MAY 2012
Vol 180
NAB 2012 - PART ONE You know, looking back on it from the safety of my nest in Godzone, I think I enjoyed this year’s NAB experience more than many in the past. After 16 years, I’ve figured out how to get the information I’m after out of the stand jockeys in the shortest possible time and to know when to cut them off for the next question. If I’d just let them talk, I’d still be there. Having said all that, there were plenty of interesting developments to report on and some personal vindications, the most notable being the rise of 4K and the sidelining of 3D. To find out more, read on and enjoy. Ed
Adobe for DVT My one reader request for “what do we want to see at NAB 2012” was Adobe CS6 so, for DVT, we are starting at the Adobe stand with Reg Santo Tomas from Adobe Systems and Stuart Barnaby from DVT. Ed: What’s new for CS6 and, as a CS4 user myself, Reg, I’m keen to know why I should upgrade to CS6 when CS4 seems to be working very well for me? Reg: Sure. Even between CS4 and CS5, CS5.5, we’ve added more support for different formats and there’s been a lot of features. But in CS6 there’s actually quite a bit more. One of the things you’re going to see here is the Hover Scrubber. Basically, you can view your clips in your project panel via icon mode, and actually you can view this as a full screen, roll your mouse over it and you can get a Stuart and Reg looking at Adobe CS6. moving preview of your clips. This makes it very easy to go through all your clips that you Ed: So this is like Adobe Bridge but with moving clips? imported, especially when you’re talking about file based Reg: Yes, it’s just working internally within Premiere, workflows which are becoming more and more common – which is nice. You can customise your controls here, so certainly away from tape right. You get a lot of media you can say what kind of transport/transfer controls you that’s all the same name, I’m sure you guys have seen it. want with a button editor. If you have a certain workflow You don’t know what they look like, you don’t know that you like, you can add things like the loop, you can which one it is, this helps you go through it easy. You remove it, add it back on … can even select these and play in and out points directly Ed: That’s a Liquid feature Stuart? from your project panel without opening it up in a source Stuart: It looks very similar doesn’t it. monitor, and put it directly to your timeline.
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Reg: What we also now have available is full screen playback. So it’s a nicer preview of your project. Ed: What about having a third monitor? This is something that I find tricky with CS4 that, from my computer, I’ve got two outputs for two monitors, so I’m working on two monitors, but to have a third viewing monitor … I can’t do it unless I have someone else’s card stuck in there? Reg: We support that. Ed: Oh okay, so what have you done with CS6? Reg: We pretty much rewrote our transmit for sending out to multiple monitors. So if you go into Premiere, Preferences, Playback – you’ll see all the devices connected to it. So if you have three monitors, you know your SDI out, if you’re going to use IO cards, you can select as many as you need, as many outputs as you have, we’ll send it out. Ed: That’s a welcome addition Stuart? Stuart: Absolutely, it’s fantastic. Ed: But you do need an extra IO card? Stuart: Well that’s right if you want to get a proper video output which comes in the form of an HDMI or HD -SDI, then you just add any of the many Matrox / AJA / Blackmagic products to give you the output. Ed: So my problem is if I have to use my little Blackmagic card to use my viewing monitor, I have to use the Blackmagic presets which in fact don’t include HDV, but this is no longer the case?
corrector on the video track. So if I open up the effects control panel … Ed: So in fact you’re using one of the video tracks as an effect track, and it’s not actually a picture, it’s just an effect that’s gone on there and you can then edit that effect, cut up that effect and edit individual bits of that effect? Reg: And so what we’ve also added is what we call “continuous playback” which allows you to playback and edit without stopping playback. You see the clip is playing back there, I’m going to make an adjustment in real time without any rendering and you see your effects are applied. And they’re applied to every single clip below that adjustment layer. It’s a huge timesaver. Another feature we’ve added … we had this feature in 5.5 in After Effects but we’ve now adapted it in Premiere. So it’s called the Warp Stabilizer. One of the common issues that you get with a lot of your footage is you get shaky footage, because you don’t always have the luxury of having a Steadicam with you. So you can see that footage is quite shaky there, I will turn it on – there’s your shaky footage, apply the Warp Stabilizer … just a few frames here in this demo, but you can see how much more steady that is. Ed: And that’s unrendered? Reg: Right. And another feature that we added is a rolling shutter repair. The reason this is important is a lot of our users shoot with DSLRs, so what you’re going to get is there’s motion when you’re moving from side to side with bent vertical lines because of the CMOS, so that’s called a rolling shutter. So you basically just add this effect called the Rolling Shutter Repair and you can see it straighten that out and you’re no longer going to see the shifting with that video. Stuart: All of the CMOS cameras suffer from rolling shutter. It’s when the frame turns like a parallelogram whenever you pan the camera. Now Adobe has built-in a new filter that takes this footage and straightens it back up on your panning shots. It’s an important feature for anyone using any of the CMOS based cameras. Ed: You’d have to do a pretty quick pan to see it though wouldn’t you?
Reg: Again, we’ve rewritten our transmit with all third parties, so now we use our player, we don’t use Blackmagic’s, AJA’s player any more, they work within our player, with our presets. Ed: I could say “about time” but anyway I won’t. We’ll move on … Reg, next? Reg: Okay, one of the things we also added now here is the adjustment layer. If you’ve used Photo Shop or After Effects you’re pretty familiar with how adjustment layers work. The problem that adjustment layers will solve is, generally, let’s say you have a whole sequence where you want to do a colour correction. You have, in previous versions, two options – you can either add the effects one at a time to each clip, or you can nest your sequence into another sequence, add the effect, but then you can no longer edit your sequence, right. What you can do now is simply add an adjustment layer on top and everything below it will apply whatever effect you add. There’s actually something even better than that … so let’s do a search for colour, now add a 3-way colour
Stuart: You’d be surprised. Every panning shot has got it to some degree or other and this new tool allows you to try it out on a shot by shot basis. Put it on and you’ll see it pretty clearly, even on slower moving panning shots as well. Reg: It’s especially easy to see it with vertical objects, like let’s say you are panning with buildings or objects where there’s clear vertical lines, they will basically warp and tilt to the side. Ed: I must say from my own experience with using a CMOS video camera for a number of years, I have never seen this effect and I’m certain that clients have never seen anything, but perhaps I don’t do many pans. And wait, there’s more? Reg: There is quite a bit more. So what we’re going to show here is our new multicam support. In CS5.5 we support four channels of multicam and we can do at least nine now in CS6. I actually don’t know what our upper limit is; I don’t really think actually that we do know. I’m going to create a multicam sequence here; you can synchronise your multicam sequence by “in” points, “out” points or timecode. What I’m actually going to show you here is I’m going to create a new sequence that’s completely not
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matching. So I’ll say I’m going to make a “DV whatever”. I’m going to drag this multicam sequence here – and here’s a new feature in CS6 – it will now change your sequence settings to match your clips automatically if you want it to. It’s very easy, so now you can work natively with your clips without having to figure out exactly what the right settings are to make it work. You can now double click the multicam sequence and you can see here’s the seven different shots I was talking about, and so to simply edit that, you would open up your multicamera monitor. Once you have your multicamera monitor open, you can use your keyboard shortcut to say “shot 1” “shot 5” “shot 7” as it’s playing back; and as it’s playing back, it’s creating edit points for you, for all those different camera angles. What we’ve always had in Premiere is a dynamic link with After Effects and obviously the big advantage there is basically you don’t have to export out your clip, open After Effects, do your effects there, bring it back into Premiere, realise you don’t really like what you’ve done, then you have to re-import it back. So that’s a common problem when you’re using things like Avid or Final Cut, because they don’t have that integration. With Premiere, we have dynamic workflow, so therefore you can just simply right click this, open this up in After Effects and whatever changes you make dynamically in After Effects will simply show up in Premiere. Ed: Super. Is it only After Effects or does it work with something like Encore as well? Reg: Yes, it does work with Encore as well. Ed: Have there been any improvements in Encore? Reg: Encore I think is unchanged from the previous version. Ed: Bugger! But you’ll show me something else cool? Reg: I’ll show you something really cool. What we have changed is that we’ve added some more things in our Production Premium suite including SpeedGrade which is a professional quality colour correction tool that you know some of those guys over there may be able to talk to you about, but this is basically a Єuro 40,000 tool that’s now going to be free in the Production Premium. Stuart: Adobe purchased the IRIDAS company last year and so now they’ve incorporated the high end grading tools from SpeedGrade as part of the CS6 Production Premium bundle as well and Master Collection. So that’s a very exciting addition.
watch folder. What that means is if you tell Media Encoder that there’s a folder where you’re going to drop files in, it will automatically output all the various flavours of that file that you want … a YouTube version, Facebook version, a DVD version, a Blu-ray version – all working and batching outside of Premiere so you can continue to work in Premiere. Ed: Very cool and looking at the timeline here, I see a little camera has now appeared as a tool on the Play monitor, so you can take a snapshot of the timeline and that’ll turn into a bitmap? Reg: I believe that was a CS5 feature … Ed: Humpf … okay. Reg: It was something highly requested by our users. Ed: So Stuart, you see some big improvements here with the upgrade? Stuart: Absolutely – significantly far more flexible on the media formats that it supports, so it does ARRI RAW, RED RAW, even the new Sony F65 RAW, so it’s really becoming the “Swiss Army Knife” of our industry, the ability to support so many formats on the way in, to be able to edit in those formats natively; also with the enhanced Media Encoder you have to export in far more flexible formats as well and of course with the addition of Watch Folders to the Adobe Media Encoder, it will work well for some automated workflows that people have, where they need to multi-purpose the files that they’re creating at the end of the day as well. Plus the creative features that they’ve put inside the product that Reg has gone over as well, it is just a phenomenal update. Ed: But Stuart, I’ve missed the upgrade path by staying with 4 and not going to 5 – is there anything I can do? Stuart: Yes absolutely. You can still upgrade from CS4 to CS6, so that’s still available. You can still do that until the end of this calendar year. Ed: Whoa – at a good price? Stuart: At a very good price, of course. Just call DVT. Ed: Now there’s one more thing Reg is going to tell us about … Reg: This is from the Steve Job’s playbook the one more thing that I’ve just imported here is a 5K EPIC RED file. So if you look at the properties here, this is
Reg: So one more change since you used CS4 is that we’ve upgraded Adobe Media Encoder and so besides the fact that we now support more formats that we can export to as far as the different flavours … let me open up our export here, and you can see all the new different formats that we support for exporting. Even something like MXF OP1a or something like DPX if you want to do that as well, which is really nice. What you can also now do in Adobe Media Encoder that you couldn’t do in previous to 5.5, is it has a batch Page 4
Official Adobe CS6 Video Launch Event Tuesday 29th May | 6pm Venue: DVT 45 Fairfax Ave, Penrose, Auckland. Email sales@dvt.co.nz to book your place
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Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd
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Join DVT and Adobe for the official Adobe CS6 Video Launch Event presented by Jon Barrie from Adobe. Get a closeup look at some of the over 800 new features of Creative Suite 6. Adobe CS6 Production Premium software offers a sleek, fresh editing environment in Adobe Premiere Pro; 3D tracking and extruded text and shapes in Adobe After Effects; new Content-Aware tools in Adobe Photoshop Extended; and faster editing in Adobe Audition. Plus all new additions are Adobe Prelude for logging and ingest and Adobe SpeedGrade for color grading and finishing.
Phone: 09 525 0788
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Email: sales@dvt.co.nz
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45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland
5000 lines of resolution by 2160 and I dropped it in Premiere; I simply play it back and you see it’s playing back without dropping frames. Ed: But is that to do with Premiere or is that to do with the computer you’re using? Reg: It’s Premiere. Stuart: It’s impressive, it’s on a MacBook Pro. Ed: Will it work on a PC as well? Stuart: Well if it’s faster than a MacBook Pro, of course, yes. Reg: The answer is “yes”. Ed: But of course, as part of this CS package, After Effects is there and everybody knows After Effects, they continue to make it better? Stuart: Absolutely and this year with CS6, they’ve brought out some wonderful new features, one of which is a new 3D Tracker, which allows you to take any handheld video camera shot and track the shot to allow you to composite other elements into it. So if you had a shot that was panning and tilting and you wanted to put a logo on the side of a truck or something for example, even though that shot is panning and tilting, you can put the logo on the side of the truck, and as the shot pans and tilts, the logo will stay in exactly the right spot on the side of the truck. Ed:
And realign itself to the new angle?
Stuart: Absolutely, so you can blend that in, which is fantastic. So 3D Tracker is a high end tool that we’re used to using in the higher end visual effects market. One of the other new features they’ve put in is extrudable 3D text which is pretty cool and to complement that, they now have a workflow where you can take any bitmap image into Illustrator, convert it from a bitmap image into a vector graphic, which is one that you can manipulate without the pixels getting all yucky looking. You can then bring that into After
Effects – logos are a great example of where you might want to use this. You could take somebody’s logo that they’ve sent you as a JPEG file, open it in Illustrator, convert it to a vector graphic, bring that into After Effects, you can then extrude that into 3D, change the colours of the logo, so you can make a really nice 3D logo. And obviously if you combine that with the 3D Tracker, you can then make that logo in 3D track over the top of a moving panning shot. But wait, there’s more … Ed: Have your paper towels handy. Stuart: They’ve now got a ray tracing renderer in After Effects, which means that they can set up light sources and render objects and cast shadows and reflections and things. Ed: Wow, that’s normally only available on the big Smoky products? Stuart: That’s right, so they’ve done a pretty good job at bringing in some of these key elements that people want to use, particularly in the motion graphics environment and putting that together. Ed: So that features 2D as well as 3D I imagine, but are there any other 2D features? Stuart: Heaps, so come to our Adobe CS6 Video Launch Event to find out more … Ed: And of course Photo Shop will have a few tweaks as well? Stuart: Yes, Photo Shop has got some wonderful new features. They’ve got a new cropping mode which is really good for us in the video industry. You can basically open any size image at all, and you can say I want to crop it to 16x9 or I want to crop it to 2K resolution and it just opens a window that you can use to easily change that. And in combination with the content aware scale, fill and patch as well as other tools that they’ve added in, it makes a great product for manipulating still images for the video world. NZVN
Blackmagic for DVT At the Blackmagic stand for DVT. Ed: Yet another of the suppliers that you support really well, Blackmagic have grown to such a size that they’ve overtaken the Grass Valley booth here at NAB which is something to be said for a little Australian company based in Melbourne. They’ve done particularly well, and they’re not to be outdone this year? Stuart: Absolutely. Grant Petty the owner of Blackmagic is a man on a mission, that’s for sure and now of course he’s looking at the world in 2½K. You know the new digital cinema camera that they’re launching here at the show has really taken everybody by surprise.
but of course now they’re really putting their stamp firmly on the production market as well, with the new Blackmagic digital cinema camera.
Everyone looked at Blackmagic as a production tool company with the switchers that they’re doing, and as a postproduction company with all the original DeckLink product that they came out with, and of course the huge range of products that have come out after that,
Ed: Now in the old days, one would say this is not the core business of a company like this. To go from their box technology, or their card technology to a camera, is a totally different ballpark, but in the digital age, it’s not such a longshot?
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like ProRes or DNxHD to extend the amount of recording time that you’re going to be able to get on those SSD cards. Ed: But I’m sure it has the IOs to allow you to have an extended record time? Stuart: Oh yes, look you don’t really need it, because the camera’s got everything you need I guess, but if you want to run outboard recorders, it’s got HDMI and HD-SDI outputs, so you can certainly do all of that if you want to. Ed: And it’s a small form factor?
Stuart: Well that’s right. Blackmagic is a company whose business is founded on coming out with cutting edge technology at remarkable new price points … Ed: But it’s digital technology, processing, it’s all on cards?
it’s
all
about
Stuart: That’s right, it’s digital technology, it’s all about processing, so just uses the EF mount lenses on the front end, digital signal processing on the back, but of course they’ve integrated the hard drive recorder inside it as well, so it will record directly to uncompressed or ProRes or DNxHD directly onto an SSD card, which is what the market wants, and they’ve got an LCD screen on it for operational control as well. So they’ve done a really good job of putting the key elements together. To glue a lens to an image sensor to a recording device in a small integrated package, and they’ve made mounting holes on the camera so that you can add the rest of the kit around it – rails, recorders, battery systems – all that sort of stuff can be hooked up around that fundamental core. But you don’t have to worry about using off-board recorders because they’ve integrated that directly into the product. Ed: And it’s at that high level so you don’t need to have a higher level off-board recorder? Stuart: Yes that’s right. The recording is uncompressed so you can’t argue with that. Uncompressed on an SSD is going to blow through your card pretty quickly, but if you want to be a bit more practical about it, you could use a high quality codec
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Stuart: A very small form factor, I mean obviously they’ve just taken the elements that you need in a camera and said well what’s the point in making it any bigger than it really needs to be, so they’ve worked hard to integrate it down. It’s carved out of a solid piece of aluminium which is a trend that we’ve seen in this market over the last 18 months, so it’s very practical, very robust. It’s not a video camera though, it’s really a digital cinema camera, because it only shoots the low frame rate progressive modes, so 24p, 25p and 30p. It doesn’t do 1080 50i or 60i … Ed: But it’s an important point to make Stuart, because I’m sure there are some people out there who are still confused because they don’t see a difference between video and cinematography? Stuart: Well it is – I think there’s such a lovely wide range of product available from all the vendors that we represent, that each product, depending on the application has its place. There’s always one that’s usually better for the job than others, if you actually analyse and figure out who your audience is, how you’re going to do your postproduction, how you’re going to do your shoot, what budgets you’ve got in mind. For example it might not be the best choice for a reality TV show. You can’t be running around trying to focus a very shallow depth of field lens when you’re chasing people into the back of ambulances or down the local highway. So you’ve got to have the right camera for the job. Ed: That’s the unusual products that they’ve brought out, but in the normal line of Blackmagic? Stuart: Yes, Blackmagic’s acquired a company called Teranex who do very high quality standards converters. These are products that will take input format, whether it’s standard definition, 720 or 1080 in any flavour of frame rate, and convert it to any other frame rate and frame size on the way out. These products were $80,000 last year; $20,000 last month; now bundled under Blackmagic’s umbrella, down to just $2,000! An extremely high quality standards converter, very versatile – so if you’ve got applications where you want to convert one format to another, these are wonderful products for that job. Ed: And that’s the thing isn’t it – that your nonlinear editing system these days can do various conversions on the timeline, but we must stress, these are software
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Stuart:
Including Thunderbolt, yes.
Ed: Now the HyperDeck Studio has been around before hasn’t it? Stuart: Absolutely, the HyperDeck Studio has been a great product. They’ve now got full DNxHD and ProRes support or uncompressed, so it’s basically a 1U rack mount unit with two SSD drive slots. You feed a video signal in and hit the record button and it will record in any of the high definition formats, in any of those different formats as well, you know, uncompressed ProRes or DNxHD. Now at the show they’ve launched a new product called the HyperDeck Studio Pro. This is a new product above that one. It actually has got four inputs and can record four cameras simultaneously. It can also record 4K as well, so you can use it in either of those two modes. So the four camera recording has got some pretty interesting opportunities. If you’re doing a vision switch where you’re bringing eight cameras back through a vision mixer to do a live switch, but you also want to do an ISO or isolated record of each of those separate cameras, with just two of these HyperDeck Studio Pros you could record eight cameras simultaneously.
conversions and sometimes they’re not up to the standard of a hardware converter? Stuart: Well that’s right, and also there’s the processing time available as well, so for broadcast applications this is a no brainer. People may choose to produce everything at a higher quality like 1080 50i, but then they know, well look, we just really need to be able to deliver it on Freeview at 1080 50p … or you can use a standards converter like this just to simply convert it on the way out; or if you just want to monitor it – what is my high definition timeline going to look like in standard definition, when it is converted at the end of the day? You can be editing on an HD timeline, outputting HD into a Teranex 2D processor and looking at it on an old PAL tele to make sure it’s going to look okay. So it’s got some interesting applications. Ed: And there are two versions of this – there’s the Teranex 2D and the 3D; basically 3D’s twice the price of the other, but it has two ins, two outs, whereas the 2D is one in, one out. And it’s all 444 or 422 the interlace up-down conversion. Everything in there including Thunderbolt?
Ed:
And they’re two grand a pop?
Stuart: Two grand each, yes, so a very, very cost effective way of recording multiple cameras. Ed:
We’re talking US dollars here by the way.
Stuart: Yes. Also you could use this as a play-out device, so if you had an application at a museum or any of those sorts of applications where you want a multicamera playback, or if you’re doing a live switch but also wanted to have logos or other video clips playing that you can switch to from time to time; or you could use it as a multi-stream playback device as well.
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LATESCTT U
Cinema Camera
PRODU
BLACKMAGIC DESIGN A revolutionary digital cinema camera design with a super wide 13 stops of dynamic range, high resolution 2.5K sensor, built in high bandwidth SSD recorder, open file format support, colour correction with full version of DaVinci Resolve and a built in LCD with metadata entry, all in an attractive compact design.
FROM NAB SHOW New and exciting offers from Blackmagic Design, Matrox and AJA. Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Studio Pro
A powerful new model of SSD recorder with 4 channels of 3 Gb/s SDI in and out, built-in high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology, and full HDMI and analogue in and out – including standard XLR connectors for audio and timecode. Dramatically higher processing power and quality allows full 4K playback from a single SSD disk using Apple ProRes compression four times the resolution of regular HD 1080 res video.
Blackmagic Design INC REALREDIBLY Teranex 2D/3D SIMU ISTIC 3 LATI D ON
Extremely high quality processing converters, including up and down conversion, SD/HD cross conversion, and SD/HD standards conversion. Features include cadence detect and remove, noise reduction, adjustable scaling, aspect ratio conversion, smart aspect, timecode conversion, subtitle conversion, 16 channel audio, test signals and more. Also includes 3D camera align, 3D dual stream standards conversion, 3D format conversions and incredibly realistic 3D simulation.
