NZ Video News June 2011

JUNE 2011

Vol 170

NAB 2011 – Part Two … more you need to know.

Granted, some of the “news” you will read about in these pages has been available online since before NAB opened and some New Zealand suppliers have already had their own shows … but we try to offer more. When I do the interviews, the person chosen is usually the closest to the product ( not a marketing representative ) and they don’t know what I’ll be asking beforehand. Their responses you read in these pages, although they have the opportunity to correct errors, are largely what they said at the time. This tends to lead to more honest answers, as there’s the pressure of this journalist’s gaze, the knowledge that I know something about the product anyway and the presence of a whirring tape recorder capturing their every utterance.

It’s your job, by comparing a number of sources, to decide what you like, what you believe, and make appropriate buying decisions.

I certainly found some “killer” products to put high on my wish list, but I couldn’t possibly tell you which ones they were. Anyway, as I’ve known for years, we all have different needs, so read on to improve your knowledge of what might make your business offer better for your clients—or just get new toys for yourself!

DVT We will now take you on a tour of some of DVT’s main suppliers. Covering Autodesk for DVT we have Elijah Astley closely followed

by Stuart Barnaby.

Ed: Elijah – Autodesk – I guess the big news I heard was that there’s going to be some synchronisation with product release?

Elijah: Product release between the creative finishing suites (Smoke on the Mac, Flame Premium and Flare) has been synchronised since the 2010 release and now they’re synchronised with 3ds Max and Maya as well. So they’re all in sync, which is really good because it helps you to get your Maya 3D models straight into your Flame Premium and Smoke on the Mac systems without any conflict between different FBX versions. That’s really helpful and also excellent

“Cover Boy” this month—Elijah from DVT at Autodesk.

NZVN on the web. Go to <https://sites.google.com/site/nzvideonews> for more news.

… more than you can poke a stick at.

DISPLAY & CLASSIFIED ADVERT BOOKINGS BY WED 6 JULY ADVERT COPY BY FRI 8 JULY

now because of all of the new Relighting Tools and Flame FX that have been added to the 2012 release.

Ed: I saw some examples of Relighting, can you explain that?

Elijah: They’ve added a whole new lighting system to the creative finishing products, giving you the ability to relight live action scenes, not just CGI products. You have a hugely powerful tool that, if the lighting when you shot it wasn’t right, or you’re looking for a different look, you can try them all out inside the Flame and Smoke on the Mac. Ed:

And they’ve given you a few effects I understand?

Elijah: Yes, Autodesk say they’re driving value into the product, but I think what they’re cheekily trying to say is you no longer have to buy GenArts Sapphire plug ins. That’s saving you thousands of dollars on your products!

Because they are leveraging that new lighting system, Lens Flares, Shadows – you can cast real shadows now as well. They are spectacular and better than anyone could do before, obviously because Autodesk have the unique expertise to do this.

Ed: Now one other interesting piece of news to come out of the Press Conference, was that 60% of Smoke on the Mac sales are actually to new customers?

Stuart: One other thing about the Autodesk range of products now is that you can have a Flame Premium system, which is their high end creative finishing tool that does everything; and then they’ve got a low cost version of that called Flare, and you can run multiple seats of Flare, which are lower cost, allow you to do more work and stuff alongside that …

Ed: They told us that last year?

Stuart: Yes, but it’s much lower cost now, so they’ve brought the price down quite dramatically … and then the integration that they now have between the creative finishing products – the Flame and Flare – with the Maya 3D Studio Max and Softimage, is absolutely phenomenal. So you can have a workflow where people are creating digital assets or animations and modelling and lighting inside of Maya or Max or Softimage, and are easily able to now bring those files, scenes, lights, cameras, action – all across into either Flare or to Flame, or even Smoke on the Mac now, for adding extra effects and animation, doing the compositing application final output. So that integration has never been better. They started doing it last year, they’ve absolutely nailed it this year, and it creates a wonderful solution for companies that have got that suite of tools to work together. It’s awesome.

Ed: And now in the Matrox stand, also with a big Thunderbolt logo all over it?

Stuart: Yes, so really two things that Matrox have come out with this year. The first is an adapter that will convert the PCI Express mini cards into Thunderbolt, so that allows you to run the MX02, the MX02 Mini, directly with Thunderbolt, so that’s cool. And the second thing that they’ve added is the ability to take any of these products and turn them into a streaming device. So you can take the output from maybe the Blackmagic production switching solution that we talked about before, into an MX02 Mini or an MX02, and then have that encoded directly into H.264 for live streaming. So some pretty nice little upgrades that they’ve done on the existing products.

Elijah: Yes that’s what we’ve found as well, that it’s been people who have known about the products, but never had the opportunity to leverage that kind of power, adding it to their workflow and obviously it’s adding value for their customers as well.

Ed: There must also be some more people out there who are able to operate it?

Elijah: Yes, a lot of freelancers who previously couldn’t afford to own a Flame but can afford to own a Smoke on the Mac, so it’s enabled them to go out and do their own thing.

Ed: So Autodesk continues to be good for you?

Elijah: for us.

Yes, Autodesk has been great Page 2

Ed:

Now is Matrox working with all NLEs or just Avid?

Stuart: Yes, it works with Avid, Apple and Adobe, so all of the key NLE vendors, it’s got full support for all of those. So it makes it a pretty universal tool for getting IO – mostly monitoring these days, but great tools for that, and now for streaming as well, and now on Thunderbolt!

Ed: Stuart – now even though they’re not on the show floor, you’re obviously a major Apple reseller in New Zealand, they had a bit of an announcement?

Stuart: They did indeed. There was the Final Cut User Group SuperMeet meeting held on Tuesday, which was sponsored by Canon and a whole range of other vendors, and at the last minute they were all told to cancel their sponsorship and they would no longer be required, because there was another “special guest” announcement that they were doing.

Stuart:

See us, we’ll help you out, no problem!

Ed: All right, now coming in, in 2nd place, Adobe?

Stuart: Debatably, yes. So Adobe have come out with a new “point” release at NAB this year, announcing CS5.5 versions of the Creative Suites across the board, with a range of new features that they’ve added into them. For us, there is interest in the production side of things, but we should talk to Dave about this.

To tell us the Adobe story, we have David Helmly who was actually on our front page with Stuart last year.

Ed: David, 5.5 – it’s unusual that you came out with a mid-product release; why was that?

David: Well we decided to go back to the old days of having 24 month release cycles. A little bit more predictable, it allows us to work better with our partners, and it really allows the customers to plan. So we’d like to see customers upgrading about every two

This turned out to be the announcement for Final Cut Pro X which is the new version of Final Cut Pro, which everyone has been expecting for some time. It’s a very exciting product announcement; they’ve completely rewritten Final Cut Pro from scratch.

It’s designed around the new architecture of the Lion operating system that’s due out this winter and they’ve put an enormous amount of resource into the quality of the media that they’re dealing with.

The second major component to it is metadata or data management inside the system as well; and then the third one is the user features and the operability of it, by using a completely redesigned timeline and they’ve also added in probably most of the elements of Colour and Motion and Soundtrack Pro into the one product.

So they’ve done a really fantastic job at doing all of that. It will be available in a couple of months’ time, downloadable from the App Store, which now runs on any Mac computer, for US$299.

Ed: US$299 for a totally new edit system?

Stuart: Yes, and they’ve got over 2 million users of Final Cut Pro now, and they were quite bold in the announcement, saying that both Adobe and Avid are having a race for second place!

Ed:

So you don’t have to change your computer?

Stuart: Not at all, no. You can use any iMac, MacBook Pro or Mac Pro and download the latest version of the software straight from the App Store and away you go.

Ed: But you’re better on this new operating system – you say Lion?

Stuart: That’s a little bit “fuzzy” – I’m not quite sure …they haven’t released all the full details yet, but I would image that for most people wanting to run it, you may need to run Lion to do it.

Elijah: Whenever there’s a new Apple operating system, some of the older hardware is always left behind and can’t upgrade to it, so those people, if Lion is a requirement, they won’t be able to run Final Cut X. Ed:

But see your friendly dealer, and that’s DVT?

David Helmly from Adobe.

years, but there is this problem – let’s just use something like the iPad as an example, that we would call a “disruptive technology” – it’s wonderful, we love them, but it’s like wow, now how do I deal with this technology?

So we’re also going to be doing half upgrades if you will, every year, sort of about this time.

You’re either going to be a customer who upgrades 5, 6, 7, 8 or you might be 5.5, 6.5, 7.5 – so you’ll decide when to jump in, but we want to give you the opportunity to do a half upgrade say the following year and say “you know what, I need that feature.” For example, we introduced closed captioning into Premiere Pro this release for 5.5, or another feature would be dual sync audio for DSLR audio, so you have a Canon 5D and another audio unit, you want to merge those clips together, or merge those technologies together, you can do that. So if you don’t need those, then maybe you just wait for the next cycle. So 24 month cycles is going to be really good. That’s sort of why we did that. Customers are responding to it really, really well.

Ed: Okay, so are those the two key things that you’ve upgraded in 5.5?

Page 4

David: No – for Premiere Pro, for example, we’ve got those two as I mentioned. We went out and really talked to a lot of Final Cut users, a lot of Avid users, how can we make our product better and how do we make it work better in your workflow, because they’re going to continue to kind of jump around in these different NLEs. So we added a lot of their shortcuts – we really took a look at the shortcut keyboard mapping; we now have drag from source to programme, match frame, a lot of the little things – we called them JDI’s – just do it, kinda just fix it. We also have a faster Mercury Playback engine – and remember Mercury is both a software technology and a hardware technology.

Here at the show we’re debuting Thunderbolt technology – all the work we did with 64 bit in the past two years has really paid off.

So Thunderbolt technology just came natural to us. Scrubbing on the timeline we’re showing at the show – you know four and five layers of 160 Meg per second files are scrubbing like butter and playing back. You can jump over into After Effects, play those clips, they play back in real time and it’s jaw dropping when you see it.

We’ve also got other technologies like in After Effects, any of you guys who shoot on DSLR videos, we’ve got rolling shutter fix inside of After Effects and that’s used with our work stabilisation filter. It’s amazing when you see it work. We’ve also added 3D stereo rigging to After Effects and some really cool lens effects for moving depth of field and focus and things like that.

Ed: It seems as though a lot of your improvements are in the Photoshop area – is that I guess where most of your customers in the creative suite space are?

David: Well I think Photoshop brings a lot of those customers to us.

Photoshop is just one of those necessary tools, whether you’re in Premiere Pro or After Effects, so that brings them to us. Once they get into the suite, they’ve hooked, they’re locked, because everything talks and walks together. We use a lot of what we call “libraries” at Adobe, where we share a lot of the technology, so as you jump from one out to the next, they just work, because it’s actually a lot of the same code, the way that that works. And speaking of Photoshop, we introduced a brand new technology called Photoshop Touch, and you’ll see that up on the App Store first on the iPad, on other devices later. It’s actually an SDK or a Software Development Kit, and for people who don’t know what that is, it’s really a programming language for things like iPads and Android and RIM devices to talk to Photoshop. So you’ll be able to look at your iPad and have interactivity with it, send things to Photoshop … we’re really anticipating our third parties are taking huge advantage over Photoshop Touch.

And Photoshop Touch is just the beginning – we’re looking at other products that Adobe are trying to figure out what would be the next logical step, and of course everybody’s got great ideas, so stay tuned.

troubleshooting, we got a lot of customer projects inhouse and managed to straighten a lot of that out. I heard a lot of good things on CS5, everything was really working great; in 5.5 we continued hunting those things down, talking to customers … I talked to a couple of customers who had P2 PAL files for example – at certain frame rates they were causing them issues in Encore, managed to straighten all those out, they tested some of them here at the show. So I think for Encore, which is at version 5.1, which means it didn’t get upgraded, just we applied any sort of bug fixes that we could and anything natural into that release, but I think you’ll have a better experience with that.

We moved South from Adobe to the lower part of the huge hall.

Ed: Now Stuart we’ve come to a booth called Isilon Systems and it’s big and it’s humming?

Stuart: Isilon provide a range of network attached storage solutions which work in a cluster environment.

Typically we put direct attached discs onto computers, we either run a single hard drive or as we get to multiple drives we set them up in a RAID 5 pool but clustered storage takes that a lot further. With the entry level Isilon solution, you have three nodes or bunches of discs sitting in a 2U chassis all linked together by an InfiniBand network out the back end which runs as a cluster. It’s got very smart software on it that can handle the management of the whole cluster, it makes sure that it’s extremely reliable, robust, high performance, and it’s also extremely scalable, so if you need to either scale capacity or performance, you can do that just by adding another node to the cluster.

That extra capacity becomes available within a couple of minutes and you can continue to expand your storage that way. So where we would consider using this in our environment, is if we were running a bunch of Final Cut applications or Adobe applications and we wanted some shared storage that we could connect to, to be able to keep all our media in one place.

Ed: This isn’t a brand name that I’ve seen before but it’s obviously reputable?

Stuart: Absolutely. Isilon’s been used in some of the biggest organisations in the world and Dave Demmocks from Isilon can tell you a bit more about that.

Ed: What about changes to Encore, because as an Encore user in CS4, it’s one of my “pet difficulties”?

David: Sure, I think in Encore CS4 and CS3 lots of changes in H.264 you know rules and editing and things like that. There were lots of little strange issues that sort of came up. We fixed a lot of that stuff in CS5 – there were some reverse field issues here and there, we really went through

Stuart and Dave Demmocks from Isilon.

Page 6

Dave: So Isilon – a little bit of potted history – started in 2001 in Seattle. Some ex-RealNetworks guys decided that node based storage was the way to go, because it just keeps scaling linearly. In 2010 it was acquired by EMC, the largest storage company on the planet. EMC is very strong in New Zealand actually – I think there’s about 30 people at EMC in New Zealand.

A lot of very large film studios in the US, a lot of broadcasters use us in editorial. We’re at the sixth generation of the operating system, so there are a lot of other people getting into clustered storage; lots of other players starting in this game, but we are the furthest ahead in technology, and our motto is “Simple is Smart”. The reason for that is that we sell to a lot of customers whose job is “and storage”. So if I’m selling to a researcher or a broadcaster, my job is not to manage storage, and Isilon makes this easy. Where a SAN might have been the traditional technology, now you’re finding that NASs are now fast enough to do that a lot in animation, heavy animation users, a lot of the big users you might suspect in media in general and content moving. You mentioned the Cloud before, the Cloud is an area that we’re doing a lot of work in, especially with partners like VMware and also the folks from Microsoft with Hyper-V, we’re doing a lot of work there.

Ed: So Stuart do you see the value in this to your customers, that it is node based, it is scalable and so you can have a small system or a large system or anywhere in between?

Stuart: Yes that’s right, their entry level solution is probably good enough to suit a chunk of our customers in terms of the capacity and performance that it has; certainly the integration with the new version that they’ve come out with, gives 10Gig Ethernet connectivity out the front – so it’s got lots of capabilities for us, but then of course its ability to expand either in capacity or performance just by adding extra nodes, means that people have got a very good vision to the future, where they no longer have to worry about storage as their needs expand. It also has the ability of adding larger nearline storage to it, so it still remains like one big cluster, but it will push off data that’s not accessed as much into the sort of larger, slower storage, and keep the higher transactional data in the upfront storage. And this is all to do with the OneFS operating system that it runs that is very smart and intelligent in terms of how it manages the data and the controllers and inside the systems.

Ed: Now Stuart, I’ve been into a number of facilities and I guess the biggest one was The Farm in London, and what struck me was that there were a number of

different storage solutions throughout their environment. It had a number of buildings, but even within buildings, there were areas where there was a particular brand of network storage system. But they were all different. Is this something that’s a problem if they are not node based?

Stuart: It’s not so much about whether it was node based, but in the past as needs have grown, we’ve found it could have been done better. They call them “islands of storage” – where we have an application where we need to do some encoding and we need a bit of storage for that, so we set something up for that.

And then a little bit further down the track, the IT department want to do this virtual machine stuff, so they set up a bit of storage to run that on … and so, as time’s gone by, you end up with a huge range of all these individual islands of storage, some with more performance and some with less, depending upon the application. The wonderful thing about Isilon, because it’s scalable in either capacity or performance, you can have a single resource that you can use to manage your media; it could also be used by the IT department to do virtual machines and, as Dave will tell you, some of the broadcasters in Australia have purchased Isilon storage for media, but have ended up using the extra capacity or performance on the cluster for IT applications.

Dave: Yes, so the whole virtual machine concept is heading towards the Cloud; and everyone’s talking about the Cloud and there are many, many areas where the Cloud is relevant, especially in the broadcast postproduction web serving; Stu mentioned transcoding content, you know these days, a broadcaster provides content, high definition, standard definition – if you have an Android phone you have to provide it for that; Apple iPhones, iPads, all different resolutions, have to have different streams of content coming out, and that transcoding is big. So that’s just one area. In a postproduction house where you’ve got animation, compositing, colour grading – all have different bandwidth requirements and things like that; and storage grows rapidly depending on, you know, whether they’re working with high def or film content or standard def and things like that.

Ed: And when you want to share things?

Dave: It’s the same directory. If you think of the concept of our storage is the 200 kilogram USB drive, it’s the same directory. As you add another node, it’s still part of the same directory. You add a node, 30 seconds later you can see that storage is available. You know about thin clients – there’s another term “thin provisioning”. You absolutely use your storage to the limit of its capacity and then you add another one and you add another one. When we add a node, it’s there in under a minute – available, operational and in use.

Many vendors can’t offer that can they? How long if you’re adding – doing a SAN upgrade, how long would that take to add that storage Elijah? How long would it take to add storage on a SAN and make it available and provision it?

Elijah: Oh how big is your SAN – it could be days.

Stuart: You see operationally, if you’re busy, you can’t afford to do that. You can’t take your production storage or RAID down for days. Remember when we add a node, the cluster doesn’t go down, you add it, it’s available 30 seconds later. You know, it’s on and available and everyone’s still using it. The Isilon system NZVN offers a real advantage.

To find out more about Autodesk, Apple, Adobe

Page 8

or Isilon, contact DVT Phone (09) 525 0788, Email sales@dvt.co.nz : www.dvt.co.nz

PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS

Sony NXE-FS100 Super 35mm NXCAM Camcorder The NEX-FS100 is an interchangeable lens camcorder featuring a full Super 35mm sensor with Sony E-Mount and an optional 18-200mm zoom lens. It is capable of capturing stunning image quality with shallow depth of field.

DVT PRODUCTION INCLUDING CAMERAS, LENSES, LIGHTS, BATTERIES AND INTEGRATION SERVICES. VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR DETAILED PRODUCT FEATURES OR CALL ON 09 525 0788.

3D M SIMPADE LE! SONY PMW-F3 CAMERA Super 35mm digital cinematography.

GOPRO 3D CAMERAS Professional 3D made easy only from GoPro

GENUS Matte boxes and follow focus by Genus

The new PMW-F3 Camcorder is designed for digital production environments that seek the creative flexibility offered by a large frame sensor- including commercial, documentary, television and feature film production.

The GoPro 3D HERO System and CineForm Studio software make it easy to capture and create professional quality 3D content.

Combine two 1080p HD HERO cameras into a single housing to record 3D video and photos while simultaneously recording in 2D.

Genus creates award winning and innovative Mattebox, follow focus and camera support systems for video and film professionals.

The Genus range of products are designed and built to exacting standards and are very reasonably priced.

STRE A LIVE M !

N SHIPOW PING

GEMINI 4:4:4 RECORDER On camera uncompressed 4:4:4 recording with S-Log.

AJA KI PRO MINI On camera ProRes 422 HQ recording at its best.

TERADEK CUBE Stream media anywhere locally or globally.

BLACKMAGIC MIXERS Broadcast grade live vision mixers.

Convergent Design’s Gemini 4:4:4 combines a small 5” touch screen monitor with an uncompressed HD recorder that supports HD-SDI, Dual Link and 3G-SDI inputs. It records to one or two 1.8” solid state hard drives. Just about every HD format is supported up to 2k in resolution in both the 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 colour space.

Ki Pro Mini is the smallest and simplest way of connecting production and post, anywhere shooting takes you. With a miniature form factor that makes for the smallest camera and recorder package available, Ki Pro Mini is powerful, supporting all four types of Apple ProRes 4:2:2 (including HQ, LT and Proxy).

Teradek’s revolutionary, camera mountable Cube media encoder and decoder family wowed audiences at NAB. Capable of turning your iPad into a field monitor, streaming live content to the web or a wireless SDI Field monitor this box has to be the most flexible, cost-effective and exciting encoder to date.

Introducing the world’s most advanced broadcast grade production switchers! ATEM switchers include advanced technology and unique, powerful features, all built into a familiar M/E setup that’s fast and easy to use. Now you can get started with live production, the world’s lowest cost and fastest way to produce professional video content!

www.dvt.co.nz

Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd

|

Phone: 09 525 0788

|

Email: sales@dvt.co.nz

|

45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland

SONY at NAB – Part Two Last issue, we looked at Sony’s offering in useable 3D cameras, 4K cameras and OLED monitors. Now it’s time for the “bread and butter.”

