NOVEMBER 2016
Vol 230
Dedo Explains Light We are at Dedolight for more indepth light discussions with Dedo Weigert. It's a very one sided "discussion" but I try. Ed: Sir, I have just two questions for you this time, perhaps with a third that I’ll cuve in at the end. The first one comes from what we’ve just been talking about, and that is the understanding of the light that an image collector is using. You have in my mind 3 choices – you can trust a meter, you can trust what the camera is seeing, or you can trust what your eye is seeing. Could you discuss those 3 options? Dedo: Don’t worry about any of them. The only thing that counts is the end result. Like in the old film days, the only thing that really counts is what’s up on the screen and whatever you see by your eye has not that much to do with what the digital image sees. What will be created or mucked up in postproduction is another matter … that is something that we always had. We always had the colourist who could influence greatly the mood of it; we had the lab that could influence the chemistry of how the soup was from normal to standard – to substandard many times – even to Chem-Tone at TVC in New York. That was chemical post flashing that changed the world for me and I had to learn to light differently because the reaction of the emulsion became different. So the only thing that counts is the end result and the only thing through the mind of a cameraman is how good it looks, how good are the skin tones, and if we have lights, light sources or lighting instruments that can even withstand the most critical test; that is mixing traditional light sources, like halogen with LEDs, without showing different results on skins, different skin, Scandinavian skin, Mexican, Ethiopian, Angolan, from the brightest palest to the darkest, because they also react differently. And if you can make it match on many different sensors, because that is a problem that we’ve
had for a long time and to some extent that still persists, that sensors of different manufacturers or within the realm of the same manufacturer, the differences are so that you get diverging results, and if we can make that match between what LED light we have and a reference light. Reference light for us could be halogen with full spectrum at 3000K or 3200K or 3400K. A daylight reference light is harder to find, because daylight in nature is very hard to define, but we use – because it is widely used and accepted as an international standard – the Kino Flo T12 tube, the fat one for daylight, which is terrible … it’s spikey and everything, but it’s the best
button and then say “whatever happens after that, I don’t care.” He has to learn to go with the project all the way to the end, because the influence that is exercised in postproduction can be extremely time consuming, can be extremely creative, can be extremely destructive, and that’s why, if you care about your image, you shouldn’t just say "I pushed the button and what happens then I don’t care." Now you have to go all the way to the end until you see the end product the way the end user is going to see it, whatever that is. Ed: Now I know in the film days, the use of a lighting meter was very important and it was critical to the setup of a shot. These days, I understand that light meters are still around, but in a much more technologically advanced sense, not to be used on set; they’re to be used in that initial stage of choosing the light that you’re going to use for your production, to make sure that it is of sufficient quality. Correct?
there is and it’s accepted worldwide. Just the same, HMI is terrible, but everybody’s using it and we’ve learnt to live with it and it has became part of our life; and so there are good ones also and if you find a real good one and keep it consistent and controlled and match LEDs with it, that’s the most difficult task. Seen as you see it on the screen, as you see it on a Class A monitor, but not everybody at home has a Class A monitor. How does it appear to the poor guy sitting in Eketahuna.
Dedo: Not correct. Light meters that we talked about in the old days were telling you how much light and they had a disc where you were able to judge your key light, your fill light, your backlight separately and try to balance them according to the limits of the film that you used, the gamma curve, or according to the drama that you wanted to convey in your lighting. Then came Ken Norwood – he walks across the road and bought a baby rattle, cut it in half and put the dome in front of the Norwood Meter which then became the Spectra Meter that all the famous studio
Ed: I understand that looking at a monitor from a camera is not the way to do it and I’m sure a lot of people are caught out by that, that they look at a scene that they’ve lit and they think “mmmm that looks nice, we’ll record that.” In fact, you need to look at what you’re recording through the camera to see how the camera sees it. But again, these days, many cameramen are asked to provide a RAW picture, something that can be used in postproduction, and that is not as the viewer finally sees the images. The viewer finally sees it in a totally different way. So how is a cameraman able to get that view? Dedo: If you loved your profession, whether you got paid for it or not, in the film days of chemical film, you would go to the lab and sit with the colourist and work it out together with him, because he had some knowledge of how it would look in the end that the cameraman didn’t have, so even today, the cameraman should not just push the
A Dedolight HMI fixture
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cameramen have been using for all of their lives. It was a terrible instrument – it had a Selen cell and you needed to go to Marshall Spring at Spectra to have yours calibrated, to give you halfway decent results. But it was what a whole generation, including the most famous DoPs, relied upon and, within the limit of studio lighting, it was very defined as to how much light you had and how much light you could use and how much you actually needed to light for an exposure. So that world has changed. We don’t have any problems with exposure anymore. Even the cheapest camera that we buy in the Duty Free Shop at the airport, allows you to go into the darkest tunnel where 2 AfricanAmericans are meeting and you have an exposure. You push the button, you have an image. But that has nothing to do with lighting. Now finally we arrive in the days of colour and when colour was defined by the layers of the emulsion that was one thing that you had to live with and learn what it did for you. Now you cannot evaluate colour anymore with a Minolta Colour Meter that many of us used. This is still good for daylight and halogen, we learnt how to interpret what it said about fluorescent and HMI, but for LED, throw it away. For LED, you need a spectrum analyser and there are beautiful little ones that you can put in your pocket ( and you don’t have to have a big pocket ) and it gives you all the data, all the information, all the graphics of what the light does, and you can use that to select your lights, fixtures, light sources and determine which ones you want to use, or it helps you to adapt to certain extreme lighting situations – how do I augment that, how do I balance it, how do I filter? Again, there’s some misconception when people say "we’ll filter it." The basic misconception often is that you think you can add colours. If in the light a certain colour is missing, you can never, never find it again, and no filter helps – the filters take away, they can never add. No postproduction can give you colour that is not there, so you should have the full richness of the full spectrum and then you can modify it one way or another. And yes, more and more of the people who take their profession seriously will work with these spectrum analysers that are now affordable. When you think of the cost of one single lens – $20,000 – then a spectrum analyser for $2000, if it is the key tool in your profession, and you can’t afford that … that’s cheaper than what the amateur pays for his golf equipment so he can brag among his friends on Sunday. Ed: Is this also – thinking about it – a valuable tool for checking that your LED fixtures that you might have purchased some time ago are still up to the standard as they came out of the factory, because I understand it’s very hard to make an LED that will survive the length of a halogen for example? Dedo: The LEDs will live drastically longer than the halogen, especially drastically longer than professional halogen. There are halogen long-life lamps but they’re so low in output that we would never use them. Ed: But it’s easy to replace the lamp in a halogen isn’t it … it’s not so easy to replace a chip?