Blackmagic Ultra Studio Express
Blackmagic Battery Converters
AJA T-tap
Blackmagic Designs UltraStudio Express is a new capture and playback solution featuring 3 Gb/s SDI, HDMI and analog connections with high-speed Thunderbolt technology. UltraStudio Express is extremely portable, as the compact design is powered by its Thunderbolt connection and can be operated from a computer’s battery or power source
Blackmagic Design announced two new Battery Converters that feature a built in rechargeable battery and a super tough aluminum design. Battery Converters include the latest 3 Gb/s SDI technology for the highest broadcast quality conversion and are available in two models, Battery Converter SDI to HDMI and Battery Converter HDMI to SDI.
AJA’s T-tap is a very small new buspowered device that takes advantage of Thunderbolt connectivity for high-quality 10-bit SD, HD and 2K output through SDI and HDMI connections. This new adapter enables a simple, unobtrusive means of getting professional video and audio out of any Thunderbolt™-enabled Mac system.
Matrox MicroQuad
F CHAOUR NNE
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A four-channel SDI-to-HDMI® multiviewer. Small and easyto-use this device lets users monitor up to four SDI inputs on a single HDMI display in quadrant view, or toggle to a full-screen view at the touch of a button. Inputs can be 3G, HD or SD, and all controls are on the unit itself; no computer is required. Matrox MicroQuad ensures a crisp, artifact-free monitoring experience, thanks to it’s state-ofthe-art 10-bit scaling engine with advanced filtering and de-interlacing.
SIM WOR PLIFIES K F LO W
AJA Ki Pro Quad
AJA Ki Pro Rack
The Ki Pro Quad is a new solid-state portable video recorder at NAB Show 2012. Ki Pro Quad is capable of capturing high-quality edit-ready files in formats including 4K (4096 x 2160), Quad HD (3840 x 2160), 2K (2048 x 1080), and HD (1920 x 1080), for the fastest path from camera-to-editorial with 10-bit 4:4:4 and 10-bit 4:2:2 colour support.
TThe Ki Pro Rack uses the same SSD modules as the Ki Pro with recording capacities scaling up to 500GB. Ki Pro Rack simplifies the acquisition-to-edit workflow by creating high-quality Apple ProRes 422 or Avid DNxHD files which can be used directly in most standard professional editing systems – no need to import or transcode files.
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Email: sales@dvt.co.nz
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45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland
Ed: DaVinci – we’ve talked about DaVinci before, but they’re continuing to develop it? Stuart: Absolutely, so at the show they’re launching version 9 of their software which includes
directly into it as well, that allows you to track objects off 2D images in 3D, so that you can grade particular parts of the image much easier by doing that selection off that, plus a range of other GPU enhancements, a slicker user interface – they’ve done a really good job at continuing to innovate with DaVinci Resolve. They still run a software only version of it with noise reduction features and stereoscopic capabilities that you can buy for $1,000 and they still offer the product free as well if you’re just doing HD. So a very capable high end grading tool that anybody can put their hands on and use. It’s a phenomenal product. Ed: Now we’re going to talk about grading at some later date, aren’t we Stuart?
extra format support – most notably the F65 camera is now supported natively in DaVinci Resolve and also it’s got extra creative capabilities like a 3D tracker pulled
Stuart: Absolutely, grading is – you know with Adobe they’ve now got a high end grading tool bolted on to their product. Apple did that years ago when they bought the Color product and bolted that into their bundle. Adobe have now done that with the IRIDAS SpeedGrade product, but if you want to use DaVinci you’ve got such great choice now in the market. DaVinci Resolve is a high end colour grading solution, again available for not too much money, so really you’ve got your pick of grading tools available to you now. NZVN
TVNZ 7 only has a couple of months left but we're still challenging the government to change their decision to close the only Public Service TV channel for all Kiwis. If anything we're getting more motivated. So what's happening? Firstly, the online petition has recently shot up around the 9,000 mark and is climbing. Please help us get it over the mythical 10,000 figure by emailing your friends and contacts. Or you can just ring them and talk about it, it's old-fashioned but it still works. The main thing is to remind people about the tragedy that is about to befall us - the death of Public Service TV in NZ. The big news is that Save TVNZ 7 is setting up a series of public meetings to talk about why Public Service TV is so important to New Zealand. We're forming committees to organise the meetings in Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin and we're looking for people to help organise and publicise these meetings. We also want to setup meetings in other towns and cities around the country too. So if you're able to help please email us at savetvnz7@gmail.com and we'll put you in touch with the right people. Recent exciting news (sorry to be so frothy) came when Labour MP Clare Curran announced she is about to introduce a Private Members Bill to save TVNZ 7. Although the bill is a long shot, it is a great way to publicise this important issue and garner support from all the political parties (even National). Please keep reminding your local MP and List MPs of your concerns about the imminent closure of TVNZ 7 and what it means to you, your family and friends. It's been a busy few weeks in the media with many columns and articles written in favour of TVNZ 7 and Public Service TV. Here are links to a few goodies:
Why We Must Try to Save TVNZ 7 by Paul Norris The Death of Pakeha TV by Paul Casserly TVNZ 7. Is It Worth Saving? by Clare Curran MP Finally, as our campaign rounds into the home straight (yes, it is depressing) Save TVNZ 7 needs more publicity. So please do your bit to talk about the demise of our last Public Service TV station and the end of a broadcasting era when TVNZ 7 finishes in June. Whether you're an All Black, a talkback caller or gossiping at the local playgroup - the more we talk about TVNZ 7, the more others will realise what's happening. Who knows. We might still stop this terrible decision and keep Public Service TV alive in NZ. Many thanks
savetvnz7@gmail.com
Myles Thomas - Save TVNZ 7
Page 12
Chrosziel for Panavision At the Chrosziel booth, we have Sebastian Merkel from Schneider Optics Ed:
But Chrosziel?
Sebastian: Chrosziel has a new VariLock, follow focus, DV studio rig. We had a VariLock follow focus before, but it could fix the direction only in one way. This time, we now have the possibility to fix it in both directions. Ed: Right, so you can lock a focal point at one place and add another, so you can very easily get focus between two fixed distances? Sebastian: The limitation we had before was, I think, a maximum of 180 degrees; now, as you can see, we can … Ed:
About 2 degrees?
Sebastian: … limit to the minimum, exactly. Ed: And I see there’s a big sign here “All matte boxes are not created equal” … how can you justify that claim?
Sebastian Merkel.
Sebastian: I like it very much. It is to show that Chrosziel matte boxes are different. They are of the highest quality; in comparison to other matte boxes they are light. Ed:
Is that the carbon fibre?
Sebastian: It’s not carbon fibre, it’s a special polystyrene housing, but we have chosen a carbon fibre design, which is very well accepted in the market – people like it very much. The difference of the material of this housing now to the old one is that it is harder, it’s more flexible, so if it falls down on the floor together with the camera and the lens, it doesn’t break so easily any more. That is why it’s not equal to other matte boxes. On the next camera, which is an ARRI ALEXA outfitted with a Chrosziel QuickLock plate, the so called “VariTubes” which can change the length in and out, it has the new studio rig follow focus with the same features as the small follow focus.
Ed: So this is arrangements?
not
available
on
all
matte
box
Sebastian: No, that’s an extra. The follow focus is always an extra. We still have the regular follow focus with no end stops, but if you need this, you can also just change the hand wheel. If you have the regular follow focus, you can take the former hand wheel off and put the new hand wheel on, so there’s no need to buy the whole follow focus. Ed: Very flexible. Now there was something I do remember about the side flags on Chrosziel? Sebastian: Our side flags can be taken on and off by using a special pivot mechanism which can be added to the matte box and you can fold them together and you can open them and fix them with a screw. So that’s, I think, something which is pretty neat … and you can adjust them by opening them and closing them together. Ed: But are you still keeping up with the camera manufacturers? I know this was a feature that Jϋrgen used to tell me, that you used to get those early designs. So, for example with the new Canons, have you got matte boxes that will fit the Canon 300? Sebastian: Yes, fit the C300, will fit the new C500, which is body-wise basically the same as the C300. We also, if you have time later on and you go to the Panasonic booth, you see the brand new mock-up of a new 4K camera of Panasonic in a glass case. We fitted out this camera with a Chrosziel bridge plate 90mm, a follow focus and a matte box. So when a camera manufacturer announces a new camera, we always try to get the technical data as early as possible in advance and, in most cases, we can manage to be ready with the accessories when the camera goes to the market.
Page 13
inside of your office building, and things of that nature. From a service standpoint, the legs are made out of aluminium, so you’ve got very low maintenance on there. This whole system at a US$650 sales price roughly, it’s maintenance-free. You don’t have to worry about leaking fluid, the drags are easy to turn. Ed: And this is it, on such a basic tripod, to have levels of drag and counterbalance is amazing? Randy: You’ve got five steps of counterbalance – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then your zero – and it’s a phenomenal piece of equipment, I mean for the entry level individual. Ed: And it comes with a bag? Randy: Absolutely. Ed: So Sachtler has never come in at this low price point, and never had the sort of, as you say, “entry level” product. One would expect with some manufacturers that it would just be a rebranded Chinese product, but …? Ed: And it seems to go the other way too, that the camera manufacturers are obviously wanting to show off their cameras to their best and they put your matte boxes on them? Sebastian: Yes, for example what we did last year ( and we are still very proud of this ), Sony approached us to make them a special deck recorder adapter for the Sony F3. We met them in Japan in 2010 and they gave us all the data and we manufactured this adapter for them within two months and you can see that here also at the show on plenty of Sony’s F3 cameras with the SRR1 recorder on it. Ed: It’s good to play nicely with the big boys eh?
Randy: No, it’s not rebranded, it’s a brand new product and the head itself is made out of a proprietary composite material and you just can’t get anything that’s lighter or more stable for the price point on the market right now. Ed:
And it’s fully made by Sachtler?
Randy:
Absolutely.
Sebastian: Absolutely. It’s very important for us as a small company. For us it’s an opener you know – we can go in and out, we know most of the important people there and, yes, it’s very nice. Ed: It’s good that you both have confidence in each other? NZVN
Sachtler for Panavision We are with Randy Frisch, service manager for Sachtler. Ed: And we are looking at the Sachtler Ace series, is that right? Randy: Absolutely, this is the Ace. It’s got an SA drag system on it which is a proprietary composite material that we’re utilising for a drag system on the inside here. Ed: So it’s not fluid? Randy: It’s not fluid, no. It’s got three steps of drag – zero through 3 – and basically you’ve got your counterbalance as well, which is something that you’re seeing with the FSB series. So what we’ve done is we’ve taken the FSB head and kind of miniaturised it one step down for the entry level consumer. The person who is just starting off can turn around and say “okay, I want to get into the marketplace, I want a good reliable piece of equipment that I can take around and not have to worry about anything.” It’s still light enough to go from one place to the next and everything’s included with a sales price of like US$600 for the complete system. That’s the head, the tripod and the mid-level spreader. Now the good thing about these is the feet. They’re not removable rubber feet, they actually screw in, and by screwing them in, you’ve now got the spike on the bottom for in the outdoors – you can push them in, you can do your corporate videos on the Page 14
Randy Frisch with the Ace.
NZVN
Datavideo for Protel We are now on the Datavideo Technologies stand with Ken Brooke. Ed: Ken’s just met two girls on the Datavideo Stand that he could actually pick up in Vegas … Ken: Hmmm. Yes I hope your readers understand the things I do to add humour to your magazine Grant? Ed: … and we’ve moved on to have a look at the new SE-600. Now this is quite a simple little mixer Ken, but it looks as though it’s quite powerful. It’s got a lot of buttons? Ken: Yes all the right buttons a great product. The Datavideo SE-600 is an eight input SD video Ken Brooke tries his luck on the Datavideo Stand. switcher, with built in dual The SE-2800 is available configured to suit your camera channel audio mixer. It has a Multi-View output display equipment i.e part of the 12 inputs can be reconfigured. i.e each input, as well as Program and Preview can be The maximum number of inputs for a certain input displayed on a connected computer monitor. Other format: 12HD-SDI,12 SD-SDI, 6 CVBS, 3 HDMI. The features include audio peak-meter, clock and dual logo SE-2800 is also suitable for mobile or OB Van use and store. There is also available an Optional Digital Output can be powered from 12Volt. Board: 2 x DV25 (IEEE-1394) and 2 x SDI. The flexible outputs make it easy to connect to external devices Now Grant is very distracted at the moment, he’s such as large screens, recorders, streaming and more – looking at a video. Shall I tell your wife what you’re all at the same time. Go to http://www.datavideo.info/ watching? en/Mixer%20-%20Switchers/SE-600 Ed: Call Protel for all your Datavideo Equipment NZVN requirements ph 0800PROTEL. The SE-600 is designed to meet the demands of working in worship, education, or conducting a live outside broadcast or shooting inside a production studio in standard definition. Ed: And that’s it, if you’ve got good composite cameras and you’re going to stream to air, or projector or you’re wanting to train or learn how these things all go together, well there you go? Ken: Some of the New Zealand schools who have streaming TV stations would find this useful and also churches because it’s very cost effective and you can use your composite gear. There’s also available a portable unit called the HS-600 which has a full intercom system built into it as well as full monitoring. Details at http://www.datavideo.info/ en/Mobile%20Video%20Studios/HS-600 Ed: Is it mains only, oh no, I guess the portable one ( the HS-600 ) must be batteries? It’s got its own coms? Ken: The HS-600 can be powered from a 12v DC car battery if required, and is supplied with an external power supply. See the HS-600 also has the belt packs and headsets and the cabling for the intercom as part of the package. Ed: Now of course there’s lots more Datavideo mixers available in different flavours, but the other product in that line that Datavideo are famous for, is their video switchers and, not to be outdone, there’s another new model out, the SE-2800? Ken: Yes, the SE-2800 is designed for the event market or an activity that needs more than 3 cameras to produce the programme. Check out http:// www.datavideo.info/specs/Datavideo_SE-2800.pdf Page 15
Vinten for Protel
with the patented and rather famous infinite adjustment, which gives you perfect balance.
We are now with Vinten and we have Bob Low who is going to tell us about Vinten Blue.
Ed: Any difference in the head mechanism itself? Bob: No, the actual technology inside the head is all pretty similar for the three product lines. I think the Vision Blue would use a little bit more industrial plastic style, which keeps the price down a little bit. The Vision AS has more of the aluminium parts. Check out all the details at http://www.vinten.com/en/product/vision-blue5 Ken: The new Vinten Vision Blue 5 has won its first award only days after its official launch at NAB. The BCPVA ( British Columbia Professional Videographers Association ) presented the Vision Blue 5 with its 2012 Video Innovation Award. NZVN Call 0800Protel and talk to Ken (Auck) or Glenn (Wgtn) about your Vinten tripod requirements.
Digital Rapids for Protel For Protel, we are at Digital Rapids and we have Jacky Law. Ed: We have something here which you call a portable streaming device, is that right Jacky? Jacky: Yes, it’s called TouchStream. If you have live webcast events that happen in different locations and you want to take an encoder and live broadcast, this is the box you need. It’s lightweight, it’s easy to use and you don’t need a keyboard or mouse to work it.
Bob Low with the Blue 5.
Bob: The new product from Vinten is the Vinten Blue 5 which is a new addition to the Vinten Blue line. It is made to support cameras in the 5.5 to 12Kg range and it has the Vinten Vision technology of perfect balance, infinite counterbalance and infinite fluid adjustment. From the Vinten line, it also has a two stage tripod – an aluminium two stage posi-lock tripod, so it’s a nice addition to the Vision Blue line. Ed:
Ken: Basically, you set up your IP number you want to stream to, set your input and away you go. And the neat thing about this is it works with Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager software remotely, which means a television station can remote control from the TV station if it is a direct dedicated link and bring in a feed as a live channel. I’m getting one into New Zealand for people to look at.
So this is a lighter tripod or …?
Bob: Actually it has a little bit more capacity than the original Vision Blue; it’s one step up, which is the next addition to a full line of Vision Blue – eventually there will be a full line of Vision Blue systems. Ed: Now there’s a range of legs for this, or is there just one set of legs for one head? Bob: At the moment it comes packaged with the one set of legs, which is aluminium, mid-level, floor spreader, two stage, 75mm. Ed: And what’s special about the Blue Line, because they’re not all the Blue Line are they? Bob: The Blue line fits into more the business, corporate, education and industrial, less expensive part of the market. Ed: And so you compare that to – what’s the upmarket line? Bob: That would be the regular Vision AS product, which is a full line of products. The Vinten AS range has the options of interchangeable legs, carbon fibre and aluminium, floor spreader, mid-level spreader, all Page 16
Professional Television & Audio Systems | www.protel.co.nz
Datavideo HS-600 Datavideo HS-600 is an affordable lightweight Standard Definition studio in a box. It is a go-anywhere product, ideal for corporate, AV and the worship markets. It is also an excellent broadcast training tool.
I Complete integrated solution with six Composite Video, one DVI-D input and one DVI-I input (res. 1024x768, 60Hz)
I Autoswitchable 4:3 & 16:9 inputs I Three composite video and multiple auxiliary output, with Optional Digital Output Board: 2 x DV25 (IEEE-1394) and 2 x SDI.
I Dual Picture-in-Picture function I 17 inch high quality TFT LED multi-view screen I Built in RS-232 & GPI control interface I Hot key functions for quick access
Digital Rapids Touchstream Digital Rapids’ TouchStream portable encoding and streaming appliances offer a broad range of advantages over competing portable and appliance-style solutions:
I Unparalleled ease of use I Superior quality I Self-contained portability I Format flexibility
I Live and file-based output I Flexible features I Quiet operation I Comprehensive input choices I Easy upgradeability I Affordability
Vinten Vision blue5 The new Vision blue5 pan and tilt head is the latest addition to the ‘Vision blue’ range of lightweight, compact and refined pan and tilt heads for today’s professional ENG and corporate user who has come to expect uncompromising performance from the premium quality of a Vinten system.
I Perfect counterbalance I Infinite adjustment of counterbalance and drag I Genuine broadcast quality I A trustworthy Vinten tripod system which is effortless to use AUCKLAND 3 City Road PO Box 6049 Auckland 1010 New Zealand
WELLINGTON Tel +64 9 379 8288 Fax +64 9 379 0290 Freephone 0800 PROTEL
15 Walter Street PO Box 6049 (Auckland) Wellington 6011 New Zealand
Tel +64 4 801 9494 Fax +64 4 384 2112 Freephone 0800 PROTEL
Ed: So we might have another “Beer and Pizza Night” soon?
SSDs are still expensive and the capacities are still quite small.
Ken: Definitely, we will have another Beer and Pizza Night and we will have a bit of technology there to show. You can also select the format you want to stream in, different codecs to suit – so you could set it to encode for the iPhone or Androids or H.264 or Silverlight. So you can actually select one of those formats or you can select a few of them and stream multiple?
Ed: Yes, but then if you put a spinning disc on a shelf for a number of years, I believe that, quite often, it doesn’t start up again?
Jacky: Yes it is possible to stream 2 or 3 formats at once, but the Touchstream is lightweight, it’s small in size, so it has limited pulse power, but it is good if you go to remote locations. It’s easy to operate, rather than taking a whole rack mount server going there. Ken: A broadcaster or a Telco could typically have a few of these positioned up and down the country and so the filmmakers could just come in and feed their signals straight back to the broadcaster. Councils could live stream their meetings. Ed: And that’s it, depending on how much time you’ve got, as to what resolution you can get those two minutes or three hours sent? And TouchStream is a good name for it, because yes, there’s nice clear buttons on there which lead you through the menu and you set it up right on the screen in front of you. Go to http://www.digital-rapids.com/Products/ IndividualProducts/TouchStream.aspx Ken: The Touchscreen is a nicely engineered product and we look forward to showing it to the New Zealand NZVN market. For all your streaming requirements call 0800Protel
James: Yes, the SSD is going to be the way forward once the capacities get bigger. At the moment, the SSD is used more just for the speed, so that you can get the editing done faster. With the single drive with the SSD, you can actually edit uncompressed HD footage, and then you’ll find with our T2 you can edit uncompressed 2K footage. Ed: And that’s it, with a single drive, spinning disc, you don’t have the data rate? James: Exactly, so with the single disc hard drive version, it’s 170 megabytes a second limit. Ken: So the beauty of all of the T1 and T2 is they’ve got removable drives or SSD, and two Thunderbolt ports for daisy chaining drives and other products. You don’t normally get both in this small form factor. Go to http://www.caldigit.com/ Ed: And here’s another CalDigit drive with an AJA IO beside it? James: The second drive is called the CalDigit T2; two hard drives or SSDs can go inside it and it can be configured into a RAID configuration using software RAID. There may be hardware RAID versions coming along in the future. On this one, in a RAID zero setting with two SSDs, you get extreme speeds of 630 megabytes a second, allowing you to edit uncompressed 2K footage. The hard drive version has actually improved a bit in the speed performance, compared to our old unit, the BR2. On this T2 you can actually get speed of 350 megabytes a second.
CalDigit for Protel We are now with CalDigit and we have James King. Ed: As Ken says James, there are a lot of new Thunderbolt drives here; do you only look after “Appleites”? James: No, no, we support all different kinds of computers, so eSATA, USB3, USB2, FireWire 400, 800 and now the Thunderbolt’s latest release. Ed:
I’m pleased.