Ed: David, we can’t leave NAB without looking at 35mm, because it’s big, there’s a lot of people showing 35mm options, cameras, lenses, connectors – all sorts of things here at the show. Sony is no exception?

David: Well it’s a facet of the industry which has gained quite a lot of profile recently. Obviously, people in all walks of TV, video production or content creation in general, are interested in the possibilities of shallow depth of field as a creative option. Now it takes nothing away from “normal” as it were, call it normal TV camera type products with smaller sensors – half inch, two-third inch type sensors, which are ideal for many, many projects in television production, and in fact frequently more appropriate than the large sensor stuff. And when you consider the type of project that lends itself to a cinematography treatment with shallow depth of field, it has to be understood that it’s quite craft heavy to obtain those production values. That’s another facet of this whole – call it “opportunity” – that exploiting shallow depth of field is quite onerous in terms of the actual craft process. But obviously, that’s something that is exciting people and people are happy to make that extra effort, to get that beautiful imagery.

Ed: And what we see here, of course, is a huge range of PL mount prime lenses, and some very expensive zoom lenses, but a number of manufacturers have now come out with an affordable zoom lens which not only would fit the F3, but also the F35?

David: Yes, so now that these cameras are manifestly in the market, the lens manufacturers and the accessory manufacturers are piling in to give their offerings, and it’s really great because we’ve got such a multitude of ways to accessorise the cameras to create unique solutions.

Ed: And one particularly anticipated device that has finally come to fruition from Sony, which fits the F3 but also any of the larger cameras where you want high data rate recording, is David?

David with the NEX-FS100P.

David: Yes, there’s certainly an emphasis on large format, large sensor acquisition, that’s for sure, across the board at every price point. There is obviously very much a trend in the industry to shoot in that way for certain types of work. That doesn’t take anything away from the need for more conventional television production cameras, right from the established documentary and drama production through to ENG and for “run and gun”, reality and all the rest of it. So that’s probably still the dominant requirement in the market.

But, of course, there is an increase in the interest from cinematography, large sensor requirements in motion picture production and also project stuff, where you want a creative look for a music video or a commercial, or just a special look in a project in general.

Ed: Now you say “large sensor” and here we’ve already talked about 4K, now we’re talking 35mm, do you put the two together, or do you make a difference between the two?

David: Well 4K is I guess, generally going to occur with a large sensor.

Ed: So large format sensors in proper video cameras have been around for a while in the 35mm area but now, with the F3, it’s become a lot more affordable, and with the NEX-FS100 even more so. So there’s a big move in that direction to large format sensors?

Page 10

Some of the range of PL mount lenses available.

David: That’s right. So this is a “work in progress” that’s obviously developed quite a distance already, for augmenting the standard … the flip-out viewfinder of the F3, to allow it to be a sort of a dioptre type viewfinder.

Ed: So it looks very much like the EX3?

David: Rather like the EX3, or indeed the FS100 that has also got a similar type finder.

Ed: So there are solutions out there?

David: There sure are, so hopefully we’ll see this come to fruition as a real product very soon.

Ed: The FS100 has been getting a lot of interest here?

David: It certainly has. We’re showing the FS100 in a number of variants, using lots of third party products to really create various solutions which are for cinematography type scenarios. There’s a number of samples of the FS100 with high end lenses, using adapters for PL type lenses. There’s products from Redrock Micro for example, here providing the kind of rails and the handles and follow focus and other things which are desirable for project work. There’s a couple of off-board recorders – the Cinedeck and the nanoFlash which are used with the HDMI output of the FS100 to record full spec 422 imagery out of the camera. So don’t forget, this is a full Super 35mm CMOS sensor, the same sensor as the F3. So we really have a very high quality image coming out of this guy and by optimising it, by adding some accessories such as this, you can get some fantastic results.

David: This is the SR Memory Recorder SR-R1, one of several versions … there’s an SR-R3 and SR-R4 also, with different mechanical arrangements to allow them to dock to different types of camera or to be used with an off-board scenario. This system records the MPEG-4 studio profile at 220, 440 or 880 Megabits per second onto 1 terabyte SR Memory cards. The thing about this is that it’s really designed at a premium performance level, not just in terms of workflow speed but also in terms of mitigating risk. It’s RAID 5 and extremely robust. And getting 6 Gigabits per second off the card for transfer; that really makes a big difference in the workflow for high-end projects.

Ed: Because you look around the show and every man and his dog is making some sort of off-board recorder that ups the specification of the manufacturer, but this is really the “bees knees”, the top end?

David: Yes, of course there are a lot of different ways to utilise contemporary electronics and storage. It means you can make your choices to produce something that does a certain job at a certain price.

Where we’ve gone with this, is to guarantee a lot of headroom for future development. So we’ve gone to the very maximum throughput, the very maximum of storage capacity and, most importantly, the robustness, so the RAID’ing of the recording and the general build and robustness and systems design of the hardware itself. So you’ve got a very high guarantee assurance of record – and that’s what you’ve got to have when you’re shooting a motion picture in Hollywood.

Ed: Now just on the F3 camera, one criticism some people have made about it, is that the viewfinder being so far at the back makes it difficult to use, and we see here a “snoot” that seems to have come from the factory David?

Ed: Now in the standard range of cameras there’s not been a lot of development, but certainly, you’ve had a couple of good successes in New Zealand. One we’ve already mentioned, the TVNZ News with the 500, but there’s more?

David: Well actually there have been developments, the 500, 350 and 320 are all recent introductions anyway, so they’re all state of the art.

Perhaps what is more relevant these days though is the development of the workflow. We’ve seen a lot of enhancement to the XMPilot workflow where we’ve got a more elegant workflow for efficient communication and integration between field operations and postproduction operations – so wireless connectivity between the camera and peripheral devices in the field and the way that metadata can be captured and shared between the field and the studio and those kind of approaches, are probably where the real exciting developments are happening.

That’s probably where the most benefit can be obtained these days, because the imaging systems of cameras are now performing to such a high level.

Ed:

Any big sales – TVNZ, Maori TV?

David: Yes indeed, so we have had some great successes in New Zealand in the last year with the XDCAM camcorders. The PMW-500 XDCAM HD 422 camcorder was selected by TVNZ for their ENG operations and we’ve sold a significant fleet there to TVNZ. In the case of Maori Television, after extensive trials of various options, they selected the PMW-350 XDCAM EX camcorder, which is a really delightful lightweight camcorder with lovely images and very good sensitivity.

Ed: In the support area – the sort of “off camera” side, the PDW-U2 high speed read / write professional disc drive. Who would want one of these David since everything’s now recorded in the camera?

David: Well one of the first customers is Bono, of course! Never mind. The …

Page 11

Ed: Oh dear, we’ve started, we thought we could get away with it, but we haven’t!

David: Well, we had the U1, which was a first and second generation disc unit providing a simple USB drive for XDCAM discs. The U2 covers the whole gamut of disc generations – the multi-layer and Quad Layer discs – so the 23, the 50, the 100 and the 128 quad layer discs are all covered.

David: It’s a safe hard disc, correct. It’s a hard disc with a 50 year plus lifetime.

Ed: Providing you’ve still got the recorder to play it?

David: True.

Ed: And that really is a necessary solution, because I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there who are worried about their hard drives stopping spinning one day. Now, these other items look like decks David? I thought decks were gone?

David: This is XDCAM Station. Well, it’s not really a deck. It has a human interface that makes it look a bit like a deck, because we are humans and we want to interface with systems.

Ed:

We like knobs and buttons don’t we?

David: Knobs and buttons are good things sometimes. XDCAM Station is a Gateway Server. This is a portal, a gateway if you like, which handles all sorts of media and has aggressive network connectivity to a number of clients within a network. In this case it can handle up to eight clients within a network, and it has up to a terabyte of internal storage, SSD and hard drive storage. It has compatibility for all types of XDCAM discs and all the SxS format media. So if you have content on XDCAM media, from any generation of XDCAM camcorder, from the beginning right through to the most recent, SD or HD, this handles it.

Ed: So this is not just for owners of 700 or 800 cameras who are using these discs – you can use them in a studio configuration?

David: Yes, it’s actually a very good archival scenario. This simple unit could be used for backing up very securely not only for video, but also as a file backup archive via USB 3, so fast ingest and recording.

So, yes, 128 Gigs on a piece of media that’s got a guaranteed lifetime of 50 years, and which accelerated testing is now starting to demonstrate will actually exceed that dramatically – at room temperature, probably up to 1,000 years!

Ed: And that’s the thing, this media is actually in a case, as opposed to a Blu-ray disc which is not in a case, and I guess that’s a major feature of its longevity?

Ed: Yes, but as you say, a gateway, this is fantastic.

I mean any facility that is ingesting into its server, it’s got one port where a whole lot of media can be ingested and I guess come out the other way too, if you need to?

David: Be out-gested, exactly. So this allows you to transcode between various kinds of types of XDCAM recording, the 50 Megabit and 35 Megabit. It will also handle, as I said, all the different flavours of XDCAM recording and different types of XDCAM media, and then network it out or hold it in its own storage. It’s got excellent machine control characteristics, so it could be used, for example, as a four port server. Also, because it has base band interfacing, you could use it as a nice little slo-mo server for a small sports truck, as an example. There’s a number of ways you could use

David: Well having secure dust-proofing and containerisation must improve things when you’re handling it. Obviously it reduces the contamination, but contamination and dust and soiling and so on for optically written phase change media isn’t really a problem. If they get dirty, oily, greasy …

Ed:

Put them in the washing machine?

David: You can literally put them in the washing machine – you can literally put them in a dishwasher, take them out, dry them off, put them back into the cartridge and they will continue to play perfectly!

Ed:

And on a cost per gigabyte basis?

David: Yes, certainly about a dollar a Gig I think for these larger discs.

Ed: Right, the sign says “XDCAM Evolutions to the Future” – a quad layer disc?

David: Sony have added another generation to the XDCAM disc family, which is a 128 Gig “write once” archival disc. So that’s very valuable. As I mentioned with the U2, it can be employed to be a deep archive, a long term archive for video content – any file, not just video.

Ed: So it’s not file dependent, it’s just like, as you say, it’s a safe hard disc?

this. You could use it as a hub for a small production unit, with several edit seats all operating on the same media; and you can hang lots of additional storage on it.

Ed: Are there different models here, or …?

David: Yes, there’s three models depending on the specifics. So the base unit does not have a disc drive, only SxS and it goes up from there, adding the disc and with additional storage and so on.

Ed: So there’s an awful lot of things packed into this one little machine, and I guess even at a cost of – what

Page 12

is it – 30 grand, compared to a DigiBeta deck, which some people had to buy at around 120, it’s “cheap as chips”?

David: And the thing about it is, it really gets you out of a lot of scrapes in terms of workflow options.

Yes, it really does a huge amount of different things. A Swiss Army Knife, yes.

Ed: And that’s it, if you listed all the things that it does and the other machines that it replaces, it’s good value for money?

David: Well that’s right. I mean value for money today is speed of operation isn’t it. Time is money and all that, and this is going to enhance that dramatically, stop you mucking around trying to sort out awkward and disconnected workflows, handing off media left, right and centre, copying and so on. It makes much more sense to integrate things using a unit like this.

Ed:

A true “gateway”?

David:

A gateway indeed.

Ed: Now what you could feed from your gateway would be a clever archive system, David?

David: Yes that’s right.

We call this XDCAM Archive. It can use any current XDCAM discs as the principal repository. It can also, however, simply act as an effective cataloguing system for existing shelf-borne XDCAM media, or other types of media too. It could be Betacam SP tapes on the shelf. So what it allows is, firstly, about 800 hours of broadcast on-line storage.

But secondly, you’ve got 85,000 hours of proxy on-line storage as well and a very elegant cataloguing and librarian interface that lets you capture the proxy imagery, set the search information and so on, and actually define shelving locations physically, according to your own actual facility’s shelving – so the room number, the shelf number, the location, the tape number or the disc number, etc, etc, and actually pictorially lets you design them, so you can literally pin them up on the wall and say “right that’s shelf No 75 …”

Ed: And have somebody go and get it, whereas in the old days you had those rooms full of robotic arms that picked up tapes from shelves and plopped them into machines, and whirred and crunched … this has a little robotic activity, but it’s on a much smaller scale?

David: Well that’s the intention, so this is intended to be a workable, modestly priced – it’s extraordinarily affordable – and very elegant and quite expandable, because you can move it into roboticised systems using something like the Jukebox here. That’s a 16 disc storage device, so you can have up to 16 of those 128 Gig drives in there, and if you can consolidate your useful archive ( your most commonly needed archive materials ) onto that, you’ve got them in real time available to you off disc. Obviously those discs can then be changed out too.

Ed: Okay, so basically your XDCAM archive system is hard disc based and this is an adjunct to it – the Juke Robotic Box? David: Yes – or you could use the Juke to be a convenient way of just working through your archival process, so you fill it up and the librarian moves to the archiving process and then you refill it with the next one and so on, and so on. And then you shelf store them.

This works pretty well – and at a modest cost. This is the point; we’re not saying this is the be all and end all Page 13

of large scale asset management, but it is a very practical one and works really, really nicely.

Something else about XDCAM Archive – the whole thing is the archive. The proxy imagery and the metadata, everything relating to the database and the images in the database, are browsable in an HTML space, in a web browser. Up to 100 seats can be looking at the content, there’s no licensing and these can be located physically anywhere. So you have a very ready access to the browse capability of the materials – very ready – over these many thousands of hours of content, any number of people within an organisation can browse very quickly to that content and search and look at it and see video and audio.

One other attribute of XDCAM Archive which I think is rather nice. You put an RFID tag on each of your discs or tapes – this is basically a little plastic sticker. And you encode that RFID tag number in the metadata relating to the content.

Now when you’re walking around your facility and you pick up a disc, it’s got the RFID on it. You pick up your iPhone or your Android phone, it detects the RFID tag, so now it knows which piece of material in the database it needs to look at. So you can be standing there with your iPhone or Android …

we have been very successful in the high end, in the broadcast area, so we’ve taken some of that technology and have introduced this very affordable switcher. So 8 input, built-in 6 channel audio mixer, it has a built-in 3D mode and built-in frame mems and frame sync and obviously it’s a full HD switcher.

Ed:

Ed:

And you could browse what’s on the disc?

So what are the inputs – what sort of feed?

David: You’ve got 4 HD, 3 HDMI and 1 DVI input and 3 analogues as well; and 4 outputs of various sorts.

It’s a pretty convenient small scale switcher for a number of applications in house of worship, event centres and small live production applications, small OB vehicles and so forth.

Ed: I guess it just fills out your range. I know Sony has made this move to become a more integrated service provider, so now you can offer more and more of your own product at different levels to complete a package for an organisation?

The key to an intelligent archive system.

David: You could browse what’s on the disc, looking at moving video, audio, just by simply holding your phone next to the disc itself!

Ed:

That’s seriously cool.

David:

That is pretty cool.

Ed: And to finish us off, a nice little Sony switcher David, the MCS-8M? David: Well this is a new area of activity for us.

We haven’t made a small switcher for a long time – something in this sort of price range, but of course we have a huge heritage of making vision switchers, and

David: Yes – we’re not SonyCentric when we’re doing System Integration though, not by a long shot. Our interest is only in supplying what the customer ultimately wants.

When we’re doing SI it’s a consultation process, a design and integration process and a support process.

It’s a never ending circle if you like, of support to the customer.

Ed: Okay, I understand that at the top end, but at your dealer level where a dealer might be setting up a small studio, they can now more easily offer a complete Sony solution?

David: That’s right, actually this is true, thank you!

It helps to understand what the hell you’re talking NZVN about first!

Page 14

David normally does – but to get your complete Sony story, go and visit your friendly Sony reseller as seen in the pages of NZVN.

Dedolight At the Dedolight booth, I was again privileged to be able to interview the founder, owner and lighting Guru, Dedo Weigert.

Ed: I know the question that Chris would really like me to ask is, have you finally developed the perfect plasma lamp?

Dedo: We looked at them, we played with them … we haven’t really gone much further, we didn’t feel encouraged enough. There is this little plasma lamp that is very small and has a very high light output and would work okay with optical systems, and it’s being used in some moving lights but we have not yet been encouraged enough to go for it. We are working with four different LED manufacturers, developing higher quality Dedo himself with a very clever prototype light.

LEDs; some of them we try to improve the phosphor mix to get a better colour rendition and this is something market that are really far away from anything that where we have to rethink completely. In the old days, could be regarded as professional. They survive only by we knew about colour temperature, then we learnt the magic of white balance. about CRI, the Colour Rendition Index, we learnt about Ed: The camera fixes it? the colour triangle and the plane curve. Then we found Dedo: Yes. In lighting, there are not many real out that for LEDs, to measure them, the colour rules, but there’s one rule – don’t mix – otherwise you’ll temperature meters are no good. So we do spectrum have a green side of the face and a magenta side of the analysis and that also doesn’t tell us really the true face, and then the famous sentence “we’ll fix it in post” story about the character of the LED. It’s a tricky doesn’t work anymore, and you’re up the creek in a character. wire mesh canoe! So we now have low priced LEDs, Ed: Well that’s it … I always thought that an LED is an LED panels and any multi LED when you look at it, looks LED, it’s a standard sort of thing. Obviously you believe very bright, it looks very aggressive. When you point it there’s room for improvement in LED technology? at the wall there’s very little light, but it’s the trend, Dedo: Most people seem to think, as you say, LED “save the planet” … is LED, it’s one big goulash and you stir it and wherever Ed: And keep the heat off the talent? you want to take your spoonful, it will be okay. There Dedo: Well that’s one of the myths about LEDs. are vast differences and now we have to learn to split Now people think it’s a lot of light; that’s only partially up the Colour Rendition Index in different R values – R1 true, because like a regular high voltage halogen lamp through R14 – and then we learn that there’s a value that produces 20 lumen per Watt; an HMI lamp for R9 that white LEDs cannot do. So you have the R8, produces 80 lumen per Watt; an office fluorescent that the average of all the Colour Rendition Indices, and with is terribly green may go up to 110 lumen per Watt; our the R9 they all break down. We always said CRI has to ceramic lamps are about 80 lumen per Watt; Kino Flo is be above 90 for any professional work. Sunlight is 100, 80 lumen per Watt; LEDs usually are between 50 and halogen is 98, a good HMI lamp maybe 92, a Kino Flo 60 lumen per Watt … so the actual light output is not as maybe 92, a good ceramic lamp like also our tungsten high as people would want it to be. The next thing is, HMI lamp is 92-93 – and then LEDs; some of the most “they use little power” – there’s some truth to it, but famous ones, CRI 74. That’s class 2B lighting; that’s you have to differentiate; and then there is the myth what no serious butcher would use to light the meat in “there’s no heat” but the biggest problem with LEDs is his shop window, because people wouldn’t buy it, it cooling. You have to build a light that’s as heavy as a doesn’t look attractive. tank if you have passive cooling.

Ed: So how is somebody who is purchasing a lamp to Ed: So is it a case of high temperature in a small know that it’s at the right colour level – that it’s a space, rather than an overall high heat? quality LED? Dedo: Well that high temperature from the small Dedo: The client doesn’t know. The client has no LED wants to go somewhere, so eventually it makes the idea; he thinks LED is LED. whole housing hot and in our Ledzilla we had an 18 Ed: But that’s where you make the decision to buy Watt LED, we were driving it with 8 Watt.

Why? from a reputable manufacturer isn’t it?

Because when we go higher, we have less light. When Dedo: And even some of the most reputable it overheats, the light output goes down, so the cooling manufacturers are not ashamed to put LED lights on the is one of the major problems with LEDs and that adds a Page 16

lot of weight, or you put a fan in, and there are onboard lights that have a fan in, it’s true. I would not have the courage to put a fan right on top of the microphone. It may be a quiet fan from a distance, but the microphone on those cameras sits right next to it, and every quiet fan after one year may not be quiet anymore.

Ed: But it all comes down to the manufacturer’s reputation though doesn’t it … I mean, you’ve been in this business a long time and you’ve developed a reputation that you can’t produce lights that are going to be obsolete in three years?

Dedo: This is like if you would have said 30 years ago “what’s the computer of the future going to look like?” Some people say “okay, you equip your new studio with LED and it calculates over the next 50 years.” This is like buying a computer today and going to the notary and saying “I want this in my last will to go to my grandson.”

Dedo: With LEDs, regardless of trying to keep up the good name of your own company, today most of the time you’re producing something that you know very well is not ideal in colour; and then come additional problems, when you do a lot of colour tests with the camera, saying this is the ultimate tool, because that’s what we’re going to use, and use as a reference light, halogen light, or a Kino Flo. You may think you come to some results, until you take the next camera that has another chip in it, and see daylight all the same, halogen light all the same, a Kino Flo all the same, an HMI lamp all the same, but with an LED it gives you vastly different colour rendition and you’ll be amazed what strange colours you get out of it.

Ed:

Ed:

Ed:

Well you take the hum out in post?

Dedo: do that.

If the frequency is clean enough, you can

Ed: All right, so what’s the answer? What’s the one light that’s going to rule all?