Inside an HMI fixture.
Dedo: Once you replace the light source whether it’s halogen or fluorescent or HMI, each time you can believe that you’re new born, you have brought original colour back. Whilst the LED, you might expect that it will last so that your grandson can use it – that’s a misconception. The lifetime of LEDs is very individual and largely dependent on the temperature at which it works. If you come to 85 degree on the LED itself, it will lose colour, it will lose light output depending on how you use it. If you’re using it in a mobile form for interviews, an LED light may last you for 5, 6, 7 years, whilst for home shopping TV, when they run this for 24 hours a day continuously, you may see degradation in light output after 2 years. Ed: But if you’re watching the shopping channel for that length of time, you’re probably not going to notice much at all. Dedo: So we talk now about lumen maintenance and there’s a term like LM-80. How many hours can you use this until the light output has dropped to 80%? Ed: And that’s where having a tool is really, really important? Dedo: The lumen maintenance is easy to check with traditional lux meters, light output. When it goes dark, eventually it will look bad and the cameras will notice it. The colour drift will also occur and there are vast differences in the reaction of how LEDs change colour or have colour consistency, and that’s why a meter is not bad to do your occasional checks. Ed: Because it’s creeping isn’t it – it’s not something that suddenly one day it’s a different colour, it just is a slow change? Dedo: Depending on the kind of disease that you have. There are some diseases that take many years to take effect and others kill you instantaneously. So overheating the LED will lead to very sudden death; 100 degrees centigrade will kill the LED instantaneously whilst the halogen lamp at 2927 centigrade is perfectly in its element – it’s called 3200 Kelvin. So LEDs are very heat sensitive. Good cooling, and also the ambient temperature, plays a big role whether or not you leave it in the sunshine and then expect it to operate at full power. If you go down in the power output a little bit, you really minimise the heat from the LED, or whether
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in a studio it’s hotter on top of the room, how the air conditioning works, vastly influences performance and lifetime and colour quality of LEDs. Ed: So if you have kitted yourself out with a studio or you are a major user of LED fixtures, it might be a sensible idea to investigate a professional meter to make sure that your studio is up to scratch? Dedo: It’s more advisable to have a good meter than, in your private life, the need of toilet paper. Ed: Now entirely on a different topic, high speed videography where you are shooting at maybe 2000 frames a second. I understand that there are limitations now with lights, or limitations have appeared with certain types of lighting, that high speed photography shows faults if you use certain light types. One that I’ve been told is that, if your light is an under 5K light, then the shutter speed is too high for the light to be consistent over every one of those shutter openings. That's because of your mains supply, your 50Hz supply, the dimming and brightening of that tungsten filament is visible in the result. Are there any other problems? Dedo: With halogen lights, many people always thought that that is continuous light. If you use an AC light source, like most of us do with 50 or 60 cycle, it is not continuous. But that didn’t play a major role and even for high speed up to a few thousand frames per second it was useful. The difference lies in the readout of your sensor, whether it is a global shutter that throws out the data all at the same time, or a rolling shutter that scans. The rolling shutter causes pretty much every light that we used to use to flicker … and again, flicker, there are misunderstandings. Flicker is the change of intensity. Very often confused with arc wander or arc movement, because in discharge lamps, you have an arc between the electrodes and that dances, and that sometimes also becomes quite visible.
resulting light with a fast-reacting photo-cell, then you will just notice little dips on the top of the display on the oscilloscope. These dips are called the ‘rest ripple‘. In the old days, when that was below 3%, you were safe up to 10,000 or 15,000 fps. That is not true anymore; the rolling shutter will show fluctuations. When you try to use DC lighting, then this is possible with a special technology of Luminys, like in their lab light, which is perfect for any kind of frame rate, but other DC-driven discharge lights will cause other problems. Ed: I can understand there would be a problem if you were converting from AC to DC through some sort of converter, you can still have that; if it’s not a full DC conversion, it might be just flattening that AC? Dedo: No, DC-driven HMIs have other problems. The chemistry of the discharge lamp reacts differently and will also be subject to magnetic fields, colour changes, spectral changes and so on. So to manage DC discharge lamps is not an easy task – not many people have even attempted it, or they’ve attempted it and failed. Ed: So apart from trying all the different lights, if you were embarking on high speed photography, what would you recommend, what typical type of light source? Dedo:
The easiest answer is "don’t."
Ed: Because of the focus change, where the centre point of the light is relative to the reflector?