James: Us too. So the first Thunderbolt product that we’ve released is called the T1, a single drive solution. It takes both hard disc drives and SSDs. The SSD supports Intel inside, so it’s 480 gigabytes and it can support speeds of up to 430 megabytes a second. The one we’re displaying at the moment is actually running at around 480 megabytes a second. The drives are modular, so you can take them out, archive them and slot in a new hard drive. It also has two Thunderbolt ports, so it can support daisy chaining. The hard drive version of the T1 now supports a 4 terabyte drive, so it’s really maxed out there in actual capacity usage, and it’s been tested and works daisy chain with all products we’re currently displaying – with Motuo, AJA, Blackmagic Design and Matrox Thunderbolt products. Ed: Just explain to me SSD – and do you reckon SSD is better for archiving long term? James: We’re using the SSD, the solid state disc inside, so rather than having the spinning discs, it’s actually a solid chip it’s burning data on. I would say that for archiving, hard drive is still the way forward, as Page 18
James King.
Professional Television & Audio Systems | www.protel.co.nz
CalDigit T1 and T2 include revolutionary I/O technology that adds a new level of flexibility to post-production workflow. Derived from a close collaboration between Intel and Apple, this exciting new interface not only sets new standards in speed, but allows creative professionals to streamline their productions like never before.
CalDigit T1 Drive Max Capacity: 4TB | Max Speed: 470MB/s Drive Module: SSD or HDD | Interface: Dual Thunderbolt Ports The CalDigit T1 is the world’s first removable and fastest Thunderbolt single drive solution with two Thunderbolt ports. It is perfect for audio/visual professionals seeking a sleek, fast and portable storage unit.
I Supports SSD’s & 3.5” HDD’s I Daisy chain multiple devices I Speeds up to 470 MB/s (SSD) I Speeds up to 170 MB/s (HDD) I Grounded power supply I Heat dissipating design
CalDigit T2 Raid Max Capacity: 8TB | Max Speed: 630MB/s Drive Module: SSD or HDD | Interface: Dual Thunderbolt Ports The CalDigit T2 is an extremely fast dual drive. It is enabled with 2 Thunderbolt ports and removable drive design, perfect for RAID 0,1 and JBOD capability. The T1 and T2 drive modules are also interchangeable and both units are capable of handling SSD and HDD drives.
I Supports SSD’s & 3.5” HDD’s I Daisy chain multiple devices I Speeds up to 630 MB/s I Supports up to 8TB capacity I Grounded power supply I Automatic event notification I Perform drive benchmark tests I Perform drive storage calculations
AUCKLAND 3 City Road PO Box 6049 Auckland 1010 New Zealand
WELLINGTON Tel +64 9 379 8288 Fax +64 9 379 0290 Freephone 0800 PROTEL
15 Walter Street PO Box 6049 (Auckland) Wellington 6011 New Zealand
Tel +64 4 801 9494 Fax +64 4 384 2112 Freephone 0800 PROTEL
uncompressed footage, with a simple easy to show read / write view. As well as this, there’s also the at James is saying Ken, sort of points to the fact that you might pay a premium for a product such as CalDigit as opposed to a generic little RAID box from a local computer store, but what you get is that assurance that it’s going to survive, last longer, and also you can monitor the performance and so see problems coming before they actually happen? Ken: Yes well put, and that’s a definite advantage. The fact that CalDigit actually pre-test their drives before they ship to us as well, ensures we receive a quality engineered product, and we’ve had very good performance and reliability out of GTech products. Ed: And you’ve got the support from them as well? Ken: Yes we get support from CalDigit directly and in turn we are better able to support our customers in New Zealand.
Ed:
The iPhone application is called Thunderview – just do a search for CalDigit and you will find it, it’s very NZVN useful.
That’s when it’s RAID?
James: Yes, in a RAID zero configuration. The hard drives on this one also support the 4 terabyte hard drives, so their maximum capacity is now up to 8 terabytes and of course, with it being daisy chainable, you can now get up to 48 terabytes of storage, just by daisy chaining six devices together. Ed:
And on the back – lots of connections?
James: On the back there are two Thunderbolt ports, so you can do the daisy chaining and you’ve also got the option to be able to swap out the drive modules. One of the cool things is that they actually use the same brackets for the drive modules themselves, so if you’re using this in a RAID one configuration, you can take one of the drives out and actually put it into the T1 and you would be able to access the data from there. Then what we’ve actually done is we’ve developed some of our software, so you’ve got a GUI for Apple, you can see the status of our drives, you can see how healthy they are; then for the hard drive version, it will tell you the temperatures, but it’s not necessary with the SSDs. It tells you the volume size and you can set up all kinds of notification, so it can tell you when your drives are reaching their maximum capacity. When there is a problem with the drive, it will give you a notification by email if you want to set up, or a pop-up will come up on the screen to tell you that the capacity is nearly reached and you should replace the drives with a new module. Other cool things that you can do with them – you can set the SMARTs on the drives themselves to make logs, so if there is ever an issue, you can just send the log files across to the CalDigit support team and they’ll be able to see where the issue was caused and be able to fix it a lot faster for you. We’ve also included the disc benchmark test, so you can see the actual write and read speeds of the disc you’re using at the time; and it will also tell you whether it’s capable of doing the HD, the Page 20
Call 0800Protel for your storage requirements.
Kino Flo for PLS We are here at Kino Flo with Scott Stueckle pronounced “Stickle” in America. Ed: I’ll call you “Scott”. Scott: Just call me Scott, that hasn’t changed. Ed: Now Scott, I’ve seen you demonstrating this Celeb 200 and you’ve had a busy time showing people how it works? Scott: Yes, we have four new products, and the Celeb is one of those that’s really been popular at the show. We have been working with directors of photography and lighting designers ( after we designed the initial unit ) for about a year on set, whether it’s feature film, commercial production or TV broadcast settings, so that we could decide which features we had in the original design we wanted to keep, and which features we would cull. And we’ve now come up with the Celeb 200. The features of the Celeb 200 that make it like every other Kino Flo would be that it’s a soft light first thing. We make soft light, that’s what we’re known for, that’s what we won an Academy Award for and that’s what we do better than anybody else. So again, like all other lights, you’re going to see the Celeb across all platforms … you’re going to see it in photo studios, video studios, broadcast studios and especially commercial and feature film production sets, and that’s because it’s soft, colour correct, flicker-free, no green and it has a lot of versatility built into it. Now each one of our fixtures, as you may know, from the 4x4 Bank down to the Mini-Flos to the large VistaBeam 600, you know big lights – they all have a lot of versatility, but it’s different versatile features built into them, depending on the type of tool that it is. The Celeb is definitely an interview type of tool. It’s definitely a 2 foot, let’s say 8 foot lighting zone. You’re talking about glamour lighting; you’re talking about interviews; you’re talking about maybe little small 10x10 or 12x12 portable chroma-key setups that people do a head and shoulders on; you’re talking about table top … all those things that you might associate with say a Kino Flo 2x4 Bank or with a DivaLite which is the world’s best-selling fluorescent now for location work. This Celeb 200 might be better compared to the DivaLite 400 and the Diva-Lite 200 in terms of its real world application. So if somebody demonstrated it to you, what you would notice in addition to having a soft light, is that it’s also a controllable light and a dimmable light. You can also change your Kelvin temperature. We call it variable colour temperature, not bi-colour. What we did was to create from 2700 Kelvin to 5500 Kelvin, a range of white, and any place you control it anywhere in between there, you can just preset and lock in any kind of a colour temperature you want. You don’t have to go back and re-meter your light level, because it’s programmed to give you the same light level across all the different colour settings. Now of course, like any LED, and like Kino Flo fluorescents, any time you dim it, you don’t have to worry about Kelvin shift the way you do with tungsten light. You know, you dim tungsten light one stop and you’ve got to put some gel on or something, which is fine, tungsten’s a
Scott Stueckle lit by his own Celeb.
very beautiful light source, but that’s one of the features of a tungsten light that people are happy to not have with a Celeb. You can change your Kelvin temperature, not have your light level change; change your light levels, not have the Kelvin temperature change. That’s a great feature of it. So again, the variable colour temperature is one feature you wouldn’t have, let’s say, on a Diva-Lite. Now another feature of the Celeb is, because they are LEDs and cool off like LEDs, you have a nice long life fixture, in other words, the light output’s going to last for a long time. The industry has rated these types of LEDs at like 50,000 hours. We’re not convinced by worldwide experience whether or not the lumen levels and the Kelvin temperature settings that we have, the tolerances that we’ve set in the fixture, will stay stable over that 50,000 hours. We believe there’ll be a shift at some point; we know it’s going to last a lot longer than say a tungsten or HMI, it’s going to last longer than a fluorescent – maybe four times as long as a fluorescent tube – but we’re not sure yet where that lands. As we find that out as we do testing over the next year or two, we’ll let people have a better measure of really what the LED life is in terms of practical lights. Towards that end, we have designed a fixture unlike anybody else’s, where the platen where we have the LEDs built into, that platen can be removed from the fixture easily by a technician and it can be upgraded. Let’s say, for example, in our new LED series, we have some kind of new technology – an LED device that some manufacturer’s come up with a brighter, more colour correct, less expensive LED light source. We go okay listen, we don’t use less LEDs, so we can come up with a new white source LED source and put it on this platen, put an array of these LEDs onto this platen and people can upgrade. Ed: To me it’s like changing the tyres on your car – the rest of the car’s fine, the controls are there, but you put new tyres on and suddenly you’ve got a new car? Scott: You’re right, that that’s the approach, but again, getting back to my original statement, this is not something new, that’s what Kino Flo’s always been about, all the energy efficiency and all the product
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Scott: When you say “you don’t mix light” you mean you don’t mix different colour temperatures, or you don’t mix different product …
design from everything from the electronics all the way to the light quality is very much a Kino Flo product. You can change out the lamps in a Kino Flo you still have the fixture, you still have the head cable, you still have the electronics. Same with this – as issues arise with the LEDs, you don’t have to throw out the fixture, you can basically repair or replace the entire platen, and again, getting back to the platen design, if there is damage to the fixture, you don’t have to send the whole fixture back and get a whole new set of LEDs or a whole new fixture, the way the other manufacturers have done it. Basically, if there’s damage, you can slide that platen out and because those LEDs are circuited in modules, you can just replace those particular damaged LEDs. And again, if you damage a few of the LEDs the entire fixture’s still working. Getting back to other Kino Flo products, let’s say you have a 4x4 Bank and you’re shooting a talent and she’s there in a scene, and you lose a tube, somebody hits it with a C-stand, boom – you still have three tubes operating, you move the fixture and you can get the shot done at least. Other LEDs, you knock it out, you lose the whole LED, you’re done, you’ve got to bring another fixture in. And if you want to get it fixed, you can’t get it fixed, you have to buy a new fixture – it’s just a big problem. And that’s what we want to make sure people know about Kino Flo is that we haven’t stopped making lights the way you’ve come to expect lights from Kino Flo. Ed: That’s talking to customers and supplying the product and the service that your customers expect? Scott: Right, exactly. Because the name is Kino Flo, so we’ve had people bringing in their LED ideas to us in the past, and there always seem to be dropouts in the design process where they’re willing to settle for “good enough”. We’ll point out some feature issues that need to be improved, they go – well we don’t want to advance to that because that’s just a little bit too expensive; we’d rather do it 80% and promote it and say it’s 100%. And that’s pretty much the LED market now. LED is another lighting tool in a kit of lighting tools; it has a certain range that it works very well, but you know you can’t get away from the fact that you still need tungsten lights, you still need HMIs, you still need Kino Flos. Ed: And that brings me to what I thought was the key thing of the Celeb, apart from it being LED, was this variable colour temperature, because one of the rules in lighting is you don’t mix your lights?
Ed: Well you tend not to mix different technologies because, I guess, you don’t have the same Kelvin temperatures from each of those? Scott: That’s an argument that started 25 years ago when we designed the first Kino Flo. It was that you couldn’t use them with other light sources – and what we designed from the very beginning was a light source that wasn’t a fluorescent. We said no, this is not – you keep calling it fluorescent, but yes it’s fluorescent based technology, this is a thing called a Kino Flo because it does mix with other light sources seamlessly, side by side without filtration. It should be a professional lighting tool regardless of what your materials are – whether or not you’re pumping a lot of wattage through a hot filament and producing a white light through on a tungsten source, or using a gas discharge lamp like an HMI or a Kino Flo. Whatever the talent or whatever the DP or the gaffer or whatever the lighting person is, whatever they’re using, all those tools should work side by side to give you at least the same colour, the same lighting quality and again some of those might be Fresnel, so they gave you a hard brittle sunlight look which is great; and then others are soft like Kino Flo and they have their place, but they should still work side by side seamlessly. That has not changed with the Celeb. But we don’t have to go and tell people, yes that’s good enough, just white balance your camera, just shoot with Kino Flos, just shoot with the Celeb and if they’re all LEDs you can fix it in the camera. No, no, no this is to solve problems, not have somebody trying to fix problems with the Kino Flo. Kino Flos solve problems on the set; LEDs that I see in the marketplace now and other lights, they basically create problems that have to be solved by the technicians. Ed: Okay, so why do you need such a wide range of colour temperature out of one light? Scott: The range is just to match to the big areas of what you’ll see on the set. Let’s say it’s a magic hour shot and you have daylight changing Kelvin temperature every hour as the sun goes down. You need to be able to balance to that. Let’s say one guy looks on the monitor, he goes “you know what, the Kino Flo Celeb on the fill side, I don’t want it to match the tungsten fill on the key; I want it to be cooler; take her from 32 down to 45 or take it down …” – they can make a really quick adjustment. You’re right, you could do the same thing by putting a gel on another fixture; I’m just saying the ability to do, tweak it until it’s right on the monitor or looks good to the eye, then that’s a really nice feature. Ed: So it’s really an artistic light? Scott: Absolutely … it has to be artistic, because you can talk to people technically all you want, you can show them all the spectral readouts, how it matches spectral sensitivity curve of film and all the HD cameras, and you can show them the graph, you can show other LEDs where they drop out of the spectrum … Ed: But what does it look like? Scott: That’s right, the DP is like “dude, my next job is based on the last job I just had. Is this going to cause me a problem or is it going to make me look good?” Kino Flos will always make the DP and the gaffer and the usual, look good. How we get there is really not that interesting to me; the fact is, once we’re there, now we can really start talking about what the creative process is and how Kino Flo can play a part in that creative process. We want to be a part of the process of making the image; we don’t want to be a
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More LEDs from Dedolight
Diffuser included V Lock & NP-F battery mount on board Mains power supply included Remotable dimmer included From $1700 plus GST
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part of the process that’s the problem, which is what we see a lot on the set. Ed: So okay, that’s one out of four! Scott: That’s one. Ed: And we’ve got a new Barfly? Scott: Yes, the new Barfly is a revised Barfly – it’s a dimming version of the original Barfly and it also has electronics that are built-in. So the original Barfly kind of changed the way a lot of people used location lights, because they’re able to take a lot of light and put it into a very small punchy package of soft light. What it has in common with the original Barfly design, is it has a nice soft but high lumen package of light in a small envelope, so you can hide it away on a bookshelf – that type of thing. So now what we’ve done, is we’ve added
Scott: Absolutely. And when you say “green” we mean “green” in terms of environmentally friendly not “green” in terms of the colour spectrum. Ed: I know – it’s been a catchphrase shall we say with lighting. Scott: We recoil a little bit when people ask us if our lights are “green”. We say they’re energy efficient, they’re not green. After 25 years of leading the industry and taking green out of fluorescents and making them useable on almost 90-95% of all feature films shot in the world, because they don’t have green, we really don’t want to go back to that discussion again “are they green?” They’re not green, but they are energy efficient. Ed:
Okay, that’s two, the third?
Scott: That’s two man, that’s two because the Barfly is considered one family.
electronics onto the fixture – instead of having a remote ballast with a head cable and a head that can be moved around, but is tethered to the ballast by a head cable, all the electronics are built into a nicely trim lightweight fixture. We have a Barfly 200D and a Barfly 400D – the “D” stands for “dimming”. In addition to dimming, we’ve added universal voltage, so you’re in Japan, you need to shoot at 100 Volt, no problem; if the local voltage drops at 90, 80, not a problem. Let’s say you’re in Australia or somewhere in Asia or Europe and you’re up to 230-240 you can still handle that kind of power. There is a power factor correction on these too, just meaning it gives you even more efficiency. So this particular fixture here, it‘s in the Barfly 200 and the Barfly 400. The Barfly 200 is less than an amp of power and the Barfly 400 is like 2 amps. So you’re talking about a Barfly 400 putting out as much light as a 1K soft light and using about 2 amps of power in a 120 Volt market. It takes what Kino Flo’s always done with fluorescents by making them energy efficient and then making them even more energy efficient to give you that much more latitude in how you use the light around the world. Ed: So you can be “green” with a Kino Flo as well as with an LED?
Ed: So going up in the world? Scott: This is about as far up as you can get. This is the Imara S10. It puts out as much light as a 6000 Watt space light with silk on it. Let’s say you’re on a set and you have like a nice large 3K tungsten soft light. It’s the same amount of light as that … however, using a combination of our existing technology from the ParaBeams and the VistaBeams, we created a reflector on here and used our 55 Watt compact lamps – 10 of them – to produce a nice soft even spread of light; as soft as our big fat T12 tubes, like the Image 85, but twice as bright as an Image 85. So it gives you let’s say at 20 feet around 30 foot candles of light. That means for lighting designers that’s a spec they wanted, because if you’re doing large area lighting or you’re doing a space lighting environment, or you had to put them up for an audience for a television show, that is a really good soft light lumen level hit at for those types of applications. We’re doing a lot of these now as space lights – these are replacing space lights; these are much better than an LED option. An LED option to produce this much light output, would cost you close to $50,000. The lumens per dollar, the lumens per Watt on an Imara S10 is right now the most efficient light source in the industry. So it’s great, it’s been taking off, I’m surprised at how fast it took off, because we do have another two big lights – we have the Image 85 and the VistaBeam 600 which have been very well received and been very popular. This thing is about a year old and as soon as people see it and compare it side by side with any other fixture, we love it when they do that, because they show this next to all these other lights out there and they go “wow, we’ll take it” – the price is good, lumens per dollar is good, it has dimming, it has switching, it has DMX remote control and it has a power factor correction. So for 3000 Watts of equivalent tungsten soft light, this is under 5 amps of power. I could put three of these in a 15 amp circuit in a house in the US at 120 Volt. That’s a lot of light, especially putting daylight tubes in there; you want to balance the light coming through a window, this can do it, and usually this is more light than they need. It comes with 60 and 90 degree Hexcel Honeycomb Louvers, very nice, it gives you a nice soft even … Ed: That was a question I had, about the honeycomb … you have two different honeycombs? Scott: Oh I’m sorry, let’s go back to the Celeb. You probably saw on the Celeb that we had a Honeycomb focusing louver, but it’s made of plastic. It’s a different kind, it’s poly ethelene cells, it looks like a Honeycomb, but if you get up close you’ll go “hey it’s
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a Honeycomb, but it’s made of small circles.” That is a nice lightweight cost efficient and artistic way of creating the same thing we do with our metal ones. The metal ones are a beautiful way of controlling the light levels, but because they’re extruded aluminium they’re a little bit more expensive. It’s just a more expensive process. So as we move through our lines of products, we will eventually try and make some of both available to people. I think what we’ve found is when people compare them side by side, the cost difference is so much better for the plastic version and it’s a heat resistant plastic, so it’s almost like “well this is perfect, this is what we want.” Ed: Because you’re not getting any heat out of the front anyway, are you – it’s all going out the back? Scott: No, but if you were on a set, let’s say somebody set up next to a light that was a hot light … Ed:
Aaah somebody else’s light?
Scott: That’s a reality on a set, there’s a lot of hot stuff on a set, so it’s a reality that if you take a Kino Flo
like a Diva-Lite and you turn it upside down, you close the barn doors, you turn it full up, you’re in a hot environment, let’s say in India shooting on location where there’s no air conditioning – that’s going to get hot, that’s going to turn into a little can or oven – and it has to be able to handle that kind of heat too. And that’s it. NZVN Ed: In a nutshell.
Dedolight for PLS At Dedolight, Mr Weigert is busy so we are talking to Tamer Avci from Istanbul, Turkey. Ed: Tamer, you are actually the Dedolight agent in Istanbul? Tamer: That’s true, yes. We have been working for 5 or 6 years together and now we have set up Dedolight Turkey. We are supplying Dedolight products in Turkey and also in the region, Syria, Northern Iraq and so on. Ed: And they’re popular – people appreciate the quality? Tamer: Yes for sure, actually it’s a German brand and the Turkish people really like German brands. I think worldwide they are really successful. All of us know that they are really reliable. Ed:
Tamar Avci with one of the new Dedolight LED lamps.
So it sells itself?
Tamer:
Yes it does sell itself.
Ed: Oh no, no, the correct answer is “It’s very difficult and I work very hard at it.” Tamer: Laughs … But you have to make a lot of effort actually. You have to know your product and your customers.
Ed: Okay, so I guess you’re very, very happy with this move into LED, even though Dedo himself is a little bit sceptical about LED, he certainly seems to be producing the best LED lights around. We were shown the new range today, starting with a “number 2” … now what did the “2” stand for? Tamer: On the LED range, 2, 4, 9 and 12, the “2” is standing for 20 Watts, the “4” is standing for 40 Watts,
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and then we have the “9” which is like 90 Watts, then we go to “12” which is 4 times 40 LED means 160 Watts, but the power consumption is around 200 Watts. Ed: But it’s not all about power consumption is it … we were told all about that today, that you don’t buy the car with the highest gas consumption. The 20 Watt means that’s what it uses, but in fact the light output is what’s critical, the number of lumens that you get out? Tamer: Yes, that’s true and also the lumens gives you the light output of a light source, and lux gives you the value at a certain distance. So you have to take into consideration all these aspects, because the optics system of Dedolight is so special. At some distances, it gives you really better advantages than the other manufacturers, especially at high distances when they go into the spot position, because the double aspheric system and internal Dedolight optics system is so special, they don’t use the Fresnel lenses. We have our own lenses.
