MAY 2014
Vol 202
NAB 2014 Part One I must say that I enjoyed this year’s show more than most. Perhaps it was that there were some real improvements in the products that many vendors had to offer; perhaps I’m getting better at time management so I can spend it where I want and not be racing from one end of the halls to the other ( at least 10 minutes at a fast clip ); perhaps the fact that I got to bed early each show night or perhaps the incentive that I had two weeks travelling around the National Parks of Colorado, Utah and California with my wife after the show was over. Anyway, it was a very good show and there are lots of things to tell you. I’ll start with DVT because I wanted you to see the photo in colour and they deserve to be first because they are such great supporters of our little publication. Let us begin back in New Zealand with Chris Barr from DVT because, somehow, we didn’t quite get to meet at NAB – however, that’s another story. We will include a photo of Chris “Photoshopped” into a typical Las Vegas scene, so you know what he looks like, as he’s telling us what he found interesting this year when he wasn’t with me.
“Now where was I supposed to meet Grant?”
Chris: I think the biggest thing I got from NAB was the fact that the ability to get access to a 4K camera is easier than it ever has been, but also that there is a camera to suite any budget. But of course too its all well and good that you can get access and have the ability to shoot 4K, you still need to ensure that you have a post-production workflow that will allow you to do so. What we have now, and what was shown at the show, are vendors providing software and hardware solutions making it possible to consider shooting 4K. For those that are unsure as why they need to consider 4K, they need to know I guess, situations where consideration needs to be made in favour of 4K eg. is the content saleable to an overseas market, is it an historical event? Do you shoot for creative needs, eg. green screen or template?
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I guess the way I see it, and many others, no one is asking for 4K. If you believe it’s worth acquiring in 4K but only need HD, down-sample and master to HD, then archive both an HD and a 4K for the future. When you shoot 4K then down-sample to HD you in theory end up with a better quality HD than if you had shot it at HD. Of course workflow is important to ensure the best possible down-sample. Ed: But surely there’s definitely an understanding out there that if you’re actually doing an HD production, you’re better off to shoot it in HD and not do the downsample? Chris: You always want to capture your content at the best possible quality. We have done that for years with HD content, where broadcasters were only ever asking for SD. The reality was, productions were acquiring in HD ( in some cases, not all ) and then supplying an SD master on DigiBeta to the broadcaster. Why? We end up with a better quality SD master as well as an HD master for broadcast in the future. Ed:
Carry on.
Chris: Other things I found interesting ... I noticed this year that every man and their dog were offering some kind of gyro-stabilised gimbal. The previous year we had a company called Freefly who introduced a product called the MōVI, which was unique and new to the market. It was a product that allowed productions to get shots that were unique, that could not have been captured as easily by other methods and in turn acquire those shots more affordably. DJI was one of the companies that I had the chance to get hands on with their solution for stabilisation. DJI call their product the Ronin. It was lightweight, but not as lightweight as the MoVi but still easy to set up and only took five minutes approx. It can also take a max payload of 7kg/16lb, meaning you can put a Red Epic underneath it. So DJI is a company that’s already developed gyro-stabilised solutions for the likes of GoPro cameras to sit underneath their Phantom/drones cameras, so the ability to turn this into a handheld stabilisation rig, I guess, was just an evolutionary process. Ed:
Ed: Okay, what about in the more traditional areas that DVT offers, say for example, Blackmagic. What did you find exciting on offer this year? Chris: Blackmagic had a bit to show once again at NAB this year. They introduced three new cameras to their range, two studio cameras and more interestingly the URSA. The URSA is not the type of camera you throw on your shoulder however, but designed more around a production/film environment as the camera is 7kg, without a lens. This was at times a hard camera to get in front of at their booth. A lot of interest came from the public. If you’re a church, a university, or anyone who wants to set up their own studio, you can now do so quite cost effectively without having to lose an arm and a leg thanks to the two new studio cameras. Secondly, DaVinci Resolve 11 was announced. It was interesting to see that they’ve now introduced an editor to DaVinci, allowing the ability, like other NLE tools, to edit, work with mixed formats, frame rates and resolutions, as well as the ability to resize, re-time video, mix audio and so much more. So rather than doing a round trip process, you now have one tool that achieves much more than just grading. Ed: The question is how can you sell DaVinci Resolve because it’s free? Chris: Well there is a lite version that is downloadable for free, however certain features are not available unless you get the paid version, for example – noise reduction and motion blur effects, real time noise
The DaVinci Resolve timeline looks very familiar.
reduction, ability to work with steroscopic, and the ability to have a collaborative workflow and much more.
So this involves battery powered gyros?
Chris: Yes these types of systems require a power source. One of the nice things about it will be its price point; they’re expecting it to come under US$5000. So it becomes an affordable option for users.
Ed: That gives an option for people to download that free version, try it out, see how it works on high definition projects and, if they really like it, they can spend a bit of money ( not a lot ) to go that next step?
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An amazingly crafted digest of the best of NAB 2014 - Part One. Page 3
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Chris: Yes, that’s correct. As a segue into other software offerings, I also had a look at Adobe. Adobe have introduced into Premiere Pro and After Effects a new tool, tracking and masking. I guess think courthouse, witness protection. So if you’ve been given the task, for example, of masking people’s faces while at a courthouse, this can now be done now by an editor quite easily, rather than actually having to push that out to an After Effects user. They have a new Master Clip Effects feature – this is the ability to apply a grade or apply an effect to a master clip and have that replicated or ripple for a better word, through every part of that clip that has been used within the sequence. Ed: Well since we’re on Adobe, what else was exciting?
camera is positioned at customers who require shallower depth of field and the ability to capture high quality 4K, and have the ability to capture high frame rates up to 120fps. So productions, films, even small indie films, this is a great camera. The way I look at it they both have their merits, it’s a matter of picking the tool that suites the job. Also important to note is the teaming up with Codex. Codex have designed a raw recorder for use on their 35mm Varicam. I was told on the stand that there is zero compression to their raw codec, not like other competitors in the market. Ed:
But it comes at a price?
Chris: It does come at a price. To date, the number that’s been thrown around has been around the sub $60,000 mark for the 35mm, and I am unsure about the HS model. Panasonic haven’t necessarily confirmed any pricing on the HS that I know of so “we will have to wait and see.” Ed: I notice that Sony this year came out with some quite astounding improvements to their range and a new still movie camera? Chris: Yes. So from the range from Sony, let’s start with sort of your prosumer cameras – they’ve released a new camera called the PXW-X180. It replaces the NX5 camera and it replaces the PMW-100 camera, so it sort of sits in the middle there now as an offering for your corporates and wedding videographers. It’s a little bit more expensive than an NX5, but quite a fullyfledged product at an affordable price.
Chris: Live text templates, another new feature within Premiere Pro, allowing editors to edit After Effects compositions within Premier Pro. In After Effects you can now get better keying results from footage that might be compressed or terribly shot and much more. I think the best thing for Adobe users who would like to know more about new features in Creative Cloud, is to jump onto the Adobe TV website and watch some of the videos that have been posted. Ed:
And you obviously went by the AJA booth?
Chris: Yes, AJA have got a new offering – I shouldn’t be surprised, but they released the AJA CION which is very much an “on the shoulder” ENG style camera, comes in a PL mount, up to 120 frames per second. Really, in terms of a price point and affordability, if someone was looking for a 4K camera, it really comes in at an affordable price US$9K, making it a very, very affordable option for someone who wants a 4K camera without having to buy a bunch of accessories for shoulder rigging a camera. It’s affordable; it’s easy and comfortable over the shoulder. I was very impressed with the balance of it. Ed: And, speaking of cameras, you went to the Panasonic stand and had a look at the new VariCam? Chris: Yes, so Panasonic have announced two new Varicams. They’ve got a 35mm and the HS model, which are a 35mm 4k sensor and a 2/3” sensor camera. I think I see the HS model as an ENG style camera targeting markets like live events, think rugby or winter Olympics due to its large depth of field and the ability to shoot at frame rates up to 240fps. Then the 35mm
They’ve also released the new XDCAM HD camera which is to replace the PDW700 and 800. This is called the PDW850. So rather than having two separate products that were very close in terms of features, they’ve combined the two into one. Sony announced new firmware for the PMW-F5/55 cameras, with features like cache recording and user generated LUT support. Users can now as a paid upgrade include ProRes and DNxHD codecs to their cameras. However I am not sure how many will. Users already have an equivalent codec on their cameras, it’s called the SR codec and in particular the SR lite codec that has the same data rate at 220mbps as ProRes and DNxHD. It’s a codec that most have the ability to work with in their editing application. However if you want ProRes or DNxHD, you can. Also announced was the new ENG doc for the PMWF5/55, designed for those cameramen who want access to controls that they are familiar with in the 2/3” camera range. Unfortunate Sony had this product under lock and key so, I was unable to play with it. A little less important for the masses, but I also took a look at Sony’s 4K live camera system for the F65 and F55. The solution provided live productions with up to 120fps for slow motion reply with their new AV storage unit. The system also allowed the ability to take HD cut outs from the 4K footage, allowing zooming in on a wide scene. An option other than EVS at a more affordable price yet providing controls EVS users are familiar with Ed:
Were you impressed by the Alpha 7S?
Chris: Yes, once again another 4K offering to the market, just like Panasonic’s GH4 that they’ve brought
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to market, it’s another affordable solution to jump into a 4K workflow. I must note that I say “affordable”, but Sony has not announced pricing to date. I guess they will gauge the market. This camera had an impressive feature set, and I think if teamed up with an external recorder, like Atomos Shogun, users will get some fantastic footage both in HD and 4K. I want this camera for my own personal use. I love toys. JVC was another vendor on the market that had a 4K camera to announce. They announced four new 4K large sensor cameras to the market. They had a shoulder mount, handheld and even a small compact model. So realistically, if you’re unsure what to get, obviously come and talk to us at DVT and we’ll point you in the right direction. Ed: That’s actually sensible advice Chris, because, with all the variation that a lot of people are offering, it’s a bit mind-boggling to know which one to go for, so it’s pretty important for someone knowledgeable to be able to steer people in the direction that their productions should be taking them? Chris: Look, that’s why I like talking to customers about what they’re doing, what they intend on doing with the camera eg. type of work, documentaries, short film etc, and not just what type of production or the immediate work they may use the camera for, but what their intentions are for future productions, so that we can obviously help navigate customers in the right direction so they can make the best sound decision. Ed: Did you see lots of little helicopter drones at the show? Chris: I did see them, but to be honest I did not spend much time getting into detail with what was on offer, but once again very interesting and they are a great tool to help diversify any production. More importantly they are a lot of fun to play with. Here at DVT we have access to DJI’s range of quad and multi blade-copters and we had the pleasure of flying or should I say crashing our Phantom. Just don’t fly them indoors when you are learning to fly (laughing). Ed:
Did you look at any audio product?
Chris: Yes, I looked at Sony’s wireless solution offerings. Sony has a new PDW-D wireless series. A key feature I liked was the interface ability on the bottom of the new transmitters. You have the ability to add the transmitter to cameras that use the new multi interface shoe. The Sony PXW-180 that was announced is one camera that has this mount. It means you do not need any connecting cables from transmitter to camera. I think it’s important to note the new range from Sony now fits within the new frequency range of
unlicensed frequencies, since the shut off of analogue TV. This is important to users as you do not want to turn up to a job and then have issues with getting a frequency to work with. The old UWPV models sit well outside that range. For those who are unsure about their wireless kits, just give us a ring and we will provide you with the information you need. Ed:
You’ll trade old models will you?
Chris: Well we can help you decide what offering from Sony’s range of wireless transmitter kits you require. Sony’s new PDW-D range is a cost effective solution for the amount of features you get. Ed: Well perhaps I’ll find somebody who will trade mine in, because I’ve got three of them! What about in lighting – I’ve noticed over the last couple of years especially, there’s a huge number of companies offering lighting solutions, especially in the LED area? Chris:
There are, and we have an array of offerings available for on camera as well as free standing LED lights. DVT have been selling iKan and Cineroid on-cameras lights for some time. However there was nothing really new in this area that I looked at. For free standing lights we work closely with Professional Lighting Service’s team to help assist with directing our customers into the right solutions. I think the best LED panel that I have seen prior to NAB as well as at NAB was BB&S’s AREA 48.
One of the smaller DJI copters with camera. Page 6
Ed: Because that’s it, I mean, you can’t be masters of everything and I guess that’s the value of the service that DVT offers, is that you’re not precious about what you sell, you will look out there in the market and find the best
product for the person and, quite often, there are companies that do certain lines of product very, very well? Chris: My brain can only hold so much information, hence why we work closely with suppliers to assist in helping our customers get the right solution for the jobs that they have up and coming. Ed: Did you find anything new in the area of production workflow? I’m still a great user of tape and I was impressed to see that Sony is continuing with its disc cameras, but for many people, they really don’t have the option anymore, they’ve got a solid state card in the camera, they’ve got to decide what they do with that footage after they’ve made their programme? Chris: There are a lot of customers who don’t use tape now that we are in a solid state workflow with cameras. But regardless of whether you are working with tape based footage or solid-state based footage, the fundamental of having robustness and redundancy in your storage does not change. With the introduction of Thunderbolt, the cost of fast reliable storage and particularly Raided storage solutions has never been easier and more accessible. An advantage of Thunderbolt storage is the ability now to work with large files, in particular 4K, without the fear of hitting performance issues. Basically you want confidence in your hardware to allow you to deliver quality content. If you have confidence in your hardware your can have confidence in your workflow.
Having fast robust storage still does not offer redundancy. You still need to replicate that content. You can’t rely on just one copy of it, so teaming any direct attached storage solution with the likes of Synology NAS array will allow any post-house to have confidence that they have more than one copy if the unthinkable was to occur. Once you have robustness and redundancy you can then work on archiving, and there are solutions that mean you do not have to archive back to tape. Ed:
Well you can go to LTO surely?
Chris: Well what I mean by “tape” is I mean like mastering to HDCAM SR. If you want to keep all your RAW footage and other project related data there is LTO and I did come across a new product from mLogic. They have just announced the first Thunderbolt LTO-6 tape drive, basically a very cost effective solution to allow users to archive product off and not have to spend a fortune doing so due to the cost effectiveness of Thunderbolt. Ed:
And was it all hard work Chris?
Chris: It was great to catch up with vendors and customers and see what people are up to and how they’re using products in the market; in particular what sells in the likes of the American market. Ed:
That’s part of what Las Vegas is all about isn’t it?
Chris: It’s important to network, it’s important to be engaged with your customers, it’s how we are able to point customers in the right direction when they NZVN come to us with questions and also problems.
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Blackmagic Design We are at Blackmagic and we have Kendall Eckman. Kendall has shown me a really special camera with the biggest flip-out screen I’ve ever seen.
The user can do that or go back to the reseller and have them do it. You can see here it has XLR audio. There’s a 12 Volt here that powers the camera, but there’s another option up here to have SDI out and 12 Volt if you want to go to another monitor or you want to go to an eye piece, that comes out there. It has your reference in, SDI out, SDI in, timecode, so it does have Genlock on it. You can hook on that, you play from someone like IDX or Anton Bauer and actually stick the battery in right here. This camera will shoot up to 60 frames a second also, so it’s water cooled and it will either shoot HD or you can shoot Ultra HD at 60 frames a second. Ed: T h i s camera capable of shooting 4K? Kendall:
Ed:
Kendall, this is called an URSA?
Kendall: Yes, a Blackmagic URSA camera. This is a 10 inch, 1920x1080 screen here; then you can see you have touch screens on either side of the camera, so you can go in and you can do all your menu settings in here. You can also get video display. Really the URSA camera is set up as a workflow camera, so you can have an audio person on one side, get all the audio scopes, meters and then you can have someone doing focus assist on the other side. The great thing about this camera is that it shoots to CFast cards, there are two slots, so once one fills, it will automatically fill the next one. In July, we’re planning on shipping an EF version of this, it will be US$6000, then there will be a PL also available for US$6500. The great thing about this camera that I really like, is that you can change out the sensor eventually. So in a couple of years, if a better sensor comes along, there’s four bolts on here, you can pull the sensor out and change it, put a new one in.
Yes, up to 4K.
Ed: A nd t ha t ’ s internal cards?
Kendall with camera lineup.
is
o nto
Kendall: Yes, the CFast cards. There’s two slots, and once one fills it automatically switches over to the next one. X Mark and Sandisk are making those right now – 120 gig and I guess in the future they’re planning on making 256. Ed:
Okay, and the codec that will go onto that?
Kendall: ProRes right now and then in the future we’re going to update that to a Cinema DNG RAW file. So it has the same sensor that a 4K production camera has, with a Super 35 size sensor, global shutter … Ed:
Wow.
Kendall: And then down the road, probably at the end of the year, we’ll have something in the B4 mount. The other thing that is later – I’m not sure exactly when they’re going to come out with this one, but there’ll be a whole body here that you see without a sensor and you can add on any camera that you want; if you have a favourite DSLR for instance you can go HDMI into the body. So you have all the options, all the features of this body, but you would be coming off of your DSLR camera. Ed: Okay, now I must make a comparison in size between this camera and your other 4K production camera. Why is it so much bigger? Kendall: Well, the purpose of those when they came out was to be more of an intimate camera that can get into tight places, maybe carry around without having any shoulder mounts or handles and things like that. Then people started to rig them up, which is fine, we have third party companies we work with, you can accessorise the camera, customise it any way you want, which is great, but there were tons of people with things hanging off of them, they’re trying to do XLR, all these other options; we figured we should make a camera where they already have these things built-in and on top of that, make it where you can do a
The URSA is big and affordable. Page 8
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higher frame rate, similar to 60p. We’re still upgrading the other cameras, the Pocket, the original cinema camera, and the 4K camera. Actually the 4K camera right after NAB will have an update and we’re going to include the RAW for the 4K in that. So we are continuing to use those cameras and update them as we go. But this is just more choices, more options, depending on your workflow. Ed: And really, for a price, it goes even further – the lens becomes the most expensive part of this camera? Kendall: Exactly. I mean, you can get up there in the lenses, but the nice thing is you can actually just grab pretty much any EF lens – the Canon EF lenses – and just pop it on there, or go PL … and it’s coming out in July.
Ed: Wow. And you’re using the same monitor here as you have in the URSA? Kendall: Exactly, it’s a 1920x1080, it’s a 10 inch screen on here. We also include some software called Camera Control, so it will go into the ATEM switcher and you can control the camera and you can do live colour grading. So all of our ATEM switchers will be updated with that and there’ll also be a whole new interface that will go across the board of all the ATEM switchers. Ed:
And it’s a very small form factor?
Kendall: It is, yes, it’s lightweight, you can throw it on a tripod, it’s really easy to use, it comes with this nice shield here too. Ed: Well, alright, keep wowing me … now apart from production switchers which, if anybody wants a production switcher, then the best thing to do is to talk to your Blackmagic representative, but in the other areas, Teranex Express? Kendall: Teranex Express is an option there with the Teranex family of products, so that you can upgrade from HD to Ultra HD. You can convert any of the footage that you have from HD to Ultra HD. You can go from Ultra HD and convert it down to HD if you need to. It also has a 12 gig SDI connection, so if you need to get up into the higher frame rates like 60p it will handle that – US$1395. We also have updated all the mini converters and a couple of our SD cards, so it rounds out the family of those products with the 6 gig SDI; they’re now all Ultra HD 4K capable. Ed: And the DeckLink which has been a very popular product for you I understand?
Behind the hood is a full sized screen.
Ed:
But wait, there’s more?
Kendall: Yes, I mean that product’s been around pretty much since the existence of the company I believe – yeah 2001 … Ed: And it’s kept the same form factor hasn’t it?
Kendall: There is more. We have a studio camera in two versions – there’s an HD version and there’s an Ultra HD version. The HD version will be US$2000; the Kendall: Yes. They’ve now updated the SDIs on Ultra HD version will be US$3000. They both come with here so that you have the 6 gig connection, single a micro four-thirds lens mount so, of course, you can do connection so you can go Ultra HD on these. With all of ring adapters and hook on pretty much any lens you want on there; XLR audio, there’s a line in here for a mic, headphone jack so you can do like the robust aviation headsets in there; and you can do talkback and tally through the camera. There’s a light on the front and there’s a light on here that will light up right when you’re doing the tally. Focus and iris – if you have an electronic lens on here it will control the focus and the iris on here. Both these cameras will shoot in 60p also. This is not a recording device at all, because the purpose of this camera is for live events, so for instance, you can go optical fibre right into our ATEM switchers. They also have SCI in and out, you have reference so you can Genlock these, and then you have a 12 Volt coming out for power. These cameras do have an internal battery that will last four hours, so if you did want to take it off of the tripod and run around with it, you could do it in a stadium or something, and you’d still The HyperDeck shuttle continues to be very popular. have four hours of battery life. Page 10
our 6 gig connections, you can still do SD and HD, but now have the ability to move up to Ultra HD when needed.
Bob: AU$995. Many of our cameras come with a full version of Resolve so you can get it with a camera. Ed: Is this a case of world domination?
Another key product for Blackmagic is DaVinci Resolve and we have Bob Caniglia from Blackmagic to tell us what’s new.