Ed:
Dedo: Yes, right. If you take a narrow tube and you look at the centre of the lit area, if then you see no more flicker, then it wasn’t flicker, it was arc movement. If you shut the barn doors down and it’s gone, then it’s arc movement or arc wander, or you need better arc stabilisation, and that’s sometimes hard to control and changes from one lamp to one lamp. It has also to do with the frequency at which the light source is driven. So on halogen lights now, using cameras with a rolling shutter, you will see flicker at higher frame rates. If you have a 5K or 10K halogen, then it may be okay, because the filament is slow in reacting to the pulses of 50Hz or 60Hz. In most cases, you will be safe up to pretty high framing rates.
Now all these lights that sort of turn on, turn off, turn on, turn off, will become more apparent when you dim, because LEDs are typically pulse-width driven. Running them at full power, the on time is long, the off time is short. When you dim, the on time will get shorter, the off time longer, but the frequency remains the same. So these holes in the on time will become obvious with cameras with the rolling shutter.
With HMIs ( metal halide light sources ) you have a different world. These lamps / light sources want to be driven with alternating power. They want to go to the maximum and then down to zero, and back to maximum and down to zero again. If you look at the incoming electricity, then on an oscilloscope you will see that the driving electricity will go all the way down to zero and then back up to maximum. If you look at the
But if you had to?
Dedo:
It can get a little complex.
Many LED lights are pulse-width driven. When you run ours at full power, we never had any problems, but when you dim them down to 50% or lower, problems may show. But usually dimming never happens on a high-speed set … Ed:
Because you need lots of light?
Dedo: You need more light than you have, so you drive them all to the upper limits. And then there’s one other light source that is totally high speed safe. Ed:
Oooh let me guess …
Dedo: Ed:
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That’s a plasma light.
Oh, right.
Dedo: It doesn’t have a filament, it doesn’t have electrodes, it just has a lamp housing with some chemistry in it and that’s excited in a microwave oven. And this microwave oven runs at 460 Megacycle – it works pretty damn fast. So that’s good enough up to 50,000 frames and you see those lights in our booth here, the Hive lights. Ed: Now at NAB, I think 2 years ago, we saw the very first of those, so they’ve really now gone into production? Dedo: They have been in production for quite some time. Plasma light sources have been used for a while in moving lights like Martin and Robe, but they don’t pursue that any further. Photon Beard also had a plasma light fixture, but I don’t think they are pursuing it any further anymore. When you add optics you may see plasma movement in certain positions of the light. So at the moment the only ones in that field is Hive from Los Angeles. All of those used to centre on the very same light source, but Hive now came out for the first time with a new light source which they call a 1000W light source. The lumen per Watt output is not that fantastic, but since it’s a very small light source, very controlled light source, at full power, it’s wonderful. Don’t try to dim it, you may have unpleasant surprises. Don’t switch it off and expect instant restart, it can’t do that. And if you dim it, it
Plasma light by Hive.
changes colour drastically. It becomes an effect light … occasionally you may want that, but for normal white light, it’s limited and so far the fixtures concentrate on PAR-type concepts, and they don’t really exist with optical systems like we have. But it’s a lot of light and some people think that’s one generation beyond LED. Ed:
Or you could use the largest plasma source of all?
Dedo:
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Let’s not get into philosophy!
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Ross at IBC We are now at the Ross stand for Gencom with Stuart Russell from Ross. Ed: Now Stuart, at NAB, we had a look at the little Solo vision switcher and were very impressed by its size, functionality and, well, it was actually very cute. It’s now shipping, there is one in the Gencom offices, but you’ve come up with something else that goes along with it? Stuart: Yes, back at NAB, we launched a range of cameras called ACID cam and I think that was an interesting development for us in the sense that it’s nice to be able to talk about Ross owning a workflow from Stuart with Carbonite and Amanda with a PIVOTcam. cameras through to playout. I think when we launched the Press, he always says that he’s trying to build a ACID cam, that gave us the ability to have that company that’s hard to kill and the way to do that is to conversation with people, which we’d not really had have as many strong product areas as we can. So I previously. It raised a few eyebrows obviously because think cameras was the big glaring omission that we had we’d never done anything like cameras before, and in the chain. building on that we thought well, okay, with launching the Solo which is obviously a smaller and more compact Ed: But the ACID cam’s not an ENG camera is it? switcher, maybe we can do something in the camera Stuart: No, it certainly isn’t, that’s a fair comment. world that’s going to be a neat little partner to that. Amanda: We wanted to also fix a big omission that We’re also thinking about some of the feedback that we we’ve had in the broadcast industry for years in regards got from legislatures where we’ve done the LCS to chroma keyers. Comparing broadcast chroma keys ( Legislative Control System ) that we have and also to film chroma keys, there was a massive difference in some of the educational partners that we work with, the quality and so what we did, and the reason why we and we were getting some comment from them about had this patented through our ACID cam, was to the ACID cam saying "well that’s great, but it’s probably address that issue and actually bring some of the more than we really need." Even in a corporate AV technology that they use for film, to be able to do world, Carbonite Black Solo is something that lends chroma key and get that really high quality with the itself quite well to the corporate world, corporate edges and everything into the broadcast realm. That’s presentations, you know larger corporate venues and why we came out with the ACID cam with the 2 amphitheatres, things like that. So the result was the outputs, one with the 422 standard broadcaster output, PIVOTCam that’s sitting on the table in front of us here and then another one which gives you the 044 so you – a smaller, standalone robotic camera. We were get the complete information. That was another reason looking to try and bundle this up actually with Carbonite why we brought out the ACID cam. Black Solo and XPression Live CG as well. So a nice Ed: So it’s playing in that very specialised space, it’s little package for smaller productions of those other not something that is a general studio camera … it can types of companies I mentioned before. be, but it was specifically developed …? Ed: But you wouldn’t use just one PIVOTCam would Stuart: That’s what I was touching on. Nigel, our you? product manager for cameras said we want something Stuart: Well the bundle that we’re looking at that can quite happily stand its own ground as a actually comprises 3 doesn’t it, so they probably standard camera for use in a broadcast environment, wouldn’t just use one, but again, I think those smaller but really, the USP, the patented part of it, is the spaces – even smaller broadcast studios – it’s UltraChrome HD which is what gives you that definition something that would lend itself quite well to that of edge that other cameras can’t really do. environment. For some people, that is really going to Ed: Okay. That leads me back to PIVOTCam – so be as much as they need. Again, it’s just nice to be what have you put into PIVOTCam that makes it stand able to offer our customers some other options. apart in that switching operation where you wouldn’t Ed: Now if we can just go back to the ACID cam for a use Brand X? bit. This was a product that was developed specifically Stuart: Well the PIVOTcam is an all new compact for a green screen application because it fitted in with HD PTZ camera with a 20x high quality Olympus lens. the graphics package that you wanted to put together, so it was purpose built? Amanda: And the integration we can have between the Carbonite switcher, Xpression CG, and PIVOTCam is Stuart: I wouldn’t necessarily say it was “purpose all through DashBoard so it’s a single interface and it built” … I think we had a desire anyway to be able to makes it extremely easy and user friendly not only from offer a camera solution because again, as I said before, an operational perspective but also an engineering whenever I hear David Ross talking in front of an audience or being interviewed by the good members of perspective. Page 8
Ed:
So how is this cabled – what are the connections?