Tamer: The Red Baron you mean? Actually that’s the Ballast for our 1200 Watt HMI lamp light head and it runs regularly in 50 Hz without any flicker. In different frequencies, you would not get any flicker, but when it comes to some kind of Phantom cameras which run on a rolling shutter, everything just flickers. So in order to prevent it, the Dedo team has made a special design that you can run the Ballast for a period of time. Ed: 8 seconds it is … Tamer: Yes, which would be quite enough for a high speed shot and it just turns into DC and so never gives you the flicker.
Ed: Now the good thing about these is that they’re all focusing lights … it’s a very elegant design, one ring and the barrel moves in both directions, going from a very fine spot to an amazing flood and it’s a very even flood from what I’ve seen? Tamer: Yes, and you don’t lose the colour temperature in between the lit area, so all the area is lit in even colour temperature and also at the same intensity, more or less, as much as it can be. So in the long shot, as I said, it’s really a very useful product and nowadays LEDs are really changing pretty quick, so you have to be in the forefront of it to know what’s going on or what’s going to happen. Dedolight is really investing a lot into it, doing all the tests. Ed: Were you impressed that Dedolight isn’t putting a fan on any of these smaller lights that might be going on top of a camera … do you see that as a good move? Tamer: Actually a fan is really something that cannot be acceptable in the professional broadcast sector, especially for the audio guys. It doesn’t matter how good it is, if you have a fan, because it creates noise and that’s something that we never want to have. You have to find a way to cool the lamp so that it can run for hours. That’s one of the most important parts in our professional broadcast industry in terms of lighting. Ed: That’s why these smaller Dedolights are actually quite large, but there’s a lot of fins there for releasing the heat that comes out the back rather than out the front? Tamer: Yes, that’s true. In order to move the heat from somewhere to another, you need to have more space. That’s why, even they look pretty small, according to our idea it’s a bit big actually. If we could have a chance to make it smaller, you know, we like to do it that way. Ed: Ah but then it gets hot and we know what happens to LEDs when they get too hot? Tamer: Yes, they don’t like to be hot actually, they lose power, they lose the lamp life, it’s very important for them. But for halogens it’s like you know you can run them at 600 degrees and they are fine. But for the LEDs you have to keep them relatively cool. Ed: Okay, so that’s the general range and they look very nice in their black and yellow, but for the people who are into specialist television, those people who are using the Phantom high speed camera, there is a special lamp source for that. Now I imagine this can plug into pretty well any lamp, but there’s something special about the source and that is …?
Ed: But what’s really clever about it is that, if you run DC through one of these lamps, it tends to burn one side of the bulb’s electrodes more than the other, so when you take the next shot, what happens? Tamer: When you take the next shot, it just changes the polarity, so you use both sides of the lamp in the same time, so you don’t cut one part of the lamp at all. Ed: On another note, I guess the really good thing for a dealership is that you’re not stuck with a whole lot of accessories for the old lights, because …? Tamer: Because you can use them in the new LED products as well. There is still a line of products in need of accessories – one is for the Classic Series, one for the 400 Series, so with the 2.0 or 2. up to 1 we will see it later, but with the 2.0 and 4.0 you can use the accessories that you have from your Classical Dedolight or 200 Dedolight range products. And also for the 9.0 you can use your 400 series Dedolight accessories. So you don’t need to buy additional items or you don’t need to throw away your previous items; you will still be able to use them. Ed: If only every manufacturer was like that huh? Tamer: Yes, I mean this is a good idea for a consumer I think … Ed: And keeping that customer? Tamer: Yes, for sure.
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NZVN
Autocue for Quinto
Ed:
We are at Autocue with Richard Satchell from Autocue and Alan McIlwaine from Quinto. Ed: Richard, you’ve been the subject of these interviews a number of times, so you know there’s no mucking around, you get straight into it … what’s new?
What was that Alan?
Alan: It’s popular in Australia. Ed: But you haven’t sold any in New Zealand have you? Alan: Not with the vanity monitor! And to continue on we have Paddy Taylor from Autocue. Ed: And Paddy I remember you exciting me two years ago … muffled sniggers … thank you, when you showed me your server. Wow, that just blew me away with what it could do for the price, obviously you’ve sold millions …? Paddy: We’ve few, definitely.
sold
a
We’ve progressed to version 3 of the software so we’ve really taken it up a notch. We’ve got advanced graphic capability in the server now, so clocks, logos, tickers, another third straps – all of them independently controlled, transparency control over chroma etc. A whole host of new features, so scheduling built into the video server now, you schedule individual clips playlists, you can share playlists amongst video ports, new formats and Richard Satchell points to the tally light. codecs so we can now ingest a Motion JPEG ProRes so first coming to do ProRes in Linux … an important factor Richard: What’s new … on the prompting side we’ve that we’re a Linux system, so an appliance, you know, got a new range of accessories for the Master Series you turn it on, it goes into the interface, you can’t plug teleprompters. That includes a digital tallylight which your iPhone into it and have Quick Time updated and will turn from red to green as the camera goes on air … suddenly you stop your system from working when Ed: Is that exciting? you’ve got a Windows update or anything like that. Richard: It’s incredible, yes, revolutionary. We now can support MXF OP-Atom, so we can actually Ed: What did it do before? simultaneously record to ProRes and to DNxHD. So one Richard: So the difference this time round is that … input from a tape device or from a camera, SDI out, SDI in, correcting two files, one ready for Final Cut Pro, Ed: It went from green to red? one ready for Avid, and we’ll score a whole range of Richard: No, we can display the camera number. So other formats still which are perfect for EDIUS or previously it was just a straightforward camera light; Adobe, Sony Vegas workplace. we’ve added the ability to display the camera number We’ve now got the ability to burn in timecode. You can as you need to, for multiple camera studios. Kind of choose how you’re handling SD video – 4x3 or 16x9; alongside that we’ve added a new 22 inch talent we’ve got closed captioning support, both LTC and VITC feedback monitor, which is HD-SDI for the first time, timecode, so you can have frame accuracy. You can 16x9 screen and a new mounting system to go with mark and log events across all ports, adding metadata, that; and then thirdly, a digital clock, which isn’t at the tags … so for a sports application if you wanted to add show itself, but will be available in the next 8 weeks, detailed descriptions of an event, like a goal, a free and similarly to the tally, that has a tally integrated into kick, penalty – that kind of thing, you can lock your it, so it displays the time, but it will also change from ports together and mark those events across things, so red to green as required. when you do a replay, all ports, all camera angles are Ed: Isn’t it dangerous to give the talent feedback on sync’d together for the replay and the director just what they’re doing … has that been asked for by talent chooses the output that he wants. So our product’s or what? really taken a huge step on and we’re doing a lot more now with sort of smart workflows – sort of end to end Richard: Well in the US, it’s quite often referred to production systems, integrated with or new jerm as a “vanity monitor” and I think that pretty much says automation MAM systems, where the video server is it all. part of the workflow, but having an automation system Ed: Oh, okay, so you don’t expect a big demand in where we can be controlling third party CG, the the UK for them? routeing, the vision mixing, all the elements that go into Richard: It’s definitely more popular in the US than a complete channel, we can be the master control system for that, either as an event automater, so just it is in other regions, that’s for sure. Page 27
Ed: But really for a small channel, having a two channel server would be sailing close to the wind, it’s much better to have the flexibility of four, but for I imagine an event type situation, two channels would be fine? Paddy: Yes, absolutely. If you’re doing sort of corporate presentations or simple replay type systems where you’ve only got one camera feed for ingesting, then it’s ideal. Obviously if you’re in a large broadcast environment, you want to mix between video sources, as you might do in a magazine or News or sports show, then in that situation you need a four port, or you could expand that into multiple ports by adding servers and connecting them together. Alan and Paddy.
looking after a News or a magazine type of show, or doing the entire station automation. Ed: Well that’s it, that was a question I was trying to get a word in by asking, was how many of these things can be going on at once? How many feeds can you be taking in, loading material into your server and how many out and things being adjusted all at the same time? Paddy: The servers are typically two channel or four channel systems. The key is they’re bi-directional, so you can have two ingest channels and then switch them to be two output channels; or on a four port system, they could have three being set for recording and one being set for playout. It’s an instant switch – you hit one button and the channel goes from ingest to playback; but you can daisy chain multiple servers together … Ed: But you can programme, so you can programme your server to playout a playlist for your channel which might be going 24 hours, but while you’re doing that, that’s one of your channels being used, so if you had a two channel you would have to be feeding in material as fast as you were sending it out in the second one. But if you had three, you could be loading that three times as fast? Paddy: Yes, so you’re thinking about like an AB roll type of operation … Ed: So along with your ingest channels, you’re also connected to the network so you can be sending files to the server via the network which is separate from those ingest channels? Paddy: Yes, absolutely, so you can be using your ports to record the baseband video or playout baseband video and then any files that you’re bringing from post from an Avid or a Final Cut Pro etc, you could export directly to the video server or have the video server set as your scratch discs and essentially, you’re doing file delivery across the network, and those files are then put into the media bin and can be played out of the media bin.
Ed: Have you had many sales of your Autocue server to broadcasters who are looking for that tsunami recovery system? Paddy: We got a lot of enquiries where people want to have a replication of their main system, but at a much lower cost, so they’re quite prepared and understandably looking for a very high end, 24/7 playout system, but feel for the disaster recovery application that that’s probably too expensive and too complex. So they come to us looking for a much more affordable system that can sit there as a warm standby so that if something fails, we can move forward to take up the slack. Ed: So does the broadcaster have to rewrite their whole playlist for your system as well as theirs, or does your system read their main system’s instructions? Paddy: With our automation and MAM system, we support the vast majority of playlist formats, so it’s a case of just simply exporting it on to our system in its original format and then we can read that and populate our playout playlist against that list of files. Ed: So Alan, a good system for Christchurch or the Gold Coast? Alan: A good system for anybody who wants to record and playback video. We’ve just finished putting in a system for the ABC for their London bureau, whereby they can take in numerous feeds and record them and it becomes a very cost effective operation for them. Ed: Oh I hadn’t thought of that – so it’s actually based in London, or is it based in Australia? Alan: It’s based in London. As you know, broadcasters have got a lot of bureaux in different cities throughout the world and they want to operate that as cost effectively as possible, so with more feeds coming in all the time, a broadcast quality server located in their regional offices, becomes a very useful tool for them. Ed: Indeed. Now last time we looked at your server it was a rack, but it’s got smaller? Paddy: Yes, so we still do the full length 3U rack units. They’re generally used for fixed installations. What we’re looking at here is a shorter unit – still 3U but it’s all solid state, so solid state system drives, solid NZVN state video drives, designed for OB applications.
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Marshall for Quinto We are now at Marshall with Rob Foster. Rob: At NAB, we’re introducing a couple of new camera top monitors, in fact a new line, the sizes are 5.6, 7 and 9 inch, that come fixed with HDMI inputs with loop through and then you can add a module that will do HD-SDI input with loop through, or you can add an output module that will transcode your HDMI signal, that allows you to output HDSDI. There’s a choice of all sorts of different battery mounts from the small Sony, JVC, Canon and Panasonic batteries; the monitor has a built-in Waveform, built-in audio levels onscreen that allow you to view any pair of audio channels from 1 up to 8; it includes a built-in false colour filter, as well as peaking filter that allows you to set up your camera correctly for a proper shoot. You can also do pixel to pixel mode through the
Rob Foster.
menu system; you can adjust your backlight to get your colours just right, which is a lot better adjustment than just brightness and contrast on the front. Ed: Now do all three sizes have the same resolution, i.e the number of pixels? Rob: The 5.6 inch is 800x480 and then the 7 and 9 inch are 1280x768 so high resolution screens for their sizes. Ed: So these are still higher resolution than the camera’s LCD screen, but they’re still not up to that standard of critical monitoring to really get that full picture? Rob: No, well it’s made for on-camera monitoring, so when the cameraman is setting up his shoot, there’s tools on the monitors to set up his camera correctly and he wants to see the image he’s looking at and make sure it’s focused properly. Ed: I hear from cameramen that they have the LCD screen on the camera, they have the LCD screen on their off-board recorder, such as a PIX recorder, they don’t need another LCD screen just to sort of, test the picture, they want that reference monitor, that critical monitor to see what picture they’re actually getting out there and to be able to judge from that – especially the focus. And you have something for that? Rob: Yes. An ideal monitor is, like I mentioned, our new 9 inch on-board camera monitor that has the highest resolution screen; the colour reproduction is perfect, so yes, the cameraman does get a great idea of what he is filming. Ed:
And the resolution of that is?
Rob: 1280x768. Ed:
Are you going to cope with 4K?
Rob: Still under development, I’m not sure exactly when, but it is something that we’re working on, yes. Page 30
Ed: Do you think it’s going to be a hard thing to do … is it just a case of, you have to make the viewing monitors bigger? Rob: It’s all the electronics in the firmware inside the monitor that’s the tricky part. Ed: But we should expect it from Marshall at some time to come? Rob: Hopefully by the end of 2012, yes, you’ll see something from Marshall in that realm. Ed: Now branching out a little bit from monitors into cameras – this is something new for you, but they’re not television cameras, or are they? Rob: What they are, are high definition IP cameras that a lot of broadcast studios are using for city cams, traffic cams, anything that they’re going to put on air, they could position them around the city that they’re located in. Ed: And in Australia you’ve actually had some sales already Alan? Alan: Oh yes, we have contracts for the supply of them for all the courts throughout New South Wales, and that’s quite a few cameras, we’re probably looking at up to 50 cameras. It’s a very cost effective way for recording courtroom proceedings. Ed:
So a little bit more about the camera itself?
Rob: We have two different styles, we have the PTC dome cameras as well as the box cameras, but all of the cameras have a built-in encoder that does H.264 compression. So each camera, you can do a live HD feed out or you’ve got the H.264 output that you can plug directly into your network and then stream it to whatever point you want to send it to. Ed:
And that’s an easy thing to handle Alan?
Alan: Oh yes, seamlessly we’ve put them in and so far every single one of them is working, and working well. That’s a good record.
Ed: So there is a Marshall solution for once you’ve taken your streamed picture from the camera, what can you do with it? Rob: What we’re introducing here at NAB is an encoder box that allows you to do live streaming, which is basically a plug and play type solution. We’ve partnered with Stream View TV which is the CDN and basically our box allows you to plug in your content, whether it be HD, HDMI or composite, whatever you’re looking to stream and plug it into the box and plug the box into your network with your Cat5 cable. The end user needs to register with Stream View, have a Stream View TV account, register their box, and basically you’ll plug it in, their servers on their end will recognise your box, will communicate with your box to set up the right uplink speed, depending on what kind of broadband you have available to you, and then you’re off, and you can stream to as many users as you want. They can dial in directly and view your content or they can do pay per view type services and handle all the NZVN credit card type of information to do it.
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K-Tek for Sound Techniques We are here with Brenda Parker from K-Tek and Stephen Buckland from Sound Techniques. Ed: Brenda - poles – you’ve got some wonderful boom poles, but also lots of little things to connect things to, which is what we all need? Brenda: That is correct. Now our poles are a thing of beauty and we’ve been making them for 16 years. Well we have now introduced the ultimate Tadpole collection, which is our beautiful boom poles shrunk down with the mini ball head on top, and with that you can put a GoPro, you can put an iPhone or any kind of small camera. You can extend your reach over people’s heads or round the corner … Ed:
Brenda and Stephen coming to you through the Junior Norbert window.
Or down even, and take those shoe shots?
Brenda: Absolutely. It’s a beautiful product and because of that, we needed to find an elegant way to mount your iPhone to a Tadpole. So we came out with the K-Tek tripod mount case, which has a tripod mount with ¼” threads in two different spots. It’s machined aluminium made in the USA, it’s not going to break, it’s made of phenomenal quality and you put that on the end of a Tadpole or on a tripod … Ed:
And they’ve let you use the Apple logo on it?
Brenda: No that’s actually the iPhone in our case – it’s gorgeous. Ed:
Oh, through the hole?
Brenda: Yes, of course. So that’s a beautiful new product that we have. For the audio customers, we
have a new antenna mount for Shark Fins. We have an elegant way to mount your RF antennas to a sound cart. You have two options – we have a T Shark or we have an L Shark and you can mount RF antennas – 6, 10, as many as you want and it‘s got mounting rings which are adjustable. It’s a beautiful product from KTek that we’re introducing this year at NAB 2012. Ed: Now just going back to the poles for a moment, I’m just clearing up the fact that the pole is standard, but you can change the head with the ball head, depending on the thread size that you want to use at the end? Brenda: Well you can take a standard boom pole and you can get one of our accessories and you can change the top of it to a mini ball head, but our Tadpoles have a fixed ball head on top. Ed:
And the thread size is a ¼”, okay.
So the flexibility is that you can buy an adapter which will change the thread size if you so wanted to do that, but the ¼” is the standard thread size for the smaller cameras and the audio, the iPhone, etc, etc. And Stephen, there is a Norbert development – the Junior Norbert, it’s got an iPhone on it – because you can? Stephen: Yes, what the Junior Norbert is, is basically a small version of the camera mount which would allow you to do things like mount your iPhone if you’re going to use that for cinematography, or any sort of small form camera, where you didn’t need the larger Norbert and the multitude of attachments that that will hold. It’s still got about six slots on top for holding bits and pieces and many threads for attaching things to, so if your camera fitted inside the form of it, it would work. NZVN
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PIX Recorders for Sound Techniques We are at the home of PIX recorders, Sound Devices, and Paul Isaacs is going to give us the short version of … Paul: PIX 240 v2 firmware which was just released and the forthcoming PIX 260 the 21st century, rack mount replacement for the VTR. Ed: Now I have to say that amongst the journalists there’s been a bit of talk about this, and they all said it’s really good and why would you buy anything else. So obviously Stephen’s going to sell bucket loads of these … and they’ve only seen the old version, now you’ve got an updated version? Paul: It’s amazing what we can do with firmware right. It’s obvious that the PIX has got this wonderful 800x480 pixel monitor and people have loved that for sort of assessing the quality of their image and stuff, but to make it a true monitor, to really replace that separate external monitor you have on your camera, you really want certain features like exposure assist and focus assist. So now we have incorporated those into the PIX monitor itself. We provide zebra stripes and false colour modes for expose assist and we provide peaking filter and 1:1 pixel mapping for focus assist. On top of that, we can now flip the display, so if you’re operating your camera in a 3D rig or something like that, or you’re operating your camera upside down, you can flip the display; and we also now have the ability to calibrate the look of the display, by adjusting chroma gain, contrast and brightness. So they’re the monitor functions. The other new key features are key markers and looped play which have been a really important request from the video assist world. They need to have the ability to very quickly locate specific points in a recording and playback to a director or whomever on set very quickly, without delay. So now we can lay cue markers during record, or playback, and loop between them or search them. Very quick. A third very important feature of version 2 is the support of standard definition, so that’s there now and we can down-convert from HD to standard definition as well. Ed: So these are all just firmware upgrades to the device and they bring it into their dealer, or do they download that from the Internet? Paul: Just go to the website, just the standard way you do with all Sound Devices’ products. It will take about 5-10 minutes of your day and you’ll have pretty much what seems to be like a brand new product, with these features. Ed:
Paul Isaacs.
Paul: The PIX 240 are really doing as good as we could have expected. I mean, they’ve exceeded our expectations. Ed: So they’re going for the top of the line, they’re not going for the PIX 220 so much? Paul: The 220 is still out there, but you know, it’s limited because of its connectivity and the fact that it doesn’t have the SDI and the timecode over SDI … Ed:
Stephen: And all those features that have been upgraded in firmware, they all apply to the 220 as well? Paul: Yes, absolutely. Now we’re going to head over to the PIX 260 which, effectively, is a PIX 240 in a 2U half
And it costs them a lot to do this?
Paul: Free. Ed:
No?
Paul: Of course – the best things in life are free, right? There’s one other feature, this other audio input mode, so I’ll just get that one in … that’s short and sweet isn’t it? Ed:
But some people want that?
Paul: Yes, some people want the simplicity of just HDMI, but really it’s the 240 that’s cleaning up.
I’ve never heard anything shorter or sweeter …
Paul: I’m improving my spiel over the years, right – I used to garble a lot. Ed: Aaaah, yes … but anyway, are they selling well internationally? Page 33
rack footprint. This is our first rack mount product and it’s really considered to be like a 21st century VTR. Any broadcasters who were wanting to transition from tapebased VTR to file-based, this is an excellent solution. But it also adds some really unique functions, which you don’t particularly find in VTRs – it has a built-in RAID1 system. There’s two drive bays here in the front, behind this flip down lid, LCD, which is a really nice mechanical design there, keeps the drives out of the way, and they’re recording to standard PIX SSD drives in their caddies, so we can slot up to two of those drives in the front. But we can also connect to other drives using the eSATA ports on the rear of the device. So now we can record simultaneously up to four drives. Ed: And those eSATA connections can go to standard fast hard drives? Paul: Yes, absolutely, 4 terabyte drives, whatever, we’ve got a whole approved list of drives on our website. Now why would you want to record to four drives simultaneously? Well when you’re dealing with video, you’re dealing with a lot of data. You could typically have terabytes at the end of a day’s recording session. You don’t really want to be copying backups for the director or dailies or postproduction, you just want to be able to hand them over straightaway and then they can just get on with their jobs, without having to wait for those copies. So that’s No 1 key feature … Ed: So just to clarify something – you say this is a 2U half rack mount? Paul: Yes, so you’re actually seeing two units side by side here. Ed:
But you don’t need two units do you?
Paul: No … well, you might do, because … Ed:
Well, can you buy one unit?
Paul: You can certainly buy one unit, that’s not a problem, but typically in an OB truck or a venue, you’ll have multiple cameras, so you want to be able to record multiple cameras all in sync, or playback video streams all in sync. Now we have the ability to synchronise these devices either via RS 422 or via Ethernet, okay, so we can frame sync, playback and record. Ed:
Okay, but if you buy a PIX 260, what do you get?
