NZVN October 2012b by Grant Cummuskey

OCTOBER 2012

Vol 185

IBC 2012 - more than expected.

es, it was a show of more new product than I expected to see and some were very significant as you will soon read about. To give you a taste of who was there ( and one who wasn’t ), we start of with this picture gallery of many of our sponsors. Thanks people - now read on. Ed. Go to www.finnzed.co.nz and follow the link to NZVN for more news.

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Sony at IBC We start at the Sony stand and we have Anthony Cable from Sony Australia. Ed: Anthony I went to the press presentation this morning and the first thing they showed us which opened a few mouths – not only was there a 4K projector there, but there was a 4K Bravia? Anthony: Yes indeed, the 4K Bravia’s being shown live on the stand with a satellite feed from Astro which is being beamed across from Belgium, received directly on the stand and put up on the screen. Ed: The 4K Bravia was one thing, but then the second was this collaboration with SES, enabling transmission of 4K via the SES satellite system. This is a potential for Sony that you can offer television stations – or you can do it yourselves, Sony TV? Anthony: Well it could go in that direction. It could be offered from a range of broadcasters, cable providers, satellite providers. The technology is available and working right now as you can see and really isn’t much different in bandwidth requirements from when HD was first developed. As HD’s grown and codecs and things have improved, the data rate which is required for that transmission has been reduced, but you know, looking at 4K now, we’re seeing data rates for that similar to when HD was originally introduced. In a couple of years’ time, as new codecs are developed and deployed, we’ll be able to get it down to almost the same level as HD currently is today. Ed: And I guess if the current broadcasters don’t take it on, then you could do it yourselves? Anthony: There’s many choices out there for people. Ed: Right, well we’ll move on rapidly. Internet sports area – there was a big announcement that FIFA has taken on Sony as goal line camera verification? Anthony: Yes. Sony purchased the Hawk-Eye company a couple of years ago, so viewers are probably familiar with that from the tennis or the cricket, but now FIFA’s officially accepted Hawk-Eye as a system for judging goal lines –whether it’s a goal or not. That’s

Anthony and friend.

the first time you’ve had automated systems being supported by FIFA instead of just relying on on-field referees, so it’s fantastic to see that technology being developed. Ed: Humans are fallible? Anthony: Well yes, we’ve seen some fairly high profile “mistakes” one could call them I guess … Ed: Yes I know – probably in rugby too? Anthony: Oh it’s across all sports I think. They’re only human, so having a third party to go back to is a nice solution. Ed: And another solution that Sony’s come up with, with the cameras, is in the fibre connection. One of the slides that really took my fancy was the one that showed that there is a back available for the PMW series. Tell us a bit more about that? Anthony: There’s a fibre adapter and a triax adapter as well, depending on the infrastructure required, that is available for our PMW-500, 350 and 320 series. This allows you to use the camcorder in more of a traditional system camera configuration. So if you’re wanting to use it in a studio with either fibre or triax, you purchase the back that’s designed for that and then you can use that same camera out in the field as a regular camcorder, instead of buying a dedicated system camera. This is great for those customers that need that flexibility in their setups. Ed: But that’s not only for the PMW series, there’s another back isn’t there? Anthony: Yes – those adapters are also available for use on our entry level system camera, the HXCD70 … it’s set for fibre and also for triax. So there is flexibility to match the type of infrastructure that you’re working with.

A sunflower in 4K - wow!

Ed: So bringing that outside broadcast possibility down to a more affordable level? Page 2

Anthony: Most definitely … for churches, small event venues and a whole range of different applications where budgets are heavily restricted but you still need a traditional live production setup. Ed: Also for a broadcaster that’s blown their lunch budget? Anthony: Well everyone’s looking for more cost effective solutions these days. Ed: And speaking of cost effective, the MVS mixer series?

Anthony: Yes, a couple of new MVS mixers were announced … the MVS-3000 which is a nice small compact 2ME switcher. It has a new control panel and is really flexible – designed for both entry level broadcast as well as non-traditional broadcast, be it churches or event venues and places where they need a very powerful system with the same capabilities and performance that people have come to expect from our industry standard MVS series. In addition to the 3000, there’s the new 6520 and 6530 two and three ME switchers respectively. Designed, again, for more the smaller OB type company or smaller broadcast facilities where they don’t need all the power of our 7000 series MVS. Ed: And do these have any link to the IP Live system? Anthony: Yes, both can definitely be integrated with that. The advantage of the IP Live system, or the NXLIP55 is that it can be used in any standard SDI based infrastructure, but allows you to transfer those signals across an IT based network. You can connect up to four video signals – you can have three going in one direction and one the other way, or two and two, as well as control, GPI, tally, Genlock, audio – all the different interfaces you need for a traditional live broadcast setup. Operators don’t have to change what they’re used to doing, but can utilise an IP back end for transferring signals around.

Ed:

Aaah so really for internal use?

Anthony: It’s used for “point to point” transfer and then, at the other end, you take your SDI out and put it into your vision mixer or your recording system and treat it as a traditional broadcast environment. Ed: So the camera that’s got this IP plug in it, what’s that all about … you can see I’m not a computer person, alright … don’t pull those faces at me Anthony. Anthony: With the HDC-2000 series of system cameras, there’s a dedicated IP trunk that’s available with a network connection on the CCU and on the camera head itself. That’s just a regular IP network, so you can plug anything into that that you like, the IP55 is just one solution. That will allow you to actually transfer four video signals down that one fibre link between the two cameras - really handy for outside broadcast, where you may be limited on the number of long fibre runs that you have, you’re able to transfer multiple camera signals back across those links and still get all your tally and everything else that you need. Ed: So it’s a very flexible little box and something that actually might win you an award here at IBC? Anthony: Quite probably – it’s definitely up for an award and we’ll see what the results of that are; it’s very innovative technology. Ed: Now to move onto cameras, and again the F65 has impressed an awful lot of people. We saw some absolutely stunning footage from the F65 as part of the 4K demo and it’s now been taken on by the movie studios? Anthony: Yes, it’s been really widely adopted; it’s fantastic, you know, we’ve seen a number of local productions as well as many international productions. It started off with the M. Night Shyamalan and Will Smith film After Earth that was announced back at NAB time and then we’ve seen it roll on many different high end features, TV series, commercials. Ed: But we don’t stop there. Sony also caters for, shall we say, the “educational user” in a number of areas, and I know I was particularly impressed by the HXR-NX30 – the little baby one with the image stabiliser. A stunning little camera. The baby one was the NX30 and now you’ve come up with the 70?

Ed: So in other words “streaming”? Anthony: It’s not direct web streaming; it’s more for transportation of the signals between a couple of different locations. In a facility, it’s quite common to have an IP network structure already in place; now you can just plug a box in each end and transmit full broadcast quality signals with extremely low latency across that link. Page 4

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Anthony: The NX70 is the higher end of those two models. It is a camera which has been very popular, well received, as you said, especially in the education market, but also in small independent documentaries, compact run and gun, corporate work, very very popular all round small camcorder, that’s very flexible and able to be used in many areas. Ed: And in the 35mm educational version?

sensor

area,

also

Ed: There you go. Now my big question, and how I want to finish, is one that’s been interesting me for quite a while. When the F3 was launched, here was a camera that really, when I saw it, I thought “wow, this is something that’s going to be very, very popular”, but then along came the FS100 and then along came the FS700 and for a while they seemed to eclipse the F3,

Anthony: Yes, we’ve got a new smaller form factor – NEX EA50 – which is definitely going to appeal to not only educational markets, but those customers who are wanting that large sensor look. If they’re training their students on it or they’re just looking for those creative solutions that the large format gives you, it’s really cost effective, comes with an interesting form factor, it’s a semi-shoulder mount design … Ed: It looks a bit more like a video camera than a cinematographic camera, but obviously it has the 35mm depth of field type look in the pictures, so it’s sort of almost a crossover? Anthony: Yes definitely a cross over product, it can also be used as a still camera, but with the … Ed: A still camera? Anthony: Yes, if you wanted to – in still mode it’s even got a mechanical shutter that can be used for shots. Ed:

You mean it actually makes a clicking sound?

Anthony: It makes a clicking sound. Most people of course will be using it as a 35mm camera in movie mode and it gives you all of the advantages of the large frame sensor in a more traditional form factor for video type work. So you’ve got built-in XLRs and audio monitoring, and all the things people were complaining about that aren’t available on a DSLR now are available in a much better form factor at a DSLR price.

but I’ve thought about it a lot since then and I’ve actually decided that no, they’re two quite different fields. To me, the F3 stands apart and it really is a baby F65 … just tell me some of the key features that make the F3 not an NEX type camera? Anthony: Sure. The F3 is, as you said, definitely the higher end, true digital cinematography camera. It has a lot of the high end features from the CineAlta line; in fact it carries CineAlta badging on it. The camera has functionality that isn’t available in the more cost effective series. It does give you the ability to do true 444 output from the camera; it’s got high end internal processing, 422 output ability for the signal, as well as giving that 444 output. The way it handles highlights and the ability to have S-Log, now as standard, has been very well received and that’s a workflow well known in the post industry already today, because it’s been around since its introduction back with the F23. So very widely accepted, very easily graded, really stunning looking pictures out of it, and when you compare the footage from this camera to many different cameras in shoot-outs, the F3’s always punched well above its weight. It still continues to be a very well selling camera … there’s always activity and people looking for the new exciting thing and that’s I’m sure why the FS700 and the FS100 – both of which are fantastic cameras – have received a lot of attention, but you know, whatever the new exciting thing is, that’s what people are buzzing about. That being said, you know the F3’s still a fantastic camera, lots of features being added continually through firmware upgrades that are offered free of charge and some great, great pictures coming out from it … Ed: Yes, you can stop now … one of the other features was the PL mount, the very solid mount that the F3 has; the F700 has a different mount, you can put adapters on it, but the F3 …? Anthony: Yes, the PL mount on the F3 is standard out of the box. We include kit lenses that you can get with it which are PL mount as well. But really it’s more designed, because of the PL mount, for customers at that level of production, who are used to working with traditional digital cinematography lenses which are of course all PL mount.

The PMW-200 captures the act.

Ed: And if you did want to use either of these products in the on-board recording mode, the F3 again Page 6

talks about, but yes, even using it at normal speed, there are lots of places that you can fit that camera that you can’t other form factors. Ed: So really the F3 and the NEX series – they’re two separate camera systems that are in fact made by two different Sony factories and there’s a reason for that; they’re actually for different users. If you wanted to choose one or the other, or you weren’t sure, go and see your Sony dealer and they can show you both of them and go through the ins and outs of each one? Anthony: Indeed, our dealers are very familiar with all the range of products, so they can suggest what the best products for your needs are going to be. Both the cameras work very well together and people use them on productions together all the time, but there may be a product that’s more suited for whatever your requirements are, so have a chat to our dealers and I’m sure they can point you in the right direction. Ed: Now give us a last word on OLED monitors, because again this was highlighted in the press briefing, that OLED has really grown, you’ve sold tens of thousands of these and really we should dispel all fears that these things are a temporary feature?

has the advantage of the SxS cards, one would say a more robust card recording format than a standard SD card? Anthony: Yes, the SxS cards are designed right from the ground up for broadcast use; extremely robust, reliable, a much larger form factor – you know, they’re not huge, but they’re still not tiny little cards that someone’s going to drop on the ground and not find if you’re out shooting in a forest, never to be seen again. Ed: And the codec that is actually recorded on the cards, one could say is a less compressed format? Anthony: Yes, on the FS700 or the NEX series, you have AVCHD recording, which is relatively heavily compressed but still gives you stunning picture quality. The recording format on the F3 is the XDCAM-EX 35 megabit recording which has been very widely adopted and easily integrated into all the systems out there. Ed: So really, to summarise the two cameras, I would say that the F3 is a cinematographic camera, so if somebody was wanting to make a movie, then you choose the F3? Anthony: Yes, I mean the F3’s perfect for that. We’ve seen it used on quite a number of productions … I’ve even seen numerous features being shot on the F3.

Anthony: Yes, the OLED monitors have been extremely well received by the industry. We’re announcing at IBC that we’ve sold over 15,000 of these models globally; a very impressive take up, really well regarded … the general feedback we hear now is that it’s become the standard monitor you see on set in Hollywood, it’s been very well received by post houses and production at all levels and, at the PVM series, they are competitively priced with LCDs. So the performance is unmatched by anyone … Ed: And you stand behind them with a published two year guarantee, but I’m sure if anybody ever had a problem …? Anthony: Sony always stands behind their products. We have the standard warranty and guarantee that is available on those, but where customers have an issue with things that are related to manufacturing, we’re definitely going to backup and support those outside that period. Ed: And if it’s related to their own use of it, then you can have a discussion with them as to how they should use it better? Anthony: Well yes, depending on what they’ve done to it. We’ve had customers who’ve dropped things on them, or put them underwater etc, and unfortunately that’s not covered under warranty, despite some people thinking it might be, and if you crush them inside an OB van compactor, no it’s not covered under warranty I’m afraid. Yes, it has happened. NZVN

Ed: But if one wanted to make sporting programmes using features such as the slo-mo capability of the FS700 and wanted that little bit more flexibility, that little bit more ease of use that you can handhold it if you really want to, you can take it into places where the F3 might be a little bit heavy, the NEX series would be the choice. I think one of the best examples was Tim from the South Island showing us that snowboarding footage – fantastic? Anthony: Yes there’s some stunning footage we’ve been seeing. Obviously on the FS700 the slo -mo feature is the exciting feature that everyone Page 8

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Gencom – VidyoCast Along with Ray Sanders from Gencom, I met with Jim O’Brien, VidyoCast – HD live over the Internet. Ed: Ray, another streaming product or something more? Ray: It’s more than just a streaming product; it’s a whole platform for interactive interchange of video between different facilities and more. Gencom got to know VidyoCast a couple of years ago and found that it was a product that would really suit not only the news industry, but also the corporate side of the business, because it’s got unique encoding and it’s got unique features regarding how you can interact between various facilities. I’ll let Jim talk more about what that means. Jim: First of all, VidyoCast brings high definition video production to the Cloud and, in any hosting centre, either private or public, you have the opportunity to put our bandwidth manager, send out software invitations to iPhones, iPads Androids, laptops, desktops and get them via our software into a live production at a fourth of a second latency. This is coupled by hardware encoders with HDSDI in and also remote camera robotics control out. This is joined with hardware decoders outputting SDI/ HD-SDI. We won the IBC Innovation Award Shortlist on it, with a project with a CBS sports network in the US where their studio is halfway across the US, the production switcher and audio mixer’s in New York City, and we handled the transit of video and audio, you know 32 channels of audio across the link and return TV network video as well as camera robotics control. Ed: So basically this is a software package … you are providing the service for all these boxes to be connected? Jim: Yes indeed, that’s right, and it’s coupled with a production switcher like capability and the ability to produce a rundown that lets people execute multiple participants in a story that’s being created at the desktop with reporters sharing the same pool of hardware decoders. Each reporter gets his 15 minutes or so, they send out their invites, they get people on screen and interview them together. You can then sequence them in a big project such as what we did with one large project with a global media company,

Jim from VidyoCast.

where they needed to produce a lot more stories of a lot higher quality, and they just didn’t have the money or the space to build a bunch more studios or expand their feeds room. They saw that we were doing this all in a hosted environment and it has completely revolutionised the way that news can be created; it’s applicable in corporate TV and educational TV with especially the remote robotics control of the cameras, and the ability for the people at the podium to see the distant rooms of students that they’re speaking with and getting questions from. One of our good patents is this idea that, if you have a window in a graphics file, make that your digital video effects window, so we have digital video effects production switcher like capability that’s easily created in PowerPoint, Paint or Photoshop and that’s allowing live production either to recording to on air or to the web, to be happening under a very elegant and simple to use control. Ed: Wow. Now in terms of you say you’re providing the hosting centre, are you actually providing the Cloud or can people choose their own Cloud, so they could even have their own Intranet? Jim: Absolutely. In a high profile project with Gencom, we have one major corporate customer who has everything inside of their corporate environment

Page 10

and so their business television studio department gets interviews and feeds from all across the world this way. Another global pharmaceutical company in New York has a similar setup, but they’re using the Internet and a private network. The company we won the IBC Innovation Award with, CBS, has a combination of Internet and public network. We’re showing here at IBC recording of live 1080i across the open Internet at one fourth of a second latency, 1080i looking as good as any fixed feed or satellite link – and this is on air routinely in the US on one of the major sports networks. So it’s a range of capability with some innovations that have never been seen before and the opportunity to change fundamentally how parts of video production happen is a real game changer; in the news market particularly, the ability to ( where the stories are appropriate ) invite people to talk on screen together, instead of sending a crew out to this guy and sending a crew to that guy and then having to go back to the first guy. Ed: Ray, this sounds like a very flexible solution looking for people to take it up. You’ve got your own hardware systems, or you can add to those hardware things, you can choose your own Cloud, this provides you the working part in the middle? Ray: Yes. VidyoCast have pioneered this sort of type of operation and, from that standpoint, we want to work with it the way they’ve designed it, so typically we would be taking advice from them on how that hardware and Cloud should work. Ed: But for an existing facility that has got a lot of this hardware and has its own Intranet, pretty well this is a solution that comes in to patch all of that together? Ray: Yes, I think it can certainly benefit anyone who needs to communicate in a formal or professional way with video and with stories or in a journalistic manner. Ed:

Very scalable I imagine?