Oh, okay.

So in fact are you talking about the new CMOS chips that are in some of the modern cameras having problems with LED light?

Dedo: The wonderful thing about CMOS is the incredible resolution and sensitivity, but at some end you pay for it, because when you have a camera that can shoot under the lowest of light conditions, you may want to use it also under normal light conditions, and then it’s just too much light. Or you may want to open up the iris a little bit to limit the depth of field, so then you throw in very dense ND filters, and they cut the visible light down to 6%, 3% transmission, but they don’t cut the infrared, and the infrared goes in unhindered. Whilst for the unfiltered camera, this may be balanced, for the camera with this extreme ND filter, you get an excessive amount of infrared and that distorts the colour. You have no more blacks.

“Ledzilla.”

Dedo: People are going to laugh at you. When your computer is three months old, your neighbour will say “what do you want with the old thing?” After three years, it won’t work anymore, because there will be new software that demands a newer computer, and you’re caught in it. So LEDs that you buy today may not be used for 50 years, even if they could live for 50 years. So let’s say realistically, a lifespan of 3-5 years until the system is totally outdated. Let me give you one example : there’s a famous manufacturer of LEDs, and we helped to build their name, and we still sell their lights, because we gave them a good name against better knowledge, because this is what people want.

Okay, so now we have another one that looks like it; it has 35% more light and it uses only half the Wattage.

Theirs is 50 Watt; ours is 24 Watt … and people don’t ask, they know LEDs don’t take power, but double the power, half the power, I think is a considerable difference. But having only 24 Watt would produce less heat; this allows us to pack more LEDs in a smaller space and to have a high output light that gives us 3x the light over the competitor, still asking for less money. But in a way, people don’t really care – LED is the big hype and there are so many differences in it.

That’s one problem. Another one is that different chips will see the colour rendition from LEDs very differently. Although they see sunlight the same, halogen light the same, a Kino Flo the same, HMI the same and so on, so all these traditional light sources will render similarly, the LED light will show very different results. So whatever you learn about the colour rendition of LEDs, it is only true for this one camera that you test it with, and you use the next one and you’re back to the drawing board.

Now postproduction can fix a lot, the white balance saves you to some extent, but there are serious limitations if you regard it as a standard for colour rendition. If you want to mix with other light sources then you may really get into trouble. So if there’s any rule, then it would be “don’t mix.”

But ideally, someday, all the research work that has been done by so many LED manufacturers, will come to fruition by having LEDs, some of them the mixed colour LEDs – we now have one that mixed red, green, blue, white and amber. It’s been done before, but there was no light output, but now there’s something that does this, and has significant light output, and amazingly good colour, controllable colour, and that becomes closer to being acceptable. Or there are others who mix a different phosphor chemistry that works better in the lower colour temperatures.

So it’s easier to get acceptable colour with LEDs that have light that is closer to tungsten, rather than something that has 6000 Kelvin – much more difficult to control.

Page 18

Or if you mix some red LEDs among the white ones, but then you have to control them and there are companies who put multi-chips like 20 chips of white and four chips of red in one array together. To use that in an optical system is not easy, because you project the little red dots, and to mix the colour so that it becomes a uniform general colour is not so easy. Usually you lose a lot of light in doing that. What’s interesting is that they have little windows that look at the red and balance it individually. Each of those arrays has its own programme you know. So it’s getting more and more high tech and many companies are really frantically working on improved colour, improved output …

Ed: It sounds as though they’re working on fixes rather than getting it right at the start?

Dedo: The white LED will remain difficult to make and I don’t think there will be any drastic breakthrough in the very near future. There will be small steps of improvement, but mixing with other coloured LEDs can bring improved results, and that’s what many are working on now.

Ed:

controllability. A panel light with multi LEDs you can’t really control. If it has a barn door, that’s more for decoration, but this light will be highly controllable.

Ed: What sort of angle are we looking at, in terms of “wide”, that would give us an acceptable even distribution?

Dedo: Not only acceptable even distribution, but perfectly even distribution, in an angle from about 5 degree to 60 degree, and then we have this – like you have on a video camera – aspheric wide-angle adapters that we can stick in front, and then we can go up to 90 degree. So a small studio light usually focuses 1 to 3; we focus with our traditional lights 1 to 25, and, with a wide-angle adapter, that goes then up to 1 to 50, which is a significant difference over traditional lighting instruments.

Have you got some examples to show us?

Dedo: We have one light that we’re building now in a partnership with Osram, for one particular museum that Osram would like as their prestige object to say “we, Osram, have built the light sources that you will see in this very prestigious exhibition.” The next one that is planned is a Turner exhibition, and we are modifying lights with these new LED technologies.

There are other developments that we are following with the white LEDs and we’re working on one with 40 Watts and another one with 90 Watts, but these figures are misleading. People always say “how many Watts?”

The question is “how much light do you get?’ So our deal has been to try and get a lot of light out of little Watts and have a higher efficiency which, especially for focusing lights, is a very important aspect. Remember the standard Fresnel light that’s been around for 100 years or longer? In the spot position, a Fresnel light has only 6% efficiency. Now you consider from 100% energy, 90% is heat, 10% is visible light and from that 6%, that’s 0.6% of the energy. The people in New Zealand have plenty of energy!

At this point, Dedo dives into a bag and pulls out a prototype of a new lamp – a new focusable lamp – that’s then quickly put away so the competition don’t get to see it!

Dedo: Our specialty has always been the combination of light sources with optical systems, so this one will be a highly focusing light. We’re very proud that it will have a very high efficiency, especially in the spot position, where other lights lack the efficiency. So even with a very low Wattage – and this is a 40 Watt LED light – we’ve tested it against another brand of LED light with 110 Watt and we have distinctly more light output, so that is encouraging. What’s more encouraging is that we can focus like you would expect from a Dedolight, so in the mobile version it will be very versatile; you can use all the Dedolight accessories. In the studio version, it can serve very well as a back light, contour light, accent light, to augment the larger surface LED panels, if you want to have something that is completely LED lit. The aim, of course, in the end is to come up with a quality of light that can be mixed with other light sources, like all of our other lights can.

We aim to make a very special tool that blends in, but has to excel in colour rendition, colour distribution, light distribution, focusing range and, above all, in

Overhead light with adjustable angles.

Ed: So in the portable version, I would see this as being an ideal light for a News camera crew for an interview?

Dedo: I would think not only for a News camera, yes for all the lighting on the run, for “run and gun” or portable studio, but also a light that’s good enough to do high class portrait lighting, to do accent lighting, to be a super controllable instrument for demanding photography.

That’s our ground; that’s where we live and that’s why sometimes we may take a few months longer than others, because we’re trying to plan our instruments to fulfil those tasks. But, as I said, with LEDs there’s so many developments coming, and even with all the four LED manufacturers with whom we work very closely, it could be that in two months they say, look, forget it, we have something new.

Ed: But then, if the LED lamp technology improves, the case, the whole system, is still exactly right, you just need to change the lamp – one would hope?

Dedo: The hope would be you just change the LED chip, but experience already tells us that many of the LEDs, even if they look like single LEDs, they’re made up of a number of chips. So we had one that worked with six chips, and then all of a sudden that wasn’t produced anymore, and we had to go for one with four chips and had to develop completely new electronics.

Ed:

Because your focal point would change?

Dedo: No, because the LED worked pretty much the same, but the old electronics that we had couldn’t

Page 19

drive it, so it’s a completely new electronic voyage that had to be developed and tested, and it threw us back several months.

Ed: Is this lamp going to be an AC or DC? Dedo: It can be used both ways.

Ed: Just like your standard 12 Volt Dedolight?

Dedo: With the hope that the AC ballast is going to be very small, and we can achieve something with it that we couldn’t do before, to have power factor correction added, ( which takes extra space and creates extra heat ) including the outer ranging so that people can go from Japan with 90 Volt to Australia where we may encounter 264 Volt.

Ed: Really – the Australians go up to 264?

Dedo: But that’s not the worst. The worst is Abu Dhabi with 240 Volt plus or minus 15, true! That’s enough to kill any lamp or anything!

For some other products from Dedolight this NAB, I spoke with Roman Zenz.

Ed: Roman, you’ve got a little light here that’s got red all over it – why’s it got red on it?

Roman: Because it’s an infrared light fixture. It’s an LED, single source focusable light fixture that people use for animal photography because it’s invisible for most animals, so you can sneak up on them and shoot them at night.

Ed: How do you know it’s on?

Roman: Well you can see it through the camera if you have an infrared camera, and you can also see it – if you look at the LED you can see it glow red a little bit.

They also use it for crime investigation I guess, and it’s

Roman with glass filters.

really for special applications and I’m sure they’re going to come up with some more.

Ed: But not enough heat to warm up the muscles after a hard day at NAB? Roman:

No, unfortunately not.

Ed: Fortunately not, actually, because we want all that infrared as light, don’t we?

Roman: Ed:

Exactly.

That’s a very specialised device?

Roman: It is. We are also coming up with an ultraviolet version of it, which is also invisible – the light coming out from it that is – and that will be used in crime scene investigation also, to show whether there’s blood or traces of …

Ed:

Other fluids on the wall?

Roman:

Yes.

Ed: Well, okay. Now this is also something I haven’t seen before, and that’s a light on a stick?

Roman: Basically, this is the new accessory for our “Ledzilla.” Instead of the focusing unit that is usually on the light and lets you spot and flood it, you can add this Soft Tube to it and it gives you a nice little soft light that you can control very easily.

Ed:

A totally flexible barn door with a reflector in it?

Roman: Exactly, and it Velcros onto it and you can bend it every way and it’s daylight and you can convert it to tungsten by adding this little filter. You can also take little gels from a Rosco swatchbook, like the sample gels from Rosco that you get for free, shove them in the little slot and there you go, you’ve got a nice colour to it – and it’s free!

Ed: Page 20

That’s a very cool light!

Roman: Yes, it’s ideal to add a little glow to things and as an eye light or to stimulate a dashboard at night – something like that.

change the angle, so you mount this light to the ceiling and you change the angle by swivelling the rows of LEDs.

Ed: Now also in lighting, but a larger something that’s an overhead light?

Ed: And it’s also good for lighting up your booth desk?

version,

Roman: Yes this is an overhead LED where you can change the angles of the rows of the LEDs, so that’s really special. All the rows move at the same time and you can also turn the whole fixture, so it rotates and it’s really, really bright.

Nice for studios, for teleconferencing; also all places where you have low ceilings you can’t really use a light panel where you can

Roman:

Yes, indeed it is!

Ed: Fantastic. Now, in the projection lights as well as the range of Gobos, you’ve now come out with some background effects filters?

Roman: Exactly. We have our glass filters that have a structure to them.

They have different structures and different colours … right now there’s eight different colours and 11 different structures available and it’s just really nice to add them to the projection attachment and have a different kind of background. If you want to do interviews and your subject is sitting in front of a white wall, it just easily lets you change and add a little extra to the background – some interesting structures. Since they have a texture to them, you can focus them on different levels, thus achieving different levels.

Ed: The depth of field effect?

Roman: Kind of, yes. Out of focus, you know.

Ed: So you can have a depth of field without having a 35mm sensor camera?

Roman: Yes, you can.

Ed: That’s a saving.

NZVN

To find out more about Dedolight product, contact PLS at Phone (09) 302-4100 Email info@kelpls.co.nz Website www.kelpls.co.nz

Redzilla for night action.

Page 21

Sound Devices – with added video!

The NAB Sound Techniques stories Buckland begin at Sound Devices.

Ed:

with

Stephen

It’s always exciting isn’t it Stephen?

Stephen: It is Grant and it’s very nice to have you here with us at Sound Devices today.

Ed: But to talk to us, someone who knows what he is talking about, Paul Isaacs. We’re going to start with the sound options, and I don’t know if it’s just me, but these look as though they’re getting smaller?

Paul: Well we’ve always done “small” but there’s just one new story in front of you here and that’s the MixPre -D which is our 21st Century answer to the original MixPre which has been on the market for over 10 years.

The 302 that you’re seeing here has been around for many, many years and is like an industry standard three channel mixer, and I think one of the reasons for its popularity is, as you say, because of the size, but also the rugged build, and obviously this really high quality premium analogue mic preamps. Then we have the 552 which we introduced about 18 months ago now, which is ground-breaking as being the first five channel mixer with a built-in recorder, and that’s proving to be very popular, again for the rugged build and the high quality.

Ed:

But your MixPre-D, the “D” stands for?

Paul: Digital – surprise, surprise. We wanted to retain the same name, because it’s a two channel mixer with high quality transformer balanced inverts, it can be switched between mic and line and you have phantom at 48 Volts or 12 Volts. One of the differences between this and the original MixPre is we’ve provided really nice generous metering, so you can actually monitor the level more precisely. On the original, there’s only a handful of LEDs, so this makes it far easier to get the signal level you’re wanting. We have the balanced XLR outputs which can be switched between mic and line.

One of the big differences with the MixPre-D is that one of these XLR outputs can also be switched to AES. So now you have a small two channel mixer with a digital output, ideal for connecting to many of these cameras now which have digital inputs, like the XDCAM. Ed: And it’s got a USB connection – what do you use that for?

Paul: That’s actually for streaming audio via USB to your Mac or a PC, so we can stream at up to 96 kHz, it just uses the class compliant drivers in either of those systems. It’s literally “plug and play” and it just makes a very high quality sound interface for your computer.

We can also play back from the computer into the MixPre-D and monitor via the headphone output. It’s battery powered obviously, very rugged, powered from 2 AA batteries …

Ed:

It just clips on the side of your 552 or …?

Paul: Clips on the 552, but really, one of the areas where we think this is going to be really popular is in the DSLR market.

Ed: Oh, why’s that – why would you need something like this for a DSLR? Paul: Well you can probably tell me that. I mean generally it’s known that the audio quality on DSLRs is pretty poor.

Ed:

Pretty poor! Stephen?

Stephen:

Pretty poor.

Paul Isaacs from Sound Devices.

Paul: But really, you know, you have boxes like the Beachtek– this really adds a level of quality above those products with a much more easily accessible user interface.

We have a camera mount point on the underside of the MixPre-D so it can be mounted underneath a DSLR; we have a locking mechanism accessory. So, yes, I think this is going to really be popular in that market.

The other thing I should mention is the fact that this has stereo return – two channel stereo return. So those two return inputs can actually be used as a third and a fourth channel, and they can actually be routed into the mix and panned left or right. So this could, in many circumstances, be used as a four channel mixer.

Ed:

Can you see great things for this one, Steve?

Stephen: Well already the predecessor was popular for people who wanted to record a reasonable quality of sound with DSLRs, but the predecessor had a couple of limitations. One was it wasn’t easily attached to the camera, which this one overcomes; and it wasn’t really designed for that particular purpose.

Ed: Well that goes with the DSLR user philosophy doesn’t it?

Stephen: Well it does go with the DSLRs, but as you’ll see round the show, everywhere, everyway, there are people trying to figure out how to make the DSLR into a working camera.

Pause for ribald laughter at this point!

Paul: So what more is there to say about this … I mean, all the functionality is controlled via front panel switches and there’s a few side panel switches as well.

There are a number of shortcuts which allow you to pan returns and adjust gains of returns. We have this

Page 22

multiple function rotor encoder on the front, which can be used for controlling your headphone level, or it can be used in conjunction with another button combination press to control the return gain level. There’s a “Press” function as well, so you can use that to determine where the signals are being panned, so that everything can be controlled from the front; there’s a built-in high quality Slate mic and also a tone oscillator.

Ed: There’s lots of things in there, but also there’s a couple of nice big knobs for adjusting the volume and they’re white on the front which I think is fantastic, because you can see them?

could quite happily blend the two together to get extra functionality, but this is an all-in-one, camera mountable solution for portable video production in the broadcast industry.

Ed: But it’s got a screen on it?

Paul: It has, yes.

Ed: Why do you need a screen for audio?

Paul: Well because it’s a video recorder!

Ed:

What?

Ed: Now moving on, and the perfect companion to the MixPre-D, the digital?

Paul: It’s a video recorder. Sound Devices is now in the video world, and you may ask why is Sound Devices doing a video product? Well it’s a sort of natural progression if you think about it – Sound Devices has been doing portable hard disc recorders for many years now, and we’ve proven ourselves to be the best at it, and so really when you’re talking about video or audio, it’s all just data at the end of the day. So we felt it was a natural progression for us to look at the video industry and see what we could do there, bringing our file based hard disc portable technology. We started looking at the market, and we realised that one of the drawbacks of video cameras – well there’s quite a few drawbacks with the cameras – but No.1 their optics might be great, but when they record to their own internal media ( whether it’s old tape based systems or whether it’s modern Flash based media ) they use very highly compressed codecs which tend to degrade the signal. So we started to look at the various cameras and we realised that all these cameras have uncompressed outputs on HD-SDI and/or HDMI.

Paul: Well I would say this product exists in its own right entirely. It doesn’t need a MixPre on it, but you

You can see that this Panasonic P2 has an uncompressed HD-SDI output, and we can take a BNC

Paul: Yes, absolutely. Also the channels can be stereo linked, so that we have MS decoding and your standard stereo linking, so you can control an MS mic, use one of the pots for level and the other one for your stereo width. So this is a very adaptable tool.

Stephen: Aside from the DSLR aspect, what it gives you is a very high quality two channel mixer, which you can use with any camera, one-man-band, club operation or, if you’re doing a basic shoot where you’ve got a sound recordist. We found the predecessor very popular in tertiary institutes and with the people at the top end of the business, as a high quality interface, because you can put power on mic with phantom power and you might put the output into a radio transmitter or similar, to link back to the mixer at another place. So it’s very versatile and high quality.

Page 23

cable from there, and connect it directly into the HDSDI input here. If a camera only had an HDMI output, we could take that out from the camera and connect that into the HDMI input on the right-hand panel here.

So we’ve got two digital video options and it’s uncompressed. We take those uncompressed video streams and record them to industry standard QuickTime files on solid state drives or CompactFlash cards. Now, in supporting the visually lossless Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD codecs, these PIX recorders basically offer the best combination of picture quality and cross-platform compatibility.

Systems use the QuickTime plug in as a way of getting these various codecs into any workstation, so as long as you have the DNxHD plug in, or the Apple ProRes QuickTime plug in installed on either your PC or your Mac, you have a direct “in” to getting your video files directly onto the timeline and ready for editing without the need for a time consuming transfer process. We’ve done real world tests with Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro and Avid and it works seamlessly. That’s the real world – go back a few years and I would agree with you that it might not have been so simple, but now we’re living in a new world and things have moved on very quickly. Avid, with its version 5 introduced a thing called AMA ( Avid Media Access ) and that allows them to link to any codec via QuickTime in other forms of file format.

So they’ve basically made the method of getting into Avid a very simple way of doing that, using this AMA. So there you have it.

Ed:

Can you adjust the codec that you record to?

Paul: Yes and these are standard 2½ inch solid state drives … we’ve got this caddy which this inserts into and

Page 24

Who’s a happy chappie?

this caddy makes a great go-between between the PIX recorder and the Mac or Windows system. We also have a FireWire 800 port or a USB3 port or eSATA on here for connection.

Ed: So you just take the caddy out and then connect it direct to your computer?

Paul: So the user gets the choice of recording to CF card or SSD – we provide the choice. Now an important fact that is often overlooked is the disc format. We have chosen to record to the UDF disc format. Most recorders are either using FAT32 or HFS Plus. They have limitations; No.1, FAT32 is limited to a 4 Gigabyte maximum file size. Now that’s great for audio, but as soon as you get into video running at 220 Megabits per second, you’re talking about a few minutes of video. So what these other recorders have to do that use FAT discs, is continually split the file, and then you have to bring all these multiple files in and merge them together in a nonlinear editor. The other important thing is that UDF is cross-platform; it’s directly readable

by Windows or MAC. HFS Plus ( which does have a huge file size capability ) is only compatible with the Mac platform, so how do you get your recordings into a PC; if you’re working with Adobe Premiere or Avid on a PC how do you get that in without going through another copying process? So we chose UDF to satisfy both those prerequisites. So really, ours is a very simple way; the workflow is very simple – record to either CompactFlash or SSD, take that media, plug it straight into whatever computer you like and you can then just “drag and drop” your files directly onto any of the common nonlinear editor timelines and you’re ready to work.

Ed:

What other video formats can it record to?

Paul: Soon. Let’s take a little bit of a close look at the other connectivity before we go into the menus, because there’s a lot going on here. I should say that there’s actually two models – there’s the PIX 240 and there’s its sibling the 220, and the differences between the two units are, the 240 is the fully featured HD-SDI HDMI in and out device, with built-in timecode reader and generator. Actually, it’s a built-in Ambient Lockit box – everyone’s familiar with Ambient’s sync boxes which provide a very accurate Genlock output and timecode output. These devices are usually hung on the side of computers to ensure that they remain deadlocked. We actually built one of those inside the box, so you’re already saving yourself a huge amount of money by having it all in one box. The 240 has a builtin timecode Ambient box, HD-SDI and HDMI; the 220, its sibling, is only HDMI and doesn’t have the timecode reader or generator in there.