Paul: The box – you just get the one. Ed: Okay, so one unit is a half rack mount device … it’s mains powered, or I can see there’s a DC so you can actually take this out on a cart out in the field? Paul: I think people are going to think of applications that we haven’t even thought of for this device. We
have had it in the back of our mind that DC powered is the key thing, it widens the scope. So let’s talk about one of the other key new features. We’ve got Ethernet here … this is not on the PIX 240 but it is on this rack mount product. I’ve already mentioned that it’s got machine control via RS 422 – absolutely essential for any postproduction facility, so you can run external controllers with this device. We’ve also got a sync in port now, so you can synchronise into a house sync, whether that’s NTSC or PAL or tri-level and that’s very important for synchronised playback and the 422 control. But this Ethernet, it provides some key features – for starters we have a built-in web server, so we can, by any browser, control this remotely, or control a whole rack of hundreds of these PIX 260s all in sync. We can control playback so they all start playback simultaneously, or record simultaneously; we can set the parameters from each device simultaneously, so it’s a really useful web browser. It can be run on an iPad, an iPhone, what have you. The other really important thing about the Ethernet is it supports Dante Audio over Ethernet. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Dante … as you know, over the years, there have been a number of audio over IP protocols, like CobraNet etc. Well we believe that Dante is going to be the winner and a lot of other manufacturers also agree with us, because a lot of other manufacturers are now supporting Dante. It allows a large number of channels over a single Cat-5, Cat-6 cable and using standard hubs and switches. It’s all based on a 1 gigabit per second standard Ethernet connection. It’s very low latency, as I said, it uses standard hubs and switches and we can now connect between any Danteenabled device and route audio in any sort of combination we like between devices. So think of all the applications that are out there. Maybe someone would like to use a Yamaha 01V96 desk with a Dante card in there, and just hook it up to our Ethernet port here. And then we have this beautiful mixing desk interface to our PIX 260. You might just want to set up on a network with 100 other PIX 260s – PIX 260s can be allocated to groups, so we could configure maybe four separate groups, so each group has 25 units in each group and we could control each of those groups individually. There’s a lot of flexibility. Ed:
Do you dream about this?
Paul: Probably … actually I have sleepless nights at the moment. Ed: Now tell me – Ethernet – I know that there are some broadcast cameras now with Ethernet out, so they actually can supply the video signal over the Ethernet, so this will accept a video in via Ethernet? Paul: Currently, no and it’s something we’re not planning on at this stage. Video in and out is by HD-SDI in and SDI or HDMI in and out, so no video over Ethernet. Ed: Okay, so we’re limited with our video in to HD-SDI or HDMI, but there
Page 34
seems to be a lot of emphasis on audio in here. Why would that be? Paul: Well because we see this as an audio solution – perhaps this box could be used for recording live concerts, where they’re taking a video stream and multiple mic sources all into this box, so there’s a whole range of applications – sports, theatre playback … Ed: That’s for recording, but you also say that this can be used as a converter? Paul: Yes, because we have eight analogue line-in and line out, we have AES in and out, HDMI audio in and out, 16 channels of SDI audio in and out and Ethernet, Dante 30 channels in and out which can convert between any of those formats to another format. So it’s a great little converter tool as well. Ed: Phew … but wait, there’s more? What’s this? Paul: It’s a very heavy mouse … no it’s actually something called a PIX Dock which is simply a box to take our PIX SSD drive in its caddy, you slot that in and then, on the other side, you find this Thunderbolt connector. So now we can transfer from our PIX caddy up to 6 gigabits per second, to any Thunderbolt enabled computer. Ed:
Whoa …
Paul: Oh well … no, we’ve always had eSATA and FireWire and USB, that exists directly. Ed: So this is just for Apple people? Paul: So on the actual caddy itself you’ve got USB3, FireWire 800 and eSATA – okay …
Paul: That’s fast.
Ed: Oh, so you can actually take it straight off that, you only need to have this box if you’ve got an Apple?
Ed: So it’s only Thunderbolt – you’re not doing eSATA?
Paul: I’m sure we will see Thunderbolt surface in other NZVN systems in the future, so there you go.
Page 35
Avid with Atomise We are at Avid with Richard Kelly from Atomise Ltd. Ed: R i c h a r d , there’s certainly huge Avid news in the broadcast area, and in the high end postproduction, so let’s have a little taste of that and then we’ll come back and talk about the midrange and what Avid’s doing for the middle production community. On the big time stuff – Interplay, Clouds – phew? Richard: Interplay, yes, it’s a really nice development on the existing Interplay structure that allows remote exchange of metadata, data as in streaming video for doing Richard Kelly at the Avid stand. remote casts, especially for, for example, an ENG can use this new collaborative system, either within environment where you can have a reporter on the their own production facility with people on contract other side of the world and a very low bandwidth who are overseas or whatever. I think it’s going to be internet connection or VPN connection and they can huge. work the same as if they were back in the newsroom back at base. So they’ve got access to all the media Richard: It is going to be a really great tool. It just and all the metadata, all the bins that exist back at expands what you can do with the existing product and base, as well as being able to do their edit. So they can your existing workflows, but it brings a remote station take new media that they’ve shot while they’re out and the home base so close together, they are the there on location and do a cut, bring in the resources that already exist back at base ( as proxy of course) , do their cut and then upload their finished story … all in the field, but just like they’re back in the newsroom. That’s going to be a really great feature for the networks and for streamlining the ENG process. Ed: Well I imagine also there are other possibilities with production facilities that might want to collaborate with a production facility overseas. If you’ve both got Interplay, you’ve both got access to each other’s material and I guess you could choose what material you could share? Richard: That’s exactly right, so say you’ve got a location – you’re going to be in L.A shooting something for 3 weeks, you can effectively join your home base up with your remote location, no matter how many remote locations you’ve got, and have a very cohesive and very managed workflow. For example, in a VFX workflow or where you’re working with remote clients, you can have some really tight management on who has got what and who is doing what, which saves money. Ed: It saves money, which is the beauty of it – and I guess this would work very well for The Amazing Race? A New Zealander actually produces it I believe and he wins Emmy Awards? Richard: I wasn’t aware they were using Interplay there though? Ed:
No, but they should be using it shouldn’t they?
Richard: Yes absolutely, it’s the perfect tool for anybody who is on location. Ed: I think this is going to open up a huge range of possibilities. People just have to think now how they Page 36
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storage – the ISIS 2000, using the same tools as we’re used to with ISIS 5000 and ISIS 7000, gives a fully integrated methodology for managing near line storage back to real time, real time back to near line. It’s a really nice product that I think will be very well received in the marketplace. Ed: But at a much lower cost per terabyte I guess?
same thing. And that exchange of metadata, you know if you’re exchanging a film cut, or a reality TV series cut, or anything that is complex that reduces any degree of manual management that’s required to know who’s got what – you can both see who’s got what. On the flip side of course it gives you an incredibly good security control over who has got what and how they’re using it and what they’re using it for. So it works both ways … it opens up the workflow, but it also brings in a really tight integration of the Pepsi-Coke scenario. You know exactly who has got access to what, no matter if they’re offsite or onsite. Ed: And to complement that, big developments in ISIS ? Richard: ISIS 7000 has now gone out to 24 chassis and with the new 64 terabyte crates with the i-4000 drive sleds, we now can go to 1.53 petabytes of storage on a single system. Interplay is now going to be able to look at up to 3 ISIS instances, so again we can use a single product to bring a huge amount of data together, to manage that huge amount of data and make it very feasible for an operation of any size to have a very tight workflow. Ed: And the American economy, for a comparison, is not yet up to a debt of a peta number of dollars is it? Richard: Ed:
It’s even bigger than a tera?
Richard: fying. Ed:
A peta is a really large amount of data. It’s definitely bigger than a tera – it’s tera-
Richard: A much, much lower cost per terabyte and the real beauty of this one is, because there are lots of near line storages out there, the real reason behind this one is the full integration. So if you’ve got an Interplay, it drops on there, Interplay understands what’s on near line, what’s in archive, what’s real time, and allows you to bring media backwards and forwards. It’s a beautiful thing for someone who has already got an ISIS 5000 or ISIS 000 installation. That would normally fit between your production server and your LTO tape system for example, and just be there as the middle ground for stuff that you know you’re going to need, but you haven’t got the time to bring it back from tape. Ed: Now another point they brought up at the press conference was about insurance by Avid looking after you once you’ve bought some of their products. I guess this is not only for the big boys, but it’s a bridge to the postproduction side of the small producer? Richard: One of the things that’s just been announced is a rebranding if you like, and also repricing of Avid support. For the last few years, we’ve had something called “Avid Priority Support” and for anybody who has had hardware, that’s been the really critical one, because that’s an extended hardware warranty and you’ve always had to tack that on when you’ve bought the gear. Now what we’re seeing across the range from the video side and the editing side, is that first year of support is rolled in and the price hasn’t gone up. So it’s a very nice story for us and also those renewals have gotten a little bit cheaper as well. It has been rebranded, so where we’ve seen Avid Priority Support up till now, it’s now going to be “Expert Plus” and “Expert Elite” on top of that. Ed: How is that going to work – I mean, for your customers, obviously the point of connection is you, but for someone who is not an Atomise customer, what do they do? Richard: Become an Atomise customer and then we take care of it all! Ed:
Oh no. But the ISIS 7000 is not the only one?
Richard: We now have a new product in the range, the ISIS 2000. ISIS 2000 is not a real time editing solution like the ISIS 7000 or the ISIS 5000 – it’s near line storage and it comes in 240 terabyte chunks, so that’s the base entry level point. What is there for you to do is, you’ve got your very fast real time production storage, but let’s say you’ve got 100 hours of media that you’ve ingested that you’ve got to move out of the way to let another show come in. You want to come in and keep it online, you want it to come back really quickly, let’s say you’re a News organisation or 60 Minutes, and you’re building a big catalogue of data for a particular story; you can’t hold it all on your online
Yes, yes, yes but … alright …
Richard: Support cases usually go back through the dealer. That’s the way it would preferably work and the dealer would handle that contact back to Avid to sort out whatever issues there are. That just allows a bit of management and cohesiveness into the process. By all means, a user can directly submit a support request if they’re on that plan – it’s just most people in our region tend to go through the dealer. Ed: And that plan would possibly be an online service? Richard: It is an online service, there’s also a phone number – so for example if you’ve got the 24/7 plan, there’s a phone number you can call and an engineer in
Page 38
the Asia-Pacific region, who has got pre-knowledge of your system, will answer the phone and be able to assist. Avid does it really well; one of the reasons I’m so dedicated to the Avid product range is they really do back-end it very well.
Dennis: Yes, so at the end of that process we had to partner with someone who we thought had the best set of tools by which to address the needs within the rich media market and we found Apace Systems. Ed: So what have you got to show us?
Ed:
Dennis: Well what differentiates Apace from a lot of the other manufacturers is that the company President, Dr Lee Hu PhD, actually helped write the code for SCSI and fibre channel, so he concluded that Ethernet really was the Holy Grail in that an Ethernet based topology allows for all of these different work groups to communicate and interoperate – whether you’re a Mac or you’re a PC.
But if you’re an Atomise customer, it’s you?
Richard: Yes, then we escalate it back to Avid. The service I try to offer with Atomise is that we become your point of contact; we not only want you to spend money with us and buy from us, we will own your issues and make sure that your production is up and running. Ed: Okay, so the Avid insurance is something obviously for everybody who is an Avid customer, but for the small production, postproduction house is there anything new from Avid, or was that covered recently with the launch of Media Composer 6? Richard: Media Composer 6 really was the big news for post for a lot of people and the major MC6 announcement was before show – we had that very recently; what we do have though is a really good promo that I think will appeal to quite a lot of people out there. It’s a cross-grade from Final Cut or Media Composer to Symphony, the top end of the video editing range that has the Media Composer interface. It sits alongside DS at the top of Avid’s video editing range and that’s US$999 for a cross-grade. That’s a very high end, very capable piece of software and if you can run Media Composer version 6, you can run Symphony version 6 on your existing computer system. That will bring a few extra features that Media Composer 6 doesn’t have. It has secondary colour correction and universal mastering and with that crossgrade from Final Cut, I think that’s going to be a really attractive thing for people out there. There are a lot of people moving from Final Cut to Avid products at the moment and this just makes it an easier decision. Ed: Because with Final Cut they would have had secondary colour correction anyway? Richard: We had the promos a little while ago at the same sort of price going to Media Composer; now we’ve got that promo going to Symphony, so I think it’s still going to be a really good story and I think it will be very well accepted in the market. The other thing that we’ve got is an even stronger academic offering coming out from Avid. So for any academic users out there, please get in touch because there’s quite a large information pack now that is available with a huge amount of resource. It goes far beyond the very discounted pricing that Avid offers. There’s some really great stuff that they’re doing and there is also a new Avid student NZVN community that’s out there on Facebook.
Here in the booth today is the vStor and the eStor which are our base server storage products. These are servers that are Ethernet based, from single GigE all the way up to 10 GigE SFP and CX4. And then on top of that we have our asset management, which is our postMAN and what we’re releasing here at this year’s 2012 show is the postMAN 3 which we call PM3 Pro. What PM3 Pro allows you to do, is to catalogue and index all of your assets in a very powerful way to be able to add additional metadata to those particular files, in that later on down the road, you can then very easily on any computer, with Ethernet or Internet access, be able to do searches for selected pieces of media and have those results come up in proxy form. So that now, if I want to search for “Grant water-skiing” I can type in “Grant water-skiing” and I can have 20 different proxy files come up within seconds, and I could be managing and indexing hundreds of terabytes worth of data storage. Ed:
And you can be doing this on the Internet?
Dennis: design.
Yes, that’s what’s very unique about our
Ed: So you’ve got your own little Cloud? Dennis: We have our own Cloud, so you’ll hear a lot of that.
Apace for Atomise We are down the hall at another one of Richard Kelly’s favourite vendors, and that is …? Richard: We’re here at Apace with Dennis Bress, President, CEO IEEI TV. Dennis: Ed:
Yes, and the website is <ieei.tv>
What’s that got to do with Apace?
Dennis: Well <ieei.tv> has been around since the early days of Wang, IBM, DAC, Honeywell. With our experience in storage – NAS and SAN, and deep archive with LTO and also with optical disc, we took a close look at this rich media market … Ed: To shorten it up, you’re an Apace reseller in America? Page 39
Dennis Bress is “A Ok” and ready to go.
bought, that’s the new “v” or “e” 4000 series that is say 72 terabytes. Say it’s the 11th server. So they want to be able to go through and take a look at all of their Apace servers and make some decisions like I want to move 2 terabytes from array 1 to the 11th server, because I want to free up space on server No 1 because it’s for a very selective work group. We’ll think about that. How do I move 2 terabytes of data from one server to another server? Ed: Slowly? Dennis: It could be very slow and then, here’s the kicker … am I saying “copy” or “move” and if it’s a copy and move, there has to be a “delete” in that equation. But when you mention the word “delete” within these facilities … Ed: Everybody puckers up?
Ed: But it’s your Cloud and you’re looking after it – not somebody else? Dennis: It’s a private media Cloud, which makes it very exclusive and therefore a lot of these clients do not want their information out to a third party … Ed: Hey, funny that, that’s sort of come up before, but you’re the first one I’ve heard that’s addressed it? Dennis: Yes, so we call it R2 and it’s an extension of the PM3 software that allows for indexing. So there’s a lot of different applications that this technology can then be applied to. Ed: Not just in the television industry? Dennis: Not just television. Some of our fastest growing clients right now are corporate … so you can imagine Boeing, for example. You have a lot of training material that needs to get out to sales people and to technical engineers, and instead of doing PowerPoint and Word documents now, why not do a video? So they have their own internal video department now, because they can buy a couple of Macs and get the software, they go out and record and they create a particular sequence that tells a story about what it is that they have to tell. Well how do they get that information out to 400 different key engineers in a very efficient way? Well in the old days, we used to burn DVDs right, and mail them out. Well guess what – as they mailed out, there’s been an update that’s a very critical update. So now we have to review version 2. Well now it’s just a single file that can be updated and that file then is available via anyone who has an Internet connection with the secure login of vindicated user access – user name and password. Pretty slick. Ed: Very, very clever – lots of applications for that I can see. Dennis: What you’re seeing here specifically with Richard from Atomise, is feature film postproduction video work. Ed: Okay, now file management, of course, is where Apace has been really, really strong, but you’ve improved it yet again? Dennis: Yes absolutely. What we found is that we have clients who have over 300 terabytes of Apace storage. That’s a lot of spinning disc. In some cases, they’ve got 10 chassis and those 10 chassis are full. Well what the IT or administrative branch of these broadcast facilities is finding, is they’d like to be able to migrate a terabyte’s worth of important data that’s on say chassis 1 array 1, to a newer server that they just
Dennis: Everybody puckers up … they say I don’t want to hear that word “delete”. So what Dr Lee and the team at Apace have devised is a software upgrade called “CFM” ( Cluster File Manager ) and what it does, is it has built-in policies by which, not only does it have accelerators for moving the data from source to destination, but it also has what we call the “validator” and it does bit sync validation of the specific file. Remember we’re talking 2 terabytes; we could be talking literally thousands of files, right? Okay, well if you have that type of process going on, you’d better make sure when you do the copy – and I stress it’s a “copy”, it’s not a “move”, it’s a copy from source to destination – after that copy’s performed, you do a validator and it does bit sync validation to confirm 100% that source is equal to destination. And then, after that, there is another menu screen that is very specific, that allows you as admin then, to say okay I’ve made the copy from source to destination, I’ve validated source to destination, and now if I’m inclined, after clicking the waiver button, I can go ahead and make the delete, and it will delete then from the source. So it’s a pretty powerful tool. We’re not designing tools that we think the industry will want – we’re listening to the industry and Richard from Atomise is a great example. He’s a wealth of information and you can benefit from listening to people like Richard, to take that information in, and that’s where Dr Lee and the engineering team really excel, is to be able to take those suggestions and recommendations and build them into products. CFM have some of those which are Global File Search; also the ability to mass move from source to destination and have a single IP view, and that’s very important, to be able to log in as an administrator and see all your servers on tabs and be able to drill down accordingly to a single file. So it’s pretty powerful stuff and we’re very happy with the product – that’s CFM, Cluster File Manager. Ed: Now Richard, we’re not putting you on the spot here, but with all these Apace people around listening, what are you actually doing with this product in New Zealand – anything big? Richard: We’ve definitely got a major installation of the Apace products with Octopa and the vStor and that is the disaster recovery system for The Hobbit which is obviously a very large production. Ed: So where the buck stops is with the Apace system? Richard: That’s right; it’s there to make sure that, no matter what happens to our primary storage, the
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production keeps on going. We’ve got to the point where if anything was to happen to the primary storage, we now know that we don’t even have to move to the other building to keep working; we just simply plug in, change IP addresses and keep going. It’s proven to be a product which is working far beyond whatever our vision for it in the production was going to be. So it’s working extremely well and we completely mirror the Isis 7000 production storage off to the Apace system, so we know we’ve got everything on a daily basis. Ed: And I guess that’s important for your clients to know, to actually see this in operation at this level, to know that they can be assured that it’s doing what it’s supposed to do and more? Richard: Well even better than that, when we did a complete fail over test, it performed far higher than we expected, higher than we’d spec’ed it to work, and that provided a degree of confidence beyond anything else that we could achieve. The idea in the implementation was we’d have to move buildings and go to the disaster recovery site to continue working. To be able to just simply change over to Apace connector and change IP addresses on the client station and simply keep working, is a fantastic bonus. Ed: Have you had a little bit of help here from Andy Gorman ( Senior Software Engineer at Apace )? Richard: Andy has been absolutely essential to what we’ve done. He’s tweaked the Octopa product to meet our exact requirements and I certainly couldn’t speak any higher of what Apace and Andy have done. They really have lived up to what the initial promise was – they have provided exactly the system that we need to the exact requirements that the client had and they’ve changed things for us, which is greatly appreciated. Ed: But Richard, that’s what service is all about – I mean, you provide a service to your clients and your vendor supplies service to you? Richard: Absolutely, and in this case to be able to reach out and talk to exactly the person who can provide that service with no layers to go through, and have their immediate response has been fantastic.
you had to get an engineer who would get on a plane and have to fly. Richard: Yes, that definitely has become a model right across the range – providing that immediacy of support and now being able to provide a virtual engineer onsite within minutes of an issue, rather than maybe hours or days due to travel. And in New Zealand, of course, that’s a really big thing. We are a long way from anywhere and to have that resource available is fantastic.
Ed: Are you a “layer” Dennis? Dennis: Yes – actually I was very fortunate to be on the original install, which was fantastic, and we had another engineer, J.R, who has also been instrumental in a part of the process. Richard: Yes, we don’t want to forget J.R – J.R’s Ed: But we agree it’s a great place to be. been great. Dennis: But Richard is correct and that’s one unique attribute to the hierarchy of Apace – you don’t need to go through multiple layers, it’s by design. We want people like Richard who are there with the client, expected to perform at a high rate, to be able to have direct access to the engineering team and the leaders of those teams, in order to solve those problems immediately, and now you’d have to say this remote Internet connection and the ability to log on and to diagnose code, has been very beneficial, as opposed to the early days, say 20 years ago, when we all had to get on air planes. You had a service call, Dennis, Lee Hu, Richard and Andy Gorman. Page 41
NZVN
Tiffen for A2Z We are at Tiffen with Brett Smith. Ed: In the Lowel section of your stand I see some lights that I’m very comfortable with. These are the Tota-lights and I’m so glad you’re still selling them?
