive camera on it, you have somebody who’s the pilot and you have somebody else who operates the camera?

Justin: Exactly. There’s a lot of communication involved, so there’s a lot going on to get the shot and a 2 man team with a Freefly product, such as the ALTA 6 or 8, is the way to do it.

Ed: Would you like to be a pilot, or is that a bit too risky?

Justin: No, I’ve started flying some of the smaller things. I have an old Beta unit, an old Freefly from my co-worker. It definitely helps to have that appreciation and just that perspective. I’m working my way up to the ALTA 6. Right now there’s a lot of movie operating and I’m just kind of working my way up.

Ed: Now there’s a lot of controversy over drones.

There have been many articles about them and it’s just hit the news recently about a drone possibly flying into a British Airways plane landing in London – do you think this is going to see some tightening up by the government organisations?

Justin: The structuring is definitely becoming more quantifiable. I know the FAA’s working on policies for the US. Ed: Does that really affect the professional people, because you guys know what you’re doing and you’re not going to do stupid things?

Justin: Our customers are definitely working at the highest level as far as aerial cinematography goes, so anyone buying an ALTA is a certified pilot, at least in the States, and they’re flying cinematic payloads. The ALTA 8 can carry up to a 20 pound payload, they’re already working at a level where these guys have been flying for years, they understand the risks, and the responsibility involved. We don’t have to worry too much about our customers in the sense of guiding them through these processes, they’re all very much at the forefront of this technology.

Ed: So this pretty much is about as good as you can get in terms of a drone?

Justin: I like to think so.

Between our flight controller, the MōVI integration and the workflow of the ALTA, there is really a lot to offer. Software and support are two of our biggest pillars that we lean on as a company, and being a small Seattle based team, we

Justin with the Freefly drone.

can move quickly, listen to our customers and solve problems as they come up.

Ed: Because there are a lot of synergies across the range … you say that this octocopter has actually got a MōVI incorporated in it?

Justin: Yes. The ALTA platform was really designed around the MōVI from the quick release to the materials used – even how are apps are virtually identical in terms of workflow between the ALTA app and the MōVI app.

Our roots are with the aerial cinematography world, but then, a few years ago, we came along with the MōVI platform and then this past year we’ve kind of had a return to form with the ALTA. But all of it is designed to work together; the flight controller is designed for integration with the ALTA; the ALTA was built around the MōVI system, so you really have that vertical integration when you purchase our products.

Ed: And it’s not just the drone or the ALTA, you also have the little remote control car?

Justin: We have the Freefly TERO right over there.

The TERO is just another perspective that we have. We had the TERO at the last couple of NAB shows – it’s certainly kind of a niche product, but some of the stuff that our customers have done with that thing, it’s been really cool to see.

Ed: So since last NAB, what have been the changes or the improvements?

Justin: The ALTA 8 is just a few weeks old actually, so that’s the big thing for us at this show specifically.

Ed:

What was there before – was it a 6 bladed?

Justin: The 6 debuted a year ago this week essentially. Yes, ALTA 6 NAB 2015, ALTA 8 as of a few weeks ago, so we are really expanding our platform. As you know, we started with one MōVI and now we have 3; we had the ALTA and now that’s called the ALTA 6 and now we have the 8 as well.

Ed:

And it’s really just increasing the payload?

Justin: Essentially, yes. It does have 8 motors as opposed to 6 on the ALTA 6, but you’re going from a 15 pound maximum payload to 20 pound.

Ed: Now are the motors independently controlled – is that how you change the pitch and the movement?

Justin: Each motor has an ESC, it all works with the integrated flight controller. A lot of our pilots are

Page 22

using a through type of transmitter and, with our flight controller and our app, you have a lot of control over the craft itself.

Ed: So you’re not actually controlling each individual motor, but by your joystick controls here it is computer controlling the motors to move it in the direction that you want it to go?

Justin: Exactly.

Ed: Now you say there are 3 types of MōVI which I guess is where you start, this is the handheld gimbal arrangement.

Just run us through those 3 different types. Again, payload consideration is the reason for the 3 different ones?

Justin: Yes. The software you have within each MōVI is the same across the whole platform. So depending on the cameras and lenses and packages you build up, we would recommend a different MōVI. You have the M5 which has a maximum payload of 5 pounds; you have the MōVI M10 which can actually hold 12 pounds. Originally it was 10 then we bumped it up before launch. And then the M15 can carry a 15 pound payload. Between the ALTA and the MōVI platforms, it’s really just about the cameras and camera tack that you’re bringing to the table.

Ed: Could you for example, like with tripods or tripod heads – could you put a 5 pound camera on a MōVI 15 and it would work just as well?

Justin: Yes. With the full cage system, that allows you to cross the whole MōVI platform. What the full cage allows you to do is really clamp down on both the top and bottom of the camera, which allows rigidity that then lets the motors tune up very high to the given payload, which equals better stabilisation essentially.

Ed: So with the 15, you could take from a couple of pounds right up to 15 pounds?

Justin: You could put an iPhone or a GoPro on the M15 …

Ed: That’s a bit of an overkill?

Justin: A bit of an overkill, but you could do it, I have seen it – not terribly often with the M15, but with the M5 a lot of people throw an iPhone on there with our mobile kit to do location scouting. There’s certain applications that even a very, very light payload can make use of with the MōVI. Ed: Now is the whole process of a motorised gimbal platform something that is difficult to learn … what is the learning process?

A well kitted out MōVI.

Justin: The main part of the learning curve with the MōVI is learning how to balance it.

It is all “toolless”. We have lots of tutorials online, a pretty robust forum, we’re very active on social media, so if there’s a question you have or something you want to see, there’s a solution or there’s help out there for you.

If I sat down with someone with a MōVI M5 or even an M15, the workflow’s essentially the same. Within half an hour, or even less than that, you could really break down the fundamentals and balance the camera yourself and then from there it’s just about doing it through our app, learning what you can do with the MōVI. We have things like Autotune so, once you balance the camera, you press a button, the motors tune up, you have your default settings that we send out of the factory, and then from there your bits are ready to go.

It’s just balancing, Autotuning and setting your parameters, so it’s a pretty streamlined process now, especially with the toollessness and the ease of use with our new app.

Ed: I guess if you’d had some practice with a nonmotorised gimbal arrangement, then you’re probably going to be a bit quicker?

Justin: Absolutely.

It’s logical, if the camera’s falling forward you need to back it out; if it’s falling to the left, you shift to the right, so it’s very intuitive in terms of just seeing what you’re doing with the mast NZVN when you’re getting to that point.

Page 24

OConnor and Sachtler for Panavision We are now at the OConnor / Sachtler stand for Panavision and talking to us we have Eric Johnston, Strategic Sales Manager, Vitec Group.

Ed: Eric, first of all, OConnor. You say there’s not a lot happening, but this is a product that’s been around a long time, it’s really well developed, everyone loves it for the big cameras, so anything new?

Eric: There is something new. What we did not have for a while was our medium size head. We had the 1030 and the 2575, but we were missing the traditional 2060, which was a head larger than a 1030 and smaller than a 2575. For a while, we were just using the 2575 casting and we were putting a smaller spring set in there, which was sort of a stop-gap measure while we were developing the brand new head that we’re showing here, which is the 2065.

Ed: It makes sense, because the camera weights are coming down?

Eric: It’s true, camera weights are coming down, but lenses are getting bigger. So it’s really dependent upon your workflow. Now we have a small, medium and large and you can consider the 120EX our extra-large head. So even though these will balance down to zero, you can put a lot of different camera configurations on these and you can go from the smaller to the medium to the larger cameras. This is really the newest thing for the show – we have introduced this at Cine Gear this

Eric making a smooth OConnor move.

year, and this is its first NAB debut … it’s actually done quite well in the market.

Ed: So, to the uninitiated, what is the benefit of balancing the tripod head size to the camera?

Eric: Well that’s just the way it works. You don’t want to be operating with an unbalanced camera …

Ed: No, no, balancing – I mean balancing is one thing, but in terms of the weight, you talk about various tripods have different weight ranges, what is there about the weight range that’s important to make sure that the camera is within that weight range, that you don’t either have too big a tripod for a small camera, or vice versa?

Eric: You can have too big a tripod for a smaller camera, but you certainly can’t have too small a tripod for a larger camera. You don’t want to exceed the recommended payload capacity because it could damage the head. It actually could be a dangerous situation. Interestingly enough, something most people don’t understand – the OConnor number actually means something. Although it’s not the exact specification, a 2560 is recommended for cameras between 25 and 60 pounds; a 1030 is recommended for cameras between 10 and 30 pounds; a 2575 between 25 and 75 pounds.

Ed:

But there’s no dot or dash in there?

Eric: There is no dot or dash, we just use that to create the model number.

That’s something that Chadwell O’Connor devised when he first started – there was the OConnor 50, the OConnor 100. The 50 Page 25

did 50 pounds; the 100 did 100 pounds, so that’s just the nomenclature that he started back in the day.

Ed: Now what I do notice also on this is a very nice little tilt arm adjuster, which I haven’t seen on another tripod before, but I’m sure you’re going tell me these are common to OConnors – this arm here?

Eric: It’s essentially the same brake as we have on our 1030 … it’s a little bit smaller and we have a little bit larger brake on the 2575. So we have all of the controls on the lefthand side for ease of operation for the operator and we’ve just continued that. We’ve fit the form factor of this lever to the actual casting of the head itself. You’ll see the 1030 is a little bit smaller and the 2575 is a little bit bigger.

Ed: But it looks as though it’s really designed to be in that particular place?

Eric: It is, most certainly, and this is how people operate, with their palm placed here, so you can very easily adjust the locks of this head for the tilt range. It comes with both bases – you can do 150mm or ball base, Mitchell base as well, which is nice, it simplifies things.

Ed:

And the legs are the same?

Eric: The legs are similar. These are our new 30L carbon fibre tripods, available in 150 or Mitchell based as well; and then if you go up a little bit larger, we have our aluminium tripods. These will hold 300 pounds.

Now continuing in the Sachtler area with James Stolz, Ambassador.

Ed: Now James, you’re an ambassador because you’re a dedicated Sachtler user, is that correct?

James: I’m a dedicated Sachtler and OConnor user, depending on the project, and have been for 15 years.

Ed: So how do you choose between the two when you’re going out into the field?