Bob: Well I think it’s a case of trying to enable the masses to be able to have a better workflow and this way … you know, back in the day when I was young and I wanted to do a project, I’d either shoot on video which wouldn’t look all that good, or try to find the money for film and that wasn’t going to work. Today, people can tell a really good story with our cameras and colour grade at a really low price and this way, they work on a better story. So they’re judged by the story and not by the pieces of equipment they use. Ed: And of course, being an editor myself, one of the big issues is that, you’ve learnt a particular system and how things work in a particular workflow, and then you want to go to a different one – what’s the easiest migration, what would be the closest comparison in the editing field to Resolve?
Bob from Blackmagic.
Ed: Bob, you’re one of the people who have been working on DaVinci Resolve for a long time and I understand version 11 is really big time? Bob: Yes 11 was a major upgrade. Last year version 10 sort of set the foundation for what we did in 11 by adding a lot more editing features – we added 70 new improvements to the editing side and another 70 plus improvements on the colour correction side, metadata handling and more. What we really are striving to do by improving our editing is that now, you can actually just go on Resolve editing and colour grading and finishing. The improved tools help us interact better with the other NLEs, so we can do better round tripping now because we have better tools so it’s easier to move back and forth. But one of the other things we did this year was to add collaborative editing. So you can have one editor on a timeline and one or two colourists working on the same timeline and, as they grade scenes, the editor can accept them or vice versa, depending on who is the master session holder. What this does is, say you’re in a colour grading session and somebody wants to slip the edit even though it’s supposed to be locked, it’s not; call up the editor, have him do it. And you can do it remotely – if media is in two different locations, you can do it remotely but they can all work on the same timeline. That kind of collaboration is designed to speed up the entire process and give people a lot more freedom. So one of the things we did in 11 was … if you own version 10, 11 is a free upgrade again and there’ll still be a lite version. The lite version won’t have the collaborative editing, but it will have all the other editing tools in it. Ed:
Bob: Well I think we’ve borrowed a lot of features from various NLEs and what we’ve done in Resolve is actually add tools to bring other people in. For instance, we added the colour wheels that Apple Colour had to bring those guys in. This year we’ve done another thing in the colour grading by bringing in tools that the still photographers are used to. When still photographers started to use Resolve, they didn’t understand some of the nomenclature, so we put in tools this year that you can use the terminology that is familiar to still photographers and this way they transition – “oh, that means this” and so it’s easier for them to learn. I’ve noticed that a lot of people from the various NLEs, when they got onto Resolve’s editing, they said “oh this feels familiar to me” because we have multiple ways to do things. So whether you’re a keyboard shortcut guy or you’re a mouse guy, you can do almost everything one way or the other, so we’re trying to be very homogenous in that sense. Ed: And you can try your lite version – just go to www.blackmagicdesign.com Bob: Yes just go into the download section … now the new 11 software will be ready in June, but version 10 which already had some editing is also free online, and so they can try that. Ed:
And how much is the lite version?
Bob: That would be free. Ed: That was the answer I thought you were going to say – and if you want the collaborative version? Page 11
You can’t get better than that.
NZVN
PLS – Matthews We are up to 117 interviews for NAB 2014 and who better to do the 117th interview but Linda Swope from Matthews Studio Equipment for PLS. Ed: Linda, still new things – there’s big things, there’s little things but I’d really like to start with a little thing that we’ve actually done before, because I find this is really, really clever and I’m hoping that everyone will get to see and touch. Once you handle this little thing, you’ll know that you won’t want to handle anything else again – what are we looking at? Linda: Exactly – it’s our new Quick Release Adapter for the NOGA Arms. It’s the simplest and quickest way to mount a lightweight camera, a light, a monitor – anything that’s lightweight that will go onto the NOGA Arms that weighs 12-14 pounds. It’s a click on, click off, the hot shoe mount stays on your device, so you’re not turning and turning and turning and turning to screw it on and then it snaps right in. Ed:
Yes, we need to see more of these.
Linda: Ed:
It’s a great little product.
Okay, now onto the big things?
Linda: So here we have a revamp of a stand that we used to make in what we called our Vator line. This is the Low Boy Crank-O-Vator. Ed:
Crank-O-Vator?
Linda: Yes, Low Boy Crank-O-Vator. So we’ve brought back the Low Boy Crank and it’s basically a double riser unit, that’s as high as it goes (3 feet) a single riser unit that stops about here; it’s a studio and a location rolling crank stand that will hold about 150 pounds, so the big cinema lights, and allow them to move them around well. Ed:
But normally you have to get lights up high?
Linda: Normally you do and there are stands out there that do that. Our hope with this, since we redesigned the castings, is that the Low Boy will soon become a Crank-O-Vator and a Super Crank-O-Vator that will get the lights much higher. Ed: Okay, because you can’t add an extra pole onto that? Linda: Ed:
No.
Otherwise it’s just too unstable?
Linda: Yes. But like I said, all the castings will be common so the thing is you have to make longer legs for the bigger stands; we’ll just get longer tubing, or make it a triple riser and get higher for sure. Ed: It’s just puzzling to me that one would want to have lights that low? Linda: But they do; but another really interesting thing is that lighting companies that burn out lights so they come back in, they have to be serviced, this is the perfect height for them to put this on, to sit on their little stool to service their light. So you see them all over for different reasons. They were a really big seller when we made them. Ed:
And you’re making them again?
Linda: Ed:
But better?
Linda: Ed:
And we’re making them again. Better, much better yes.
Now, stands – what you’re most famous for?
Linda: We have some new lightweight aluminium stands, just lightweight versions of the ones we’ve been making for years. This is an aluminium Combo, all aluminium, black powder coat, so it does the same thing it just is a lightweight. It won’t hold as much weight of course, but there are people out there that are like “I don’t want to carry that 30 pound stand around”; and then we’ve got a lightweight aluminium Baby which is all aluminium except the top riser is steel. Then this is a new triple riser Combo aluminium with the steel top riser and they’re all black powder coat. It’s made the exact same way, just out of aluminium instead of steel for those who are concerned about lugging those heavy stands around. Ed:
It’s still very stable and very secure?
Linda: Oh yes, and the top riser being steel, that just gives it a little extra stability at the top when you’re using all three risers. Ed: Now I did notice something as I came in that caught my eye, and again it’s in the smaller version of the Matthews equipment, and you’ve got a camera mounted on top of it? Linda: Yes, and this you’ve seen before. This is a couple of years old. Ed: Well sometimes I miss things Linda. I’m not the man I used to be. Linda: I’m just going to show you. It’s a Baby Ball Head Adapter, so it’s Baby here, so it can mount on any Baby pin. It terminates on the top of the three-eighths male thread, so a standard ball head just screws right
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on. So you can mount that on any Baby stand, any Baby clamp, a Baby plate – anything with a Baby pin. So you could get this camera just about anywhere.
probably about 16 feet I would say off the top of my head. Ed:
That’s about 5 metre.
Linda: Yes, and it just basically turns our regular Intel-A-Jib into a crane – a small crane. Ed: And it’s got quite a decent sized camera on the end there? Linda: Yes, it will hold 35 pounds at full extension and the good thing is, if you are an owner of an Intel-AJib, you can buy an upgrade kit and then you have an Intel-A-Big.
Ed: I see some people standing on a stand here, just showing how secure it is?
Ed:
All these names. Who comes up with them?
Linda:
Linda: Yes, that’s the MiniVator stand. We made it several years ago but discontinued it because there were issues with the gear that was in there. We’ve redesigned the gear, we’ve redesigned all the insides and beefed up the castings, the spider castings, and just made it a lot stronger, brought it back new and improved. That will hold about an 80 pound light – not as heavy duty as the Crank-O-Vator but it’s a good cranking stand. Ed: And cranking stands are important just to get that slight variation in where you want to throw your light and you don’t want to have to bring the whole thing down and adjust it and then put it back up again? Linda: You want to get it up there, get it as close as you can and get it up and get your shot. Ed: And talking about getting it up, we’ve got a very long jib? Linda: Yes, what we’ve done is we’ve taken a standard Intel-A-Jib and added two extensions to it and a cable kit which increases your length to … that’s
Ed:
So they haven’t called anything a “Linda” yet?
Linda: Ed:
Ed Phillips, our boss, our leader, No.
Oh, I must have a talk to Ed.
NZVN
PLS – BB&S Lighting For PLS, we are at BBS Lighting ( Brother, Brother & Sons ) and we have Peter Plesner. Ed: Peter, we had this visit from Jelle just a couple of months ago in Auckland and all of us who attended the show were extremely impressed, in fact, so impressed, that I just brought Phil Keoghan along here to have a look at your Soft Area light. He’s gone away with brochures and hopefully we’ll see the BBS light on some of his shows in the time to come, but in the meantime, you haven’t been resting on any laurels, you’ve actually been working, so what’s new? Peter: Well the newest thing that we’re showing is more and new additional accessories for the AREA 48. So we’ve now made a set of detachable barn doors that clicks on and off very easily. We made a new softbox that is hard, so it also clicks on very easily; and then we made this “run and gun” unit. There’s now one with handles and we have a belt pack battery pack so you don’t have the weight of the battery on the unit itself. This is very lightweight, it’s just 6 pounds and this will give you a lot of fun running with this one. Ed: Just tell me, in terms of run and gun, I imagine, because of the arrangement of the phosphor panel in the front and no shadows, this is quite different from putting any other single panel in a run and gun situation because, with any little movement you would see the shadows?
A super-sized Intel-A-Jib from Matthews.
Page 14
Peter: Yes exactly and that’s the beauty about this one. Shadow rendition is really, really soft; it wraps really nicely around the face. You can run and you don’t have to be that
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The next thing I would like to show you is that we have now made a clamp. You take four standard AREA 48s and we made a kit with this clamp. It comes apart, it’s just three parts held together. This is a really powerful machine with four units together. This has just gotten into production over the last week here. Ed: And each one has its own little panel, but you would of course always use the same panel on each of the four wouldn’t you? Peter: Yes. Of course you can control them individually, but you would probably do that. Ed: Okay, anything else? What about public interest? We’re still on day one, but it looks as though you’ve had plenty of people coming through the booth, even though you’re not really in the lighting area? Peter: It’s already been really, really good for us, so a lot of good contacts – really good. So of course Peter holds the AREA 48 soft in “run and gun” mode. worldwide now there are a lot of gaffers accurate in your movements, because the intensity over using these, a lot of DOPs are using these. In Australia, we made some very big softboxes – they are 8x8 feet, the whole width of the beam spread is very similar, so like a standard 8x8 foot frame, mounted with a half grid it’s a lot easier than running with a small 200 Watt in front of it and reflector behind that. It’s only two feet battery on your belt. deep; and then in that we mounted eight AREA 48s and that is a really powerful light source and a really soft light source for larger studios. Ed: So that’s it. Take a standard panel and put them together in a sensible way and you’ve got a huge variety possible. Peter: Exactly. And the good thing is that you don’t just buy this thing and then leave them like that there; you can de-rig it and use the units as single units or as 2 by 2, so that’s an advantage also for rental companies that they don’t have to buy something that is then collecting dust for half a year on the shelf until it’s got to be used again. Because normally for space lights and for large screens, if you buy LED space lights, they are at this point extremely expensive – so you have to be able to use it for something else as well. Ed:
You can now clamp four together.
Clever technology, clever thinking. NZVN
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Atomise – Avid Richard Kelly from Atomise is telling us the NAB highlights from Avid. Ed: Of course we’re at Avid – he hasn’t had the purple tattoo yet, but it’s coming … Richard: It’s on the back of my neck. Ed: Right, what have you found exciting? Richard: It’s been a really exciting show this time. It’s been great catching up with a whole pile of old friends and colleagues and seeing what’s going on out there. I’ve been in the US for two weeks already; I’ve been off at the Purple Mothership in Burlington doing an Avid Certified Support Representative Interplay course Ed: Do you get a grade? Richard: I did – I nailed it. Ed: So you’re A+ are you? Richard: Yeah, that’s right. Ed: Exactly, exactly, we won’t ask for the report card. But, what have you learnt at the show? Richard: I’ve learnt that Avid has changed their way of doing business dramatically, as of now. Ed: For the better? Richard: Yes, it’s all positive. They’ve brought out some things that customers have been asking for, for a long time and they’ve also brought a new paradigm for interacting in our broadcasting environment and community. So the first thing a lot of our users will notice is that we’ve got a massive change to the way the professional editors – so Media Composer and Pro Tools – are licensed. When you purchase, you’ve now got three options. You’ve got a “by the month” or “by the year” subscription, which is very, very cost effective; or you’ve got permanent licences – effectively the same way we work now; and you have the Holy Grail that bigger sites have been asking for, for quite some time – fully floating licences, concurrent licensing. So you drop a licensed server onto the network, let’s say you’ve got Media Composer installed on 50 machines, you’ve got 20 licences because you know you’re only ever going to need 20 at a time, someone starts up Media Composer, it picks up an available licence, hands it back when they finish. Ed: Aaah you don’t have to carry a dongle around? Richard: You don’t have to carry a dongle around, you’ve got full management, so you can have a standard build go out to all your workstations and, for somebody like TVNZ for example, where you’ve got an Enterprise level system, it makes scalability very palatable, because you don’t have to have multiple builds of workstations. So a very nice feature and I know something that a lot of people have been asking for. Ed: Well, that’s very clever, and I must say that’s the first I’ve heard, because there’s certainly been some grumblings about other people who have just gone the subscription model and offering nothing else, but this sounds like it’s for the customer? Richard: It’s not only for the customer – Avid have been very clear that they are 100% committed to maintaining their relationship with their channel partners. They haven’t gone the Adobe route; they haven’t dropped their local partners, so they’ve been very careful to make sure that there is going to be a good continuation of both support and communication
in our local market, which in New Zealand especially is incredibly important. We’re a long way away from everywhere else … Ed: Don’t we know it, yes. Richard: So I think it’s a really good thing. Ed: Excellent. Now I understand Interplay has really taken off in your market Richard? Richard: Interplay has become a massive feature of what we’re doing. Obviously, we’re known for shared storage and collaborative environments and the New Zealand market has been the “go-to” place for that. What we’ve seen in the last year ( and obviously we’ve had some reasonably successful installations ) at TVNZ for example, with the Blacksand Post and now at Weta Digital, is a real uptake of Interplay. Partly it’s because the price has come down to something palatable in our market; part of that is also because the functionality is so good that it’s hard to look past. What we’ve seen is a change from people looking at just storage, to now virtually all of our quotes are storage plus Interplay – and that’s allowing a real shift in both workflows and capabilities in-house. That’s another one of the really big things – you’ll notice that the big sign this year over on the Avid stand is “Avid Everywhere”. Ed: Just give us a quick run through again of Interplay. What does that mean to an Avid user – who would use Interplay and why? Richard: Avid Interplay – the one we’re talking about – is a Production Asset Management system. If we start at the real base level of it … when you’re working with just storage, you’ve got a big bucket that you’re just pouring storage into and your management of that is completely manual. At its base level, what Interplay does is it allows you to know what media and assets or what assets you have on your system, what they are being used for, who is using them, what rights you have for them; and then, if you move beyond that, it allows you to bring in automated workflows and functionality. So one of the really amazing things here is Cloud workflows, in this case, private Cloud workflows. If you have Interplay, you have your Media Composer; you can have capability to have a remotely attached Media Composer or Pro Tools that works streaming data live from your ISIS via your Interplay to a remote site. Let’s say you’ve got a VFX show
Page 17
happening, your production editorial is in Vancouver, your VFX house is in Wellington, you can have a completely tight real time relationship with complete control of versioning and asset management of handover. So it removes that manual handover flow. For ENG, for example, it means you can be out there shooting, you can bring up all of your resources you have back at base, cut to story, drop in your new material, it will send back high res and proxies of the new material, and the story goes to air. Then the next stage, your reporter can pull out their iPad, check that they’ve written their rundown correctly, proof it, check that approval has been made, use it as a teleprompter, send the whole lot back to base. Ed: So that’s Avid Everywhere? Richard: It’s everywhere … and what Avid is pitching this time, Avid Everywhere with the Avid Media Central UX is a platform. I’m going to watch your face really, really carefully when I say this next part, but what they have announced is a full connectivity toolkit to open up the system 100% to both their collaborative parties and their competitors to allow anybody to join Avid’s platform. Ed: Wow – that is a bit of a turnaround Richard I must say, after years and years of Avid being rather “retentive”, shall we say, to be so open. What’s brought this about? Richard: We’re working in a world where people are collaborating across the globe … Ed: And they don’t all have Avid? Richard: They don’t all have Avid. We’re working in environments where you’ve got very key systems in customers’ environments. That might not be Avid, obviously we’d like them to be Avid for storage, for management and for editors, because those are the things that I look after and we’re really known for, but there’s room for lots of different products. Now it is completely open for any developer to plug in and work directly with that environment. That’s a massive change. So you can imagine what that means to a large broadcaster who might be using an ingest server from X company and a playout server from Y company … now you can have full integration with the Avid platform. Most likely they’ve already got iNEWS, they might have Command, so that gives them a really tight integration of their entire system, just simply by being on the Avid platform. The really cool thing is the vast majority of our existing clients are already there, just needing to upgrade software. It’s not a new buy, it’s just upgrading to the next level.
workflow, we upgrade the software, it becomes 4K capable. It’s a great story. Ed: So in terms of the Avid updates, how is that going to work … not like the others I hope? Richard: No, you get a notification that an update is there and you certainly get to manage it completely which, of course, in our tightly managed environments and workflows, is incredibly important. Avid is very aware of who uses their products and what they use them for and they’re not going to go and do something like that other “A” company has done, which has caused a bit of angst amongst its users. Ed: Yes, one especially! Richard: The last thing to talk about here was something that actually happened in the lead-up to the show – it started on Thursday night – and that was the inaugural Avid Customer Association event. I attended that and I was interested to see what this thing may look like and do, and I was pleasantly amazed and happy to see that there were 1100 creative professionals, the vast majority of whom were clients at executive level and engineering level, as well as some channel partners like myself, getting together. Avid has taken the step of saying “you’re our users, tell us what you want, we’re listening and we’re going to build our products the way that you want us to do.” So they’ve set up a number of boards, with some rather experienced and respected industry professional people on them, and so the executive team is getting information directly from their user base. Ed:
Ed: That’s very cool. Okay, that’s for the big boys, now what about the smaller users of the Avid product – any news there with developments with Media Composer, etc – it’s now 4K is it? Richard: Media Composer has been 4K for quite a while. That was something we announced last year, but this year we’ve got support on all the ISIS products for 4K in a collaborative storage environment. Ed: Alright, so 4K’s already there – what other developments? Richard: ISIS 5500, one of the favourites in our market, it now scales all the way up to 12 chassis which makes 768 Terabytes of storage. That’s a massive change from the six chassis we’ve done up till now. They’ve already increased the file count with the current version of software, so in our market, that’s going to be a really important thing. That means anybody who has bought an ISIS 5000 over the last few years now has a continuing upgrade path for adding capability onto their system – and of course it’s 4K supported, so even if you bought your system three years ago with an HD Page 18
That’s got to be good for the brand.
NZVN
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Atomise – Apace With Richard Kelly from Atomise, we are with Dr Lee Hu from Apace Systems. Ed: I understand you’ve done something clever yet again Dr Lee? Dr Lee: Thank you, yes. We are the firm that provided the new solution and the new workflow for this very dynamic environment. At this show, we are involved in the solution for “Adobe Anywhere” so if you look at this, we are working out from a data server side to support the postproduction in the broadcast environment. With Adobe and Avid and ITP, we view them like from an application perspective, from a user perspective. So Adobe Anywhere is from a user and an application perspective that is anywhere, but we promote “Anywhere” since we released the postMAM four years ago, and we talk about “data anywhere”. So you have three elements to deal with – data, user, application. Ed: And it’s good to have the “Anywhere” being on your own server? Dr Lee: Yes. Now with Adobe Anywhere, we can seamlessly integrate it inside anywhere in Premiere, you can access your media anywhere; you can access the search engine and timeline markers and export and ingest all these things always in the environment, so it’s really very good and exciting things from our perspective. And now, with Adobe Anywhere and Premiere and Apace postMAM and also storage system, you have an entire solution for the customer in a single site.
Dr Lee: Yes, which is very important from our users’ perspective. You have a workspace to gather each group and read and write access control, and besides that we actually have things beyond that. Fundamentally, we think the data for media companies is the most important asset. So like a bank that carries no cash. So this thing is the key. So we look at it as a private Cloud concept. Basically you have ownership of the data, you have total control of access of the data, and this is very different from a public account at for example Google. Every three months they say “okay, we have a privacy policy change – do you agree or not?” Ed: Do you want the US government to have a look at what you’ve got on your storage?
Ed: Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume that an Apace system like this, you can have Adobe Anywhere as part of that system, but you could also have other editing platforms that connect to this storage system? You could have a photo storage file, you could have any sort of file stored here in different bins and places and it’s all going to work seamlessly. So you’re not limited to one particular vendor in terms of their editing software for example?
Dr Lee: Exactly. So you have total control of that. You can yank out this, not allow any outside access, or you can have access through VPN – this is your choice, and that’s as we see it very different, because you know like interstate commerce is governed by the different laws, the same thing is that between companies the law is different. That you have control of your data is very key for us.