Brett: They are still by far our biggest seller and when people say Lowel it has so many components, so how do you decide? The answer is you buy a kit, because the kit then gives you an artistic lighting set in one box. So you’ve got three different lights with different power factors and different form factors, 235 Watt, a 500 Watt and an 800 Watt – you mentioned, the Tota-light which is a broad throw, you’ve got a focusable 500 Watt and you’ve got, not a pin spot, but you’ve got a smaller sculpting light. So you can do a three point key fill-in back or hair light in one kit and the pricing is US$1200, so it’s one of those systems that’s plug and play. Everything is provided and so they still sell hand over fist and, yes, they are tungsten. Ed: Even, I see, spare bulbs and some stands in there? Brett: Yes, stands, cables, we’ve got black flags, we have flexi-shafts, we’ve got mounts to mount on doors, scissors to hang on ceilings – all in the kit. So you get everything, every contingency that comes up in walking into a room, to light one, two or three people all in a small kit.
colour rendition index, which generally has to be above 91 to be a similar spectrum to the sensitivity of the video camera; that’s actually to the colour spectrum. And so we have a mix of tungsten, fluorescent and now, after a lot of research to try to reduce the effects of multi-shadow, we’ve brought out a range of studio and portable lights with LED. This is what everyone wants; it’s not just a buzz word. We had a customer wanting to change because all the lights look green. With LED, because they were environmentally sound, low power consumption … people bought them really before they questioned whether they were still a good colour balance for CMOS chips and for colour cameras and so it’s interesting – now it’s almost like we’ve come the other way round with LED. We’re now trying to introduce the type of quality that people demanded from fluorescent and didn’t get … well, we’re now saying there is a difference. One LED panel against another is different. It’s not where it’s manufactured, we’re not trying to say East versus West is different; what we’re just trying to say is your reflectors, the choice of your LEDs, your mounts, the options like DMX control make it into a light that people get an aesthetic beauty from, but also has good functionality. So we’re in the game with all the features we wanted to integrate into an LED light. Ed: But Lowel’s been around for a long, long time – I mean it’s got that history from the cinema in America … obviously it’s not going to “shit in its own nest” and make a nasty light?
Then we go up to the DV Creator 55 – that adds a Rifa light and the Rifa light is our famous soft light. So what that gives you then is the versatility to run interviews just with a single light, because the Rifa has a very soft wrap effect, you can actually still sculpt the face with a single light, but it also gives you that beautiful versatility of having four lights to do key, fill, backlight and background. So you’ve got just that extra dimension that you can use to light a room. The advantage of that too, is that the Rifa light is now fluorescent as well as tungsten. Now you might say “well hang on, fluorescent, that’s not the latest technology – LED is the latest technology.” We’re working now with all three technologies, because they still suit certain applications, whether it’s price, whether it’s light output, whether it’s colour temperature, or Page 42
Brett: No, and the whole idea of Lowel is not just to raise the average light in the room. It’s to sculpt light; it’s to create motivational lighting if you’ve got a drama scene; it’s to give you a depth of field from subject to foreground, background – and, you know, you’ve got to almost grab people one by one to tell them that lighting isn’t just for the camera’s sake – it’s actually for the viewer’s sake, which is why when someone says “hey my camera’s got all the sensitivity I need, why would I need a lighting kit” we say “well just to make your images look like what people expect to see.”
Brett: It is. It’s called the Steadicam Tango and it connects to a traditional Archer or Zephyr Steadicam or sled. So what you have is the operation of a Steadicam which is stabilising while you’re walking or on a segue, but with the additional boom range of a jib arm. And it extends up to 1.5 metres and especially for something like corporate or educational video, this jib arm allows you to explore. Steadicam’s always been a moving
You have to enhance light, you just can’t reproduce it; a camera isn’t like your eye, it doesn’t kind of fill in all the gaps. The lighting helps people do that. It’s like good audio. I think lighting and audio are the two things that people say “what’s wrong with my images?” Well it’s the sound, ironically, and it’s the light. You put those in ( and a tripod because I used to work for Miller ) but you stabilise, you enhance with audio and you add this kind of sculpt with light and you’ve got a story. Ed: We’re getting into the philosophy of television here Brett? Brett: I know, I know, okay let’s get back to LEDs. Ed: So there is a Lowel prime LED 400 lamp? Brett: And a 200, yes. So they’re new and, as I said, we’ve got DMX control, we’ve got dimming, they are single colour temperature, but you can see by the LED array that, to get the 5600 or the 3200, we’ve added a little bit of both, but it’s not a blender. We have a blender in a little handheld light, which goes from 32 to 56; these are dedicated. They have the broadest beam angle in the industry, so for studio applications, you’re going to put two Lowels up against three of a competitor’s – and probably the key selling point, is that you do have 40% greater throw, so the light output is 40% greater than its competitor’s but the beam angle is about 30 degrees wider. So you’re going to get a greater coverage with less lighting. So for studio applications, low ceilings, you’ve got the coolness of the chip but you’ve also got less fixtures, and they are hopefully about to take Asia by storm! Ed: And in the Steadicam range, wow, this looks like a boom?
medium, so you can walk and talk with people, but you’ve got a limited height range and movement. Now you’re actually able to go over dividers, go underneath tables, and it gives you the smoothest flexibility of any type of stabiliser. It was an idea that, 30 years ago, Garrett Brown, the inventor of Steadicam had, but of course the cameras were all too heavy and the materials weren’t strong and light enough to build what you can today. The form factors of the new cameras, whether it’s Sony or Canon’s, they’re all in this block shape that RED originated, yet perfect for the Tango. So you will see a lot of these now as they start to roll out. You’ve got the 2.4 metres height, that’s the advantage. Ed:
But what’s the weight of the thing?
Brett: You’re going to have to see someone with it on, but, if you take the rig side away, it’s probably about 20 kilograms or 44 pounds. It’s not as much as
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you think, it’s quite light. That is the capacity of this system; it’s not going to take any more than that – maybe 22 kg. Ed: Okay, so that’s for the big boys - for the smaller boys? Brett: For the smaller boys, you probably know that the Steadicam range was traditionally cinema, so the heavy duty cameras, 35mm film, 16mm as it migrated down to broadcast, lightweight cameras 8-10 kg, so we developed systems. We now have 11 systems going from the Ultra2 US$66,000 down to the lightweight. You asked about the lightweight – we have the Pilot which is a wedding video style. So you would say Canon 5D, EX3, so you’ve got that 2.5-5 kg payload; the Pilot allows you to wear a streamlined vest, so you can actually put a jacket over it; you’ve got a lightweight arm, lightweight camera, but you’ve still got the stability and the gimbal and all the functions and features of a big Steadicam in a smaller form factor. It’s designed, as I say, for wedding or corporate, where it’s plug and play, someone suddenly needs a Steadicam shot, it take minutes to set up, there’s no tool adjustment, so it’s very simple to operate and very simple to get great images. We’ve now got two models – an HDMI version to monitor, and we also have an HD-SDI, because the Steadicam range has now gone all HD. Even the lightweight rigs have
HD out and that doesn’t sound like much, but of course, when you’re trying to wire 3 gigabit through a coil spiral down a tube, it’s a big thing to us and customers want it, even though it is only a display device. They want to see HD if they’re shooting HD and it’s quite a big selling point for a lot of the customers. We have the Pilot at the 4.5kg; we have the Scout which goes up to 8kg and the Zephyr which is probably the new “darling” of the corporate broadcast world, because for about US$11,000 you’ve got a 10kg capacity, so you’ve got larger camcorders, down to Canon 5Ds that you can weight up and operate on a system that has the integrity of the larger systems, but is still lightweight at a good price. And then, as I say, we work down to there. We also have the handheld Merlin and Smoothee which I think you’ve seen – and they still continue to sell hand over fist. The Merlin 2 has got a redesigned camera platform, redesigned in strength and hinge joint, but essentially is the same principle as all the other Steadicams. The Smoothee now has mounts for GoPro, GoPro 3D, the iPhone 4, iPhone 3 and we added different mounts and again it’s selling extremely well to that market where people have got 1080p in the palm of their hands. Now what they’re looking for is, again the audio, and the stabilisation and the image quality, to create professional images with a system; the Smoothee is how they achieve that. NZVN
Teradek for A2Z We are at Teradek for A2Z and we have Jon Landman. Ed: How many years has Teradek been going now? Jon: About four years and we make an H.264 encoder as the guys at A2Z are well aware. They’re also familiar with the Cube but what’s new for the Cube at NAB is an OLED screen, so you can now control the Cube or set up the Cube without a laptop, or without an iPad, directly from the screen, from the Cube itself. It has a two hour battery built-in; it has an SD slot, so anything that goes through the Cube will be written to the SDs and then FTP’d back to a site afterwards with the Bond if you’re using the Bond. We’ve also got Memo WiFi, so there are two antennae now. These are the main upgrades to the Cube 155 – it’s the “55” family. We’re going to continue to promote the 150s, but we’re going to start shipping these in May and the price is yet to be confirmed, but it will be under US$2500.
Jon Landman.
Ed: Right. Just explain to me a bit more about this Memo WiFi. What’s the value in that as opposed to what you had before? Jon: Well the Memo WiFi is a dual antenna system so we’re going to get better reception with the dual antennas, and Memo deals with a multipath better, so hopefully you’re going to get a better WiFi experience. Ed: Less likelihood of a dropout? Jon: Yes. Ed: Okay, so you talked about a bonding solution? Jon: Now what we’re able to do is to take the output of the Cube via the USB connection and connect it to our bonding solution, which is called the Teradek Bond. It fits on top of the Cube. It bonds together five modems, aggregates the bandwidth and then sends those up into the Cloud or to a TV station, to be sewed back together and then pushed to a decoder. This is a one-time cost,
no reoccurring fees, you supply your own modems, it costs US$2500. The programme that aggregates those bits is called Sputnik, which is a Linux based application, which we supply you for free and you can put on your own Linux server, or host it in the Cloud. So those we are selling and shipping and doing very well with. Ed: So in fact if you had a very good relationship with your telecom supplier, you could actually do this from anywhere in the world and stream back to your station anywhere else in the world? Jon: In high def, yes. Ed: That sort of takes a roaming cameraman to new possibilities? Jon: Exactly, and if you look on our website, you’ll see some of the recent footage that we had, which was basically the F18 crash in the States. We had a cameraman on his way home pull over to the side of the
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road, whip out his Bond, stick it on his camera, and go live to the station. These are inexpensive enough to put one in every cameraman’s kit. An encoder and a Bond costs you about US$5K, which is actually less than the cost of the lens that he has. So, you know, we have News organisations really thinking about putting one of these in every cameraman’s kit. Our competition in this area is basically a couple of companies. They are all rental systems that cost you about 2K a month. We are 5K one time. Ed: And really, the quality is there. I mean its H.264 and it’s full …?
Jon: Yes, exactly and the cameraman actually has a visual … the faster the Cube lights are flashing, the higher the bit rate. Look, number 2 is going slow. If I pull it out, watch – we’re not going to lose video – watch. No, he’s just pulled out modem 2 and the video feed continues unaffected. Jon: And you should see that channel disappear here. It takes a few minutes to show, but look, the data rate … it’s trying to … it aggregates … so we’re lost, it’s going to go down to zero eventually, because we’re pinging the software all the time. You can see it’s going to turn down to zero and ( because this is an average bitrate ), eventually it’s going to go down to zero and that will go down to zero and then the latency … Ed: So the buffering is really where it’s at, because you can’t rely on wireless modems to give you 100% signal 100% of the time, but when you aggregate it over five …? Jon: It’s not about the 100% of signal, it’s what’s the latency of each modem. For example, I could have modem company A that sends my signal to Africa and back before it hits my decoder, right?
Jon: You can tell them this is real Bond footage. Now you’re going to see some other footage shortly … Ed: Okay, so in using this system, you’re totally independent of I guess your camera’s frame rate and resolution, so you can have 720p, 1080i …? Jon: It doesn’t matter. Teradek input is independent of the encoding rate, so I could have a 1080i signal coming in from my camera, but I could only maybe have 2 megabits per second with the bonded signal, so I would say “okay, I’m going to do 720 at 2 megs.” Ed: Jon, just tell me again about this Sputnik software – this is something that I guess you would have on an iPad beside you …? Jon: No, this is what sits on our Sputnik server in the sky. So you’ve got multiple modems right; they cut up all the video into different packets. They’re all going to go up over different modems and have different latencies, so you need to have a buffer somewhere that waits for all of those packets to come in and it realigns them, puts them in the right packet order and then sends them to the decoder. We make that software – it’s called Sputnik, it’s something that we give away for free, you can put it on a Dell PC with Linux on it, or you can host it in the Cloud. So that software has an interface and this is the interface, which gives you some interesting statistics. It tells you what the modem speed is out of each modem; it tells you what the latency of each modem is; it tells you how full your buffer is. With those three items, you can decide how low you can lower your buffer to decrease your latency. And obviously that modem there at 8 seconds is holding everyone else up, because modem 2 – let’s imagine it’s got packet 2 – I can’t send packet 3 until I’ve sent packet 2 to the decoder. So it’s got to sit there waiting for packet 2 to come in before it can send … that’s what latency means.
Ed: That’s Telcos for you! Jon: On the other hand, in San Francisco okay … I’ll give you an example. I had phenomenal 4G, I noticed that on all of my modems I had under 100 milliseconds between the modem and Sputnik. My buffer was always full, because the modems were giving me the full bitrate, very low latency, so I was able to look at the statistics and then bring it down to 2 seconds in my buffer here because it was always being filled up. So I then took my latency down to 2 seconds and I had 2 seconds of latency. Ed: How did that affect your video quality? Jon: The same video quality, I’m not losing any packets and in San Francisco, out of a single 4G modem, I’d get 3½ megs. So that’s like the most ideal circumstances. Ed: So in fact, I guess to protect yourself, you have as many different Telcos’ systems on there, so at least one of them is going to be connected? Jon: That’s exactly it. We have redundancy because we support multiple different carriers, and we have redundancy because we’re load-balancing the video amongst those. So I go to an area where there’s actually no signal of a particular carrier, I’ll take that modem out and put it in my pocket, put one in that does work in that area. NZVN
Ed: So in that case do you call the cameraman and say “pull modem 2”? Page 46
Sennheiser for Syntec For Syntec, we are at the Sennheiser stand with Rob Blumenreder. Ed: And Rob, Sennheiser is not disappointing; new product this year? Rob: Yes we have. We have a new addition to the Evolution Wireless portable line and it’s called the SKP 300. So a plug on transmitter isn’t anything new for Sennheiser but in the Evolution Wireless line, the G3, we didn’t have a plug on that provided phantom power. So what the 300 series SKP plug on will do, is of course it will make any microphone into a wireless transmitter, any wired microphone into a wireless if you’re plugging in this transmitter, to the XLR3 and it also supplies phantom power to a condenser microphone so if you wanted to have a wireless boom operation that makes it very nice and easy for “run and gun” stuff. So again, not new for Sennheiser, but new in the G3 line and it’s a perfect complement for your kit for audio for video. So that’s the first bit and that has a street price of US$525. The next product is actually in the Neumann line. This is called the KK 204 and KK 205. These are capsules designed specifically for the 2000 series. The 204 is a cardioid condenser derived from the KMS 104 and the 205 is derived from the KMS 105, a super cardioid condenser. Again, they are exclusively designed for 2000 series, so what that means is you can get that Neumann sound on our mid-range wireless. This is going to be very large in the US, particularly in the House of Worship market,
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Rob Blumenreder.
Neumann since 1991 and we have in our 3 and 5K series which is our flagship, the Neumann KK104 and 105. So this is kind of a “tip to the hat” on our flagship wireless and bringing that down to a more professional but mid-range for Senn-heiser option. Ed: Now while I’ve got you, in the States of course you’ve sorted out all your bandwidth … Rob: Yeah – for now. Ed:
Oh, you mean it’s not sorted?
Rob: Well you know, there’s one thing for sure with the government and that’s nothing’s for certain. As Sennheiser moves along, we’re looking to find ways to do more with less and Sennheiser customers recognise and understand that we are technology leaders.
anybody who is looking for the best possible sound that they can get out of their wireless system. They have a street price in the United States of around US$999. Ed: So is this new for Neumann … I mean, I associate Neumann with studio mics, fixed position. These are handheld, are these the first in the handheld series? Rob: Actually not. These are the first in a lower price point for Neumann – the capsule itself isn’t in the lower price point, but the wireless, the Sennheiser is. There’s been a partnership obviously with Sennheiser and
So we will be working over the next couple of years on new technologies so that we can ensure that we are providing our customers with the most appropriate service for the changing environments around the world, not just the US but also in all the European markets and Asian markets. Everybody is different. Ed: Trying government?
to
keep
one
step
ahead
Rob: Trying, but it’s a hard thing to do. taxes and … Ed:
of
the
Death and
And bandwidth?
Rob: And bandwidth regulation is going to be added to NZVN that.
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Ensemble Designs for Gencom For Gencom we are at Ensemble Designs and we have Cindy Zuelsdorf. Ed: Cindy, you’re going to tell us about a very hot product that Nicki is very excited about, because Gencom are selling the Ensemble product in New Zealand and Australia. What are we starting with? Cindy: We’re going to start with the BrightEye Mitto scan converter right here. You can take any images from a computer, maybe YouTube or Skype, and output them to SDI video. So, looking at the back here you’ll see this is where you would plug into from your computer … Ed:
Which is a DVI or VGA input?
Cindy: Or it can be HDMI as well. So any of those work – DVI, HDMI or VGA – and then the output can be SDI, so serial digital video either SD, HD or 3 gigabit per second (3 Gb/s) SDI. You can bring that SDI signal into a production switcher, a vision mixer and switch a show. A lot of our customers are broadcasters, folks that want to use a Skype interview, for example, and turn that Skype interview into something that looks good enough to use in HD. They might even need to adjust the audio with respect to the video, to keep the lip sync intact. Skype video is notorious for having bad lip sync due to the video processing being different from the audio processing and the BrightEye Mitto scan converter can adjust for that. Ed: So with the scan converter you can adjust the audio sync? Cindy: Ed:
Can I show you?
Yes, I’m sure.
Okay, so it’s really cool controls in adjusting the audio delay, because as Cindy says, the video takes longer to process and so it’s always delayed in relation to the audio, so you want to delay the audio so it rematches with the video. And the other side of it is the scan frame looks as though it is infinitely adjustable; it’s just a rectangle that you can drag to any sized shape you like and that’s your new picture frame. Cindy: There are also memory registers for that frame. You can set up a particular configuration so you always know that when you go to input 1, your rectangular selection is pre-set to the correct size for your Skype video; when you go to input 2 and then recall register 2 the correct size and position is recalled for that particular source. Ed:
So is that a crop or a resize frame?
Cindy: It’s cropping the picture, and then resizing that selection so that it fills the whole screen. Ed: And what we’re seeing now on the screen is a split screen between the BrightEye Mitto scan converter and Brand X. Brand X is looking very soft. I think if this was a fabric softener comparison, Brand X would win, but because it’s not, I think the Mitto is a better product. What do you think Cindy? Cindy: What a nice setup. Absolutely, we’re really good at scaling and filtering and that’s what we aim to show here. You’ve got all the detail, none of the flicker, much sharper. Ed:
Very nice – it’s a much better picture.
Cindy Zuelsdorf.
Cindy: Here’s the BrightEye 72 and this is an SDI to HDMI converter. Now there’s a million of them out there right – but the difference about this one is that you can also adjust things like proc levels, you can adjust offsets, so all the things you want in a high end monitor, we’ve actually built into the converter. That means you could go out and get an off the shelf consumer monitor and our BrightEye 72 converter and boom – now you can adjust levels, you can see audio meters, you can look at H & V shift, look at caption decoding if that ever becomes interesting in New Zealand, timecode burn in – all that nifty stuff. Ed: Okay, another good little piece is that when you have a monitor in your shot, displaying something, the colour might be off on that monitor. It might look fine to the person directly viewing the monitor, but once you’ve seen the monitor through a camera, the colour could be odd. So your BrightEye converter does what …? Cindy: The BrightEye 72 converter lets you colour correct that monitor that’s in the shot or on the set, so that it looks correct to the home viewer. Ed:
And it’s all for about US$1000?
Cindy: Yes, a great price. You can go out and use that and combine it with a kind of off the shelf consumer monitor and get your high end broadcast functionality. Ed:
Beautiful. And now we’re moving on to?
Cindy: Ed:
Cindy: Page 49
The BrightEye 57, test signal generator …
How do you come up with these numbers? Aren’t they fascinating?
Ed: Do engineers think of them or do you have a focus group? Cindy: Focus group, absolutely, yeah, we rent a big kind of a condo for the weekend … Ed:
I hope there’s lots of comforts?
Cindy: Yes – we bring in the good food, the wine and we sit around and go “57” – I dunno; “72” I dunno, what do you think? Focus group, serious marketing. Ed: Cindy’s got the measure of this interviewer! Alright enough of that, get on with your job, come on… Cindy: Ed:
Do I have to?
Yes.
Cindy: Alright then. So this is our very fabulous BrightEye 57 reference generator that gets used in OB and broadcast, fly-pack – those kinds of places. It gives every kind of test signal you need, so 30 plus test signals, every kind of bars, split field bars, 75% bars, SMPTE bars – whatever kind of bars you want – flat field 20, flat field 80, pulse and bar – oh my gosh, I’ll stop … Ed:
This gal knows all the words.
Cindy: Pathological – that’s my favourite. know the “pathological” one? Ed:
You
I’ll take your word for it.
Cindy: It’s absolutely true. You can also output things like HD tri-level sync or your favourite Black Burst – all those good signals that you need, some embedded audio tone … Ed:
Cindy: Ed: Ed:
Ed:
Could you really … it would still work without …? Absolutely.
You’re not worried about static?
Okay, so what does this big card do?
Cindy: Engine.
And it’s got a card slot?
So these are three of Cindy’s best, but there are more – there are many more in the BrightEye stable and to find out more about all of these you need to go to Gencom and talk to the people there and find out what BrightEye has got that provides a solution for what your problems are – as long as they’re not focus groups! Cindy: Well Grant you’re going to be the first I invite to our next focus group. I hope it’s an exotic location?