James: It really depends on what my job is. If I’m going to do more cinematic things, we’ll have a lot of time to set up and I do need the perfect smoothness of my camera movements, then I go with OConnor. If I’m doing more documentary run and gun where I have to be fast …

Ed:

And you have to carry the tripod?

James: And I have to carry the tripod – that’s a good side note, yes – then I’ll go with the Video 18 usually.

Ed:

But of course it depends on the camera that you’ve got to put on there?

James: Yes, obviously as well.

So depending on the payload, that’s the new thing about the new Video 18 – are you metric or …

Ed: I’m sorry, we are metric yes, there are only some countries who are still behind the 8 ball.

James: Thank I’m metric.

Ed:

you,

because

Well most of the world is.

James: Well most of the world, but in talking with some Americans, I’m like “I’m metric, what’s this in pounds?”

So they’ve increased the payload to 20 kilo on this one; it was 15 before. It looks the same, but the new thing here is at the front you have the button that goes from low to high, so if you have a camera that’s anywhere between 1 -10 kilo, you would go on low, and if you have one that’s from 10-20 kilo you go on high. So depending on the payload you have, you have

James for Sachtler.

Page 26

a smaller camera, smaller setup, you have the lower end.

more set and safer, so the whole thing doesn’t twist and turn.

Ed:

Ed: Is that also a lot to do with how many stages you’ve got – if you’ve got 3 stages, you’re not quite as stable as you are with a 2 stage?

So that just improves the drag?

James: It improves the drag and the whole payload and the counterweight of it as well, so if you have a heavier camera, you obviously need more counterweight, whereas if you have a smaller camera you need less.

This tripod basically makes you set for light small cameras, or a big heavy setup as well. It can do it either way. And it’s very smooth – it’s the same smoothness as it was before and it’s a beautiful head.

Obviously, the great thing I think as well, is that now with the heavy payload … because sometimes you have a shoot and then all of a sudden they’re saying “okay, we’re going to use the ARRI 1880 zoom lens on that, and that’s obviously a very, very heavy lens.

But you have already rented this and you didn’t know we’re going to go with a big lens, so with this, you can just switch it to “high” and you can still use this tripod without the tripod being brought to its limits in terms of weight.

So you’re more versatile and more futureproof and product proof with this head.

Ed: Now I notice something underneath the head there – it looks like a pair of grips that you use to strengthen your wrists?

James: You can do that. But that’s such a great thing as well, it’s called the SpeedLock.

In times gone by, you would have to twist and turn it to change it and here you just grip it, it’s loose and you let go, it’s tight.

So it’s an insane improvement in speed in terms of setting up your tripod, because sometimes it’s so tight and you can’t open Such a simple but very clever idea. it, and with this it’s a matter of one second and then you’re loose and then you’re tight. So levelling the tripod has never been as easy and fast as with this.

Ed:

And there’s a range of legs to go with this?

James: Yes. At the moment they’re shipping with the 18 legs, so the smaller legs, but they’re going to bring out a new package.

I think by summer they will have the Video 20 legs which is honestly the version that I would be going with, because then you have more rigid legs that can take a bigger payload as well, especially if you need to pan fast, then with the heavier legs you’re a little bit

James: No. They’re all very rigid and with the SpeedLock as well, it’s like one long stage, or here you have two stages. They’re all very rigid.

It just depends on if you have a heavy payload on there … I do a lot of things for Mercedes and then I like to have a heavy drag, so more smooth panning with fast cars, and for that kind of stuff I like to have heavier legs; you see like this, they give in. It’s so rigid that the legs give a little bit in.

It obviously depends on what you want to shoot, but for that kind of stuff, I would go with the heavier legs. If I’m just doing documentary stuff where I don’t have to be as precise with the rigidness, I can have a looser head because I’m just doing people and I’m more flexible with that, then I would go with these legs because they’re a lot lighter and easier to work with – just because they’re lighter.

It always depends on the project, but if I were to buy a set, I would go with this head and the slightly heavier legs, just so I can put a bigger camera on it and it will be more rigid.

Ed: Now it’s a small thing, but I do notice on the tripod legs, the buttons are in red, obviously so you know where to go rather than the whole thing being black and you’re trying to find them in the dark. Is this something that’s new, or has this been around for years?

James: No, that’s been around for always.

Basically, with these buttons, you release it and you can take out the middle spreader, and with this one you can make it wider.

Many times if you’re somewhere shooting and it’s very dark, then the red does help you see it a little bit better.

Ed: The levers to adjust the length of the legs though are still black?

James: Ed:

Yes.

Ah well, maybe next year.

James: The SpeedLock ones are red. some over there and they are red.

There are

Ed: Oh, okay.

So really, you personally have obviously tried other tripods, but you just find the Sachtler very good for your workflow?

James: Yes. I had 2 shoots with Miller heads and I did not like them at all. They felt rougher in the panning and the Sachtler and OConnor are very smooth and they’re always the same. If I set it to level 3, it’s always level 3, it’s always the same. So if I go to rent equipment somewhere in New Zealand or wherever, I get this head, I put it on 3, I know exactly what I’m getting. With other tripods, I feel that they wear out more, where 3 is not necessarily a 3; a 3 can be a 2.

But with Sachtler it’s always the same. I just rely on the consistency and the rigidness of whatever settings I set them to.

Ed: We’ll put in a word that your next posting is down NZVN our way.

Page 27

Video Devices for Sound Techniques We’re at Video Devices for Sound Techniques and we have the Boss, Ed Capp.

Ed: Ed, it’s a wonderful product that you guys sell, and you keep improving it, it keeps being used in some pretty serious productions, because a lot of cinematographers still don’t trust the on-board recording of many of the products that they use, especially their second cameras. They like to have the highest resolution possible to be recorded, that will match their top end cameras, and this is where your PIX product comes in. It comes in with that high level of recording, but also the security of the image that they can see in the viewfinder. There are other products out there that will record images, that will monitor images, but I think you’ve got the combination of high level recording and quality picture … would you agree with that?

Ed C: Is this an open-ended question? I think Grant you hit it right on the head. What we’ve tried to do with our new line of PIX-E recording monitors, is to really develop a professional product, but bring it into a reasonable price point. Customers who come to Sound Devices and our Video Devices brand are really looking for a product that is built for professionals, a rugged product that is designed to meet their needs. There are other products on the market, but a lot of them may or may not really be able to hold up to their expectation in performance when it really matters. So with our new line of PIX-E recorders, we have the 5 inch and the 7 inch models, the E5, the E5H and the E7.

Ed: Ed C: Ed: Ed? Ed C: Ed:

And they’re all now shipping?

Yes, they are.

Because there was a bit of a delay wasn’t there

Ed Capp for Video Devices.

built-in all the recording capabilities, being able to do a 4K file, to be able to do the ProRes files.

Ed: And these are things that you can improve with firmware updates can’t you – that’s the thing. Once you build the monitor, you can add little bits and pieces, but really a lot of improvements can be made in that recording system?

Ed C: Right, and that’s been a trend we’ve seen over the years in manufacturing and especially in our product lines. So we can define a product, give it a core set of features, but as the product evolves – it’s almost like a living item. We really communicate with our customer base, taking that feedback and really hearing from them about “you’ve given us a good tool, but now in this application it would be great if we could do this”, or “it would be great if we could do that codec or that capability” so over time what we’ve tried to do both from our audio products and into our video products, is that the product evolves. It continues to add value, we develop its capabilities, so that the product that shipped on its first day, maybe a year later, is completely more mature in its capabilities, but not to bloat it up with unnecessary features.

Ed: So what are some of the latest features you’ve added since the last show?

Well at NAB 2015 we called a preview …

Oh I missed that!

Ed C: Yes, you must have … so for us fundamentally, there’s a release or a preview. If we release it, it means we expect to ship it within about a 4 -week window of the time we show it. Last year, we previewed those with the knowledge that we felt it was important to remind the market that we were very much into the portable recording video market and had been waiting some years for a release, and to show the market what we wanted to do. With the release of the PIX-E series, the fundamental change is that the emphasis has been first and foremost on looking at it from a monitoring perspective. When we had the PIX240i, the real functionality was built-in as a recorder first, monitoring second. This shifts now into the idea that it’s a monitor first and recording second. It’s no compromise recording, but we put in scopes and histogram and a lot of monitoring tools that are important for a monitor application. But we’ve also

Ed C: It’s come on quite a bit in terms of onboard capabilities with the monitoring tools, the capabilities of inverse screen and, just now, we’ve announced that we will be introducing an H.264 coded to all the PIX-E series models. For a lot of customers, we hear them – we know that they’ve asked for RAW and some other capabilities, but for us we see from another end of the market that they’ve been looking for a much more compressed read to go to the web streaming file, and we thought that’s a really unique area that we can offer to our customers. And from the broadcast market, where they’re also doing the same thing, they can record the ProRes file but simultaneously you could also have that H.264 file that they can quickly get to the studio right up online, or in some environments you have in a meeting in advance audio-visual industries, they’re doing long form meeting recordings where realistically they’re looking for a more compressed file that they can easily hand off to a client

Page 28

so they can take it away on a plane and plug it in and watch easily. And in the cinematography workflow, the H.264 becomes a great daily file that they can quickly share. You can even burn the LUTs in to that file and have your audio sync’d right in. So again, trying to adapt it to the workflow and how people work.

Ed: You obviously don’t want to try and meet every corner of the market, because you’re always going to get some people who will want a slightly bigger monitor, a slightly brighter monitor, a few more NITs ( and I know what a “NIT” is ) and of course RAW recording.

Ed C: As a manufacturer, whether you’re the smallest or the largest, you only have a set definite amount of resources, and trying to figure out what would be the biggest benefit to the biggest group of your users is really important. So it’s almost more about what you don’t put into the product, than what you do put into the product, because at a certain point, you can fill it with so many features that it becomes bloated and almost unusable to the customer because the complexity becomes so extreme.

Ed: Like the VHS recorders of years gone by, when one tried to programme one?

But that’s quite a small section of the market, and really I can see your PIX recorders fitting in a very broad range, from your wedding videographer right up to your documentary maker, as either their main means of recording to improve the recording capability of their perhaps lower end camera, or to act, as you say, as a daily recorder that they can easily look at the files rather than take them out of the high end camera. So it really covers quite a broad range?

Ed C: Yeah, and we’re still trying to figure it out to this day!

Ed C: Absolutely. There’s so many places you can try to go and there’s so many different niches within a segment and they all have value and they’re all legitimate requests that come in, and as a manufacturer, one of the things we have to try to do is interpret those requests and pick a direction for us to go where we think we can add the most value to a segment of the market, because we can’t be everything to everybody.