Dr Lee: Yes we are application and the vendor and the platform agnostic. So basically, we support AAV to FCP and also all this access is browser based, the worldwide access through the PM. Also we provide a system we call Media Data Machine. Basically it’s selfmanaged, so you can have two tiers, so we have a postMAM Global on top of that postMAM, so you can do the local search or have like a big organisation like ABC or CNN, they can have like a single search window; Global all the different branch and the search concurrently. So then they will return the search result. All these things we designed with scalability in mind. So heterogeneously, you have our older system, new system, they all can work together, but the key part is that the media data is the most essential thing. You can have a different processing application, you have a different OS environment, all that, but at the end of the day the content is the king, you need to have a way to access from a mobile device, from a local and a network.
Richard: It’s a fantastic system. I’m very proud to use the Apace system on The Hobbit as a disaster recovery system.
Ed:
So it’s anywhere and any file?
Dr Lee: Yes, anywhere, any file, any format and any price form and application. Ed: But also security, so I’m pretty sure you can say that you can lock off certain parts of the system so you can provide access to people to certain bins, to certain applications, whatever, within the system, and allow them to use those, but lock them out of others?
Ed:
Is this a good system Richard?
Ed: And having said that, you’ve already told me in the past that in fact it could have actually replaced the other system that was running? Richard: There are some limitations on it that we can only have four editing clients running live, but should we have an issue that one building is no longer available, we can keep our production completely going. We’ve tested that, it works beautifully and I ( as Atomise ), and also our client, have been very happy with both the product and the fantastic support we’ve had from Apace. It’s really working well for us. Ed: Because that’s really important to you, to keep your name there that you are getting that support to keep your good name within the New Zealand community? Richard: That’s right. Support is key to everything that we do. We’re not a sales driven company, we are a support driven company and that is the culture I’m trying to bring and keep within what we do, so it’s incredibly important that the relationships we have for the products we have, are with companies that are equally as support driven. I’m not interested in box movers; I want people who are there for the long haul and to help maintain and grow those relationships with our clients. NZVN
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PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS
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Atomise – StorageDNA Richard Kelly from Atomise took me to another of his suppliers, StorageDNA. Ed: Richard, yet another storage system – there’s got to be something different about this one? Richard: This system tags onto the end of the editorial process or the delivery process. What StorageDNA do is manage an archive of media to longterm storage. So, for the purpose of this, we’re going to talk about LTO, because it’s the familiar one. What StorageDNA have is a range of different levels of product from a single tape drive, workstation based product through to server based and tape library based products, up to very large library based products. So something that meets all of the range in archive at a really good price point, but the really cool thing that these guys have in Avid workflow, is that their software understands an Avid project, an Avid bin and an Avid sequence. So you can take your finished Avid show that lives on your local storage or on your ISIS storage and it will gather up all the bits and pieces it needs to drop it all onto a tape for you, which may form your delivery mechanism to your end user, or it may be for your personal archive. Where this is great over everybody else, everybody else requires you to back up on a workspace or a drive, leaving you to drop stuff on there and then you bring it all back. This is very definable, so you can do a broad drop onto a tape, but it’s very aware of the edit environment; it allows you to do a completely definable drop onto a tape.
gentleman at the booth we’re looking at there is the owner of the company. He designs the products. It brings back that theme that we have of the last three companies we’ve been to, you’re dealing directly with the people who make the stuff … when you need something, you can get an answer, really straightforward & they listen when you need changes. Ed: That’s ways good. Richard:
Ed: So it’s your whole project, your metadata, your files, everything? Richard: Everything. It gives you a very simple transport, restore and deep archive methodology at a price point that is fantastic. We’ve got these in the field working and they are beautiful – absolutely beautiful. Ed: What other options are there in terms of the technology … if you’re not going to LTO tape, what else can you do? Richard: In theory you can plug anything you like into their system. Ed: Okay, so you’re not tied to LTO tape – if you had some other archive medium, you could use that? Richard: That’s right. They’re providing an appliance that manages and remembers what is where, and then allows you to restore and backup from your deep archive. The last part of that chain in our world is as we talked about before – Interplay is becoming a massive force in our market; this product is Interplay aware. That means that, when you archive your project, all that metadata can stay on in Interplay and Interplay understands that that media is no longer on your spinning disc, it’s on an LTO tape and knows how to talk to StorageDNA to bring that media back online. Ed:
Well it’s got to be good?
Richard: It is very good – very, very good. We’ve had a very successful installation at the Open Wānanga. Those guys have really enjoyed the implementation of the product and it’s working very successfully for them. Again, it’s great to find another small company; the Page 22
alIt’s fantastic.
NZVN
Gencom – Plura For Gencom, we are at Plura Broadcast Inc with Ray Kalo.
Ray: Well we have two sizes in this series – we have a 7” and 9”. What we’re looking at here is 9 inch. Ed:
Right – and the screen resolution? Ray: It’s 1280 by 800, so it’s a high res screen resolution. Ed: Now something this clever and with so many nits, one would expect a very high price, but? Ray: Not really. Currently running it for US$2500 list. Ed:
we’re
That’s for the 9 inch?
Ray: That’s for the 9 inch and the 7 inch as well. Ed: Oh, so you can have 2 inches for free? Ray: Yes, Plura is so generous, aren’t we!! Ed: Now, we’re just having a little peak round the back – lots of connectors, all that one would require in there and of course at the moment it’s on mains but it will run on battery. Now at the back here it looks like Ethernet connectors. What are they for?
Ray and the DBM-155 monitor.
Ed: Nicki sent me here to look at a new 7 inch monitor and immediately I can see why. This is the PHB-209-3G multi-format Plura monitor. What’s really exciting about it is that they’ve got a whopping great light shining down on it like the sun, and you can see the picture as clear as day. So what have you done? Ray: Well, we are using a new high brightness panel. We did not just increase the brightness, we maintained the colourimetry; it’s not just making it brighter, you have to make it colour accurate, so that’s what we did. Ed: So you’re telling me that a standard monitor of this size would be around 100 nits? Ray: That’s correct. In a regular standard broadcast facility, the SMPTE standard is 100 nits. Of course some panels can produce up to 200 or 300, but this one goes up to a 1300. Ed: And the purpose of that is not to have it inside a studio, but …? Ray: Outside – outdoor applications under the sun and in direct sunlight. Ed:
Especially with Steadicam operators?
Ray: Yes, for anyone who is shooting outside and looking at the video, it will be as if he is watching inside the facility.
and GPI. Ed:
What’s GPI?
Ray: GPI is General Purpose Interconnection – so you can use it for tally, you can control the monitor over using contacts closure. Ed: Right, so again all of the connectors that one expects with a Plura? Ray: Yes, everything you see with a PBM 3G series as far as the connectivity and the feature-set. Ed: And it’s all aluminium, it’s all solid and there are lots of little screw-holes in there for attaching it to various things? Ray: You can rack mount it, if you have a flight pack, but also a desk stand. Ed: Right, but you haven’t stopped there – have you made anything else? Ray: Yes we did … we have added another size monitor. We’ve added a 10 inch to the PBM 3G family, so now we have a 7, 9 and 10 as well. It’s a bigger size with higher resolution. Ed:
But this is an inside one?
Ray: Yes, it’s for indoors.
Ed: And they don’t need a hood, they don’t need to hide in the shadows? Ray: No hood, nothing at all as you can see. You can see the difference when it’s regular 100 nits and 1300. Ed: Wow … and that’s it, it’s not just a super-bright monitor but it maintains its clear crisp colourful picture even in this bright light and it’s not only that, there are lots of buttons on it Ray? Ray: Yes we’ve included all the beautiful standard Plura features – waveform, vector, audio metering, speakers, audio decoding and de-embedding, all multi-format inputs including 3G, so you have two inputs with two outputs, DVI HDMI PC component S-Video and composite. Ed:
Ray: These are for firmware updates
And is 7 inch really big enough? Page 23
Ed: So what is the technology that allows you to have that extra brightness in there? Ray: It’s the back light control, calibration and driver. Ed: Is this something that sort of reduces the life of the monitor? Ray: No, not really, it’s a powerful panel, it’s going to need a little bit more power, but it’s meant for that use. There are a lot of applications where LCD monitors are required outdoors, so our supplier delivered a good panel and we’re using it. Ed: Now in the big monitor series, you’ve released a bit of a whopper? Ray: It’s the DBM-155. 55 inch with a slim bezel, mainly is used for multi-viewer applications, so big wall systems or master control in production rooms. Ed: Or client viewing – but it’s not a master monitor is it? Ray: No, it’s not meant for colour critical application. Ed:
So have you got a 4K monitor in the pipeline?
All the connectors you might need.
Ray: A 4K monitor will be in the pipeline once we know where we’re going with the standards. The standards are not set to stone yet; it’s very hard to speculate … Ed: Because I guess, if you get the dimensions wrong, nobody’s going to buy it? Ray: That’s exactly right. I would rather invest our resources in the technologies that are practical at this current time. Ed: Now I’ve recently spoken to an illustrious camera manufacturer and their take on this is that the resolution is actually only part of the picture. To get a good picture, there are lots of other things and I guess does that go with monitors too? Ray: Oh absolutely – there are a lot of factors involved in that and with 4K, there’s not just the panel, it’s not the driver, there’s a lot of inputs specification going into it. You know you have to consider all of those aspects. Ed:
Not just the number of pixels?
Ray: Not just the number of pixels, not at all. number of pixels is just one tiny part of it.
The
Ed:
Ray: I would say the client – to me, any technology has to be driven from the bottom up, and you need demands. If there are demands, if there are people or viewers who are going to be willing to invest in the 4K to look at a great picture. Facilities have to reinvest in a lot of gear to deploy a 4K; it’s not just buying a camera, it’s not just buying a monitor. Ed:
Ed:
Because then you might be here tomorrow?
Ray: That’s a great thought – we will be here as long as we continue to provide affordable, reliable and quality products our customers can buy and use for NZVN many years to come.
We are here at AJA for Gencom and we have Tony Cacciarelli to tell us about TruZoom for AJA. Ed: Tony, I see you’ve also got Corvid Ultra in here, so obviously it ties in well? Tony: Yes, Corvid Ultra is a key part of the TruZoom software. We’ve been working on this for a little while, primarily as a sports replay and evaluation tool. We’ve done some work initially to be able to capture a 4K image and then, using the power of the Corvid Ultra in the TruZoom software, as well as our TrueScale hardware, we’re able to go in and isolate a particular area within a 4K image and highlight the action without having to actually move the camera. So we can keep the camera on a wide shot and wherever the action’s moving, we’re able to move our Region of Interest around that 4K image and extract out HD resolution video that can then be fed into the television stream. So you’re doing this live rather than in post?
Tony: Correct yes. This live at the event, primarily recording all the time and particularly exciting play, they
Some of them still haven’t got to the HD level?
Ray: Exactly, there are some people still using analogue, so factor all that in, including the economical atmosphere we’re living in now – cash flow is king. So for us we’re going to be careful and we’re going to wait and see what happens.
Gencom – AJA
Ed:
So what are the other parts?
is designed to be used for replay. So we’re then, if they have a can use this system to Page 24
zoom in on that and really get the framing they want. You know, they’ve always got cameras that are covering all the angles and those guys are great at being able to cover it; this gives them that one more level of coverage, as well as being able to do slow motion, pauses. TruZoom has a full timeline so you can control variable speed playback as well as the framing and you can build up a move that can then be fed out live. The whole system can be driven live on air if you want to do that, but primarily, they’ve been using it for replays where they’ll come back, set up a move and then they’ll be able to go to the TruZoom system to show the playback and show the detail of that play from an angle that may not have been covered by the other cameras. Ed: And you’ve always got the safety of that wide shot to go back to if you get your zoom wrong? Tony: Exactly, yes. You can always go back and change the point of interest. So sometimes, for the first pass through, maybe the point of interest is on a particular area of the play, but they may also want to be able to show another area where a particular player was out of position in a football match or something like that, where they show how that person being out of position affected the whole play. It gives them a ton of flexibility for being able to move around the playing field and pinpoint which particular bits of action they want. Ed: As you say, the heart of this is the Corvid Ultra, but this isn’t the only thing that Corvid Ultra can do? Tony: Absolutely. Corvid Ultra is a high quality processing engine. It’s able to take 4K in and out and it has a heavy duty processing engine around it and we’ve got development partners that have been tying into that as well. Colorfront is a colour grading system using Corvid Ultra as their 4K I/O into their colour grading system as well as Quantel. We have Grass Valley that’s onboard now as a partner with Corvid Ultra and they’re doing some work on a modified version of TruZoom. We have a long list of partners that are actually working with Corvid Ultra using it as 4K I/O and a very powerful processing engine to drive their software. Ed: And in terms of using this in post, you could always do it in software but it’s going to take you a long time and you’re not going to get the same quality as you do with a hardware option? Tony: Absolutely yes. The hardware speed of Corvid Ultra really gives you a real time power that you just can’t get any other way. Ed:
The “Ultra” sort of gives it away?
Tony: Yes, we put that in there specifically so that we set ourselves apart. Ed: Now I know another area that Gencom has been particularly keen on with AJA in the past has been the FS1 and now you’ve added an “X” to it? Tony: Yes, we’ve added an X and it’s a whole new product really, but it is based off of our FS line, doing all of the same up, down cross-conversion and frame synchronisation, that people who are familiar with the FS1 and the FS2 love and know and have used for quite some time. FS1-X is the next evolution of that, adding in the frame rate conversion capabilities that people
Connections on the AJA FSI-X.
have really been asking for and now we’ve got the ability to convert realistically anything in and anything out from this box. So we’re showing on our booth here a demonstration of converting 1080 59.94 to 1080p 50, a classic example of being able to take in and change frame rates. So that’s one of the primary features that’s new with the FS1-X and it’s a really nice motion adaptive conversion, so we really wanted to have something that was going to be above and beyond the normal conversions that you might see. Ed: And just looking at the two screens here, as regards their picture clarity, I can’t tell the difference; in terms of the speed of it, it’s a fraction of a second difference, so virtually it’s live? Tony: Yes, we have a small delay between the two because of the processing that we’re doing in the FS1-X but … Ed:
It’s a couple of frames?
Tony: Yes, about a frame or two, but as far as the actual motion within the frame, it’s very smooth, very clean, much cleaner than you would see again in other typical frame rate conversions. One of the other things that we’ve added on to the FS1-X as part of the whole “X” is MADI audio support. This has really grown with the rise of 5.1 and 7.1 audio, the need to handle a lot of audio has increased, so we now have direct coax and fibre inputs and outputs for MADI audio right on the back of the FS1-X. You combine that with the embedded audio that we have in our SDI and fibre and HDMI, the analogue audio inputs, the AES audio inputs and outputs, all of that gives us a 224x224 channel audio matrix router in this device. Ed:
Everyone needs one of those?
Tony: I’ve got one at home! In a professional environment, just the audio routing capabilities of this box are almost worth the price of admission, so it really gives you an incredible amount of power over remapping your audio. You know, one of the funny things with 5.1 and 7.1 audio is that there’s no real defined standard for which channel is which speaker. Some may do left and right on channels 1 and 2, then the centre channel, then the sub, then the rear surrounds; others might do left, centre, right on 1, 2, 3. So audio remapping becomes a real issue if you’re getting something coming in with audio configured one way and you need to reconfigure it, that’s where that audio matrix routeing really shines. Ed: No defined television? Tony:
Page 26
standards
–
That’s television today.
that’s
sounds
like NZVN
Gencom – Ross For Gencom, we are here at Ross Video and we are starting with Dae Yung Choe. Ed:
Dae, you look after Asia-Pacific, is that right?
Dae: Yes. I take care of the business operations for Asia-Pacific as well as Oceanic which is New Zealand, Australia and the South Pacific. Ed: Now we’re starting where we’ve started many times before, but for good reason – we’re starting at Carbonite? Dae: Absolutely. Carbonite is the No 1 selling switcher for Ross Video. What we’re showing at NAB this year is our version 9 software which adds tons of new features on top of the rich feature set we have today. So with version 9 software, users will get an additional .5 MLE capability on their 2 MLE carbonite switcher giving them a 2.5 MLE engine. So any customers who have purchased a 2 MLE Carbonite switcher from serial number 1 to the latest Carbonite switcher we sold, can download the software for free and enable this extra horsepower. Ed:
How can you have half a switcher capability?
Dae: .5 MLE is quite common and very useful on certain applications. While it doesn’t provide the full MLE functions such as DVE’s, it does provide 2 Linear / Luma Keyes and a Program / Preset Bus with the ability to perform cuts, dissolves and mediawipes. Ed:
Right.
Dae: To support the additional .5 MLE, we are also introducing 2 new Carbonite control panels, a “3S” and a “3X”. “3S” is a 3 MLE 24 crosspoint button panel and a “3X” is a 3 MLE 32 crosspoint button panel. These new panels allow the user to have a dedicated button row for their .5 MLEs. Existing users with a 2 MLE Carbonite panel can access the .5 MLE by toggling one of the MLE rows on their panel. Version 9 also brings you MiniMEs. MiniME is like an internal miniature MLE that’s available in conjunction with the regular full MLE. 4 MiniME’s are available in a system and each MiniME comes with an independent mixer and 2 keyers that can be used anywhere in the signal path. It can be used for pre-keying of a source, downstream keying, midstream key layering, all without touching the resources of the traditonal MLE. Another cool function the MiniME provides is the ability to support Multiscreen applications. These are IMAG applications. In this application, Carbonite is able to output a single source to be scaled over all four outputs in multiple screen layouts. Keying and DVEs can also be included to create visually rich effects. Bezel compensation and edge blending functions are all included. So today, with version 9 software, Carbonite offers 9 various control panels and 4 types of frames to build your perfect Carbonite system to address any production application. Ed:
the physical buttons, the spacing between them, spacing and gapping the ME modules, creating a menu control module. As opposed to leaving the control surface on the touchscreen, we now have the panel to navigate my menus right from the surface, with the knobs for the values. We’ve gone to a 16x9 touchscreen, putting more information on the screen, but still maintaining the similar menu workflow that people have been used to since Synergy, then Synergy MDX, then Vision and now Acuity. We’ve now gone to two new frame chassis – one is 8RU which is the exact same size and footprint as our previous generation Vision large frame; the other is 4RU. We went slightly larger to a 4RU chassis because the customer feedback we had was 3RU but limited IO is not as good as 4RU. So we said alright, they’re okay with going 1RU bigger. Our 4RU system is 60 in with 40 out. It’s up to 6 MEs all in that chassis. Every ME has 10 channels of 2D DVE and 4 channels of ME store with 4 gigabytes of RAM cache standard, plus a 4 channel global store with 4 gigbytes of cache also standard. 3D DVE is optional, and those can be added in on an ME by ME basis and it’s a 2 channel with Alpha card and that just plugs in. And that can share between MEs, so ME 1 and 2 can share their 3D DVEs, 3 and 4, 5 and 6. Ed: What sort of production would amount of technology?
require that
Les: Well it’s not necessarily what kind of production – we have plenty of customers, they want to put 8 windows up you know – CNBC Asia’s done it, I’m sure there’s a few stations in Australia and New Zealand who have needed to put 5, 6, 7 boxes up. So having the DVEs just allows you to put it up. The other benefit is if I need to move and manipulate graphics or chroma keys that require two channels. So it’s not just about boxes, but I need to shift and resize graphics. So having two channels, they’re always there, always available to me. That’s why the 3D DVE there’s fewer channels of it. There’s no need to option out tons of 3D channels because I only need a little bit and that’s where you get into the 3D manipulation. Now the ME stores, that’s something that becomes a lot more powerful. Most productions are now very heavily graphics driven, I need bugs, I need wipes, I need elements that I bring into my production. So instead of being just 8 channels wide, every ME is 4 channels plus 4 channels globally. So now in a 4 ME switcher, we’re talking about 20 channels; in an 8 ME switcher we’re talking 36 channels and they’re scattered across. Those MEs can also be repurposed. If I would rather have, like I’ve got here, a 4 ME switcher where I’ve taken the half ME and attached it as four more keyers to the programme ME, I’ve gone and I’ve used those other 4
That should be enough for most people?
Dae: It’s an outrageously powerful switcher at the mid size production range but we’re not done. We still have lots of future plans for the Carbonite series. Next, let’s look at Acuity. This is our new flagship production switcher which we just launched about 18 hours ago. And to tell us about Acuity we have Les O’Reilly Les: Acuity is our next generation production switcher. It’s building off of the vision production series and it’s going to the next level. One of the definitions for the word Acuity is “sharpness of vision”, so it’s a bit of a play on words. We’ve taken Vision, we’ve recieved a lot of feedback from customers about how we could make it better, right down to how we could do the design of Page 27
Les with a lot of mixing choices at his fingertips.