Cindy: New Zealand I was thinking, it seems so exotic there. Ed:
I could.
Cindy: I’m not worried about static. You know we manufacture and test all of our equipment right at our factory in Nevada City, California. At Ensemble Designs we build it ourselves; it’s not built in China or somewhere else, we build it ourselves and we’ve really got the static under control. We build everything and test it ourselves and it’s solid and reliable.
Cindy: This nifty card slot lets you make your own test signals. So if you want to have a test signal with an animated logo that says “Grant” spinning around, you could build that, put it on this nice secure digital card, SD card, and then just load it into the front of the unit. You can build your own custom test signals with audio clips and video animations, if you want to. I’ll show you an example.
Ed:
A big card, yes.
Ed: It’s a big card and she’s touching it with her fingers instead of … oh dear, that’s a no-no, won’t put that in the rack?
Cindy:
Rather cautiously – No – lots of odd skin tones?
Cindy: Well kind of, it’s a kind of crazy purplish colour. It’s got sequences of ones and zeros that can fail a signal path in a TV station and so we generate this test pattern that, if that can pass through your system, you are good to go; and if it doesn’t, then we know that there’s some issues in the path. Ed:
Cindy:
That’s true. Okay, now Cindy’s got a big card? Page 50
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mixer – a little mix effect, if you will. It’s something that you might use in an OB van; you might use it in a fly-pack; you could use it for central casting; as a presentation switcher and as a small master control. It has two keyer layers and can do two keys and background transitions, like mix effects do. The interesting thing about it is that you can control it from your automation, but you can also control it from a Mac, a PC or an iPad. And so we’re finding that some people like something a little different on the control front and we aim to please, right. Ed:
That’s going to make the “Apple-ites” very happy.
Cindy: Well that’s okay, you can use your PC and browse to it on any browser that you want to. You don’t have to be an Apple-ite to enjoy this cool new tool, huh? Ed:
So show me it working?
Cindy:
Absolutely.
Well with a little bit of practice, I could see that one could put together a TV programme with logos, backgrounds, keys – all sorts of things, very simply from your Tablet or your PC, using this card and it is an Avenue Layering Engine.
Ed: So as a preview system, you’re saying what can happen? Cindy: It could be a preview system, it could actually be used for switching a show live. It allows a director, or a lighting director, to be mobile and move about in different parts of the facility to switch the show. So you mentioned as a preview application, setting up a live event, potentially a lighting director might take the iPad, go to different locations in the facility, maybe switch between all five cameras and check the lighting and be sure it looks good. Maybe there’s a presenter who is going to stand up on stage and wants to switch his or her own show and not have to have a director. Whereas in a TV station they’re going to sit in a master control room, but still with the iPad they’d be able to move around and do some switching without having to be in one position. It gives a little bit of freedom, a change. Ed:
Versatility is the word.
Cindy: Hey, versatility … a kind of change in the workflow, it gives people the freedom to be in different NZVN places and switch.
Plura for Gencom For Gencom we are at Plura with Ibrahim Karim, Director of Operations, Plura Broadcast. Ed: Ibrahim, tell us a few technical things about what Plura’s been doing in the year since our last NAB visit? Ibrahim: Well, we’ve introduced a new product – the PRM -224-3G Plura Reference monitor is one of a kind. It can display dual video with dual waveform and vectorscope, PBM-221S and PBM-221-3G, 21” Full HD resolution, PBM317S, 17” Full HD resolution, PBM-209-3G, 9” 800x480 resolution and PBM-307-3G, 7” with 1024x600 panel resolution. All the above-mentioned items come standard with the unmatched PBM-S and PBM-3G features respectively.
Ibrahim Karim.
Ed: Is this to do with the screen technology or back end technology? Ibrahim: Both – we partner with an elite panel manufacturer as well as our back end engine which drives this panel with the extraordinary features set in every monitor we offer. Ed: So just to get this clear – any monitor that you produce under 17 inch can’t be true HD in terms of its number of pixels, because you can’t fit that number of good pixels onto that smaller area? Ibrahim: Yes, that’s true. That’s a limitation of the technology for the manufacture of the panel itself. It’s like the boundary of any technology.
Ed: So I guess the choice of the panel technology that you make is so that it works in all conditions, whether they be very hot, very dry, very humid or very cold, but also it’s got to be cost effective and, as you say, there are some panels that are smaller and can still fit high definition on them, but at a much higher cost. Ibrahim: Yes, that’s available. Ed: So 21 inch really is the best “bang for your buck”? Ibrahim: Well I think every monitor can and will meet our customer’s expectation and budget. Ed: But then, what’s behind it is the high end Plura technology isn’t it?
Page 52
Ibrahim: Laughs … here is the new PBM-317S, 17” Full HD panel, a new added member to the S-Series. Ed: I guess it’s got to be an evolving process hasn’t it – you’ve got to listen to what your customers are asking you for, and you think yes, that makes sense and we’ll make that and release it? Ibrahim: Yes, it is an evolving process; it’s driven by our customer’s demand. We love to do things that satisfy our customer’s needs. Ed: That’s why you’ve got no 3D solution? Ibrahim: No, unfortunately it goes back to the economics factor, the demand is not sustainable. Ed: Oh. But a feather in your cap, you’ve signed up Hitachi to supply them with something. What’s that?
Ibrahim: Yes, you can see it here. This is actually the engine, the main part that drives the panel and where we have our technology and our investment built in.
Ibrahim: This is the viewfinder that goes on the Hitachi cameras. We are proud to announce our long term agreement with Hitachi for supplying Plura 7” and 9” viewfinders. Hitachi is a prominent player in the camera business and we are excited to work closely with them.
Ed: So having a good panel is one thing, but having good backroom stuff is also important?
Ed: It’s good to have the confidence in Plura to put their name on your monitor?
Ibrahim: Yes, it’s quite important. It’s like building a car with a great chassis, reliable engine with a great driver to finish the race. Our products comply with our founding principles – Reliability, Affordability and unmatched Functionality.
Ibrahim: Once again we stick with our founding principles Affordability, Reliability & unmatched Functionality. Ed:
Ed: And then in the larger sizes you go right up to 55 inch? Ibrahim: We actually offer up to 70”. We have shipped quite few of these and in fact just shipped an order for Gencom Singapore. Pretty impressive size. Ed:
Tell me, are any of your monitors 4K capable?
Ibrahim: Ed:
No, not yet.
There’s no demand?
Ibrahim: Well there’s no demand. We have the platform to build it, however it’s not economical to build. We will keep monitoring it, and if we see any traction or demand we will jump on it. Ed: What’s this on the “Innovation Expectations” section of the Plura stand?
Beyond
Ibrahim: This is the new PRM-224-3G. It’s a new reference monitor with10-bit panel for more accurate and smoother colour transitions. It features 3D LUT capability 17x17x17-8 points linear interpolation, RJ-45 Ethernet, 100Mbps, LAN to serial control, Powerful Audio Measurement Package, Adjustable and User defined Gamma Control, Dual display Mode with dual waveform and vector, Closed Captioning and Teletext 801 / Subtitle OP-47. Ed:
And it’s Plura quality?
Ibrahim:
All in one?
Ibrahim: Comprehensive products built to last. The unit over here is the new MVM-124, 24” with built-in 4 CH multi-viewer. Ed: And I’m pleased to see on the corner is an analogue clock, but of course it’s digitally projected. Page 53
Yes.
NZVN
Hahnel for Focal Holdings We are at the Hahnel stand for Focal Holdings and we have Mike Stango. Ed: Hahnel has a nice little microphone and another new product … we’ll come back to the microphones, now Mike, what’s this item? Mike: This is Hahnel’s Inspire unit. It’s really quite an imaginative unit. In the past, most remotes have been what we call “blind” remotes. Someone can hit the button and they hope that their camera fired. They really don’t know. Ed: Oh this is for the still camera market? Mike: Still and it also has applications for video. We have a lot of customers here at the NAB show who are using it as a monitor. With this particular Inspire set you have a handheld display unit which will fire my camera and also allow me to see both real time streaming, real time video out of the camera, or it has its own built-in camera. And I can choose between the wide-angle view or the real time. Ed: Like the lens view? Mike: Exactly, so it’s my choice. So what I can do with this, is I can setup up to four different cameras, different locations, and by holding this wireless monitor, scroll through each of the four cameras and see what the camera would see as if I was standing behind the camera. And if I like the image ( or when I like the image ) I can depress the shutter release button here on my monitor, and my camera will fire. Ed: And so for a video camera, the video camera would start rolling? Mike: Yes. It depends on the On / Off button of the video camera, but as far as the streaming video as a monitor, it’s a complete wireless monitor for the camera. Ed: So when you say in terms of the button, I mean how does it operate … is it a physical button press or does it use a lanc control or what? Mike: We use a wired control. The difference would be on camera models where the normal shutter release button also operates On / Off on the video, then our Hahnel Inspire will both start and stop the video and allow you to view. On some Digital SLRs the video button’s a completely separate button on the camera, unattached to the normal shutter button. In that scenario, then the Inspire is used as a wireless remote and monitor only, without triggering the On / Off function. Ed: So this is really only for a DSLR where you have that remote control trigger … you couldn’t use it on a standard video camera? Mike: That’s true. Ed: Except as a monitor? Mike: Correct, except as a monitor. We’ve had film directors who have four cameras rolling on a normal scenario and from their position, they can scroll using this Hahnel Inspire and see what their cameraman sees wirelessly and very inexpensively. Ed: Because that’s using the camera on the upper module? Mike: That’s correct. Ed: Right – is this an expensive product? Mike: No, it’s quite reasonable. Ed: Together? Mike: Together – as I said, it also includes all the connecting cables.
Mike Stango with the Hahnel Inspire.
Ed:
Well, why wouldn’t you have one?
Mike: Agreed. Ed: Right, so that’s the monitor, but along with that we have a very cool little microphone. Tell us about that Mike? Mike: Okay, this is Hahnel’s new microphone and it’s a great looking product. What we have here is Hahnel’s venture into the video market for Digital SLRs and for video cameras. It uses a standard 3.5 mm plug, so it’s obviously applicable for many different models – but where it really stands out ( besides looks ) is its shock mounting system. As you can see, it has quite a unique shock mounting system, completely different to everybody else’s in the marketplace and I like to think it’s really a very rugged system that can take some abuse and still keep the parameters of good sound quality. Hahnel’s invested a lot of time and energy into the shape of the condenser house which you can see here and our whole microphone is quite a bit shorter than the other microphones on the market. Now let me just say, this is not a shotgun mic and, as we know, a shotgun mic is great for somebody talking on a podium … Ed:
But it’s obviously directional?
Mike: Absolutely and it is bias-directional, but it will take the majority of the sound in front of us, almost in an egg shape and still receive some edge sound. When we go to the back of the unit – well, first up, it’s operating on two triple A batteries, which Hahnel includes with the package …
Page 54
Ed:
Batteries are included – fantastic.
Mike: They’re a rare company that does that actually … we’ll pop that in and we flip over to the back of the unit, we have three very simple controls. We have a green diode telling us we’re in the “On” position; we have a low cut out to cut down some of the wind noise, if we’re in a high ambient wind noise position; and we also have both a plus 10dB and a minus 10dB slide switch setting. So if we’re in a very quiet church and we want to increase our sound capabilities, flip of a switch, we can do that. But Grant, where it really excels, people are getting such great video out of the Digital SLRs and the microphones that are built into the cameras are absolutely atrocious. You hear every little noise, even just holding and moving the cameras. If you add something like a Hahnel MK100 microphone to the equation, it doesn’t take up a lot of space and you’ll hear instantly a really big difference – quite frankly, for not a lot of money. Ed: And that’s it, when you’ve got a DSLR and you’re holding this and trying to get audio, your finger movements as you’re moving around on the camera, are amplified and picked up by those little microphones? Mike: Absolutely and you have to spend a lot of time in postproduction cleaning that up. If you can start off with a much cleaner, much more acceptable audio track
from the very beginning, you’re more than halfway there. Ed: And having the 10dB plus or minus switch, to me that’s a really strong positive? Mike: Absolutely. It just gives you more versatility, covering the bases of whether I’m in a very quiet environment or a very noisy environment. This NZVN microphone will do the trick.
Page 56
Vinpower Digital for Imaging Technology We are with Ryan Swerdloff from Vinpower Digital. Ed: We are looking at a very smart solvent printer and what makes this different from any other printer out there Ryan? Ryan: There’s a number of factors that make it different. The most important thing is we’ve created a way to use solvent ink in a small profile printer. Solvent ink will adhere to just about any surface, whereas your typical inkjet needs a special inkjet coating in order to adhere to the disc. This solvent ink will adhere to silvered lacquered discs, white inkjet printable, white thermal printable – any type of disc that you put in there, in fact pretty much any surface that you put in there. So what it does is it gives you the ability to have an inkjet printable disc with full waterproof, full scratch resistant and you can print on any surface; you don’t need a special disc, so you can lower your cost when it comes to the type of disc that you use, or what you want to print on. Ed: And also, you save the cost of those little inkjet cartridges at horrendous prices? Ryan: Exactly – and that’s the other factor, it’s a continuous ink system, so it has a six ink system where you can fill it as it’s going. It’s visible from the outside, so that means that you can see exactly where your ink levels are. The computer will let you know as well, but you can visually inspect it; you can add more as you need it and then it will keep your production going. This system is more for production; it’s not meant say, for just like doing one or two every few weeks or so. This is meant if you’re really putting out a product that you intend to make an impression with, whether it’s for sale or giveaway, anything that you want to do that you want to have a nice colourful, bright image that reflects something that’s professionally done. Ed: So does the robotic disc feed side come as part of it, or can you have that separate? Ryan: It’s both. You can either get the printer by itself, or you can get the printer with the robotic feeder. So the robotic feeder holds 100 discs and it allows you to just walk away from it. Otherwise you have to slot load each one.
Ryan Swerdloff.
Ed: A very time consuming operation, but still for perhaps a small operation, it might be viable. Ryan: One of the important factors of this is it’s pretty much “on demand.” So instead of going to some duplication house or going somewhere where you need to have a certain number of quantities that you have to produce, this you can do on demand, in your own time, when you want to do it; and it’s great because I don’t know in terms of your currency, but in the US currency it’s equivalent to about 10 cents a disc for the print cost, where for most other like ink cartridges or thermal ribbon transfer, it’s between 20-40 cents a disc. So you’re saving a lot there as well. Ed: And in terms of the software that you use to create the disc face, does it come with that? Ryan: It does have a software template that you can use, but you could also use a Photoshop or other type of standard design software that you would normally use. Ed: I’m very impressed with the robotic loader. I’ve seen some very complicated looking ones in the past, but this looks very straightforward Ryan? Ryan:
Yes.
Essentially it works through a gravity feed pole, so the disc falls Page 57
Vinpower Digital has released a new Eco Solvent Ink system that can print on nearly any surface with spectacular results for mere pennies per print The availability of Eco Solvent Ink printers is nothing new, but they typically cost many thousands of dollars and tend to be very large complicated machines. The Venetian is far more affordable and easy to use in a compact device that can fit nearly anywhere.
The Venetian printer using the Eco Solvent Ink can print across many different surfaces without requiring any special coating or treatment. In fact, it is perfect for use with optical discs (i.e. CD, DVD, or Blu-ray), Security ID cards, Fabric, Paper, and many other surfaces. In addition to being able to print on a variety of surfaces, the Eco Solvent Ink is also extremely water and scratch resistant ensuring the printed image will endure day-to-day use or handling. The Venetian uses a Continuous Ink System (CIS) with 100ml exterior clear tanks, so the user can tell at a glance if the ink is running low to prevent running out of ink again in the middle of an important job. In addition, our Eco Solvent Ink is very Earth friendly, as the solvent does not release any harsh chemicals that would negatively affect the planet. The Eco Solvent Ink will not clog or damage the print head either, making the Venetian a true cost effective print solution for so many applications. Venetian Printer at $1,195+gst, and comes with 6 colour Solvent ink bottles at 100ml each Optional: 100 disk Autoloader at $945+gst, each 100ml solvent costs $119+gst
www.imagingtechnology.co.nz;
12 Holloway Place, Penrose; PO Box 62-157, Auckland; Tel: 09 5257888 Fax: 09 5257898
down, it slides it in and then it pulls it back out and it falls into the receptacle. Ed: So you just have to put it a little bit higher on your desk than you normally might have your printer – or cut a hole in your desk for the bin? Ryan: Ed:
Well it has a stand so it stands higher up.
They’ve thought of everything!
Ryan: Well we try and make you not have to do any alterations to your existing furniture. Ed:
Now is the solvent ink a proprietary ink?
Ryan:
Yes, it is a proprietary ink.
Like I said, solvent ink is not a new system, it’s been around, but it’s typically for large format printing, so using it in a lower cost, smaller printer it has a couple of problems. The problem is that the particles that make solvent ink are too big to fit through the print nozzle, so it clogs up the printer whenever you try and use it. We had to work with chemists who re-engineered the ink so that the particles could not only be smaller, but that they wouldn’t bond together to create the large particles again. Also, when you’re using solvent, it dries a lot quicker, so you have to keep it from drying before NZVN you use the printer.
Shure for Now Sound We are now at Shure and we have Christopher Lyons from Shure Incorporated. Ed: Now range, the while now, that Shure range?
we’ve seen the Shure microphone professional range advertised for a but the big news at NAB this year is have well and truly expanded their
Christopher: Yes, we’ve added a new line of portable wireless system called the FP line – that’s this one right over here, in fact I’ve got it in my pocket as well. That’s the nice thing about making small products – if it was a rack mount something … So the FP series ( FP stands for Field Production ) is aimed at people who are doing video production maybe on behalf of their company, or school, or church, a theatre – perhaps not broadcast level per se, but somewhere in between and who want professional quality sound but don’t really need to spend $2000 for all the features that a broadcaster needs. Ed: But it has some of the features and I can see two aerials come out of here – two floppy aerials, it must be a diversity mic?
Christopher Lyons.
Christopher: Yes it’s a UHF diversity system, so you get diversity performance; it comes with two output cables, so you get an XLR connection or a 3.5 connection, and it fits a variety of different cameras. It’s based on the same circuitry as our SLX system, which is very popular and so it’s compatible with all those components; it comes with a shoe adapter so you can mount it directly on top of your camera; it runs on a couple of AA batteries … Ed: Oh that’s always good, no fancy batteries in this one? Christopher: No, simple and reliable – runs about 12 hours on a fresh set of batteries. It’s also easy to setup – on this model you push a button, it scans the frequency range, finds a clear frequency, then you hold
it up in front of the transmitter and push a button and an infrared link transfers the frequency setting to the transmitter. So you don’t have to go through a menu with your eyes half shut, or anything like that. In about 30 seconds you can arrive on site, do a quick scan, pick a frequency and get it all set up to use. Ed: Okay, but that’s not across all frequencies is it … you must have a band of frequencies that this particular device runs on? Christopher: Correct. This FP system is available I believe in five different frequency ranges for the US. Ed: That’s where having a local dealer is important – they’ll know which is the right frequency band for the country and they’ll sell you the right one?
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Christopher: Well I don’t know if it’s standard, but it’s popular enough that Shure uses it and I want to say one or two other brands use the same connector with the same wiring, so Countryman makes lavalier and headworn mics that will work with it, but there are lots of different ones that are easy to work with. So if you have a particular favourite, chances are you might already have it or at least you can buy that mic with this connection on it. It’s certainly not something proprietary and secret to Shure. Ed: Are they actually compatible across the range – like if you had the bodypack from the top end range, which is the UHF-R – is that compatible with the receiver on this one?
Christopher: In different countries, we sell either different numbers of bands or each band is different by its width or the actual frequencies that it tunes. So every wireless system that we sell in different parts of the world has been certified with the local regulatory agency as legal for sale, and through our local distributor in that country, we’ve co-ordinated with them to figure out which are the appropriate frequencies to use. In some countries, that might be different regionally … where in this city you want to use this frequency range, in that city you want to use a different range – so it might be customisable. Ed: Now tell me, you say that it will scan the available frequencies – can you preset a frequency manually? Christopher: Oh yes, you can go in and say I want to use this particular frequency and it stays there and next time you turn it on it’s still at the same frequency. Ed: That’s a very versatile device. Christopher: It only scans if you tell it to, or if you push the button to make it do it. Now that’s the portable receiver … to go along with it, we’re also introducing a portable plug on transmitter. So for people who want to do that ENG style you know omnidirectional interview mic, we’ve got an inexpensive plug on transmitter to mate with this system, in addition to the normal handheld and bodypack transmitters we sell with all our systems. So it’s really a flexible system with a lot of different options for people who do different types of work. Someone might be doing mostly interviews, someone else might be doing product demonstrations, you know dramatic video or low budget films – all kinds of things. Ed: So is there one bodypack that’s compatible with this? Christopher: Yes, there’s an FP1 bodypack transmitter that’s compatible – it looks just like this actually, but only one antenna on it and it’s available with all our range of lavalier mics and headworn mics; and then there’s an FP2 handheld transmitter which again comes with a variety of heads like the SM58 or Beta 58 or what-not. Ed: And does it have a standard microphone input so you could actually use somebody else’s lavalier microphone?