Gencom – Ross Video We have Jeff Moore from Ross Video.

Ray Sanders - citizen reporter.

Ray: Yes – you can have it working just between two parties or you can have it across a huge network of people round the world. Ed:

And if you start small, you can grow big?

Ray: Absolutely, there are no limitations.

NZVN

so you can bring things like HDMI for computer inputs or analogue component or analogue composite into the system. It also has a very high end scaler that does i to

Ed: Jeff, we were very impressed that Ross came and showed the Auckland community the products and explained the new relationship with Gencom, but we’re here now to talk about the products specifically and Carbonite has now become a big name for Ross … something new? Jeff: Absolutely. Carbonite launched at NAB last year and we’ve shipped over 700 units so far, so it’s been a very successful product for us. At IBC, we’re launching four new things. The first is the Carbonite Plus frame which adds features and functionality above and beyond what the regular Carbonite frame does. It adds up-converter frame syncs in every input and doubles the number of DVEs and it’s only an extra US$5,000 for the Carbonite Plus frame. Then we’ve got the Carbonite Multimedia frame, which adds the features of the Plus frame, as well as four multimedia inputs,

Jeff at the Ross News desk. Page 11

p conversions. So Carbonite Plus, Carbonite Multimedia, then we’ve introduced a brand new control panel called the C2X – Carbonite 2X – control panel which has 32 buttons on it. It has dedicated memory keypads, so it’s an expanded panel for live production. It’s very cool. And the last thing is View Control which combines a touchscreen user interface for Carbonite with multiview. It’s very visual, you can see the sources that you’re looking at and then pick those through the touchscreen and get them on the air very quickly. It also ties in control over our XPression Character Generator, it’s very powerful through that, as well as our BlackStorm video server. The View Control application is available free, downloadable by our customers and they can download it and try it out; we’ll be releasing it in a few months, once it gets through a full QA pass. Ed: Now of course, traditionally, mixers have been big boxes with knobs, buttons, sliders, all that sort of thing, and if you wanted a new one, well you had to buy a whole new box, but the Carbonite range – there’s quite a lot of software involved in this and so upgrades, improvements, all that sort of thing, can now be done by software and there would be fewer times that you would have to change your hardware panels … correct? Jeff: Yes that’s exactly right. The rack frames themselves are made using the latest DSP and FPGA technology and it’s all programmable. Even the hardware in our production switchers is software now, right, so our hardware programmers are the ones that are working in lines of codes, software, and that’s why all of our production switchers as we move forward in time, get new features, which is great for clients because, if they buy something today, they know that as we go down the road, they will be getting new features and functionality. Ed:

Without having to buy a new box?

Jeff: Without having to buy a new box – simply by going to our website and downloading the latest version of software and installing it, which takes minutes. Ed: So now we move on to … well it looks like a TV studio for Ross News. What’s going on here? Jeff: Well this is a sort of Ross Video “tour de force” where we’ve got a virtual set that uses our Furio robotic camera system. We can do beautiful robotic camera moves. The virtual set is being produced by XPression, our graphics system, and all the graphics and character generation are coming from XPression as well. We’re also integrating Twitter feeds and we’re bringing those in through Inception, our social media management system. The chroma keying on the virtual set’s all being done through Vision, our production switcher; video’s being played back through BlackStorm, our video server platform and everything is being automated through OverDrive, our automated production control system. So we’re showing a virtual set and augmented reality newscast here, every half hour and it’s all being run by one person, one operator, so a very efficient, technologically advanced solution. The Furio system is really graining ground quickly – we’ve got customers like the BBC – in London their W1 facilities have six Furio cameras in each studio and all of their network level newscasts and news productions will be coming from those studios. So we’re quite proud and excited about that. Ed: And it actually makes sense to have your robotic cameras on tracks rather than free moving around the floor like Daleks?

Jeff: Well we have both. We actually bought two robotic camera companies this year. One of them was FX-Motion in Brussels and that’s where Furio came from, so we have Ross Robotics in Brussels now; and the other one is an American company called Cambotics, so we have CamBot with free roaming “Dalek” style pedestals that can take up to 200 pounds and are very robust; and we have smaller scale systems as well, they’re simple pan/tilt heads. Our 500 series is used in the Australian parliament for example. It gets quite big, 43 heads in there. Then we’ve got Furio on a track, and the benefit of being on a track is that it’s very precise. We know exactly where the robot is and the lift column we know exactly how high it is. We call that “absolute positioning” … Ed:

Which is ideal for a virtual set?

Jeff: Ideal – exactly – and it comes standard with Furio, the absolute positioning system comes with it, including lens readouts, so we interface with Canon and Fujinon lenses for example, and all of that data then is fed into XPression and then that allows us to track the virtual environment with the real environment, very precisely. Ed: But this is a big move for Ross isn’t it? I mean, people who’d had little contact with you for a time, they would have thought “well you’re only mixers”, but you’re moving far afield now? Jeff: Yes, I suppose that’s true. We started life as a video production switcher company, a mixer company, and then got into terminal equipment, but over the last few years, our product line has really expanded a lot. We’ve done some acquisitions and also developed

Page 12

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internally and a big part of that is we have a huge reinvestment in R&D every year. Research and Development is typically 25% of revenue at Ross, more than double normal industry standards, which means we’ve got a lot of new things coming. Ed: Now before we go, Jeff, we can’t let you get away without telling us a little bit more about openGear because this is something that, when I first saw it, I thought “wow”, this is good for two reasons – (1) Ross is providing this backbone for its own product, but (2) you were being very open and saying to other developers “hey, if you’ve got something you make, that can fit in this chassis, here it is, go for it, produce it and it gives the customer the opportunity to use product other than Ross, but using our architecture” – and this has continued to grow? Jeff: Yes absolutely. It’s been growing exponentially. Ross makes frames for all of the openGear partners, so we know exactly how many are being shipped out there and the curve is exponential, there are a lot of solutions in the marketplace now. We’ve got a total of 37 partner companies on board with this standard, making technology and we have different ways as well that partner companies can get

Carbonite exposed.

involved through openGear Connect, as a development partner and so on. But, yes, it’s really doing well and we’re excited about the future with openGear. We have a lot of products ourselves and we’re seeing a lot of partner companies who are being very successful with the platform – and customers like it, you know that’s NZVN the biggest thing.

Gencom – Cobalt Digital Now continuing on the story of openGear, we’ve actually moved to a different booth. Ed: Ray we’re at Cobalt Digital – this could be confusing? Ray: Only in New Zealand! Cobalt Digital is a US company who make a range of products in the “glue” field, but in particular they’re specialists in loudness processing and perhaps that’s something we could talk a little more about, because it’s a very topical issue at the moment. Ed: But they have an openGear obviously fits in the openGear Chassis?

product

that

Ray: Absolutely, yes – and they have control panels and displays for those as well, so that they can easily access the equipment in those trays. Ed: Okay, and to tell us the Cobalt Digital story, Kevin Moore … Cobalt Loudness, now this is one of my pets. What can you offer in this – a total solution? Kevin: Absolutely. So starting with the SDI loudness processing, we have three cards; we have the 9086 which is for SD and stereo PCM content. You can fit 20 of those in a frame, so very high density – that’s 20 in 2RU. Moving up, we have the 9085 card which is again 20 in a frame, but that will handle 5.1 material and HD signals. Moving up to the high end, we have the 9985 which will handle 10 in a frame, 10 in two rack units and that brings in the ability to do Dolby decoding on the front end, Dolby encoding on the back end and up-mixing before the loudness processing. So it’s a complete audio processing card.

be installed directly in front of MPEG encoders and they provide that essential protection function to make sure that you get a consistent MPEG stream out regardless of what happens video-wise on the front end.

I should mention all of our loudness processors also operate as frame synchronisers, which means they can

Ed: Can you mix and match these cards in a single chassis for a smaller operator?

Kevin from Cobalt Digital.

Page 14

! "

$% % %#

Kevin: Absolutely. The slots are fully independent, so you could do five of one, five of another and three of the 9985 – that would work fine. Ed: Now is this automatic loudness control or do you have to ride it as it goes through? Kevin: No, it’s fully automatic. We have a longstanding partnership with Linear Acoustic who are experts in loudness control and we’ve licensed their algorithm and bring it in an ultra-compact highly dense package. All the cards have integrated loudness metering, both before and after the processing and that metering is exported to our hard control panel or our software control panel. Both of these will log the signal for an entire 24 hours and allow the operator to see the whole loudness story of his channel for the previous day at any time. The panels have the ability to do sessions, otherwise known as integrated measurements, so you can make a precise recording of any individual programme that is of interest to you and the panels also create reports of those sessions so that you can take that documentation somewhere else and use it in discussions about the loudness question at the channel. Ed: Oh I love that word “discussions” … it’s also called “kicking arse”. Now of course, different countries have different standards and not only a single standard but within the whole broadcast audio area, there are a whole range of standards, so I guess your product’s totally flexible in terms of you can change where it triggers or where the flags are quite easily?

the logging and analysis from our panel that went out to one day and we said what if that went out to one year? So we built this product, SpotCheck, which goes out to one year. Right now we’re looking at approximately 15 days’ worth of data. This is the average loudness graph of the station over 15 days. The yellow line represents the metadata, the indicated dial norm of the metadata, so it’s basically checking you on the fundamental rule of loudness, which is does your loudness match your dial norm? And, as you can see, this station has problems. Now where it really gets amazing, is if you go down to within one day’s resolution, we have video thumbnails, so the audio events can be easily correlated against what actually transpired, and then the even better correlation is when we activate “as run integration”. So the product looks at the folder where automation is spitting out the “as run” list and it reads that file, it brings it into its own database. Now as I go in to any one of these commercial breaks, I can see what’s going on in the commercial break, and I can even see “oh, this commercial went out at the wrong level,” and that’s what this red indication is giving me here. As you can see, this is a commercial for Bob Kirby Plumbing, everything lines up nicely, but that commercial, whoever produced that for Mr Kirby, produced it a little

Kevin: Absolutely. You can always change the target loudness level; you can change the amount of compression that might be employed and there’s actually two other products that I want to show you that live outside the openGear chassis but advance the loudness story a little further. These are server based products, so they’re both installed in one rack unit devices. The first one is called LMNTS. LMNTS was a customer idea where they came to us and said “we love what you’re doing in SDI, but we have all of these transport streams and we need to solve the same problem. So I need you to go into the transport stream, take the audio, fix it and send that transport stream back out.” That’s exactly what LMNTS does ( LMNTS stands for Loudness Manager for n-Transport Streams ). This is LMNTS IP which is the IP transport stream version of it ( there’s also an ASI transport stream version, so it works with either of those ). LMNTS actually supports an amazing number of codecs. We support MPEG1 layer 2, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, AAC on the whole spectrum from AAC LC all the way up to HE AAC version 2 and coming soon Dolby E codec support for people doing essentially contribution feeds instead of final delivery feeds. In LMNTS you simply indicate the multicast addresses for your source and destination for each of your transport streams, then in a transport stream you select the audio pids that need to be controlled, bring them under management and the system will then begin unpacking them, monitoring them, correcting them, repacking them and reinserting them into the stream. Ed: It does everything but make your coffee? Kevin: There is no coffee feature and that is not on the roadmap! Ed: Product No 2 – still without coffee, SpotCheck? Kevin: The SpotCheck product is also for transport stream operators, and these are for people who have an interest in very long-term compliance logging. We took

bit too low and this commercial never should have been ingested at this level and it never should have been emitted at this level. Now of course it can be hard to deal with the whole graph, so the way that we help the customer there, is we give them this calendar based view and you can call up a report for any day. Now we’ve extracted all of the commercials and we show percentage “okay”, percentage “too quiet”, percentage “too loud” and then we create essentially a “worst offenders” list for that day. On this particular day, this commercial was the loudest at fully 4.25dB above the dial norm. All of these are in violation of the ATSC spec, which says you get a 2dB plus or minus window, and these were all too quiet. On this channel, they run their dial norm a little loud, so they’re more prone to be quiet than they are to be loud. At the bottom are the ones that are okay. We bring in a thumbnail for each one, so you can see yes, that’s definitely Kanoski & Associates and it’s all right there. Ed: Well, that just makes it so easy to make sure that whatever you’re putting out that day is compliant and provides you that list?

Page 16

Kevin: It’s all right there, it’s one rack unit, all you have to do is give us your transport stream in either IP or ASI and point us at that “as run” list and it just goes. Every time you come back to this, it will move forward in time and it’s always up to date and it always tells you what you’ve got. Ed: Okay, now what we’re looking at here on the SpotCheck graph and all of these ones that are out of compliance … in fact this isn’t something that’s gone through your processing has it? Kevin: No, absolutely not. This was data that we gathered by putting an antenna up in our area and just seeing what television sounded like these days.

Ed: And that’s the beauty of the Cobalt Digital system, is that, if that signal was then fed through your loudness processing, you wouldn’t get that level of out of compliance? Kevin: Absolutely. The real time processors drive towards compliance and make this situation much, much, much, much better. SpotCheck can audit that your investment in the loudness processor is actually paying off in some sort of numerical basis. Ed: So you can still tell from SpotCheck what went in out of compliance, but going out, it’s going to be compliant? NZVN Kevin: That’s correct.