Ed C: We try really hard to listen well to the customers and as a manufacturer you kinda have to juggle this a little bit, because you want to keep focused on what you feel is going to be the greatest benefit to the customer and to the market.

Ed: But that’s where it’s important to get that customer feedback, to hear the problems or the requests that they have, filter those and bring out what you feel is going to be the best to improve your brand?

Ed: So where to next – 5, 7, are you looking at a PIXE9 for example?

Ed C:

Impossible deniability.

Ed: Well that’s it – again you hear from your customers what they would like and you have to think “well, is there actually a market for that”?

Sometimes you’re doing a short putt, meaning you’re trying to address a request that’s very easy to do; and sometimes you’re trying to do transformational things – you’re trying to move not just for what the immediate need is, but you try to anticipate where the market is going and what they might need in 3 years from now.

And that takes a bit more work and vision. As a company we try not to keep looking. You have to look

Page 29

important high quality audio is to the image and to the experience. One of the things we’ve always heard and know over the years is that audio is consistently a challenge in the picture capture world.

at what the competition does and be aware of it, but we get most of our ideas from that interaction with our customers, and that gives us the most clear path for product development.

Sound Devices as a manufacturer is very committed to our Video Devices brand, as we are to our audio brand, and we are continuously looking for new opportunities and new products that we can bring to market, but we try not to be “me too”. With the resources that we have, we want to invest in the products that we feel will really help move the needle, move the category and be a true asset to the customer, not just another of this or that.

Another person dedicated to the brand is Stephen Buckland who is with us here today.

Ed: Stephen you’re particularly happy that the PIX-E7 is shipping?

Stephen:

Yes.

Ed: Well there are a lot of ads that said “It’s coming, it’s coming”?

Stephen: Well that’s right, if you notice the wording has changed, and there is actually limited stock I think currently sitting on the shelf. We try to keep some in reserve for those last minute unanticipated customers or requirements. Adding to what Ed says about future requirements and future developments, one of the things that always impressed me is a new development comes out like the capability to record MP4 files. The first person who heard about this said to me “oh yeah, and what’s it going to cost?” It’s not going to cost you anything, you’ve invested in the product, you get the benefits of future developments. “Oh, really, I don’t have to go out and buy a whole new one?” No. Ed: That’s the benefit product Stephen?

of

buying

a

professional

Stephen: That’s correct, that’s right, but some people don’t realise that. They’re always looking for some catch or some trap.

Ed:

Some people need to be educated Stephen?

Stephen:

Yes they probably do.

Ed: Now Ed, I see there’s a little box attached to the bottom of the PIX-E5 and this is a PIX-LR and it looks a bit like an audio recorder?

Ed C: It does in fact look like that. Again, as we try to differentiate us from what maybe somebody else might be doing in the monitor segment, as a heritage coming from the sound side of it, we realise how

So what we’ve done with our PIX-E series of monitors is offered a new accessory called the PIX-LR. What that does, is it offers a module that connects through serial connection on the bottom of the units and Allen screws into them, so it becomes one solid piece, and it adds first class high performance mic preamps of our design, to the PIX-E series. You always could come in with a one-eighth mini stereo connector in there, so you could always record audio, but now you can put this on the front end.

So now I’m getting very high performance audio, very low latency with the image, and the ability to have full proper LED metering for outdoor sunlight viewable LEDs. You have professional limiters in place to help override or protect those inputs and then you can use that as your front end of the audio and then take a feed out of that and feed your camera, as well as having your redundant recording on the monitor itself.

Ed: So is it actually 2 separate recording systems, or is the PIX-LR feeding the audio back into the same record that the monitor side is doing?

Ed C: So if you think of the PIX-LR as almost like a microphone preamp – so there’s no recording happening on the LR itself. The output of the PIX-LR feeds into the PIX-E5 or 7 and all the audio is recorded on the .MOV file that it is recording. So you have audio and video recorded synchronously in the one file. In addition it also offers a delay function – one of the issues in many environments when you’re taking the feed from picture and sound, is an inherent delay in many of the cameras outputs. Here you have a delay adjustment and you can match the delay so that your audio and your video are synchronised in the same file.

Ed: Is that done automatically or is that a manual setting depending on the camera?

Ed C: Right. So each camera’s slightly different.

You can either do it with sticks and match it up that way, or you can manually adjust and watch yourself a little bit, but you know that’s in millisecond settings, around 3 millisecond as a common setting, but that being said, each camera is slightly inherently different.

Ed: And I guess what’s really important is that the PIX-LR fits both the 5 and the 7 and potentially anything else that you might make?

Ed C: In that series it would. It won’t work as a standalone mixer …

Ed: No, but if you have a 5 and a 7, you don’t have to buy 2 separate ones?

Ed C:

Right, it’s interchangeable between the 2.

Stephen: Apart from the audio interface though, you’ve overlooked one key feature of the LR, which is these buttons at the bottom here. Now what these buttons allow you to do is actually put the machine into “record” or “play” or “rewind” or “fast forward” without having to find the control on the screen. So if your hands are slight sweaty, it means anyone can actually instantly play the stuff without having to fumble around on the screen.

Ed: So it’s a dual purpose, it not only provides you that audio preamp and that high quality audio, it also

Page 30

through a couple of your really good ones that you do much better than anybody else?

Stephen: Some of the most popular things we sell are our battery distribution systems, specific for bags.

We’ve been selling them for quite a few years and they’re very handy. They have typically been using NP1 batteries in order to power them, and you have 6 outputs to distribute to different devices, so that you can power everything from one battery. But what we have that’s new this year is a smart battery that seems to be the way the industry is going. They’re much higher capacity than the previous NP1’s, they’re a bit lighter and they have a fuel gauge. They’re 98 Watt hour whereas the NP1’s are in the mid-70 range, so they’re a good option.

Ed: Do they fit into the same slot as the old NP1’s?

Stephen: No, they have their own proprietary connector which is actually a lot smaller than the NP1 cups, so it takes up less space in the bag and like I said, it’s a bit lighter and they have an integrated fuel gauge as well. We’ve also got our Cart Power solutions.

Again, very popular for guys who need power to power up their cart, and what we have new is some Pelican versions of additional batteries that you can add a little extra time to your battery power, which is very nice.

Ed: What was that noise?

Stephen: That was our new Bell and Light System.

It’s very rugged and robust, we’ve been working on it for a while. The great thing about it is we have a really robust power supply – it’s 300 Volt, allows you to power

gives you some nice big “record” “stop” “play” “fast forward” buttons?

Stephen: And funnily enough, the people who have bought the LRs to date, that’s the main reason they’ve bought them. Because they’re cinematographers, the audio is not their main concern, but it’s the buttons that they appreciate.

Ed:

There’s nothing like a good button Stephen.

Stephen:

That’s right.

Ed C: It gives you that big beefy transport control and that’s what people really liked on the PIX-240i and it gives you that same control functionality on that. NZVN

Remote Audio for Sound Techniques For Sound Techniques we are at Remote Audio with Stephen Reter as well as our own Stephen Buckland.

Ed: Stephen, this is a company that Mr Buckland has brought me to because you provide the accessories for sound recordists out in the field. Apart from their recorder, they need the cables and the bits and pieces that go along with it and that’s what you do?

Stephen: That’s right, yes absolutely. We do custom cables and we have a very large selection of cabling that we do for locations sound guys on film and television. Anybody who works out of a sound bag or a sound cart, we have plenty of solutions for you.

Ed: But it’s not just cables, there are lots of little boxes and splitters and all sorts of things, so run us Page 31

Stephen Reter with Remote Audio’s smart battery.

Ed: But that’s why people need to come in and talk to you and have a look at it?

Bells and accessories galore.

up to 30 base stations, satellite stations, off of one power supply. The new satellites are very rugged, they’re a triangular design, so it saves on space. We use 2 LED lights instead of 3, and as we’re cutting the power needs by about 30%, you can daisy chain more stations and have more versatility there. We also have them in multiple sized bells for different loudness, so we have a 4 inch bell and a 6 inch bell and we’re going to be coming out with an 8 inch one as well.

So depending on your needs, whether you’re in a tight space and you don’t need quite as loud a bell, the 4 inch is perfect; if you’re in a larger area and you want to really get people’s attention, you’ve got some other options there as well.

Ed: Now I’m looking rather confused at this point so can you please explain to me Stephen B why you would need one of these on a set?

Stephen B: That’s right. One of the things in front of us which several people have asked us for recently, is a cable which allows you to feed audio into the ALEXA Mini. Now these things, yes you can make them yourself if you’re very good at soldering and you can get the parts, but Remote Audio makes them – basically they supply them off the shelf. Another thing which probably has a wider use than just for sound engineers, is their head phones.

We should try that pair out over there.

They’re not noise cancelling, but they eliminate noise permeating them. So if you’ve got a shoot around people shooting guns or jet engines or something similar, these will allow you to monitor the sound and not be swayed by the other noises around.

There’s actually an ingenious pair on the shelf opposite, which also have a little microphone, which allows you to actually communicate to other people on set, and your voice isn’t drowned out by the jet engine or the rifles being shot.

Ed: And there’s an intriguing little product down here called the Hot Box – have you sold many of those Stephen?

Stephen B: We sell occasional ones.

They’re battery distribution systems, so you plug a 12 or 14 Volt battery into them and then you can take a variety of feeds off them and feed a variety of equipment. So it allows you to run more things off one battery than you NZVN would otherwise be able to.

Stephen B: Okay, you’re shooting in a studio, and most studios in New Zealand are converted warehouses and you need a system to alert people who aren’t directly involved in the actual scene to the fact that they’re about to be shooting.

Ed: So you can’t just yell out “SHUTUP”?

Stephen B: Well you can try doing that, but often people are further afield than within even the shouting range, and with this system, by linking them up with walkie-talkies, you could even have one at the gate to the studio so the person who’s doing security will know not to let any vehicles come in and disrupt the shot.

Ed: But you wouldn’t want to have those lights flashing while you were recording surely?

Stephen B: Outside the studio you probably would, yes. You know how the good old studio thing always used to have a red light saying “recording” – this is basically a sophisticated version of that.

Ed: Aaaah, I see. Right, I mean it looks very nice, but I imagine an expensive doorbell?

Stephen B: yes, but …

I suppose it’s an expensive doorbell,

Ed: I think you should have one on the front of Sound Techniques?