Ed: But if you’ve got timecode coming off your camera, what’s the point?

Paul: Well HDMI doesn’t officially support timecode, so there’s no timecode that transfers over HDMI. SDI officially supports embedded timecode, so we can pick up that timecode from the camera and when the camera rolls, you can actually use that to trigger the start of recording on the PIX as well. So like an auto record mode, yes. But it’s important that you also have the ability to use this as a master generator, so you can sync other devices like recorders all to the high accuracy clock in here.

Page 25

Ed: Formats – video formats? says “Video”?

I see on the menu it

Paul: Before we go there, I want to still focus you down here. Now it’s a widely known fact that many video cameras and recorders compromise on the quality of their audio. That’s why we have double system sound and audio recorders. Because Sound Devices is known for its audio, we have decided to put in here “no compromise” audio quality, so all our PIX recorders include our premium quality, award winning analogue input circuits that we use on our 7 series recorders. We have two balanced XLRs here which can be switched between mic and line; they can also be switched to four channels of digital AES input as well. That makes an ideal companion for, say, something like the 552 digital mixer. In addition to that, we can take eight channels of digital audio over the embedded HD-SDI or also channels of digital audio via the HDMI. So we can record up to eight channels of audio on our recorder.

We can select any of those eight channels and I navigate the system by using this rotary encoder on the right-hand side of the unit, and I make a selection by pressing the encoder and then I can very simply adjust gain. This is a very unique device, because it’s really the first device out there to not compromise on picture or audio, so we consider this really to be a three-in-one box. We have the video recorder, we have the Ambient Lockit timecode interface and Genlock output, and we have a built-in high quality eight channel recorder.

That’s three boxes in one! We also have the super quality LCD monitor which is an 800x480 pixel LCD, so

you no longer need to have a separate LCD monitor on the top of your camera – so that makes it a four-in-one device.

Ed:

Do you get Ginzu knives with it too?

Paul: No. So this monitor you’re looking at now is actually a 4.3 inch diagonal LCD monitor, but the production unit will be a 5 inch monitor and that’s actually going to fill up most of this real estate here.

Now we can easily turn off all this onscreen data by just pressing the LCD screen, so it’s very easy to monitor the quality of the audio. The high resolution makes this an ideal tool for checking your focus and your colour and all that sort of stuff – so a very powerful tool.

Ed:

Can we go onto the video now?

Paul: Yes, let’s move on. Let me just talk you through the menus here. Press the “Menu” button, and you can see the various main sub-menus here. So we start with file storage – this is where you can select which drive you want to record, how you want the files to be split automatically, you can choose file name format, which is important, because the file name is the thing that the editor first sees when the data gets imported into their system, so you want to be able to set that up – do you want it to be “scene” take, do you want it to be “reel” take, “drive” take or a combination of “drive-reel” take?

We can then choose … we can set up the reel number the scene name, the shot number, the take number, so the metadata coverage is really good here.

Ed: Okay, there’s a lot on here, let’s move on to the video?

Page 26

Paul: Okay, video. The codec choice is as follows. As I said, we support either Avid, DNxHD the native codec for Avid, or ProRes, and we provide four flavours of each, depending on what bit rates you want. Now we record 10 bit colour depth as opposed to 8 bit, so we get very good colour dynamic range.

The ProRes options go from ProRes HQ 220 Megabits down through standard ProRes at 145 Megabits, down through LT and then to Proxy – so there’s all these different bit rates you can select. Obviously the lower the bit rate, the more recording time you’re going to get on your media.

So on a typical, say, 256 gig drive at, say, ProRes 422, you’re going to get several hours of recording on one drive and this is just something you can’t achieve if you’re recording uncompressed. Most people would say that using the ProRes or Avid DNx gives you a visually lossless picture. And then with the DNxHD for the Avid based workflows, again we range from 220 Megabits down to 36 Megabits. So that’s the codec. We have built-in converters in this box as well, which means if your camera is, say, outputting 720p at 24 frames, you can choose to record that, the PIX recorder will automatically identify that and record that format. But we can also choose to convert that to any other format on the fly. This is unique to this product, there’s no other portable product out there that can do that. So there’s just a huge range of options there. We can even convert to SD on the fly, or we can upconvert from SD to HD; we can crossconvert between 720p, 1080i, 1080p; we can do 3:2 pulldown removal – this is an important technique, because often cameras which are setup to record 1080p 24 for a more film-like workflow, a lot of those cameras output at 1080i 60, they add what’s called a 3:2 pulldown, and it’s good to be able to remove that pulldown to save on data, but also to make the workflow conform.

Ed: I see it’s got a playback resolution rate, so you can actually record in one resolution and then playback in a different one?

Paul: You can see we have a basic converter on the input or the output … a lot of flexibility in here. We’ve spoken about audio a little bit, I’d just like to say that we have all these audio input combinations …

Ed: Well one would expect that from an audio company?

Paul: Yes, absolutely. We have AES digital, we have analogue mic line in, we have embedded digital as well.

We can actually take any combination of those pretty much, and so if you want to, say, use two mic inputs along with six channels of your embedded, they can be embedded together and recorded along with the picture and pre-synchronised into the QuickTime file.

Remember, this gives you the advantage of not having to synchronise in post, so you’re saving a huge amount of time there. You’re saving a huge amount of time that you’re not having to transcode, so this is really speeding up the whole workflow procedure.

Ed: Well it seems as though there’s an awful lot in there and hugely flexible. Does it come at a huge cost?

Paul: Well that’s for you to decide! As I’ve said, there’s the two models, the PIX 240 with all the bells and whistles – H D-SDI, HDMI, Lockit box, audio converters, etc – that streets at US$2,595.

And the PIX 220 is US$1,595. There’s a number of accessories … we should talk about powering actually.

If you look at the rear panel round here, you can see there’s two Sony L mount battery connections. You can plug in the standard lithium ion batteries and power the unit with those. They can also be charged from the unit, and you can also power by external DC 10-18 Volts. So if you want to power from a D-Tap off an Anton Bauer battery, you can easily do that. That’s powering; let’s talk about a number of the accessories … you can have a magnetic sun hood so literally you can let go and it goes “schtoonk” onto the unit and it claws round the side to prevent it being swiped off.

There’s going to be an articulated arm for mounting on the top of the camera as you can see here. As I mentioned before, this caddy for the SSD drive is US$99 and this provides like a caddy for the drive to mount on the PIX but also it doubles up as your interface to your Mac or PC. So there’ll be a whole range of cables on offer as well, to suit different cameras and powering needs. I think that pretty much covers it.

Ed: That seems like a winner Steve – especially at those prices?

Stephen: Yes – it’s obviously a new product for us given that we’ve been strictly involved in audio, but all the feedback I’ve had so far in the last 24 hours has been very, very positive. I’ve already got people in New Zealand wanting to have a look at one and try one out, so it’s pretty exciting really.

Ed:

When are you going to get some, do you know?

Stephen: I believe the first demonstration ones will come out in late June / early July and then, not long after that, there’ll be the first production run, so it’s NZVN best you pre-order now.

To find out more about Sound Devices products, contact Sound Techniques Phone (09) 366 1750 Email digital@soundtq.co.nz

Page 27

Petrol Bags For Protel we have Ofer Menashe from Petrol Bags.

Ed: Ofer, DSLR, it’s still popular – still people want bags for DSLR cameras?

Ofer: Yes definitely people want bags for DSLR. We think there isn’t enough space for people who are shooting with HD DSLR cameras, but shooting video, and this is where we are focusing our NAB 2011 with the DSLR in Motion range of new bags. They can contain a DSLR camera, with all the accessories needed in order to shoot great videos. Basically we have different kinds of bags – backpacks, shoulder bags and trolley bags that can contain all these accessories to help the professional HD DSLR photographer to succeed in what he needs to do.

Ed: And you’ve got different sizes there I guess, because people want different numbers of accessories?

A happy customer with Ofer.

Ofer: Absolutely – sizewise it relates to how many bodies would you like to put inside the bag – the HD DSLR bodies, lenses, a follow focus, matte box, spare lens, batteries etc. All the bags have partitions with Velcro that you can configure the way you want to hold the components.

Ed:

And they’re all black?

Ofer: Yes, it’s the same material that we’re using for the video line – exactly the same, but we’ve dedicated these bags for the HD DSLR market. We offer the DIGIBAG PD221, the Dr.DSLR Camera Bag PD443 as shoulder bags. We offer the PD332, PD331, PD336 DSLR Backpacks. We also offer the DSLR Sling Bag PD33 plus two Rolling Bags PD337 and PD610.

Ed: Now this looks a little bit different … this is a raincover?

Ofer: They are all black, and light red inside.

Ed: And it’s that good outer material that is pretty well damage-proof?

Ofer: Yes this is a raincover for an HD DSLR camera PD150. It has a couple of very unique features – first it’s very visible meaning it is the TPU material that is all clear, so you can see all what is in the camera, including all the buttons, easy access from the side.

We have this shoe system where we are using the hot shoe of the camera, allowing us the option to slide it forward or backwards, depending on the lens that you are using.

Ed: Very handy. Now what about for the video person – anything new there?

Ofer: We have done some modifications to our range, but in general it’s the same popular and successful Deca line that we introduced NZVN at last NAB. For the full range of Petrol bags and covers, contact Protel Phone (09) 379 8288 or (04) 801 9494 Web http://www.protel.co.nz

Page 28

Zeiss Optics For Protel, we are at Zeiss with Helmut Lenhof.

Ed: Now Helmut, I know you’ve got a lot of lenses here, and Zeiss have been making lenses for millions of years, but our interest has suddenly been enhanced by the release of the Sony F3 camera, which takes PL mount lenses.

Suddenly everyone wants PL mount lenses, especially the primes. You’ve got them, tell me about them?

Helmut: First of all, Zeiss has been manufacturing PL mount lenses for many, many years. We have three groups of quality lenses : the upper group is the master primes – they are pretty fast lenses; they have crisp and clear pictures; they are optimised in flare and they don’t have any breathing and they are pretty fast at T1.3.

The next upper line is the so-called ultra prime lenses.

They have a wide range of focal length – they start with the 8mm and go up to 180mm and they are not so fast; they are a little bit smaller and more compact and the speed is up to T1.7.

Then the standard range, the so-called compact primes, the CP.2 lenses. They are in an affordable range and they go from 18mm up to 100mm.

Ed: Now Zeiss is certainly well known for the quality of its build and that’s not only the machine manufacturing of the metal, but especially the glass, and I know a lot of television lens manufacturers – the quality of their lenses, a lot is determined by the coatings on the lenses. Is this the same with Zeiss?

Helmut: Of course.

As you might know, Zeiss invented the layers for optics in 1935 and in the meantime, we developed many kinds of different layers

for getting the best optical quality and to reduce the flare into the lens itself.

But coming back to the compact primes, because the compact primes fit quite well to the F3 – we deliver the compact primes with an interchangeable mount concept, meaning that for these lenses, we can provide not only a PL mount, we can also provide the same lens with a Canon mount, with a Nikon mount and with an E-mount – with all kinds of mount which are available in the market. So we think with this concept, that the lens is now a long term investment. Camera bodies are getting cheaper and cheaper but the lenses they are a little bit more expensive. Lenses are a long term investment because, unfortunately for Zeiss, the lens lasts forever!

Ed: Now that’s in the prime lens area, but you also have a zoom lens – is that true?

Helmut: That’s true yes.

Here we have our lightweight zoom. The light-weight zoom goes from 15.5-45, x 3 zoom, and it has a constant speed about T2.6. It’s specially developed for cine application. This version ( we call it the Lightweight Zoom 2 ) is also modified for an interchanging mount concept. So with this zoom, you can fit it to nearly every camera system available in the market.

Ed: So it’s not just a PL mount, you can put it on – well it’s here on a Canon EOS? Helmut: Exactly – in this case, you see the zoom on a Canon body, but it also fits to a Lexar for example or a film camera of course.

Ed: Now what surprised me is the price for this zoom lens Helmut?

Helmut: Yes. The zoom lens is about US$29,000.

Ed: And the class that it would fit into would be?

Page 30

Helmut: It fits into the master prime class. It’s fast – it’s a T2.6, no ramping and no breathing, and many people are surprised about the optical performance of this lens. They come here and look through and they are astonished about how crisp and sharp the pictures are.

Helmut: Yes, the customer can, for example, order it with a Canon mount, then we fit a Canon mount directly onto the lens; or if the order is make me up a PL mount, we put directly a PL mount on the lens. So it’s not an adapter, because an adapter is always a compromise.

Ed: And it has that flexibility of having a PL mount adapter, also …?

Ed:

Helmut: Sorry, it’s not an adapter. We fit always the original mount on the lens. We don’t like adapters.

Ed:

Can you put a Sony PL mount on the lens?

Helmut: Of course, and also the E-mount as well.

The PL mount is a standard and the Sony PMWF3 comes NZVN with a PL lens mount adapter.

Oh, the original mount is?

Helmut:

For your Zeiss lenses, contact Protel

It depends on the customer’s wish.

Phone (09) 379 8288 or (04) 801 9494

Ed: Oh, okay – so it’s the same lens, but you buy it with a different mount?

Web http://www.protel.co.nz

Technodolly Looking at Technodolly for Dolly Shop, I’m being chased by a camera.

Somebody’s trying to look up my trousers! Saving my modesty we have Horst Burbulla from Technocrane Limited.

Ed: Dennis has been very happy with his Technocrane in New Zealand Horst, but you’ve got something even more for him now, have you not?

Horst: Yes, we have now finished the Supertechno 100 and it’s about to be delivered to a big feature in London and we hope we will have the first work in the middle of May. Ed: Well how can you improve on something that really was world-leading – I mean there was nothing better than it?

Horst: We had the Supertechno 50. So 50 metre lens height, and out of the 50 we made 100 metre lens height.

Ed: Okay, so it’s longer, but what drives it is the same, except you’ve now got some new software I understand?

Horst: Yes, for example we make now a special software where you can scale down movements. It’s very good for special effects, because if you want to shoot one time with a 1 to 1 and then 1 to 2, then one guy is twice bigger than the other guy, and then they can fight like a monster or something.

Ed:

I’m not quite sure I understand.

Horst: When you’re shooting in a green screen studio, you can match two pictures together; and when you shoot the one guy at one distance …

Ed: Oh, okay, so he appears to be half the height of the other one; you just repeat the same motion and you shoot with the second guy at twice the distance and then you match the two in the studio. And Horst is nodding, so I’ve got it!

Horst: Yes, it’s a little bit complicated, it took me a while to understand it.

Ed: That is the beauty of repeatable motion isn’t it, and it’s very accurate repeatable motion?

Horst: First of all it’s very accurate and it’s very easy to use, yes – you simply push two buttons and that’s it.

Ed:

Is it actually frame accurate?

Horst: Yes. What means “frame accurate”? For up to an 18mm lens, it’s frame accurate but that depends very much on the speed. If you have a slow movement, it’s frame accurate; if you have a 10x faster movement, you will see already tiny difference.

Ed: And it’s certainly a lot better than what was available before, which was nothing?

Horst:

That’s for sure.

Ed: Now not only have you got a bigger one, but you’ve got a smaller one as well?

Horst: Yes, it’s the new Technocrane and it is for everybody who has a camera who shall have a crane – it’s cheap, light and small. Two guys can carry it by

Page 31

hand, you can put it in a normal station wagon on the top, and that’s the important features of this crane.

Ed:

But it’s still programmable?

Horst: No – it’s a little bit programmable, so you can make straight lines; you can work in a virtual studio; you can have what we call “targeting”.

So the camera automatically follows the subject if you programme it, but it’s not fully programmable like the Technodolly where you have all axis of the crane programmed.

Ed:

But still it’s a good start?

Horst: Yes – and one day this small crane will be fully programmable because it’s prepared this way, and in 2-3 years we will work on this.

Ed: So if you buy the basic crane, then you should be able to upgrade it to fully programmable in years to come, when you can afford to?

Horst: Right, because the technology is the same like the Technodolly – it’s just the base is missing, which would make this crane fully automatic.

Ed:

Wow, something to look forward to.

If you want to hire a Technocrane in New Zealand, contact the Dolly Shop Phone (09) 818 1981 Web www.dolly.co.nz

Page 32

NZVN

Square Box and nanoFlash Some more for DVT, Square Box Systems – CatDV and we have Rob Howarth.

Ed: Rob, from the name imagine what you do, tell me?

I

can’t

Rob: We do media asset management software, particularly for integration with Final Cut, so I guess it’s a similar sort of market to Final Cut Server but we have a number of distinct advantages over that.

We’re not exclusively tied into Final Cut, so we’ve got integration with Avid and Premiere Pro as well, though I guess the integration with Final Cut is probably closest because it’s so open with the XML. Another advantage that we’ve got is it’s very easy to get started – you don’t need to set up a server or anything, it’s just a desktop application, you download it, double click and you can start dragging media files in it. It will catalogue them, so you can catalogue any kind of file – it’s primarily for video, but you can bring in all the supporting files like PDFs and project files and Word documents and still images and camera raw files, and any metadata that CatDV finds in the file is added to its catalogue automatically. You can bring in IPTC metadata for example, or you can drag in your iTunes files and it will out the metadata from there, and then you add your own keywords and log notes to that, to build up a searchable database of all the assets.

You can use CatDV as a single user standalone product, so it’s a very low initial cost of entry; you can just put it on a laptop and take it out in the field, pull your files in and start cataloguing them; or you can use it in a networked environment.

We’ve got systems with 50100 users; for example we’ve got reality TV shows where they’ve got eight cameras rolling 24 hours a day and they’ve got a team of 30 loggers who are just sitting there transcribing every single word that everyone says all linked into the timecode. So it’s getting some pretty heavy use.

Rob will look after your media for you.

the producer could lay them out on a timeline – it’s just cuts only, no transitions or anything, but just to select the shots he wants to use, using the low res proxies, save that to sequence and then you perhaps go over to the Mac with the Final Cut edit suite, the editor will pick that up, drag and drop into Final Cut so the sequence will come over with all the metadata and keywords that the producer put in about what he wants to see.

In Final Cut he will relink to the online media, and then you can finish the edit there.

Ed: So Stuart, would this be a really sophisticated version of Windows Explorer with much better search features?

Stuart: Yes well it’s got metadata so you know most people do media asset …

And then, because we’re cross-platform and we’ve also got a web interface, there’s lots of ways then of accessing that, so one workflow, a producer might be using an office PC just on a low spec machine; they can search the database and browse the assets there using low res proxies that we’ll create, make their shot selection – we’ve got simple sequence editing built-in, so Page 33

Ed: Can you compare it to Windows Explorer in any way at all?

Stuart: Well most people use Windows Explorer as their media asset management system, but where its downfall is, is it’s just a bunch of files and directories that you’ve created. If, for example, it was important for you to know if the video was shot at night or during the day; Auckland or Wellington; and whether it was shot by Peter or Bob, how are you going to organise that? Are you going to create folders for the Auckland / Wellington and then put the Peter / Bob in it and then put Night / Day in that folder … if so how would you find all the night shots … and this is the difficulty.

What CatDV will do is just tag your video files. You could have them all in the same directory, but you can then search for Peter, or search for Peter at night time in Auckland and it will find those shots for you. So it’s a far more sophisticated way of managing your data. It also knows what shots were like because it’s recording metadata as well, it knows a lot more information about the types of files. So you can say “well, I want to see all Peter’s assets in Auckland at night time that were shot in high definition” … so there’s lots more capability than you’ve got with Explorer.

Ed: Now is this scalable – is it something that you could use as a single producer with a small asset, or I guess you can use it on a very large scale. Is there any difference in the cost?

Rob: Yes, well we haven’t talked about cost, but a single user standalone version CatDV Pro retails at US$340 – that’s for a single user, but then if you’re talking about say, at the other end, a 10 user Enterprise system, so that’s a central database, so it’s searchable by all those users …

Ed: So Stuart, this is a cheaper and more versatile system than some other vendors might lock you into their particular way of working?

Stuart: Oh absolutely. A media asset management system can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so this a very powerful, scalable, cost-effective solution for everyone else, from the one-man-band working at home who wants to manage his projects, all the way through to smaller work group environments doing regular television series work that want to look after and know where all their assets are, and then right the way through to larger installations where you’re doing full on larger work, so it’s pretty powerful.

Ed: Now that is good on its own Stuart, but you reckon you’ve got more?

Stuart: Oh yes, part of the process of media asset management is what you do with the media once you’ve finished it. You want to archive it and put it somewhere for safe storage, so we have some solutions that will sit alongside CatDV that will allow you to take material that you’ve got catalogued and databased inside CatDV that’s on your hard disc and push that off to tape. But the beautiful thing about doing it by this method with CatDV is that it still knows all the files and what tape they’re on. So later on, when you come back and go you know there’s some files I pushed out to tape six months ago, I need to get them back, you can search CatDV, find the files, and then use that to restore them back onto your system so that you can reuse them.

We move onto the nanoFlash booth and it’s as busy as ever.

Ed: From their iPads while they’re on the bus?