MEs as multi-viewers. So now I’ve got these multiviewers. Each multi-viewer has two heads out of it, so they use the common pool of inputs that I assign and then there’s two heads with separate layouts. So really what I’ve got is a 4 multi-viewer system, but I would have 8 different layouts that I could currently be sending out of the production switcher. It’s not all about whether it’s the Ross multi-viewer or the external multi-viewer, but think of it as how they can be leveraged together, right. I can get lots of heads of multi-viewer out of my production switcher. All the mnemonics and everything pass through. But when I talk about ME programmes, ME previews, still store monitoring, these things that I was wasting lots of production outputs on my production switchers just to feed back in, now I can bring just a few outputs out with these multi-viewers in them that have those sources, leaving me a lot more outputs to send to my facility. On our outputs, a standard feature, is the ability to take groups of four and turn on aux keys, so I can mix, cut and even do a single linear key all on an aux output, using no resources from my MEs, no transition engines and no keyer engines – nothing, it’s standard. When I start looking at how I reduce the number of outputs that I would consume for monitoring, I now have a ton of outputs I can use now for onset monitoring, feeding other little MiniMEs, looping them back into the switcher so I can pre-key into a box. So I start really growing the production platform. And all of this is in 8RU, 8 MEs, 120 inputs, 60 outputs, right … all of that is all in 8RU including the power supplies. There isn’t a separate chassis for power supplies; there isn’t a separate chassis for DVE; there isn’t a separate chassis for device control. Everything is contained in the one 8RU chassis. That’s a lot of power. Ed: So how much training does it take to run something like this? Les: For an experienced TD – it depends. Have they used a Vision or a Synergy switcher? A day, because it’s all pretty much the same. Is it a TD who is transitioning from a Sony or a Grass switcher? Maybe three days – and that’s just because now we’d really like to sit down and talk about what is your show. Not only are we going to train you, in those three days let’s rebuild your show while we’re doing the training. Ed: Because there’d be things in there that they wouldn’t know that it was capable of, so you can say well you can actually do this and …? Les: That’s right, like practical examples when you’re doing training is the best way, because having the end result that you need to achieve and knowing in your mind’s eye what you want, makes that training experience also stick with you. So from an operator standpoint, when I build something that I need to use, I’m going to remember that feature and how I did it and we’re going to roll through it, as opposed to just being the guy which I would call “giving a demo”. This does this, this does this, this does this … it’s like okay, this is how it works, now let’s apply that, let’s build this thing. I need to build this – okay, let’s sit down, the best way to do it would be to use this feature, or this functionality – this is how we’re going to build it. Now you do it. Right – that’s how we train.
there’s quite a list of new items on the openGear platform this year? Jeevithan: Absolutely, and we’re really thrilled about it. We started off with a handful of openGear partners eight years ago and now we have about 68 partners and hundreds of different solutions available off-theshelf. Together, the partners and solutions are what make the openGear ecosystem, and it’s continuing to grow and evolve with more partners and more products every year. For NAB 2014, we continue to expand our offerings in the openGear line. Last year, we launched an openGear card-based master control solution, which was fully controllable through our DashBoard control system. Given our huge success with the master control switcher, we decided to provide a hard control panel to complement DashBoard. We are also introducing a new VANC data processor (TES-8643) for NAB 2014, so, if someone is looking for a solution for customised data packets being sent over SDI stream or for SCTE-104 triggers for digital programme insertion, that’s all now being taken care of in this card-based solution. We are also introducing a master reference and test pattern generator. It is not an openGear card, but it complements openGear in the sense that it’s being controlled by the same unified DashBoard control system. Along the same lines, we have an audio monitoring bridge (MB-650) that we are launching here, which provides full monitoring of up to 16 channels of embedded audio and supports 3G/ HD/ SD SDI inputs. Again, it comes with the same DashBoard control and complements the rest of the Ross infrastructure product lines. These are just a few of the highlights. Ed: Just tell me what about in the streaming area – do you have a lot of people supplying cards for video streaming purposes? Jeevithan: At NAB 2014, we have a partner solution for streaming to the web, which is totally consistent with Ross being an openGear evangelist. We’re working with a solution provider who provides an MPEG encoder as well as direct streaming for the web, which includes RTMP, direct HTTP and HLS streaming. The card is controlled by DashBoard and is available for anyone who is running an openGear system. Ed: Do you know all of the 68 partners’ cards that openGear has – this is a test? Jeevithan: It’s certainly a challenge to name them all off the top of my head, but the openGear website (www.opengear.tv) provides the list of all openGear partners and the products that are available. Ed:
And it’s growing, which is good?
Jeevithan: Exactly. Ed:
We are continuing Ross Video and we have Jeevithan Muttulingam. Ed: One of the areas that I am always fascinated by is the Ross openGear platform. I think it’s a very clever and very friendly system that you have here, and it’s proven its worth, it continues to develop and I see Page 28
And you reckon the advantage for Ross is?
Jeevithan: Working together with partners, means wider distribution of the platform, higher volumes, and a wide variety of solutions that are available to our customers. It’s also that we are delivering a unique solution. Our customers are not single sourced for vendors and there’s no vendor lock-in. Customers have choice, and best in class products. It helps us deliver incredible added value to our customers. Now any interview at Ross Video would not be complete without talking about DashBoard and we have John Naylor.
quite likely that it’s controllable by DashBoard, because we can send and receive messages over UDP, TCP, or HTTP. We’ve got a couple of examples of that on the booth here … we’re controlling a Yamaha deck from a custom panel and also a Blackmagic HyperDeck from a custom panel. Ed: And we’ve got a special England versus New Zealand app here? John: That’s a cricket scoring app, it’s to drive XPression and the idea is that you can go and drive graphics for your game and you don’t need to understand graphics … Ed:
You understand the rules of cricket though?
John: Yes, you need to understand a lot more; you need to understand the rules of cricket. The way the interface works is … we’ll start a new game here and put England into bat and we have the events that can happen in a cricket game, like some guy scores a run, or a dot ball, somebody’s LBW’d and we keep the score going here and anytime you want to actually make a graphic out of what’s happened, then we can say we’ll have a bowler to the batsman, so we’ve got Abbots bowling to Pieterson, and take it to air as a graphic, clear it, or we might want to have the batting analysis come which just requires the operator to press this button. This application is an example that I wrote and it’s available on our website for a free download, along with the XPression project, so people can basically learn DashBoard and how to build a fairly substantial app with it. We’ve also got lots of little smaller codesnippet apps. We’ve got one for VDCP that shows you how to control a BlackStorm via VDCP and there’s all sorts of other stuff up there as well. Ed: So a lot of the power is in that collaborative community if you like, the DashBoard community?
John: So what’s new at DashBoard at NAB 2014? We’ve just released version 6.1 and the significant features in that are that we’ve basically put PanelBuilder on steroids. It’s an awesome interface for creating custom panels.
John: Absolutely and there’s a linked-in group for DashBoard, it’s called DashBoard Custom Panels and I’m dying for somebody else other than me to post to it! It’s really there for us to help people create their solutions and streamline their workflows. If somebody isn’t feeling comfortable, or up to the task of doing the scripting necessary to do that, then we also offer it as a service. We’ve got a couple of customers already who we’ve managed to help out with workflows … one guy said “it streamlines our workflow and it saves us 2-3 hours a week” … that’s the kind of stuff we did for one of our clients. Ed:
A great product.
John:
A custom panel is a method of integrating a workflow that can be operated very simply in a streamlined fashion, no matter how complex the actual operation is. We’ve got an example here on the booth of our latest control system that allows a single operator to produce a multi-cam HD production with graphics, all from one screen and with a training curve of maybe one hour. The other stuff that we’ve done in DashBoard 6.1 – we’ve got things called Network Listeners which means that we’ve added to the already large universe of devices that can be controlled from DashBoard which previously was any openGear device, over 300 or 400 solutions from Ross and our 68 other openGear partners, all of those devices have been DashBoard controllable from day one. We’ve Ross Carbonite, Ross XPression, Ross Robotics, Ross BlackStorm – those are controllable from DashBoard now and basically if a device out there has an Ethernet port on it, it’s
Thank you.
Cricket scoring will never be the same. Page 29
NZVN
Avere Systems Here's one that is just "interesting" as they say in QI. We’re at Avere Systems, just doing this because we’ve heard all about them and how important their particular product is. We’re not going to say where it is, but there are some New Zealanders using your products and to tell us more we have Mark Renault.
Ed: Oh my goodness, your family is named after a car! Mark tell us what Avere does? Mark: We have a product that will optimise and aggregate NAS environments into a single namespace and increase the performance and allow you to separate the capacity from the performance in your application. So we’re here at NAB because we do that for rendering, transcoding and compositing of special effects and animation. Ed: Right, so these are not just hard drives that you’ve tinkered with – you’ve got some clever technology added on? Mark: What we do is we do supply appliances to our customers, but our value add is definitely a tiered file system that basically learns what the application workflow is and then we start moving blocks of files to the proper storage media that that block is required for its performance level. So we figure out what the hot files are and, within those hot files that you want to perform on, we figure out what the blocks are within those hot files and we put those in the fastest storage media with DRAM basically and we can feed those out to CPUs that will do rendering, transcoding and that type of thing. We’ve been doing this for about five years now. We’ve got about every major studio using our gear – the top 12 blockbuster hits of 2013, every frame on every one of those movies has been run through an Avere to supply the shots into the CPU render nodes, to get the job rendered, completed, special effects done. Ed: So this is actually a combination of hardware and software that you supply? Mark: Yes, we sell an appliance, but we are not a hardware company. Frankly, we buy gear mass produced by another company and we load our software in it. Ed: So it’s not a case of somebody’s already got a hardware solution that they can load in your software into their system? Mark: No, but what we’ll do, they’ll usually have a “hardware solution” where they have a NAS product there, a network appliance machine, an Isilon, a BlueArc, and ZFS system. What we do is we sit between the clients and that storage and we optimise the throughput, we aggregate multiple NAS devices into a single namespace, we offload the load from those net apps and Isilons and so forth and we end up serving data out to the clients faster than they could.
Ed: Now is this a product that’s applicable to a smaller user – a production house that might have a few people who are doing animations? Mark: We’re all over, we’re scattered between animation houses that would have 60 or 70,000 cores in a render farm all the way down to companies that have 100. And why we do that, is we sell this system as a clustered environment. You can start with one, you can end up with 50, which is really cool. The other thing we do because we accelerate locally to the clients, our cluster has to be physically close to the clients, because we want to keep the latency between the data that they want and the devices really low so we can push data back and forth. However, we don’t care where the storage is, so probably half of our customers have our devices sitting in front of artists, render farms, transcoding units, but the storage could be 40 milliseconds away, 100 milliseconds away, halfway around the world. We have our boxes within one large house that has facilities in Las Vegas, the Bay area, Southern California and India, and we’re building this namespace, we’re allowing them to share assets between all these locations. So all of the major studios use our stuff both locally and through this LAN environment. Now, the reason why we’re here today is, not only can we aggregate multiple NAS into a single namespace and hide that latency behind us, we have now announced that we can also integrate ObjectStore into that set of storage behind us. So you could go with an Amazon S3 ObjectStore; we work another company down the road here called Cleversafe, they have a private ObjectStore and you can have your net app, your Isilon or whatever … we can aggregate that all together into a namespace – it doesn’t matter if it’s sitting as file based or as ObjectStore. We have utilities that allow you to move files to the ObjectStore, ObjectStore back to the files behind us, so you can migrate things on and off the different storage, yet we can cache all that data up to the clients and hide the latency – and that latency is either between us and the NAS which isn’t usually too bad a latency, or us and the Cloud which would be a higher latency. We can hide all that, present the data up to the clients really quickly, really fast, at very, very low latency and that’s the name of the game. It’s basically a very intelligent read/write cache that aggregates different types of storage together, either ObjectStore or NAS. Ed: And in very simple terms it’s all about speed isn’t it. It’s about how quickly you can get that project out. Just as a yardstick, have you got a sort of a factor that you could say by putting your product in, would increase the speed of a system by how many times? Mark: It depends how many of our boxes you want to buy. I can increase with just 1 or 2 of my boxes a pretty high speed NAS by a factor of 3, 4, or 5. I put 6 or 7 of my boxes in a cluster, it’s orders of magnitude. What we really do in simple terms is we allow the customer to separate capacity from performance; in the old days you had to buy your capacity, and capacity and performance was intermingled together, and some people end up buying way too much capacity because they needed those discs to handle all the IOPS. Now you don’t do it that way, you just buy – quite frankly I call it “cheap and dirty NAS” and you use that just for capacity, you buy a couple of the Averes, you run your process, you need more capacity – buy some more SATA3 terabyte SATA drives. That’s for capacity, you want more performance, throw another Avere in there. So we’ve made it simple; we’ve separated capacity from performance. NZVN
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Techtel – LYNX-Technik
Ed: Now, Yellobrik, you’ve been around for quite some time and certainly, in this area of the market, For Techtel, we are here at LYNX-Technik and we have there have been glue products made by all sorts of Joehan Tohkingkeo, managing director accompanied by people from all around the world in all sorts of colours, David Colthorpe from Techtel. but you’re the original and one and only Yellobrik. Just tell me in general, how does your product range differentiate from the others? Joehan: Since we started in Asia-Pacific about two years back we have received considerable recognition from the broadcast industry for our specs, reliability and quality and we always take great pride in that. All our products are designed and tested in Germany at our head-quarters in Weiterstadt outside Frankfurt. So that German build quality and reliability have become very important factors for our broadcast industry customers. And, of course, we pack a lot of features into our little yellow boxes. Yellobrik modules can be used as a standalone product and, additionally, they can be rack mounted so providing great David and Joehan looking very dashing in their yellow sunnies. versatility. Yellobrik is the
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only company in the world that offers products that allow you to mix SDI, HDMI etc and fibre optic transmission at the same time, even after the conversion process, so reliable and high quality links of up to 10Kms between modules can be easily achieved. We also wish to emphasise our reputation for good after -sales support – this is pretty important for our customers. Ed: So you must give a very long warranty on your products? Joehan: Our warranty is three years. Of course, sometimes you can be flexible, we can always help customers. At the end of the day, we want customers to be happy. Ed: I guess it’s important too that if one does fail, you see it and know why it failed so the problem can be avoided in future product?
David: That’s right, we’re talking about fairly mission critical applications here. They are solid broadcasting applications where things must continue to work 100% and often in quite trying conditions. Ed: So what would be your biggest sellers in this range?
Joehan: Definitely. I would say the good thing is, so far, the failure rate is very low, but we offer very good service support. The first year, if anything fails, we do a one-to-one swap – that’s how we support our customers. Ed:
That’s good, and you can concur with this David?
David: Yes, I must say that’s certainly been my experience with Yellobrik and with LYNX products. They are absolutely fantastic. There have been a significant number of installations in New Zealand already in the broadcast area and those involved in linking within OB trucks, arenas, racetracks and so on … Ed: Where you really don’t want anything to go down in the middle of a race for example? Page 32
Joehan: Our current biggest seller I would say would be the SDI to HDMI converter. This supports the SDI format up to 3G and you can also access all 16 embedded audio channels. One of the unique features is that you can slot in a fibre SFP and, after your conversion, you can send it by fibre “point to point” to a distance. Another added feature is that we have YelloGUI, which is a free software control application that allows a computer to change the parameters of the unit. One of the unique features of the Yellobrik is that you don’t need to read the manual because all the information is on the housing itself. Ed: It’s very good for men then? Joehan:
Exactly! As you know, most people would not read a manual, so that’s why the design is very intuitive and user friendly, because all the controls are on the front of the box. So looking at it, you can truly understand the true flow of the design and also which button to push and which DIP switch to position correctly. This is a very intuittive and user friendly design.
Ed: That’s what I was going to say … when looking at it, it’s got a whole lot of little switches and little rotary knobs but some of your other brick products don’t have any switches? Joehan: It depends on the product range. If you’re talking about DA, you’ve got nothing to switch. Of course, you don’t see any control panels there. So it varies from product to product. We also have a range of fibre optic solutions and, as I mentioned earlier, the uniqueness of this product is that you can use it as a standalone, or you can rack mount it. So if you look at the fibre optics product range, we have a very small form factor and also, we have a range of different connector types for our customers to choose, depending on what sort of connector type you want – you want an SD, you want an LC or you want an SC, we can provide the solution for you. Our sender products cater up to 10 kilometres, but if you have a specific requirement for up to 100 kilometres, we can provide an SFP to cater for that distance.
two power supplies. Also, we can offer a standard rack mount just for one Yellobrik, just in case in certain applications you only want to rack mount one single Yellobrik, this rack mount will take care of it. But the standard 19 inch rack mount racks will house up to 14 modules, mix and match. Ed: Okay, so that was your biggest seller, now what have you got new for the show this year? Joehan: At the show we are pleased to introduce our Testor Lite 3G. As you can see the orange colour is very nice, very unique and very handy. It’s full of features but with a price point of US$995 ( RRP in NZ is $1095 exc GST ). I would say we are very confident that this product will fly because to date, we have so many interested people who come along and say this is very compact, very unique and comes free with all the built-in different test patterns that we have, including 3D patterns and dynamic patterns. As you go along, LYNX-Technik has always had the policy of updating new software, new patterns and customers can download from our website free of charge. This will be a very ideal tool for service engineers in facilities. It’s compact, it’s versatile, and we have the optional soft case that you can mount it to your belt. So this is touchscreen, a high resolution screen whereby you can change the different requirements with a touch of the screen. Ed: And you’ve made it orange because it’s not a Yellobrik? Joehan: Yes, because this is not part of the Yellobrik range and of course the point is the colour is still very attractive. David: You can find it in your electronic serviceman’s bag which is often a big dark cave. Ed: Okay. Now I know you mentioned fibre and I see quite a few products here that are fibre related – basic fibre, CWDM fibre, fibre splitters, SDI to fibre, that’s the main one for you? Joehan: Yes. At this point in time, I would say, as far as the fibre optics range, the SDI to fibre is our biggest seller. In fact, we are also selling to one of the biggest TV stations in India. They have embraced the Yellobrik using our fibre optics solution. Of course, one thing is we have a CWDM solution whereby in certain scenarios when you have only limited fibre cable available, you can send up to 18 channels of SDI over one single fibre using CWDM technology and we can achieve that. No loss, no degradation, uncompressed video, real time. Ed:
Ed:
Ed:
Joehan: that far.
Ed:
Ed: And looking at this here, your 19 inch rack mount looks very nice – it’s a genuine Yellobrik rack and that will take any of the Yellobriks? Joehan: You can mix and match, you can put up to 14 modules in there and it offers redundancy as well;
So customers can go on your website and search?
David: They can. They can see on the website (http://shop.techtel.co.nz/) where individual products are described and download all the PDFs for the full brochures and the diagrams.
Ed: It’s a long way to send a cameraman from his base? Definitely – at least he doesn’t have to run
So as you say David, it’s …
David: … a veritable cornucopia of solutions. There’s pretty much everything you need to connect anything to anything, wherever it is.
And if they’re confused, they can call you?
David:
Certainly they can.
Will that help?
David: I hope so. But as Joehan said, Yellobriks are very intuitive to use. Ed:
They’re plug and play?
Joehan: I’d like to say it’s not “plug and pray” it’s “plug and play”! NZVN
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Sound Techniques – MozeGear For Sound Techniques we are here at MozeGear and we have Reg Webb, senior development engineer and Stephen Buckland.
you already own. So if you’ve got a 4 channel mixer you can add another 4 channels to it. Line level inputs – it’s active, it’s got 26dB of gain, pan switches ... left, centre and right pan switches, and a peak indicator on each channel. The outputs are on a mini XLR and are independently controllable, so if you’ve got two different devices that you want to send it to, you can send it to those two devices independently. Ed: So this is not designed to be used on its own, it’s not a mixer but a mixer expander? Reg: On its own, maybe. If you’re wanting to connect to a DSLR, then you can take the output from this directly into the DSLR and use the monitoring and metering on the DSLR. You can externally power it from 4.5 to 20 Volt or internally from two 9 Volt batteries, or four double A batteries. So it’s an option when you buy it as to which type of batteries you want to use. Ed: And this development still?
one’s
actually
in
Reg: Yes. It’s almost ready for sale, but it’s pretty close to release, yes. Ed: This is something waiting for Stephen? Reg with the add-on mixer.
Ed: Now you have got a number of little boxes here Reg, but the one that we’re particularly interested in is a very small little black box. Reg: Yes, we’ve got the TIG which is an echo timecode generator, .5 PPM. It’s designed primarily to connect to DSLRs, but people have been using it as just a regular timecode generator with the BNC out. One of the unique features of it is we can take the left and right audio signal into the box and combine it with the timecode so that you get a timecode output on one connection on the 3.5mm and the combined audio on the other, to go directly into a DSLR. The output is a variable level from 6 millivolts to 3 Volt, to be able to match to the camera. It runs from two AAA batteries, for about 15 hours and will do all the normal timecode rates from 23.97 all the way up to 30 frames. It can be jammed from any external device and cross-jammed for any external device.
you’ve
been
Stephen: Well the business of syncing up picture and audio when shot on a DSLR is one that’s complicated things. Ed: And you get people coming to you asking you what can I do? Stephen: Yes, the odd thing is the sound mixer, for some historical reason, has become primarily responsible for timecode. Now the sound can happily play all by its own without necessarily being in sync
Ed: So this is a SMPTE timecode, not User Bits? Reg: It’s SMPTE timecode with User Bits. It will copy the User Bits from the device that you’re jamming. Ed:
Are people still using User Bits?
