NOVEMBER 2014
ARRI Lighting for PLS To complete our IBC 2014 coverage, the first place we visit is the ARRI lighting stand where we find Mike Wagner. Ed: That’s a German name, but you’re actually from Burbank, California?
Vol 208
Mike: That’s right, I’m the lighting product manager for ARRI and we have a bunch of things to talk about today. Ed: Excellent. Now we don’t want to start with LED, we want to start with something big but actually a product that ARRI’s not making itself, but you liked it so
much, you decided to have an alliance with the company, and that’s a motorised control unit? Mike: That’s right, yes. It’s a product called the BigBee and it’s a universal motorised yoke meaning that it can handle anything from our M18 sized fixture, which is a relatively small fixture, all the way up to the ARRIMAX fixture, which is a very large fixture – so 1800 Watt to 18,000 Watt and everything in between. It means that a rental house could buy just a few of these and use them for all of the fixtures that they have, instead of as before, you might have just been able to use it for one or two fixtures. So it has full control over the pan and tilt of the fixture and you can even control the focus of the fixture all remotely – either through DMX or through a Licht-Technik box. Licht-Technik is the manufacturer and we’re partnering with them on this product and ARRI is going to be selling it exclusively through our sales channels. Ed: So you don’t have to mount this in a studio, you can actually mount this outdoors as well?
Mike Wagner.
Mike: Absolutely, in fact a lot of our customers will get lifts of some kind, cranes, and they’ll mount two of these on the crane and the great thing about that is they can bring the crane up to height and no longer do they have to have a man in the box in case they need to adjust something. So you would typically lose some manpower by someone having to sit up in the crane, and if you need to add diffusion or move the light a little bit left or right or focus it slightly differently, that’s what he would be up there to do. Now you can have all of the labour on the ground, which is much more useful, and control everything remotely when it’s a few metres or tens of metres up in the air. So again, trying to make people’s lives on set easier and faster to do things. Ed: But I imagine, in a large studio, it would be ideal, because once you’ve stuck it up there, you don’t have to revisit it? Mike: Precisely, yes. On one movie, The Life of Pi – they shot a lot indoors, in a big pool and they used I believe, six ARRIMAXs all on these motorised yokes and they were able to control them and aim them however they wanted and basically recreate the sun inside with six of these very, very powerful lights, and had everything remote control automated. That’s the other thing that you could do with it if you’re doing motion control or a shot that’s very special effects heavy, you can have very precise control over how the light is positioned all remotely, or through a computer if you like to do it that way as well. Ed:
I was going to ask if you can you track?
Mike: Yes absolutely. They have motors in there that, if I remember correctly, have 0.3 degree accuracy, which is pretty good and you could make a cue and make a programme, hit the “go” button and it does its thing. Ed: Fantastic. Right, now down to the ARRI lights themselves and these M series have been around for quite some time. There’s the new M8 which was released as you say about a year ago, it’s still very popular, people are still interested in HMI lights?
The BigBee motorised yoke.
Mike: They are extremely popular; in fact our business is growing in the HMIs. We started back in 2006 with open face, reflector-based HMIs ( without Fresnel lens ), which are very efficient. The first one was the ARRIMAX, the big gun, and since then we’ve released the M18, the M40, the M90 was the second newest one, and now the brand new one which was released about a year ago is the M8 and that’s been very successful as well. So people are still using the big lights, they’re still using HMIs because they need the output. You know, when you are competing with the sun, you really still do Page 2
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need the big guns and that’s where the M series comes into play. They’re extremely efficient, extremely powerful lights, very easy to set up, very easy to use on set. You don’t have to lug around the big heavy box of lenses any more like you did with Pars. Ed:
Because it’s got that really clever ARRI reflector?
Mike: Right, so the MAX technology reflector is what we call it. That’s really the magic behind it. It takes all of the light and pushes it forward so you get maximum efficiency out of the bulb and again you’re able to focus it, so you go from spot to flood just by turning a knob where again, as before, you had to do that with lenses.
Ed:
Is there a place for an L3?
Mike: You know, we’ll definitely look into it. We’re actually working on a larger version at the moment, so we’re going to go the other way first. It all depends on what our customers ask us for to be honest. We listen very closely to our customers, we try to stay very close to them, so if they’re asking for smaller units we could certainly deliver it, but to be honest, most of our customers are asking for brighter and so we’re working on a larger version and hopefully we’ll be releasing that very soon. Ed: But in the smaller area there is a little soft box I notice?
Ed: Okay, so there still is a place for lots of light, but more and more the requirement is for a better quality of light. In the smaller lights, you don’t necessarily want lots, you just want to have lighting in the right position and a lighting balance with natural lighting. In that area, you’ve had advancements in the LED fixtures? Mike: Yes that’s correct. The exciting thing is that there’s so much production nowadays, whether it be big productions or small productions and so the tool bag has grown. Now people can pick the tools that are appropriate for what they’re doing. That’s where the LEDs come into play I think, where you’re able to increase that versatility of the fixture that you’re using. Really, all ARRI LED technology is based off of tenability; that we can tune the colour temperature, tune the green-magenta point, adjust the vivid colour if you have a four colour model, so you’re able to do these things very, very quickly just by turning a knob. We started off with our L7 which is an LED Fresnel. The goal was to try to mimic tungsten Fresnels as closely as possible, to get the colour rendition that people are used to, to get the beam field that people are used to, to be able to spot in front of the light, to be able to have one crisp shadow like you do with a regular Fresnel. That’s what we tried to focus on and we think we’ve done a very good job. It’s been a very successful product for us. TV studios love them. We’re starting to see them be accepted into the motion picture industry as well, but that ability to tune the colour temperature or change it very quickly allows our customers to kind of have more creative freedom in a much shorter period of time. At NAB, we released a new version of the L series called the L5, so it’s a smaller model. It still has all the same great features – you’re able to tune the light, change the colour temperature in a much smaller package. It’s actually half the size and weight of the L7. We’ve even added a couple of additional features including an onboard battery input so that you can use industry standard batteries, and now you have an extremely mobile solution with amazing quality light. It’s not like other LED lights maybe, where you have to sacrifice the quality of light in order to have that portability; with the L5 you still get a true Fresnel quality, beautiful beam, beautiful colour rendition and it’s portable – you don’t have to worry about AC power if you don’t want to.
Mike: That’s true. It’s called the Caster – we have two products actually, the LoCaster and the BroadCaster. The LoCaster has controls on the unit while the BroadCaster is mainly made for using in
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Lots more from IBC 2014 plus a new face at Face TV p34. Page 4
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remote situations through DMX – it’s got power DMX onboard. So the Caster is a very small compact soft light; it’s really great for doing some extra fill or some accent lighting or if you’re in a small interview setup, you could use a couple of them and light the whole scene with them. They have a very even soft beam of light and that is again keeping on that theme of tunability, we’re able to tune the colour temperature of that fixture as well. So you’re able to adjust the colour temperature from 2800 to 6500 Kelvin, green-magenta point and of course all of these are fully dimmable from zero to 100%. Ed:
And they are LED based?