Page 17

PLS – Gekko Technology For PLS, Chris and I met with David Amphlett from Gekko Technology UK. Ed: David, PLS are the major suppliers in New Zealand of your product and Chris is particularly interested to know about your large panels, because they are something that you apparently do very, very well? David: We do extremely well, I’m sure we do. “karesslite” is the product name which goes on all of our large soft panels and there’s about 18 variants, and the variants are location or studio, the physical size of the product, and the colour of the product. So we go basic tungsten, basic daylight, a mix between daylight and tungsten which we call “blendable”; a double density unit in what we call the “one by one format” so we do a double density daylight and a double density tungsten, twice the output, same form factor; and we also do an effects karesslite in the 6012, which is a wide format landscape format lamp … Ed: We’re going to have a look at that in a moment, but just to clear this up, you say “tungsten” but in fact no tungsten lamps are used in any of your product? David: No, it’s all LED based, every product. So it’s in the tungsten spectrum 3200 nominally or 5600K. Ed: Right – and just to make a point of difference between the Gekko “one by one” panel and an imported box from some Asian country? David: We’ve never been afraid to be a bit heavier. We spend a lot of time and money on research in terms of how the product works thermally. That creates an extra bit of weight and our fixtures are quite robust and quite well designed. So all of our products have proper DMX connectors, 5 pin industry standard – we don’t use telephone jacks, all the componentry is very well designed. Technically, we under-run all of our LEDs to help give them a longer life, so we never power them anywhere near the maximum; the same with the electronics, we’re never running at a full charge and all of that comes at a cost. Either the lumen cost or a power cost. And then it’s the same as anything you know – electronics is based on the weakest component and it’s based on the quality of the component. So you

Chris with David from Gekko all in green.

can get something working and light it up but if you want something to withstand the knocks of either rental or studio use, then it’s a choice, you can do it in a different way. Sky News and Sky Sports use karesslites exclusively in their sports studios and news studios. We’ve fitted out about 8 of their studios with soft lights and they won’t use any other product from any other manufacturer worldwide. So that’s all karesslite soft lights … and that’s a decision for them to make based on their own colorimetry testing rather than what we say. And other people choose other products for different reasons, as we discussed, in terms of if they want a $400 product then they know what the downside of it is. Ed: And Chris, this has got to be good for you, because you don’t want to be associated with any nasty products do you? Chris: No, it’s always been our MO to provide the best gear and not compromise on the pricing and the quality of the kit that we supply – either rental kit or sales kit. Ed:

Because you’ve got to support it?

Chris: We’ve got to support it, yes, and we’re too damned far from the manufacturer to be returning gear.

Page 18

Lighting Now being distributed by PLS Contact the sales team for pricing or any more information.

Phone (09) 3024100

Email: info@kelpls.co.nz

Website: www.kelpls.co.nz

Most manufacturers are probably 4 or 5 days away and most of our guys want it back by tomorrow, bless them. David: On robustness and serviceability, the electronics pod on the back of karess could easily be serviced by a technician. You don’t have to take the whole lamp apart; you don’t have to put it in the skip. Let’s say the electronics failed on a karesslite that we’ve shipped to Chris, we could just send out a spare electronics pod; he hasn’t got to send the whole lot back, he hasn’t got to break seals and all that kind of thing that happens with some other products … and then it would be a simple engineering of fitting the internal connectors and boom you’re off. But, having said that, I don’t know of any that have sold … Ed: ... they don’t seem to break. David: No, they don’t seem to break. Ed: One of the questions I have in the design of these things, is that you have a one by one panel, but what sort of work has gone into actually getting an even throw from that panel? I mean, you must have worked out a degree of throw that’s going to be even? David: Yes, we do a lot of in-house testing, we have our own darkroom and our own analysis on how we choose how the light’s designed, but we also add additional functionality on the lamp, so you can take off the soft panel on the front very easily, you can put an egg crate on the front and control the spread of the beam, so as you would with a fluorescent light in a studio, where you want to control the spill … Ed: What about lenses, what about focusing or spreading the beam? David: They’re fixed lenses and they spread it as wide as possible and then the soft on the front, which is retractable, that softens it out even further. Ed: One of the products that’s caught my eye here is one of your widescreen panels that’s green, and I see that it’s not a green filter on the front of it, but it’s actually the LEDs behind that are green. Can you explain? David: Okay, that’s karesslite FX and it has two sets of diodes in it. It has ones designed to work with green screen and blue screen specifically. So the output of the LED is in the spectral peak which is best suited to technical effects work. The reason for that is, if you throw tungsten light at a green screen, 95% of the light you’re throwing at it is completely wasted because it’s in the wrong spectrum. If you throw light of a very tight spectrum into that, it’s only going to kick back what you need, so it’s more efficient power wise. So all of the colour we’re throwing at that green screen is the colour we want reflected back. There’s no wastage. And also, from a postproduction perspective, they’ve got a very tight spectral width to work with and that means they get better quality keys. Ed: And also not having so much light thrown around your studio, you don’t have to balance your talent so brightly against what actually looks quite dull, but in fact because it’s 100% green, it works much better? David: Yes, so you’re more efficient in your use of power and the way you use the lights. Ed: And it’s even more efficient than having a white LED and a green screen … I guess that’s not going to work at all, unless it’s a multi-spectrum white? David: If it was a broad spectrum white it would work, but you’d have the same efficiency issues that you have with throwing tungsten light, because again, there’s only a small band of the spectrum that you actually want it to reflect, so it’s no different to any other whites, whether it’s fluorescent or tungsten or

HMI. I mean the only tweak you did historically if you’re doing blue screen keying is you use an HMI because you’re closer to the spectrum that kicking back but there’s still a phenomenal amount of wastage percentage wise of the light that you don’t want reflected and like I said, it spills all over the place. Ed: Is this interest in high technology one of the reasons that attracted Gekko to you Chris? Chris: Yes it is, because there’s more and more people jumping into energy efficiency. We’ve actually got a project on the go at the moment where EECA, the government energy authority, has put money up to pay for a percentage of a lighting installation based on the energy savings. This sort of kit is exactly what fits in those sorts of projects and I can see an immediate application for the FX unit on that in a small studio where they’ve got minimal air-conditioning and all of those issues with energy saving. You know, we made the jump from tungsten to HMI and then HMI to fluoro and as LED is progressing, we’re making the jump into LED. Certainly, particularly in colour, that’s the real appeal … I mean, with our experience on the other side of the entertainment business with colour mixing LEDs, we know LED to make colour is the most efficient way of doing it. Traditionally you’ve taken a full spectrum tungsten light and you’ve thrown away 98% of the colours that are in it to get the 2% of the colour that you want, so why not take 100% of the colour that’s coming out the front of the fitting and use it – it makes a lot more sense. Ed: Do you get an EECA subsidy if you do private houses too? Chris: We can talk about that Grant. I’ll have my people call your people! NZVN

PLS – Matthews For PLS we are at Matthews with Linda Swope. Ed: Linda, one day soon you’re coming to New Zealand snowboarding I understand? Linda:

I am, I am – I’m going to do it.

Ed: Excellent … and then we’ll have a show and we’ll learn all about Matthews equipment and Linda will be there and you’ll bring a slider and you’ll show everybody what a slider does. Linda: I’ll bring the slider, I’ll bring the new line of Crank stands that we have coming soon. They’re not here yet, but they’ll be here soon.

Page 20

Lowel-Lighting: Artistry & Function in LED Onsite presentation in Auckland - October 2012 PLS would like you to join us for an evening of refreshments & snacks, presentations by Don Bachmeier and Brett Smith from The Tiffen Company and a chance to have a hands-on play with the Lowel PRIME studio and Blender Portable LED lights from Lowel. Date is Thursday 11th October 2012 from 6.30pm, for catering purposes please RSVP to Matt at office@kelpls.co.nz by Wednesday 10th October.

LED lighting burst on the scene with promises of low power, high output luminance for all. At about the same time stills and video cameras boasted CMOS sensors with low-noise, low-light sensitivity that no longer required masses of illumination to create noise-free images. What cameras and lighting operators still demanded however was illumination that created mood, added depth to a scene, warmed skin tone, blended with existing lighting, and enhanced the craft of story-telling with images. The first generation of LED rarely delivered this, while the misconception that all LED lighting was created equal caused confusion amongst those looking for an evolutionary path from Tungsten, HMI and fluorescent. Lowel’s Prime Studio LED and Blender Portable LED range don’t resemble 1st generation LED in any way. They deliver this demanded artistry, and perform it at a price and power factor that finally confirms LED’s place on the grid in every new and blended technology production studio.

Don Bachmeier - Lowel-Light’s Lighting Applications Specialist To help provide both a creative and technical understanding of Lowel’s LED lighting leap, The Tiffen Company’s Don Bachmeier will be visiting studios across South East Asia in September and October. Don will be working with lighting directors, designers, studio managers, DOP’s and camera operators to light with and integrate Lowel LED lighting into their studio and location productions. As Tiffen’s US-based Lighting Applications Specialist, Don is technical support on everything lighting for Lowel, with four decades of image making experience under his belt, encompassing film and digital based media in broadcasting, independent film production and photography. While also working on product design, Don contributes course notes and photo images for Lowel’s web-based education program (LowelEDU.com) He also traveled extensively in Asia in 2008 lecturing on Lighting for HD. During his upcoming tour, Don will provide a blueprint for lighting professionals seeking to understand how to set up the correct LED fixtures for each application (yes, all LED’s are NOT the same), and adjust their lighting to meet their camera’s and creative lighting needs.

www.tiffen.com

www.kelpls.co.nz

www.lowel.com

Ed: But you have a new product here and it looks like a very nice jib? Linda: I do have a new lightweight jib. It’s the smaller version of our IntelA-Jib. It’s the same construction, the same XBox extrusion construction; the maximum length is 8 feet; you can also use it at 4 feet. At the 8 foot length it will hold about 12 pounds; at the 4 foot length it will hold more like 22 pounds. It breaks up and sets down in minutes and loads into a carrying bag that’s got wheels on it and it lists at about US$3500. Ed: And the intelligent thing about it is that as you move it up and down, the platform where the camera sits stays level? Linda: Yes it does … and the X-Box extrusion part of it, it allows you to make your moves without a lot of torque or twisting, because it’s solid construction all the way through. So it’s definitely a very nice piece of equipment lightweight tripod mini-crane.

Linda shows off the new jib.

for

Ed: Super. So that makes how many in the series – 2 or 3? Linda: Two. We have the Intel-A-Jib and now we have the Intel-A-Jib Lite.

Ed: Excellent. changed?

And

that’s

–

stands

haven’t

Linda: Stands haven’t changed, sliders are still selling like crazy, they haven’t changed. All the hardware is you know, like you said, if it ain’t broke, NZVN don’t fix it, right.

Page 22

Matthews Rigging Kit

Phone (09) 3024100

Email: info@kelpls.co.nz

Website: www.kelpls.co.nz

DVT – Blackmagic For DVT, we have Tim Siddons from Blackmagic Design UK. Ed: Tim, we’ve isolated three particular products that Blackmagic has been working hard on and, not to be outdone, Blackmagic has been working on 4K? Tim: Yes absolutely. 4K for us has been very important because, as you’re probably aware, we also have another product called DaVinci Resolve and our Resolve customers are constantly thinking about increasing the resolutions, and 4K’s a big demand within the deliverable specs and the film specs. So the request from the colourists using DaVinci was “could we have a product from Blackmagic Design that supported 4K?” A year ago, we announced a product that we wanted to release based around 4K and the feedback that we got was that our customers were not just looking for a 4K solution, they were looking for one product that encompassed everything that they needed from standard definition, high definition, 2K and 4K within a single product. So what we decided to do is take those requests and design a range of 4K products. The first one I’m going to show you here is this one called the UltraStudio 4K. Now this is a new product, it’s just been announced. The price point of this product is 1,095 Euros. This is an external one rack mount unit video input/output device. Now if you have a look at the product you’ll see it’s a very beautiful product; it’s designed to be pretty. Ed: it?

Yes, but it’s got to work nice though too, doesn’t

Tim: It’s got to have both of those things. Ed:

It’s like having a girlfriend with brains?

Tim: Well the good thing about this is that you can put it in your rack, it looks great when everybody comes into your studio … Ed:

But a good rack is not the only good thing is it?

Tim: I’m not going to comment … you’ve put me off now! Ed:

Well you were getting very “marketing” on me?

Tim with UltraStudio 4K.

see, it also has Thunderbolt. Now Thunderbolt will then allow that to connect to the Macintosh workstation and allow you to use it as a Thunderbolt device. So it’s a Thunderbolt I/O that takes advantage of all these new high resolution formats. Ed:

Tim: Yes, there are a couple of other Thunderbolt products that we’ve announced. These two for me are very exciting because, what we decided to do, is to take our core technologies that we have for video input and output and split them so that we can use things like the output technology as an independent product, or the input technology as an independent product. We’ve launched two new Thunderbolt I/O technologies or products. The first one is called UltraStudio Mini Recorder and the other one is called UltraStudio Mini Monitor. They’re 125 Euros each, they connect to your computer over Thunderbolt and one side is a Thunderbolt connection; on the other side is an SDI connection and an HDMI connection, the idea being that I can connect this now to my MacBook workstation. I might be working in the field, I might come back to a hotel, and I want to plug

Tim: I was, wasn’t I, but let me tell you about it anyway … Ed:

Now speaking of Thunderbolt?

Well this is real.

Tim: Let me tell you all about it, keep it real … this product will give you standard definition, high definition, 2K, 4K input/ output – that’s over SDI, either over a quad link or a dual link for 4K and it will also give you HDMI either 1.4 for high definition or also the new standards for HDMI 4K. So this will deliver your content at any format any resolution in or output, depending on what your needs are. It makes it a very flexible platform for going from anywhere from standard def all the way through to 3D all the way through to 4K. It has internal and external timecode support; it has XLR jacks for audio and as you can Page 24

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my Mac into my TV screen and use that as a monitor to edit on. This is a tiny device, it’s about the size of two boxes of matches put together and I can connect it to a Thunderbolt connection in my Mac and then connect the HDMI connection to an external monitor and it will allow me then to preview at full resolution exactly what I’m editing, or maybe what I’m grading, or what I’m working on. So this becomes a fantastic little onset tool or a location tool for me to get high quality full resolution video output via Thunderbolt to a display device – whether that be an HDMI device or whether that be a professional SDI device. That’s the UltraStudio Mini Monitor. The Mini Recorder’s exactly the same … it allows me to take “video in” either over SDI or over HDMI. All of a sudden, I’ve got a product that I can take out in the field and I can connect to a camera or I can connect to a deck or I connect a device to it and record straight into Thunderbolt to my MacBook. Ed:

So your MacBook becomes a recorder?

Tim: You have the best of both worlds, you can play out or you can record to … from a very small device – I mean something that’s small enough that you can put it in your shirt pocket. Ed: Well why is it only Thunderbolt … why can’t you do something for the PC user? Tim: Well interestingly, Thunderbolt has been ratified and verified for use on the PC platform. Products are out there shipping now for Thunderbolt on Windows and we’re going to be increasing the number of products that we have certified for Thunderbolt on Windows. We already have two, the first two products to be certified by anybody that Intel have certified for use of Thunderbolt on the Windows platform, are two Blackmagic products. There are Intensity products that use Thunderbolt. Ed: Is this a case of just having a card to plug into your chassis? Tim: On the Windows front … you know it depends really on the manufacturer and brand that you’re using. Intel are certifying certain brands and products that have been produced for use of Thunderbolt, so there’s currently a list on various websites – I believe <thunderbolttechnology.net> is one of them … don’t quote me on that … but there’s a long list out there of various products that are coming out with Thunderbolt certification that’s been done by Intel. What that means in terms of adding Thunderbolt to a PC, I don’t know personally, but I’m sure it will mean adding a card at some point.

cameras for the last 10-11 years and our products have gone everywhere from the input of video into a computer right the way through to now DaVinci Resolve with the colour grading of material and delivery. That entire postproduction process from acquisition through to delivery, Blackmagic have had a very big involvement with … and we knew that process really well and we recognised that there were a number of limitations and issues with the quality of the delivery of the content because of the way that camera manufacturers were assessing the way that material was crated, it was encoded, the way that it was managed … Ed: You must really say “some” manufacturers, not some of the big ones?