Stephen with the TIG.
Reg: I don’t know whether they do or not, but if there’s information there, it will take it and put it back out again. Ed: Right, okay, so that’s this little device … what else have you got?
with the picture, so Sound Techniques has always looked at different timecode options and when this came along, it seemed compact, it did what it did and nothing else, and we thought we would give it a try.
Reg: The other device is a mixer expander. It’s designed to be used as an addition to something that
Ed: And what about the add-on mixer – a worthy product to add to your line?
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Stephen: useful. Ed:
There are situations when it could be
Time will tell?
Stephen: It really is a case of time will tell. You know people get tripped up in a situation where they don’t have the equipment requirements and the mixer expander would do. Ed: I guess you’ve got to see what the final product looks like and what the price is? Stephen: That’s exactly right, yes. It’s not something that I would have myself been looking for, but I can see the use for it in the market. I think it will NZVN have its place, yes.
Sound Techniques – Sound Devices For Sound Techniques, we’re here at Sound Devices with Paul Isaacs and Stephen Buckland.
ProRes and DNxHD files which can be directly imported into Avid and Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere. It can also embed up to 64 channels of audio, which is like crazy. But this is an amazing product for live events, where there’s a lot of audio sources you need to capture high quality video feeds, for live music concerts, for corporate, for studio production, for postproduction. Ed: In this situation, you’ve got it as a rack mount, but I guess you can take it out as a single unit? Paul: Yes, you can take it out as a single unit. We’re showing four in the picture. But one of the key features of the 270 is that it’s a scalable system. Yes, it can be used as a single half rack 2U product with one video input and 64 channel audio capability, but it can actually be grouped with multiple other 270s or 250s. So you can actually scale a system depending on your job. If you invest in one and you need to grow that to two, to three, maybe you’re working in a production next year which is five cameras, as opposed to just three cameras – you just add another unit. You haven’t wasted that investment. You know, with so many of our competitors, you have to buy four channels upfront, or eight channels upfront, which is a huge investment. You’re talking $70,000 and above for that sort of thing. This is a much more cost effective way to get in. So when I mention “scalable”, the units – the 270s and the 250s – they can be linked together via Ethernet. They can either be daisy chained or you can go via a network switch; then once they are connected that way, they automatically discover each other, and then you can allocate them to a group. If you allocate them to the same group, they then effectively act as a single unit. And when I say single unit, it’s totally frame accurate record playback as if they’re one machine. That’s a pretty incredible feature. Think about playback applications where you’re doing like a large image across multiple screens, like video walls. So you’d have multiples of these driving each segment of that video wall and the video would be totally frame accurate in sync as a key feature. In multicam scenarios, where you’re recording multiple camera feeds in a studio, like ISOs from different angles, you can make sure all of these units drop into record at exactly the same frame and they’re totally locked and synchronised. So it’s a pretty crucial feature.
Ed: Well I think your booth is getting bigger and it’s getting busier year by year Paul – so what are you showing us this time? Paul: Well this year, we’re showing another couple of the brand new video decks which are shipping this month. We have the 270i and the 250i. We’re also showing an audio only deck too, called the 970 but I’m going to focus on the video deck, the 270i, because that’s really the flagship of all the features – like it’s the superset of everything. The 270i is a really high performance, quality, robust, reliable video deck for mission critical applications. It replaces any linear video deck with a file based solution and it records edit-ready,
That’s one thing … the Ethernet actually is a very powerful interface in this product. It provides that grouping control, but it also allows you to transfer recorded files into a remote location. You don’t have to deliver now on a physical media. You can still do that via just a 2½ inch drive to take that out and hand deliver it, and since we can record on multiple drives, this is another really key feature – and this is totally unique in the industry – these devices can record up to four drives simultaneously. Why is that important? Well, when you’re dealing with terabytes of data which you typically can have at the end of a day’s recording, to copy that data via a Mac or something like that is a really laborious process. If you can just hand off copies there and then, that is a huge timesaver. Ed: So it’s not a RAID, you’re actually making simultaneous identical copies? Paul: Exactly … readymade, ready for delivery, that is huge. We are getting hit so hard by people
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going “have you got that feature, we’ve been after that feature for years” – and none of our competitors do it. Ed: So you don’t have to have that data wrangler making a copy, making another copy just to be safe, you can do it on the recorder …? Paul: On the fly, it’s all done. Hit “stop” at the end of recording and it’s all there, ready to go. That provides instant deliverables, but also backups. So this whole idea of multi-drive and backups, that’s obviously a safety issue. These devices are aimed at really mission critical applications, where there’s actually no room for loss of data. So there’s the issue of drives – you can record to four drives and you’ve got four levels of protection there, but what about power? What happens if all power is removed in the middle of recording? Well, if you look at the rear panel of the 270 here – and the 970 has this as well – it’s got two redundant DC supplies. So if one cuts out, the other one seamlessly takes over as if nothing had happened. Now what about in the situation where both of them got cut out? Well there’s an internal UPS – we call it Powersafe. Powersafe is the name of the technology, basically it’s a UPS in there and if all power is pulled, it will still power the unit for 10 seconds, wrap up the recording, close all files intelligently, so there’s no lost data. Beyond that, we
also have the file header savings scheme, which automatically updates the file headers every 30 seconds, so you can never lose more than 30 seconds anyway. So there are all these mission critical technologies which we’ve included in this product. Ed: And of course the big question that everybody talks about at this show – 4K – are these 4K capable? Paul: No, these are HD and there’s still a vast application and market set requiring that, you know … so these particular products are not, no.
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Ed:
And?
Paul: I want to talk a little bit about the audio capability as well. So the 270 has, as I said, 64 tracks. I think this is like crazy right – but we have 160 audio inputs and 160 audio outputs. What are they? Well we’ve got MADI on fibre or coaxial, that’s 64 channels in and out on MADI. MADI is a very widely used multichannel digital audio interface, it’s very prevalent in broadcast circles still. Obviously we have 64 channels over Dante – that’s audio over IP, and Dante has really rapidly taken off. There are so many consoles out now that support it, and what that means is we can just use one simple bit of CAT5 cable to connect from a huge console to the device and have 64 channels going out. In fact, we can connect multiple Dante devices. In that corner over there, we have a Shure Dante radio receiver … if it’s sitting on the same network, I could take channels from that, I could take channels from a console, I could take channels from anywhere on a network and bring them into this device. Then we have 8 channels of linein line-out, 8 channels of AES in and out, we have 16 channels of audio on the SDI in and out, the video input and output, and then we have 8 channels of HDMI in and out too. There are two rear eSATA ports for connecting two further drives for recording. It’s got RS422 for machine control, still a widely used remote control platform. So I’ve given you an overview of the 270, I want to talk to you about the PIX 250i and then the 970, just to show you what the differences are, because they all look identical. We don’t actually have a 250 in this rack, but I can show you one in a minute, it looks pretty much identical from the front. The 250 again is a video recorder with all the same features that I’ve just told you about the 270i. We’ve really mainly just reduced the audio in and out count and the number of drives that you can record to. We don’t have 64 tracks, we only have 16 tracks, but that’s still pretty good right? We haven’t got any MADI or Dante on there, but you’ve still got your line in and out, you’ve got SDI, you’ve got AES in and out, so it’s still a powerful audio recorder. Instead of having four drives that you can record to, you can only record to two drives, but that’s still really cool, because you’ve still got a readymade backup or
deliverable. The other thing that it doesn’t have is the second DC input, but it does still have the UPS, the Powersafe UPS inside, so it still has that solid mission critical feel about it. If a client doesn’t need all those bells and whistles, they have another option. Now the 970 which I’m showing just here, is an audio only version of the 270. We’ve stripped out just the video input and output. So no SDI in, no SDI out, no HDMI in, no HDMI out – but it has all the MADI, the Dante, the line, the AES audio inputs and outputs, and it’s a very, very powerful tool. It can still record to four drives, it has the redundant power supplies as the Powersafe technology … now one thing I didn’t mention in my enthusiasm is that all of these units can be grouped together. You can mix and match 250s with 270s and 970s if you so wish, and they can all be controlled by our web browser. This could be done wirelessly if you had a wireless router on the Ethernet port. So the PIXNET we call it, the web client which can be run on Chrome, Safari, whatever browser you really want – that shows you a list of all the devices on the network, then you can pick and choose which one you want to control, click on it and it will bring up a transport window like this, and then you can group them all together and put them all into record together, start them together, play them together, you can set parameters across multiple drives … it’s really like a universal control for grouped devices and this is like a really powerful tool because it can all be done remotely. All these devices can sit in a remote machine room somewhere … and you can even instigate file transfers over Ethernet remotely. So if you’re sitting in a postproduction studio and somebody’s just recorded a file and they say right, it’s done, they could remotely pull that file off while they start to record another take. Isn’t that cool? I mean we’re getting away now from a physical deliverable. This is really setting a new bar in what’s possible with audio card based audio, postproduction video decks – a really powerful tool. Ed: A very powerful tool, singly or as a group Stephen? Stephen: Yes, and it was interesting because yesterday I attended a presentation on the Sound Devices stand from a guy who works for Google Hangouts and it opened up this whole other area of possibilities, of not just this equipment, but the whole Sound Devices range for video conferencing and you know, its interconnectivity makes it very versatile and not necessarily in the obvious ways that you would think. You’re likely to look at this and think oh that’s a video recorder; yes it’s a video recorder but it does a whole lot of other stuff as well. Paul: You’re sort of limited by your imagination. Stephen: really.
Well it’s a bit like Lego
Paul: We’re sort of like learning so many new applications – people are going I’m using it for this and you’re going really, I never thought of that one. NZVN Page 38
Quinto – JVC We are at JVC for Quinto with Pete Fullerton and Nick Critelli.
loss of quality at 1.5 megabits per second and the image looked fantastic. So for low budget, especially for news gathering organisations, that camera would be ideal. Ed: And it’s also controllable from the studio? Nick: Yes absolutely, you’ve got remote capabilities, so the producer or the director can be looking at the image and, if they want to add a little bit more light etc, they have got full CCU control via the LTE or 4G network. Ed: So that’s something I guess, where the possibilities really only come about when you start thinking about what you could do with it – that the people back in the studio or back at the facility, if you’re out there recording some documentary or something could have a look at the picture and tell you “Ah no, just move a bit closer or over there a bit” and they can see exactly what you’re shooting at the time; they can see the live stream, but also simultaneously you can record to a higher level onto the built-in cards on the camera?
Pete and Nick.
Ed: Nick, we’ll start with you, because you’ve come along with Noel Oakes from various JVC sellers in Australasia and you know all about what JVC has got on offer this year? Nick: The cameras that JVC will be releasing this year are exciting. JVC will be continuing with the GY-HM150 that has been very popular amongst the entry level users, as well as schools and universities. The HM600 and 650 will also be continuing with new firmware to be released in the coming months. The new units are the HM850 and HM890. They are already creating a buzz in Australia and generating a lot of interest. Ed: And that’s a camera that’s been highly accepted worldwide by News organisations I understand? Nick: Yes absolutely, there has been some recent acquisitions by American broadcasters, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, to buy more than 70 units. Those units have been extremely popular; offering the 20X zoom lens is very handy for news gathering and it gives you extreme low light capabilities as well as a very good wide angle, so covering all bases. They also have 60p and 50p Full HD recording at 50Mbps as opposed to the 35Mbps which was used before.
Nick: Absolutely, yes that’s correct and if they’re not happy with the framing they can even zoom in. It has got those extended capabilities. Pete: So for remote news gathering it means that the studio can send one person out with a camera, that person stands in front of the camera, the studio can adjust the camera so the picture looks good on air … for things like marginal sports events, you can stream them live to the web. We know there’s games out there like local rugby for a start that could be streamed live to the web. So essentially, you can have your own OB van in one camera. Ed: Or multiple people with multiple cameras around the ground all streaming at the same time and back in the studio they can decide which shot they take? Pete: That’s correct, and there is some exciting software out there that will allow you to have a switcher in the Cloud – you can switch the streams, you can add
Ed: But the really exciting news in that level of camera for the news organisations and for people who want to do live streaming, is that JVC have come up with a camera that’s got pretty well everything built-in? Nick: Yes, the new range of shoulder mount units, the 850 and the 890 have the built-in streaming capabilities. We saw from a demo here at the stand where they crossed live to L.A and had a correspondent there just using a 4G modem, a one man team basically, and he presented on the screen without any Page 39
graphics, you can mix, cut and you can have multiple streams coming back. You can have a multiple camera OB with 3, 4 cameras and you can either choose what shot people want to watch –choose what shot to show – or people at home can choose their own shot, what they want to see. Ed: Gosh, it’s all getting very complicated. But then you haven’t stopped there – I’m very pleased to see that JVC has now gone back to the roots of offering a really top end broadcast camera that JVC was famous for years ago. Now you’re getting back into that space? Nick: Yes definitely. The big buzz word for the last couple of years has been 4K. JVC are proud to present the new 4K handheld unit with the full frame 35mm sensor and it will accept the industry standard MFT mount lenses. Pete: We’ve got a large camera that’s going to have a PL mount and then we’ve got some other options with other cameras that same sensor is being put into, that has a Micro Four Third inch mount. So you’ll have a large frame sensor camera, a 35mm sensor, with the most adaptable mounting system on the market, which is the MFT or Micro Four Third inch mount. Nick: We see these great opportunities within education, military and the budget filmmaker or
4K on a drone - the pictures were amazing.
Ed: And what’s that little one with the remote head – that looks particularly exciting because of its capability to pop on a drone?
A very slim 4K offering.
documentary maker to record fantastic footage using the 4K camera.
Pete: That’s the GW-SPLS1 camera module with 35mm sensor with MFT mount. So we have a small portable head which is remote back to a record unit. Not only can you have a 4K sensor mounted on the dashboard of a car for in-car shots with a nice wide angle lens, but we’ve actually got on the stand here a remote drone with that same unit mounted in it, for remote helicopter shots. Ed: Okay, so since you actually don’t have your own showroom in New Zealand, how are people going to get to see and handle and, well, touch these new cameras?
To be fair, I conned him into this photo - but the girls enjoyed it.
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Pete: We will be selling these through the New Zealand dealer network so the best thing is to approach your favourite dealer and enquire about the JVC. You can approach Quinto direct and we can point you in the direction of who has actually NZVN got the demo models.
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Quinto – PAG
we’re up to a 10 Amp individually on the 3-stud system. Both systems provide 12A when batteries are linked.
For Quinto, we are at PAG batteries with Nigel Gardiner. We always enjoy these interviews with Nigel, partly for the humour, but partly because you speak so clearly for Miss Hellfinger. You don’t have the twang that we get in some of the interviews – you’re an exponent of the Queen’s English, you must have gone to a good school?
Ed: And this is particularly important for today’s very power hungry, single sensor, large cameras?
Nigel:
Not a remand school anyway.
Nigel: Yes absolutely. You know, if we’re looking at digital cinema, the F65 from Sony, and the ALEXA, are very high current cameras. Sony and Panasonic cameras used to be 20-35W, now we’re looking at 75 Watt cameras. By the time the camera’s had monitors, microwave links and other things added, we’re struggling with a standard battery. So we’ve had to enhance the battery, giving you a higher current and then linking batteries for longer run-time. So you get the best of both worlds. Ed: So you’ve got an F65, you wouldn’t stick one of these on the back would you, you’d put a number of them. How many would you put on? Nigel: I think you’d be looking at maybe 2 to 3 – 2 minimum. An F65 draws about 110 Watts without anything extra. Ed: Okay, so you put three on and then what happens – after some time which one goes down first? Nigel: The battery nearest the camera is the controlling battery and it will discharge one or two of the others first. If it can manage on discharging one, that’s fine, you then have a hot swap capability, because the battery that’s nearest the camera will keep the camera working while you take the empty battery off and put a new battery on. So you’ve got as near as dammit, continuous power – until such time as the one that’s nearest the camera actually runs out. Ed:
Nigel has an Anton Bauer alternative from PAG.
Ed: Right, well, there’s been a number of times we’ve come here and there hasn’t been anything really to show, so we’ve sort of talked about PAG and the brand and the reliability of the product, but this year we’ve got something new and it’s really excited the Americans? Nigel: Yes. We’ve taken the linking battery, which you did an exposé of about a couple of years ago, which was a V-Mount linking system and, for the American market, we’ve created a 3-stud battery linking system; similar features of the V but we’ve changed the connector for compatibility with the Anton Bauer mount. Ed: So it has all the features of the V-Lock, the connectivity … well just run us through that whole interconnectivity of the linking system? Nigel: Linking batteries together does traditionally have problems but we conquered the problems with our V system. The PAGlink 3-stud system is, let’s say, enhanced, because we’ve chosen to up the cell standard on current. The cells in the 3-stud battery deliver more current, so instead of a maximum of 8 Amp with the V, Page 42
And that could be a very long time?
Nigel:
It could be a very long time.
Ed: And the really good thing is that these are much lighter than the Anton Bauer ones that you can replace? Nigel: This is one of the smallest and lightest batteries around, let’s say, the highest energy density. We’ve made it as small and as tight as possible; we’ve got to think about shipping, we’ve got to think about basic weights … these are all things to consider when you’re designing a battery. The cameraman, the broadcaster, doesn’t want excess space you know, it’s cost.
check these batteries – it is tamper-proof. Grant’s trying to pick it off, but you can’t, it’s tamper-proof, but when they’re going through security, people look at it and think “oh well, that looks official”.
Ed: And all of these link back to the camera if the camera has got that ability, you can see the battery run hours etc in the camera viewfinder? Nigel: Yes, all our batteries now have a talking capability with the camera. Again, you get the same information on the battery itself when you press the button, you’ll get the remaining capacity of the battery and then you press it a second time, it’ll tell you how long that stack whether it’s 1, 2, or 3 batteries, will run the camera for, in hours and minutes. So you’ve got all the information on the battery, but all that information is transmitted through to the viewfinder. Ed: And you also allow these batteries to be charged on an Anton Bauer charger? Nigel: If you’re making a replacement battery, you have to make it so that it will charge on the customer’s charger, otherwise there’s no incentive for them to take your battery. Ed: Yes well that’s logic Nigel, but sometimes in this industry, logic doesn’t actually make sense otherwise everyone would be using your batteries? Nigel: That’s true. We do try to put some sort of logic on this which often doesn’t seem to work, but there we go. Yes, there are an awful lot of Anton Bauer chargers around and we must make sure that the battery will charge on any Anton Bauer charger. Ed: But in terms of the technology of the charger, is the battery going to be better or worse off by being charged on an Anton Bauer charger, or if someone is going into this long-term should they really get a PAG charger? Nigel: Ideally we would like people to buy a PAG charger, but I think that’s secondary at this moment, because the battery is dictating what the charger does. Ed: Oh, so it works that way, the battery tells the charger what to do? Nigel: That’s right. The battery is designed so that you can’t overcharge it. It tells the charger “I’ve had enough”, so nothing’s impossible, but it’s very difficult for any charger to damage our battery. This is the same for the V as it is for the others … the regime of charging and discharging is controlled by the battery, so you can’t over-discharge it and you can’t overcharge it, and they’re primarily the only ways that you’re going to destroy the battery. Ed:
That’s pretty fool-proof Nigel?
Nigel: Ed:
We normally talk about error-proof.
Oh, because there are no fools in our industry?
PAG batteries being charged by an Anton Bauer charger.
Ed: Because it’s got a picture of a plane on it and it says …? Nigel: It’s got a picture of a plane and it gives our test certificate number, because all lithium ion batteries must be type tested. I’m afraid to say again, as we’ve talked about previously, probably only 2 or 3 companies in the world do this. Most don’t. We send between 16 to 20 batteries to an independent test house – we are probably looking at about a £5-6000 cost, so that they can put these batteries through a rigorous test procedure. Then you get the certification and that means that you have passed the United Nations advised regulations for air transport and therefore the cameraman can go through with confidence to say that this battery has been tested. With the battery itself, we also give a copy of the test certificate, so if there’s any ‘jobs-worth’* people in security, you can put that in front of them. Ed:
Yet more confidence in the product?
Nigel: Well the poor cameraman’s got a lot of gear and the last thing he wants to do is to turn up at the airport and they say “sorry, you can’t ship that.” You know, what does he do – he gets out the other end and he’s got no batteries.
Ed: And I guess also, one of the big incentives to buy a PAG battery is this lovely little black and yellow sticker that you’ve put on there?
But the important thing is, and we must remind people again and again and again – you must NEVER check lithium ion batteries. They must always be hand carried.
Nigel: Yes, it’s our own invention, but it looks official. It gives the cameraman a bit of confidence when he’s going through security, because he can’t
* A jobs-worth is an official who says “ I can’t let you do that, it’s more than my job’s worth”. NZVN
Nigel:
I make no comment on that.
Ed:
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Wise words from Nigel yet again.