Amanda: You’ve got SDI, you’ve got DVI, and it’s even got a composite output! Ed: And in terms of control? Amanda: We run VISCA protocol, which means our Carbonites can control it from the switcher, so you can do your pan tilt motion control from there and we can control it through DashBoard as well. Ed: Okay. Now Keith, I don’t see a microphone on there at all, but in terms of application, this is obviously something that a smaller studio that is doing an internet type presentation or on an Intranet one, like in an educational institution … this is sort of right up in that space? Keith: It’s right in that space exactly. It’s perfect for corporates, for schools, for churches, streaming channels – right in that niche. Stuart: Just one of the other thoughts that crosses my mind is that I had a conversation with somebody earlier on today and we were talking about the trend in some parts of the world towards single vendor purchasing and that’s something that I’ve really noticed a lot in the 3 years that I’ve been with the company. I think a lot of customers like the idea of the “one throat to choke” to use that expression. They like the idea of just having one point of contact, one bunch of people to deal with and it’s just one phone call. There does seem to be an increasing trend towards single vendor and again, to come back to my earlier point that David Ross made about building a company that’s hard to kill, I think the more of these solutions that we can offer that
are complementary to what we do already, the more that we are able to be vertically integrated and own as much of the workflow as we can, the better for us. As long as we’re adding value and as long as we’re keeping customers happy, what’s the reason to start buying in from multiple vendors and having the issues that go along with that. We can package up. Ed: It makes sense. Now an area that’s hit the news around the Newsroom here is Ross’ involvement with virtual reality … Keith? Keith: Ross have been doing virtual sets for many, many years and, as you can see with having the ACID camera, they’re really seriously committed to getting the best out of the virtual environment as you possibly can. No one else can do that with what the ACID camera is doing in terms of chroma key performance. And what’s new for this show, is the partnership with The Future Group who are specialists in graphics for gaming. So we’re taking all that technology that you find in the gaming world and applying that to virtual sets. When you thought virtual sets used to look good, have a look at this because now they look fantastic, they look absolutely real. Stuart: I can give a little bit of additional context to that. The Future Group is a Norwegian company and we got involved with them because they were producing a game show format which was based in a virtual environment. The idea was very much that this would air on traditional linear TV and people would watch the game show at home and they’d watch the teams playing in the virtual environment, but also the kids could be sitting on the floor with their tablets playing
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along as well, playing the same games and the kids’ score would contribute to the teams’ score on the show and I believe that show is going to pilot in the autumn of this year. That was how our relationship with The Future Group started off. Really, Frontier is a technology demonstration at this show so we don’t have a market-ready product yet. We hope to have that at some point early next year, but it’s really all about rendering and it’s about being able to take away that slight plastic look that you sometimes had with some virtual sets in years gone by – they had a slightly plastic look to them, there was a slightly kind of unreal sheen to them. Some of the textures didn’t look quite right. Now with graphics power and graphics platforms becoming increasingly more sophisticated, we’ve managed to do quite a lot with that over the last couple of years. I think what Frontier can do is that it brings through the unreal game engine that was alluded to earlier – it brings that real sense of realism to the graphics that you’re seeing – so things like shadowing, some of the reflections that you can see. For example, up on the screen earlier there was a picture of a window with raindrops running down the outside. Again, it just adds a whole new dimension to what you’re seeing. There’s a good example right there, you’re looking at it now. It looks like a very high end game or a Hollywood movie. So again, I think it’s just something that could potentially improve the look and feel of our show studios, to just make them look that little bit more like real life. Ed: Again, it’s an extension of the other parts of the Ross family, especially this ACID camera? Stuart: Yes very much so. We’ve done a lot with virtual sets and augmented reality over the last few years, it’s definitely a big part of our business. We’re always looking to try and improve the sophistication of what you see on the screen. A lot of customers like the idea of virtual studios because it allows them to use their studio space very flexibly. You have virtual sets for different applications, you can change the sets very quickly and easily, but again, it’s just about improving that finesse, improving the sophistication, making it look that bit more realistic. Ed: And we look forward to a 360 camera at some stage soon? Stuart: Well "never say never" I think. David Ross always says he’s not going to acquire another company for the next 12 months and then he has a funny habit of