Stephen B: What – to tell people I’m not in the office, or that I’m not receiving visitors!

Ed: So, a good product range for you Stephen?

Stephen B: It’s diverse. I think the difficulty with Remote Audio is probably trying to describe the breadth of their product.

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Ring me anytime.

Rycote for Sound Techniques For Sound Techniques, we are at Rycote and we have Richard Hall, Marketing Manager.

Ed: So you’re obviously a new body into this family – have you married into the clan?

Richard: I haven’t no, not even metaphorically, I’ve just joined.

Ed:

Oh, there’s no opportunities do you think?

Richard: I think my wife would probably have something to say about it, yes.

Ed: It depends company?

Richard:

how

dedicated

you

are

to

the

Yes, well …

Ed: Anyway Richard, we’re here not to talk about your personal prospects, we’re here to talk about the new Cyclones and the new material? Customers were very happy with the previous Cyclone material, but you’ve gone and made it better?

Richard: We have improved it, yes, as is our way.

We’ll start with something and then we’ll develop it; if we can improve it, we will.

So the original Cyclone, the feedback that we had was it’s great, we love the 3D-Tex material if the thing works fine, but it was too big for a lot of people and the mics they were using, and actually the colour was quite divisive as well, because we had feedback from some people that the talent was looking up at this huge

Page 33

Richard with the latest Cyclone.

Cyclone, this black thing swinging in there, and going “whoa.” It’s different, it doesn’t look like the familiar neutral battleship grey Rycote stuff.

Ed:

You could have made it pink?

Richard: We could have made it pink, probably even worse, so we didn’t, we went with the familiar grey. So that was the reason behind that.

Ed:

And it now comes in 3 different sizes?

Richard: That’s the key thing. We’ve gone from the large model on its own, to a large, a medium, and a small, so we now have a Cyclone to accommodate a massive range of shotgun mics, short shotgun mics, condenser microphones – whatever you’ve got we can fit it in a Cyclone now, so it’s smaller and lighter.

Ed:

And the cage is the same sort of design?

Richard: The cage is the same sort of design, but with the medium and the small model we’ve introduced a short XLR, so it’s lighter and keeps the overall weight of the rig lighter, but this also has meant that you can get proportionally a longer mic in a shorter size.

So you can now get like a 416 into that medium, and an MKH50 into a small, which you couldn’t do without the short XLR, so it’s vital to having that overall shrunken size for that.

Ed: And of course it still incorporates the famous Rycote Lyre?

Richard: Why of course it does, yes, but more than that, if you’ve got your Rycote Lyre suspension, you’ve also continued the Rycote Lyre into the basket suspension, so you’ve got 2 lots of suspension going on – one for the microphone and a completely independent one to isolate the basket itself.

The feedback we’ve had from the tester was sensitive mics, things like the MKH50, this has been the one … this suspension has absolutely nailed the shock and handling problem. So wind protection is covered with the material and the handling noise from the dual suspension, with the patented Rycote Lyres.

The Cyclone range.

Ed: Now on the fabric itself, it seems to be a finer weave than the original black?

with that colour, however in terms of its durability, it will be absolutely fine.

Richard:

Ed:

Ed:

Yes it is, yes you’ve noticed that.

Is it just as robust and easy to clean?

Can you wash it?

Richard:

Richard: It is … it will probably show up marks more with that colour, that’s an inevitable side effect of going

If it gets wet, you can dry it, so yes.

I wouldn’t chuck it in the tumble drier, but you can wipe NZVN it I would say, rather than wash it.

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ChyronHego for Techtel We’re here at ChyronHego for Techtel with David Colthorpe and we’re talking with Casper Plessing.

Ed: Now Chyron is a name that those of us who have been in the industry for a long time know well and have great thoughts about, because it’s really the “go to” graphics product for broadcast production. But you’ve added the “Hego” name on the end and you’ve actually made some more acquisitions that make this a much bigger company with a much broader range. So what’s the direction you’re heading in now?

Casper: Basically to govern the whole workflow from start to the end, in fact you can see the whole line up at chyronhego.com – however today we’re looking at a specific product – VidiGo Visual Radio.

Ed: Right, “visual radio”. Now I know a lot of people go the other way, they start off with a broadcast station and they think “right, we’re going to go into radio, we’re going to go into web” but you’re talking about going the other way. So you start with a radio station and then you add some vision to it. Is there a difference in how you go that way?

Casper: In fact, we don’t want to change the radio presentation. VidiGo Visual Radio is software that adds an automation layer that makes it possible to fully automate the visual, the screen based, production of your radio content.

But the radio element is unchanged.

Ed: Okay, are you trying to convert your traditional radio listener to watching this on TV, or is it to try to get new younger people to listen to radio, because some people think it’s an old person’s format – wireless?

Casper: There are a couple of drivers here. First of all, kids. I’ve got a 12 year old nephew and if I ask him “what’s on your radio” he laughs at me because he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

He has his devices, his laptop, iPad and iPhone, you only have to look at kids to see what’s happening. Their media consumption is different. So, if you want to continue in the radio business, you have to get on other media, and one of the ways to do it is to “visual-ise” it. The other big driver is pressure on producing TV. For example, Canada’s CBC regional TV stations needed to make about 2 or 3 hours of News every day, but to produce it in a traditional TV environment was way too expensive for their budget. However, by taking their excellent radio format News and adapting it to the screen using VidiGo Visual Radio they dramatically extended their audience.

Ed: So a difference I would think would be that a traditional television watcher, the first thing is actually the viewing, so they’ve got to sit down there and they’ve got to view the content. If they walk away to make a cup of coffee, they’re not listening to it, that’s the ad breaks. But your traditional radio listener will have something on, they’ll be listening to the radio and every now and again, if something sounded interesting, they could look at their screen to see what was actually happening. But the focus would be mainly on what they’re listening to. Is that correct?

Casper: It depends a little bit on the stations, because we have installations all over the world from Australia to Africa, to Europe, to South and Latin America and the US and Canada. So we see a range of different setups – from full TV studios to just webcams – depending on the best cultural fit. Distribution is the key to this.

Of course you can go live on your traditional TV channel, or by live streaming, but a lot of

Casper and David.

our customers also record, and they cut out the good stuff and put it on YouTube. It’s an additional revenue stream, especially for stations with a younger audience who are very focused on non-linear media consumption.

These stations have more viewers on YouTube than they have listeners on their live radio.

Ed: Did you have a station in the Ukraine for example, around that area?

Casper: I’m working in the Ukraine but …

Ed: Because I understand the visual radio stations there, to get interest in their News programmes, have their female newsreaders slowly take their clothes off as they read the News.

Is that something that your product allows?

Casper: Yeah, yeah, for sure. That’s actually a very funny thing, it’s a Dutch example because …

Ed: Yes, I know the Dutch, they’re very open minded.

Casper: Well they had a thing called the Night Show. There was some kind of bet and if the DJ lost the bet he had to present naked, on camera, so it was very exciting. So maybe that was a sort of accelerator for Visual Radio in the Netherlands. Especially now, because it’s recorded, it can go viral on YouTube and capture your audience.

Ed: I could see that this is something that even a small radio station – a regional radio station - could take on, with not too much of a capital investment?

David: That’s right. It is really intended to affordable and particularly to be very automated, you’re not having to consider additional manning, that the level of automation really means that once all up and running and programmed …

Ed: You’re good to go?

be so so it’s

David: You’re good to go, it’s straightforward and there are no additional costs or resources needed.

Ed: That’s it, because you don’t really know what increase in listenership or viewership you’re going to get, you’re not making too big an investment. But I imagine this is scalable?

Casper: Yes, for sure.

What we see is that, normally, systems start simple and basic with 2 or 3 cameras, but we have a lot of installations that even have 12 cameras right now and they get much more complicated. But it’s very important that we made an elegant solution. It has to be really appealing and look like someone is behind the buttons, but what makes it interesting is the automation layer that – I don’t want to say “replaces” – yes, it replaces a producer, actually 2 or 3 men if you need. So based on the audio input, you can fully automate your production and about 90%

Page 36

of all live Visual Radio that’s being made is fully automated and a lot of our customers switch off the monitors of the user interface, so they don’t even know that the automation is there.

Ed: So David, with the automation the actual cost of doing business is kept very low?

David: Yes and with real broadcast quality, so it looks like real TV – it is actually real TV! Ed: And Casper, in terms of hardware, what’s involved?

Casper: The system runs on standard IT hardware.

We don’t have any specific switchers, it’s purely software based. We do have an interface for manual operation with a hardware panel, but a lot of radio stations don’t even need that. We have a simple PC GUI and we have mobile phone apps that can fully control the whole system. The automation is driven by audio inputs, so based on the audio input the end user decides what to do. For example, microphone 1 the host is speaking, you go to camera 1, simple; microphone 2 someone is speaking and you go to camera 2. But what if the host and the guest have a discussion? You don’t want it to switch over and over, so you can decide to have a wide shot or maybe you want to have picture-in-picture or a side-by-side, or with an animation. Another control method is through the radio automation. The system can automatically start video clips that are cued by the radio files in the radio automation. You don’t have to change anything in your automation or your workflow, we are just the slave and the master is the radio host or DJ and the radio automation.

Ed: So your video clips follow the speaker when it is microphone activated, that it switches the camera to that particular one, but, if you want to do that, you can manually override it?

Casper: But you don’t need to do anything. Maybe if I speak in microphone 3 then you can do whatever, you can put it on your webcam and during the break you can switch on your webcam outside for example. It really depends on what you want in your output, we can do it.

Ed:

So really the key to this is the automation?

Casper: The automation, the producer or host and the imagination of the system designer. We don’t decide what to do, it’s the end user who’s in charge. NZVN

Page 37

Canon with DVT For DVT, we are on the Canon stand having a look at the latest cameras and lenses and the person who is going to talk to us today is Stuart Barnaby.

Ed: Stuart, I understand this is a very big sandpit?

Stuart: It’s a massive sandpit Grant. It’s actually quite a big game changing deal at NAB this year with technologies that are changing in our industry and will change our industry dramatically in the future.