Mike: They’re all LED based that’s right. Different colour LEDs gives us the ability to really fine tune the colour and that one has actually just gone through an upgrade, so we’re calling it the Caster 2 Plus series. It’s 35% brighter than the previous model which is very significant. It gives our customers that little bit of extra brightness for the more strenuous applications when maybe they have to put the light a little bit further away when they’re not able to shoot wide open on their lens – they might have to close down the lens for focus reasons or something like that. Again, it just gives them that little bit of extra boost. Ed: And ARRI’s not ready to go plasma yet – you have some reservations? Mike: Well, we’ve looked into it. You know, the HMI technology is so available and there are many bulbs, there are many manufacturers, there are a couple of limitations with plasma that we found. From the research that we’ve done so far, and we will never discount a technology, we always look at how it advances, but from what we have seen, there aren’t enough advantages for the plasma lights over HMI. The bulbs certainly last a lot longer, but there’s somewhat of a limitation on how bright they can get; you can’t really have as big a range and power classes as we’re able to do with HMI. So we will never discount that technology, in fact like I said, the tool bag is growing as a place for that technology and there are companies that are doing very good work with the plasma technology … Ed: So you’ll keep it in your gun sights will you? Mike: We certainly will and if there’s a breakthrough in that technology that really gives our customers that added advantage, that’s what we look for. Why do it if it doesn’t actually give our customers something different than we’re already doing? Ed: Now speaking of tool bags – lighting kits. I see there’s a number of lighting kits over there and I know they’re very popular in New Zealand, so what have you got in that range? Mike: Actually we started doing lighting kits in the US – that’s when it first started and they’re extremely popular in the US. We sell many, many lighting kits every year and there’s a very wide variety so of course we have our traditional tungsten kits – we have tungsten kits ranging from Fresnels and we have some with open face and then we have some with chimeras inside of them, so we have a very wide range. We’re actually just releasing some new kits that are LED based, so now that we have the L5 which is a much smaller, more compact LED fixture, we’re actually putting that inside of a kit and including it with our LoCaster product. So we have a soft light in there, we have a few different versions of these kits, but we have one that’s perhaps two L5s and one LoCaster so you can really do a full lighting setup all with LEDs and the beautiful thing is that you could run all of these off of one circuit. You don’t need to worry about plugging it into a bunch of different circuits and blowing a breaker;
you can plug them all into one power outlet and not even worry about it. The other advantage is that, of course, because they’re LED, they’re very cool running, so they’re not putting a lot of forward heat out of the lamp. If you’re doing an interview setup with someone who’s not used to doing interviews, it’s a lot less intimidating because it’s not like a police interrogation. Ed:
Been on one of those have you?
Mike: No, no – not yet anyway. It really does give it a great advantage in the mobility of it and then you can also run all of those lights off a battery if you so choose. So if you’re in a location that doesn’t have AC power, you could do that as well. We’re hoping that they’re going to be as successful as our other kits have been and we think that they will. Ed: So you’re selling these in the US – have the Europeans not really taken …? Mike: We actually have migrated them over into the European market in the last couple of years and we’re starting to see them pick up a little bit. It’s interesting to see the different regions, and you mentioned New Zealand … in my opinion, the kits are a great thing, you get a lot of value, everything is in one kit, you get the stands, you get all the accessories, you don’t have to worry about it. They’re made to go on airplanes, so you don’t have to worry about them getting damaged, so I think it might just be a matter of time. There are a growing number of owner / operators in Europe who are starting to buy equipment themselves instead of renting it, and that’s where the kits really come into play and where they become a really powerful solution over just buying onesie-twosies. So go and see Chris and see what he’s got in the way of ARRI kits to improve your lighting. NZVN
Page 6
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MOG Technologies for Atomise For Atomise, we are at MOG Technologies from Portugal and we have José Paixᾰo. Ed: José, does the MOG stand for something? José: Yes it stands for Media Objects and Gadgets. Normally we don’t advertise that because it is very long. It belongs to the initial name of the company, but we always used the initials, being easier to share and to advertise as MOG. The company in fact, started being MOG Solutions providing SDKs to broadcast equipment manufacturers to José with my personal favourite product from Portugal. handle MXF files. Initially we were only doing SDKs to manufacturers like Avid, application can communicate and control mxfAdobe and others. Then MOG Technologies was created SPEEDRAIL. in 2007 when we started to have our own box to sell Ed: So is this something that’s only for the into the market, to the broadcasters, to the broadcasters, or do you have a product that would fit postproduction houses. We still have the SDK’s into a small production environment? business, it’s still open, but our biggest profit nowadays José: The majority of our customers are belongs to MOG Technologies and the product line that broadcasters and big post production houses because we have, mxfSPEEDRAIL. we began initially working with the most common Ed: So why the change … obviously it’s enabled you formats from Panasonic and Sony, so we started to grow your company successfully having relationships approaching the News departments of the broadcasters. with Avid and others, so why did you need to go out on Then also, because postproduction started to use those your own? formats, we started to approach that market, smaller productions, as well. Recently, we have included José: We were involved in a lot of projects doing support for GoPros, ProRes, JVC, Canon formats like the bridges between the media, between the Avid world and 5D and the C300, so when we included those formats, archive from other parties; between Sony Media or we were as well increasing our approach to smaller Panasonic Media into the Avid world and others. So our postproduction houses. We also changed the way to technology was used as an enabler of a lot of products deliver our products. We used to deliver our solutions to handle different formats. At the end, we thought in rack unit servers, that are big servers with high that it could be useful for the market to have a product performance. Some of the small postproduction houses that easily will be able to do that bridge between those don’t really need that performance, but they still need a different formats, in a centralised and easier centralised ingest solution. For those we created the management. Xpress system. We designed a small box where we can Ed: So you don’t have to be a user of Avid or have a mix and match of all of our services ( base band something else; you can in fact have your own system recorder and player, and file base ingest ) in a single with MOG? rack unit of 24 centimetres depth. José: Yes, the idea was to have a product that Ed: But with the Xpress, is this something that a easily will be able to do those routes without any customer could buy off the shelf and then just plug it developing or any customisation on the different into their studio and it’s going to work, or at that level, technology. So if you have Sony Media, like an XDCAM do you still need a systems integrator to make sure it disc, and if you want to bring it into an Avid world, you works? have to do transcoding, you have to change the José: The solution that we have in the Xpress box wrapper, to change the container of the file for a native is the same that we have on the other servers, with the Avid format. With our systems, you just need to set up highest performers; software is literally the same. The the input where the media will be read and the output only difference will be in the performance and in the where the files will be sent; the folders where the media capability of the system to deliver faster the final media comes in and where the media will go out! depending on the workflows. So it’s more connected to mxfSPEEDRAIL will ingest, transcode, create the low the performance and the capability to mix everything in resolution file of media, bring all metadata and send all the same box and not that much in the way to improve of it into each final destination. So a news department the ability of the user to deal with our product. or a post production house, doesn’t need to develop a mxfSPEEDRAIL it is quite simple to configure, but we software to handle their workflows, they just need a always supply through our partners to support us in centralised tool to handle all of them. Of course if they installation and supporting our customers. have strong reasons to have their own solution, our system can also be integrated in other products for Ed: So it is important to have an integrator such as some specific workflows. All features can be controlled Atomise to install it for you to make sure it works in via webservices with a full API available, so easily any your system?