going and acquiring a handful of them. Gone are the days when I bet my mortgage on these things. He surprises us as much as he surprises you. Ed: Well watch this space. So what’s he bought? Stuart: Within the space of the last couple of days, certainly in the last couple of weeks, Ross has acquired 2 companies. The first one is a Canadian company called COVELOZ. They’re not so much of a product or solutions provider, they’re more of an engineering company, but they play very much in the IP networking sphere and I think that’s something that can open up some interesting potential product developments for us. Our take on IP has always been very pragmatic; we’ve been very heavily involved in the IP debate, we’ve had people on SMPTE and the various other standards committees, so we’ve been as involved in that debate as we could be, but we’ve also said baseband is far from dead, we still have customers and broadcasters who are trying to transition to SD from HD, so the here and now still matters to us. The next 2-3 years solutions for those kind of customers still matter to us, but I think this acquisition opens up some interesting areas because these guys are very heavily involved in the IP world. Ed: And a whisky company? Stuart: I wish … nothing would make me happier I can tell you. No, the second acquisition is a company called Abekas who are a well-known name in the industry. Abekas have been well-known for their sports slo-mo replay server, called Mira So again, I think that’s a nice thing because, when we brought out the ACID cam range, somebody said to me "oh that’s great, you now own a lot of the workflow there, the one area where you may be missing something is replay." This is something that I think drops very neatly and very naturally into what we do. We don’t have to wriggle anything around on either side to make space for it, it just drops very neatly into the product portfolio. They’re a very wellknown company, they’re great guys, they’re a very natural fit for us. Again, given that single vendor environment that I mentioned earlier, it allows us to go back out and say there’s the range, we can absolutely take care of you from A through to Z. Amanda: And Abekas is already integrated with DashBoard, which is nice. It’s easy. Ed:
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BB&S at IBC For PLS, we’re here at BB&S with Henrik Christensen from Brother Brother & Sons, Denmark. Ed: Henrik, I guess the product that we really want to have a look at that you’ve done the most development on is your strip lights. I’m very impressed by these beautiful kits that you’ve got here, that seem to have lots and lots of little bits and pieces in them and I’m sure you’ll explain what they do? Henrik: It’s still fairly easy to mount these things as you have all the grip material in the box for any solution. It will take you a few minutes and you’re up and running for a three point light situation or even bigger than that. Ed:
Okay, so what have we got in the box?
Henrik: In the box we’ve got 2 power supplies, 2 driver boxes, 8 tubes, angle clamps … Ed: 8 tubes – so in fact, in these 8 tubes, you can order different phosphors? Henrik: You can order 4 different colour temperatures now – 2700, 3200, 4300 and of course 5600. Ed: But when you order them, you can choose which ones you want – so you might only want 2 of those? Henrik: Yes, you can mix up your kit as you want – 2 of these, 4 of that, that’s not a problem. Ed: And even though they look very smart, they’re actually a list retail price in Euros of about Є120? Henrik: For each tube, yes, that’s about the price. For 90cm of high quality, high CRI, you know these are like 98 CRI. Ed: Well we know about the quality … I mean, this is why we’re here, this is why PLS represents you in New Zealand, because you provide a quality product. So okay, power supplies, but what’s this? It looks like a very large power supply, is this part of the kit? Henrik: It’s a new thing because everything here is running 48 Volt, so there is a new thing from Blueshape with a battery pack that converts to 48 Volt. Ed:
So this isn’t actually part of the kit?
Henrik: No, this one is not part of the kit, but we also supply these ones for when you want to run on battery. Ed: Aaah so you’re using a 12 Volt battery being converted by the power supply to 48 Volt?
Henrik: Exactly. On this one I can manually adjust the pipe and it’s very bright. It produces 1000 lumen for every foot. On the grip side, you have a small clamp, universal, from a company called 9.SOLUTIONS that we made an agreement with worldwide; magnetic, very easy to fit. You have the small clamps here that fit on the tube that you can slide … Ed: Right, so there’s a rail on the tube and it just slides to the position that you want to have it. You can have it vertical, on an angle, anything you like and only one clamp needed to secure it, because it’s so light? Henrik: Yes, it’s so lightweight, this is like 600 gram. So I’m ready to mount my light anywhere I want. It takes me a few seconds to put it together, put it into the driver, and then we need a battery. Ed: And the dimming – it’s a quality dimmer so you’re not going to get any flicker in your CMOS sensors? Henrik: This one you can run 50,000 frames without seeing anything. It’s constant current as on all our products from BB&S. Ed: So why did you make them a 48 Volt system rather than a 12 Volt system? Henrik: The 48 Volt dimming is a step down dimming and it’s so much
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Ed: So again, it’s quality dimming so that you have really about 100 stages of dimming in there? Henrik: Yes, on manual mode, 100 stages on which we use a DMX board and 16 bit, that would be 65,000 steps. Ed: That’s enough for any lighting person I would say. So you’ve shown me some of the accessories in here and I can see there are a lot in here, because you’ve got 8 tubes in that kit. Do you have smaller kits available?
nicer and as we are delivering these things for a lot of car commercials and so on, they want it to be perfect. So step up solutions have the problem when they switch on. I can try to show you this, but here it’s already on, so it will not glitch. You have no glitch when you turn it on, it’s really from zero to 100%.