Tim: Well if you look at video, I mean most of the video cameras will record a compressed video signal into a codec and many of those codecs are proprietary and they’re recording to proprietary recording devices; and when you look at more the kind of film orientated cameras, that give you that kind of “cinematic” look, again there’s similar sorts of problems. Where they had very good optics, on the back end, the actual recording mechanisms and the types of video being recorded were not suitable for postproduction. Now a lot of them are recording very heavily compressed material – either H.264 or Long-GOP files – and as soon as you take that material into postproduction, it’s very hard to edit and it becomes very hard to colour correct and grade. We recognised that there’s a growing need within our customers to produce cinematic looking images, film looking images, beautiful looking pictures, but they were struggling once they got to the colour correction process, because there wasn’t enough information in the files. You know, the images are all 420, they’re very heavily compressed, they’re very low dynamic range and as a result – well, is there anything we can do to address the needs of our customers to produce something that had a better looking, more beautiful looking picture, but at a price point they could afford. I think the DSLR manufacturers did an incredible job of producing fantastic products and redefining, I guess, what could be achieved at price points and budgets, within the creative and film

Ed: Right, now we’re going to have a look at the Blackmagic camera and really Tim, my first question is – why? Tim: Why did Blackmagic camera? Good question. Ed:

make

camera

I’m sure it’s been asked before?

Tim: It’s actually a fairly popular question, because I think a lot of the industry has wondered why Blackmagic, a company that’s been known for video input/output and making PCI cards, would all of a sudden venture into the camera market. I guess for us it made a lot of sense, because we’ve been working with capturing video from Page 26

industries – especially with products like the 5D. You know, you look at that and you think Canon completely revolutionised the market with that, they’ve been able to put high quality optics, simulate depth of field and give that good quality finish look to a picture. That redefined for us the film market as a whole. But we felt that our customers were looking for something with high dynamic range, with codecs that were more suitable for the postproduction processes and we didn’t see anything coming from any major manufacturer to really address the needs of the postproduction community. So we thought well, if that need hasn’t been addressed by the camera manufacturers, maybe it takes somebody that understands postproduction to actually take that step forward … so maybe let’s do something about it. That’s why we decided to make a camera. We decided to make a camera from the back end up – rather than focus, as the camera manufacturers do, on the camera itself, we thought well, what are people going to do with the content once they finish using the camera, and how can we design the camera based around what people want to do with the material. That’s why we’ve now got the cinema camera. Now the cinema camera has three major recording formats; most important for us was the ability to record RAW. So we’ve used an open standard RAW file which is CinemaDNG and that records a 12 bit RAW file which you get complete access to from the camera. It also records ProRes and DNxHD. We wanted to go with formats that were open, formats that were popular in the community and allowed a user to have an end to end workflow without having to go through any degeneration of material, or go through any transcoding before they get to the point of delivery. Ed:

And the size of the image?

Tim: The RAW file is 2.5K; ProRes and DNxHD are both high definition, because of the standards of what those codecs deliver, but it’s a 12 bit file. The camera records onto an inbuilt SSD drive which is a technology that’s been taken from our HyperDeck products. I can take an industry standard SSD, which you can pick from your local computer store, and the nice thing about those is that we don’t control the price of them. So it’s fast, it’s robust, it’s low cost, it’s high capacity and it’s not proprietary.

Ed: And you’ve got a standard lens mount for any sort of lens? Tim: Yes, we’ve got two options on the camera; this is the EF mount camera and this will give you the ability to put any Canon EF lens or, via an adapter, an alternative lens. We’ve just announced today a brand new version of the camera which will have a micro fourthirds mount and that gives us a much shorter flange – and the good news about that is that we can then start putting the adapters onto it so you can adapt to PL and you can adapt to maybe a Nikon mount. So if you wanted to use something that wasn’t EOS-centric or EF based, then the best way to do that is to put it onto a mount which is going to have a shorter flange and give you the ability then to use adapters. Ed: They all look very tripod mountable but I don’t see where the handles are to hold it? Is it really a handheld camera? Tim: Well the camera has been designed so that you can do either. As you can see, it’s a beautiful aluminium chassis, but on the bottom of the chassis is a quarter inch screw and we manufacture a set of handles for it. All the ones that you see at the show are on tripods, just for the sake of allowing everybody to get hands on and play and touch and feel the camera. But once you take it off, and then you put it onto a rig, whether that be a shoulder mount rig, a handheld rig ( and we’ve got 3 quarter inch screws on the top which allows you then to screw a handle on the top ), it actually becomes very versatile as a handheld camera … because I can hold it in different positions whilst maintaining stability whether it be high up, or whether it’s low down, using the various mounting points, and the various brackets and accessories. Ed:

And it’s got a lovely big viewfinder?

Tim: Yes, you’ve got a huge screen on the back. The screen becomes your interface to what the camera can do and this is one of the things that really make it stand out. The screen doesn’t just become your viewfinder, it’s a touchscreen, so it gives you the ability to actually start changing settings and adding metadata into the camera. Everything within this camera’s been designed to make the postproduction process easier. So when I touch the screen, it opens up what we call “the slate”. It’s an electronic slate and in here I can put metadata and comments and key words in, so I understand what clip I’m working on, and it becomes easy to locate once I get into my NLE or my postproduction process. Ed: it?

I don’t see a keypad attached to

Tim: Right, so if I click on one of those areas – let’s say for example here … Ed:

Oh, a keypad appears?

Tim: A keypad appears, so you’ve got here a very similar kind of interface that you’ve been used to on any kind of mobile phone. It uses a very similar technology … Ed:

It takes calls, does it?

Tim: Hah, not yet. That might be happening in the future. So once I’ve done that, hit “Save” and I’m back and that metadata will then be applied to the Page 27

clip I’m going to record. I can then take out the SSD card, it’s got all the metadata on each clip, take that straight into your NLE and then you can find the clips that you’re looking for, based on the metadata. One of the things we’ve put on there, was the ability to put a star for a clip, the idea being that once you flag a clip as being a good take or a bad take, then you can go back into your NLE, you can identify all your flagged clips and you’ve got all of your good takes lined up within your edit ready to go. It’s a simple case of then dragging and dropping them off the timeline and trimming them based upon where you want those clips to be trimmed. I can identify every good take based on whether or not I’ve put a star on it or a flag on it, so it becomes easy to identify once it gets to the postproduction process, without going through hundreds of clips to work out which one’s which. So I’ve got a touchscreen on the back which controls my metadata entry, and then I’ve also got a menu which gives me access to the camera controls. That gives me things like time and date settings; it gives me white balance adjustment, shutter angle adjustments, my ASA adjustments; the camera is natively rated at 800 ASA, but you can reduce the ASA down to 200 ASA ( and you can see the ASA updating as I updated it within the camera ), or up to 1600 ASA. You’ve got all the software control here, you’ve got your audio control and on the side you can see I’ve got balanced and unbalanced jack audio inputs for microphone audio; I’ve got a headphone jack on this side for monitoring and I can adjust my microphone and the channel input levels here. I’ve got an inbuilt speaker, so if I’m playing video clips back, I can hear what’s going on, on the video clip if you don’t happen to have headphones …

DVT – Autodesk For DVT, we are with Rama Dunayevich, PR manager at Autodesk. Rama is on her umpteenth coffee of the day. Ed: Rama, my mission here today is for you to tell me what has happened since NAB just a few months ago … and Autodesk has done something, but it hasn’t done another thing yet. Let’s start with what it has done, something pretty cool with Flame I understand? Rama: Yes, we have the new edition of Flame. It’s the 20th anniversary and we’re coming out with a 20th anniversary edition of Flame in October. It’s one of the biggest redesigns in Flame’s history to hit at one time. There’s three main core areas of development – a new creative workspace; an editorial timeline now on the top level of the application; and then we have enhanced performance with GPU. Ed: So, like Smoke on the Mac, it’s becoming a product that an editor would more easily jump to and find a bit more user friendly than somebody in the old days who really had to be a graphic artist to understand how these things worked? Rama: Well I don’t necessarily think that somebody’s going to be an editor who’s on Flame, but what we’re noticing is a convergence of creative capabilities and when somebody has that mission critical high performance, high end work that’s being completed in post and that’s the final place, that’s what the extremely talented Flame artist is known for, they need to be able to do whatever is thrown at them and be the jack of all trades. Ed:

But the look has become more timeline based?

Ed: And so on and so on … it’s certainly got all of the things a cinematographer would need and really this would be classed as a cinematographic camera? Tim: Well this is where it gets interesting. All the toys that are on the camera – the functions, the metadata … that doesn’t turn it into being a great camera. Those are all the things that help the process. What makes this a great camera is getting those cinematic looking images out of it. Now we’ve got the SSD drive, we’ve got the CinemaDNG files; we’ve got a very high quality sensor … the sensor gives us 13 stops of dynamic range. Now that information is only good when I take it into my postproduction process, so bundled along with the camera is a full copy of DaVinci Resolve. So when I buy my camera, I’ve got my grading suite ready to go with my camera, so I can then take full advantage of that beautiful looking image that comes out of it, I can work with my highlights, I can pull out my shadow detail and I can truly create a cinematic looking image. That’s why we called it the cinema camera. It’s not about the inputs, it’s not about the metadata … those things make it easier, but they don’t deliver a great picture. The most important thing about this camera is the picture, and it’s getting that picture all the way through your postproduction process without losing quality. That’s what this camera allows you to do. Ed: And every home should have one, so go and see Stuart at DVT and put your name down on the list … they’re coming soon? Tim: The cameras are shipping now. It’s taken us a bit longer to get them out than we would have liked, but NZVN they are on their way. Rama: Well the timeline is right there at the top, because it’s all about the story, right? And so to be the best storyteller, it needs to be framed in the context and the story is often told in editorial. Ed: Okay, so really it’s just improving the tools, the look and the ease of access of the tools for display? Rama: Exactly. It’s much easier Rama loves coffee - and her to use and now Autodesk products. there’s a new unified creative workspace that is organised as a taskbased workflow so that you don’t have to be in a certain mode to work. You can easily jump between different modes and access the core creative tools more quickly and more efficiently. Ed:

But you can still do it modal if you want?

Rama: Well, now it’s a one-click workflow. new design lets artists work the way they want.

Page 28

The

PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS

NXCAM NEX-EA50

Affordable professional camcorder The NEX-EA50UH is the first in a new series of affordable, entry-level large sensor NXCAM professional camcorders. Thanks to its E mount interchangeable lens system, Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor, powerful imaging capabilities and flexible semi-shoulder design, the NEX EA50UH significantly expands creative freedom for Full HD video and 16.1 megapixel high-quality still photos shooting.

Sony PMW-100

Features overview: • large sensor (APS HD CMOS) • powerful lowlight capacities • 60/50Hz selection • shoots 1080 50p/25p/50i or 59.94p/29.97p/23.98p/59.94i • E-mount (allows multiple adapters to other mounts) • Electronic Zoom Lens: E PZ 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 OSS • 2-channel XLR (mic included) • mirroring memory stick technology (16,32,64GB) • records to AVCHD 2.0 • can take jpg stills at 16MP • powered by NPF batteries

Sony PMW-200

S SUPPORTPEG M S P B 50M

MFX G IN C E R ORD

The PMW-100 is Sony’s first handheld camcorder supporting the 50 Mbps MPEG HD422 codec. With its one 1/3” Full HD Exmor CMOS sensor (1920x1280), the PMW-100 is able to achieve high resolution, high sensitivity, low noise, and wide dynamic range in a small camera.

The PMW-200 is the sucessor to Sony’s well respected PMW-EX1/R camcorder which supports the 50 Mbps MPEG HD422 codec and MXF recording. With its three 1/2-inch Full HD Exmor CMOS sensor (1920x1280), the PMW-200 is able to achieve high resolution, high sensitivity, low noise, and wide dynamic range.

Features: • Single 1/3-inch Full HD Exmor CMOS sensor • 50 Mbps MPEG HD422 recording • SD Recording and Playback (DVCAM) standard • 10x Fixed Zoom Lens (f= 5.4 - 54 mm) (servo/manual switchable) • Two ExpressCard SxS Memory Card Slots • NightShot Function • 16:9, 3.5 inch color LCD • Slow & Quick motion • High-quality four-channel audio recording • HD/SD-SDI output and composite/HD-Y output • USB interface for connecting camcorder as card reader • Six Standard Gamma settings and Four HyperGama Settings

Features: • Three 1/2-inch Full HD Exmor 3CMOS sensors • 50 Mbps MPEG HD422 recording • SD Recording and Playback (DVCAM) standard • 14x Fixed Zoom Lens (servo/manual switchable) • Two ExpressCard SxS Memory Card Slots • 16:9, 3.5 inch color LCD • Slow & Quick motion • High-quality four-channel audio recording • HD/SD-SDI output and composite/HD-Y output • USB interface for connecting camcorder as card reader • Six Standard Gamma settings and Four HyperGama Settings

www.dvt.co.nz

Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd

Phone: 09 525 0788

Email: sales@dvt.co.nz

45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland

Ed: Aaah ... so you can have your cake and eat it too ... and of course it’s cheaper?

that we’re doing everything we can to put it in the product.

Rama: The price of Flame is so dependent, it’s so customised for the individual that we don’t talk about the price because it depends on which country you’re in and what system configuration you need.

Ed: That’s it – at the moment, you can actually download Smoke on the Mac and use it, output a production with it and you’re not paying anything?

Ed: There you go – but the other side of the story, what a lot of people are waiting for – Smoke on the Mac, not yet ready? Rama: It’s not that it’s “not yet ready”, it’s that we’re extending the pre-release trial. Really this was a big bold strategy for us, to go out to the community with a pre-release trial and say that we want community input, we want to hear what the community wants and we want feedback and want to work with them, and we want our development team to work with them. There’s been such an overwhelmingly positive response – thousands and thousands of downloads –we have something like 10,000 “likes” on Facebook already, that we want to make sure that if people are making suggestions and they’re good legitimate suggestions,

Rama: Nothing, it’s completely free and it’s a fully functioning pre-release version of Smoke 2013 available for download and use through to December. In fact, we’re finding what’s amazing is that we did a survey with some of our users and we’re finding that close to 30% are already using it in production, even though it’s a pre-release trial. Ed:

And you’ve come up with Version 4?

Rama: Version 4 is being shown here at IBC for the first time and Version 3 just came out on the 27th of August, so you can really see that development is constantly at work and coming up with new versions and improving it all the time, so that it’s ready for release when it comes out and it’s the product everybody dreams of. Ed:

I can see why you need constant coffee.