Rob: Well that’s different again, but I mean this is using the CatDV application, so the 10 copies of the CatDV desktop application plus the server, so that’s more.

Ed: It’s duct?

a

scalable

pro-

Rob: Yes, it is indeed.

We’ve got a web interface, so with that you can do web based for viewing approval, you can let customers browse the assets and put comments on, using proxies.

We’ve got an automation engine, so we can do watch folders and scriptable tasks and do transcodes in the background.

So maybe once a clip has been approved by the user, the Stuart with nanoFlash choices for you. worker node will pick that up and automatically create a Ed: Stuart, we are at nanoFlash. Now I didn’t know play out version, FTP it to your server, send an email to you were the agent for nanoFlash in New Zealand? say there’s a new asset ready – so really the sky’s the limit in terms of the kinds of workflows you can Stuart: Yes we are – we do just about everything automate and support.

Grant! So the name of the company is Convergent Page 34

Design. They do two key products now I guess – one is the nanoFlash and the other one is a new product called the Gemini.

The nanoFlash is an external hard drive recorder that goes on your camera, that records high definition and standard definetion video and when it’s recording in high definition it uses the XDCAM HD format that is used in the high end PDW-700/800 cameras. But what it does, is it actually records that format at a much higher data rate than you can record in those cameras. So it basically gives you a really good recording mechanism to get better quality than you’d get on something like HDV for example, or even XDCAM EX, so you can get a better quality recording device. The nanoFlash has been around for some time, it’s been quite successful for people who want to just be able to record in a format a little bit better than that that is native on their camera.

What Convergent Design have released this year, is an exciting new product called the Gemini, and the Gemini is the same type of processor – it’s an external hard drive recorder to go on cameras – but this one will record uncompressed video at 4:4:4, which means it’s not deleting any of the colour out of the video signal at all. It’s got the RGB capabilities; it uses two SSD or solid state hard drives for its recording, because they’re now fast enough to be able to record the full 4:4:4 uncompressed video. It also works in a mode that will allow it to record two video signals, if you want to record uncompressed at 4:2:2, so even for people who are looking for something to do that, it’s a very cost effective solution. For example, you could use that to record stereo out of a stereo split rig. So we’re very excited about the Gemini and actually now having a very low cost solution to do full blown 4:4:4 recording for people who want the ultimate recording – you know,

they don’t want anything deleted out of their signals out of their cameras at all. That’s pretty cool.

Ed: And I see they’ve already got an F3 here with the standard nanoFlash connected?

Stuart: Yes, it’s perfect for the F3. The F3 at the moment runs 4:2:2 out of it, but there is an update coming to give you full 4:4:4 output from the F3; also with the S-Log as well, and so the Gemini is fully compatible with the S-Log output in 4:4:4, so it’s a much richer way of recording that material for giving you more options in postproduction. And it’s already picked up a number of awards here at the show – the Video Award and the TV Technology Mario Award, so it’s doing extremely well and we’re very excited about the product.

Ed: So it’s got all the inputs on it and two SDI slots and it’s got a very large LCD screen for actually monitoring what you’re seeing?

Stuart: Yes, exactly, so you can use it as an on-board monitor as well for your system – you know, SDI in SDI out, loop through, audio in audio out as well.

Most of the audio coming into these things comes through SDI now anyway … HDMI out for monitoring, so a very versatile, small, portable solution. It comes in a nice little box with all the bits and pieces you need to put it together.

Ed: The exciting products from DVT never seem to NZVN end.

Page 35

For more on Square Box Systems, nanoFlash or most anything else, contact DVT Phone (09) 525 0788, Email sales@dvt.co.nz : www.dvt.co.nz

Synology NAS Solutions Disk to disk backup and archive now affordable to everyone

M SCALASSIVE ABIL ITY DU CONAL 10GIG (1,00NECTIV E 0MB ITY /SEC )

RS3411xs Rackmount Up to 102TB, 34 drives at 3TB per drive.

DS3611xs Desktop Up to 108TB, 36 drives at 3TB per drive.

Synology xs-series NAS servers combine high performance, massive scalability and reliability for small and medium-sized businesses.

• 10GigE connectivity boosts throughput to 1,000MB/sec • Full Windows, Mac and Linux support • Hot-swappable Hard Drive Design

D CONUAL GIG (166NECTIVITE MB/S Y EC)

DS1511+ Desktop Up to 45TB, 15 drives at 3TB per drive.

DS2411+ Desktop Up to 72TB, 24 drives at 3TB per drive.

RS2211+ Rackmount Up to 66TB, 22 drives at 3TB per drive.

All high performance, scalable and full featured NAS solutions for businesses that need an efficient way to centralise data protection, simplify data management, and rapidly scale storage capacity – with minimal time spent on setup and management.

• 165MB/sec write, 195MB/sec read performance • Full Windows, Mac and Linux support • Dual GigE connectivity with failover and link aggregation support

PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS

www.dvt.co.nz

Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd

|

Phone: 09 525 0788

|

Email: sales@dvt.co.nz

|

45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland

PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS

CatDV 8.1 Work together effectively and efficiently Cross-platform, highly scalable, and now with enhanced automation capabilities to simplify the most complex workflows, CatDV asset management meets the needs of individuals, studios and large production houses.

FOR UP-TO-DATE, ON BUDGET ADVICE ON SETTING UP OR UPGRADING YOUR EDIT-SUITE, ASK THE EXPERIENCED RESELLERS AT DVT. CALL STUART OR CHRIS ON 09 525 0788. POST IS OUR PASSION.

FRE CREAE YOUR TIVIT Y HP MSL2024 TAPE LIBRARY Enterprise backup, restore and archive is now accessible to everyone.

BRU PE FOR OSX BRU Producers Edition Backup and Archive Solution

AUTODESK SMOKE 2012 Now with Flame FX and 3D lighting - a game changer.

HP StorageWorks MSL2024 is the ideal entry-level tape library combining capacity, flexibility and advanced features in one compact unit. With uncompressed capacity of up to 36TB it can easily tackle backup and recovery jobs typically handled by mid-range tape libraries.

Producer’s Edition for Mac OS X is specifically designed to protect your creative assets. You can now easily drag-and-drop entire projects into Producer’s Edition to easily create archives.

Free your creativity with this streamlined, high quality finishing environment on the Mac. Smoke offers a timeline-based, all-in-one creative workflow that can make you more efficient and reduce complexity in post production.

SOFTVFX WAR E ADOBE CS5.5 PRODUCTION PREMIUM Craft great stories with game-changing innovations.

SYNOLOGY 10GIGE NAS SOLUTIONS Disk to disk back up and archive is now affordable to everyone.

The high-performance leader in video production software.

Produce your best work faster than ever before with the blazing fast Adobe Mercury Playback engine and new Warp Stabiliser that steadies shaky video footage with a single click.

Synology xs-series NAS servers combine high performance, massive scalability and reliability for small and medium-sized businesses. Optional 10GbE dual ports network card boosts total throughput to over 1,000MB/sec.

www.dvt.co.nz

Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd

|

THE FOUNDRY NUKE Advancing the art of digital compositing.

DAVINCI RESOLVE 8.0 Now for iMac and MacBook Pro

NUKE is a powerful node based compositing product that delivers unparalleled speed and a first-class feature set, unrivalled in the desktop market. NUKE is the production proven visual effects tool that brings speed, functionality and flexibility to your VFX pipeline.

The world’s most advanced color correction tool is used on more Hollywood feature films, commercials and television shows than any other system.

New features include multi layer timeline support with editing, XML import and export with Apple Final Cut Pro. Now includes OpenCL processing to allow use on iMac and MacBook Pro computers.

Phone: 09 525 0788

|

Email: sales@dvt.co.nz

|

45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland

Canon Lenses For Quinto, we are here at Canon and I guess the big news for me, and a lot of people have been waiting for this – a zoom lens for the Sony F3.

To tell us more about this and other things we have Paul Bryant from Australia.

Ed: Paul it’s actually not correct to say this was built for the F3 … this is a zoom lens that is for a 35mm sensor?

Paul: Yes, these are full 4K performance PL mount lenses designed for the 35mm large image format video cameras.

We’ve produced two lenses, so they can be used with cameras like ARRI Alexa, RED One, Sony’s F35, and SRW9000PL, their new PMW -F3 and the Panasonic AGAF105.

Ed:

Paul Bryant from Canon with Shane.

So why two lenses?

Paul: Well first of all, they’re zooms and the important thing about zooms is they’re in an area where there’s been a shortage of full performance zoomable lenses.

When using fixed primes in a production, the problem is that a lot of things have to be done in a given timeframe. So productions often require lenses that at least you can widen them or tighten them a little bit to change the shot, without having to physically remove the lenses and then mount a new lens.

Ed:

Or move the camera closer or further away?

Paul: Yes – and what they’ve done is make two lenses – one’s a wide, one’s a long and Canon’s really had a good look at the market. So we’ve got a 14.5-60, so it’s a 4.1x zoom. That’s a wide angle and I think there is only one other lens on the market that is as wide as this one. We also do a 10x long, which is a 30x300 and that’s what people are particularly excited about, is the long range zoom lens.

Ed:

So, again, it’s depth of field?

Paul: Yes. The 14.5-60 is T2.6 across the range, and the 30-300 long zoom is T2.95 from 30/240 – so a little bit more iris at the end of the range.

Ed: Now what I do notice about these lenses is that as soon as you put them on a camera, it’s not something that you could handhold?

Paul: No, they’re a substantial sized lens. I mean probably for a short period of time you could manhandle, but they are designed to be definitely on a tripod with rods, on a dolly or crane and the full gear along with that.

Ed:

So firmly mounted?

Paul: Firmly mounted, yes.

Ed:

That’s how you like them, isn’t it Shane?

Shane: Absolutely, but I’m making no comment at all at this time!

All I would say though is that handholding these cameras is difficult anyway, because with the shallow depth of field, trying to maintain a focus while you’re handholding a 35mm camera is incredibly difficult.

So traditionally ( even with film cameras ) they’re designed to be fixed, steady and well focused.

Ed: Now in terms of the price – we’re talking ballpark?

Paul: So at the moment, ballpark, US$47,000 for the long and US$45,000 for the wide.

Ed: I mean that’s an incredible price point when you look at the competition, but how does it stack up with other Canon glass?

Can you make a comparison with the build quality, the optical quality?

Paul: This is in the same build quality as our prime lenses, so fixed prime lenses naturally, because they’re not zooming, they’re the best lenses you can get. Well

Page 38

what they’ve looked at is the area where there was need, and that’s to create a zoom lens that is in the same sort of quality and build as our prime lenses. And the big requirement for that is, with production being very busy, people need that sort of performance, but need to be able to zoom to change the shot.

Ed: Now, going into the “bread and butter”, the lenses that the ENG market uses, you’re obviously making one-third, half inch and two-thirds lenses for that. You’ve produced a cost-effective two-thirds inch lens – the KJ20x8.2B – any other special features?

Paul: There’s a lot of low budget stations now requiring an affordable ENG lens; it has to be high definition, because all the cameras are now high definition, so it’s

lenses. So it’s a mechanical attachment only, just to take the tail. But the two lower cost lenses – the wide and the long – they don’t need that at all, they can hot shoe mount.

Ed: But the question comes that you buy a smaller camera, like the EX3 – you’re not expecting that top end picture quality, so why would you put a broadcast lens on it?

Paul: Well you need more than just a broadcast lens; you actually need a high definition lens, so a lot of people – they may have an old broadcast standard definition lens and think this cost me far more than my EX3, therefore it’s going to be good enough. It’s not, because it was built to a standard definition format, so the high definition format … to give you an example, there are so many more pixels on the CCD block of the cameras, that if you’ve got a fault on a lens, it’s perhaps over 100 pixels instead of one or two. So we had to reinvent the wheel – lenses had to be built as perfect as we could get for the higher format. So even a standard definition broadcast lens won’t be good enough – you need a high definition lens. So we do a range of affordable professional through to more broadcast style, high definition lenses for that.

Ed: But if you put a lower cost high def lens on, or you put the top spec lens on, what difference could you see in a picture?

full performance, high definition lens, but it’s done at a professional lens price point. It’s still got a doubler – we’ve made it a little bit wider than the previous lens, so it’s a 20x8.2 for around US$15,000.

If you look at our 7.6x22 times lens, the cheaper version of that is US$33,000 and the broadcast version is US$52,000. So this is 8.2-164, so not quite as wide but nearly as long with a 2x extender, for around that US$15,000 mark.

Ed: So it’s a lens that suits the market for ENG, for your XDCAM type range?

Paul: Yes, and the lower cost Panasonic and Sony cameras that are being offered for that marketplace now.

Ed: Now I’m sure that still at the moment one of the most popular cameras around at the professional level, and – oooh dare I say it – moving into the broadcast level, would be the Sony EX3. Now you’ve got some lenses for that?

Paul: Yes we do a Sony hot shoe mount 20x – that’s equivalent to, on a two-thirds scale, 20x8.5 and the equivalent to a 12x6, so a low cost wide angle. They’re both hot shoe mounts, so you don’t need to adapt to whatever and they will go straight onto that camera, and price-wise from US$14,000 and roughly US$17,000 for the wide angle. There’s also the more upmarket three broadcast style lenses with 2x extenders, a very wide and a very long and a mid workhorse, a 17x that will go on that camera – but they do require an adapter.

We do an adapter for the one-third inch in JVC, Panasonic and Sony, but certainly, half inch is only Sony and the adapter required for these lenses is only to take the pigtail for power, because these lenses have a pigtail for power the same as the two-third inch

Paul: A classic example is on your zoom lenses – when you get near infinity, you won’t see anything in the viewfinder, but the shot will be out of focus in the middle or the sides, and will actually go in and out of focus. And the sad thing is, once you come back with your job that you may have only had one go at, you suddenly edit it and they say “why is this not quite sharp?”

Ed: It’s a big difference – what about the amount of light passing through? Do the higher spec lenses lose less light?

Paul: Again, they have to address light with the performance of the lenses, and the little cameras, because they’re small CCDs and need more light, they actually need high definition … that’s another area where it’s even more critical for them to have the good lenses on, than the two-third inch cameras.

Ed: And having different coatings, coatings on the top end lenses?

higher

spec

Paul: Different coatings … with a high definition format it’s a lot easier to see faults like colour aberration, so everything has to have layers and coatings to correct the aberrations as much as possible, and give the lens maximum performance. Nowadays, lenses have to be environmentally friendly too, so it’s lead-free glass, better able to break down in the environment at the end of its lifetime, and it has to have solder-free electronics and all that sort of green technology so you have to look at the whole end of the story with new lenses.

Ed:

Canon’s gone green?

Paul: Yes … well we have to – everyone has to go green and address it.

NZVN For your big Canon lenses, contact Shane Ormsby, Quinto Communications NZ Ltd Email shane@quinto.co.nz, Web www.quinto.co.nz

Page 39

Wohler For Quinto, we are at Wohler and we have Kim Templeman-Holmes.

Ed: Kim, a couple of products from Wohler – last year we saw a loudness meter; this one’s got smaller and funky, and it’s called “Pandora”?

Kim: What we have here is the Pandora Loudness Monitor and the main part of this is actually an iPod Touch 4 as the processing and the screen display. We build the chassis and on the rear panel you can see we have an SDI input and four pairs of AES inputs. Anybody who has currently got an iPhone, an iPad or an iPod Touch, can actually download this application free of charge and run it in a demo mode, just to see what the capabilities are. But if we run through it here briefly … if we go to the menu, at the top here we have an integration period and we can change that from five seconds to 60 minutes; we can run it in manual or continuous mode. In manual, you switch it on when the adverts come on and switch it off when they finish; continuous is 24/7. We have gating which we can switch on and off; we have an alarm where we can display either over, under, both, or turn the alarm off altogether; and we can display up to eight channels in banks of two. As I mentioned earlier, on the rear panel, we have AES and SDI selectors and this is where we determine which one of those we’re looking at.

An incredibly useful feature is the logging feature. Now the iPod itself I would very much doubt is going to last this long, but in theory, this unit will hold 20 years’ worth of logging information. I’ll be long gone, the iPod will probably be long gone, but the information is there.

You can then export that information to a laptop or a desktop or whatever, for later, so it’s just a spin wheel.

On the set reference, this is where we decide whether it’s ATSC, which is the basic US spec to -24dB or EBU which is -23dB. So one’s 1770, 1771 complaint and the EBU is the R128 specification, and this is fully compliant with both those specs. So if we exit that, channel assignment, this is where we decide what’s going to which meter. So we’ve currently got this configured that the left is going to meter one, the right is going to meter two, centre to meter three, etc etc and this is where you basically map that out. And then on the SDI mapping here, again, it’s a little matrix, we decide meter pair one is currently going to show pair one.

So quite simply, we sell you this chassis, we sell you the power supply, you supply the iPod, you go to the iTunes, download the programme, plug it into this box, hook up your SDI or AES and you’re up and running.

Ed: And I guess at this point, Shane, that having a meter is perhaps the “cart before the horse”, because in New Zealand we don’t yet have any consensus as to what loudness standard there should be, or even any legislation to say there should be a loudness standard?

Shane: No, that’s true and I don’t think that legislation is necessary.

I think that already the audience at large has made itself quite clear that significantly varying loudness within a TV channel and across a number of TV channels, is a problem.

The broadcasters know it’s a problem, and the broadcasters have, independently of any legislation, already started to look for ways of monitoring and modifying and controlling the loudness, both within a channel and across a stack of channels like Freeview or across a Sky bundle, to ensure that the audiences’ enjoyment of

Page 40

the television experience as far as loudness is concerned, is looked after. So although there is no legislation, it is a currently discussed topic in New Zealand.

Ed: So we should leave it up to the broadcasters to sort it out for us?

Shane: Yes, the broadcasters know that if they don’t do something, their audiences will gain less and less enjoyment from the services that they’re delivering – and enjoyment of the service is the whole point. If they’re not enjoying it, they’ll switch it off; if they’re not watching it, then there’s no point in having it. So loudness monitoring is something that they want to sort through.

Ed:

You’re an optimist?

Shane: No, not at all. I mean it’s been discussed, the guys are making plans …

Kim: Yes, this is our new Presto, which we’ve just launched at the show and, as you say, it’s a little bit special. What you’ll notice is that there’s 16 video sources and they’re shown or displayed on many OLEDs in the top of the switch cap, so you can actually see what you’re previewing on the front of the switch. Now remember, this is a 1U unit, so with 16 switches, the OLEDs are fairly small, but you have got an indication of what you’re previewing.

Then you can output the results or whatever you want to preview, up onto a much bigger screen, whether it be a 17 inch or a 50 inch or whatever. The main application for this is actually things like server rooms – you know, we’ve moved away from the old tape days and onto servers, and obviously, what you’ll find is people have written on Chinagraph pencil you know “on server one we’ve got this”; “server two’s this” – and so this is a very quick

Ed: Okay, we’ll set a date when we check their plans.

Shane:

Yeah, well, you know …

Kim: I’m the same with it. Obviously, we’re in the US right now, but it was actually the US public that started the drive in America to get it mandated for the very reasons you’ve said. You know, the typical story is that the viewers are watching the football match on a Sunday afternoon, they’ve got a comfortable listening level, the adverts come on “Geez where’s the remote” and they’re all diving over and treading on the dog – you know, rapidly trying to turn the volume down. It’s actually the feedback from the general public creating enough noise that it got to government, and over a period of time it was mandated and it is now law in the US that you have to comply with the loudness over here.

So I think it’s only a matter of time before it takes over in other parts of the world. It’s going to come.

Ed: I’d actually go with the law rather than relying on the goodwill of our broadcasters, I’m sorry Shane!

Shane: Oh well, I just have a lot of faith in the guys you know. The irony of that though is Kim’s right – if you’re watching a show and the loudness of the programme, including the commercial breaks, is comfortable, then you sit there and you watch the whole thing. At the moment that you’re forced to reach for the remote because the commercials are too loud, you don’t stop at comfortable, you take it all the way down and you mute it for the duration of the break. So not controlling loudness and having commercial breaks that are too loud, is a disservice to the advertisers themselves, because the viewer suddenly mutes the audio altogether.

By controlling the loudness and making it comfortable for the whole programme, along with ad material, you’re more likely to watch the entire programme including the breaks.

Ed: Perhaps Shane?

Shane:

you

should

become

a

broadcaster

Maybe …

Ed: Now we’ve moved inside into the trailer and here we’ve got a Presto 16x1 multi-format audio / video source switcher. “Ho-hum” you might think, we’ve seen lots of switchers in our time, but this one’s a little bit special?

It’s obvious which channel you’re on.

reference to see what they’ve got on each individual server. If they think they’ve got a problem, they can just hit that button and it will switch up for the main monitor, go “okay yes we have”, or “no we haven’t”.

And the audio also switches with the video. It is not meant as a broadcast quality router switcher for transmission purposes; it’s for monitoring purposes.

Shane: switcher?

Why can’t you use it as a broadcast bypass

Kim: Well there’s no Genlock for example, there’s no house clock, you can’t lock it to anything, it’s totally free running. So, you know, in an emergency situation, yes you could switch with it, but it’s not meant for that level of processing.