Henrik: We have smaller kits available with 4 tubes, 1 driver, but all packed nicely into Pelican cases with foam, it should be easy to find your parts and everything is there also for rentals, you know you come back home, you open it, okay all my stuff is here. Ed: Because BB&S is well known for the remote phosphor system, where you don’t have the phosphor on the LED, it’s as a separate panel, and therefore it’s a much cleaner and clearer system; with the strips, there is a fixed phosphor panel on them, but you say you can
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replace it if you really want to, although at the price it’s not really necessary? Henrik: You can replace it, if you bought 100 tubes and you’re in a hurry and we can supply you with new phosphors. Of course, it’s a warranty issue. We deliver a closed finished product, but as soon as you open it, there will be a warranty issue. Ed: Right. Now the other question that came to me … also in the strips you have a smaller version and one that is only 12 Volt, what do we have here? Henrik: It’s exactly the same as the other pipes as to the pipeline that we just looked at, though this has an integrated dimmer on it. It’s easy, it’s a fast kit, you have it in your backpack, tear it out, put a battery power to it and you have a local small constant current dimmer, still the same quality, but very small.
see a very big difference in the way that it reacts to humidity on your face. This will not make you shiny and have all these points that you can see. That’s a very big difference, and also the way the colour rendering of the tubes of the remote phosphor … it’s still the same as the Area 48, it’s just so much better. Ed: So that’s that. You mentioned Area 48, it’s the product that you started with, it’s still going strong? Henrik: Yes, it’s the 4th year and we supplied more last year than the year before and this year we are already going pretty strong on it. Ed: Well Area 48 is how you broke into the market and now you’re expanding. How can you improve on the Area 48? Henrik: There’s not much to improve on it, but it’s still going strong; it has a new brother though, called the Area 48 Studio which is also a 48 Volt unit. This gives you the ability to put power supplies far away from fixtures like up to 40-50 metre away, and have this dimming from zero to full with no glitches in the beginning. Ed: And you have also produced a few more phosphors? Henrik: We have produced a few more phosphors – we have a 6500 and a 10,000K. The 10,000K is made mainly for commercial shoots, outdoor sunshine, where they want to have this really, really cold light. Ed: Now I know a couple of years ago at NAB you were showing a portable version of the Area 48, so since we know this is 48 Volt, did that have four 12 Volt batteries on it?
Ed: You can’t say it’s the same quality as the larger pipes of the 48 Volt? Henrik: This is similar but in the low dimming area it’s not as good as the step down – this is the step up driver. It’s for a different purpose. Ed:
But as you say, these come in shorter versions?
Henrik: Shorter versions, one foot and 2 foot lengths, all the same colours again. Ed: And it looks as though you haven’t got remote phosphors on these – it looks like it’s got a plastic cover over it? Henrik: Yes it’s the new SNAPBAG for it from DoPchoice that we’re showing here. It’s just to get some spill control on the light as the radiation is 220 degrees on the pipe. Very often you will like to have some light control so DoPchoice made this very small SNAPBAG with the front diffuser.
Henrik: No, it has a power converter from Blueshape, a new product from them which converts 12 Volt into 48 Volt, but I would still suggest you use the former what they called the Area 48 Soft which is the original one running 12 Volt. It’s much easier for that purpose. But we have seen a lot of night shoots with the new cameras like the Sony FX7 100,000 ISO and where they have to film you cannot turn the lights down far enough, so that’s also the reason we went for the 48 Volt system that can dim all the way to zero. Ed: That’s it – keeping track of what the camera manufacturers are doing and providing the accessories to let them show off their products to the best advantage? Henrik:
Ed: You can actually change the shape on it because it’s just Velcroed all together … very flexible. I’m sure you could squeeze it in with some rubber bands or whatever so you’ve got a whole lot of variation. Now my immediate question, having seen lots of LED strip lighting that does the same sort of function – you could have this in a car for car commercials, you could have it hidden just providing a little bit of quality light somewhere. Why wouldn’t you go for the LED strips? Henrik: I would say that the way this fixture renders the light, is that it’s one light source, it’s not multiple points as an extended light source. You will Page 16
Exactly.
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Pro Tools for Protel For Protel, we have Gil Gowing from Avid Pro Tools. We’ve interviewed Gill before and I have a list of questions for him prepared earlier by Rene. Ed: Gil, the starter question for 10 points is regarding Pro Tools Cloud Collaboration. Is this necessary for everyone because some people have expressed … well we don’t actually want to put our stuff up in the Cloud, they don’t like the idea? Gil: I understand that. Basically, before Pro Tools 12.5 and Cloud Collaboration came out, the way you did collaborate with people was either by sending them a drive or using something like Dropbox. The great thing about Pro Tools Cloud Collaboration is that it lets you work in the Pro Tools environment and be able to share the tracks. Is it for everyone? Not necessarily, but I think people should definitely give it a chance and actually see how it works. I’ve been working with Alpha versions for several years now, and once we got the real version working over the internet in the Cloud, it really does open up the creative process to a point where you’re not limited by having to be in the same room to be creative any more. You can start working on a track, push that up to the Cloud to a Collaborator and then get something back almost immediately and be able to react to that instead of working on a bunch of tracks, having to save them off to a drive, send that off to somebody, wait for a long time for those things to get worked on and then get brought back. It’s a lot more of an organic process. It’s very, very creative so is it for everyone? Not necessarily, but I would want everybody to try it. Ed: Okay, question two – what’s the difference between a master project and others – I guess this comes from the whole digital era … you used to make a master on tape and that was it. Then you duplicated that and had sub-masters because every time you did it the quality dropped. Now when digital came along, basically it’s all the same? Gil: Well there are probably a couple of different ways you can look at this question. The difference between a master project and copies is there really isn’t a difference. Basically, it’s more about versions and being able to kind of pare things down. Now the word “project” is new to Pro Tools 12.5. Prior to Pro Tools 12.5, when you created a new session – that’s what it was called, it was called a “session document” – what we designate as a “project” now is actually a session in the Cloud for Collaboration. It is a different thing, there is a cached version locally on your drive, but the project is something that you would push up to the Cloud to be able to be used. Now you can start in a session and you can then save that as a project to push it; and then you can take a project and resave that as a “local session”. But in our terminology, “project” is an actual session in the Cloud. Ed: Right. Question three – what’s the process of making and sharing changes? Gil: Once you create the project and save that up into the Cloud, you get a new set of tools in Pro Tools that allows you to create tracks and decide which tracks you want to push up to be shared. Then you invite collaborators to that project. Once they accept, they can download the initial tracks in the project and then