As much as it went from analogue to digital, or from standard definition to high Stuart and Chris at the Canon stand. definition, we’re seeing those changes happen in the Ed: And Chris is looking remarkably charming today market today as well – the move from SDI and HDMI and he’s going to tell us that, in fact, you can use this type connectors to this new IP method of lens on other cameras? communicating video, and the way we deal with contrast and colour spaces is changing dramatically as Chris: You can, just like I guess any other EF lens, well. you’re not limited to running it on a Canon camera. You can run this on Sony FS7 or FS5, with a Metabones We’ve got a range of cameras from many different adapter, so E-Mount to EF; all the lens information is vendors that are changing this ballgame. One of the passed through, including power to the lens, that then ones that is leading that is the Canon C300 Mark II and also powers the Servo, so that you’ve got a run and gun why – it’s got 15 stops of dynamic range, which comes Servo solution for the FS7s or FS5s, or any other extraordinarily close to the dynamic range that the camera you choose to put it on. human eye can see. So that’s really impressive and we’ll talk about that a little bit later.

Ed: And in terms of its specs, it is a higher spec than the package Sony zoom lens?

What I would like to talk to you about right now is the new Canon Servo 18-80mm lens. This is an ENG style Chris: It’s far superior in terms of its picture lens that you can put on any of the Canon EF mount quality, its ergonomics, with a permanent servo drive cameras, covering the C100, C300 type cameras, and unit on the lens and a rocker control unit with the ability have a proper rocker style zoom control on the lens, to detach or relocate giving you flexibility in varying including autofocus and everything. situations.

Ed: So this is getting more and more to cater for the Ed: And now? television market as opposed to the cine market?

Stuart: Canon have created a new Super 35mm Stuart: It turns a C300 Mark II, for example, into a camera called the ME20 which can shoot at a high iSO more “run and gun” type camera. Of course, if you’re range. The iSO rating tells you how sensitive the image doing interview work, documentary, drama, short form sensor is. iSO ranges of 800, 1200, 2500 are sort of you may still want to have a set of Primes, but this sort semi-typical; this new camera that they’ve created has of lens will allow you to do reality TV … an iSO rating of 4,000,000 ( 4 million! ), which means it can literally see in the dark. It’s a game changer for Ed: Properly? people who need to do extraordinarily low light filming.

Stuart: Exactly. So it’s a great lens. An 18-80, Of course, even low light to no light, it is the “go to” very wide to a reasonably moderate zoom range as camera for that. It’s a remarkable piece of technology. well, so it’s a really awesome lens for that.

Ed:

What does it look like at 18 – is it a bit fisheye?

Stuart: Not at all, no. They’ve done an awesome job in developing the lens with multiple elements inside it. Prime lenses at a certain focal range will always look better than a zoom, since a zoom lens is somewhat compromised because of the range it needs to go through, but they’ve done a great job with this particular lens and produced a great product that will be very appealing for many shooters, for a range of applications.

Ed: Is there a good package deal with the 300 Mark II and the new lens?

Stuart:

Of course there is, if you come to DVT.

Ed: And it’s not a compromise when you’re dealing with normal daylight?

Stuart: No, not at all.

Of course in normal daylight, you can throw ND filters over the front, you can knock it back by shutting your aperture down, drop the iSO rating down, speed your shutter speed up to correct for that. We can all have cameras where we open the aperture and slow the shutter speed down to get more light into the camera, but of course if things are moving then it’s going to get blurry. This camera can shoot at normal shutter speeds and actually see in the dark. It’s remarkable.

Ed: And it’s not just a still camera, it’s a video camera?

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Stuart:

It’s a digital film camera!

Ed: Okay. I imagine the applications of night shooting are limited, but certainly the applications of low light shooting … there are many more applications where you are in dim light, such as at the show here, where you can use it without external lighting?

Stuart: This camera goes to an iSO rating of 4 million and that’s unheard of in our industry.

So it opens up completely new boundaries of opportunities in terms of cinematic photography.

It’s a remarkable product and whether it’s right for everybody – probably not.

We’ve got other cameras that have got extraordinarily low light capabilities, but this one takes that to the “Nth” degree and it’s incredible.

Ed: But it’s important that it’s still very usable at higher light levels?

Stuart: Absolutely, no problem whatsoever. The fact that you can turn all your lights off and still see an image doesn’t mean that you’d actually do that. You can throw some basic lighting at a scene and get remarkable images, whereas with some of the other cameras that we have, you’d have to throw a lot more light at it.

Ed: And you can make good use of the high dynamic range?

Stuart:

Yes, absolutely, for sure.

Ed: And there are 2 versions of this particular low light camera?

Stuart: There are. There’s the ME20 which can go to 4 million iSO with a price tag of NZ$35K. The second option is the ME200 which is sort of the baby version, which still has very, very good low light ability, and pricing we’re told will be circa NZ$10K. There’s a tool for somebody and at the right price point and look, this camera’s got huge potential for not just our industry, but for others.

Ed: Okay, we’re now looking at a projected image because …?

Stuart: Because it’s a way of looking at high dynamic range content.

This basically means the contrast ratio is dramatically increased; also, along with that is the increase in the colour gamut. So you get much more dramatic colour and there are more colours in the whole video system.

Stuart: So the C300 Mark II, for example, can shoot with 15 stops of dynamic range, which is an indication of how much contrast is available in the camera. But it can also shoot with this wider colour gamut as well. So it can shoot colours that you haven’t seen before on displays – deeper reds, much darker reds for example …

Ed:

Well it looks much more natural, it really does?

Stuart: Well of course our human eyes have been able to see these colours forever. Our display devices haven’t been able to show them to us, so the video signals that we’ve been processing, whether it’s for PAL for high definition, have always had to be constrained to be able to be deliverable on the display devices that we have.

As our display devices have improved, we are now able to open that up to higher contrast ratios and a broader range of colours than we’ve ever been able to see before, and that’s what you’re seeing here on this display.

Ed:

You were saying about HDR?

Stuart: HDR is basically just the lack of compromise. Rather than constraining the colours in the contrast ratios to where our display technology is, as our display technology improves, we can loosen those standards and make them broader. And so HDR literally is really just basically getting close and creating devices that can get closer to what our human eyes can see.

If you go back a few years to the standard definition systems, there were lots of colours that we could not see; and when you go to the high definition video system there’s still a whole range of colours we can’t see.

But now when you go to Ultra HD or 4K, there’s much more of the colour range that we can see and so this display device that we’re looking at here is able to show you much higher dynamic range, much greater contrast in the images, and also a much, much greater colour gamut as well.

Ed: So what are the cameras that Canon make that will allow this range?

C300 Mark II with all the fruitiest fruit.

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Your Production & Post-Production Solution Specialist Now at 400B Great North Rd, Grey Lynn

www.dvt.co.nz Like DVTNZ to stay up-to date with the latest promotions and industry news.

Ed: So I guess really the obvious example of how shooting dynamic range is really valuable, is in a typical New Zealand beach scene?

Stuart: Yes, if you were shooting a beach scene where you were shooting underneath a tree and you had shadows showing up under the tree and you could see across the water to the clouds in the sky, on a normal ENG HD video camera, you would have to choose whether you wanted to see the detail in the clouds and make the tree and everything underneath the tree in the shadows, black; or change the exposure in the camera so that you could see the detail under the tree, but in that case, the sky and all the clouds would go completely white. That’s an example of what a

DVT has Moved We are in Grey Lynn says Stuart Barnaby, at the brand new, improved Auckland premises of DVT. Now for those of you who haven’t been here yet ( they’ve only been here a few weeks ) it’s the old premises of Nutshell, expanded and vastly improved but with the same pool table and coffee machine we know and love.

Ed: Now Stuart, this is a new era for you, you’re finally in the City and you’re finding it very good for your customers?

Stuart: Yes absolutely. We’ve wanted to move into the City for a long time, but it’s trying to find your way through different parameters and find the right premise. That was taking us quite some time to find a place that we could actually come to and still have the space that we need, the security obviously, with the sort of equipment that we have, and also freely available parking for our customers to make it dead easy for them to come in and see us. A lot of City areas are quite compromised with some of those

limited dynamic range would give you.

With the modern 4K cameras that we sell today, you have an expanded dynamic range so that you can retain the detail in the highlights – all the clouds, and sky and stuff, as well as the detail in the shadows under the tree.

Ed:

But in that case, you have to be shooting RAW?

Stuart: In that case, you need to be shooting in a format that supports it, not necessarily RAW, there are other formats as well. So, for example, in the Canon C300 Mark II, you could be shooting Canon C LOG-2 which gives the 15 stops of dynamic range. To find out more on this just come into DVT and see it all in action.

NZVN

factors.

We’re very pleased to have found this wonderful spot right in the heart of Grey Lynn, right in the heart of where many of the production and postproduction companies are that we deal with, so we believe that will allow us to offer a higher level of service to our customers and a greater level of convenience for them to come and see us should they need to.

Ed: And it is good for them to come and see you because you’ve got all these display cabinets and there’s lots of product around here that they can have a look at and find things that perhaps they didn’t think they needed?

Stuart: With part of the move into Grey Lynn, we’re also trying to bring aspects of some of the things that we get to see at NAB back to Auckland and have them on permanent display here at DVT. So whether it‘s talking about high dynamic range and what that means for shooting, editing, grading, VFX and delivery; the same thing with video over IP – another big strong new feature that’s come out recently … how does that work, what does it mean, those sorts of things.

Also just being able to have all the different ranges of cameras, the different lens options, the different tripod options available for customers to be able to come and easily see. It’s going to be exciting.

Ed: Are you having any opening specials?

Stuart: Well after just going to NAB and moving at the same time, we’re grappling to catch up a little bit, but we’ve always got specials on various products from time to time, and the best way to find that out is either check the website out or come on down and see us.

Address: 400 Great North Road – down a driveway currently next to a building site.

Website:

NewTek for DVT

www.dvt.co.nz

NZVN

For DVT, we are looking at the NewTek stand with Stuart Barnaby.

Stuart: Actually the big story with NewTek this year is that they launched at IBC a technology called NDI which stands for Network Device Interface.

Ed: Wow, the TriCaster. Going round the show, you see lots of different companies demonstrating their products by using the TriCaster as a streaming tool, because I guess they see that if you’re going to do this, that’s the tool that you need, and it’s the only tool you need.

Our industry for many, many years has been driven by sending a video signal from a camera to a source of some sort via an HD-SDI or an SDI cable – Serial Digital Interface cable. NewTek have developed a new technology where they can send video sources from one place to another by an ordinary gigabit Ethernet

Page 41

network. So all you need to do is take a video camera and plug a little gadget into the back of it, which a company that we work with called BirdDog, is creating.

It turns the video signal into a network connection and that goes onto your network. And then you can plug multiple of these into all of your video cameras and they all appear on the network to anything that you plug into the network, like your laptop, etc.