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José: Definitely. We are a Portuguese company, we have our headquarters in Portugal. We have a support line in working time GMT, so definitely it is important to have an integrator who will be able to help the customer and to help us doing the installations, setting up the configurations and to cover any problem that may occur in the future, or any situation where the workflow changes for some reason. So definitely, and in the case of Atomise, the knowledge that Atomise have regarding the Avid workflows is something that we give importance on the way that we have a big list of Avid customers. It’s very easy to understand our product when you understand the Avid world. Ed: Because that’s it – something of this level of technology, if somebody installed it themselves, very likely they won’t do it correctly and therefore they blame the product rather than their method of installation? José: I can share with you that I was dealing with Asia-Pacific market when I joined MOG four years ago and what I understood was that in some cases you really need to be involved in installations. Specifically in New Zealand, we start to work the market now. Let’s say that I haven’t been there yet; I met Richard a couple of months ago and we are very happy working together. The integration partnership is something that is just bonding now, so the expectations are high considering the knowledge that Atomise has for their market. Ed: And I guess the big question is “Portuguese” … how come a Portuguese company has made inroads into an American company like Avid. I have to say that this is the first Portuguese product that I’ve ever covered in the years that I’ve been doing this. How can you do it?
José: The story starts when the MXF format was created like 11-12 years ago. It was a SMPTE committee that did it, where three Portuguese belong to it. So when they got back to Portugal, they thought of an idea to create a product to handle MXF formats and then they create MOG Solutions that was developing those SDKs I referred to before. Then the company grew, and other elements with other experiences joined that team and administration realised that they could approach the broadcast market in a different way, directly to broadcasters, creating MOG Technologies and mxfSPEEDRAIL. Ed: Another obvious question – if you’re going to put in a system which is basically an Avid system, why wouldn’t you go with a totally Avid solution, rather than a hybrid that would be Avid and MOG? José: In fact our products are compatible with Avid workflows … Ed: No, but you’re saying that Avid sells your product under its own name, so why would you go with a MOG as opposed to a MOG under an Avid brand? José: Because we integrate with more workflows than Avid. So in the same way that we interact with Avid, we can as well send media to an Adobe or Final Cut editing environment, encoding into ProRes or any other format that customers will prefer to work with. Customers are able to open the files as they are growing in Final Cut or Adobe, just the same as they do in Avid Media Composer. So initially, our partnership with Avid was very strong and it was the strongest one that we had at that time. So that’s the main reason why we are very close to Avid, but the truth is that we also cover other workflows such as Adobe and Final Cut. Our focus is definitely on the editing job, so we want to accelerate the ingest before the editing, and the delivery file after the editing and we do that whatever the NLE is. The fact is that, Avid has a very important share of the market and historically, we were very close to them, and that’s the main reason why our products always integrate with Avid. Ed: Okay, so to simplify it, if you buy an Avid solution, you will get a MOG product in there, but it only deals with the Avid workflow; whereas if you want to have the possibility of more than just an Avid workflow in your system, then you get the MOG product directly, so that gives you that greater flexibility? José: Yes, so let’s say you have an environment that is 100% Avid and if you want to have a fast and easy file ingest accelerator, we will have a solution for it. As well we have our SDI recorders that will bring you the media from live feeds or VTRs into Avid, the same way as we do with files. But if a studio or a post production house have some Adobes Premieres or Final Cuts with the same mxfSPEEDRAIL system, and at the same time, we can transform media to both worlds at the same time. So we can feed several environments with the same source at the same time. So, as an example, in the project that we are having in TVNZ, they are only using Avid, so the MOG systems that they have are only doing Avid files. But if at some point, they may decide to upgrade with other editing solutions, whatever they will be, they just need to upgrade our systems to create the same file structures and then easily they will have same ingest solution for both environments. Ed: You obviously haven’t been into TVNZ if you say they’re only using Avid? José: I mean in this project definitely. Ed: Oh, that’s one part of TVNZ, but I kid you not, there’s just about everything in at TVNZ.
Page 11
José: I haven’t been there yet. Soon that will happen. But for this project, the information that I got, it was exclusively an Avid system. Ed: You have something supporting XAVC?
new
that
you’re
now
José: Yes, XAVC is one of the news that we have for IBC – the new SONY format. Today we are already able to provide a file based system ingest that will bring that XAVC into the Avid environment. Soon we will have that input format available in all of the workflows that we can do in mxfSPEEDRAIL. The other news that we have is this box here, where we combine all of the mxfSPEEDRAIL services with different Xpress units. We have as well editors installed in those units, so ideally in that small box, we will be able to have the baseband ingest, file based ingest, NLE’s and storage. The focus is to show to our partners and customers that, with our solutions, they will be able to have everything in a really small box. Everything will be there in a really small and light box, easy to carry and easy to transport. More news is the fact that we are already doing quality check in the input files, so when media comes in, we are already analysing some aspects of the video and audio. Those are the first steps in the quality analysis. We are announcing as well our partnership with Blue Fish. From now one, we are using Blue Fish capture cards in our SDI recorders. Ed: José: Ed:
Now where’s that bottle of Port? Well, it’s only noon … Hey, it’s Amsterdam.
NZVN
Page 12
Sadly, I did not win the bottle, but I did enjoy the equivalent on the MOG stand.
Canon Cameras for Protel We are at Canon with Paul Atkinson from Canon and Tyrone from Protel. Ed: Paul, it’s true to say that there hasn’t been a lot of movement in the C series, the 100, 300, 500 – just some little upgrades, some little tweaks, but something’s coming in the reasonably near future though? Paul: Well obviously we can’t talk about any future plans, but what I can tell you is that we continue to upgrade and enhance our range with firmware upgrades that are free to our customers. For instance, we’ve added some autofocus features to the 100 and 300, which is a paid for option, but also continuing to improve the feature set. At the end of the day, these cameras are tools, and let’s be honest, they’re quite expensive. The C300, if you take that as an example in the European market, is two years in a row the most rented camera in the UK and Europe. We’re on course to be the most rented camera again for the third year in a row. In a recent industry survey, C300 was the camera of choice either for current projects or for future projects for the vast majority of content producers within the broadcast industry. So the Cinema EOS range we said when we launched it in 2011, was the start of a new range for Canon and I think it would be fair and safe to say that we will continue to enhance that range as the market dictates, and bring products to the market that the market can actually use. Ed:
So why is the series so popular?
Paul: The simple fact is image quality. We’ve recently upgraded the maximum ISO to 80,000. This gives a capability especially for things like documentary and for wildlife, natural history type of projects, that really gives you the chance to get full colour in almost complete darkness. Obviously there has to be some ambient light, but you’d be amazed at just how low that ambient light level can be. Ed:
Just a few stars huh?