they can start working on changes. There’s a little status plate on the track now that will tell you if somebody who’s online at that given time, is actually working on that track and if they push “changes” or not. So there are new tools on the track that allow you to push the initial track up and then be able to push changes back and forth. Ed: Aaah – number four. What if you, as the owner, don’t like the changes the collaborator makes? Gil: At this time, with version 1 of our Cloud Collaboration process, let’s say you get changes from a collaborator and you don’t like it, you just have to undo it and push the changes up. Eventually, what we want to get to is kind of a revision history where you can actually change and go back in the process. We’re not quite there yet, it’s something we’re still working on. Ed: So that’s a bit like Adobe Photoshop where you’ve got a whole list and you can go …? Gil: Somewhat – it probably won’t be that sophisticated up front, but you will have a revision list to be able to go back in time. Ed:
So at the moment you just …
Gil: You take the changes in, if you don’t like them you undo it and push “undo”. Ed: Now we’re onto number 5 – how do you deal with not all your collaborators having the same plug-ins as you? Gil: One of the really cool features that we introduced towards the end of last year, before we introduced Cloud Collaboration, was some functionality in Pro Tools called “commit” and “freeze”. If you push a track up right now that has plug-ins on it and your collaborator doesn’t have the plug-ins, the track will show up on the other side with the plug-ins offline and not active, so you won’t hear that process. Now it won’t affect anything, basically the collaborator won’t hear that, they can make changes and push it back and it won’t affect the plug-ins on your site. If you do want your collaborator to hear what those plugins are, especially like with virtual instruments, if you don’t know for sure whether the collaborator on the other side has those or not, you can either do a process called “commit” which will take and render that track down as a new track; or you can “freeze” which will take that process and render it in place. That way you push that change up and they can hear what it sounds like with all the processing in place,
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without actually having to have those plug-ins on their system. Ed:
But it means they can’t make any changes?
Gil: On the freeze track they can’t make any changes; on the commit track they can. Ed: But then you can’t undo the frozen changes with what’s been added to it? Gil: Well like I said, you can’t edit a frozen track, but the idea behind that is that you can share a track and they can add tracks to that, or you can commit a track and share that, then they can edit that and you can bring that back over and if you want to use it then you can apply those edits to that. Like I said, if you commit a track, it’s a new track and then you can take the unaffected track and apply the changes to that. Ed: And if this was happening too often, you just tell them to buy the plug-ins? Gil: Well another thing is we are working with our third party developers from the onset of how all this work is … we have a marketplace now in Pro Tools and we’re working towards the situation where, if you don’t have a plug-in, we want our third parties and especially our plug-ins to be on this marketplace and it will come up with a dialogue box when you download the tracks, which says “you don’t have this particular plug-in – would you like to go buy it or rent it?” and then it takes you to the marketplace automatically and you can either choose to rent it for 7 days, 31 days, or you can just buy it outright. Ed: Now how safe is the media in the Cloud – is there any encryption involved?
Gil: Absolutely. It’s 256bit encryption just like you would have from the military or in the banks. Obviously, if you do enough work, it’s something you could possibly hack into, but it’s as safe as anything else out there at that point. Now the one thing about all this is that it is very encrypted, there are no real names of anything up there, so if somebody did hack into the servers this happened to be on, they wouldn’t really know what they were looking at anyway. It’s kind of the same thing we do with our Media Composer media, there are no real names involved, it’s just a bunch of characters so you don’t really know what you’re looking at. From what we’ve seen and from talking to the bigger media companies out there, this is about as safe as you’re going to get. Ed: Can you stop collaborators using your media they have downloaded after the project is finished? Gil: At this time no, but let me back up a bit … the owner of a project, once they’re finished, they can delete that project and it will delete it off of everybody else’s systems. That being said, if you are part of a project, at any given time you can save that project as a local session, so there are workarounds to that. Ed: So it’s collaborators?
pretty
important
to
trust
your
Gil: It’s pretty much one of those things. We’re wanting to get our artists community where you can go out and search for people to collaborate with, without having to know them. But right now, it’s pretty much that most people who are collaborating will know who that collaborator is. We don’t really have any safeguards in place that, once that project’s finished, if
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they have offloaded that media as a copy, we really don’t have a way that we can go out and kill it after the fact. Ed: So you’d be a bit wary of collaborating with Happy Times Music Company in Lagos? Gil:
Aaah no comment.
Ed: Now I understand that you need an internet connection even if your collaborators are on an Intranet. Why is that? Gil: Right now, with our first foray into collaboration, everything goes through our Cloud server. There is no local based collaboration process in place as of right now. Eventually, we would like to get to an on-premise server where you wouldn't have to go through the actual Intranet into a Cloud based server option, but we’re not there yet with that. Ed: Will there be a LAN – a Local Area Network version?
then you’ve got a 10 project 60 Gigabyte plan that runs at USD29.95 a month.
Gil: Yes, that is exactly what we want to work towards, especially for our bigger enterprise clients that don’t want to go through an actual internet based Cloud. Ed: So what do they have to do now?