NZVN

DVT – Adobe We are talking to Adobe for DVT and we have Bill Roberts from Adobe and the title is “Introducing Adobe anywhere for video – collaborate without boundaries.” Ed: Now Bill, this isn’t a release product is it, but it’s something that obviously you guys are pretty excited about, because certain other purple vendors have been advertising for a long time that they’re the only ones who can really do collaborative production. Adobe is now getting into a collaborative production environment? Bill: Well I think that, in the past, there was the definition of collaboration as being something that happened inside the walls. Today that’s not collaboration; collaboration may be in the same city, in the same country, the same continent, or maybe it spans multiple countries and continents. In a pervasively connected network world, collaboration has an entirely new meaning. We’re throwing down the gauntlet and saying that modern collaboration, as long as you can connect on the network, you should be able to get to your media, you should be able to see it, interact with it, there should be no boundaries to your workflow. Here on the show floor, our main stage demos show Adobe Premiere working on media which is in Hamburg, Germany collaborating with somebody in Hilversum in The Netherlands here, so to us that is the new workflow. It’s about bringing together the best talent and driving the most efficient workflow. Ed: So you can use your version of Adobe Premiere 6 or some future version of Adobe Premiere to edit material that someone else is accessing at exactly the same time? Bill: Exactly. The whole idea is that there are two components – first we want to make the project a shared object, so that everybody’s looking at the same representation of the project; the second part is making the media available regardless of your bandwidth connection. We look at the world as being if you have a wireless connection, you should be able to get to the media, do your work and on the back end it shouldn’t be hard to have version control and management. We make it very, very simple for people to put their work in

the public space in this environment and people can iterate and work on it and you have full version control, so there’s never any issues of you not being able to get to something because it’s locked – it’s always open and live and you can contribute. Ed: Now what I’m worried about Bill is that this is going to go the way of Liquid where it was a wonderful product, but when you captured a clip, the programme gave it some incomprehensible name and you could never actually find that clip unless you were in the project itself. I want to know, as an individual user, any future version of Premiere that has this collaborative workflow, it’s still going to look after the individual user who wants to find that clip in Explorer? Bill: No problem. So what we do, is we try to take all of that complexity … you do need complex naming

Page 30

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www.dvt.co.nz Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd

Phone: 09 525 0788

Email: sales@dvt.co.nz

45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland

Like dvtnz to stay up-to-date with the latest promotions and industry news.

structures when you want to have uniquely identified content, but the user does not want to see that. So we just make it that it’s exactly the same as if you’re using Premiere locally; if you name a clip, whether you do it in Prelude or Premiere, ( you know a lot of people use Prelude now to ingest the content and that works with this system as well ), whatever you name the clip, that’s what it’s going to be named in the system. Then as you start creating with that clip, what happens is, when you first start making a sequence, you have what we call this “sandbox”. So you start working in your own sandbox and then you push it into the public domain. But whatever naming conventions you want to use, if you’re doing it yourself, it’s whatever you type in. If you have an enterprise wide media asset management solution which drives a whole naming convention specific to your facility, we can sit beside that and inherit those types of workflows, but there’s nothing we impose on naming or structure. We’ve tried to keep it so that it is simple and the learning curve is literally a couple of minutes. Ed: So this is going to mean as well that the other products within the creative suite can also be collaboratively shared so your Photoshop files, your After Effects files, everything can become connected? Bill: That is the vision … at the current point we’re talking about Premiere, Prelude and After Effects; we can hold all of the other data, because the nice thing about this is it’s an open architecture, so the piece that

Training seminars went all day.

is the more complex component is that dynamic viewing stream that’s created on demand. That requires a deeper integration. But if you had a Photoshop file in the system, no problem, you can access that and use it. But in the media space, where you have that heavier media associated with it, that’s the part that takes more time to get the integration; so we’re focusing on the primary products right now and we’ll have the complete story when we launch the technology down the road. Ed: And I guess another worry is that, with something like this, which obviously has a Cloud component – it’s not going to force users to adopt Creative Cloud membership, to operate your Premiere with your friends this way? Bill: No, no and actually Creative Cloud subscribers get exactly the same application, but there’s no dependency whether you buy a perpetual licence or a subscription to the product, the application is the same and they’ll both be able to work with this back end software architecture. This is an add on that allows you to have workflow, but the stand alone applications still function exactly the same, there is nothing special we force you to do if you want to adopt this, other than add in the anywhere component.

Bill was interviewed a lot.

Ed: And we’ve got Bill recorded saying this. We will NZVN keep him honest.

Page 32

Riegers is still Riegers We’re here at Riegers Camera and Video in Mt Eden and there’s been a bit of a change at the top. The new person replacing David Honore on the front desk is Matthew Cardno. Ed: Matthew, you’re here under the wing of David while this transition takes place, so tell me, what prompted this? Matthew: David decided that it was time to step aside after 29 years running the shop, so it seemed to be the ideal opportunity for me to get back into sales and as I have a lot of experience in post and live production and also in retail, I have the ideal mix of knowledge and experience to help customers with their needs and workflows. I was looking for a new challenge so taking over from David, wanting to continue with the same customer service and support that Riegers is wellknown for, is perfect for me.

with and then my plan is to shift to Tauranga and help my son with a few projects that we’ve got on down there. Ed: Are you still going to be doing things by mail order? David: Matthew will be doing things by mail order because he will be taking over my position and looking after the customers the way I have over the past 29 years. Ed: Is there anything you want to say to those customers? David: I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all those customers who have been very supportive to me – thanks a lot. Ed: Is there any “last day” – any day when your fans should come in with tears in their eyes and say goodbye David?

Ed: Is this going to mean any changes in the way Riegers operates? Matthew: We’ll expand the product line; we’re still going to support all David’s customers and we’re certainly going to support all the products. We will expand the product range with video accessories but also grow the photographic side at the professional end with DSLRs, lenses, flash units and that type of thing. Ed: Are you still going to do the same good deals that David did? Matthew: Always. We’re going to continue with exactly the same format. We’re still going to do the sharp deals and work with people in the long term to help them grow and provide them good service and support. Ed: So how are you able to do this Matthew … have you got some pretty strong backing here?

David (with his pride and joy camera) welcomes Matthew.

Matthew: Yes, we’ve got the backing of A2Z in this with their product lines, the support and everything else, but this is a separate business.

So even though, of course, people can shop where they like, the way that we’re going to run Riegers is as if David was still here … and he is actually going to be here for some time, while this transition takes place and I learn how to do things the “David way”. And now we’re going to talk to the man himself, David Honore Ed: 29 years in this business, 29 years “Open All Hours”, front of house, smiley face. What are you going to do David? Are you going fishing? David: I plan to do a lot of things that I haven’t done before. I’ll be taking a few months off to start

David: Well I think I’ll be sort of coming and going. If Matthew needs any assistance on anything, I’ll be here to support him. Ed: What was the first thing you showed him? David: Well I actually ran him through the shop and showed him all the equipment that we have; talked about some good second-hand trade-in cameras that we have here at the moment. Some of them have done minimal hours and would be a very good camera for a customer not wanting to spend on a new camera. We’ve also been talking about second hand editing systems – I’ve got a nice Casa Blanca editing system here, and so on. Ed: You don’t want to let those deals go do you David? David:

Page 34

Never.

NZVN

Atomise – Avid For Atomise, we are here at Avid and we have Jim Frantzreb from the US. Ed: Jim, you’re here to tell us about what’s happened with Avid since NAB a nd big improvements, small improvements? Jim: Yes, and kinda two major themes, one of which is the future of the newsroom and there are three examples that we’re showing. The first thing you notice as you approach the Avid booth is the Interplay Sphere display and demonstration desk. You might recall that, at NAB, we introduced Interplay Sphere and this is the first time it’s been seen at IBC and in fact it’s shipping as of yesterday. Interplay Sphere is an extension to Interplay Production, the complete editorial production environment, that lets editors located anywhere have the exact same collaborative editing experience that they would have if they were in the facility. And what I mean by that is I can be on a laptop anywhere, with an Internet 3G, 4G, WiFi connection. The next thing is we are introducing iNEWS 4.0, a new platform for a 64 bit compatibility and 130% increase in the story database which is important as we move towards more story based workflow; and also very important, this becomes a better platform for future enhancements that we will deliver to the market. The third thing is Interplay Central, our lightweight web -based UI for people who are non editors and typically work upstream of the editor. Ed:

You mean like the reporters?

Jim: Yes and we’ve shown it with a great journalist toolset, but we’re having a technology preview here, showing how it can extend to producers, assistants and so forth, and is going to replace some of the functionality possibly in Interplay Production. We’re also showing some enhanced news functionality as well, like for instance we’re showing editing capability on iPad for news stories; and we’re also showing news story creation and editing on iPhone … Ed: That’s just within the iNEWS system isn’t it, so you can edit a news story on an iPad, this is not something that somebody with …? Jim: On iPad you could also view the video … Ed:

You can make decisions?

Jim: You can make decisions, you can edit the news text and so forth; iPhone is strictly text as it is with Blackberry. So that’s kinda the future. Ed: So a number of improvements to the Newsroom situation …? Jim: Right, and the other thing that we’re showing that’s new is in the theme of asset-based workflow. What we mean by that is, when you add metadata to the media; to the file-based workflow, it increases in value and there are many more things that you can now do. The asset management system that it’s based on is as much about the workflows that you can accomplish as about the fact that it manages assets. So we’re showing over here Interplay MAM Active Archive. This is the Interplay MAM system, it’s the same system that

has enabled the really revolutionary Internet coverage that NBC did for the London Olympics. The same system, but we’re showing it in a much more affordable and easily deployable package. It’s been predefined and it includes the professional services, the training and the support for the one price, and much easier for customers now to say “yes, I can start here and then I can build on this”. Ed: Okay, so a number of improvements to the Newsroom situation …? Jim: This is more of a broad-based asset management system … it can link production systems and, by the way, has a great workflow with Interplay Production, which is production-oriented asset management, but outside of that, once the assets are complete, and you want to interface with other processes, you want to have an archive; those are the roles Interplay MAM Active Archive fills. At NAB ( 2012 ), we had a very large number of announcements and what we’re saying at IBC here is that we’re now shipping many of those. For instance, Avid Motion Graphics is shipping, as is ISIS 2000 nearline storage. We’ve incorporated multiISIS workflows into the Interplay Production environment and the new AirSpeed 5000 release so that can have up to three separate storage systems that can be nearline and on line, and you can orchestrate workflow between them. AirSpeed 5000 was announced at NAB; here we’re announcing the 2.1 version which includes a lower cost version, which may be of interest to your readers – 2 channel – HD models only, MPEG2-HD ( XDCAM ) and AVC-Intra US$40,000. That now becomes the least expensive AirSpeed which kinda bookends your workflow by handling the ingest and output, plus we also have support across the board in AirSpeed the Interplay family for a new subfamily of DNxHD codecs, DNxHD 100. DNxHD-100 has already been adopted by a number of manufacturers and we’re now formally supporting and optimising it. Ed: That’s one of my questions – with other nonlinear editing manufacturers, some of them don’t release new codecs until they release a new version of their software, so if some camera manufacturer comes out with a new codec for their camera which they do, suddenly your version of the editing programme is obsolete because you can’t handle that codec. What

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does Avid do in this situation? Are you constantly releasing new codecs as camera manufacturers produce them?

Avid, but it’s not just Avid, you can use any MXF file in its native form in other nonlinear systems – you’re that open?

Jim: Yes we are. For instance, at a conference like IBC, we take that opportunity, as do other vendors, to meet with camera manufacturers. They talk to us about their roadmap and about new codecs or new technologies that are coming that we need to know about. So yes, we can start planning for the support for that codec. And by the way, to make this simpler, a few years ago we came out with a technology called AMA ( Avid Media Access ) which makes it really easy … it’s an SDK basically that allows you to very easily import file based material, actually start working on it, before you even really import it into the editor. This has made it much easier for us and for manufacturers …

Jim: Yes, you’re right. MXF is an open standard. Avid was one of the companies that met to create the standard, it’s widely adopted. You could think of it as the default file format for Avid … Ed:

I know you’d like to?

Jim: Well it’s probably our first priority to support, but now, as I was saying, it’s just bits. We can support and we’re pretty adept with wrappers and so forth, so if you want to work in in a QuickTime environment you could do that, or ProRes, or JPEG2000 … Ed: I know AJA with their Ki Pros are supporting both the Apple format and the Avid format and they seem to go together? Jim: Yes, right – and I’m saying all this and I’m not really an expert editor. Ed: That’s all right, but that sort of goes to show you that the ProRes format that they use, they can also use the DNxHD …? Jim: And you can say the same thing about JPEG2000. DNxHD has actually had a pretty broad adoption. It’s used widely in television production globally in episodic and live, and good uptake in sports with EVS a big proponent of DNxHD-100, and support by several other manufacturers. For your Avid systems, contact Richard at Atomise.

for instance, if they have the ability to create that SDK, then we don’t have to do anything. But in some cases we’ve done it proactively; for instance, we’ve done it so that you can have a complete QuickTime workflow within an Avid environment; you can have a complete ProRes environment within an Avid workflow. We have announced at the show for the Media Composer, NewsCutter, and Symphony editing family, support for JPEG2000, so we now support that in addition to the new DNxHD-100. The other thing that’s worth mentioning is the support for AS02 in Media Composer and this is an extension of the MXF standards family that replaces the master tape where you can have a container folder that moves with the project. That container folder has all the video, all the audio files, the text files, reference files of any kind – anything you want to associate with the project can move together. Ed: Now that leads me onto the question – the MXF standard. This is something that people associate with Page 38

NZVN

Quinto – Autocue We are at Autocue with Paddy Taylor and from Quinto, Alan McIlwaine. Ed: Paddy, we’ve talked to you before about your wonderful server that has obviously captured a lot of interest worldwide? Paddy: Yes and we’ve seen some really interesting customers come to us for the video server range. Now we’ve evolved that product area. We’ve had newsroom and automation systems for some time and what we’ve done now is that we’ve built what we call the Autocue production suite. The idea behind the Autocue production suite is it’s based on the video server; you take our newsroom and our automation systems, and you can use the automation to do your transmission and the video server is your play out device. So a small channel or a shopping channel or a music channel would be using our automation with the play out server and then, still using the same hardware, they would pause that play out to go to their live content – the news or a magazine show or a sports highlight show; or if it’s a shopping channel, the actual live content that they’re using. And they’re still using the same system. What then happens is, you run a different application of production suite, taking control of the video server and it is a live vision mixer, audio mixer, chroma key, CG device, still store, clip store – everything you need to run a live event. So the live cameras are brought in, they’re vision mixed with the pre-recorded content that’s already on the video server; you can do DVEs, you can fire off your graphics, you can control your camera system, you’ve obviously got the teleprompting which is probably what we’re best known for, so you can be outputting your scripts from the news system to the teleprompters … all of that capability from the one vendor. And it’s the same system that you’re using for your automated play out, and nobody else can do it. Ed: Other people say they’ve got a television station in a box, but there are always things that one needs to add on, whereas with this, all you need is a camera and some talent? Paddy: Yes basically. I mean nobody else has the teleprompting; nobody else has one system that is both a live production system and does automated play out. We’re just taking it a step further; we genuinely are giving a one vendor solution ( it’s not actually in one box, it’s in two boxes, but the concept’s there ) which does everything you need for both live and prerecorded content. Ed: Now I imagine this wouldn’t have to be just for broadcast – you could actually take a feed out of this through a streaming device? Paddy: Yes absolutely. One of our beta customers is a UK magazine show called Broadcast Show Live and they produce a live show once a month that is streamed. Ed: It’s about time you changed your name then isn’t it? Paddy: Yes, it gets a little bit lost sometimes. The problem is that, if you go the US, we have a very different reputation, because we used to sell our teleprompters as QTV. That was an Autocue brand, so if you say “Autocue” in the US, they’re more likely in a

Paddy and Alan.