Paul: A little bit more than that perhaps, but certainly not far off it … decent sort of quarter moon light. Ed: But in the meantime, the little handheld video cameras from Canon – and I do stress that these are video cameras, as opposed to the C series which are cinema cameras. At NZVN, we do like to make a difference, because some people, shall we say, misuse the type of camera they’ve purchased, or expect the cinema camera to do video work and vice versa. So in the video camera range, some very nice little packages? Paul: Again there are two distinct markets if you like, the people who want the traditional camcorder in our XF or our XA range depending on which sort of
format the guys want to capture in, and recently we’ve released the XF200 and the 205 cameras. These draw the best bits of XA20, the best bits of XF105 and the best bits of XF305 in a small camera that still produces the quality and the results that people want. And what’s unique on this particular camera is, if we start with the recording, it’s a tried and trusted MPEG2 long GOP format in an MXF wrapper, up to 50 megabits per second as a fixed bitrate and simultaneous recording. There’s nothing new in that respect, but what we’ve added to this camera is the ability to record MP4 files simultaneously at up to 35 megabits per second. Now this gives – especially if you look at the News gathering industry, it gives them the chance to get higher compression rate, lower file sizes, sent back to a newsroom much quicker and in these days of 24 hour rolling News, that means that they can get a breaking story on air much quicker, albeit at the slightly lower resolution, and then wait for the higher resolution footage to arrive by other means. Ed: Now I do notice that this little 205 is slightly heavier than what I would expect for a camera this small, but then, when you look up closer, you see it’s actually a die-cast chassis? Paul: It is – it’s built to be used in the field, it’s definitely not a studio camera. Consequently, we put a lot of thought into the way that it’s designed. I can see that you’re opening up the BNC connectors – all the connectors for this camera are on the righthand side of it as you look through the viewfinder, and all the controls are on the left. I know in some cameras there will be a headphone socket on the lefthand of the camera and BNCs on the right and it’s just cables everywhere, but this gives you a chance of a good cable management. The 205 series, in common with all our numbering if you like, has BNC connectors, the 200 doesn’t, and we have 3G-SDI as well as HD-SDI which is selectable and we put 3G-SDI on because in MP4 we can do 50p. Ed: And there are lots of little sensible things added here. I notice for example, there are two Canon mic inputs, but there’s also a mini mic input?
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Paul: Yes, we have a mini jack, we have two XLR inputs and built-in microphone and we can actually do 4 channel recording on this as well. So a scenario for this would be, if you’re in an interview situation, the interviewee will have one mic on one channel, the reporter a mic on the other channel, and then the onboard mic can be doing 3 and 4 for ambient.
features of this camera, you could transfer that to pretty well a full broadcast camera?
Ed: There’s a little button down here next to the start/stop which says “unlock” – what’s that for?
Paul: The lens hood is detachable. You can have the traditional lens cap or just a quick lens cover which flicks up to protect the lens when it’s not in use. The other thing that we’ve got on this is a very effective infrared system for those times that you need to shoot in no light situations at all.
Paul: That is because we’ve got a rotating handle, which means we can change the angle of the handle to suit the shooting conditions, or even just if somebody’s filming for a long time, just for a little bit of comfort with a change of wrist position. It makes it extremely versatile.
Tyrone:
Yes.
Ed: And again, other simple little things, like a rubber mounted shock system for the shotgun. Now it’s a very interesting arrangement here with the lens hood – is that some sort of protection flap or what?
Ed:
You mean you can just switch this to infrared? Paul: Yes it will switch to an infrared. It’s got a built-in infrared light system as well, which like all such systems, is quite limited in range, but it doubles the intensity of the one on the XA20. We’ll get something that I can demonstrate – obviously for a recorded interview it’s not very visual, but something just to show how good it is. Ed: I guess that’s really for macro shots, you’re looking at …? Paul: Well again, it could be documentary, wildlife with absolutely no light whatsoever, and even without any infrared illumination, it’s still very effective.
A very creative display even for Amsterdam.
As a package, we’ve got a 20x optical zoom, you’ll notice we’ve got three individual control rings because this is designed so we can use it in fully manual – like if the experienced operator wants to, but you can also give it to the trainee or the junior camera assistant, switch it to automatic, say “go and get me some B roll or some background footage or beauty shots”, and they’re going to get something that’s useable. And to further enhance it, we have a five axis image stabilisation system, very similar to the one we saw first released on the XA20 last year. This can operate as powered or dynamic and uses a combination of optical and spare capacity on the sensor. Ed: Can you see this as a big seller for you Tyrone? Are they available now in New Zealand? Tyrone: Yes, they’ve only just been released in New Zealand. I think this is a really great camera for the out of studio market that’s looking for something which is portable and easy to use … Ed:
And robust?
Tyrone: And robust, yes. We’re quoting them at the moment into places like universities and schools, who can see the versatility of them. Ed: And that’s it, because there are so many ins and outs and features on this that, once you’d learned the
Ed: And the difference between the 205 and the 200?
Paul: It’s like all our range where they end in a 0 or a 5 – the 205, like its brothers and sisters, has BNC connectors, the 200 doesn’t. Apart from that, they’re identical in specification and even the 200 will have a LAN connection. There’s a wireless connection as well, so you can use a wireless browser through your iPad or Smartphone as a remote control for the camera, and a limited sort of file transfer protocol via wireless to get back to newsrooms through Internet. Ed: And it has a Canon battery although I imagine that this is a standard 7.2 Volt? Paul: Yes it’s the same battery as the 305 and the Cinema EOS system. We see this as potentially being used as a B camera to the C300, even though one is a cinema and one isn’t. We have the wide dynamic range setting on this camera which is very similar to the one you’d find on the Cinema EOS range, the 100 and the 300, and that gives you 12 stops of dynamic range on those cameras 800%, on this one it’s at 600%. But it does mean that you can match the footage very closely and you don’t need to grade it. That’s a big distinction that we always sought to make. This doesn’t have the Canon Log that you’ll find on the cinema range, but with the Canon Log, you have to grade that footage. With the wide dynamic range, you get the same latitude, but in a format that doesn’t need to be
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graded. Obviously – although I keep saying this is News – this is where we see this as being a major market for this camera, but News, documentary, small camera for TV production as well maybe, for beauty shots. It’s a discreet package, but still with the quality of the 20x optics. Ed:
And?
Paul: You may know that we’ve recently released a remote control unit for the majority of our cameras, it’s the RCV100. This is more than a remote control unit – it will work on the 200 and 205 and all the Cinema EOS cameras and it could almost be considered a mini camera control unit. The things that you can actually control with it do depend on the camera that you have, but you can do things like in a colour programme setting you can change master black, white balance, colour balance, you can adjust the knee and the sharpness, you can bring in the ND filters, adjust zoom and focus and that’s quite useful sometimes in an OB situation or if you just want to be able to not touch the camera on its setup, if it’s static. It gives you a lot of control as well as the quite obvious of being able to start and stop recording, access the menus. The cameras can be very individually customised and the basic rule is that if one of our function buttons has a number on it, it can be reprogrammed from a list of various parameters. Whatever you set on buttons 1 to 4 for any of the cameras, that will be accessible through this RCV100. Ed: Tyrone this has got to be a cost-effective camera for schools and training institutions hasn’t it? Tyrone: Yes a great value and versatile camcorder for events and documentaries. NZVN
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Plura Monitors for Gencom The very first interview of IBC 2014 is for Gencom at Plura Broadcast and we have Ray Kalo.
toward network-based signal processing, distribution and control within broadcast and production facilities. Alpermann+Velte’s hybrid conversion solutions also allow facilities to seamlessly bridge legacy and IP environments, rather than forcing customers into “all at once” digital workflow transitions. Ed: Now Ray, I would imagine that this is not just a product that you’re going to purchase and then rebadge and sell it as it is – you’re obviously going to do something with it; and secondly it’s not going to be something that’s incorporated in your monitor line ( which you’re famous for ) – it’s going to be a side product?