Ed: Now these little panels, what’s the technology behind the picture?

Kim: They are OLED switches and the advantage of OLEDs ( apart from the obvious high contrast that you can see, you know the blacks are very black for example ) is that, as against an LCD, you have a very wide viewing angle, so typically these are 180 degrees all round. With LCD technology, either above or below or from the side, you normally lose some view. With OLEDs it’s all the way round.

Ed:

And the cost – 5 grand?

Kim: US$4,995.

Page 42

Ed: A bargain! Do you think people could actually use this in New Zealand Shane?

Shane: I think there’s a market for it, especially for monitoring purposes. We’ve got a lot of control rooms where we’ve got multi viewers and we’ve got guys monitoring, you know doing occasional presence monitoring of sources, and then wanting to be able to bring the source up to have a closer look at it. With a situation like this, you can have this little one rack unit device mounted directly underneath the monitor, and if they see a problem come up, if they a drop to black or some disturbances, they’re not having to look to find out what source this is, going to the router and

switching that router output to the monitor; they just push the picture with the problem and it’s there, right in front of them. Then they can go back and figure out what source they’re looking at. So I think it’s a nice little unit. It would also be quite good as an emergency bypass switcher. The last thing you want to be doing is hunting around for the paperwork to find out what source to switch to when your main output’s failed; all you’ve got to do is look for something that you like the look of, push the button, and you’ve got it.

NZVN For all your Wohler needs, contact Shane Ormsby, Quinto Communications NZ Ltd Email shane@quinto.co.nz, Web www.quinto.co.nz

Apace Storage Now for Richard Kelly at Atomise we have Lee Hu from Apace Systems.

Ed: Lee, the signage looks similar to last year, but in fact you’ve got a new storage box here – tell us about it?

Lee: Yes we have launched the v4000 and E4000 series.

Both are new chassis and new hardware, the v4000 supports most high speed hard drives and also solid state drive, so you can have a hybrid combination to benefit from the speed and the capacity. So we have our E solid state drive configuration, or 16 out of 24 drive. So you can mix and match with the performance and the capacity – this is Estore, for the Estore 4000 both of them now is the 10 GigE ready and the 4 GigE ports are standard. And on top of that you always can add more GigE ports or 10 GigE ports. 10 GigE will support an SPF plus which you can run up to Mars so it depends on the backup on the E’s and the distance. You can have an SFP plus SR for Short Range or LR for Long Range – it’s your choice.

Ed: Just tell me, with the solid state drives, are they now at the stage where you can actually trust them to be long term viable?

Lee: For the configuration currently, we are mostly using them for their performance – particularly for challenging applications like audio where you might have 64 or more soundtracks. There, if you use a hard drive, you have a competing head issue because of the seek time, but with the solid state hard drive there is no seek time. Basically, it’s anywhere we tested it from 57 times faster than the hard drive. Single drive is equivalent to a raid so that way we give a lot of – we develop a utility to help you backup the data to the raid 5 or raid 6 on the hard drive side to benefit the capacity.

But on the other hand you have the performance and the flexibility of a configuration to support iSCSI native of ISIS, NFS, NTFS or HFS for Mac or other different configuration of a 4 drive or 2 drive or 6 drive array for various applications.

Ed: So you have the speed but you still have the safety aspect of the RAID, so you still RAID arrayed your solid state drives?

Lee: Yes, typically we do not RAID a solid state drive because of the cost. We have software workflow which raids to the hard drive array part because this is internal, so speed is not an issue. It’s almost like very, very fast through the parallel bars.

Ed: Aaaah, so you actually do the RAID to a hard drive, rather than to the solid state … that’s clever!

Now, you have some improvements in your software, in the asset management?

Lee: Sure. We now have an ingester to go with it for Panasonic P2 and the latest AF-101 and also XDCAM. That’s one aspect of it; the other is that tape archive digitise the interface with a Telestream pipeline. The live ingestor can start tagging them and also we have iPad2 and JoyPad hook-up and now you can remote access both ways, add a comment to it.

Ed:

So from your iPad you can access your assets?

Lee: Yes, you can search and play back, you can add a comment to the iPad, you can have a timecode level marker there, so at the database, the people in the central office, the editors, they can see what is the things the customer feedback and the instructions from

Page 43

understand the storage scalability is not just to say today we scale heterogeneously everything from a single band the same type.

But the key is that how you can have a different platform, different … this is in a sense internet model. You have older system uses they all work together, you always have a legacy to carry state of art and the future even better system there.

a producer or management for example, and actually this can through the VPN the 3G. Ed: You’re not going to make friends with some people that they’ve got to take their work to the beach!

Lee: And you can ingest from the iPhone and the iPad 2 camera to the database for the workflow for business use, corporations, for so-called non-professional. But I think that the trend like a web 2.0 wiki model is user generally the way forward. It’s what we call private eMedia or YouTube in the box. For example, 10 years ago, when there’s a storm, the broadcast news is all CNN, now for the Japan earthquake, all the news is from YouTube and the latest footage, because what matters is the right time, right place, you have an iPhone or something, you can record the event.

How we can make them work together and easily find it, that’s the key we work hard. Seamless they put a different camera, different ingest digitiser and different play out presenta-tion device, that’s the thing.

So at the end we assume a very simple thing – the physical air Ethernet Gigabit or 10 Gigabit, logical air is a browser, so really we take all these different platforms OS application out in picture, we support all this common application, common format, common operating system – make them all work together.

Ed: And that’s where having the very flexible system that you have, means that you can do all of those things with one system?

Lee: Yes, and also this is a centralised – you can do the cut through the browser, there is no software installed on the client and it’s the platform independent, could it be Mac, a PC, Laptop or a Tablet. You can have the application do things like a video marker you can tag it and export the markers into FCP or Avid so editors who load that media and metadata see your comment on the timeline, so you can edit accordingly.

Ed: And you’ve got some news for Richard about the amount of storage that you can put in a rack unit now?

What’s the capability now in one rack unit?

Lee: Yes, we can put package 72 terabyte in a single 4U and one rack can get us over 700 terabyte, close to one Petabyte now, so plenty of space, not matter what the high resolution or 3D are coming, we can supply you with enough storage.

Ed: But it’s not only the storage though is it, it’s the storage management that is really the key to what you do?

Lee: Yes, we view that as the key, because once you’re dealing with Terabytes or Petabytes, how it finds them from thousands or hundreds of thousands of media. That’s the key. And with ingestor, with the marker, with the video marker, we try to help you, not just to store them but also to find them. The key we look at it as heterogeneous that is scalable. What that means is that you have a different chassis purchased with different vendor over different times. Our view is that through a database, through certain things, you can find and locate that part quickly, because we

The key is we want to help to have efficient production and efficient access to your media and all make this NZVN seamlessly work together.

Page 44

For more about what Apace products can do, contact Atomise at Phone (04) 380 5010 email atomise@atomise.co.nz website www.atomise.co.nz

Avid Media Composer 5.5

The World’s Most Advanced Film and Video Editing System Faster and more open than ever.

New features include:

• • • • • •

Capture, monitor, and output with AJA Io Express Support for the Euphonix Artist Series Support for Matrox MX02 Mini monitoring-only solution Sony SR Lite 220Mb/s CODEC native support Real Time Audio Suite & Avid AIR audio plug-in support ScriptSync & PhraseFind

Available NOW! Avid Media Composer software only, Mojo DX or Nitris DX. Call Atomise Limited today for an obligation free quote.

Editing Solutions

Visit www.atomise.co.nz; email atomise@atomise.co.nz or call Richard Kelly on 04 380 5010 / 021 86 33 94 for information & demos.

Experts

Hot Avid Video Promotions!

Crossgrade from Final Cut Pro to Avid Media Composer Software v5.5 with 3rd party applications for only $1,295 + GST *° *Proof of ownership of FCP is required.

Upgrade from Media Composer Adrenaline or Liquid Blue or Liquid Chrome to

Avid Media Composer Nitris DX v5.5 with 3rd party applications & 12 months Priority Support for only $8,995 + GST *°

*Freight is additonal.

Requires return of Adrenaline/ Liquid hardware. °Promo ends 17 June 2011.

Pricing subject to change without notice due to volatile FOREX.

Apace Systems Atomise Limited Authorised Reseller of Professional Editing Equipment

Swit Power At NAB for A2Z, we are at Swit and we have Victor Sun from Swit Electronics and David Epstein from A2Z. Ed: Victor, Swit batteries, you’ve continued to make improvements and make batteries for the newer cameras?

Victor: Yes for the Sony F3. We have a connector for the Sony F3 supplying power through the XLR connector.

Ed: Because the genuine Sony batteries have a specific attachment, don’t they?

Victor: Yes. David: One of the difficulties with generic batteries for the likes of the EX1, EX3 and F3, is that you can’t power the camera directly from the battery. You have to go into the DC input of the actual camera to enable you to achieve voltage for the camera to work.

However, Swit have developed a battery with a pigtail that comes off the battery which you plug into the DC input. One of the advantages of the Swit battery is that it has the Anton Bauer power tap out of it, so that you can power up a nanoFlash or a Sound Devices or an AJA Ki Pro Mini, a light or indeed a wireless receiver, with the Anton Bauer power tap. Because this particular battery has a retractable pigtail that powers the EX1 and the EX3, that has not enabled us to power up the new Sony F3. However, this new adapter that Victor was talking about, enables you to go from Swit’s pigtail into an XLR, so the same battery that you use for the EX1 and EX3 will now power the F3 as well.

Ed: Fantastic, a very versatile battery?

David: Indeed.

Something else that Swit has developed in their line, is a complete line of batteries for other cameras – for the Sony Z5 and Z7 we have the standard NPF battery, and these batteries all have a power tap out of them. This is a 7.2 Volt battery and there -fore the voltage out of that particular battery out of the DC output is obviously 7.2 as well. This is very valuable from the point of view that you can power a light and the camera with the same battery and Swit make an LED light that has a 12 Watt power draw but pumps out an equivalent light of 40 Watts and it’s a dimmable light with barn doors, dichroic filter and a diffuser all built into the light, so a very versatile system.

The other batteries that Swit does are also for the new Panasonic AF102, Canon 5D, Panasonic HVX202,

Page 46

HMC172, etc. So they have many batteries in their range for all common products and cameras.

Ed: But Swit’s not about batteries David?

all

David: The new product release which will be available around May or June is the Swit 1071F and that particular monitor is a 7 inch monitor which handles HD-SDI input and HDMI input, and waveform monitor for both of those – HDMI and HD-SDI; but if you put an HDMI signal into this monitor, it has a built-in converter that converts the HDMI signal and spits out an HD-SDI feed. So if you’re lacking an HD-SDI feed from your camera, you can actually use the Swit monitor as a converter. This particular monitor has now gone into the high def realm at 1024x600. So a pretty high res monitor with extraordinary colour – we are really looking forward to getting these in, because this is a tremendous looking monitor.

Ed: And they’re 12 Volt obviously powered by the same battery that can power the camera?

David: Good question. It will run on Anton Bauer 12 Volt or V-Lock or indeed an external source of course, but you can choose whether you’d like to put Sony, Panasonic, or Canon 5D batteries on this. It will run on all of those. We just supply the right adapter on ordering.

Ed: So in fact you can’t run it off the same camera battery – you need to have a second battery for it, because it is 12 Volt?

via WiFi, CAT5 or 4G. What you can then do, if you’re coming out WiFi, you can then watch those feeds on your iPad or on a local computer, or stream it directly from the Cube to Livestream.com. : Ed: Let’s just get this straight – your camera’s out in the field, you’ve got the feed off the back into this box, powered by a little battery, and I guess it doesn’t take much power?

John: Three Watts.

David: The monitor can run off the camera battery when it is one of those with the Anton Bauer clip on it; or you can run it from an external 12 Volt source through an XLR connector; or you can clip a battery onto the side and have a multiple selection of battery types to put on there. A very versatile power supply.

Ed: Now amongst the many features that this monitor has, one in particular is focus assist?

David: This is extremely helpful particularly if it’s a bright day and the camera’s LCD viewfinder is hard to see . You use the Swit hood that comes standard with every monitor to obviously look at the screen, and then by using the “focus assist” button the user chooses either colour red or colour blue, to show and help to achieve focus.

NZVN For more on the Swit range, contact A2Z Phone (09) 375 3085, Email sales@audio2vizual.co.nz, Web www.audio2vizual.co.nz

Teradek Cube For A2Z, we have a product called Cube and the company is Teradek Cube represented by John Landman.

John: This is a very cool product. We believe we are the first to ever invent a camera-top H264 encoder that takes in HD-SDI, SDI or HDMI and then outputs it Page 47

Ed: As long as you’ve got a connection to a WiFi somewhere, you can stream that virtually anywhere?

offers a mobile version, so you can watch it on your iPhone or your Android.

John: Yes, you can stream it point to point, which means you could stream it back to your studio. We also supply decoders that can decode the H264 feed back to HD-SDI, or HDMI. So that’s a point to point connection.

Alternatively, or actually simultaneously, it will stream live to Livestream, which is a private account that you can set up and is available for those that you give the password to, or directly to Livestream that is then plugged into your own website. They give you the code to drag that onto your own website. So as far as your viewers know, they are watching your own website.

Ed: But what about in a local area network format – you can obviously up the specs there?

Ed: So I guess the big question is, what’s the resolution?

This is a 3 Megabit per second stream, but we can actually encode up to 15 Megabits per second 1080p.

The only place that you can see 15 Megabits at 1080p is if you hardwire it, and we have a CAT5 cable. So let’s say you were filming in a studio and you really wanted this to be a secure feed, you didn’t really want it to go over wireless, and you’ve just run a CAT5 cable to the encoder directly into the router, it’s all standard equipment, and then you’d have a multicast address to open up in VLC in any number of computers on that network. So it’s fantastic for executives, directors and anyone else that needs to monitor what’s going through the lens of each camera at the same time. You can actually open up multiple instances of VLC at the same time, so you can open up VLC camera 1 to camera 6 on your laptop – you don’t need any special hardware, you don’t need any special software, it’s just real easy. And we can go directly from the Cube to the iPad, and we can support off of one Cube about three iPads

John: Well if you look at what we’re streaming at the moment, which is being shot over on our stage, going up over CAT5 to the worldwide web, to the Livestream servers, where we are adding graphics on the lower third because Livestream gives you a virtual master control CG system where you can add lower thirds and graphics etc and then they’ve published that on the website and now we’re watching it on the web, and what Livestream says to us is that the soft spot for encoding for viewers is in the 600-700 Kilobit per second range. The minute that Livestream will stream at a higher bit rate than that, they say the consumers phone and complain that they’re dropping frames, etc because their bandwidth is not sufficient. So we are happy with the quality that we’re receiving here, which is at 600 Kilobits per second and it means that anyone can see it wherever they’re watching. Livestream also

John: Correct.

If we’re going over a WiFi network, we operate in the 802.11n spectrum, so you can buy a standard “off the shelf” router – we use a Linksys up here, and we’re streaming from the Cube that’s on the top of that RED camera via the WiFi router to our laptop here. We are watching it as a VLC stream. With VLC, which is a programme you can download from the web, you have the address of the stream and you can just see what’s being streamed.

Page 48

Speed to Get the Shot

09 6300753/info@lacklands.co.nz

simultaneously, and that comes down to the WiFi bandwidth that WiFi can offer.

We integrate as well into a Wowza server – I don’t know if you’re familiar with “Wowza”?

Wowza is basically a local CDN – it’s a CDN that you can put in your facility that you can build a front onto that will give you a web page that can support hundreds of feeds. So let’s say you were in a production environ-ment where you wanted to give access to people that had iPads, iPhones, Androids, Blackberrys, laptops – you name it – Wowza will support all of those formats. So that’s something that we also work with, and that’s a very popular solution.

Ed: Can you see any use for this at all in New Zealand David?

David: We already have customers who’ve ordered them, and these have already been delivered to our hotel, so the answer is a definite “yes”.

John: Yes. We’re getting about 150-200 feet range at about 4 Megabits per second, with about a third of a second of latency, so we’re able to connect this to mobile devices, fly them around. It’s a 7 ounce unit that pulls about 2 Watts of power – very low power, very lightweight, very versatile.

Ed:

David: And very well priced indeed and it will be available shortly; as soon as they arrive we’ll be NZVN publishing a big advert.

John: The feedback that I’ve got from people, from users, is that this is a real game changer in the way that they work. In the past, if they wanted to stream, they would have to supply a feed into a computer of some sort, with an encoder and set up Windows Media encoding, or Flash encoder, make sure that they could tunnel through the Firewall, etc, etc. It wasn’t simple. This is so simple that even an engineer can do it.

Ed: I see a demonstration here where you’ve got this mounted with a camera on a little mini helicopter?

Portabrace for A2Z For A2Z, we are at PortaBrace and we have Ken Barry.

Ed:

And very cheap David?

Ken, a new era has begun?

Ken: Oh every year is a new era.

Ed: In terms of making bags – new bags, new people in the market coming up with new shaped cameras, you’ve got to make a bag for them?

Ken: Yes, not only that, but they’re adding lots of features. These small high def cameras are becoming more and more popular, but they want a shoulder bracket on it because they can’t stabilise it; they want a light on it; they want a pistol grip – so there’s all kinds of new opportunities for us to make custom rain covers, custom camera bags.

So in the last two months especially, we’ve just been extremely busy doing that for TV stations mostly, but some individuals also.

Ed: That’s it, because some manufacturers come out with a bag range, but you’ve got to choose one of that range and really that’s all you get, but with PortaBrace you have some options?

Ken: Yes, we’ve always offered lots of options for stock cameras and let’s say the “normal” things that people put on – you know a Sennheiser mic, or a light or a BeachTek XLR connector or a different battery and wireless microphones. But now it’s getting just a little bit trickier, because the cameras are so small and unstable, it’s very tiresome to hold the camera out in front of you and get a stable shot, so now the shoulder brackets are becoming a little more popular. So we’re just reacting to what the market wants. We’re in a Page 50

small shop, we’re right close to the needs of our TV stations in Canada, North America, South America …

Ed: But a long way from New Zealand?

Ken: But the problems are exactly the same. You’re using the same cameras we’re using; you understand the issues just as well as everyone else, so you’re going to benefit from this mix that we’re in the middle of and of course A2Z can contact us with any specifics you may have. Hopefully we’ll be able to supply things quicker to you.

Ed: On a less important note but still important to the look, I notice there’s a lot more black here this year?

Ken: We introduced the black because we are doing more DSLR cases. People who are in that market have migrated from the still photographer into that market; they’ve already got a line of black bags in their collection and it’s quite natural for them to want another black to add – just the way the blue bags are … people say when we tell them we make black bags now, “oh no, I’m sticking with the blue when I’m adding to my collection.” It makes you look more professional.

The new kids who don’t really know much about it, they’re more price oriented; they’re going to get the Chinese made stuff, because that’s what they can afford. They’re going to look a little different than the other guys who are doing on-set work. But they’ll come around, they’ll understand a lot of people graduating from the colleges ( at least in the United States ) already are introduced to PortaBrace. They see it all over in every news crew in their local town, so they’re going to say “hey, wow, that’s what I’m going to get.”

Ed: Now looking at one particular bag, what’s this one Ken?

Ken: This is a DV Organizer; basically we make three versions of this; one small, the DVO-1 series, the DVO2 series ( which is the one I’m holding in my hand ) and then the DVO-3 series for matte box users, mini DV cameras, shotgun mics – you know, that kind of thing.

This one’s more structural, stackable, they don’t have rounded tops, things don’t roll off of them, they store well in vehicles – these are real valued points. If I owned a camera, this is the one I would get, one of this series. DVO-2 is a real popular item and actually, we were just saying about shoulder braces, you’re going to start seeing longer versions of this for the people who don’t want to take that shoulder bracket off, or deal with on / off stuff. They want to be able to reach in, and grab the camera.

Ed: So that’s the thing, when you’re ordering this particular case, you can specify the length of it?

Ken: You don’t have to, because we’ve already figured out via the website, what models fit in it. Just go to our website, it’s quite clear and explicit.

Ed:

That’s the easy thing …

Ken: And if you do need something different, if you’ve got something really unusual ( and we get these requests all the time ) just send in a photo of what you’ve got. You’ve rigged it out with something totally bizarre like a follow focus and rails and a matte box and it’s just a little mini DV camera and you’ve got an Anton Bauer battery and wireless microphones on the back – you’re coming up with something that’s not going to show up instantly on our website. Start with that, because 9 times out of 10 we have a solution, or with a little tweaking and customising we can come up with something even better.

Page 51

That’s the advantage of being a small shop. We’re not into that eight week waiting time; we’re not into the big numbers. What happens with big volume guys is they get caught flatfooted every time.

They’ve got old designs, they can’t react to the market as quickly.

We’ve been doing this for 30 years, we know what we’re doing – it’s as simple as that. But if you want something inexpensive, it’s okay, a generic thing – if that works for you, we’re fine with that too.

Ed: And your lighting strip?