Also, you can take any system on the network and play video clips back; you can take any system on the network and open an application that generates test patterns; you can take anything on the network that will take your computer screen and present that to the network. So basically, anything that you can see on a screen will present itself on the network.

Ed: Now the network – does it have to be a closed network just around your office or facility, or how far away from the TriCaster base can you be?

Stuart: At this stage, you would want to have it as a local area network, so a simple LAN as they call it.

There are ways of extending that remotely, which are relatively straightforward to do with a wide area network and as long as you’ve got the bandwidth in place to deal with that, it can happen. So what they do is basically take a full uncompressed HD signal and convert it into something that’s around about 100 megabits per second.

That means, on a gigabit Ethernet network, you can send 10 of these full HD, full framerate streams across that network, and they have written applications that will allow you to convert those streams from one format to another, to record those streams, to play back those streams and to deal with them in multiple ways.

Buddies - or mutual support!

DeckLink card and convert it into an NDI source on the network. DeckLink also do a Quad card, so you could take 4 SDI sources into a computer and expose all of those on your network as NDI sources. It can also take NDI sources elsewhere and convert them to SDI outputs that you can plug into your existing SDI infrastructure.

Ed: But at the same time, can you take SDI and the NDI inputs into your TriCaster?

Stuart: Yes you can. The TriCaster supports SDI and NDI sources and it doesn’t care what you choose.

In fact, if you want to in a TriCaster, if you’re not using

The biggest thing at the show this year has been about the delivery of video content over network protocols and there are multiple ones that have popped up.

There’s the Aspen faction, SMPTE 2022, IP Live, there’s a whole bunch of different ways of doing it, the NewTek NDI is just one of them. But NewTek have come up with a bit of software called NDI Connect which allows them to take their protocol and bridge it to everybody else’s in both directions. So if you move forward in time and want to set up a SMPTE 2022 protocol for other parts of your applications, this NDI Connect software product that runs on a computer will convert it immediately from SMPTE 2022 into NDI to your existing network, or vice versa. It is a game changer in our industry for sure.

Ed: If you already have an SDI system in place or the infrastructure, the cabling, can you mix and match.

Can you have some SDI and some NDI? Stuart: Absolutely. The NewTek NDI Connect for example, will allow you to put a DeckLink card into a computer, take that SDI source that comes into the Page 42

the SDI inputs, you can make every single input to the TriCaster an NDI source on your network, which could be a test pattern generator running on your laptop; it could be something coming from their NDI Connect product with a DeckLink card in it with an SDI input; it could be a scan converter of a computer screen; it could be the output from another TriCaster somewhere else on the network … absolutely anything.

Ed: So I guess also it doesn’t care about the frame size or the framerate … if it’s a video signal you can feed in anything and you can handle it?

Stuart: The NDI technology is framerate and frame size independent. It doesn’t care. So whether you’re running 720 50p, or 1080 50i you can send all of those sources over the network and TriCaster can read all of those sources and do vision mixing etc and output it.

But most importantly of course, is this NDI standard is open.

NewTek have delivered this as a software development kit that other vendors can access and there’s been over 400 other vendors that have embraced this NDI technology.

Although it’s not perhaps for national broadcasters that will want to look at SMPTE 2022 or Aspen, for the rest of the world the technology that is available with NDI with NewTek is fully functional across the board today. Everything you could imagine you would ever want to do with this technology is available today with NDI. Also, the NDI SDK is fully compatible with many of the other standards, so if a software developer gets NDI and implements that in their system, it is automatically compatible with SMPTE 2022 for example.

Ed: So for anybody setting up a studio, basically the cost of cabling it has come down dramatically, and for anybody who’s setting up a concert or a sporting event, again the whole cabling issue is totally minimal?

Stuart: Absolutely. All you’ve got to do now is just plug your cameras into the network, plug your monitors into the network …

Ed:

Can you use a wireless network?

Stuart: Not really. There are ways you could do it wireless but it’s a bit more complex. It’s definitely a wired network – you plug all your monitors into the network, you plug all your sources into the network and you plug your vision mixers into the network, your graphics machines into the network and all those things that need to manipulate the images can see all of them; and all the monitors can see all of the sources, whether it’s the output of the vision mixer, or the output of the graphics card, or a monitor, you can switch and control all of them completely independently. It produces remarkable flexibility into those applications that we’ve never seen before.

Stuart: We are the experts in NDI technology. We understand how it works, we have it fully on display at DVT, we’re looking at implementing this across the board for a wide range of our customers.

It’s extraordinarily exciting to be able to see every single video source on any system. In fact, in an organisation that’s got all these video sources on their network, anybody on a computer can open up a screen and look at all of the sources or any one of the sources on their computer. It’s remarkable … and that’s with no SDI cables going to their computer whatsoever. This is extraordinary technology, it’s a game changer, we understand it and we’re here to help you implement it.

Ed: You say that this solution can be totally independent of a TriCaster, so you don’t have to have a TriCaster to use this NDI solution from NewTek? Stuart: Absolutely.

The NDI technology that NewTek has released is completely free and open, so anybody can implement it. For example, if you’ve got a computer with a Blackmagic card in it, or an AJA card or a Matrox card, if you install NDI on that computer, the video inputs of those cards become NDI sources on the computer network, and the video outputs of those cards become NDI destinations on that network. So if you had 3 computers for example, with DeckLink cards in, you’d have 3 inputs and 3 outputs on a network. It’s just that simple and you can install free software to make all of that happen.

Ed: But it’s an ideal adjunct to a TriCaster because it gives you all of those options of inputs?

Stuart: The TriCaster is one example of a piece of software literally that will allow you to switch those 3 inputs to those 3 outputs and do vision mixing – fades, dissolves, wipes, keying, add graphics, etc.

But it doesn’t have to be a TriCaster. For example there’s a very low cost VJ Software called vMix which supports NDI, so you can open up vMix on your system and see those sources, do some basic switching and output it to one of those destinations. And there’s over 400 vendors that have implemented support for this.

NewTek have released this technology and made it freely available, but you could implement a system that’s got nothing to do with NewTek hardware at all.

It’s remarkable, and it’s all on display at DVT today so NZVN come on down and have a look at it all in action.

SDI is basically one single cable that only goes from ONE single source to ONE single destination. This technology is one source to every single destination, and every single destination can see every single source. This is unheard of in our industry, it’s a game changer and it will change the way we do video production in the future.

Ed:

And it’s available at DVT?

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Avid for Atomise For Atomise, we are at Avid with Ren Middleton.

Ed: Ren, I get the impression that Avid continues to improve and to provide new services to its customers worldwide and, in New Zealand now, you’ve pretty well got the market in the broadcast News area cornered?

Ren: We’ve done very well. The partnership between Atomise and Avid has been terrific and we’re kinda cleaning up the market slowly but surely down there.

Ed: In a good way?

Ren: In a very good way. We’ve got some really good projects going on in New Zealand, particularly in News, and some very sophisticated workflows, and I think the good thing is that all of the things that we’ve been developing over the last few years are really coming together now. At NAB, we’re able to show some of those developments to our customers from New Zealand, so they can see that it’s not just talk – we’re actually acting on what we promised.

Ed: I think in the past, you seriously did have competitors, but nowadays, I think your horse has actually bolted and has crossed that finish line?

Ren: I think certainly in the traditional production space we’ve always been incredibly strong. In News in Australia and New Zealand we’ve been weaker. We haven’t been in that market, but I think now people are understanding what we can offer and the sophistication of our workflow, and also the simplicity of some of our toolsets which gives incredible power in quite a simple interface for a lot of the users. But it’s the integration of a lot of systems under one roof that makes things nice – sophisticated workflows, simple to use.

Ed: And talking of simplicity, in the storage area, you’ve taken 4 into 1?

Ren: Yes we have. We’ve previously had 4 different storage systems – ISIS | 5500, 7000 series, 2000 series, 1000 series …

Ed: Were there any customer comments about that?

Ren: No, because they were fit for purpose, for what they did and had different forms of redundancy. They were called “ISIS” – so now we’ve changed the name, ( which I think is a very good thing ), to Nexis, which is “next generation intelligent storage”. We’ve combined the capability of all of the previous storage that we had into one hardware item.

Now that hardware is optionable – you can get very big word groups, very high redundancy for mission-critical projects, or you can buy very cheap – like the product now is cheaper than our previous cheapest product and even the high end customers are going to save a lot of money moving down the track. Now that’s not saying that we’re going to give up on our old storage; we’ll still continue to sell that for a period and we’ll still continue to support it to provide upgrades for at least 5 years once we’ve called end of sale dates on it.

Ed:

Ren trying his hand at presenting.

Ren: Yes, MediaCentral is big in New Zealand. We’ve done a lot of development with that and we’re showing some previews of development at the moment, particularly from a News point of view. Soon we’ll have the capability to assign News stories via an assignment sort of module if you like. Previously, you weren’t able to assign resources in a terribly sophisticated way within the iNews, MediaCentral portion of the product.

Now you can and that’s growing thick and fast. The reason we’re doing this is that now stories are not just about going to air on a single bulletin so we’re really

Can you mix and match?

Ren: You can actually and this is very clever. If you have existing storage and if you have some new storage with the ISIS file system and our new Nexis Client, you can actually connect to 2 storage groups. So you can have both storage systems running side by side, yes.

Ed: Excellent – and in the MediaCentral area?

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focused on StoryCentric workflows.

Through the assignments tab, you’re working on a story, but then you may nominate “well that may need to go to social media, that may need to go to these bulletins, those bulletins, that needs to go to Twitter” so it just gives you a way to control the story and then you can position that story into whichever outlet it needs to go.

It may go into the rundown for your 6pm show, it might go to social media.

Ed: So really, it’s improving the whole workflow in an operational sense?

Ren: In an operational sense for the people on the ground floor, it helps them. It helps your producers, it helps your people on the assignment desk, it’s good, but it’s all in the same interface.

Ed: So is this an upgrade, is it just a firmware upgrade, or is it a new product?

Ren: No, its part of MediaCentral, which is effectively Avid’s window into the media world, so it will just be a future upgrade to that MediaCentral platform.

Ed: And talking about “future” you continue to grow the number of partners that you share nicely with?

Ren: The openness story with Avid continues. We’ve got our connectivity toolkit which we use internally when we’re connecting all of our systems together through the platform. We give all those APIs and that connectivity toolkit out to third parties. Here we’re showing a lot more third party integrations into the platform – things like XMedia which aggregates a whole lot of social media.