Ed:
Gil: Now you have to go through the Cloud. That’s the only choice. To use our collaboration you have to put your project up in a Cloud server. Ed: Or you go the old way? Gil: Or you go the old way where you save it off to a drive, you can encrypt the drive, you can FedEx the drive, or you can use Dropbox. Ed: But if you’re in a LAN situation …? Gil: Well if you’re in a LAN situation, if you’re in the same building on the same local network, then it’s just a matter of saving things off to a centralised storage so people can pick it up. Ed: And lastly, does having the ability to collaborate cost Pro Tool users anything extra? Gil: If you are a current Pro Tools 12 user who has a current plan in place – one of our “all access” plans – you get 3 projects in 500 Megabytes as part of your plan for free. So it’s kind of a basic plan that lets you try things out. For most people, that’s probably not going to be enough storage and it’s probably not going to be enough projects, so we do offer 2 other plans in place that you can add to that. We have a 20 Gigabyte and 5 project plan that runs at USD9.95 a month; and
That’s not a lot?
Gil: It isn’t a lot – and the nice thing is because it’s monthly, it’s one of those things where you can do a project and then you can basically clear it out. And you can make an archive of it, and once you’ve made that archive and you’ve cleared it out then you don’t need that space anymore. So you might be working on a project for a couple of months – let’s say you’re working on an album and you’re working on 10 songs. Right now, I’m going to do the $30 a month, 10 project 60 Gig and you’re doing your thing. You archive those things and then, let’s say, okay, well I’m going to try out a couple of ideas but I don’t need that much anymore, you could then downsize to the $9.95 a month. Another thing is that the limits of what your plan is only apply to the actual person who created the project. So if you’re a collaborator, you could have the free part of it and you could be working on something that’s maybe 4 or 5 Gigabytes, but it won’t count towards your plan, because you’re just the collaborator on somebody else’s project. Both sides don’t have to pay. So if you are the owner of the project, you’re paying the $30 a month, but your voice talent or your guitar player over here, you don’t have to pay the $30 a month, you can just basically be on your free plan and be fine. Ed:
It’s called clipping the ticket once?
Gil:
That’s right.
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ARRI Lighting at IBC We are with Bertrand Dauphant refreshed after a short rest following his recent New Zealand tour. Ed: Chris showed you all the good things to do in Auckland did he? Bertrand: I had a fantastic time with all the gaffers, learnt a lot about the industry in New Zealand and enjoyed the food and the drink, so I’m looking forward to going back. Ed: Excellent, but now we’re here at the show and SkyPanel – it’s just SkyPanel, SkyPanel and more SkyPanel? Bertrand: Our SkyPanel family is growing and we are delighted to introduce the new S120. It’s a double size of aperture compared to the S60, same power, because most of the people who have the S60 keep telling us “you have enough power, it’s powerful enough, what we need is a bigger aperture.” So we released the S120 and it’s a tremendous reception from the market. From the Asian zone that I manage, we have already got more than 200 orders on the floor yesterday from rental companies. So yes, we love expanding the SkyPanel family, the clients love that, every day people use new applications, find new ways to use the SkyPanel. It’s not only a softlight, it’s a key light, it’s a backlight, you can use it in so many ways … it’s a space light, you can do RGBs over its colour aperture to enable great, great projects. Ed: I can see the benefit here on the floor of a wider panel and, in this case, it’s a vertical panel, but looking at the people on the stand here, you’re not seeing unpleasant shadows. You have a much softer look with that wider panel, whether you have it in a vertical sense or in a horizontal sense. Is that really the reasoning? Bertrand: Yes. A lot of people said the light is wrapping around you and I think the design of the reflector is very important. If you compare it with a lot of other LED panels, if you try to put them vertically, you will have multiple shadows, very unwanted at the back and things like that. Bright yes, but it’s a really warm softlight that goes around you and we wanted to offer that to complete the family of the SkyPanel. We have the same set of accessories that you have with the rest, so you have the bag, you have an eggcrate, you have barn doors – everything that you expect and for us, it’s a great complement of the range and I think the gaffers and the rental houses I talk with, they’re all excited about it. Ed: Also what I like is that it’s solid construction – an aluminium case, it’s made in Germany and it’s robust? Bertrand: Yes, it’s robust. Also, ARRI is not well known for releasing new product every year. What we did in this S120 is that we used a lot of communal parts with the S60, so that allowed us to release a new product relatively fast – you know, one year and we have a new product. And again, you have new accessories – we have a remote control now for the SkyPanel that you can see around which has been demanded by a lot of gaffers and users because people put back on the stand, put back on the grid and you cannot see the display. So with the remote control you can control it locally. We have also now integrated a
slave / master mode so when you control one SkyPanel, if you daisy chain your SkyPanel with DMX, you can control 20, 30 SkyPanels on set, without a lighting board, without any knowledge of DMX control. Ed:
Is the remote a DMX remote?
Bertrand: No, it’s a USB port remote, so it’s very easy, you plug and play. You don’t need to know anything about DMX. What we try to offer to gaffers is really a simple way to control the SkyPanel and, after that, you daisy chain your SkyPanel with a DMX cable, but you don’t need a DMX box. Ed: Because, going round the show this year, there are more and more people coming out with Apps for their iPhones and iPads to control things, so I can see it’s just a matter of time before that’s going to be offered in the lighting area? Bertrand: What we do, and what we offer and can say to people to do, is simply you connect a very simple router to the USB port and you can use any Apps you find on the App Store and you can control your light. That’s the best way to go WiFi. Every country has a different type of router – you go to Bunnings or whatever, the local hardware store, you buy a simple router, connect it to your SkyPanel or to your LED light. We don’t intend to integrate radio or WiFi in our product because there are multiple companies offering that – people in different parts of the world use different products and we want to leave the freedom of that. We NZVN are not a radio company, we are making lights.
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