Ed: Ray, you’ve just excited me – well, sort of, about this acquisition that you’ve made. It must be an important acquisition for you? Ray: Indeed, Plura’s acquisition of Alpermann+Velte, which follows the formation of Plura Europe GmbH earlier this month, increases our global visibility while enhancing Plura's overall digital broadcast and video production solutions. Plura will also retain the Alpermann+Velte brand, which is recognised worldwide and especially well known in Europe. Alpermann+Velte formed in 1972 as an electronics and industrial solutions specialist, and quickly gained traction in the broadcast and production industry with its timecode products, which include reference-based generators and inserters. Ed: Now you’ll correct me obviously but, in my mind, timecode is something from the days of tape, to make sure that your tape signal was synchronised with everything else. But in these days of files, the timecode’s there but why do you need to worry about it? Ray: In recent years, Alpermann+Velte has shifted its focus to IP-based solutions, evolving with the migration
Ray: Right, it’s an add-on product. It will enhances Plura's portfolio; Alpermann+Velte has developed a new range of products to address broadcast data needs in the workflow, from metadata coding and insertion to overall organisation of digital video data streams — an emerging range of solutions that Plura will continue to develop. Ed: So again, it’s something that’s going to grow. You’re going to put some expertise into it … now he’s got a smile on his face, so he obviously knows what he’s going to do, but he’s not going to tell us just yet are you? Ray: It has to be like a drip-line, you know, you can’t get it all at once. Ed: Oh I’ve heard that from my wife too. Alright, so we’ll go back to monitors shall we, a safe area, and I know at NAB I was really impressed with your little super bright monitor. Has that been a big success for you? Ray: Absolutely... Ed:
What’s the model number?
Ray: PHB (Plura High Brightness)-209, a 9 inch. one of a kind, we’ve been very successful with it.
It’s
Ed: I mean there is competition out there, but it’s really expensive? Ray: Well Plura products are always affordable, reliable and come with unmatched functionality – those are our three main strongpoints. Ed: And obviously the reliability is something that, because Gencom backs it as a reseller of Plura monitors, they’re not going to sell something that they’re going to have to keep fixing? Ray: We strive for the best and every day I come to the office I remind my team with an important note “We to need put ourselves on the other side of the fence.” We have a responsibility beyond and over the price of the product we sell. Our responsibility does not just stop where the price is, no, it’s a long-term vision where the customer has to be pleased with our products because repeated customers are the main focus in our business.
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enjoy to use. The other feature we added is an HDMI preview output. So whatever you see on the SFP or PRM monitor, you actually can output that image into any other Plura or third party screen. And that is another feature which you can use for master control for example, or for production facilities, where they have a good quality monitor and they want to enlarge the LKFS into a large consumer monitor Ed: Something for the clients to look at maybe? Ray: Sure why not. Ed: But in the basic technology of the monitor itself, the device that shows you nice clear pictures, no technology changes? Ed: And you’ve got to keep innovating haven’t you. So since we’ve last spoken with you, are there any major technology improvements or are you following the Japanese kaizen way that you do business? Ray: No, no we try to be unique. We don’t like to copy anybody, and we dislike it when people copy us. We actually have two unique features we added to our monitors, the SFP-3G and the PRM-3G series. Now they have comprehensive audio loudness LKFS built-in including logging capability. Ed: Hang on, let’s go back … you say you “have audio loudness built-in” what do you mean by that, monitoring? Ray: Monitoring, yes. Ed:
Not conversion?
Ray: Audio loudness monitoring. Ed: How does it show that – does it show you a big red flashing light or something? He’s going to demonstrate it to me, here we go. Right, we’re looking at a screen … Ray: The audio loudness measurement on the monitor displays in real time, your levels per second and tells you what is your current level, what is your target level and what is your maximum peak value, and it changes with time. Now this is built-in within the monitor. We also have added streaming and audio logging over IP to your PC. Ed: Because this is it, isn’t it … loudness is not just an instant thing, you can have a spike, but it’s an overall thing, it’s taken over a period of time. So that’s why you need that log? Ray: You need that log. Let’s say you have a programme, you want to check on something that happened overnight, or at midnight and the staff missed it during the shift at the station … Ed:
A customer complained you mean?
Ray: A customer complained maybe, or you had a glitch in the programme and you want to go back and see when it happened and on what programme. So that log file – it’s there, and you can go and look at it, see where the audio levels were at any given time or date. We also have added a scheduler where you can actually schedule when you want to log and record, and you can export that back into your system. So it’s very dynamic. It adds features to the monitors that people
Ray: No, just more enhancements in our calibration capabilities, in our colourimetry – we always enhance and develop our technology. But in general, it’s more software than hardware. Ed: So there is a capability with the Plura range that you can do software updates. If you bought a monitor a year or two ago, something new comes out, you can get the software update and suddenly your monitor has a new lease of life. That’s the Plura way I understand? Ray: Absolutely, absolutely. Any added features, primarily they are software based and can be updated over firmware upgrade, and off you go, no problem. This is why a "Plura monitor is not just a video monitor like others. It is truly a comprehensive Audio, Video, other tools monitoring device." Ed: Every year that I come to Plura, of course I keep asking Ray the same question … “where’s your 4K monitor Ray?”, but he hasn’t yet done one. I asked him this at NAB and I got the same answer? Ray: Yes – we have not done one because financially and fiscally we don’t see the benefit of it, and I’m all about numbers. I don’t think it would make sense to spend the resources into developing when the projection of sales is not going to meet the actual demand at this point. I don’t see it happening yet. We have the capability to do it, but I just don’t feel it’s financially viable for us at this point. Ed: I’ll keep asking. So the top monitors that you’re putting out at the moment are satisfying your customer needs; they’re not seeing that 4K is necessary for what they do, so …? Ray: Many people want to see it, and my answer to them is “if I had it for you now for a certain value, would you buy it?” and the answer is not yet. Ed:
So you want to be here tomorrow?
Ray: I want to be here forever. Ed:
Well you’re talking to the wrong guy!
Ray: I want to be here – if not us, whoever is going to take over, to continue this venture, they have to be fiscally responsible. Ed: You’ve got teenage children have you – you have the same discussion with them? Ray: We can get into this forever if you want me to, but our position has always been consistent. Our company success is driven by customers’ requests and providing solutions for our clients they need now NZVN and in the near future.
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Rycote for Sound Techniques We are at Rycote for Sound Techniques and we haven’t got Simon just yet, but we have Chris Woolf. Ed: Chris, your claim to fame is that you’re actually a designer for Rycote? Chris: I am indeed the designer for Rycote and most of this new Cyclone product are my ideas. Ed: And to add credibility to your designs, you’ve obviously spent time in audio production? Chris: I’ve spent an enormous amount of time in audio production. I’ve been in the industry for about 50 years now and I’ve done just about every audio job you could think of, including a lot of location work, location mixing, boom operating and stuff like that as well. Ed:
You must have started as a child soundie then?