In the News room, you can be seeing all the trends from various sorts of social media; that’s integrated into MediaCentral, so for a journalist or a producer or an editor, they can see what’s happening around the world and what’s trending in the same desktop as they’re working in building their daily rundown and writing their News stories and even editing. So there’s things like that – we’re showing a lot more third party integration here on MediaCentral.

Ed: But you surely don’t give these APIs to anybody who asks for them … if you got somebody from the back streets of Guangzhou asking for your APIs, would you hand them over?

Ren: There is a strict certification process which is important because we’ll be taking the frontline support calls on these integrations. We do have a rigorous control system through it but, if we can integrate with some key other vendors, it just makes sense; it’s better for the customer.

Ed: As long as that integration enhances the customer’s operations?

Ren: That’s right – and that’s really what we’re focusing on. We’ve already got about 50 integrations, there is a line-up spanning about 2 years at the moment of people who want to get certified on the platform.

Ed: Now something new that I haven’t seen at an Avid booth before, is a virtual set with big spikey things on the end of booms and so on. What’s going on here Ren? Ren: This was all part of the RAD acquisition last year.

Now they’re fully embedded, they’re part of Avid, but they have some outstanding products. So what you saw was some virtual sets and we’re one of the worldwide leaders in this technology – incredibly clever and you’ll see it in our region very, very soon on a couple of exciting projects that we’re working on. It’s very sophisticated technology but it’s not just virtual sets.

We have a whole range of products from the RAD graphics range including PowerWalls and TD Control which embellishes the look of a studio. We’re feeding multiple monitors within the studio, or stadiums, and it incorporates graphics as well. It can be the relevant perspective depending on where your camera is positioned. It’s very, very clever technology. We also have replay servers, fast turnaround replay servers – lots of exciting stuff from graphics.

Ed: Is anything of this coming down into Media Composer – the improvements in the graphics engine there?

Ren: There already is … there are plug-ins to Media Composer already, of graphics of the former RAD, now Avid graphics, so yes. Now if the graphics are going to be embedded as part of the standard package of Media Composer, I don’t know, but there’s certainly some very clever plug-ins from RAD from the graphics range that go into Media Composer.

Ed: So the RAD input into Avid is not really something that an independent producer would have any part of … it’s purely a News enhancement?

Ren: It’s not a title tool within Media Composer if you like – it’s a journalist’s tool. Let’s take a News workflow once again – you can open up a template within Media Composer, you can write all of your title information – you know lower third, or full screen graphics – and that can automatically be triggered when that story’s played out on air.

Ed: Got it. Now Ren, I’ll give you a scenario here.

You’ve got a production house that maybe has 4 seats of Media Composer, that has grown from 1 to 4, what’s their next step? What’s the next thing that Avid could do to assist them to make things work a lot better for them?

Ren: I think the first step is putting in some shared storage from our new Nexis range, which is affordable, and that gives them collaborative workflows and the enablement to work on the same piece of media in multiple edit suites. It saves a lot of the “sneaker-net”.

Now the next thing that they can add is MediaCentral on

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MOG Technologies for Atomise For Atomise, we’re here at MOG Technologies with Nuno Magalhaes.

Ed: Now Nuno, we are here at the MOG stand and all around me I see these big letters “SKYWATCH.” Now this is not something out of Terminator, this is something that MOG has developed that is really quite unique I understand?

Nuno: Exactly, it’s going to be something for our customers who look at MOG as an ingest supplier or an MXF tool supplier. This will be a different approach, because it will sit on top of the ingest systems, it will overlook all the production environment, not only MOG systems but everything from storage, everything from cameras. We are looking at a production environment starting from a card that is ingested from an independent system – it doesn’t need to be MOG – and we’re going to report back to you the status of that media, where it is in the production chain, so if it is on the editing system who is working with that media on the editing system, how long did he take to process that media. Those elements will be reported back to you in terms of an analysis that you can perform to provide you with vital information of resources that you’re using internally on your News stations, or network stations let’s say, the TV stations overall. This is independent of localisation, so you can work directly let’s say here in the United Stated in L.A, but you can monitor everything that is being done in Las Vegas.

Ed:

And nobody’s doing this already?

Nuno: There are some approaches in this segment, like Vizrt in some segments, but this is aggregating the knowledge that we have from several technological partners that we work with directly. It’s something of a new approach that will benefit all the broadcasters and the major broadcasters, because they can have an overlook directly of all the production environment – studios, live events that you’re doing.

They can contemplate the costs of making a new live event, getting information from previous or past events that they had, because the system itself will project the costs of a new event. So this is a big data approach.

Ed:

Well that’s pretty impressive?

Nuno: Yes. Besides, this is totally customisable and uniquely focused on the customer. So it will be targeted for a specific customer, who will have his specific needs that will need the specific reports to then report back to the administration in an efficient way, without losing too much time trying to gather all the information from all the different departments, all the different systems, so everything will be centralised in one single platform.

Ed: So would you call this a business management tool?

Nuno: Yes, it’s pretty much a business management tool, but it aggregates more than that, because you’re able to monitor, you’re able to control all the resources that you have available. If you want to be ingesting for your own also, you can ingest through the system. You can see what systems are not running, are not responding and it can talk to someone to go to handle those systems to try and understand what’s happening to them, why they are offline, why they are not working, which services are not responding – a lot of things.

Nuno has his eye out for you.

Ed: Now my question here is, for a large organisation that has already a MOG system installed for whatever purposes, but is mainly an Avid environment, how is this going to affect it. Is it going to change the way Avid works in any way in that environment?

Nuno: It will complement Avid’s efficiency that you already have on the workflow. It will not disrupt anything that you already have because, as I mentioned earlier, it’s on top, only knowing each step of the production chain. So it will not mess with the Avid environment; it will only gather feedback directly from Avid’s module different platform from the MAM system, from the storage. So it will collect information from Avid that will report back to the top management layer in terms of for you to know directly what resources are being used or in what point of them the media is eventually being worked on, if it’s already been processed, if it’s already been rendered, how long it took …

Ed: So it’s really something that management is going to look at, rather than the operational people.

This is not an operational tool?

Nuno: Not an operational tool, you’re not going to put a finger let’s say directly on Avid.

Ed: Or in fact, on the traditional MOG tools that are in that facility, so the operational arrangements, environment, will continue as it was …?

Nuno: As it is, so we will have MOG ingesting the media, checking in media into Interplay, into the MAM … from the MAM it will go directly to the editing system

Page 50

this is something that we are side by side working with the SKYWATCH platform. So everything will come to an end that we can provide an overall solution, but it’s not going to be aimed directly for customers. This will already be in the ingest system because we’re also of course working on our tools in parallel with other projects.

Ed: And of course in that area the Cloud plays a very large part. Have you come to any agreements with Cloud service providers?

and the editor will do his rough cuts, he will do his renders, he will deliver the media elsewhere and eventually we’ll be only overlooking of what’s the status of that media and who was working on that media, just to report back. We will not touch anything operational.

Ed: Well I’m sure that will keep the operational people happy.

Nuno: Yes it will, because we’re not messing with their jobs, we are easing up their tasks.

Ed: Okay, are there any operational side of MOG?

changes

then

in

the

Nuno: This platform is able to be customised as I mentioned earlier, so you can use what MOG already has, but as you know we are a company oriented to provide services in development. So we can customise even our solution independently to perform other tasks that are aside from the ingest systems, or to complement it that you have multi-viewer capabilities – you can see feeds coming from anywhere in the world directly in one single browser.

Ed: Is this all new in 2016 – are there any improvements in the codecs that you can work with or your systems?

Nuno: Let’s see … in terms of MOG’s ingest solutions, the improvements are constantly happening, so we’ll be moving on to new codecs implementation, and besides the new codecs implementation, we will be also including the support for IP in the near future. So

Nuno: Yes, MOG has its own Cloud service that’s right now implemented.

We have an agreement with Level 3 which provides their CDNs and the content and change networks that they commonly use.

So we’ll be aggregating value to the ingest, working directly with the Cloud. We have a platform which is the WXtream which records directly to the Cloud, it prepares VOD content direct into the Cloud.

The Cloud itself since it’s Level 3 managed, it has its own security built-in because it’s a trustworthy platform overall, so very well known. It’s very similar to Akamai but with a larger brother approach let’s say, in terms of market.

We have a point of presence directly in Portugal, so we are the sole representatives in Portugal for Level 3.

MOG is the only one that works directly with Level 3 in Portugal. So this will be a huge step for us, because we will be working in virtualised environments any time soon and the Cloud will be a way to start complementing our solutions to the new technologies that come ahead.

Ed: In terms of SKYWATCH and the predictive nature of this software that allows the customer to work out in advance what the next concert of production is going to cost, I assume that this is an iterative approach – maybe on the first one it’s not going to be quite right, the second one it’s going to be a bit better and, as time goes on, it will learn more and more how you do things and what the costs are likely to be, so it gets more accurate as time goes on?

Nuno: You put that well, that’s exactly what it’s going to be doing. It’s meant to be looking at the costs associated for each production that you’ve made, what you used in a previous production, and it will tell you basically if you already have that equipment, you probably won’t need to buy anything. If the equipment is in use and you need to make a new production and contemplate new costs, it will tell you from previous learnings, the system was gathering up until now, and provide you with the relevant information for you to know how many units you will be needing of cameras, of cards, of storage that will be needed for that specific content. So it self-learns and provides you with that information. It might not be at the first stage extremely accurate, but it will give you a rough estimate of probably what you’re going to be NZVN needing, based on what you have.

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ARRI Lighting I’m here at ARRI with Stefan Sedlmeier from ARRI Australia / New Zealand and he’s going to give me a book to take home, to read on the plane, but in the meantime, we’re here in the lighting section of ARRI, and there’s big ones, little ones, but they’re all the same colour – silver and blue.

Ed:

Do you like the colours Stefan?

Stefan: I love the colours. It’s important to be colourful and bright and precise in terms of lighting.

Ed:

And everybody knows it’s yours?

Stefan: I assume so. First of all, welcome to NAB 2016, which is personally my 20th NAB this year – 21st time in Las Vegas …

Ed: And you’re loving every minute of it aren’t you, I can tell?

Stefan: Every second. It’s good to meet all our customers, the visitors from Australia and New Zealand, here in the central hall at the ARRI booth.

Ed:

And we’re looking at a big SkyPanel?