TV station to think newsroom, because they tend to call it a “teleprompter” rather than an Autocue, whereas in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, when you say “Autocue” everyone knows it’s a teleprompter – put a mirror in front of a camera. Ed: So Alan, this makes setting up a regional station in Woga-woga or Hamilton as easy as? Alan: Yes, it’s a very cost effective solution for a small television station ( for want of a better word ) whether that be broadcasting in the traditional mode, free to air, or whether it’s going through IPTV intranet transmission. The really neat feature about this is of course that you have the prompter integrated in with the overall system, and so for a station starting out with a very limited budget, then by having the prompter, the mixer and the server all integrated into the one box, it’s (a) more cost effective (b) the operator training is reduced because you’re only training on a single system and (c) it’s got a lot of flexibility. Ed: Now Paddy, in terms of flexibility, certainly in an educational facility or a small station where you’ve got lots of potential people working there, how many can you have inputting information into this system at one time? Paddy: There’s no real limit. I mean, it’s the number of client licences that you choose to take with the system. We operate on a concurrent user basis, so you could have five licences concurrently and install them on 50 machines, so it’s very flexible. Actually, at the moment, universities, colleges and schools do buy “channel in the box” systems … but the idea of a channel in a box to give you one low cost solution, which obviously education loves, also takes 5 or 6 job functions in a gallery and puts it in command of one person which, if you are broadcaster, is what you want to do. You want to keep your costs down and you want say 4 or 5 people out of the equation and lower the chance of failure by having one person that’s doing the automation. In education that’s not the case. What they need is a system that someone can do the vision mixing, the audio mixing, the CG, the play out, because you need to have a job for those students … all those students need to learn each of those processes, and the other channel in a box systems can’t do that. They’re not

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designed to work that way. Our system can be operated by one person, but you can also spin out control of the applications to different workstations, different clients. So here I’ve got an audio mixer which is controlling the audio mixing there. It’s controlled in the interface, so you can have someone who is still doing the live audio mixing, someone who is doing the vision mixing, someone who is doing the CG – so everyone has got a job … and all you’re doing is paying for a very cheap computer on a desk and if you want it, a control surface, rather than having to buy a separate audio mixer, a separate vision mixer, a separate CG device, a separate stills store, a separate video server. Now again, nobody else can do it. It gives us a really unique proposition for education customers and over the summer when we were doing the Broadcast Show Live that I was telling you about, that’s been a really good showcase, because they’re talking about broadcast products and they’ve been using the product. Lots of education customers have said we were going to buy a TriCaster and the reason we didn’t buy a TriCaster ( or haven’t yet ) is because it’s a single operator. It’s a great product, but it’s a single operator. Actually, I don’t want to get rid of staff, I’ve got 10 people and I’ve got to give them all a job – there’s the training and the teaching and this is the only thing that does it. So that’s a big, big market for us. Ed: Well Paddy, I’m lost for words, because you’ve answered all my questions, and I’m sure this would

Quinto – Marshall For Quinto, we are at Marshall and we have Jim Toten.

answer the questions of any group who wanted to setup with their own little broadcast station? Paddy: Yes well hopefully – certainly there’s a strong local TV initiative in the UK now and also in the US which is one of our biggest customers for the newsroom system. The feedback we’ve had so far suggests that this is going to be another successful product for us. Ed: And the great thing is the actual technical quality of what you’re outputting is not determined by this box, it’s determined by the material that you feed into it? Paddy: Yes absolutely, you know whatever you put in is what you get out. So if you’re putting in a low quality signal, you’ll get a low quality signal out; you put in a high quality signal, it’s lossless, you’ll get a high quality signal out. Ed:

You couldn’t want for better.

sunshine, bright daylight quite well; you can see the auto iris and auto gamma and auto knee circuitry kick in which I thought was quite interesting, because I

Ed: Jim, we saw Marshall monitors at NAB, but also you’ve got into these nice little cameras for surveillance work, remote work? Jim: In fact there’s a truck outside with one mounted on the roof. Ed: Uh-oh here’s trouble. ( Alan McIlwaine arrives for the interview ) Jim: There are pictures of it – it’s a little satellite truck outside … Ed: You’ve got a large man behind you! Jim: It won’t be the first time … so that camera is mounted outside. It’s hard to see in your audio tape, but here’s a video that I produced with my car where I put the big camera on top of my Toyota FJ Cruiser and I drove it through Death Valley and purposely left everything in automatic. I had a joystick PTZ controller in the dashboard of the passenger seat – my brother was actually controlling it. But you’ll notice that the camera’s set up to handle bright

NZVN

Jim below the small Marshall surveillance camera. Page 41

didn’t have to adjust that. That’s the stock camera out of the box. There’s another shot here of it going down the street in Las Vegas and you’ll see some bumping – it’s not the smoothest road out there. Ed: But that’s very cool for a surveillance camera and that can also be controlled by joystick? Jim: Absolutely, it’s a standard Pelco control protocol; actually it supports 5 or 6 common PTZ protocols over RS45 or RS422. Ed: And it’s not only the big camera, but now you’ve come out with a smaller one? Jim: Yes, and what both cameras have in common is a switchable 50i or 60i and their very rugged, weatherproof, all temperature, all weather housing. In Death Valley it was 100°F – quite warm and in fact, I heard the little cooling fan kick on inside the unit. There’s also a windshield wiper on the larger unit, and the best part is the infrared illumination at night time, so it does an automatic switchover. You can actually manually set the switch points between black and white, night time mode, infrared mode or daytime mode, and in pitch black darkness the illuminator will light up about 50 feet away as you pan around. Ed: But the crims won’t see that it’s lit up? Jim: That’s not quite true. We were driving through a dodgy part of Las Vegas in the middle of the night and I had a bunch of people staring at the roof of my car. I went outside, and the IR LEDs have a light red glow to them. Let’s switch over to talk about the new camera. This is the smaller one and these are also addressable,

so they’re all on the same RS45. So that’s camera 2 and I can switch it here … I’m getting a lot of blooming because there’s a huge light source back there from an LED manufacturer, so let’s get away from that for a little bit and we’ll see this here. It’s a pretty sharp camera, it’s got an automatic gain structure … Ed: What about focus? Jim: And focus is automatic and there’s a manual override too, but that’s a pretty sharp focus there. Of course, these all have presets, so it’s very easy using a standard … this is a very low cost PTZ controller I have, I can set this shot there, I go one – hold down preset; there’s a quiet “beep” that will go and I can move it over here and I can go back to one preset and it will go back to that spot. Ed: Alan, the value you see in these cameras? Alan: The small camera’s just been introduced here at IBC and the new feature of the small camera is the infrared light illumination on it so it will illuminate an object up to 600 feet away. But the rationale behind these cameras ( apart from the obvious surveillance application ) is for point to view cameras, where in many cases there’s a need for a few point to view shots and an OB truck when it arrives on site can set these up. Ed: You mean like a goal line shot? Alan: A goal line shot or a crowd shot and they can just lock them off and they’re relatively inexpensive cameras and then whenever they need them the pictures are NZVN there.

Quinto – AB on Air Here we are with Alan McIlwaine from Quinto at AB on Air Wireless HD and to talk to us we have On Sobol, Director of Sales. Ed: Now AB on Air, this is a very red box that’s sitting on top of a camera, with a couple of aerials on it. Tell me what it does? On: So first of all the colour red was chosen because of our CEO – he likes Ferrari – so therefore he likes to remind himself every morning what he would like to buy in the future. Ed: It’s good to have a CEO with vision huh? On: Yes, that’s a good vision … we’ve been in the market for about 5 years with wireless camera links. Most of the R&D team and the CEO have been around in the wireless arena for over 20 years and have decided to develop wireless camera links for professional broadcasters in the production, in sports, in news gathering. Prior to this development, we designed some of our wireless links for other manufacturers. Ed: Right, and over there’s a very simple receiver by the look of it? On: Correct, so we are introducing our new receiver that would be an entry level cost of US$7,999 for transmitter and receiver. It comes with the antennae, transmitter and receiver, entire pack at this price. It’s a very good deal for getting your signal out from the field into the OB van or transmission station, up to 250

On with a wireless HD solution.

metres of basic support range and you can increase it with the additional antennas up to 500 metres. Ed: Is it only HD-SDI? On: No, it supports also SD, so we are backwards compatible. It has a signal indicator that will show you how much your signal strength is; once you go further up the distance or have interference it has a low delay switch for 90 milliseconds and a normal delay mode of 200 milliseconds for a basic standard wireless link.

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Ed: And it’s not compressing the signal anyway – whatever your camera puts out, that’s what’s going? On: We use the H.264 codec. We use the DSP of Texas Instruments which is we believe a strong company in this field and we are able to put on top of that DSP a lot of algorithms to maintain the stability and quality of the link. So we have algorithms of acknowledgement algorithms built into the receiver and transmitter that was designed as a full duplex system to make sure that every pixel is pixel to pixel accurate received. So that makes sure that the quality stays throughout the session while you are shooting a news event. Ed: What sort of megabit rate? On: It ranges between 4 megabits per second up to 14 megabits per second which is the highest end. Ed: How does it range? On: Well automatically adjusted according to link capacity. Alan: It uses adaptive coding techniques. Many earlier systems just used fixed coding and that has got disadvantages in that you can get a lot more information through under certain circumstances and less through under others; with adaptive, you can adjust to compensate for whether you’re close or whether you’re out in a corner and it happens automatically. The other thing the system will do, you can either have it on the 2.5 gig licence or the 5 gig on licence band and it will automatically hunt for a free channel. So say a cameraman takes it out there, he can just set it up, plug it into his camera, power up, it will automatically find a free channel and go back to its base station. The other neat thing about the system is that as it sends its information across, then it gets confirmation off the packets of data and so it becomes a very robust system and, as On says, it uses H.264 which is what most modern links are using. Ed:

What about having a cache?

Alan: It’s sending information across between the transmitter and receiver and as the packets go across it gets a confirmation from the receiver to say that it’s okay. If that confirmation is not there, then it will resend the packet again. But all of this is happening in nanoseconds and so the system again becomes a very robust system, because it can send multiple times without any noticeable degradation of the picture. On: And there is latency built into the system in order to maintain that kind of stability and quality, so the latency in that system is 90 milliseconds which gives you enough time to correct errors – and in any wireless system ( even in your cellphone ) you will have errors in the wireless built into it because you have interference from iron, from walls, from other networks … for example, here at the show, this is a very good test case for us, because we have around 100 networks working in the same environment of 5-6 gigahertz working around us and the system is still working 9 hours a day without any frame drop. The only problem is batteries, which is not my problem! Alan: Until now, the wireless cameras have been the domain of professional high end cameramen who have paid a lot of money for them. With this device here at under US$8,000, it brings that into affordable territory. It gives the cameraman a lot more flexibility than was ever available before, because for minor sporting events, for public gatherings, things like that, the system’s there and it’s available. Ed: And was this being used by Israeli Television before this?

On: Yes of course, we use it in news, in sports events – obviously other models because this one was just introduced yesterday, but the other models we have sold a lot of them around the world; we’ve sold them in Belgium, in Korea, China, Mexico, France, UK – whatever, you name it. Ed: And now it’s time for the free world – Australia and New Zealand? On: Correct and that’s why we are choosing some distributors in this region to focus our efforts on that specific region because I would like to go for a vacation there! Ed: And it’s good that you’ve got a range of models to cater for a variety of uses Alan? Alan: That’s right. The new one is an entry level model, obviously there’s a complete range with even CCU control. Many existing systems are only one-way systems. This is a total bidirectional system and hence it is possible to put CCU control into it. We have a system that is in Australia at the moment and we’ll be taking it across to New Zealand prior to Christmas. Ed: And what I like is that the basic model here … and has this got a model number? On: Yes, 305. Ed: The 305 has got the power cable actually connected as a tap to the battery that is powering the camera. So it’s not a particularly power hungry device I image? On: Correct, it’s only 10 Watt of power; it will consume from any camera from Anton Bauer, IDX or VLock batteries and it would work between 2-3 hours of operation with the camera together, so it’s enough for any shoot outside … most games are less than two hours. NZVN Ed: Sounds good to me.

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Quinto – PAG Batteries We’re here with our very favourite interviewee, and I know readers you can guess that it’s Nigel Gardiner from PAG. Nigel: I guess you must be saying that to everybody – I can’t believe that I’m the only special one. Ed:

No, no, you’re very special Nigel.

Nigel: It’s good to speak to you again, I hope you’re all well and all the associated things. Ed: And it’s not so far for you to come here is it, to Amsterdam, it’s just a short flight over …? Nigel: Oh no, we drive! We left London at 6 o’clock on Wednesday morning, got the 8.30 ferry from Dover to Calais and then we drove up from Calais and we arrived here at about 3.30 Dutch time. Ed:

Nigel is all linked up for you.

Fantastic. If only we could drive places like that.

Nigel: But there’s so many of you guys over here anyway, Australians and Kiwis are treading the roads of Europe like every year for your Gap Year or the Grand Tour or whatever you call it. Ed: Well we just like to spread the good word in Europe amongst the older members of the world. But we’re not here to talk about Europe or anything like that ... we’re here to talk about PAG batteries. Nothing new Nigel? Nigel:

No, nothing new …

Ed: But still a lot of excitement I understand – a lot of people have been through the stand, a lot of people are looking at the PAGlink system because … well tell me, who are the people who are coming here? Nigel: We’ve got a lot of UK broadcasters, a lot of Europeans, it goes about as far as the Middle East; a few in Asia but that’s basically it. The new linking system seems to be a hot product once we get it in people’s hands. They look at it, they puzzle and they can’t quite believe that it does what it does; and then they get excited about it because, oh suddenly, I can have all these little adapters and gizmos and whatever it is, and I think it just offers them a completely different viewpoint on the battery on the back of the camera. Ed: And that’s it, you’re getting PAGlock people coming here and drooling over PAGlink? Nigel: Yes. Recently the BBC bought about 100 new Sony cameras. They have been a strong PAG user for many years in PAGlock and they said “now we think we’ll go for the PAGlink” and they changed everything. We did a little exchange and we made some little adapters so they could, let’s say, phase them out and phase the new ones in, but they’re extremely happy and it seems to be working extremely well for the BBC. Ed: So that’s it, it might be a little bit of a capital investment to start with, but over time that repays itself I guess in longer battery life and better workflow? Nigel: And flexibility. Also of interest, Sky, at the beginning of this year, opened up Sky Arabia and they’ve got something like I think it’s six different

locations and 37 cameras and they decided to use PAGlink as a battery system of choice. Ed: And I imagine that’s a pretty harsh climate out there? Nigel: Oh it’s crazy but we seem to be surviving and at this moment, no problem. Just at this moment, Paul Francis from BBC News United Kingdom wandered onto the PAG stand. I pounced. Ed: Paul, you’ve been PAG users for quite a number of years I understand? Paul: We’ve used lots of different companies that have supplied us with batteries, but we’ve tried to go to one particular type of battery if we can now, that powers the PMW-500 and so we actually, since the testing, went over to the PL96e … Ed: Was because Sony camera particularly gry?

that that was hun-

Paul from the BBC.

Paul: It’s quite power heavy, yes, and what you want to avoid is your batteries discharging before you’ve closed a clip, because there’s the potential for you losing your clip, whereas tape used to just stop. Potentially you can lose quite a lot of your media if your battery goes down in that time, so these link batteries are just fantastic – you just keep adding them on top and hopefully our media is going to be safe. Ed: That’s it, because prior to this, you were using the PAGlocks which didn’t have that safety feature?

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Paul: No, but then again, the previous cameras didn’t demand quite so much power. Another issue that we had was the older batteries weren’t so good in cold weather and we haven’t had a winter to test them properly, but we’re told … Ed: it?

It’s about time they sent you to Antarctica isn’t

Paul: Well we’ve had one guy in Svalbard in northern Norway last week, so we’re waiting for him to come back and either send all the batteries back to PAG or endorse them, so there you go. Ed: Now tell me again, the value is that you’re not going to lose that clip, but also I guess they’re lighter and easier to manage? Paul: Well they’re brand new batteries, so theoretically, they should hold their charge for longer; they’re much easier to manage in terms of you can stack them up on the PAG charger; PAG are bringing out a charger for use on location – a much smaller unit which is really good; and you can stack them up so you’ve got double capacity effectively. Not only that, you’ve got problems with flying batteries around the world these days – lithium ion ones – and these come in under the safety limit, so they’re pretty good. But you know there are other batteries out there, other battery manufacturers as well … Ed:

Oh you’ve got to keep them on their toes?

Paul: Absolutely, yes. Ed:

You don’t want to let Nigel get complacent.

Paul: No, we won’t be ruling out … if he’s failed … Ed: I’m sure I can point you to some other stands NZVN who would love to talk to you.

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Syntec – Rycote We are with Tim Constable from Rycote as Stefano is otherwise occupied. Ed: Tim, you know the story, you know what’s hot and what’s new from Rycote? Tim: Yes, we’ve got four new products that we’ve launched at the show this year. The first one is an InVision Stereo Pair Kit; you’ve got a stereo bar with two In-Vision mounts on top of it and that’s mounted on top of a table stand which is one of our new products as well. Ed:

And the idea of this?