Ken: Well the light strip comes in a lot of the bags now – a lot of the camera bags have it. It’s just kind of a fun thing for people who do night work or theatre work … you want to look inside, you want to find some little thing that you’ve lost, but it’s not so bright that it disturbs the people around you.

It doesn’t create attention, but it’s a standard item. You can buy it separately as it does Velcro into a lot of our cases.

Ed: And the light bag itself … it looks as though it’s designed for incandescents?

Ken: UC3 model, we’ve been making that for 27 years I think.

It’s actually changed very little; we’ve added some interesting features on the bottom to make them easier to clean and the non-skid; we added the light …

Ed: And that’s it, the centre panels are movable and so if you change your lights you can still keep the same box, you just change the position of your panels?

Ken: It doesn’t even have to be just lights. People put monitors in there, they’ll put their battery charger, battery stock – it’s a production bag. It’s for a lot of accessories that people use – some small light stands will fit on top of those dividers. Yes, there’s hundreds of different solutions for that; that’s an extremely popular bag. That’s why we never really had to change it, people just keep ordering it.

Ed: Now, in terms of another product … what’s this called?

Ken: Well this one happens to be for the Panasonic AF100, three prime lenses, follow focus, matte box, batteries, cables, all the normal stuff that you probably want to take with you. We designed this case so that it would also fit into the shipping case, so you can ship it safely, and when you get off the airplane, you pull this case out and then you’re ready to work, you know you’re all set. You almost just reach in and grab the camera with minimal setup.

Ed: So it’s a soft bag that goes inside a hard case?

Ken: And it’s not even a soft bag; it’s a semi-hard bag, because it’s got a frame all around it … and then we have the special dividers which are also rigid, which give even more structure, and keep your gear from migrating around.

Ed:

So baggage handlers really can’t damage it?

Ken: That’s right – it’s almost impossible. The other thing they were interested in doing was to make a backpack module.

So we made a zip-on, clip-on backpack module with beautiful straps, but it also holds a 17 inch laptop computer, so you can do some field editing. So attach that, and you’re ready to go; or you can just sling a shoulder strap on – either one of our Super Straps or the normal HB-40 and carry it over your shoulder. That’s just one of the things that we do for that camera, but the concept is a shipping case collection combination – a normal case that you can work out of, shed the weight of the shipping case ( which everybody wants to do ); our shipping cases are probably 10-15% lighter than some of those other brilliant beautiful waterproof cases, but people are really worried about their shipping costs. People are even getting rid of shipping cases altogether if they can; I’ve heard one guy talk about putting things in an Igloo Cooler because he can do it. So people are getting a little worried about that, and they don’t like the die-cut foam things, because they take up so much volume. They want to compress it or keep it in a case like this, so that they can keep their shipping costs down.

If you can do that, and you ship a lot, you’re going to pay for the case in a short period of time.

Ed: So Rex, do you think this is the perfect product for the New Zealand conditions?

Rex: Yes exactly, because people are always travelling – New Zealand being offshore …

Ed:

remote, people

are

travelling

Or just in between islands?

Rex: Or even just between cities …

Ken: Well somebody must shoot video up in the mountains.

Rex: Yes, and once you’ve got to your location you can pull out the bag with all your gear already in it and you’re all ready to go; you don’t have to repack it into another bag. It saves the weight and time, and with the convenience it’s perfect.

Ed:

And it’s really not a heavy case for airline travel?

Rex: That’s right, and you can put it in the hold and it’s safe.

Ed:

And they’ve got wheels?

Ken: Wheels and a pull out handle – what more could you ask for!

Ed: And one more – you’ve always had the QuickDraw cases?

Ken: Yes, we’ve always had this Quick-Draw case, model CC-HD1. People really love it, we sell it all the time, but New York News 1 had a special request, because they were banging up their door jams and elevator jams with the tripods and they had to navigate

Page 52

through a food court area that was huge, with all kinds of specialty booths, so they had to fight these crowds and they were hurting people. So what we did was we came up with a Quick-Draw but we put wheels on it, and then we went a step further and figured out a way to put their big heavy tripods head down; now they just wheel in and out of the building and there’s no damage and they’re happy as can be. And we even embroidered their logo on the front of it, and used their colours and they’ve never looked back.

They’re just happy as can be.

Ed: So that’s it – just another example of a customer has a need and you come up with something that not only meets what they want, but you just go a little bit further?

Ken: Just that little step further, right.

Actually, we went down to visit and check and make sure everything was okay, and were there any improvements to make, and they love them, and then they said the local news guys are looking at it too, going hey where did you get that? That’s a nice reaction.

Ed:

Ken: Oh, I didn’t think of that.

You should put your logo on the outside of them!

Page 53

For PortaBrace carry solutions, contact A2Z Phone (09) 375 3085, Email sales@audio2vizual.co.nz, Web www.audio2vizual.co.nz

NZVN

Linear Acoustic For Gencom, we are at Linear Acoustic and we have Guy Hufferd.

Ed: Guy, Linear Acoustic is certainly a name that everybody knows – big in audio, big in transmission, multi channel – what have you got?

Guy: We have the AERO.air here. This is our audio loudness manager; it has 10 channels and we just recently reduced it to a 2RU size and it’s just full of options and capability …

Ed: What, you mean you can test 10 channels at once?

Guy: Or you can broadcast 10 channels at once. It upmixes from stereo to 5.1 surround and it’s basically our workhorse. You can do any form of 10 channels 5 stereos, 5.1+2+2, etc ...

Ed: So when you say a “loudness manager” is this checking to see that the signals are at the right loudness, or is it adjusting the level so that it is at the correct loudness?

Guy: It adjusts the level – it’s a processor and it will adjust the level by compression. It ensures that it’s -24 LKFS, or wherever you set it as the engineer. It’s got plenty of features that an engineer can work with to tweak and create their own sound for the station, or it comes automatic with presets and you can just leave it set up, and once it’s set up it just goes and goes and goes and you just leave it alone.

Ed: So you’re saying that a whole range of programmes, and the ads in between, can play through this device, and the audio levels will be synchronised to an acceptable level throughout?

Guy: Yes, it ensures that there’s an acceptable level for the end user.

Ed: Wow, has this come about because of the legislation in the States?

Guy: This was actually introduced long before that …

Ed:

But you’ve been selling more now?

Guy: Yes, well we certainly hope to, yes. It was made for that – you know, the legislation has been going on for a long time …

Ed:

We’re just starting!

Guy: Yes, I’m sure – but I don’t know if your government is going to be stepping in or not. Ours did, but really the resolution, the “CALM Act”, was based off of a paper that was produced by the ATSC and our founder, Tim Carroll, was involved in developing that paper. So everything that we produce is going to be loudness compliant.

Ed: I guess if a commercial production company has a problem with the station changing their loudness, then it should have been up to them to have given it to the station correct in the first place?

Guy: Well ideally that’s how it should be, but we also develop products – not just for processing at the end of transmission – our goal is to measure that loudness, make sure that it’s compliant all along the line; like right now, we’re standing at the transmission area, but we have other pods for ingest and live production. We have equipment that a mixer will be able to stand there and be able to ensure all the channels that he’s mixing ( even in a live setting ) are under that -24 LKFS. Ed: Excellent. Okay, 10 channel – that’s for people who need 10 channels, but if you don’t need 10 channels, have you still got something?

Guy: Well the AERO.one here – there are three different versions of that : it’s a 2 + 2, or a 5.1, and a 5.1 + 2.

Essentially it processes for loudness, it controls the loudness, it manages it, it’s essentially a processor that is a basic version of our AERO.air. It’s just a few channels; it’s got crowd control – like if you’re producing live sporting events, sometimes you’ll lose the announcer in a 5.1 system because the crowd noise gets so hot in your surround sound. What our crowd control dialogue protection does, is it ensures that that dialogue is there, drops the crowd noise, and ensures that you’re able to hear it. It will do a separate downmix to channels 7 and 8 for the announcer’s voice.

Ed: So what’s the difference between the AERO.one and the AERO.mobile?

Guy: Well the AERO.one is designed for broadcasting surround sound or stereo sound at final transmission.

The AERO.mobile is specifically designed for mobile TV – you know if you’re watching TV on your iPhone or your handheld device, it is intuitive enough to know to lower the background noises and once again bring up the actors’ voices so that speech is not lost to other noises in the mix.

Ed:

Basically optimises it for a mobile device?

Guy: Yes, because usually on a mobile device, you’re listening and there’s a lot of crowd noise, you’re in environments where …

Ed:

You haven’t got great speakers?

Guy: Sure, right.

Ed: Okay, and there’s one down here that’s got a couple of speakers included with it, that’s 16 channel digital audio?

Guy: This measures metadata and digital audio. What you’re looking at here is the top number is your dial

Page 54

norm value where you have set it in your Dolby Encoder, and the bottom number is what you are actually transmitting and it also adds speakers, so if you actually want to hear what is going out over the air, you can hear it.

Ed: And this is the LAMBDA-II. Okay, that’s the hardware, but I understand you’ve got a software version of the AERO? Guy: Yes, AERO.file is our file-based system. It will allow you to measure, scale, and “fix” all of your file based audio content.

Ed: Is this software control for your hardware …?

Guy: Yes. This is a software solution only. It sits on your server and you can send up to 6 files for it to process at once or you can put it in automation.

Ed: So why would you have the hardware, because this is obviously cheaper?

Guy: Software does not always mean cheaper. This software is actually more expensive than our top of the line base unit. Not everyone has file based audio files at this point. Many people are still running tape.

Ed: So both offer the same features, but just in a different way?

Guy: Yes, we have a lot of people excited about this.

NZVN

For more on the Linear Acoustic range, contact Gencom Phone (09) 913 7500 or (04) 939 7100 Email info@gencom.com Web www.gencom.com

JVC We are at JVC for Gencom.

Ed: We are starting out with a black box that has a Blu-ray logo on it, but it also has a hard drive in it and it’s the SR-HD2500E. JVC: This is one step up from the SR-HD1500.

This one has HD-SDI in and out, that’s the step up – that’s the main difference between them and both are still available.

Ed: Just tell me, what sort of uses would people put these to?

JVC: Well its practical use is anything that effectively revolves around creating your own Bluray discs.

The combo’s a very practical application; it’s kind of like anything that you want to take from any of those different media, or store it on the hard drive, or record to Blu-ray – it’s all in one nice neat little box now.

Ed:

Salvatore shows us through the JVC stand.

So for backups?

JVC: Definitely for backups, but also for creating your own new discs. JVC’s philosophy around this sort of

stuff is being able to take from multiple sources and create to multiple media … so backups, but also content creation as well.

Ed: Because it’s got a number of slots in there – I see an SD card slot; it’s got an HDMI, it’s got USB and a FireWire?

JVC: Yes, that’s exactly multiple in, multiple out.

right.

So

Ed: Okay, and in the bigger end of stuff, in the studio you could do with one of these?

JVC: Yes, it’s from Telecast Fiber Systems. It’s a fibre base station and Page 55

it’s connected via fibre to the GY-HM790E and it gives you up to 100 metres worth of cable for remote control of your cameras.

days, but some people still very much want to shoot SD, so this has got SD and HD capabilities.

Ed:

Just a simple switch and you can record either?

JVC: Yes, absolutely. But again, it’s very much that ProHD ethos of lots and lots of functionality – you know, without trying to sound like a sales pitch – at a very reasonable price.

Ed: And really the selling point for me is this huge LCD screen which is just so clear?

JVC: Yes, and again something that JVC of late have done very well, is concentrate on their cameras and listened to the cameramen and the people who actually use them – cinematographers – and that was one of the things that really came out, give us a big clear clean viewfinder.

Ed:

And what’s this 20 second retro record?

JVC: It’s a 20 second retro record!

Ed: Now going down to the smaller cameras, there’s something that … well it looks like a consumer camera, but in fact it’s a 3D …?

JVC: It’s a full HD 3D camcorder, but it’s the pro version. Critically, the difference between this and the consumer version is that it can record in 24p. It’s a brand new product that should be available in the next 2-3 months … a very, very clever small compact professional HD 3D camcorder.

Ed: And this is the GY-HMZ1E and I guess if somebody wanted to produce 3D programmes for their clients, it’s not a huge cost to get into it with something like this?

JVC: No, that’s exactly right. For a professional 3D camera, it’s going to be very accessible and it will

Ed:

And it’s got joysticks and buttons and lots of …?

JVC: It’s clever and it’s very neat – there’s only three cables out of the back, and everything’s taken care of within those three cables. So it’s a neat little package, it’s very efficient.

Ed: Now we saw a couple of new cameras at IBC that are really bringing JVC up there with the top end of cameras in the third inch market and they’ve launched yet another one, the GY-HM750E? JVC: Yes, it’s a new camera and it does everything that the ProHD range does so well in terms of HD, but this has also got SD capability as well. It came about because a lot of people are obviously shooting HD these

It’s obvious that this is a stereo camera.

definitely be bringing 3D much more mainstream in terms of that end of the market for sure.

Ed: Because it’s all in one, you don’t have to do too many adjustments?

JVC: Very few, and we’re going to go round now to the 3D monitors which you’ll see make even more sense when combined with this camera.

Ed: So you’re recording a 3D signal, but just in case you wanted to do a 2D output, you can select 2D once you’ve recorded it?

JVC: You can.

Ed: Now we’re on to the monitors, and again JVC is certainly renowned for high quality monitors, and more on page 59

Page 56

“ inspiration. partnership. support ” special offer limit ed stock

Professional Blu-Ray & HDD Combo Deck Recorder with SD Card Slot!

SR-HD1250 Blu-Ray Disc TM

250GB Share and Archive your Original HD Content.

$1995 + Gst

Quick and easy way to Import, Record and Playback. Simple yet convenient editing and dubbing of HD content.

Recommended camcorders for the SR HD 1250: GY-HD250 & GZ-HM400

Sony - Panasonic - JVC - Canon

Contact us at Gencom for more information on our extensive range of JVC products.

Tel 09 913 7500 / 04 939 7100 | email info@gencom.com | www.gencom.com

$5500 + Gst

what’s this one – a professional 24 inch, 3D analysis monitor?

JVC: This is very clever. It’s a brand new product, the DT-3D24G1Z 3D monitor. This is very much aimed at the professional side of production and postproduction – 24 inch, full 1920x1080 and a very, very smart monitor.

It’s got lots of functions built-in to the monitor, which previously would have been external functions. So you can mess about with the waveform and you can mess about with the vectorscopes and all sorts of things.

Ed: So that’s it – really the difference is the active or the passive glasses make a huge difference to the experience?

JVC: They do make a difference, but it’s arguable – it depends on what’s been shot, and what kind of screen you’re watching it on, but this is a very good display, shot with very good footage and I think it’s one of the more impressive ones that I’ve seen at NAB. Ed: Well what interests me is that, I suppose, only in America, there was a great big disclaimer that went right across the screen saying “prolonged 3D viewing could be hazardous to your health”!

JVC: Yes, I saw that too, but then again, being at NAB for five days, prolonged drinking could be hazardous to your health as well!

Ed: Now you might remember readers, a number of years ago, a very large “boxy” camera at the JVC stand, and this was their 4K camera.

Well, things have progressed and showing in prototype form, JVC’s potentially new 4K camera, which is, you might say, small. But – 4K – it’s obviously something that some people are interested in, and perhaps more interested in that high resolution than they are in 3D?

Right next to it ( it doesn’t have a model number on it, because at the moment it’s still a prototype ) is a 32 inch 3D monitor based on the current 46 inch model.

JVC: Well that’s a tough question to answer, because I think that when you look at the pictures this thing produces, I mean they’re astonishing in their clarity, as you would expect them to be. There is definitely a market for it, as there is a market for 3D. The question is how are you going to bring it to a reasonable price point, and how are you going to create the content and enough of that content to get it out to market, so that there’s enough of it to be consumed, so that people will buy the screens – and we all know what the cycle is.

This 4K / 2K camcorder is a prototype, but it’s very much born from the fact that JVC spends an enormous amount of money on R&D and an enormous amount of money just on the research that feeds that R&D. So it’s a product that, at the moment, they’re stressing is a prototype, but to your point, and to the point about 3D, if there’s a big enough level of interest ( which I believe there will be ) then there’s a strong chance it will go NZVN into production.

JVC have been testing the market, they’ve seen that there is a market for the smaller 3D monitors … they all use exactly the same technology and that should be coming to market approximately a couple of months after the professional 3D monitors.

Ed:

That’s at the consumer level?

JVC: That’s more aimed at the consumer end, but particularly … most JVC 3D monitors at the moment are being used by production and postproduction houses.

Behind me is another monitor which at the moment, again, is still a prototype. It’s a 65 inch 3D monitor; the signal and the image quality is exactly the same across the board whether they’re small monitors or large monitors, but this thing is quite astonishing in its size and clarity.

Ed: A very interesting point on the JVC stand here with the 3D screen – a beautiful big screen – and with the active 3D glasses … and you say the pictures were shot on that tiny little camcorder?

JVC: They were shot with the GY-HMZ1 camera and – yes, well, you just saw the pictures for yourself!

Page 59

For more information on JVC product, contact Gencom Phone (09) 913 7500 or (04) 939 7100 Email info@gencom.com Web www.gencom.com

Plura Monitors For Gencom, we are at Plura Broadcast with Ray Kalo.

Ed: Ray, I did mention this just a moment ago, but I’ve been round the show, there’s a lot of people this year selling monitors, but you’ve got the best offer?

Ray: Well obviously, other companies would like to enter into our market. We still believe we have the niche, we have the quality, we have the reliability factor, and the features – rich features that I guess everybody else is trying to reach up to and join the race.

But we are confident we can continue our technology to be the best.

Ed: To me, I guess, it’s a big vote of confidence that Gencom look upon you as the monitor of choice for most of their installations, because their name rides upon yours as well?

Ray: Oh absolutely, it’s about partnership, it’s about mutual confidence. We deliver … when we say we can do it, that means we can, and a very prominent example is in Australia. The Australian market was interested in OP-47 and the demand was there, and we put our name on the line and we said we could do it, and we’re delivering Plura monitors with OP-47 decoder built in.

Ed: Okay, and since last NAB have you come up with any new models, any new technology that we should know about?

Ray: Yes, we are introducing our new 7 inch, a 3G model, very compact, very powerful. It’s the best 7 inch in the market, with dual display capability ( nobody else does that ), with waveform vectorscope, with OP47 for the Australia market and New Zealand market

Ray Kalo from Plura.

capable, and it’s in a very sweet spot pricewise. We also have the new FTM, the Field Test Monitor. It’s the first product in the market with dual capability for displaying video, as well as generating test signals, and that is a great product for trucks, for flight packs, for portable test applications, and again, that’s a product that was requested from many OB truck vans in the past six months, and we rushed to produce it based on the request.

Ed: Now in terms of the technology of your panels, some manufacturers have gone to a different OLED standard. Is this something that Plura has looked at?

Ray: Yes, for sure we did. We tested it, it did not meet our standards, due to the unreliability factor of the panels. We are still confident that the classic CCFL and the LED panels are more reliable in the long factor. We don’t feel that the OLED panels are mature enough. We are definitely going to continue looking at them, monitor the progress and the reliability factor of them, and when they are reliable enough, we will implement that technology in our monitors for sure.

Ed:

It’s not just 7 inch is it, you go way up to 70?

Ray: Yes, so we have 7 inch all the way to 70 inch.

The features are fixed, standard across the board – anything from a dual display, anything from dual inputs, HD SD 3G HDMI DVI composite, component S-Video, analogue audio, metering …

Ed: Can you actually have different formats appearing on the same multi-view?

Ray: Indeed, yes you can have HD-SDI next to SD, or you can have 3G next to 3G, or composite next to HDMI Page 60

– any combination you like. And that is the powerful processor and FPGA tool we have, and of course that means a lot of programming, a lot of experience, a lot of pioneering engineering into it, to be able to process two different formats at the same time.

Ed: Now what about 4K – is that sort of next year’s plan is it?

Ray: You know, maybe, maybe not … 4K has always been there, but we make decisions based on the market demands, rather than it’s a technology there you know.

If we can support it for the long term, if we really believe that it has a huge demand, absolutely, our technology is capable of providing that product, but we don’t see the demand that it’s going to sustain the business.

Ed: Do you see a demand for 3D monitors?

Ray: You know what, that’s a very interesting question.

Last year we had like maybe hundreds of requests for the whole show; this show, maybe 10. So what does that tell you? It tells you that the demand is becoming less.

NZVN

It’s what’s inside that matters.

Ed: Next year you might get one?

Ray: We might get one – so does that make business sense? You can answer that question!

Ed:

Oh I’d rather not!

NZVN

To find the Plura monitor for your needs, contact Gencom Ph (09) 913 7500 or (04) 939 7100 Email info@gencom.com Web www.gencom.com

Hamlet Measurement For Gencom, we are at Hamlet with Brian Massie.

Ed: Brian, we’re starting with the VidScope-BX – so why is this important?

Brian: Besides being the first of its kind on the market, the unique selling point of the VidScope is that it’s utilising hardware that you already have.