EDIUS for AVA We are at Grass Valley talking about EDIUS with Matt Scott, demo artist. The reason we are here is that Mike Symes at AVA in Christchurch has been very positive about EDIUS for many, many years and he’s managed to sell quite a few units into the Christchurch area. There is even a qualified EDIUS tutor in Christchurch for those who wish training. We would just like to support Mike’s initiative because EDIUS really is a very powerful editing tool, as Matt I’m sure agrees.
and now that is their tagline, it says “edit anything” – that’s a huge deal. But 5-6 years past that, they really started to push the craft editing side of things. What they nailed from the get-go was like performance reliability and their acceptance of more cameras and formats than any other editor. Ed: Let’s go back to this “edit anything”. I know some other companies offer that too, and you drag things in and you put them on the timeline and yes, you can scroll through them etc, etc, but when you come to output it, suddenly it says “pause while I render this.” Do you get that with EDIUS too? Matt: Rendering is a tough question. Generally speaking, no, there is no rendering. But if someone goes “hey, I’ve got a 16 bit TIF sequence and a logo animation that I want you to play in real time”, it’s not going to happen. But if we’re talking 10 bit 422 or 444 and if we’re looking at intermediate codecs like DNxHD, then you’re going to get real time performance and it’s unparalleled real time performance, especially when you start doing colour correction.
I’m going to show you how to do that and stuff in a second … but that’s going to look really good on audio! While we’re speaking of customisation, because this is important too with EDIUS products, not only can we edit 8K – so EDIUS now supports 8K in an upcoming version and I actually have that Beta version right here – at the moment we’re looking at a 4K resolution, but the cool Matt and Mark Hall from EDIUS supplier, Corsair Solutions. thing is, it’s not limited to Ultra HD, it’s Ed: So Matt, you’re going to tell us what the special actually full scope 4K; but then we can customise that features of EDIUS are that some of the other editing frame size, so it’s not just limited to broadcast standards, we can actually customise that to say systems don’t have, or that EDIUS does better. Let’s 1496x1708 which is equivalent to 2.4 to 1 aspect ratio. start with that? So you can actually have any frame size you want. You Matt: Okay. Let’s start at square one, and even could literally have a 50x50 if you wanted to. though you can’t see the screen … Ed:
We can imagine it.
Matt: Yes, let’s imagine this beautiful screen with all of these numbers and stuff on it. Ed: But you can have two monitors surely, you can spread your workstation across two or three? Matt: Unlimited. If you want to have a bin on six monitors, as long as you’ve got a “Quattro 56 billion”, you should be fine with that. Some of the features are the reasons I like EDIUS and actually, it’s good to note right now that I’m not employed by Grass Valley. I’m a cinematographer from Australia and I just have a very extensive post knowledge. My background is actually as a News editor, so I grew up with Avid. I liked Avid but it was way out of my price range and what I didn’t like about Avid was that it was very fussy. It would only work with a small numbers of formats, it wasn’t very flexible and it kept crashing on me. Those things annoyed me so I looked elsewhere, and when I looked elsewhere, the performance was just killing me. Like, I wanted to have my own home edit station and then one day someone put me onto this thing called EDIUS and I’m like, “what the hell is EDIUS?” Anyway, I downloaded this free 30 day trial and from there (1) I was just blown away by the performance; (2) I was blown away by the fact that I could import anything –
So now that we’re in EDIUS, it just looks like any other editor really. I mean, it’s broken up into three stages. We have our timeline, we have our bin and we have our preview monitors. What’s cool about it is this actually works exactly like I used to work on my Avid. So my bin is in the same place as the Avid; my timeline is set up like Avid; my keyboard shortcuts are like Avid and all of those settings can be saved into a profile and that profile can be saved on a USB stick or distributed through a network and permissions can be set in that profile too, so in a News working environment you can say “hey guys, who edit News, you’re not allowed to edit in 4K. I know you want to, but you’re stuck at 720p.” You know what I mean? Ed: Can you make it look like a Final Cut Pro or a Premiere timeline? Matt: Almost. I can make it pink. If you want it to look pink we can go to user settings … Ed: I don’t want it too gay I want it looking like something that somebody’s used to. Matt: You said Final Cut Pro! Ed:
Oh, okay, yeah.
Matt: So here we are, now it’s looking like Final Cut Pro. Anyway, let’s have a look at some of the aspects that do make it fast. I’m not just talking about
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real time performance … what about simple things that speed up workflow? So if we have a look at my hard drive here, I’ve got a folder structure, and in my folder structure is footage, and in my footage – blah, blah, blah there’s music, sound effects, graphics etc. Let’s open a folder and press “okay” and now we’re bringing in almost a terabyte of footage very quickly, but what’s more important than that is the folder structure’s the same. So we’re ready to start editing straight away – so there’s no transcoding, no intermediate codecs, we’re ready to go, its 4K footage on the timeline right now. We’re also monitoring this in 10 bit using a new Matrox card and we’re monitoring that in 4K. So what’s cool is we can start colour grading this and there’s still real time performance; it’s out of control! Ed: And so your whole file structure really just looks like Windows Explorer? Matt: Ed:
Exactly. You can have clips or you can have details and …?
Matt: Oh yeah, that’s a good point. So let’s change the view of the bin to a detailed view and let’s get rid of this horrible pink because it’s starting to annoy me … Ed:
Oh, go on, you know you liked it.
Matt: Let’s have a look at the bin and go to our footage and we can change the details of the view. We can change it to clip view, thumbnail view, and these are the green lights that let us know that these clips have actually been used so if I delete some of those, some of the lights go off.
Ed: That’s such a simple thing that’s so important to know – “have I used that clip”? Matt: Yes, it’s super cool. Usually I don’t demo this stuff, because no one cares about it. I care! So let’s change the view to the detail view … and we can add and remove details just like in Windows Explorer. One of the important ones is frame rate. So if you’re mixing frame rates on a timeline, it’s important to know what frame rate’s what; but even cooler than that, if you’ve got 60p footage and you want to play it at slow motion, instead of slowing it down in your clip using a filter, changing the speed, drawing power from your CPU, you just highlight all the 60p clips and change the frame rate here, and bang – they conform to the same frame rate as your timeline and then they play without artefacts in slow motion. Another really cool but simple feature – where in “Finally” Cut Pro you need to exit, go to Compressor or some crap like that, do all this transcoding, in EDIUS it’s a click. So real time performance aside, I’m talking about just the way EDIUS handles media. It’s very, very powerful. Ed: What about controls – since there are so few EDIUS users in New Zealand, apart from in Christchurch, people have to migrate from another editing platform, how are they going to learn all these symbols? I see arrows and buttons and things but I don’t know what they mean? Matt: Ed:
That’s a good question and actually … I’m full of good questions.
Matt: You’ll enjoying this.
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keep
‘em
coming,
because
I’m
Ed:
You wait!
Matt: Actually in my spare time, I get paid big bucks to go and train people who have come from Avid or “Finally” Cut Pro and I train them how to use this software, and honestly, like the buttons and logos you’re talking about, they’re pretty straightforward. I mean this little one with the dials, that’s your audio mixer; and this one is scopes … Ed: Are you telling me that if you hover the arrow over it, it tells you what it is? Matt: Exactly. So I don’t even have to be there demanding all this money … really you could just hover your mouse over something and whamo! But you’ll notice my screen layout is quite clean. There’s normally 1064 or 1065 buttons here that I’ve taken away. So getting back to the customisation, normally all this space is filled up and there are buttons and crap everywhere. You can customise that to exactly the way you want. If we go to “button” for example, and we can add this audio channel map down here, and you watch … there it is down there. But you can also remove buttons as well. So we could remove that, remove that and then they disappear. You can really customise, not only the timeline, but the players, recorders, the bin etc.
I want to know the basics, I want to know very simple … Matt:
You’ve made your mind up then?
Ed: No, not yet, I want to know some very simple things like your audio tracks – why can’t I see a waveform on there? Matt: That’s because we don’t have any audio down there. Let’s have a look at some audio, that’s a very good one. What we’re going to do is drag some music down to our timeline here and you’ll see by default, EDIUS will split left and right and separate it onto two separate tracks. That can be annoying sometimes, I think that’s a stupid idea. Ed: Oh no, I like that. tracks into two mono’s.
I like to change the stereo
Matt: Well there you go. I hate doing that, so I’m going to change it just with this little button here ( as you can’t see ) and I’m going to drop down on the timeline and expand it. Here we have a waveform
Ed: Okay, have you got a simple little feature like “copy and paste effects” on a transition? Matt: That’s a good one. Let’s have a look. I spent hours calibrating this shot ( actually I do it in about 30 seconds ) but anyway, let‘s go to our effects and you’ll notice I’ve saved one here and it’s called “Beautiful Mirrors”. That is dropped down on top of there – look how beautiful that shot looks, and we can just compare that before and after … looking pretty good. That’s just a saved preset. You can save, not only multitudes of filters, you can save speed changes, you can save layout changes, so here we are in the layout tool. Remember, this is real time, no other software can do this in real time. So I’m going to animate this across the screen in 4K, in 3D space, in real time – who the hell can do that, that’s impossible? So the cool thing is, we can actually save that movement. If you’ve got a super that needs to fly in from the corner, you can save that animation and apply it to a super, apply it to a logo, apply it to actual footage. It’s just a simple click. So for example, if we go up here to the transform properties and we just grab a new clip … Ed: Oh, I just saw the timeline all red, what does that mean? Matt: Ed:
That means I’m pushing it to its limits. So you have to render that?
Matt: Well let’s hold on a second. We’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 plus we’ve got five colour correction effects, a keyer a layout manipulation in 3D and it’s 4K … Ed:
Are you looking for sympathy?
Matt: Yeah a little bit – can I have something, have you got a coffee or something? I’ve been talking all day, trying to stay positive man. Do you want to be blown away by some colour correction? Ed: No I just want to see the simple things. If I’m going to transition from another editing platform to this,
A very familiar timeline - not hard to learn.
monitor which is generated in the background so it’s not going to take up valuable time every time you open a clip. But let me show you something really cool … we can edit audio just like any other thingee, okay that’s pretty standard, but we can also do things like this – do two at once, or we can also right click and move all of them on a scale, so like 50% so the same pattern will stay. What’s even cooler than that is, I mean, this is all standard features right … what we can do is, if we had a hardware board set up to this – we don’t actually need one but it would be cool if we did – we could press “play” and we can add keyframes in real time to our audio. That’s pretty cool. But even cooler than that, I’m just going to add an “inpoint” here and an “outpoint” here and I’m going to press No 6 for loop and this is just going to continuously loop. That’s not very impressive, but what is impressive is we go up to here … Ed:
No, I think they’re impressive.
Matt: Let’s go to the parametric equaliser ( that makes me sound smart ) … if we double click that now, what we can do in real time is monitor the guy’s voice we’re trying to fix up and some “tst- tst- tst” up in the 10K range, give him a bit of bass because his voice
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hasn’t broken yet and sort of just pump up the midrange of that voice, and we can hear it in real time, it’s looping, this is really powerful stuff. So we can colour correct in real time, we can do audio changes in real time and the performance is simply amazing. Ed: Okay, now let’s look at output. So you’ve got your little sequence there and you want to output it as an H.264 1080i file. What do you do? Matt: Okay, so normally, you just press F11, but I’m going to export just this little section here, and so I go “file export, print to file”. Now EDIUS is supposed to support more formats than any other editor, so if you want to export, EDIUS can do it. Ed: When a new codec comes along, how do you get that new codec – do you have to buy the next version of EDIUS? Matt: Not always. This is where Grass Valley is ahead of the game. I think they’ve got friends in Japan who know people in Japan. When a new camera comes out, they take each other out for dinner and they talk about codecs and then they implement them. Ed: Okay, so normally you have to do upgrades rather than just download codecs. Do you have a DVD authoring programme built-in? Matt: Oh now you’re talking. We can author a Blu-ray straight off the timeline, or a DVD straight off the timeline. Ed: Matt: Ed:
This sounds like Avid Liquid? Yeah, but Avid Liquid doesn’t actually work. Not anymore. You got me there.
Matt: Remember those little simple things we were talking about – check this out. Lots of authoring tools put effort into making beautiful menus, which you can do, but generally speaking, you just want to give someone a DVD as a preview disc or something like that, so adding chapters and stuff can be a pain in the arse. But all I’m going to do now is just press V for marker …
Panavision – Chrosziel We are at Schneider Optics for Panavision because they are the resellers for Chrosziel matte boxes in the USA. Sebastian Merkel is going to tell us what’s new.
Ed: Are you allowed to say “arse” on television just like Paul Henry? Matt: I’m not allowed to say shit or arse, but I continually get in trouble for saying both of them. Anyway, so here we have some markers on our timeline and they’re generally useful in editing situations to add notes, etc, but what they’re cool for is, if we go to burn a disc from a timeline “file, export, burn to disc” – those marker points actually become chapter points. A really, really simple feature; a really, really cool feature. So remember we can burn Blu-rays straight from the timeline, DVDs straight from the timeline and it’s also got its own DVD authoring programme as well. Ed: Alright, my last question – the big one though – photo manipulation. So many productions these days need graphics, need photos, need titles, etc. I’m sure there’s a titling programme built-in that has got every font imaginable, what about photos – is there a quick way to manipulate photos with something like Photoshop? Matt: It integrates in that it accepts Photoshop files and, if you have both programmes open at once and you open the Photoshop file that’s on your timeline, you go back to Photoshop, make changes and save it, that will instantly update on EDIUS’ timeline. So in a way, yes. Ed: What about the support now for Blackmagic Design cards in EDIUS 7? Matt: AJA cards, Blackmagic cards and we’re actually using a Matrox card right now as well. So Grass Valley finally opened up third party hardware support, which is really cool, so they’re not just restricting you to use Grass Valley hardware. Ed: Well it all sounds too good to be true, but if you want to get a demo of this, apart from talking to Mike Symes in Christchurch, Mark Hall from Corsair Solutions is the supplier of the EDIUS product and you can go online at www.corsairsolutions.com.au and have a NZVN look.
don’t actually have a back focus adjustment, is that right? Sebastian: That’s correct, especially the two-thirds inch ENG cameras, you could adjust the back focus at
Ed: Now Sebastian, Chrosziel’s not just matte boxes by the look of this gadget you’ve got here? Sebastian: This is a collimator we are showing. The collimator is for measuring the back focus of lenses and the collimator has again become a very important device with the growth in the use of PL mount lenses. They have to be measured with a collimator according to the back focus. This is an item we have been selling very successfully in the last few years and that’s why we are showing it here. Ed: Because quite a few of the modern cameras
A well engineered collimator from Chrosziel. Page 47
so you can adjust the width and the height of the cage according to the width and height of the camera body. Ed:
Okay, so this is for the DSLR user mainly I guess?
Sebastian: This is for DSLR also but not only. It is good for any camera, also the C300 where you want to attach additional features – audio, light, you know the cage comes with threads, so you can attach different accessories to the cage. And you have a nice handgrip because some cameras don’t have a handgrip. So that is something. Ed: And of course it perfectly fits your matte boxes onto it? Sebastian: Yes, absolutely. Then what else do we have here … this is something which becomes more and more important for broadcasters if they want to get Ultra HD or 4K content and their two-thirds inch cameras and lenses do not allow this, they change to a 4K cinema camera and lenses and these lenses need to be controlled. What we did here is we used our Aladin as an interface. You see there is a lens with three motors and this lens can be controlled via the Aladin interface when the camera demands focus and zoom. This is for live production, so this is broadcast, this is not cinema. This is, in a way, a kind of merging of cinema equipment with a broadcast application. Ed:
And this fits any of those standard zoom lenses?
Sebastian: Yes, any. You take the Angénieux, you take the Canons, you take the Zeiss, you take the
Sebastian with Multicage.
the camera, but the PL or Super 35 or full frame cameras, it’s not possible. So if you see that the back focus is out of line of the lens, you have to shim the lens. And to see how much it is out of focus, you need the collimator. Ed: It’s not something you could do yourself with a file I guess? Sebastian: No, absolutely not. It’s a long-term investment, so it lasts forever if you want and it’s important especially for rental houses. Ed: And the importance of having your back focus in adjustment, especially with 4K, it’s even more important? Sebastian: Absolutely, because the higher the resolution, the harder it is to pull the focus, so if your back focus is not in the right position and you have your setup and your subject which you want to have sharp in a certain distance, and the certain distance is not according with the distance on the lens scale, you have a big problem. And that’s why you have to have a correct back focus. Ed: So you’re not actually recording 4K, at most you’re recording 2K? Sebastian: Yes. Ed:
Right, that’s the big stuff, now matte boxes?
Sebastian: Matte boxes, nothing new. However, with this little fellow, we can make setups with our so-called Multicage or CustomCage, which is fully adjustable to the size of the camera. It comes with different modules Page 48
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Fujinon Cabrio there. Any of these lenses can be used and controlled with these external motors, no problem. Ed:
So Chrosziel’s really branching out?
Sebastian: Yes absolutely. We are looking for new business fields and this is one of these new fields. Next coming up is the World Soccer Championship in Brazil where Sony intends to produce Ultra HD content and maybe we will be there with our units. Ed:
We’ll keep an eye on the cameras.
NZVN
Sachtler FSB range, because then you’re into a cast aluminium type body, but you know these go through very vigorous testing, they’re very tough and we’ve had the Ace out on the market now for two years – the Ace L and the Ace M head tripod systems. Ed: So there’s nothing actually new in the Sachtler tripod area? Jake: Not at this stage, no. We have some exciting stuff going on in the lab but I can’t tell you about that. Ed:
We might see it at IBC you mean?
For Panavision, we have Jake Dodson to tell us about Sachtler.
Jake: You’ll see it at NAB next year, so we’ll make a splash then. It’s a bit early days right now – but we’re very excited about the matte box and the follow focus rig. It’s really nice, you can see that Sachtler quality on that system.
Ed:
Ed:
Panavision – Sachtler Jake, the latest and greatest?
Jake: Well the latest and greatest is the Sachtler Ace range, the Ace accessories. This includes three main elements – it’s a matte box with two main filter holders which can be rotated through 90 degrees with a really nice stop on those. And then the second element is a variable height base plate, so that we’ve got a nice range for adjusting the camera height relative to the follow focus …
Well that’s what we expect with the name.
Jake: Well absolutely. We put in a lot of effort – there are a lot of these products out there, but you’ve got to look beyond the regular design … it’s how the products get tested, how they actually get validated, how the actual ergonomics work, you know all of these little touches, that’s what you get out of the Sachtler brand, so we put a lot of effort into making sure that you’re NZVN really going to enjoy using the product.
Ed: So on which cameras do you need the height adjustment? Jake: Well the idea is that you buy a rig and it gives you flexibility across a whole range of cameras. We were talking to a guy earlier who wants to use his on a D800 for example, so a DSLR with a classic kind of 80-200mm lens … the third component being the follow focus. What’s critical about the follow focus is that it has zero backlash. Now having a zero backlash mechanism at the price point – you’re talking about US$1500 for all of those three elements together in a kit, which is a very competitive price point, especially with a zero backlash mechanism. So we think that, in terms of price performance, this is right at the leading edge. Ed: And it fits on any of the range of Ace tripods? Jake: Yes. It will actually go on any standard or any regular baseplate, so it doesn’t just have to be Ace. But typically, if you’re really looking to pull the price down of your system, you would actually put this on maybe an Ace M, where you’re talking about a head and a tripod combination in that sort of US$600 territory. If you want to go up to carbon fibre on the tripod, so for further weight you’d go up to the Ace L, and then you’re looking at around about that US$1100 mark for a carbon fibre tripod with a head – and these are all Sachtler fluid heads, so you’re getting a very high level of performance for videography work. Ed: That’s right – so the weight capacity that earlier Sachtler tripods had for the lighter cameras nowadays? Jake: Exactly. So it just gives you a bit more flexibility, a bit more portability. If you want a tripod that’s going to last you for 20 years, you might go for the next range up, which is the
Jake from Sachtler. Page 50
Sony – Part One We are at Sony with Nick Buchner from Sony AustraliaNew Zealand.
commercial use, for drama, for feature film making etc. So you’ve really got a very versatile product that’s not just dedicated to one style of shooting, versus the approach that at least one of our competitors is taking. So we’re trying to develop a really versatile package, whilst enhancing what people have already got. We haven’t brought out a new camera, we’ve enhanced the F5 and F55. Ed: It’s still a cinema camera thought isn’t it – it’s got a large sensor, it has a short depth of field and so people just have to know how to use that?
Nick with the PDW-850.