Chris: No, believe it or not, I started as a cameraman, but I’ve been through most of the broadcast jobs, including even designing studios, designing edit suites, installing studios and I’ve flicked between engineering and operation about every 5-10 years throughout my working life, so I have a pretty broad knowledge of what’s going on. Ed: Alright, I believe you, you know what you’re talking about. So what’s this Cyclone? Chris: This is Cyclone and it’s a new design of windshield, a radically new one. It doesn’t take any of the old parts of Rycote; it doesn’t try to be backwards compatible; we’ve started afresh and decided to work on what we need to work on, how we need to design it. We love fur, fur is very efficient, but fur is very unreliable. It’s unreliable in manufacture and it’s very unreliable once it gets wet or dirty, so we’ve gone over to a brand new material which I’ve been trying to get an ideal version of for about 10 years. It’s called 3DTex and its great point is that it has two different surfaces. It’s got a smooth surface on the inside, we can give it a pockmarked finish on the outside, the two different surfaces are entirely independent of each other, they can be engineered independently. It’s also a thick material and it has fibres between the two surfaces, and each of these qualities we can alter in manufacture independently. Ed: Yes, but once you’ve built it then you’re stuck with that particular combination, or can you change it? Chris: We could ask the manufacturers to change it if we wanted to. We have actually … Ed: So you’re not making “bespoke” microphone sound suppressors? Chris: We have a manufacturer in the UK and they’re experts in this class of material and they’ve then manufactured a particular version for us that we’ve tested out and which we’ve proved works really well. Ed:
Chris Woolf with the Cyclone exposed.
it rather unreliable. It also tended to make it relatively impervious to particularly the high frequency sound. So it was always difficult to get fur that held together, but which also passed high frequency sound well. Ed: Because you never actually used the skin of the squirrel did you? Chris: No! The material works brilliantly … in the size that we’ve got it, the diameter is critical. It’s about the same size as the old-fashioned windshield was by the time that it had had fur on top. Without fur, this has the same or slightly better wind noise reduction than the old furry ones had. So normally you would never need to use this with fur at all; it’s a furless windshield. If you want to add fur, you can go and record in a hurricane if you fancy it. I
Okay, so every Cyclone’s the same?
Chris: Every Cyclone is the same, yes. The advantage of it is that it’s completely consistent. Because it’s engineered it does not change. It can get wet, we can shake it dry, blow it – it dries out completely within about 15 minutes and its performance is identical to what it was before. With fur that was never the case. When it got wet it stayed wet for a long time and you had to give it a bit of a hairdressing in order to get it to work again properly. So this is a much more consistent product. Ed:
But does it have the same sound quality as fur?
Chris: It’s actually more transparent to audio. Fur had to have a latex backing in order to hold the strands on, and it was that latex backing which tended to make Page 23
haven’t actually been able to test how good it is in a hurricane, because I haven’t been able to find a wind strong enough to really prove what it does. Ed: It looks as though it’s a lot more robust and easier to clean than a furry thing? Chris: You can wash it for a start – if it gets really dusty and dirty, you can just stick it under a tap. I won’t tell you that you could hold a hairdryer on it, but you could and it will dry it off perfectly well and you can use it again straightaway afterwards. Ed:
Could you paint a smiley face on the front then?
as much as a conventional one would. So the shape is quite important. We also make sure that it’s largest where the microphone needs to be quietest; wind noise reduction is governed purely by the diameter of the shield and how far it is spaced away from the capsule. That’s a given of physics, you can’t alter that. So by putting the largest diameter in the area where the microphone is most sensitive, we actually make the most benefit of the size. Ed: And the assembly arrangement, the ease of getting it in and out, is that something new?
Chris: There’s no particular reason why you shouldn’t, providing that you don’t block up the holes. We can embroider a name on it quite happily and brand it … you could paint anything you like on it if you fancy it … as long as you don’t block up the holes, it will work perfectly.
Chris: That’s brand new. Normally, all windshields have either had to be slid in on a slot system, or clipped by multiple clips around the side. This one just clips together using magnets. We’ve christened it a “self-building” system, because it just builds itself – you can’t build it the wrong way round, it just fits together and that’s it.
Ed:
Ed:
Is it any more expensive than a furry version?
Chris: Slightly in this design, because of course, there are so many other things that we’ve added onto it. Because it’s a radical design, not only has it got a different material, it’s a different shape. We use this elliptical shape mainly because it gets rid of a lot of “room turn” effects. If you have parallel sides, you have standing waves and you reinforce particular frequencies. If you have something which has no parallel sides, you tend to spread out the frequencies at which it tries to reinforce, and you get a much smoother response to it. When you actually fit this around, it doesn’t alter the tone of the microphone anything like
And of course it uses your famous Lyre system?
Chris: And it uses the Lyre system, in order to give it not only the microphone suspension, but also the basket suspension. The basket is suspended so that handling noise between the pole and the actual basket is massively reduced. Each of the two suspension units, the top and the bottom unit, are independently suspended and work in unison with the basket and keep a lot of the handling noise out of the basket. So the acoustic transmission from basket into mic is massively reduced. Ed: Is it shotgun?
Page 24
designed
for
any
particular
length
of
Chris: It’s designed for the majority of short shotguns, the CMIT 5U, the 416 and any other similar length of mic. There will be shorter versions for some of the smaller mics coming later on – that will be a little while, while we get the tooling right and while we sort this out. But this one is for the most popular one and equates to the WS4 which was by far the most popular windshield in the modular series that we had. Ed: Gosh – and are you going to rest on your laurels now or have you got something else you’re planning? Chris: We never rest on our laurels. When I get too old and die, we’ll give up, but up until then we’ll keep going. Now we have Simon Davies, Mr Rycote himself. Ed: Simon, I have to ask you, are you happy with Mr Buckland as your new distributor in New Zealand? Simon: Yes, Stephen’s a good guy, he knows the product inside out. We’ve known each other for the best part of a decade from all the times we’ve met and talked about every product we’ve ever done at NAB, so it’s a very easy transition from our point of view, so we’re very happy. Ed:
And you’re happy with your sales?
Simon:
Yes – early days, so it can always …
Ed: Oh I thought you’d never be happy with your sales, you can never sell enough? Simon: Well it’s early days, and with our product we’re talking about a fairly specialist bit of kit, you know people need to use the kit outside, so it’s a case of working together. We need to learn from what he
tells us about things going on down in his market and we can then push things through to him as well. So yes, very happy. Ed: And obviously this Cyclone is going to do good things for you, but have you got anything else? Simon: Cyclone has been a big transition for us and one that we want to keep our place at the top end of the market with. We’ve got other things coming down the track which will involve the materials, the shapes … magnets is a big thing for us as well that we’re working on and developing. Ed:
Magnets, what do you mean magnets?
Simon: What we’ve always had are fasteners that you unscrew or you twist and you snap off and we’re looking at it from the point of view of not just performance, but actually application and ease of use … Ed:
Ergonomics?