Stefan: We have a variety of HMI, Tungsten and LED fixtures and the SkyPanel is the latest addition to the range of LED lighting.

There are 4 different versions of the SkyPanel, 2 different form factors and 2 different technologies, so the controllable LED and the remote phosphor, which is also driven by LEDs but with a phosphor plate instead.

Ed:

So, why is that important?

Stefan: Okay, let’s talk a little bit about SkyPanel of which we have shipped more than 10,000 units worldwide since it was launched. The manufacturing output is currently about 500 units a week and we sell them in large numbers to TV studios, broadcasters and rental houses … a lot of SkyPanels have been used in Wellington, New Zealand for Ghost in the Shell – I think they are using 120 SkyPanels on set and they don’t want to use anything else.

Ed: Do you know why they chose them? they’re not the cheapest panel?

I mean,

Stefan: They’re not the cheapest panel, but they’re remote controllable in terms of dimming, colour temperature, you don’t need any gels, you don’t need

Stefan with ARRI’s SkyPanel.

to change any lighting fixture if you want to change from daylight to tungsten or vice versa.

It’s all programmable, remote controllable.

Ed: Okay, but that’s nothing special. manufacturers offer those features too?

Stefan:

Other

Then I would say it’s probably the best colour rendering index on the market, and the brightest panel available.

I would always recommend a customer to judge the quality of an LED fixture through their camera. Use an electronic imaging sensor – it can be a DSLR, it can be a motion picture camera, electronic camera, and look at the monitor or through the digital viewfinder. This is how the camera sees colour; the human eye tends to compensate for colour errors, but when you shoot, you represent a person, their skin tones, and the skin tones have to be natural and look authentic. Also, when you do overor under-exposure and the person is looking around, the lighting situation is changing, and then it’s also less trouble for anybody in post. So they allow for good exposure as well from the lighting side, and good capture from the camera side.

Ed: You’re sounding more and more like Chris McKenzie?

Stefan: I like Chris, he’s a good customer of ours.

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Ed:

Okay, and?

Stefan: We always listen to the market, and what makes a product strong is to really accommodate customer feedback.

So there is an improvement in the low end mode, which means better dimming down to zero, so especially coming up from zero with neutral colours. This is quite sophisticated for any kind of LED fixture.

Ed: So it’s not staged, there aren’t steps that you could see as the dimming changes; it’s a very smooth dim?

Ed: But you’re talking from the same page. That’s exactly what Chris says – you have to see what the camera sees and not what your eyes see?

Stefan: This is correct, because in the end, we are in the motion picture industry, we’re doing image capturing, high frame rate. Or for a stills photographer, this would be with a DSLR to capture stills. But it’s still to be captured for any kind of representation or distribution, be it on TV, in a print magazine, by advertisement, on a panel, and the colours have to be right.

Ed: I have to butt in here, because it’s not only the colours of the skin tone. You’ve got the person in the foreground and you’ve got to get the skin tone right, but at the same time, you’ve got to have the background in a sensible colour?

Stefan: The entire scene, if there is nature in the background, with trees and leaves and grass – you know that and you have a certain expectation what colour grass is and what colour the sky might be.

Ed: Unless it’s some sort of Bergman movie, then you can have any colour in the background you like.

Stefan: Yes Grant, I know what you mean. Okay, so what is really new is a new feature set for the SkyPanels in terms of controllability, filter emulation for industry standard gels, an improved low end mode …

Ed: Hang on, what do you mean by “filter emulation” – you mean you don’t actually need those gels or what?

Stefan: Correct, you can dial in the gels digitally via DMX – basically preselect the gel for industry standard filters and it is an accurate representation as if you would put a gel up in the rig, but without climbing up into the rig, or bringing the rig down, or using a cherrypicker or whatever.

It’s remote controllable to be dialled in via the DMX; we disclose all the code values and every programmer can basically create his own looks by using the preset industry standard filters. So it is important for us to speak the language of the gaffers and it’s not about DMX values, it’s about what kind of filter do I use … do I use a quarter blue so and so, I use this, I use that, I use a cosmetic so and so, and the characteristics of these filter types and densities can now be selected digitally and pre-programmed on any control panel with the new software version 2 on the SkyPanel.

Ed: So in fact, if you bought an earlier SkyPanel, it’s just a firmware upgrade?

Stefan: It’s a firmware upgrade, which you can do via PC or USB stick and it’s free of charge for version 2.

Stefan: Correct and this is especially important for theatres as they tend to really fade down to black without steps or coming from the dark dimming up without steps. You could do this very nicely with tungsten with the pre-glow and then just ramp it up, and now we can do this with the SkyPanel as well – it’s called Low End Mode. As we just mentioned about tungsten, there’s now also a tungsten mode on the SkyPanel, where the colour temperature emulates the characteristics of a tungsten fixture, of a tungsten globe, like in a theatre environment they have the warm colour when the light is coming up from black and then it gets towards the natural tungsten colour temperature of 3200K once the light is really lit.

Ed: That sounds really amazing actually, that you can programme an LED to look like tungsten?

Stefan: Correct, this is the goal. Then you have also more engineering features like ARCNET implementation, remote device management (RDM) implementation, variable dimming curves, remote fan control – the fixtures have very silent fans but sometimes it may be necessary for a certain film shoot to turn the fans off for 8-10 minutes and turn them on later, and you can do this now by remote for the entire ceiling. Afterwards, the cooling will continue and the fans resume working.

Ed: Is there a failsafe in there in case the gaffer forgets to turn the fans back on?

Stefan: Yes, there is a two-stage failsafe with first a warning and later …

Ed:

What – sirens go off do they?

Stefan: Nothing so dramatic.

There is a temperature cut-out as a failsafe. But it’s also built-in in a way … the fixture will always protect itself, so if you forget to turn the fan on manually, it will automatically start ramping up very slow, very quiet, to avoid turning the light off. So it will rather continue to have some air circulation to keep the electronics cool, to keep the light going. Similar to our cameras – they really never turn off, they rather start melting, but they will always roll.

Ed: It sounds as though your SkyPanel is getting very sophisticated, there’s now a lot of software control to give a huge variety of light available for a shoot. Could you, in the future perhaps even emulate candlelight?

Stefan: I think you can emulate candlelight … this is a way of programming the brightness of the light and pulsing it or whatever control you use on a DMX controller. It may be possible, but you can also write your own scripts on a lighting control panel, because we offer the entire palette to really control the light remotely in terms of brightness, curves for dimming, colour temperature, in any way in DMX control values.

However you want to run the fixture, we are with you and we are also disclosing all the control values in the DMX protocol.

Page 53

Ed: So you could even hook it up to your beatbox or whatever, and have the lights pulsing to a bit of techno music?

Stefan: Exactly. You see the ceiling here … these are 49 controlled SkyPanels. You can even play a one layer video and they will represent the characteristic of the picture. It’s difficult because I’m not a gaffer, but you can show patterns – anything – you can make this like a rotating fan, anything. Now it’s just static blue but all day they have running patterns up there, so it changes all day. Yesterday I had a chat to the guy behind the booth as to how he did it, and he said many scripts and they can upload a JPEG or whatever, or a video and just emulate the ceiling to represent that on a very large scale. I would like to make one comment about software, firmware, hardware and updates. The main important thing is to keep it simple and robust, so we try not to over-engineer anything so it is still a work tool, robust on set and built for harsh conditions.

Ed:

That’s pretty hard for Germans?

Stefan: No it’s the same recipe of success with the cameras. We are quite realistic. Camera-wise, we have about 3 software updates a year – they are major updates, well tested, announced, pre-released for Beta and then launched to the market. The same should be for lighting, so there’s no rush to have another software update, it will be a major step, but reliability and robustness is the main important thing for us, because it’s a lighting fixture we have to count on.

Stefan: The ARRI L range consisting of L5, L7 and L10 – this range has also been extended, so there are new versions of the L10 for example … there is a daylight tuneable (DT) and a tungsten tuneable (TT) now available as well, which is a better price point without the possibility to have the entire colour palette tuneable. So let’s say for a theatre who say “we need tungsten but tuneable” or for a studio who say “we need daylight but tuneable but we don’t want the more expensive version like the L10-C” they can now choose like say an L10-TT or an L10-DT. Ed: Okay, but the software developments that you can put into the SkyPanels are not appropriate to put into the L series?

Stefan: It’s probably not necessary; the L series are quite advanced already. They have been developed and they have been launched to the market some years ago. SkyPanel is a different platform internally in terms of processing power, but there are also other factors …

SkyPanels can run off battery, you can run them on Ethernet or I should say ARCNET, so a certain base like an Ethernet Network Protocol. The L series is more USB based for upgrades and diagnostics. The SkyPanel is more integratable in terms of remote control.

Ed: So all of this technology is really only in the SkyPanel range – this is not right across the ARRI L range for example?

Big lights, big grid.

Ed: Now of course, we do associate ARRI with big lights and there are some huge HMIs; there are your SkyPanels and your L series – they’re all big, big, big lights.

There’s no move that you know of for ARRI to go into the smaller onboard lights, the camera lights?

Stefan: Currently not. We’re really focusing on the large lights which also need to be supplied in large Page 54

quantities. But on the other hand, we are also open to cooperation and leaving other manufacturers room to allow for packages, and I think this makes ARRI unique.

We don’t try to dictate the market – we can’t dance every dance floor and we’re focusing on our core competence, which is motion picture film lighting. I’m happy to see a lot of other manufacturers on our booth at NAB for any kind of accessory and the suppliers for lighting, as well as for camera products and lenses. I think this is also how I run our operation in Australia / New Zealand – that we always partner with other manufacturers and companies, because this is what makes a team. For the end customer, it’s a matter of choice anyway. We may contribute the light or the camera, but then there may be a different manufacturer for a lens, like Canon, or Fujinon, or for a lighting control system or a certain rig or batteries for example,

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and we are always open, we disclose the interfaces, we work with a lot of third party manufacturers.

On Monday evening, we had our partner programme here on the booth. This was just last night, we’re all industry partners, so third party companies contributing to development were invited onto the booth and I think this is also a philosophy to be open platform in terms of technology, but also in terms of marketing.

Ed:

It’s a good way to be – sharing?

Stefan: Yes I really live it like that; I also worked for different companies in the past and it’s always good to see the big picture and on set all companies meet anyway and it’s always about the benefit of the end customer, the owner / operator, the user, the rental house, that all systems work together without any NZVN flaws.

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