Tim: The idea of this is to have a convenient mounting device to set up a stereo kit. It uses the universal InVision mic mount, so you’ve got a universal mic clamp in there … Ed: But what’s the idea of having stereo sound like this? Tim: It’s something that we’ve been asked to do quite a lot. Ed: They’re spaced about human ears’ apart are they? Tim: Yes. Ed:

But you can adjust them for smaller heads?

Tim: You certainly can adjust them for smaller heads; you’ve got a distance that you can move them either side of the centre point of up to about 15cm. Ed:

And it makes a difference? table stand separately.

can

come

Ed: And this one looks like it’s a splatter guard? Tim: And the third product is an In-Vision 7 with a pop filter kit. So you’ve got the In-Vision 7 mount on top of the table stand and then you’ve got a bar with a pop filter on the front of it. It comes complete; you just get it in the kit. On the kit there as well, you can see a Tac!T inline high pass filter that we launched earlier on this year.

Tim: Most certainly, yes. mount the mics in there. Ed:

And you can obviously

And they’re the four new products that we’ve launched at the show this year. Ed: And of course these are all interchangeable with previous Rycote product?

Okay, next … it looks like a very wide Lyre?

Tim: Yes. The second product that we’re launching is a table stand with an In-Vision mount and it’s a universal mic clamp in the In-Vision setup itself and that mounts onto a new table stand that we’ve got. The table stand itself has got quite a heavy weight in the bottom there with a screw thread and the In-Vision mount goes on top of it. You can get the In-Vision mount either by itself or with the table stand … and the

Tim: Yes, totally interchangeable. You can see there’s a lot of common components there in the kits themselves, so it follows in line with the philosophy that we’ve got of making everything as modular as possible. Ed:

And it’s obviously working?

Tim: Most definitely so, yes. There’s a lot of demand and interest for the products we’ve got here today. NZVN

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Syntec – Sennheiser For Syntec we are at Sennheiser with Sven Boetcher from Germany. Ed: You’ve again got this perfect location for your booth, it’s beautifully lit, nice colours and Sven you’re looking relaxed? Sven:Yes, I’m very relaxed; I’m especially very happy to have the system here. This has been under development for over 10 years; it was the biggest one ever we did at Sennheiser and so we are really happy to present it here at the IBC show and we’ve got very good customer interest on it. Ed: It doesn’t look very portable? Sven:No, it is not intended for portable use, it is intended for studio use, broadcast use and theatres. It’s especially designed for multichannel systems, for big installations like … Ed: Okay, we’re not talking about a microphone, we’re talking about a large box here with lots of meters on it … and what do all the meters do, and what does the box do? Sven:So the box is the receiver for our wireless microphone transmitters and it’s a control station for everything. You can do your frequency allocation with that, you can do a frequency scan, of course you can know about all the parameters which we have in the system like RF level, audio level, you can control the gain structure, everything. So this is kind of the heart of the system. Ed: So these are dB meters, you haven’t gone for loudness meters? Sven:No. We go for dB meters because it’s the most – let’s say the most direct thing. Loudness is so much related to other topics like compression and we have no compression at all in the system. It’s a digital wireless transmission which is completely transparent and codec free. We offer cable like quality. Ed: Wow, that’s putting your money where your mouth is? Sven:Yes and that’s a challenge, especially because, when you’re speaking multichannel systems of 50 and more channels, the range which is available is the UHF range and when you’re speaking UHF range, then you have to stick to certain regulations. Ed:

Oh, don’t we know it!

Sven:Yes … and we have to stick to these regulations and squeezing all the data into that given frequency regulation which we have and that’s a tough thing and that’s a special in depth that takes long … Ed: Okay, this is a 9000 model, but obviously it doesn’t have 9000 channels?

Sven:No, not 9000 channels but we can do a lot. So more than 100 channels is easy to be done. Ed: Okay for selecting, but for actual operations on the day, how many channels? Sven:It’s an eight channel mainframe receiver which we have here and of course you can combine into larger systems. Ed: Excellent. Now the other end of that, some rather futuristic little gadgets? Sven:We have a new handheld transmitter. This offers an option to connect it to 12 different microphone heads. It’s modular, with 12 different acoustics from permanently polarised condenser, dynamic heads and also condenser heads, Neumann heads as well. This is a modular construction and the capsule, especially the new 9002, 9004 and 9005 capsules which are permanently polarised condenser, they have a patented solution here, for the shock mount. It’s so effective, it reduces the handling noise very very effective. So it’s our quietest transmitter. Ed: What – a German joke? Sven:Aaah maybe. I don’t know. Ed: And in their little wireless packs there, I notice you clip the battery on and off, or was that something else? Sven:It’s the battery. It’s a modular design; here we have a lithium ion rechargeable battery pack, which fits into the transmitter. The transmitter housing is made of magnesium, so it’s lightweight and the batteries are not only for the body pack but also for the handheld, they have intelligence built-in, so you can see on the display how much operation time you have left … in this case six hours 41 minutes is the remaining operating time.

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Ed: Wow that is a big thing for those of us who are used to putting in AAs and not quite trusting that little two-stage meter? Sven:Exactly – and that gives you a big advantage in kind of the operation safety and it keeps you calm at your show and you can concentrate on all those other things. Ed: So is the receiver backwards compatible with previous microphone packs? Sven:No, it’s a complete digital modulation, so therefore there is no compatibility to analogue systems. This is really a new line. Also the antenna design. The antennas are remote controlled from the receiver, so via the RF line there is a back channel from the receiver, so we can control everything. For example, we have a signal generator in the antennas which produces a defined signal and the receiver measures the level of that signal. So assuming on the signal generator we have this 10dBm signal and the receiver sees only 5dBm. Then he knows the cable loss is 5dB. So the system automatically then compensates the cable loss and only that; it’s not over-boosting or not under-boosting, so it’s always levelled perfectly. This avoids a lot of errors, because often you don’t know how much the cable attenuation is. Ed: That’s very clever. Sven:That helps in daily operation very, very much. Ed: But you must also have some warning that the cable attenuation is getting high? Sven:When it’s too high the system gives you warning and tells you okay, the attenuation is too high, maybe you should better change to another better cable, or have a shorter cable. There are other tools on the receiver which really help you in setting up the system – for example, you can do a complete frequency scan here with the receiver and it’s a really good visual display and you can see immediately the scan result, what is on the air or in the

Syntec – Jünger We are here for Syntec with Jünger and we have Mark Judor from Germany. Ed: Now Mark, a product line new to NZ Video News readers is Jünger. Who are you and what do you do? Mark: Jünger Audio is a German company based in Berlin. We’ve been doing dynamics processing for the past 20 years. The company started with a lot of studio products, limiters, compressors, expanders, deessors – we’ve been pretty famous for that then roughly 7-8 years ago, we started to move into the automated loudness control area, because this is a topic which has been increasingly important all over the world. Ed: Well there’s a lot of people talking about it – I don’t know whether it’s the same in Europe; one side talks about it and wants a resolution, but the government departments don’t seem to be willing to set anything in concrete? Mark: Well things have changed … and changed globally. That means that in Europe, in the US and in South America there are now strong laws which have been passed by governments, which make it compulsory for broadcasters to care about loudness. Initially, it’s mainly targeted to handle advertisements but ultimately, once you start to handle that, you will have to also do all the rest of the programme because

air here in the booth. And according to this, you then can allocate all your wireless microphone channels visually, which gives you a really great overview and you’re not tapping in the dark. Ed: Exactly, so there shouldn’t be any complaints NZVN from anyone not getting perfect reception.

you get conscious about the impact of loudness. So there’s no way you’re going to leave your movies going berserk with the sound, if you have handled the advertisements. There has been work undertaken by the Americans under the guidance of the ATSC committee, with laws like the CALM Act. In Europe, with the EBU, the PLOUD Group made this new loudness norm, which is now applied in Europe. It’s a de facto standard which most of the public television stations try to apply in Europe and some countries, like France for instance, made laws out of this recommendation based on this EBU 128 standard. They make it compulsory for all the broadcasters to stay within certain values. And that’s good, because that improves a lot the whole quality chain in TV stations and it requires an automated processing management which is what we do with our boxes and systems. We have basically three types of boxes – an 8 channel processor which is called the TAP (Television Audio Processor); a 4 channel processor which is called LM4 (Level Magic 4); and a 2 channel processor called LM2 (Level Magic 2); plus the modular systems. All these systems enable us to solve the loudness issues for whatever type of television we may have – be it a rebroadcaster or a small regional television, or a bigger group doing 5.1 Dolby encoded content.

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Ed: I guess the real value is that you don’t have to go through every programme that comes into your station, every ad that comes into your station; if you have this in your system, what’s going out is going to be pretty close to what the standard should be? Mark: Exactly. The system is going to handle the loudness with the following idea – not colouring the sound whatsoever, but working on the dynamic range so that they actually fit to the different constraints. Our norm’s based on integrated loudness values, so over time and short-term values which are the ones you may also suffer from in advertisements. Ed: But if this is not a clever system, if there was a long quiet period in a movie, then a non-clever machine would try and ramp it up? Mark: Exactly and this is why you have an automated way to work. There are different types of gate, different types of curve which are going to be applied, different types of behaviours the system is going to have, in order to make this possible without users noting or hearing that there is a process at work. The least that you want to have is a system not capable of adapting to the different types of content coming in. Initially, we had boxes providing just one type of loudness control, which was ours; because there were no norms, people weren’t really aware of loudness to start with. People understood level and the electrical measurement of it, but 7 or 8 years ago people didn’t know or didn’t understand the fact that you have to understand that there is a perceived value of loudness and this is subjective. This is something where at that time there was no regimentation saying “oh, you have to go according to that and measure differently than just an electrical value, because the perceived loudness at that level is different.” Ed: I know that in the discussions in the past, where levels have tried to be set, the clever audio engineer comes along and says “hah, I can defeat that, I can work around and make your ad sound a lot louder, but still stay within the standard.” So again, they were playing with the rules? Mark: That is exactly the point and that is exactly the reason why all these norms now started, because ultimately, what you had is that the guys would always conform with the limiter value, the electrical value you had, you were never exceeding it, but you had compressed the content in such a way that everything was put so high up that, when you had other content coming in, there was a huge difference. You had several loudness units or dB differences but still being totally compliant with whatever norm existed in the country. Now it took time, but we are here now at the time where there’s no country in the world where people don’t understand this notion of loudness, and that’s already a big, big step forward. Now many of our advanced customers start to say “okay, we’re going to follow these new regimentations but we don’t want that to be reprocessed by a processor, because this has been processed when it came into the station, so why reprocess something which has been processed already?” There we saw that we need to bring a bit more finesse in the way we work so we give indication to the processor box when it has

Mark has loudness under control.

to process, how it has to process, and when it has to stop processing. Ed: So up until that point, it’s not having any effect on the audio signal? Mark: That’s the point … well some people want to actually use the maximum headroom possible or allowed into that area … Ed: I think that will always happen, but as you say, one of the big difficulties, especially with a broadcaster, is that what they’re getting in might have already been through this process once or even twice before they get it. Now in that case, you don’t want to have audio that’s processed again and again and again – and you’re saying that with your system nothing would happen to it until something exceeded one of the parameters that was programmed in, so you really wouldn’t have any audio change unless it was necessary? Mark: Correct. Actually what happens is that the processor processes in different ways. You can do it smooth way, mid-way or hard way, but it’s true that sometimes you have to tell the processor because if he’s activated, he’s going to process according to the type of processing type that you’re going to give him. But what happens more and more now is that the users can tell when there is an ad being played or when there is a group of ads and in this group, the group … the ad processing type might be a way lot stronger or a lot harder than what you would want to use for movies. You may be very soft on movies, because you want to keep a huge dynamic range compared to what you have in advertisement. When you do your own contents, you may want to have a bypass complete, or just a limiter active and this is done by what we call the event management … this is done with different types of triggers. We receive triggers from the automation. You can actually tell the product to work according to that type permanently, or set up one type for a certain number of hours and then another type for another certain number of hours. Ed: I guess another problem’s got to be that if you do start audio processing, there’s got to be some delay and so you have to delay your video along with that audio processing, or not?

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processing time is two milliseconds, so we’re way within the time and there’s no need to delay it. Ed: You’re not going to lose lip sync in two milliseconds? Mark: No way, no way, no that’s really important. And this way of working is really interesting because as I said, a couple of years ago, people actually used like one standard default preset and they did everything with this. Now people get more demanding because they know loudness and they see that they can handle it in a more subtle way and they say there’s no reason why I should actually process everything to match the criteria I have on advertising which might be tougher than for the rest of the content. Therefore I can actually do it way smoother and leave more headroom for other contents, what we would call noble contents like the movie contents or the produced shows that they do, because they deserve it and they are produced already accordingly. So this is really a point which is interesting because you have to be able to provide a couple of presets, a couple of snapshots which are actually started according to the contents. Mark: Actually we have to delay it only when we handle Dolby encoded or decoded contents, because each time we have a Dolby encoding or decoding process, we use one frame. So we have actually builtin in our SDI boards which are provided with our systems, an integrated video delay, so that we are capable of compensating that. But the traditional

Ed: But then you have to work with it intelligently. And I guess the other thing is that, if this is not just about loudness control, Jünger must … the whole processing business, you must have a lot of other parameters that you can put in there to take care of other aspects and I guess that’s something to talk more about with your Jünger dealer in New Zealand? Mark:

Please do.

Note: There are now some loudness specifications for New Zealand due to take effect from 1/1/2013. Go to www.commercialapprovals.co.nz/documents/commercial_production_standards.pdf

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NZVN

Protel – Canon We are at the Canon stand for Protel and we have Peter Yabsley from Canon Europe to tell us about a new camera in the EOS range. Ed: We’ve looked at the 300, we’ve seen the 500, and now you’re looking at the other end, the 100? Peter: Absolutely so really it’s all about filling out the range, more options for people. The C300 is a broadcast level camera, it has a certain price tag associated with it. What we’ve done with the C100 that we just launched on the 29th of August, is we’ve brought in something as a kind of an entry level to the Cinema EOS range. The concept is to keep the same kind of great image quality that we’re used to from Cinema EOS and the EOS cameras, but make it as small and as mobile as possible and make it as easy to use, especially for single shooters. This is about 15% smaller than a C300 … Ed: But you could still add the rods and all the bells and whistles …?

Peter with the C100 from Canon.