Ed: Nick, we had a very interesting press conference – there were lots of quite exciting things mentioned there but I guess the big one that everyone was very impressed by was the clever shoulder mount kit for the F55 and F5 because so far, everyone’s been coming up with rigs that look atrocious and probably don’t work very well. Now there’s something from Sony that the camera just clips in and every function is in the right place for somebody who wants to shoot off their shoulder? Nick: That was one of a trio of announcements for enhancements to the F5 and the F55. Probably just calling it a shoulder mount is not doing it justice; we’re calling it a build-up kit. The aim is to turn the F5 and F55 operationally into something that’s very similar to an XDCAM shoulder-mount camcorder. A lot of freelance shooters for television are used to the XDCAM camera, they’re used to where the controls and switches are, so what this kit does is not only add an adjustable shoulder pad – that’s just part of it – but it adds a module under the front of the camera that has all the key controls -– white balance, gain, audio levels – exactly where an XDCAM user would expect them to be. Further back to the rear of the camera, we’ve got an audio block where audio levels and audio input switching are exactly where you would expect them to be. On top is a radio mic receiver slot where our two channel digital wireless mic system can be easily slotted in. At the back, there’s also a row of input and output connectors for audio and power, including a D-Tap. There’s a new handle that fits on the top with a mounting point for a shotgun mic, plus another input point for that mic.. So what you end up with is a camera that an XDCAM shooter can pick up and feel very comfortable with … in fact, at the press conference, we heard noted documentarian and XDCAM shooter Alister Chapman from the UK, say that he just picked this camera up and the controls and overall layout felt very familiar. That’s the idea, to give that “run and gun” style shooter that option. Now, having said that, just take the camera out of the rig and you could put a RAW recorder on it, you can do lots of other things, it’s a very powerful production style camera for
Nick: Exactly. Whilst I’ve just made much of the fact that all the controls are in the same places as an operator used to working with our 2/3” cameras would expect – yes, you still need to be able to focus accurately which means becoming proficient at controlling that shallow depth of focus. No disrespect to any particular cameraperson, but it is a skill to be mastered and we’re certainly hearing from some production companies that it’s causing them difficulties – that it’s sometimes not so practical to work in this style even though they’d love to go with a large sensor look. In fact, some of them are moving back to shooting with 2/3” type traditional cameras. Ed: Well surely a lot of their problems can be fixed by using the right lens? Nick: Not necessarily. It doesn’t matter what the lens is, you’ve still got to focus it. You’ve still got to be on the money. Ed: But if you have a nice big wide angle it mitigates it, shall we say? Nick: If you’re always shooting wide angle that may help reduce focus problems – but you’re not always going to be shooting wide angle! So you’ve got to take your focusing skills to a new level. The cameras help you there, offering various focusing tools in the viewfinder such as peaking etc. Ed:
It gives you the option?
Nick: It does. Ed: Now I understand there’s a very good upgrade from F5 to 55? Nick: Well that’s the second of the trio of great announcements. We will offer an upgrade kit for people who have got F5s to upgrade their camera completely to F55 functionality. It’s a hardware-based upgrade, the sensor has to be replaced, you get all the features and performance of an F55. So that’s great for people who’ve possibly put their toe in the water with the F5, weren’t necessarily sure they needed what the F55 offered, but have since discovered that the extra features and performance would be useful … they’ll be able to get an upgrade for a very similar cost to the difference between the cameras in the first place. Along with the shoulder mount adapter, this upgrade will be coming towards the end of the year, probably around October-November. Ed: But I’m sure there are plenty of people who have bought an F5 knowing what they want and that’s what they want and they’re happy with it, because it does what they’ve asked for? Nick: Well absolutely. Generally, what we’re seeing is that the freelancers who shoot lots of different content
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and have no idea what kind of job they’re going to be doing from week to week, have tended to go for the F55 because it gives them the most versatility. There are some very good reasons that people have appreciated, for example the Frame Image Scan feature that eliminates any rolling shutter problems, or wanting 4K onboard recording etc. But where people are shooting particular types of programming – reality programming, documentary, corporate, that type of thing, it’s often been the F5 which is very good value, particularly with the bundles that we’re offering at the moment with viewfinders and other accessories. Ed:
And the third thing?
Nick: Well the third big announcement was the option to fit additional codecs. The cameras are very versatile – right now they have XAVC, they have 50 megabit XDCAM format, they have HDCAM SR format and with the RAW recorder, they can do RAW. But sometimes there are other codecs out there that people wish for – for example, those that are still working in Final Cut 7, which has no XAVC support, so they like to shoot ProRes. So what we’ve announced is a chargeable hardware update, that will add ProRes and DNxHD codecs to the camera, making them surely the most versatile cameras around in terms of choice of recording codec. Ed: But I do remember something from the press conference, that there was quite a famous person who, when asked what codec he used said XAVC and he’s doing major documentary programmes using that codec, not an off-board recorder? Nick: That’s true and I think there was also another very good example at the press conference of a live grading session where they put up some large nighttime images shot in Los Angeles. Curtis Clark ASC shot these and he had a noted colourist from Sony Colorworks in Hollywood. They graded this shot live and they did comment at the end that this was shot in XAVC, it wasn’t shot RAW, yet they felt they got a lot of latitude out of it, they were able to bring a lot of detail up out of the shadows. XAVC is a new-generation codec and it’s a very good codec, but we want to make the cameras totally versatile for those who wish a choice. ProRes is something that a lot of people have wished for, while DNxHD is something that those working in Avid are keen to possibly work with using a native file rather than having to transcode – so this is an option. If they don’t want it, they don’t have to buy it, but it is an option. All of this comes on the back of the release of Version 4 software for the cameras which was just released a day or two before NAB and adds a bunch of new features to the cameras – things like cache recording where you can get up to 15 seconds of cache recording, so you can basically run the cache and when you hit the record button you’ve captured the previous 15 seconds of material. This can be great in some documentary and action situations. We’ve also added the ability to apply 3D user LUTs to the camera plus various other features, quite a raft of them. And that’s all available as a free update. Interval recording where you could set to shoot X number of frames at X interval was also due with Version 4, however this has just been slightly delayed and that will come out in Version 4.1 which is due for the end of May.
Ed: It looks like you’ve got some pretty good base cameras there – the F65, 55 and 5 and now it’s a case of upping the software into them, the accessories that go with them, to keep them up to date? Nick: Well, they’re amazing cameras to begin with, and we’ve always promised an upgrade path. The F65 has also just had a Version 4 upgrade, that adds a whole bunch of new features, but different to the F5/55. I just had Hugh Calverley here from Imagezone, a Kiwi who has been working with F65s and he went through the whole Version 4 feature set with the product manager from Japan and was very pleased with what’s been added. So all our F Series cameras continue to evolve and that’s what we’ve promised – we’re not going to just bring out a new camera every six months – we’re enhancing what’s there, making them more versatile, adding more features, more options, for all styles of shooting. Ed: So does this mean that the 3 chip broadcast camera is dead – is it now going to be only single chip, short depth of field cameras? Nick: I would say absolutely not. I think that old maxim of “horses for courses” does apply and there are a lot of situations where a small sensor camera, a 2/3” camera or smaller, is the better weapon of choice. It’s not a fad that people like to shoot with that shallow depth of focus – it’s a cinematic look and it allows more people than ever before to achieve that look at a much more realistic cost than was ever possible in the film world or the early days of digital cinematography. But that doesn’t mean that look is necessary for every type of production, nor is it practical for every type of production. I alluded to an example earlier where a reality show had looked to go to large sensor, had a lot of difficulty with the camera guys not really being able to capture everything that was necessary and the feeling was that they’ll go back to 2/3” for the next series. So I think certainly, in the field production world, there’s a lot of legs left yet for XDCAM and for 2/3” generally – in the studio camera domain 2/3” continues to rule and I don’t think that will change in a hurry as we’re not even broadcasting our primary channels in HD in Australia, let alone 4K, you guys are ahead of us there! So no, I don’t pronounce the 2/3” camera dead. Ed: In fact, you’ve come out with a new one haven’t you?
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Nick: We have. The PDW-850 is a new XDCAM shoulder-mount camcorder – the successor model to the venerable PDW-F800 and PDW-700, our extremely popular disc-based camcorders. This is a new discbased model, showing just how committed we are to the optical disc format. The PDW-850 essentially has all the features and functions of the F800 but is more like the price of the 700, with improvements such as a more advanced digital signal processing circuit that achieves lower noise, better sensitivity. It’s still a 3 chip CCD camera and still recording to the optical disc that so many users find provides a very easy and cost-effective workflow. Ed: Now you say CCD for the 850 but there’s certainly been a huge success with the CMOS chips in the smaller cameras, in the 1/2” and 1/3” cameras – why not go to CMOS in those broadcast cameras? Nick: I think in the broadcast world, there’s still a feeling that CCD is superior to CMOS. That gap is narrowing, but there are some laws of physics that govern how a CMOS sensor will perform. For example, the rolling shutter or “jello” effect – with a CMOS sensor, it is very real and, unless you have either a mechanical or some form of electronic shutter – for example, the F65 has a mechanical shutter, while the F55 has a Frame Image Scan function which essentially is an electronic global shutter – unless you have something like that, you will suffer from some form of distortion in elements of the picture – vertical elements, moving elements – because of the physics of how a CMOS sensor works. They’ve certainly come a long way and we sell a lot of CMOS cameras, so I’m not standing here putting down CMOS, but I think in the broadcast world, a lot of the engineering people still feel that CCD is superior, so we’re continuing to make studio cameras, OB cameras and ENG/EFP cameras such as this new PDW-850, using CCD sensors. Ed: It is a look isn’t it. I mean, you talk about “look” for a cinema camera – there is a certain look to a CCD image compared to a CMOS image? Nick: Well as I said, the gap is narrowing, and I’d certainly be challenged myself, to necessarily pick the look just based on an A-B comparison on a monitor of a static subject. Once you start putting motion in, there may be a difference, but look, CMOS sensors have come a long way. I can remember standing here in Las Vegas 15 years ago in the early days of digital still photography when someone came out with a CMOS sensor for a still camera, a certain design, and we all just laughed and said you’ve got to be joking. But it wasn’t too many years after that that certainly several major manufacturers of digital SLR cameras were using nothing but CMOS and today that technology is in our F65, our F55 and in lots of our topline products. However as long as there’s a demand for CCD in broadcasting, we will continue to offer CCD too.
venerable NXCAM model has been the HXR-NX5P – the top of that range when it comes to a small sensor camcorder with a fixed lens. Then we have a range of small handheld XDCAM camcorders – the PMW-100, the 150, the 200. This new camera actually replaces the NX5 and also the two lower end models of the XDCAM range, the PMW-100 and 150 and becomes a bridge between those two worlds. It’s a 3 chip, 1/3” CMOS camcorder with a 25X zoom lens, a brand new lens design. It’s a wide lens too, going to 26mm equivalent, so it’s really class-leading in its performance. It’s got some really cool new features – it’s got a variable ND, so whilst it has three ND filter positions, it also has an electronically controlled variable ND filter that using a thumbwheel, you can dial up any ND value between 1/4 and 1/128 and that’s a technology that we’re seeing for the first time in this model. Another key interesting feature is we’ve introduced the use of a hot shoe called a Multi Interface (MI) shoe. We have an adapter for our UWP-D wireless mic receivers and by fitting that combination to the camera’s MI shoe, the audio signal from the receiver goes straight through into the camera, no cable required; the power for the wireless mic receiver comes up from the camera, no cable required and when you switch the camera on and off of course you’re also switching off the wireless mic receiver. Ed:
Oh that’s very clever.
Nick: It integrates beautifully into the new PXW-X180 camera. Ed:
Is it only one shoe?
Nick: There’s a single MI shoe, plus there are other cold shoes on the camera. So if you want to mount a light, such as our new HVL-LBPC which also integrates well with this camera via the MI shoe and can be switched on and off by the camera, you can or if you need a wireless mic too, you could still put a light on the cold shoe further back on the handle. So this camera’s really a great all-rounder – it records the 50 Megabit codec, it records XAVC, it records AVCHD, so it gives you a range of codecs. Ed: Hang on, I’m just getting confused about these codec numbers … Nick: Okay, AVCHD is an HD codec running at a maximum of 28 Megabits per second, so used for HD only – that’s the basis of our whole NXCAM range – they are all AVCHD cameras.
Ed: Right, now in the smaller cameras that we know and love from Sony? Nick: One of the new cameras we’ve launched here at NAB is the PXW-X180 and this is a camera that bridges the worlds of NXCAM and XDCAM. We have a range of NXCAM cameras that use the AVCHD codec and that’s really where our professional offerings start. A very Page 53
Ed:
Is that an MP4?
Nick: AVCHD is an MPEG-4 file format. The new XAVC codec is also MPEG-4 based and was introduced with the F5 and the F55 and is now proliferating across more of our models. It’s a newer codec, very scalable, it’s capable of doing HD, 2K and 4K – however, note that the PXW-X180 is not a 4K camera, this is an HD camera – but the beauty of the XAVC codec is that it’s very efficient, it looks great, it’s becoming increasingly well supported by all the NLE manufacturers – with the exception of Final Cut 7 as that’s not under any further development – but it is supported by Final Cut X. So the camera has a versatile set of codecs and a really versatile set of features. The NX5 has been a very popular workhorse camera and the new PXW-X180 is really set to take its place as an even more powerful workhorse for someone who wants a relatively small handheld camera with a very powerful lens. Ed:
Okay, quickly past monitors?
Nick: Yes, probably the star of the monitor display here is a prototype 30” 4K OLED monitor designed for reference and grading purposes. This will be out within the next 12 months and is really the pinnacle of our OLED technology. Our PVM and BVM OLED models have been really well accepted in all areas of production and this is sitting at the top of the tree. Ed: Well I can attest to that because, it’s a very dark picture and you can still see detail in the black – and that’s the test of a good monitor. Okay, in the audio area, radio mics, it’s really a big area because we’ve got to chuck out all our old ones shortly. Nick: March next year. Ed: So you’ve come to the party? Nick: We certainly have. The situation in New Zealand is that you’re just a few months behind Australia in having to vacate the higher frequencies and move to the new 502 – 606 and 622 – 698MHz ranges. We’ve got radio mic systems at various levels that fit within that range. There’s one main frequency block available for New Zealand, which is 638 – 694MHz. We’ve got fully digital and analogue hybrid systems within that range, but it’s also cleared the way for digital modulation of radio mics which wasn’t permitted previously under the Gener al User Licence in New Zealand. So that means our DWX system, which has been available in North America and Europe See if you can count the number of for about five little cameras in this picture. Hint: it’s less than 10. years, is now
available in Australia and New Zealand. This system is fully digital, so from the output of the microphone’s preamp right through the signal path, transmission path, receiver and into something like an XDCAM camcorder, it’s digital all the way. We have a beautiful integration with any current XDCAM camcorder that’s got a slot, so cameras like the PDW-F800, PDW-700, PMW-350, PMW-400 – these all feature a wireless mic slot. We have a two channel digital wireless receiver that fits into that slot, it’s the only two channel slot-in receiver that delivers two channels through the slot – others you generally have to use a cable to jump out the side of the camera. We’ve got a range of plug–on, handheld and bodypack type transmitters. The other big thing about DWX is through the tight integration with XDCAM, you can control the receiver through the menus in the camera, which is fantastic for a one man camera operator. You’ve also got control and status monitoring of the transmitter back from the receiver. So there’s actually a 2.4GHz signal that allows you to remotely control the gain or switch off or change the channel or switch in the low roll-off filter remotely from the receiver. Ed:
This is one of the benefits of digital?
Nick: It’s not specifically a benefit of digital, but it’s a benefit of designing a system where there is that facility. We’ve had great success with this with the BBC, with CNN, with various other American networks, and I should add, we also do rack mounted systems for studios and performance venues, so there are opera houses and theatres and other places that have also put in these rack mount receivers using the same transmitters and the same digital technology. Being digital – fantastic signal to noise ratio, fantastic frequency range, very natural sounding and really it’s the pinnacle of radio mic technology and it’s just ideal for XDCAM users. We also have adapters so you can take the slot-in receiver off the camera for use by a sound recordist or on a camera without a wireless slot. So DWX is a great system for high-end users. It’s complemented by our most recently introduced UWP-D Series, which is a lower cost range designed for small camcorders. We have various kits – bodypack kits, hand mic kits, plug-on kits. The UWP-D system uses digital processing in the transmitter and receiver, but the transmission is still analogue. That design means these mics have very good transient response and a great sound – and again we have all types of transmitters available plus some very nice operational features such as headphone monitoring output on the receiver which is handy for a second pair of headphones, all metal construction so they’re really tough and switchable mic/line inputs. Ed:
Well that’s a very good replacement for the …
Nick: UWP-D replaces the previous UWP-V Series. The other big thing about UWP-D is they have quite a wide tuning range, so with the new world of frequencies that are available to use with wireless mics, we’re all going to be pushed into less space. The system we’re selling in New Zealand is 638 – 694 MHz, so a 56MHz range. Ed:
That’s over twice I think what it was before?
Nick: The old UWPs were 24 MHz and some of our competitors are still 24 MHz. Some are a little greater but no one matches our range at the price, so you get greater versatility to find clear space. Ed:
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Excellent, good way to finish.
NZVN
Protel – Facilis For Protel, we are at Facilis Technology Inc and we have Jim McKenna. Ed: So Jim, Facilis TerraBlock is the big sign you’ve got up? Jim: TerraBlock is our original and still leading product at Facilis and we’ve been shipping it for 10 years. It is our flagship product, it’s our shared storage server, it comes in many different options in terms of the drive set and connectivity options. TerraBlock is in version 6 right now, so it’s been around multiple releases. The last few releases have been centred around our shared file system and that is a layer of management layer in TerraBlock. We are a software company after all and we just wrap it in a turnkey product in a server; but our shared file system allows us to send out fibre channel and Ethernet connected clients volumes that are writeable to every location where they’re mounted. This is especially important because this not a Network Attached Storage, this is not a volume level locked fibre channel SAN environment … this is a shared file system across fibre channel and Ethernet that has interesting attributes, one of them being emulation mode for Avid. Emulation mode for Avid allows us to appear to the operating system, whether it be Mac or Windows, exactly like we’re a Unity or ISIS – and when I say “exact” I mean exact in that all of the sub-directory creation in the MXF media files folder, all of the bin locks and all of the icons for network clips – they’re all intact when you use emulation mode on TerraBlock. Ed: And they must be happy with that, because I see their name on your wall here – or did you just put that there? Jim: Well the solutions partners that we call out are more based on our implementations in customer environments, and certainly there are more seats of Avid on our storage than I think any other third party – tens of thousands. This is because of the fact that we designed the product early on around Avid workgroups, because most of us are ex-Avid at Facilis. So we started out with the product that we knew would be most difficult to support, which is via the media compression. But from there, we branched into all the more popular applications in Final Cut and Adobe Premiere, Scratch, Resolve and any number of other applications that are commonly used in postproduction, especially content creation in high quality postproductions. Ed: Now you say that, over the years, the hardware hasn’t changed apart from that the drives have got bigger and faster, but I hear you saying that the software has changed and I guess also the inputs and outputs have changed. So how has the software changed – what have been the improvements in the software? Jim: When we first started shipping the product, we were fibre channel only at the time – it was 2 gig fibre channel only, but we’ve gone to 4 gig and 8 gig and now 16 gig from there. It was a volume level lot, single user right, so you had one writer and multiple readers on every volume. The workflow was a bit handicapped when it came to that, and we were competing with systems like Unity which, even though they were much more expensive, had a better workflow. So about five years ago, we developed a shared file system, which was a major improvement in the software beyond just the improvements in interface, improvements in usability, operating system support and things like that,
that you do along the way when you’re a software developer. We made a big improvement in the shared file system – that’s the major change and the platforms of the server have kept up with us, because we’ve changed our motherboards five times now, connectivity methods as you say have changed, controllers have changed from SATA to SAS, everything’s gotten much faster. In some cases, we’re doubling the speed of the server as compared to what we called out as a stream count early on, in the early days of the system. So even though the drive count hasn’t changed, drive speeds have increased, motherboard speeds have increased and our software has increased in efficiency. Ed: So as opposed to having a dedicated hardware array for your editing system, having a Facilis TerraBlock enables you to have that plus have storage for other functionality – maybe you’ve got some graphics, maybe you’ve got some other programmes in there and you can create compartments within your storage and controlling system, to enable you to do all of this in one bin basically? Jim: At the very least, it’s centralised storage, which means that even if you’re not collaborating, you can centralise all of your assets in one location, so if you need an asset management, or archiving functionality, it can all be in one place. Most of our customers will at least migrate jobs room to room which does require some level of centralisation and also requires some level of permissioning across rooms – you can see this volume, you can’t see this volume – and most of our customers will also do some collaboration. So even if they’re in environments where collaboration isn’t especially necessary, like maybe an advertising agency
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where there’s just really one project per room, they may even send it off – you render this for me, you bring this in for me, you ingest this or record this for me, that is collaboration. It’s allowing multiple systems to work towards the same end goal, on the same media set, on the same drives. So that’s very important in the functionality of a postproduction facility to hit the deadlines on time. It does give you what local storage does; because of the speed of the system it can take the place of local storage while at the same time enabling so much more across your workstations in collaboration. Ed: Okay, that’s for the big boys, now for the one man band, the small person, the small operator, you still have something for them? Jim: Well we have a direct attached storage, which is our T8 model and that’s simply a SAS attached 16 or 32 terabyte drive array – 8 drives. We’ve changed the pricing in January and actually the T8 is half its price when you consider that a 32 terabyte now drops in where a 16 terabyte was pricewise. So I think it’s a very good deal for the one man operations and folks using local attached storage instead of a SAN. Ed:
And the connection is Thunderbolt or …?
Jim: The connection is dual port 6 gig SAS, so it’s very fast. The thing that the folks at Protel may want to know about is version 6. Version 6 LDAP integration, active directory synchronisation for user accounts, resizing of volumes down as well as up, so more efficiency with the sizing of volumes has been realised with the version 6. More usability factors like keyboard commands, new normal user mode within the interface itself to keep some information away from normal users and non-admins that don’t need to see and the Adobe Anywhere qualification as well. So we can sit on the back end of Adobe Anywhere which, in a place like New Zealand, may be very popular because it allows for remote access worldwide for users and editors across the world to be able to access your personal storage across the Adobe Anywhere server. So it gives you opportunity to take your assets and expose them you know if you have the software, and the servers enable anyone anywhere in the world without having to create individual proxy files for those files. Ed:
And is this a free upgrade for existing users?