If you have any capture card, the VidScope is designed to utilise its capabilities and features – of capture especially – and then represent the video and audio in a way that is usable, manageable, easily seen on any screen size of your choice, showing a host of displays useful in any Page 61

production workflow. There are six windows, ample for most, but users’ memories allow recall of nine preset set-ups. For video editing it may be more video based for the audio edit showing all audio displays including surround sound, without having to keep changing layouts, conveying the information that you actually want to the operator. We have three levels of VidScope – entry level which is BX a download or the BX HD up to the high end, which is 4:4:4 – all available on a USB 1GB data stick.

The advantage of the USB stick versions is they can be moved from one PC or Lap Top to another.

Ed:

Is this just a software solution?

Brian: Yes, it is literally a software solution, but it works in conjunction with your existing capture card hardware. To check to make sure it works with your particular capture, you just go to the website, download it for free, register, we’ll provide you with an unlock code for the zip file, you then just register the serial number and we’ll provide you with a trial period, this allows you to validate and confirm it’s the ideal solution for your workflow.

Ed:

Well you can’t get much better than that?

Brian:

No.

Ed: You’re obviously very sure of your product if you can offer a free trial?

Brian: Yes we are, we offer a 30 day free trial in the knowledge that you won’t find such capability from any other supplier! So before you commit to purchase, you get to run it through its paces. The worst thing you want is to commit to purchase in the belief it will do something, and then find it doesn’t.

Ed: Oh, how many people have been caught with that!

Brian: Exactly. So we took an approach, well why don’t you validate it and then if you’re happy, purchase.

How simple can it be? One of the other aspects of it is, from an engineering point of view, if you are a freelancer and this is the operation tool that you want,

and you know that where you’re going has the capture card that you can utilise, you can actually have this on a dongle, so the licence is held on the dongle. When you go into that environment, you can plug it in, install the software and because the licence is on the dongle, when you walk away, you walk away with your software.

So you’re not giving up anything as a freelancer.

Ed:

It gets better and better. And the next product?

Brian: This is the VidChecker and the benefit of the VidChecker is it’s a file based QC application. The guys who actually designed the backbone for this originally designed Cerify.

Ed:

Designed what?

Brian: Cerify, the Tektronix Cerify solution.

Utilising what they already knew, they came up with a second generation instrument, similar in a lot of ways to our Reel-Check.

The key aspects of this are firstly, it utilises multicore, multi-thread processing.

Where you might have limitations with other manufacturers that if a file is being utilised under, say, one part of the core, and another file is utilising another part of the core, when that second file maybe finishes early, the first file that’s being processed will not take advantage of the additional bandwidth that becomes available. This is designed to take care and to absorb the additional bandwidth, so therefore it becomes more efficient and quicker – and time is money.

You create precise templates to work with, representing the criteria of specification to be met; within the different templates you have key attributes for that client, and you can build up a whole list of parameters specific to clients …

Ed:

So if one of them likes it a little bit pink?

Brian: Well it’s more that somebody has a tolerance band, so instead of having SMPTE spec where you were plus or minus 5%, they’ll say “well actually, we’re going to go a little bit harder than that, and we’ll go plus or minus 6%;” or we’re going to actually reduce it even further, and therefore we guarantee that when we put the content out to the broadcaster, it’s going to be in spec.

The other good thing is that it’s not something that is just manually operated; you can have it under automation, so that things can be pushed to it under automation and told what to do, without somebody physically having to keep coming back to the unit. The only real intense timeconsuming aspect is setting up the templates. But, once you’ve done that, you can copy and rename and make slight tweaks to them to meet each requirement. So you’re not having to start from the ground up every time. It saves thousands of man hours in QC checking.

Page 62

VidChecker can make correction as well for the gamut levels and also for loudness. Handy. So if it’s for people where content is imperative to get out, but it has to meet broadcast levels, what you can do, for people like video on demand, end consumers primarily, you know mobile phone and so on – what it will do is it will go through everything that’s required, but also if, say, the RGB level is outside the gamut levels, what you have is ( unlike a normal legaliser which might crush or crop ) what this does, is it has a special algorithm so it actually tries to do an intelligent correction and therefore you then re-encode it in the best encoder that it has available to it, which would be fine for that type of environment where it’s been pushed to. Not the workflow of a broadcaster, because there it should just flag the issues to go back in the workflow of being reproduced.

Ed:

And you can turn that feature off obviously?

Brian: Absolutely, it’s literally with the templates – you can then just say what you do or don’t want.

Everything has the option of “reject on error”, but when it comes to the corrections, you’ve got your chroma, your black level, your RGB gamut, and then after that there’s nothing within the video format that’ll actually correct.

Ed: So that’s it, you’ve got a little check box which is “reject on error” or not and “correct” or not?

Brian: Yes, exactly that. It’s very straightforward; it’s a Windows based application, all done through the browser, so it’s something that is universally utilised and understood, very user friendly indeed. It’s very much if you know how to run Windows, you know how to get from template to template, you know how to utilise tabs – you’re there. And it’s just about setting up the templates and then, after that, where you want your outputs to go; if you want a correction applied, where that actually goes, and the fact that it has a prefix in the title to state that it’s been corrected; where you want all your files that have passed without any issues, corrected or rejected appropriately.

At the same time, if there’s an issue, you can have emails set up to go to the people that the content relates to – and that is configurable under each template. So you can have a template for HBO; you can have a template for Disney; you can have a template for ESPN … and that allows you to utilise and get everything together from a central repository of data on high end servers and what you have is an option called “the grid”. Now with the grid concept, each terminal is a node and then you have access into the primary, so you can pull whatever you need out within each station; and you can limit the functionality or the operational controls of each node / terminal by saying under your password you can only read the reports; you can’t do anything other than that. But what it will do means that you can have your end customer, or your provider more importantly, of content, have an email or have the option to come in, look at the error report and then go and fix the problems.

Ed: It sounds as though you’ve thought of everything.

In that situation, when there is an error, rather than just ringing the client and saying “hey, you’ve got to fix it” you can actually send them a link to the site and they can look for themselves to see what the error is, and how big an error it is?

Brian: Yes, they actually have their own unique folder, with their own unique passwords so they go to that specific location, which is agreed in the contract, and they don’t have to have somebody on the phone trying to explain; they go straight to where the report is, it’s held in a central place under their unique passwords. Obviously the broadcaster has availability to go and look at it all as well, but more importantly the posthouse environment or the end user if it’s going to somebody else, has the same functionality.

Ed: So you can vary the access depending on who’s looking at it. But also, to me the major aspect of this is that it’s a definitive report that is not subjective; it is something everyone can look at and decide “yes we accept that” or “no we don’t” and deal with it appropriately? Also the tests are repeatable, whereas with human QC – we never see all the same faults we saw before ...?

Brian: Correct, and when they actually come to the report, there are thumbnails to show the first frame; there are thumbnails to show the last frame of the issue. So it’s very, very clear, within timeframes and everything else, to see what the issues, what the

contentions are, where they need to go back and fix the issue.

Ed:

Page 63

Everyone should have one!

To get your very own Hamlet VidScope, contact Gencom Phone (09) 913 7500 or (04) 939 7100 Email info@gencom.com Web www.gencom.com

NZVN

Rycote Now for Syntec, we’ve found Rycote under the name Redding Audio Inc and we have Stefano Pucello from Rycote.

Ed: Stefano, I’ve still got a little fluffy thing on my recorder and it’s working beautifully.

Stefano: Hello Grant, nice to see you again, in another part of the world. The little fluffy that you’ve got on the top of your recorder is doing very, very well.

What we call our “micro windjammer” is resolving problems with many incorporated microphones.

Although the audio coming from your portable device is not the best, it still has to be protected from the wind, and that’s where we come in.

In other news, since my trip to New Zealand, we have launched the new portable recorder suspension. The portable recorder suspension is using the same technology adopted for the shotgun mics – basically it’s the Lyre technology that we discussed back in Auckland. What it does is to completely isolate any portable recorder that has got a quarter inch thread underneath. It comes as a kit which includes a handle so that it can be used more easily by journalists – like at the moment you’re holding it with your hand. There is also a little cable clamp because, again, apart from the vibration coming from the handling noise, you also have cable-borne noise, so the actual headphones cable can be clamped here and therefore is basically not getting that noise. It also comes with a little hot shoe

Page 64

Stefano was happy that I’d kept my fluffy on.

adapter that you put on the top of any camera, and nowadays, with the DLSR booming, that is one use of the portable recorders.

Finally, the actual suspen -sion tilts and therefore it can be directed to the source where you want to record. Here in the States, this one is retailing for Another use for the Lyre mount.

US$159.99 whereas just the suspension only, for the Zoom, is US$95.

Ed:

That’s continuous development for Rycote.

NZVN

For any Rycote product, contact Daniel Rowe at Syntec New Zealand Phone (09) 263 9885 Email sales@syntec.co.nz

CLASSIFIED For Sale RIEGERS CAMERA & VIDEO CENTRE 246 Dominion Rd Mt Eden Auckland Ph: (09)6304115 Fax (09)6315228

JUNE SPECIALS Canon XLH1 Inc. Canon 16 X Manual Lens.

HDV Semi Shoulder Camcorder HD-SDI out Gl in, PRICE $6490.00 Inc gst.

Canon Manual 16 X Zoom XL 5.4 - 86.4mm Video Lens PRICE $1899.00 Inc gst.

Above products are NEW and are less than half of the original R R price and come with standard 12 month warranty.

SONY HDR FX1000E HDV Camcorder unused prize R.R P. $6999.00 PRICE $5695.00 Inc gst.

SONY HVR VIP HDV Camcorder Inc standard accessories H.Duty battery,carry bag,modest use. $2990.00 Inc gst.

SONY PD 170 DV CAM, Camcorder Inc standard accessories, camera bag modest use. $1790.00 Inc gst.

SONY Wide Angle Lens with lens hood VCL HG 0862k suitable HVR V1P or FX7 $490 00 Inc gst.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR OUR MONTHLY SPECIALS Email riegers@ihug.co.nz

Sachtler Support For Panavision, we are at Sachtler ( part of the Vitech Group ) with Jim Davis.

Ed: Jim, tell us something about the new range in lightweight support from Sachtler?

Jim: Well this is the Sachtler Cine DSLR tripod system. The main difference between this and our other heads is the camera platform is designed specifically for this still camera – it has a block in the back that doesn’t rotate. It comes in carbon fibre or aluminium tripod choices …

Ed: And what I do notice is that that base plate is longer than what I’ve seen for a video camera?

Jim: That’s due to the different configuration from a standard video camera.

Ed: Because of the number of accessories that people need to put on DSLRs? Jim: Correct. New this year is our tubular tripod system, for a 75mm fluid head, maximum height about 170cm. It’s lightweight, folds very, very quickly and compactly.

Ed: I notice on the cine DSLR tripod, on the legs, it looks like an extra bracing arm. What’s the purpose of that?

Jim: This is a tripod called the Speed Lock that we offer in 75mm and 100mm sizes. It’s a two-stage tripod with a single locking lever so it allows you to make an adjust-ment with one leg, or with one lock, for two stages, so that’s the idea.

Ed: So instead of having to unlock two different clips, it’s one clip and it unlocks the two stages? continued over page

To see all the Sachtler range, contact Panavision Phone (09) 360 8766 Email tim.timlin@panavision.asia Web www.panavision.co.nz

Page 65

Jim: Yes, that’s correct.

The lower lock is basically a cam that operates from the top lock.

Ed: So, of course, you could use these legs on a standard video head?

Jim: Sure other brands or ours, we offer it – all Sachtler tripod systems have a choice of different types of tripods with a certain head.

So, same with this, we have this model, and this model, we have aluminium single stage, two stage, with everything we make.

So it’s very prehensive.

com-

Ed: As one would expect from Sachtler.

NZVN

Page 66

Launch Invitation

By Imaging

Technology

Venue: Time:

519 Panmure/Ellerslie Highway, Auckland 5.00 ~ 7:30 pm Wednesday 22 June 2011

Be the first to see the new features Avid Studio v1 :

Transform your HD videos, photos, and audio into rich, multimedia experiences with Avid® Studio movie production software––incorporating the same technology used by top Hollywood editors. Features include sophisticated photo and video correction tools, powerful media library, unlimited timeline tracks, in-depth training, and tons of pro templates, effects, and transitions.

Studio 15 Ultimate:

Created by Avid®, the world leader in professional audio and video creation technology, Pinnacle Studio™ HD Ultimate Collection v.15 makes it easy to edit like a pro with intuitive new features, ultra-fast performance, and a massive content collection.

M-Audio KeyStudio 49 with Pro-Tool SE

complete recording system > turn your PC or Mac into a full-featured studio Pro Tools® SE software > record, edit, and produce with the same platform used by top audio professionals M-Audio® KeyStudio™ 49-note keyboard > play the huge virtual instrument library in Pro Tools SE over 100 virtual instruments > fly solo or be the entire band extensive library of templates and loops > quickly and easily make music in any style

AverMedia HDMI HD capture Card

Capture Anologue Video from Component, Composite and S-Video Real-time 1080p HD H.264 recording

AverMedia HD HomeFree Duet

Lan based Live FreeView for your iPads and laptops

RSVP For finger food catering and drinks Please email to chris@imatech.co.nz

12 Holloway Place, Penrose, Auckland. ph 09 5257888 WWW.Imagingtechnology.co.nz

Chrosziel Matte boxes For Panavision, we are looking at the Chrosziel matte boxes with Gregg Hamlin.

Ed: I guess there have been some new models because people have come out with large sensor cameras?

Gregg: Absolutely.

One of the changes is the look of the Chrosziel – it’s a carbon fibre look, much more indestructible, you can drop it, it will bounce right back. Also, on the new 456 Academy Double and the 450 Super Wide, we have 130mm rear diameter, so they take much wider lenses.

The Academy box Double or Triple takes up to 12mm in 35 Academy and the 450W takes up to 16mm in 35 Academy; and the 450W takes 4x4 filters and 4x5.65s; the Academy will take Panavision filters and 5x.65.

Ed: And you’re showing them here on Sony cameras, we’ve got the F3 and we’ve got the NX-100, so obviously they’re working, the rods – the whole system is complete and ready for shipping?

Gregg: We have kits all made up – follow focus and gear drives and everything, so people are really enjoying the Chrosziel products.

Ed: So there you are, the whole kit is now available, baseplate, rods, follow focus, matte box to clip onto your large format sensor.

NZVN

To try a Chrosziel matte box for yourself, contact Panavision Phone (09) 360 8766 Em: tim.timlin@panavision.asia Web www.panavision.co.nz

Schneider Optics For Panavision, we have Bob Zupka from Schneider Optics.

Ed: Bob, filters, you’ve got some new ones for NAB this year that are obviously tackling a few issues with current cameras?

Bob: Yes, what we’ve introduced for this year at NAB is a line of neutral density infrared filters. One of the common problems is that many of the camera manufacturers, to some degree, have issues imaging infrared light within the camera.

Typically what happens is that black materials made with different types of dyes will render themselves different colours in the camera. It really isn’t something that you can correct in post – and it’s simply because the cameras actually see slightly beyond the visible range. So, to your eye, two materials may look perfectly black, but

the camera may render one of them a magenta or brownish colour. I have a demonstration here where we’re showing these black hats … they look black on the screen, they look black on the set. If I remove the filter on an EX3 Sony, you can see you get a significant colour shift between the two materials.

So we’ve introduced the line – basically what we plan on is that these will be, essentially, a replacement for standard ND, since you could use these on all the film and digital cameras, so they’re completely agnostic. They could be stacked, there’s no orientation specialty, they’re nonreflective, so it simply looks and acts identical to a standard ND, but it does eliminate the infrared issues.

The official name for the filter, the IRND filter line, is the Platinum series from Schneider Optics.

Ed: I have to concur with that at the moment, because I’ve just seen the demonstration that one of the black hats stayed black, while the other one went a more on page 71

Page 68

Avid Studio Turnkey Non-Linear SD/HD System includes Protools SE for audio editing and Anologue Breakoutbox

Enjoy powerful real-time video and audio editing.

Avid Studio is a revolutionary nonlinear video editing application. Powerful real-time video and audio editing tools give you precise control over virtually every aspect of your production. Avid Studio takes video production to an entirely new level.

      

With this turnkey system you simply unpack, plug in your camera and start editing.

Get your Videos done faster with this Xtreme Workstation.

Real-time editing - Take advantage of a new, real-time editing experience that provides immediate feedback and enables you to edit with amazing speed.

Multiple timelines - Take advantage of multiple timelines to experiment more freely and manage complex projects more efficiently.

Advanced colour correction - Use colour correction tools to adjust hue, saturation, and lightness for highlights, and more.

Enhanced audio editing with pro-tool SE- Produce richer, more vibrant audio using sample-level editing, track-based effects and more Direct to DVD and Blu-Ray - AVCHD burning; DVD and Blu-ray disc authoring and burning tools

Workstation includes:

        

Intel® i7 Processor with 6GB of Memory with 4TB of Hard Drive with 1 GB of Video memory.

Configurable with DVDR and Blue-RAY DISC 23” LCD Monitor M-Audio AV20 speakers Avid Vocal Microphone with Protools SE software SD Anologue Breakoutbox

www.imagingtechnology.co.nz;

12-14 Holloway Place, Penrose; PO Box 62-157, Auckland; Tel: 09 5257888 Fax: 09 5257898

HXR-NX70P

NXCAM Compact Size Camcorder

NEW

AT NAB 2011

Sony's new rain and dust proof HXR-NX70P camcorder is truly a professional performer that is compact enough to go anywhere and capture the action anytime, even in rainy or dusty situations. The HXR-NX70P may appear compact, but it is loaded with the latest features that professional shooters demand for tough assignments in rugged environments.

This camcorder is ready to capture amazing footage no matter where your next adventure may take you, from humid rainforests to sandy deserts. You'll be ready to roll on the action as it happens without worrying about adding a rain cover to protect the main camera body. The Exmor R™ CMOS sensor delivers superior performance in low-light situations where natural ambiance is desired, boasting roughly double the sensitivity of conventional CMOS sensors.

More information at: sonybusiness.co.nz

Key features • IEC60529 IP54 rating rain & dust proof performance • Ultra-wide angle 26.3mm G lens • Optical SteadyShot image stabilization with Active Mode • Back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor for superb low-light video • 1920 x 1080 Full HD 50p recording with 12.3 Megapixels still image capture • 3.5" touch-screen XtraFine™ LCD display • XLR adaptor with selectable phantom power • Geotagging with built-in GPS receiver

distinct brown on screen; put the filter back in and they’re both black. So, yes, a telling demo. Any other new filters?

Bob: One of the other things that we’ve been making specially for the 3D applications where people are using beam splitting rigs … they’re realising that because of the nature of the beam splitter, one of the images tends to get cross-polarised. So if you have glare coming off of water, windshields, wet surfaces, one of the cameras – basically the camera that’s receiving the reflected image – will have a very apparent different image than the transmitted one, and when these are combined in 3D, it becomes very, very noticeable, almost like a noticeable flicker. It’s called a Quarter Wave Retarder Plate. They’re made to be installed in front of the beam splitter on the outside of the beam splitter box and it’s essentially a clear laminate Quarter Wave Plate that’s laminated in between two water white sharp P270 pieces of glass with anti-reflection coating on both sides; typical retail price in the US$700-1,000 range.

They also serve the second purpose of preventing damage and contamination to the beam splitter. So

Bob Zupka from Schneider Optics.

basically, it looks to the eye as if it’s a normal optical slat but in fact it has a dual purpose to eliminate this cross-polarisation issue in 3D beam splitting rigs.

Ed: And along with that, there’s a full range of other filters that Schneider have been making for many, many years?

Bob: Exactly – a full range of diffusion, polarisation, colour correction – we really tend to try to stay up on the industry and provide as many options for the shooter, and many times give them that extra 5-10% NZVN out of the camera that they buy.

To get your personal demo of the Schneider filter that’s right for you, contact Panavision Phone (09) 360 8766 Email tim.timlin@panavision.asia Web www.panavision.co.nz

NZVN ADVERTISING RATES

NZ Video News is posted free to New Zealand video production professionals - if you know someone in the business who would like NZVN too, tell them to write or phone us

Rates from April 2008 Advertisement A6 (must be set portrait) A5 (must be set landscape) A4 (must be set portrait) Spot colour - a supplement of Full colour - a supplement of Classified 40 words pre-paid cash Loose Inserts are accepted conditionally

NZVN AD RATES: - EXCLUDING GST $ 80 $140 for one $270 for two in the same issue $260 for one $250 each for more than one in the same issue $120 per A3 $420 per A3 $ 20 ($23 including GST)

AD COPY REQUIREMENTS: To qualify for listed rates, all copy and artwork must be submitted in photo copy ready form - black on white, as an Adobe PDF file - print optimised. Email to <finnzed@xtra.co.nz> AD DEADLINES:

SEE FRONT PAGE

Pay by cheque or direct credit to ANZ # 010242-0160111-00 Page 71

A Call To Arms!

- Manfrotto has the broadest range of tactical arms and clamps Enlist Today!

www.panavision.co.nz Sales Tim (09) 3608766

Support 318 Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn, Auckland

Service tim.timlin@panavision.asia