Simon: Ergonomics … customer satisfaction. With a lot of the mics now you have to get in there quickly, whether you’re doing an internal to external shoot or whether you need to get to the back end of the mic and press a button, and so that’s a big feature of this where we’ve stepped away for a very long time of doing a sliding approach or something that you have to undo. This is a series of magnets on there and it just makes things simple, but at the same time consistent every time, whoever puts the thing together, because that’s very important. Ed: What about in your Lyres, because you’re the one who developed them. Have you made any changes,
Page 25
is it isn’t it, people were used to film and to convert them to video was hard. So for a soundie, converting them away from fur …? Simon: I think from our side of life, what we would always like to do is get someone to let their ears make the decision for them.
Simon also with Cyclone.
have you come up with some new materials, made them thinner or whatever? Simon: No, the biggest jump forward in Lyre technology at the moment is in the Cyclone, because we’re actually using a form of the Lyre for the basket isolation. The actual windshield itself is now isolated with a series of Lyres inside the lower and upper pods. The next stage … it’s always continuous development and we’re changing some of the actual features on the Lyres where we separate the material of the clip part that actually holds the microphone to the actual suspension arm of the Lyre. All of these are enhancements and developments and we tend to do that as and when we establish a way that we can improve something, or if there’s a problem, and because we do it very localised to us, you know our moulder who does all our injection moulded parts is in Swindon which is 40 kilometres away from where we are. We jump in a car, he’s got a similar sort of accent to us – whether we meet in his office or a pub it makes no difference, we can actually ask him about the problems, we can work with him. The Cyclone, for instance, is 17 tools and we could have gone to the Far East and we could have looked at doing it in a much more mass volume sort of thing, but the control was important to us. Even when you look at the very fine details of it, it’s belt and braces stuff – it’s old-fashioned engineering, with glued joints but supported by nuts and bolts and things like that, but at the same time trying to keep the weight as low as possible.
When we introduced fur in 1985, my mother Vivienne, on a number of dealer visits that she went out to, almost had to use advertising gimmicks, you know little toy dogs with fur on to convince people that this was a serious product. With this, what we don’t want to do is push anything down anyone’s throat; we want to get them to listen to it, believe it themselves. It is very different and we understand that it’s very different, but I think at the same time, listening to it, using it in real life, you know get out there, whether it’s down at your distributor or it’s a rental house that’s got one, listening to it and hearing it yourself is going to be the only proof. We do a little bit of marketing with the websites and things like that, but really we’re not trying to teach someone how to use the kit; we just present them with the best wind protection or the acoustic transparency that we can. Ed: And apart from it obviously being easier to handle and easier to clean, you’ve really got to listen to something like this. It’s not something that you can just say “oh yeah, that’s got to be better?”
Ed: Do soundies have difficulty understanding this new material, because obviously you’ve had fur for a long time? Simon: In the same way as the Lyre was a replacement for an elastic or a rubber suspension, the 3D-Tex is a material that you’ll see on a lot more products coming out over the next couple of years. There are lots of parameters in there that we can control that with the fur it’s very, very good – it virtually increases the size of any windshield, it’s a very random structure that gets rid of the wind noise as it hits the actual surface of the windshield. 3D-Tex in the right shape and the right form profile is brilliant in terms of the performance. Ed: Having said that, will it be a hard sell to soundies because they’ve got so used to the sound of fur … this Page 26
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Simon: Yes, totally, and there are so many different things within this. I mean, we’ve been dying to tell the world about this. In terms of a development process, it’s over three years. Magnets are not something that people are going to be used to with a zeppelin-like blimp, and there are a lot of conventional things out there that people know when they pull it out of their Pelican case, it just works every time. So for us, this is about showing people that there are different ways of doing things and time will tell whether the conventional zeppelin is replaced by this in the long term, or whether they run along parallel to themselves. Ed: So the Cyclone is initially held together … it snaps together with magnets, but then you have a locking key? Simon: Originally we never even had the locking or the safety catches, but the reason we put it on there is that if someone’s using … Ed:
Soundies can be pretty rough.
Simon: Yes, and you stick something at the end of a 4 metre pole and swing it around, bad things can happen. The last thing you want to see is one of these shells flying off onto the talent. The whole magnetic feature behind it allows it to be built in the way it is, where we don’t have solid spines or flat pieces of plastic in front or around the area of the microphone that would have a negative impact on the reflections and things like that. So what you’ve got is a very, very simple one handed operation to open and shut it and any sound guy that’s ever used one of ours that wants to go in and do an interior and has to take off the
jammer, take off the endcap, unscrew two screws, jiggle it about, unslide it, go inside – will recognise how easy this is. Ed: And I guess you have to move away from fur with the anti-badger campaign ramping up? Simon: Yes, the cull has had an impact on us … but no, the weird thing about fur is that it has its place and we’ve done it for such a long time and most of the ladies who have known me since I was knee high to a grasshopper are still there and they’ve been taught how to make the 3D-Tex, because the 3D-Tex … believe it or not, we’ve got machines in there that haven’t been used in the UK for about 30 years. We’ve developed lots of different methods of putting this together that hopefully mean you’ll recognise the quality and the performance when you get it, but fur has its place and for certain things at the moment. Once you’ve invented something or brought something out that does really well, it’s very difficult to find a solution that replaces it and we certainly wouldn’t bring something out that was inferior to it. So it will stay for the time being on certain products, but we developed the Lyre to be at the forefront of shock mounting, and we also wanted to do the same on the windshielding and this is the first stage. What comes next is quite exciting for us, but we want to develop stuff … even as a small company for us it’s the next step that’s important, to have something down the track. Ed: It’s good that you’re giving the customers a choice still, but if they do really want fur, they don’t have to go elsewhere?
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Simon: Yes totally. I think this is the first product we haven’t done backward compatibility, but if you ever came to the factory in Stroud and saw what we retain and what we do as support for previous generations and the Lyre upgrades that can upgrade a 1982 suspension and things like that – so we still honour that commitment to the previous purchases that their customers have bought, because the stuff’s worth a lot as well, it lasts for years. Looking after those customers who have bought that kit, so that when they
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Well your name’s on the product isn’t it?
Simon: Yes, and heritage. what’s gone before. Ed:
You learn a lot from
Yes, Mr Rycote.
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PAG Batteries for Quinto Here at IBC, on a little corner of a little booth, it’s Nigel Gardiner from PAG. Ed: So Nigel, we’re here to talk about batteries and the Anton Bauer has been a huge success – not your Anton Bauer battery, but your Anton Bauer plate adapter or your connectors, or what is it again? Nigel: Perhaps your readers will remember 3 years ago Grant came to England and he saw the prototypes of the V-linking system we were developing. What we’ve now developed is an Anton Bauer linking system on a unique product which is a replacement for the standard DIONIC 90 HC battery – a direct replacement, but it also has the added feature of allowing batteries to be linked together. Ed: Obviously, your own PAG V-link is preferable, but in situations where you have some legacy Anton Bauer equipment, or you’re a rental house and you have lots of other equipment that might have that Anton Bauer plate on it, here’s an answer for you? Nigel: Well we’ve actually taken a different approach now, because, what we’re saying is, we can do a linking battery for your camera, regardless of the mount on the back. So if you’re happy with a V, then we do a V-linking; if you want to stay with your Anton Bauer, then we do an Anton Bauer linking. I remember this time last year, knowing that this was in our design schedule, looking at the Panasonic booth and seeing that every single camera had an Anton Bauer bracket. Now years ago, I would have been totally depressed at seeing that, but now it doesn’t matter to me because I know that we have a battery system for any Panasonic camera as well as any other camera that either has an Anton Bauer or a V system.