Peter: We have various rigs. We have this new cage from Redrock; we have a Zacuto rig; we have a naked if you like the camera on the desk there … and it’s very small, it’s very lightweight and especially if you partner it with something like our EFS lenses which are a bit smaller than the L lenses, then you’re still going to get great quality, but you’ve got a really, really small package. Ed: So where’s the sacrifice? Peter: The sacrifice is … well there are a number of differences let’s say between the 100 and the C300 … Ed: “Sacrifice” is a bad word is it? Peter: Well it’s not so much “sacrifice” – I’d say that there are differences between the two cameras. The C100 is smaller, but by the nature of the fact that it’s smaller, there is a bit less flexibility in the design. So, for example, you can see the LCD is fixed rather than movable on the C300 and the C300 is somewhat more robust actually. I mean this is still a camera that will take the knocks and bumps, no problem there, but the C300 is a little bit stronger. This is AVCHD 420, it’s an SD card in the camera. Obviously the C300 is MXF 50 megabit 422, which is much more of a broadcast accepted codec. Also on the C300, you’ve got certain other outputs you don’t have on this like you’ve got HDSDI timecode and Genlock which is very useful for multi -camera shoots. Fundamentally, the C100 is a slightly different product concept, a slightly different product design, but the idea is still to keep the image quality right out there. Ed: Obviously you’ve got your off-board recorder if you need it but what about lenses, does it take a common lens? Peter: Yes, completely compatible with all EF lenses and I think we have 64 or 65 now, and we’ve got new cinema lenses here at the show as well, which may or may not be so appropriate for this product, but all of our cinema lenses are available in EF mount, so all of them will go on this camera. This camera is not available in PL mount, it’s EF only, whereas the C300 and C500 are available in both versions. Ed: Now in talking with our readers in New Zealand, looking at the Canon range, it’s at a higher price point

shall we say, than the competitors. So what is it that they can take heart from that tells them they’re paying more because they’re getting something better? Peter: Obviously “better” is a subjective judgment; we feel these are the best cameras available in terms of image quality, but the important thing for us is that we brought something new with Cinema EOS. It was a big departure for Canon and I think it was something quite different in the industry, especially in terms of the design, in terms of the recording codec and the quality that’s in the cameras. I think if you look at each of the cameras in the line-up now, they really offer something quite unique in terms of, first of all, the feature set, which is very comprehensive; secondly the design which is again quite unique and was very much designed with modularity, portability and the feedback from the EOS system in mind; and most importantly, fundamentally, the quality of the image that comes out. Ed: Is this not just your lenses? Peter: It’s not just the lenses – it’s the sensor and the processing. So for the C300 and actually the C100, C300 and C500 all use the same sensor which was designed originally when we launched the C300 … and that was designed specifically for video. These cameras don’t take stills. Ed: No, we’ve done a very good story with Mieke about this and tried to explain to everybody out there that still cameras are still cameras, and cinematic cameras are different? Peter: Yes absolutely, and you can have a middle ground, so for example the EOS 1DC that we have here is actually a fantastic piece of filmmaking kit, but obviously it has certain limitations because it’s a DSLR. What we would say is, if you look at where these cameras are positioned, for what you get in the package, actually, I think they’re really, really competitive, they offer great value for the end user, especially the C500. Ed: So Peter, where do you see the C100 fitting in – what sort of people are going to buy the C100? Peter: Hopefully a lot of people. No, as I say, this is the entry to Cinema EOS ranges, the most affordable product in the Cinema EOS range and the big decision

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To view the C300 in store today, visit one of our Canon Cinema Authorised Resellers

point for people is probably the codec. For many people shooting for broadcast particularly, and maybe also in the cinema environment, the 50 megabit 422 codec we have in the C300 is very important. Maybe, actually, it’s mandatory for their customers. Ed: But if you’re at that corporate level and you want that shallow depth of field …? Peter: Weddings, events, corporate, all kinds of – educational … you know, film schools. You can teach all the techniques on this camera. It’s got a log gamma curve, you can teach grading, it’s got great quality, it’s got shallow depth of field, but you know in the end you have more features and a better codec in the cameras as you go higher up the range.

– we have a 30-105 and we have 15.5-47, both T2.8, both suitable for 4K, absolutely fantastic quality, but much lighter, more mobile than the top end zooms that we introduced last year. This is the first time we’ve actually had them out in public in Europe for people to see and get their hands on. NZVN

Ed: And that’s what you pay for? Peter: Basically, yes. Ed: And not only a new camera, but a new lens? Peter: Yes, so here at IBC we’ve got the full range of our new cine lens series. We’ve got three Primes, 24, 50 and 85mm; we’ve got the two top end zooms that we announced last year in November, which are superbly high quality; and we have two new lightweight compact zooms

Protel – Datavideo

Ed: And I guess that’s not only in the OB type situation, but it’s also in fixed studio situations? You can move around with this?

For Protel we have met up with Tyrone. Ed:

Tyrone what are we looking at?

Tyrone: We’re looking at the SE-2800 the latest addition to the Datavideo range. It’s an HD-SD video mixer and we’ve have Pascal van de Pol from Datavideo who is going to help us with all the details. Ed: Have you sold any previous models of these boxes in New Zealand? Tyrone: We certainly have and they’ve been very popular as a cost effective and a very efficient way of doing everything that you want out of one box.

Tyrone: Yes, that’s right. There are a few of the earlier models out there in houses of worship as an example and some of the smaller broadcasters. Ed:

Now Pascal, can they upgrade them?

Pascal: It depends on what you want to upgrade, but the new SE-2800 unit comes in a configurable situation. You can have either, 8 or 12 inputs. It comes with an eight input module which is included in the unit. So if you start with an 8 input setup, yes, you can upgrade later to 12 inputs; the inputs can be configured for HD-SDI or SD-SDI. This other unit you are looking at is the SE2000 and it is available in two variations, the SE-2000 5Ch HD Switcher and SE2000R Rack Mountable HD Switcher. Now you are looking at the new HS-2800 which is an SE-2800 in a rack box with full monitoring and comes with built in Datavideo recorder of your choice, so it’s configurable and of course you can put your own equipment in, remove the ventilation shaft and then whatever you like, wireless intercom system or whatever, by a third party brand. Ed: So there is some flexibility to add your own items to the box? Pascal: Yes it comes in a configurable way within two variations of the unit, so they are fixed setup, but if a user wants to add their own equipment, no problem. Ed: Now I see some smaller cases here – I guess these are also fly-away kits, but less powerful?

Pascal with the SE-2800. Page 54

Just some of the great new Products now shipping from Datavideo and shown at IBC.

MS-2800 Mobile Video Studio solution built around the SE-2800 switcher The MS-2800 is a modular mobile video studio that enables live production and event recording. The unit is based around the Datavideo SE-2800 broadcast-quality switcher featuring 8 digital and analogue inputs (upgradeable to 12 channels). It is designed for live events and TV programmes that need to blend a variety of video and audio sources. Thanks to its small form factor, the SE-2800 is ideal for use in a portable rack unit.

The Datavideo SE-2000R is a rackmounted version of the SE-2000 five channel HD video & audio switcher.

The PTC-100 full HD PTZ Camera has been designed with many indoor applications in mind such as live theatre events, concerts, conferencing, worship, news studio, talk shows, education, indoor sports and security. The Datavideo PTC-100 combines outstanding image quality with super smooth and quiet pan/tilt/zoom operation.

Call Protel for a new catalogue and pricing. Check out the full details on www.protel.co.nz/blog/category/video/datavideo

Pascal: Yes, they offer fewer inputs. The one we’re seeing here is the HS-2000 in both lightweight and metal case. Technically they are the same, but this is a four HD-SDI switcher, which offers four inputs of HDSDI. One input is shared, so you can have three HDSDI and two DVI inputs or four HD-SDI inputs and one DVI input. Both are coming in two variations – lightweight version and a metal case. Ed:

But then an even smaller unit by the look of it?

Protel – Digital Rapids For Protel, we’re at Digital Rapids talking Kayak Transcoding and we’ve got Pete Kavanagh. Pete: What we’re showing here is the release version of our Transcode Manager to transcoding product. We’re expanding on the current version of Transcode Manager 1.6 by adding a new framework for the engines that actually run the jobs underneath Transcode Manager. Over the years we’ve built up the Transcode Manager system and it’s all been built on the same core software that we use within Stream on all the live encoders. So the same core transcoding, straight encoding, live encoding software. We’ve added lots and lots of features to that, it’s grown; it got to a point a couple of years ago where it was becoming quite unwieldy and difficult to add new features, so we decided to start breaking it down and rewrite from scratch. What we’ve ended up with now is the new Kayak platform where what we have is, essentially, a workflow

Pascal: This is the HS-900 system which is essentially the same as the HS-2800 except this is our first model switcher, but it’s SD-SDI, so SD-SDI switcher … Ed: Because there still is a market for standard definition? Pascal:

Yes SD products are still selling Worldwide.

Ed: If you require portable HD or SD studios in a box talk to the experts at Protel. NZVN

designer that allows you to put together a live encode or a file transcode workflow in a visual manner. Starting with your input file, stepping through individual processes, things like decoding, audio processing, video processing and then encoding to a final output in a graphical interface. Ed: This is obviously going to be a lot more flexible for you when you want to do an upgrade because it’s just a software patch and away you go? Pete: That’s the key thing. Previously, we’ve always released Stream on a point release basis, so every 3-6 months we have a new version of Stream that has a dozen new features or additions. When we moved to Kayak, everything is component based and the components all live in a database back repository. What that means is that, when we come up with a new feature, we don’t need to wait for the next big release, we can just push it out the door straightaway. Likewise, if we come up with bug fixes or if we come up with additional features for an existing component, we can issue the new component, but the key thing is it doesn’t have to overwrite your existing version of that. So if you’ve already got a workflow that works perfectly, you don’t need to touch it, you can lock it down, it uses the exact same previous generation components. But then you can build a new workflow that has the updated one and do some different things with it. You can always guarantee that that process that you put together three years ago will do exactly what it did when you put it together. Ed: Because a lot of this is changing very quickly isn’t it, this whole streaming business, and new stuff’s coming on really every month, so this enables you to keep up with that? Pete: Yes, that’s right. Ed:

And the customers to keep up with it?

Pete: Exactly. And as soon as there are new formats such as the major adaptive streaming technologies now, like Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Flash Adaptive, Apple’s HLS … as soon as you get something new like MPEG-DASH coming along, first of all you want to implement it quickly, but because it’s so new, you’ll go through a series of iterations over the first year or two, so there’ll be rev 4, rev 5, rev 6, you want to be able to try and keep up with those as quickly as possible. So this allows us to give our customers that ability. Ed: Clever thinking. Call Protel for sales service and support of Digital Rapids products in New Zealand. NZVN

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Protel – Pro Tools For Protel, we talk with Simon Sherbourne from Pro Tools. Ed: Simon, you must love your job with these big desks and thousands of knobs and buttons that a lot of people don’t understand? Simon: Yes, I have the chance to play with stuff that I couldn’t afford to buy or play with otherwise, or have the talent to work with. Ed: Simon, I’m sure you’re talented. Now Pro Tools has done something since NAB? Simon: Yes, there’s a new Thunderbolt interface, so our HD native system, which was previously a PCI card, is now available as a Thunderbolt interface, so it does exactly what the PCI version did, but we can run it on a MacBook Pro or an iMac or hopefully some Windows machines at some point. So it gives us a kind of semi-portable system that you don’t need to buy a big $3,000 MacPro to run.

have these big System 5 consoles running Pro Tools off the back. Since Pro Tools 10, we can now control Pro Tools incredibly to a deep level off of this console. For example we could have maybe three Pro Tools running, plus the built-in channels on this desk, all running side by side in front of us on the faders, which is huge, especially for the feature film market; it’s a really huge development. We also have the video side – people are using those services for things like colour correction, easily controlling the track selection in Media Composer, so yes, it’s been really, really good actually. Ed:

So one of Avid’s better moves?

Simon: Definitely, yes. It was a brilliant thing. We were all huge fans of Euphonix before the acquisition, so we’re all really excited. Ed: It’s a win-win and for customers in New Zealand, Avid Media Composer and Pro Tools systems can be purchased from Protel. NZVN

Ed: And apart from that it’s pretty much the same? Simon: Yes – all of our big product announcements kind of finished towards the end of last year with Pro Tools HDX, Pro Tools 10. That set up our stall really for the next couple of years or so … we kind of have our new platform and everything’s in place. Ed: And in terms of the marriage between Euphonix and Pro Tools, this has been well received by Pro Tools users? Simon: Yes, across the board. So there’s quite a range of Euphonix stuff … on the desktop controllers, the Artist series, that’s done really well with Pro Tools and then all the way up to the big consoles, so we’re sitting in front of a System 5 console here. I see you’re from New Zealand, so Park Road Post in Wellington, Digipost in Auckland both

Protel – Petrol Bags We are at Petrol Bags for Protel and to tell us more we have Michael Bannon. Ed: This is a bag that’s more than a bag – this is the PA1003 Deca Sound Gear and Accessories Bag. Is this just for audio people? Michael: No it isn’t. What we do is we develop bags for professional users – they’re either doing video work, photographic work or audio work. This bag is designed to take large amounts of equipment to a location. Say we’re working in a hotel, we’re shooting a drama, or we’re going to go and do an interview somewhere … the purpose of this bag is really to go in the back of a vehicle, so the first thing you’ll notice is it’s flat and square. That means we can pack it. I own a Volvo Estate, I can get 12 of these in my Volvo. In the back of a Ford Mondeo you can get three side by side. So you can carry an enormous amount of equipment. When we get to the site, you will notice that it’s a trolley bag, so if there’s a lot of weight, we’re not breaking each other’s backs trying to carry all our

heavy equipment in and it’s looking consistent. If you look at the base, you will see that it is solid plastic. If we’re leaving it standing outside, it’s not getting wet, it’s not picking up the rain. I can sit on this and I’m quite happy to demonstrate it. It looks like a soft case but the corners are heavily reinforced so it’s very robust. They’re absolutely solid, so we concentrate on putting protection where it’s required and not where it’s not. It’s not a hard case, it’s a hybrid. If we look inside the bag, the first thing you’ll notice is the orange colour. The reason we have it bright is, if you drop a cable or a lens hood, you can find it easily – and I know from my own camera use, I’m always looking for a back cap, a front cap, but with bright orange you can see it. This is the top level; we can adapt these compartments to how it wants to fit. But it also has rapid access to a lower level. We call it a sound device because we imagine people putting cable in here … Ed: Well you could get bottles of Sauvignon Blanc in there by the look of it? Michael: Quite possibly. You’ve got your kit and in the stuff down here you’ve got your refreshment and no

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one knows it’s there. You’ll notice how this closes. This has got a Velcro closer so you don’t have to continually zip it. Across the Petrol bag range, we’ve found that these handles, they’re locking handles, we’ve got them across everything we do, so it means that you don’t have to zip the bag shut every time you close it, but you can actually grab it and it’s secure. Ed: Even though it has “audio” in the name of the bag, it’s obviously very versatile. You can put pretty well anything in there and if you took out your Velcro dividers, you could actually fit a camera in there too? Michael: If you get something like a PMW500 – a big camera, you could take all of that out and you could fit it in; and on the next job you could put the floor back in and do something else. For the money, you’ve got a massive amount of capability and you’ve got a massive amount of flexibility, bearing in mind that we only focus on protection for the professional market. Ed: In terms of other detail, one of my pet likes is the zips. A bag can be destroyed by having cheap zips and these are high quality, heavy duty, very long lasting zips; and I do also like the new handle, where the two bits clip together to make one handle. Very nice. It’s definitely not a fly-away, it’s a good solid construction, not for aircraft travel, but superb for local NZVN use.

Ed tests the rigidity of the PA1003 corners. “Ouch” - it passes.

It’s Vegas Baby! So you read all those stories from NAB every year and you want to go too but the planning is too difficult? Some readers have expressed this to me so I’ve come up with a plan for 2013. How about a semi-guided tour? All the tricky bits sorted but time in between for you to see and do the things you want. The fixed parts would be  Leave Auckland for San Francisco on the Thursday 4 April before the show ( Air NZ )  3 nights in the same hotel in SFO  Flight from SFO to Las Vegas on Sunday 7 April  5 nights in the Riviera Hotel which is 15 min walk to the NAB show  Flight to Los Angeles on the Friday after the show ( or later if you wish ) The return flight to Auckland could be on the same Friday or you could have pre-arranged time in Los Angeles at your own expense. No meals or sightseeing included but economy flights, hotels, entrance to the 4 days of NAB, show orientation and stand tours would be. I would offer suggestions for things to do in SFO and Vegas and I would provide a check list for all the listed events. Cost estimate for the above is $3600 single or $3000 to share a hotel room with one other. I usually book my travels in November so you’ve got until the end of October to email me your interest. I will keep in contact with those who respond and confirm with full details in November if there is sufficient interest.

Contact Grant by email finnzed@xtra.co.nz Page 59

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