Jim: Yes, if you’re on support contract, version 6 is free to download; version 6 will however only work on 64 bit servers. We made a change back in 2008 that allowed us to upgrade servers after March of 2008 to 64 bit and as long as you’re on that upgrade path, or have bought your server after August of 2010, it’s already 64 bit, you can go to version 6. Ed: Fantastic and for local sales and support call Protel in New Zealand. NZVN
Protel – Datavideo We’re here at Datavideo and we have Cathy Aung from Datavideo Corporation. Ed:
Now a new product in a little box?
Cathy: This is our VP-597 3G/HD/SD-SDI Distribution Amplifier, so it takes two HD-SDI signals in, you can switch it, like an AB switch, and you can distribute to six SDI Streams. If one input disappears, the other one kicks in and it’s just a DA for HD-SDI. Also new is the MCU-100 which will now control up to 4 Panasonic or Sony video cameras remotely; MCU-100 (Hand-Held) or MCU-200 (Rack-Mounted) Multi-Camera Controller. Ed:
And this is all by WiFi is it?
Cathy: No it’s all via Ethernet. It goes into this little guy right here, and this end of the connector connects to the Sony camera, and this is just a composite out so you can monitor it, and this Ethernet control connects to here. So you can control up to four of them. And we also have a new SE-1200 switcher; it’s four input, HDMI, you can control it with a computer Page 57
Cathy with one of the many great connection solutions offered by Datavideo.
interface, so connect it to a computer. So just connect the Ethernet and with audio inputs you can have SDI or HDMI in … HDMI in, HDMI out. So I think it’s the three and four you can change your data to SDI or HDMI. Ed: So there’s a lot more Ethernet control coming now? Cathy: Yes, most of our products, definitely. We have the NVS-20 Video streaming server as well. It’s also connected to the computer by Ethernet. It has HDMI and HD/SD-SDI inputs for streaming. You can also connect a USB stick to it and record the stream at the same time as streaming out.
Ed: So what do you need at the other end of that, the streaming server? Cathy: You connect it to a streaming server and this is just a browser base, so when you want to connect it to the computer, there’s a computer interface that comes up that you type in an IP address and then that’s how you connect it. You have to use a streaming server like Ustream or Justin.tv or Twitch.tv and that’s how you connect it. Ed:
Is it an expensive product that one?
Cathy: Ed:
From Protel NZ$1,107.00+GST.
It’s mains powered or battery as well.
Cathy: You can use a DTap battery and connect it to the 12v input. This is the AD-200 an Audio Delay box with source level controls. You can delay up to four audio channels. Ed:
And this box?
Cathy: This one is actually the Wireless Distribution Device NVW-150/250 WiFi Bridges to transfer Video signal over WiFi. So you connect this to a WiFi network and then you can transmit VU signal wirelessly over WiFi. So that’s another new product. Ed: And really the plates on here are just to connect the batteries to? Cathy:
Yes. You can connect it to a V-mount.
Ed: Well you have been busy in the last year coming up with new products! NZVN
Protel – Livestream For Protel, we are at Livestream with Mark Hall from Corsair Solutions in Australia.
bring them into the studio software as a remote camera source. What you can do now, with the Broadcaster, which is the on-camera mounted encoder, rather than go into the Cloud and then coming back into the Livestream studio which has a latency maybe of about 10 seconds, you can go direct from the Broadcaster over the WiFi or LAN in as a remote camera source. So that has been updated in the firmware of the Broadcaster and you’ve got like a couple of seconds latency, so that’s a very good addition. Ed: And a much shorter pipe – I guess therefore with less potential problems?
Ed: Now Mark, you were the cover boy in our last issue when you did the show at Protel in Auckland, but even since then, there have been some releases at NAB from Livestream? Mark: There have been some very exciting announcements which we’ll run you through. One of the first major announcements is Livestream working with Google Glass. You can actually use Google Glass and use your voice commands to start streaming from the Google Glass and even bring that in as a remote camera source into your studio software. The next feature is the ability to take in any external source and
Mark: Yes, definitely. The next major announcement is the Livestream 510 which is the next version from the 51. So this one, apart from being a rack mount unit, has a touchscreen foldable screen that’s inbuilt in the unit, which can actually fold down and come up as needed. It still comes with the metal cover and you get the carry bag so it’s flight friendly; you can take it on the plane very easily and transport it. In addition, we’re actually running the Livestream Studio 2 software. This is going to become available in around about May and this will be, from what they’re saying, a free upgrade, with all their other free upgrades, from the Studio 1 to Studio 2. One of the very major things for the Studio 2 software is the ability to support bonded modems in the unit natively. So where you might have previously had like a LiveU or a Teradeck for a bonded solution, you can actually have up to four 3G/4G modems in this and it supports bonded straight out of the unit, which is fantastic. So you can have a complete flyaway kit by
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Mark: You can see the glow effect that it has and just the quality – it’s just amazing and we’ve had a very good response from people seeing this product here at Livestream. Moving on, here we’re looking at one of the stream that’s going out live from NAB. At the moment we can see we’ve got currently 56,328 viewers all around the world … oooh 335, 56,336 viewers all around the world, so they’re probably hearing us talk at the moment if they’re streaming; you can also see where they’re located. So that’s just really showing the stream that goes out and how people are viewing what’s actually happening live at NAB at the moment. So it’s very, very exciting. Ed: And that’s only one stream, so obviously there are lots of other people producing content and delivering it via Livestream around the world and that’s even more? Mark: That’s right, but they might even be pulling this as a remote feed in and they might be taking this as a Picture in Picture for their stream. You can see some of the channels there, we’ve got Cornell Hall we’ve got Without Limits TV, Mexico Beats, Nova Arena – some of the people are at universities, so they’re all popping up as to who is actually using the screen as well. Ed:
plugging four USB modems in here with redundant 3G/4G modems. With that, there’s a lot of other features that have been introduced into the Studio 2 software – that includes the ability to take external feeds of RSS and XML; also Facebook and Twitter integration into your live feeds, so you can have that come up from all your followers on the display. There’s a new GUI with it so the layout has changed; it’s a more funkier type layout, and you’ve also got three graphics engines in there as well rather than two. What you can also see in front of this is the brand new Studio console that’s just come out. It’s a very nice looking unit, a very smooth T-Bar; you’ve got your three displays which show all your medias and your programmes and your times and your recording. Its sliders are all motorised, so we can use it from the audio mixer and you can actually see it move – so that’s fully motorised and very good quality components as in all the Livestream products.
And in a quieter area?
Mark: We have the next version of the 1700 which is the HD1710, 17 input, live production switcher. We’ve got the same control surface we had over there, but in addition, we’ve got the additional audio surfaces that sort of hang on the end of that. You’ll also see that we’ve got an Onyx Blackjack USB recording interface which we can use for taking external audio feeds in, in addition to the audio that may be embedded with our SDI channels, and use that within our mix as we want. Looking closer at the unit here, you’ll see that there are bays at the front, so we’ve got swappable media that can be taken in and out of the chassis. For example, you might be recording something and you might just want to literally pop it out and give that to someone else. So apart from the eSATA, the USB3 and obviously the GigLAN that it has on it, you can also swap the drives there as needed. It’s running the new Studio 2 software which is going to be available very soon. You can also see some of the recent upgrades that have come through on the current Studio software … and people with Studio will know, any
Ed: And I can attest to the frame being a very solid aluminium frame so it would be very hard to damage this? Mark: That’s right, there are a lot of people who have been waiting for this and it’s going to suit them … a very nice looking unit. We have the larger system with another separate audio dedicated console which you can extend this to. It’s very well featured, you’ve got all your displays there, all your displays change – if I change my camera source from Media-1 or Cam-2 to a different name, that automatically follows through and displays through on the displays as well. Ed: They’re very precise touch buttons. I just changed the output programme and it was very smooth. Page 59
Take it anywhere.
sort of update comes through completely free. So, as soon as it comes out, it pops up when you start and it gives you the option to install that or not install that update. I’ll run you through some of the recent additions. We have the four ISO records so we can have four records that are being done simultaneously. Now that can be done up to 120 meg per recording and they can be instantly accessible in either the Media 1 or the Media Pool 2 or both. So apart from those four that are constantly recording, they may be a combination of any of your camera inputs come in, you might have two cameras … those can be also brought back and played back as media clips while they’re still recording at the same time. So we might have an instance where there is a basketball match and we want to subclip that and have that which will be instantly available for playback as a Picture in Picture say on our graphics channel. We’ve also introduced a button that you can hit for replay, that you can designate so if you see something you hit the button, it will go back any number of seconds up to ten, and have that already cut, ready to playback when you’re ready to go. Ed:
But the normal programme’s still recording?
Mark: That’s correct. So you’ve got those four records happening and they’re available in either one media pool or the other media pool, or both at any one time. In addition, we’ve got an H264 encoder that’s introduced in the unit and you have basic controls for the touchscreen which reflects the new 510 unit. They’re some of the main features that have been brought in, in addition to ( as we mentioned earlier )
the ability to take in new data feeds. We did talk about RSS and XML, we can even do stuff from, say, Google Docs, so we could take in data from a Google layer or a Twitter layer as well and bring that in. So it’s not just for your standard sports scores – there’s other sorts of data that you can bring in. Ed: And I guess that now that this has reached this level, it’s up to the consumers to come along and say, “great this is fantastic, but can you add” … and once you’ve got some bulk of customer feedback, then Livestream can look at what they’re going to do next? Mark: It’s quite amazing how far they’ve come over the last few years compared to last year and just the flexibility going from someone can buy the software and use it with their existing Blackmagic cards or they can buy the turnkey systems, but just flexibility … you could have an iPhone and bring that stream live from your iPhone, or you could bring that in remotely as a camera feed and mix it in. So it’s a very, very flexible system. And it’s also open I should say, the Studio software. If you don’t have a Livestream platform that you stream to, if you stay with Wowza or Akamai you can still stream to that, you’re not locked in. It’s completely open, which is one of the great things about it. Ed: I have just been advised by Protel that a really good value promotion has just kicked in and will no doubt be of interest to customers considering Livestream solutions. Call Protel to arrange a quotation or demonstration of the Livestream products. NZVN
ARRI Cameras We are at the ARRI booth with Stefan Sedlmeier and lots of camera gear. Ed: Stefan, we’re very pleased to see some AMIRAs on the stand. I guess we’ve been promised some demo models very soon, perhaps in the next couple of months? Stefan: Yes, this is correct. We ordered two demo cameras for ARRI Australia and have our first customers’ orders in. Also, we will do everything to get the first to one of our New Zealand clients and have a workshop together with our lighting distributor, our customers and the New Zealand Cinematographers Society. We will let you know when but we well endeavour to do this during May. So this should be a good event to get all the customers together and of course a lot of tech talk, but maybe also some beer and ‘nibblies’. Ed: That will be good and we’ll certainly keep everybody informed as to when that might be. Now we’ve covered the AMIRA, and there’s obviously a lot of interest in that, but you’re still supplying people ALEXAs – it’s a highly regarded and popular camera?
It’s plain to see that Stefan is happy with his AMIRA.
Stefan: That is right. The ALEXA is still going strong, we have already sold and shipped seven ALEXA systems in 2014, the total number sold in Australia and New Zealand is about 150 – I would say it’s about 110 in Australia, maybe 115 and about 35-40 in New Zealand. It’s still the camera of choice and we supply
to everybody. We have owner/operators who operate with one or two cameras up to rental houses who own 10 ALEXAs. Ed: Now one of the problems that you’ve been telling me about is support – that you offer the support for the product that you sell, the ALEXAs, but you’re having a
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problem with the people who own them actually coming to you? Stefan: Yes we have a positive problem because sometimes you want to do preventative maintenance which is sensor cover glass cleaning, CMOS sensor calibration, also small cosmetic repairs like tape measure marks or a cover glass for the optical display – the LCD on the righthand side of the camera, just to make sure no screws are missing, everything is fine, but we can’t get the cameras because they are continuously shooting. Even if I tell customers just send them to us for preventative maintenance, they say “no, the camera is fine, it’s not broken, it doesn’t break, we’ll keep rolling”. So it’s a positive problem to have, but on the other hand it’s like a car, you should keep it maintained, well looked after and there are some checkpoints which we sometimes would like just to make sure that all patches are installed, the latest firmware is up and running and if any questions arise from our customers, also to train them up on software upgrade packages – we are now at version 9.1, soon we are releasing version 10, and we also want to make sure that they know all the latest gimmicks and features of the camera. Ed: Perhaps you should ask the engineers to build in a little timer or something that, after a certain number of hours, a little red flag appears in front of the sensor – that would bring them in in a hurry? Stefan: Yes exactly. This is like a car as I say, next preventative oil service, or inspection due in 4000kms. But we are proud, because we only get really hard cases – this is when the camera hits the ground or goes underwater, or hits a brick wall like it happened on Mad Max: Fury Road where the car with the camera on the bonnet drove through the brick wall. The stunt didn’t really work out as it should and the camera was completely destroyed. So there was nothing we could even fix anymore; that was just fixed by replacing the camera with a new body. Ed: Now obviously, you’ve got lots of very satisfied customers and people are still buying the ALEXA and are lined up for the AMIRA, how does this fit in with the buzz at the show here which, as everybody knows, is 4K but your cameras are not 4K, however people still want them. How does this make sense? Stefan: I am very thankful that you are asking me this question because it’s really important to understand this properly. Resolution is one of many factors which make a good camera imaging sensor. As important as resolution is dynamic range, colour separation, authentic skin tones, exposure latitude, a good signal to noise ratio – so low noise floor, and a high frame rate. According to your subjective perception of resolution of focus, dynamic range is even more important than resolution. ARRI has a native 3K sensor, we run the camera in HD1920 or in 2K 2048, in RAW we output 3K. Now there is a new feature for the ALEXA XTs which is a so called Open Gate mode and we read out the entire sensor width, which is 3.4K. We have a show stage here, where customers talk about their experience and they continuously up-res to 4K for IMAX and 4K DCP for digital cinema and we are still beating real 4K cameras in terms of image quality, not because we have a higher resolution, but because at 3 or 3½K resolution we still deliver a better dynamic range, better colour fidelity, so the images still look better. You can’t compensate that by just having a higher resolution when you have to buy that for the price where you justify signal to noise, or you justify good colour rendering.
Ed: But of course, if you’ve got any image that’s got depth, how much of that image is actually going to be at 4K – only the exact point of focus, where you’ve got one bit of light landing on one pixel and not being spread across two pixels? Stefan: Yes, it’s always the composition of the sensor in relation to the lens. You always take the lens into consideration and, in the real world, not all scenes really deliver 4K in terms of modulation. It really depends on the scene. As I said before, only looking at resolution doesn’t make a good picture, because there are cameras out there which shoot 4K but the images don’t look pleasant to the human eye, and customers keep telling me that – yes, this is a 4K image, but the skin tones look wrong or the colour rendering is just bad, or the colour separation, or it can’t do 14½ F stops. Under perfect conditions, you can achieve 15 F stops with the ALEXA, you don’t have a problem with noise and the camera is still very flexible and fast – fast in terms of turnaround, in terms of data wrangling, in terms of post paths, so there is no number crunching required. Also, with ARRIRAW, this is straightforward; the last features in Australia were shot in ARRIRAW and even Roger Deakins’ Skyfall was shot with ALEXA and upscaled to 4K for DCP. Gravity was shot with ALEXA – I think this was even shot in 2K, this was not even ARRIRAW. Look at that in IMAX to see how beautiful this looks. So it’s all about image processing and really having a good capturing at the front end. Resolution is important, but you wouldn’t justify having a high resolution if it would jeopardise other factors which make the beautiful images from the ALEXA, and this is probably the reason why we are still standing strong on ALEXA. And of course, we are watching 4K and beyond, 6K and there will be a sensor, a camera, a technology when we can handle the data backbone at the same frame rate up to 120 or 200 frames, 14 bit colour depth at the sensor, 12 bit on the output, 14½ F stops and the same image quality in 4K. This is what we need. But on the other hand, production companies don’t want to pay more for doing 4K. Don’t forget that 4K is four times the data than 2K. I always mention projects when you shoot 4K … when you shoot 4K you should also shoot high frame rate don’t forget, because it’s no point shooting 4K at 24 frames. If you shoot 4K you should be shooting at 48 or 50 frames. This has more aesthetical reasons, otherwise you have too much motion blur when the camera is panning, but to do it properly like Peter Jackson, once you shoot 4K you should shoot at 48 or 50 frames. When you shoot this in 3D, suddenly you have 16 times the data compared to a single camera shooting 2K or 3K at 25 frames. So don’t underestimate the complexity in post and the turnaround time to have the capture drives empty for the next day of shooting, and the costs involved with that. Of course we’re looking into that and see how easy we did the transition to 2K and also, don’t forget that we did 4K or 6K for years – our film recorders, the Arrilaser film recorder is a 4K machine; our film scanner, the ARRISCAN is a 6K scanner, we oversample by scanning in 6K while we output 4K; 35mm film was 4K for years, for centuries and nobody is even talking about that. So for us, 4K is nothing new, but capturing 4K with a digital imaging sensor, this is new and handling a data backbone on set and post with 4K. Film could handle 1 gigabyte a second – this is the capacity you get on 35mm film stock, 1 gigabyte a second without even thinking about it. Nowadays, there’s new recording media, stronger processing power, new mix, new rendering farms. It’s all part of the system and
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you need this as well. It’s not about acquisition, but having the entire path to the delivery. The deliverable is quite unlikely 4K, not for the cinemas because the cinemas have just upgraded to DCP 2K and for the average audience you don’t see a difference between 2K and 4K unless you’re sitting less than seven metres away from the screen. So there’s an entire part to be taken into consideration – the viewing distance, also the screen size in relation to the viewing distance and don’t forget that film shooting is also a business; business has to be economical for the production company and if you overdo it on the technical side, then you miss out having more money for setup, for actors or makeup or post or good editors.
What’s on the other side.
This is one part of it and at the end it has to be a pleasant experience also for the audience watching this movie, and you see the entire food chain; the resolution of the imaging sensor is one part of it, but the audience will not probably tell or judge, the pictures just look great, they look pleasant, they look authentic and this makes the difference. And it’s also about lighting and having good lenses, having a good DOP, a good cameraman, good operators – the entire composition of the image.
contribute. This is also what we see – all the positive feedback we have now with the AMIRA, the customers say this is really a proper camera, they love it, they put it on their shoulder; we have five AMIRAs here on the showfloor and the cameras – two of them are basically mounted on a quick release digi-cine bridgeplate and they are on customers’ shoulders all day. This is what they like, they can really run it, they can test it and this is exactly how they love it.
Ed: On the subject of resolution, again I just bring up this point that, if you’re taking a frame, you’ve got a foreground, you’ve got a mid-ground and a background … if you decide in your foreground there’s one particular head that you want to be focusing on, that’s the bit that’s going to be 4K. The rest of your scene, because it is slightly out of focus is not going to be 4K, so the resolution there doesn’t matter. It’s not about resolution as you say?
We have this adjustable shoulder pad, adjustable viewfinder mount, so the ergonomics to take it out of the soft bag, have it on your shoulder fast and start rolling. It’s like a car or a good shoe, you know it has to fit, and this is the fit that I get all day from customers – that they don’t even have to look at where the buttons are, they know it intuitively and they can operate it, because you have to concentrate on the scene, not on your camera.
Stefan: That is just the cinematographic look – people want to have shallow depth of field. This is also part of the artistic creation of the image. Of course, it’s important for faces in the foreground to be in focus and really spot on. It’s also a challenge for the focus puller to really be spot on, because in 4K you see immediately when you are off.
Ed: Stefan, customer experience – what have they been telling you?
We discussed helicopter shots and you shouldn’t forget about compression. It’s always important to consider what your recording media and codec is and nowadays it’s best to record transparent, so uncompressed RAW native and if you have the choice between a highly compressed 4K or a native 2K uncompressed, I would always go for native 2K uncompressed, because this will still deliver better results and less compression artefacts.
Stefan: I like it when we are here at NAB 2014, it’s basically my 18th NAB this year and I still love it when I see happy eyes from customers who have a camera on the shoulder or they play around with the light and I encourage customers to run it, push the buttons, take it off the tripod, push it hard. We make products, they are built to last, test them out, if not here, then they won’t last on set, so I really stress to them switch them on, switch them off, turn them around, play with them. This is why we have a trade show and this is why everything is to be operated and NZVN to put your hands on.
Ed: That makes sense. Now ARRI, in terms of camera development, you’ve sort of got that middle upper ground sewn up and you talk about 6K … are you looking both ways? Stefan: We always look left and right and we always look at the business model of course if it makes sense. One part is technology, but the other part is having a product which you can sell at the right price point, so our customers are happy with the product in terms of quality and of course price and availability. If there is a niche to fill for us with our knowledge, our background and image processing, we could still Page 62
PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS
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