Nigel and Alan.
Nigel: Ed:
Well I could … no, dear oh dear …
Device, Nigel, device.
Nigel: I’m sorry about this Louise, but this is what he does to me. Unless my brain has gone … you see I’m older than Grant, but I’m sure I’ve told him about this. Once more then. What we have in my hand is a Battery Reader. Now what we can do is interrogate any Sony battery or any of our V batteries, to give us information such as how much it’s charged, what’s the capacity, what’s the age, when it was manufactured, the voltage, temperature and software versions. All we do is plug this into the battery. We also do it for the Anton Bauer. This is a device for maybe the bigger user, who has a lot of batteries, so he can check them out to make sure that they’re in good nick before he goes out and does the job.
Ed: And I can add to that Nigel, because I’ve just been at the ARRI stand and I notice their AMIRAs have a single Anton Bauer on the back of them; but when you get to the ALEXA, which is a bit more power hungry, guess what they’ve got on their back … two PAG V-Lock batteries. Nigel: That’s right. We’ve been talking to ARRI in the last four months. It’s sometimes difficult to get hold of the right people in companies, but we’ve now shipped to ARRI a set of V linkers and a set of Anton Bauer linkers and they’re lending cameras to people who are interested in buying, and our batteries are going out with them. So not only are they testing and appraising the camera, they’re actually looking at our batteries. This has got to be good for us. Ed: It is indeed. You’ve got to spread the word Nigel. Now, there’s another little device that Nigel says that he’s shown me before, but I think he’s not quite the man he used to be, so Nigel, what’s this little device that I’m holding in my hands? Page 30
more on page 33
like this are now causing embarrassment to a lot of people; there’s been fines and other things and a number of cameramen are getting to their destination and their batteries aren’t there. Ed: Because they x-ray the bags and take them out? Nigel: That’s right, they x-ray the bags and take them out. Some people question it, but I know a few who have said “where are my batteries” and the airlines and the security say “well it’s up to you sir – you can complain or we can fine you about $50,000” and that’s the fine for transporting lithium ion batteries in the checked bag. Ed: Because that has actually happened in the UK I understand? Ed: And I’m sure your dealers have got samples of this – if somebody was concerned about their batteries, they could take them in and have them checked? Nigel: Oh yes, it’s a very simple thing. Also we can change or update the firmware of the battery with this device. Sometimes we’ve had to change the firmware because of camera issues and, with this device, you can actually update the batteries to the latest firmware. Ed: Superb. One other little item here, where there’s no moving parts, is a card and it states “Lithium Ion Air Transport Advice”. What made you come up with that little card Nigel? Nigel: I think it was dealer frustration in the fact that PAG, like one or two other battery manufacturers, spend a lot of time and money making sure our batteries meet the IATA and United Nations specifications, and to get this we have to submit 20 plus batteries to an independent test house where they destructively test them. After they’ve done the testing, we then get a certificate, plus the test report, to say that our batteries are safe for air travel. Now the frustration is the fact that most battery manufacturers do not go through this process. This process means that we are more expensive. Some of the good things are that now airlines are picking up more and more on this. You’re not allowed – and it’s a criminal offence – to put a lithium ion battery in your checked baggage. All lithium ion batteries have to be hand carried. Things
Nigel: That’s right, it’s happened a number of times. So we would like the regulations to be tighter, because we know that we meet them, but we also know that probably 80-90% of all battery manufacturers do not meet them. As far as we’re concerned, we don’t want to stop them, but we wish that they went through the same procedures and that would give us a level playing field on cost. Ed: Right, to finish us off, one very good bit of news for Australia-New Zealand is that Quinto has now taken on JVC. Quinto is now the JVC agent in New Zealand and Australia and they’re also the agency for PAG batteries so there should be a very good synergy there. Obviously, in the smaller JVC cameras, the 7.2 Volt, there’s nothing there for PAG, but in the 12 Volt and beyond, you’ve got the battery for them? Nigel: Yes, it gives us an interesting introduction to the batteries into Australia and New Zealand. It’s been difficult for us in both countries, but I think this aid of Quinto having JVC means that they can package batteries together and I do see then a strong growth potential in both Australia and New Zealand. Ed:
So Alan should get his chequebook out?
Nigel: There are some things in this world that are possible Grant, and there are some things that are not possible. This is now another speechless situation. I’m not sure whether he’s got a chequebook; I think he just NZVN stores it all under the bed.
Page 33
A New Face for Face TV production costs and you can make a living out of it as well. Ed: Which is what you’ve been doing with The Beat Goes On and other programmes for quite some time now? Gerard:
Exactly, that’s the formula.
Ed: What’s your vision of how television can service a community? Gerard: There are a lot of people who do wonderful charity work in New Zealand which just never gets reported. All the good news seems to miss out – say the opening of a library in Masterton, or a new cycleway somewhere. They’re all community projects; we’d love to feature those a lot more. Less sensationalism and more of what’s actually happening in our community. Ed:
Gerard, you’ve taken a bold step forward?
Gerard: Well, we started off with The Beat Goes On as a regular television show, that’s been going for over five years – today we’re doing about five different television shows every week – and now we’ve gone a step higher. We now manage the station that broadcasts all our programmes – Face Television. So we have a new face, you’re dead right Grant. Ed: So Face Television, for those who might not have tuned in to Channel 83 on Sky, has gone through a number of iterations. It started off as a vehicle for Jim Blackman and his friends as Triangle TV, then Stratos, now Face Television. Jim’s passed away, the station has been in a bit of a limbo, shall we say, and you have seen an opportunity. From what I understand, you really want to improve its image as a true New Zealand community television station?
Ed: So the plan for the rest of this year 2014, is “steady as she goes”? Gerard: Steady as she goes. We’ve had the station since the 1st of September and any change can’t be immediate; you will see incremental improvements as 2015 progresses, moving into 2016. If you or your community group have any interest in creating or providing programmes for Face TV – contact Gerard Smith on 09 525 1512 or Gerard@facetv.co.nz NZVN
Gerard: That would be our ideal. It’s an opportunity for us to step in to represent New Zealand at a different level, not a commercial level. Ed: At the moment, there’s a lot of programming on Face that is coming from overseas, content that cultural groups are interested in, but you really want to put more focus on local shows. How can our own production community become involved? Gerard: Look, we’d like to invite television producers throughout New Zealand, if you’ve got an idea for a programme we’d love to hear from you, we really would. We’re continually looking at new ideas. If you’re a television producer, you might be able to edit the programme yourself, you might be able to shoot it yourself and just give us the finished product, or if you’re not sure of that particular process, we can handle everything. We can record it, edit it and broadcast it for you. So, we’re looking for creative ideas from people right throughout New Zealand, to represent the New Zealand story. Ed: Now it’s just a matter of cost because this is something that is not paid for by the state or by general advertising; this is something that, if you want to broadcast a programme, it’s going to cost you, but you have the opportunity to sell advertising of your own around it? Gerard: Yes exactly, you can get all your costs back. You could give us a half an hour programme, you pay to have that half hour programme played, but if you’ve sold advertising on it, that will cover your Page 34