Christopher: No it isn’t. We actually make a different portable receiver specifically for the UHFR range, called the UR5. What’s really different is the audio processing – so even though they might be able to tune the same frequencies, the companding and the audio processing wouldn’t be exactly matched, so it would work but it wouldn’t sound right. Ed: That’s no good then? Christopher: No it isn’t. Ed: Well, that’s covered the radio mics … in the camera mics, I see there’s one particularly interesting looking one here that’s a bit of a “U”? Christopher: Actually, this is one of our BP89 shotgun microphones and this little attachment accessory here is the direct result of going out and talking to people who do video production. They said “you know, sometimes I need the directionality of a medium length shotgun, but I don’t want the length of a shotgun that long, because it gets in the camera shot.” So we said “well, what if it was essentially folded in half?” So we came up with this little adapter that lets the barrel to be on the top, making a U-turn to the preamp tube on the bottom, so it’s a little bit taller, but it’s effectively about 6 or 7 inches shorter. You sort of get to have your cake and eat it too – you get the long directionality, but a shorter length. Ed: So it’s the same adapter – you could plug in a medium length, a long length or a short length? Christopher: Correct, yes, the BP89 is all modular so that one preamp can work with three different tube lengths; you know there’s a variety of Rycote accessories also for wind blocking and shock mounting and so forth, so it’s really a flexible system. And then again, for people who are at a more entry level point
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and aren’t ready to spend quite that much money on a shotgun mic, we offer an integrated unit that’s not modular, called the BP82, that’s just a short shotgun for people who are doing some production work and want a good shotgun mic but don’t want to spend too much money. Ed: Right, now a totally new product line, broadcast headsets and we’ll see if the Now Sound team are going to be doing these, but obviously you’re excited? Christopher: We are, because we’ve been making headphones that have been very successful for about three years now, primarily aimed at recording studios and studio monitoring – and of course we’ve done microphones for eons. So we decided to put the peanut butter and the chocolate together so to speak and we’re doing a line of broadcast headsets. Ed: I don’t know if peanut butter and chocolate is very popular in New Zealand, but we’ll go with the metaphor. Christopher: See here in the States, there’s a very popular candy that’s peanut butter and chocolate, so that’s what I’m referring to – and they always talk about the accidental merger of the peanut butter and the chocolate, so that’s where that comes from. What we’ve done is take some high quality full coverage headphones with a flexible headband here, and added a dynamic mic element on a flexible gooseneck. You get high quality mic and high quality earpiece available in both a single earmuff and a dual earmuff, so depending on your needs; removable cable, which can be replaced if it ever fails, or compactly stored so it doesn’t get beat up, locks on those, so that it doesn’t get unplugged accidentally. Also a clever feature, when you tilt the microphone boom up vertically, it mutes the microphone. It’s a magnetic read switch, so it’s a silent mute, there’s no “click” or “clunk” or anything like that. You can also tilt it around all to the other side if you prefer a left hand mic or a right hand mic – it works either way. So the single ear and a dual ear version, both full coverage headphones. For those people who prefer a lighter duty earphone, we’ve got a version that’s a very small, over the ear, open air version … same microphone and boom, but just a lighter duty headset and a smaller headphone driver. Ed: And these look very robust I must say, although they’re certainly not heavy, but they look as though they would handle a bit of beating?
Christopher: Right, and like all Shure products, everything has to go through our legendary “drop” test, humidity testing, moisture resistant, salt spray – everything you can imagine. So like every Shure product, they’ve been through the wringer. Ed: Now of course, in New Zealand, we’re still slightly up in the air as to what frequencies are available and it looks as though, for radio mics and coms, that we might have to hop if we’re moving from one part of the country to another … has Shure any way of making this easier for us? Christopher: Yes – we’re pursuing two paths at the same time. On the one hand we’ve got some new products like the Axient system that tunes an extremely wide frequency range. I believe, here in the States, it’s 228 MHz wide; and on top of that, the system can automatically change frequencies on the fly live, if it senses interference. That’s obviously an expensive solution though, so another approach we’re taking here in the States is that certain TV channels will be reserved for wireless mic use, although they will be different in each city. What we’re doing is working to make the most of those channels, ( because it’s usually going to be 2, perhaps 3 or 4 channels ), by making wireless systems that can pack frequencies more densely together in a narrow section of spectrum. So with an entry level system, you might be able to get 3-6 systems in one 6 MHz TV channel; whereas on our top of the line system, it’s now 15 in one channel. But we’re going to just keep pushing that number up higher, so sometime in the future, hopefully if you can just find one open TV channel, you’ll be able to accommodate enough frequencies to do a show. Ed: Okay, we’ll finish it off by saying that in any situation, where you are dealing with a reputable manufacturer such as Shure and a local agent such as Now Sound, it’s a case of you’re buying from a reputable dealer, a reputable brand, you’re going to get the service, the support if something needs to be done because of a government change in frequency regulations. Christopher: And it’s also important that that manufacturer actually offers a wide variety of frequency ranges available, so that if you find out the one you’re in is not the right one, you have to hope that they offer the one that is the right one. Not all brands do that; some brands only offer 1 or 2 or 3 choices. We try to offer as many as possible for that country. So by offering the full possible range of solutions, then if you find out, ooops, I’m in the wrong spot for this city, NZVN hopefully we can address that.
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IN CRITICAL PRODUCTION SITUATIONS EVERY MOMENT MATTERS. The new addition to Shure product portfolio not only offers unparalleled sound quality and revolutionary features, but also provides flexibility and durability for ENG, field and studio production professionals. In critical broadcast and media production situations, Shure has the total solution for you. Learn more at www.shure.com/asia
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UR5
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VP82
Shotgun Microphone
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Kessler Fusion for Dolly Shop We’re here at Kessler Fusion with Eric Kessler. Ed: My goodness, it must be your company Eric? Eric: Yes it is. Ed: Now what we’ve got here, because we’ve never seen this before – I would classify as a mini technocrane, but this looks very cool and I guess it’s on a small sliding track here, but you could have this track as long as you like? Eric: Yes, as long as you like and we have different sliders, full size dolly that you can adapt the system to. Really what Fusion is, is just the motors and the control system. So the mechanics of it can be changed to whatever format that you like.
Eric: Up to 25 pounds. You can put an ALEXA, RED.
Ed: And you can put quite a large camera on there, or what’s your weight?
Ed: Okay, and so your track, and there’s no limitation on the length of your track?
Eric Kessler.
Eric: Yes, 1,000 feet, that’s just because of the belt length; that’s as long as we can get the belt. Ed:
Can you go up hills?
Eric: Oh yes, you can go straight up vertically. You can see here on our shuttle pod mini, obviously we could have it straight up and down. Ed: Aaaah so it’s not just sitting on the track, it’s actually grabbing the track? Eric: Right. You can hang it upside down, go vertical, whatever you like. Ed:
Wow. And the beauty is that you programme the moves?
Eric: Right and it’s exact repeatability over any time. Once you create the motion, you can save that bar, you can play it back over 20 seconds and then shoot it as a time lapse over four hours if you like. That would be the exact same path. Ed: And you can manually adjust the way points if you decide that “oh no, I didn’t get that one right”? Eric: Yes, you can scrub any point, grab the line, drag it into position, in real time the camera will move and you can tune in, just what you like. Ed: Now, also as part of the software package, you can perform some camera control? Eric: Yes, you can do zoom focus aperture – as long as your lens has zoom focus aperture external controls – by using our focus motors; or our F.I.Z mode which is just you know focus / iris / zoom. Ed:
Have you actually tried it out on any shoots?
Eric: Yes, on the TimeScapes film. We went out with them; that was a film that we sponsored with Tom Lowe and we took it out in the desert and shot for three days with it out there and produced some really nice pieces for him. Ed: So what does this do that, for example, a Steadicam operator couldn’t do? Page 63
Eric: Actually it is made to be out in the desert and it can handle some rain. I wouldn’t submerge it, but weatherproof yes, even our connections. You can see there’s an O-ring inside here and that it’s pushed to connect to watertight connections and they’re very solid. I mean, you can hang the whole system by it, so it’s very strong. Ed:
So you’ve thought of everything?
Eric: Well we hope we’ve thought of everything. If not, we’ll be reminded of what we missed and we’ll correct that at a later time. Ed: How does the Revolution Head interface with the motorised slider? Eric: If the question is, how do you mount it to a slider – you can either bolt it directly or we have a quick release plate kit that you can just snap in and out off the slider. Ed: Okay, and in terms of time lapse, slo-mo with the controller? Eric: Well obviously it’s just the ability to set specific key frames and have it repeat every time. So it’s mostly going to be for visual effects, stop motion, time lapse and compositing – your visual effects compositing. Ed: In other words, you can have total control over your frames? Eric: Yes, everything. Ed: Okay, now this looks a little bit delicate to me, I wouldn’t imagine this out in the desert … it’s not going to get much rain on it, but a bit of sand blowing in?
Eric: Obviously slow motion is going to be the same, in my opinion, as running live motion, just how quickly you can do it. If you want to shoot slow motion, you’ve got to move very, very quickly. Our speed limits are on our website as far as specs go, so I guess it would depend on what you’re shooting as to whether or not that falls within what you want to do. Time lapse … there are time lapse capabilities, so the question is “can you do it?” Yes you can – you can do an actual live recording and NZVN play that path back over any time that you like.
Sony at NAB2012 - Part One For Sony, we have Nick Buchner from Sony AustraliaNew Zealand Marketing and Scott Webster from NZ. Ed: Nick, the buzz around the Press Room has been Sony 4K F65 and it’s big for you too? Nick: It certainly is. Last year we launched the F65 here at NAB, the world’s first true 4K camera. We commenced deliveries of the camera several months ago and it’s now actually out there being used … there’s at least one Hollywood movie After Earth that has now wrapped having shot on the camera; Oblivion is currently shooting with Tom Cruise and there’s also a picture shooting in New Zealand The Evil Dead remake, which is a Hollywood picture as well. We’ve had television ads shooting in Australia and NZ, plus series starting to look at the camera for TV drama work. So the F65 is moving ahead, but I think one of the major themes that Sony is pushing here is indeed “Beyond HD” including 4K and we’re very keen for people to realise that it’s not all about 4K in and 4K out. You know, 4K is not just something that people who are working in the cinema space need to think about. Of course, that’s a big part of it, but what we are showing here are other ways that 4K can be used, for example, in broadcast. Over the last few years, we’ve shown a concept of several HD cameras locked together to give a spread or a view of an entire football field and then stitched together to give that panoramic view. Ed: I’ve seen that done with 3D? Nick: Initially we showed it just as 2D, with a virtual camera effect and we have subsequently also shown it Page 64
Nick Buchner with the NEX-FS700.
see from these images, the monitor shows a cut out area and it’s a more than acceptable HD picture. So here’s another use for 4K.
with 3D where in fact, the depth of the pitch or the field is mapped and they can then simulate 3D. It’s very effective. But, from the virtual camera point of view of being able then to zoom in on specific areas of the picture, of course if you’re working with HD pictures initially, you can’t really zoom in very far before the pictures start to fall to pieces. I remember saying to people who we were demonstrating this “what if it was 4K, what if the source cameras were 4K?” and that’s exactly what we’re showing here. We’ve got two F65s locked together to show a football field, so two 4K cameras, and then, in postproduction in this case, not in real time, but as a demonstration of the concept, we’ve stitched those two 4K cameras together and we’re showing here the windows that have been cut out of that total image. We are showing that you can zoom in to a fairly small portion of the image and still get an extremely acceptable HD picture – perfectly good enough for HD broadcast, and yet with enough resolution so you can see the players’ numbers on their jerseys. For example, you could then use tracking software to track players; these are concepts, but it’s all possible. And most importantly the cameras exist, they exist now; the recorders that enable this exist. The real time stitching of two 4K images is really just a function of having enough processing power to be able to do it. I don’t believe we’ve got anything available right now that can do it … Ed: Do it live, yes? Nick: Do it live, as with the HD version that we’re showing at the other end of the stand but, as you can
Ed: Well it’s headroom isn’t it. That’s also what I’ve heard about 4K is that you might not be making a release television programme in 4K, but it gives you that headroom to play around digitally with your picture? Nick: Well that’s another aspect to 4K. Just to finish though on the previous concept, another thought was what if you were to record this stitched picture? That would mean that you had coverage of any incident that happens on the field constantly. So if something happens, if the action play is at this end of the field and something happens there, there’s a fight or something that they want to see, they can still get it, even if the camera guys weren’t there. Ed: That’d be good for Australian League wouldn’t it? Nick: Oh well, you know, the trans-Tasman tests, yes. So again, it’s not all about 4K in, 4K out; this is an HD scenario. Now you just talked about having headroom, that’s very right. Someone shooting a commercial for example can shoot in 4K … and let’s say there are unpredictable elements in what they’re shooting, might be animals or kids or whatever. That gives them the additional coverage area to actually reframe for an HD output and possibly save a shot that they might otherwise just have to reshoot, because someone hasn’t exited the frame at the right point, or positioned in the right way. Ed: But also have that headroom for animation and effects work on it without degrading the picture? Nick: Extreme resolution, yes. Ed: Okay, so that’s using the F65, but is that the only choice that consumers have at the moment if they want to go Sony 4K? Nick: Well right at this moment yes, but at this show we have also launched the NEX-FS700 which is a 4Kready Super35mm sensor camera. Think of it as a “big brother” if you like, to our popular NEX-FS100, with a number of feature improvements and additions. The basics are the same – it’s a modular design with a Sony E-mount for the lens, it’s a Super35mm sensor, but we say 4K-ready because the sensor is capable of 4K output. At this stage, that hasn’t been harnessed and we will have a solution in the future for 4K output from this camera which will be recorded externally, but as for the details of that, that’s basically all I can tell you at this stage. The NEX-FS700 will start shipping from the end of June. Ed: So that’s it, it’s an external option, but it’s a firmware upgrade? Nick: There will be a firmware upgrade required to the camera and there will be some kind of external recording device and we imagine it will be some kind of stream out of the 3G HD-SDI output on the back of the camera. The 4K roadmap for this camera means people are future-proofing themselves if they’re interested to think about how 4K can benefit them in the future. But really, the thing that seems to have got people really stirred up here at NAB is the super slow motion capability of this camera, because this camera is capable of shooting in full high definition at up to 240 frames per second – that’s in 60 Hz, or 200 frames per second in 50 Hz plus it can also go further than that, at 480 and 960 frames per second in 60 Hz, but with decreased vertical resolution. There are examples up here on the screen of the super slow motion and you can see
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it’s very, very creditable and so we’ve had interest from everyone from creative filmmakers to broadcasters who might be producing coverage of action sports – you know BMX or skateboarding or surfing or extreme games or whatever, where they’re only recording highlights packages and things, who think that this is a very cost effective slow motion camera that will come in at around the NZ$12,700 mark. Ed: But it also means they can still use that footage at normal speed if they want to? Nick: Definitely – there are a number of key feature additions to the camera too, which for the creative filmmaker are very welcome. Things like inbuilt ND filters; I’ve mentioned already it has an HD-SDI output so that allows you to record to external devices if you wish; there’s a new more robust design to the topmounted handle; and another key thing is the redesigned handgrip on the camera. What’s interesting about that is there’s a servo zoom rocker on it, so whilst we don’t have any servo-controlled lenses at this stage, I think it gives you an idea of things to come. A
Nick: Well whether it’s Zeiss, Canon or any other DSLR lenses other than Alpha, once you put them on this camera you won’t get autofocus. It’s really important to stress that, in moving to a large frame sensor camera, you need to be very, very, very attentive to your focusing. Certainly for a videographer, for example, used to a normal two-thirds or smaller sensors, focusing can be quite tricky. It’s another set of skills you’ve got to develop and autofocus is probably not something you should just dismiss, because there will be situations where, in fact, it might save your bacon. Ed: Well exactly, I mean the cameras these days are so clever, you should actually rely on their focusing ability to do it for you? Nick: There’s some very nice footage showing here, there’s some surfing that’s been shot by a professional cinematographer, but he used autofocus and he said it was just so easy, it worked perfectly well, it tracked very well. So whilst there is a huge range of third-party adapters to other types of lenses, Canon EF lenses – I keep mentioning Canon because there’s obviously a huge installed base of Canon lenses out there and there’s a whole range of adapters here from Birger, from Metabones and others that allow the Canon EF lenses to be used on this camera, plus also adapters for Nikon lenses, for Leica lenses, etc. But I’m just wanting to stress the value in some shooting situations of being able to choose autofocus on the camera, in this case when using either the E-mount lenses or adapting up to the Sony Alpha lenses. Ed: Okay, now we’ve moved onto a set that Sony have setup that is really subtly lit. It’s a little bit orange and I wouldn’t say “dim” light, but it’s a very filmic light. Nick, why is this?
bit like when we launched the F3, it had a servo rocker on the side and people said “wow, well what’s that going to do?” Well some months later we launched a servo zoom lens for that camera. But the modular design remains and I think it’s a very powerful camera at a very good price, building on the reputation for image quality established by the NEX-FS100. Ed: And it’s good to have something as well as the F65 there on the horizon? Nick: That’s right – and another key point is that we are showing these cameras here at NAB with lots of third-party accessories – lenses, recorders, mounting equipment. You know, there’s an entire global industry in making widgets to make these cameras and others work in ways that people like – different types of brackets, handles, mounts, etc. One key Sony accessory we are showing is the LA-EA2 lens mount adapter. This adapts the E-mount used on both the FS100 and FS700 to a Sony Alpha lens mount, that’s the Sony Digital SLR lens mount, and we’ve got quite a range of very nice Alpha prime and zoom lenses, including some Zeiss designs. The thing about this adapter that’s unique over using other adapters to other brands of mount, is that it preserves the autofocus and enhances iris control. So this camera is capable of autofocusing with E-mount lenses and using that adapter, also with Alpha lenses. Ed: That would speed up your workflow immensely compared to taking your standard Zeiss glass for a DSLR?
Nick: I’d say probably rather than dim light, it’s shaped light and contoured light. The lighting for film shooting is quite different to television, so rather than have one big set for all our camera range, we’ve separated off the cinema type cameras here to a special set for this year, where we can show off the NEX-FS700, the PMW-F3 and F65 on a set that’s been lit more typically as it would be for a film situation. Ed: Right we’re onto a section here, the SRMASTER section and this is production workflow? Nick: SRMASTER encompasses all our recording and output options for the SR Memory system, which is the new high-grade storage system that’s used on the F65 and also on the SR-R1 portable recorder that we have that can be used on lower level cameras, like the F3 or indeed anybody’s camera that has an SDI output. This is based around a new type of memory card that we call SR Memory. It comes in various sizes and various speeds – at its maximum, shortly we’ll release a 1 terabyte card with about a 5 gigabits per second sustained transfer rate, so with the F65, if you’re talking about doing slow motion shooting at 120fps in full 16bit RAW 4K, then you’re talking about an awful lot of data. So this memory system’s been designed to be very robust to ensure the integrity of the data and the footage is secure, and also to support those very high data rates. But, as I said, there is a range of data rate cards down to slower rates – it’s not all about the top end of town, we have a portable recorder that in Aussie $ terms is about $15,000. It’s designed for use on, as I said, cameras like the F3 or any camera that provides an SDI output. So SRMASTER is the term we use to cover the whole workflow situation, working with the SR Memory cards; that means everything from a simple piece of software such as our RAW Viewer, that’s supplied with the F65, that can be used to view the
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PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS
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NEX-FS700P Sony is pushing the creative boundaries once more with the new NEX-FS700/K FullHD Super Slow Motion camcorder, the latest in Sony’s line-up of NXCAM interchangeable E-Mount camcorders. The new Super 35mm model is designed for high-speed shooting, capable of capturing footage at up to 960 frames per second. Features include 3G HD-SDI output and built-in ND filters. Additionally, it also offers several creative options, shooting styles, and enhanced ergonomics – all based on customer feedback – to deliver a flexible production tool that can fit seamlessly into a variety of shooting applications.
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45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Auckland
files. We then have a number of partner companies here, Colorfront and YoYotta, both of whom support the F65 RAW files and these are on-set data management packages that allow various forms of file output from the footage that’s been shot on the camera. For example, the director might want to take some of the files back to his caravan to do a bit of a rough cut that night on his laptop to see whether he’s got what he needs, or it might just be dailies viewing by the camera crew. Ed: So is all this workflow different from what traditionally a production house would have because it’s more difficult, or because it’s a different workflow? Nick: It’s because it’s a different workflow. In the past, if we’d been working with tape, if you wanted to view the footage on set, what did you do – you put the tape into some form of player, play it back and there you go. If someone says “I’d like to take a DVD of that away to do something”, you burn a DVD or dub to another type of tape. Here we’re working now with data, it’s a different sort of level. So, yes, it does change the workflow, but what you’re trying to achieve at the end of the day is the same thing. If we think back to the film days, what did “dailies” mean? The dailies were the footage that had been shot the day before, had gone to the lab and been printed to a one-light print or more recently probably transferred to some sort of video format, so that the crew and the director and producer could have a look and see that everything’s going well. Here it’s all about on-set data management and, in some cases, these are very sophisticated systems that allow you to do all sorts of things on-set which may only be required in a high-end Hollywood production. Ed: But that data management process can be used with other formats at a lower level, once you understand the process? Nick: Certainly, and in its simplest form you may just wish to save the data that you’ve shot during the day, secure it away, send it off for ingest at the postproduction house and not worry too much about looking at the dailies. It all depends on how the production wants to work. We’re also showing here native F65 RAW editing, working with the RAW file produced by the F65 and we’ve again partnered with major players, like Adobe, Avid and others, so that that file can be read and edited. We’re also showing colour grading – same story again, we’ve partnered with companies like DaVinci, Assimilate and Filmlight, so that they can all work with that F65 RAW file in the grading suite. Ed: I’m sure Adobe’s happy with that, that you’re showing F65 RAW footage being edited on Premiere?
is a relatively small handheld HD 422 camera, recording HD 422 50 megabits per second to SXS card. That’s the same format as the XDCAM optical disc based cameras are recording and that’s also what some of the larger card-based cameras are recording. It’s a great little camera for journalists, for entry level documentarians and corporate video – that type of thing, who believe they need to acquire content in 422, possibly because they’re doing some heavy postproduction, visual effects work such as compositing green screen, or whatever, where 422 capture will give them some advantages. Ed: So this is a slightly different path – I mean if we start off with XDCAM, initially it was known as the disc format, as the spinning optical disc. Then there was the EX range, which is a “flavour” of XDCAM but onto SXS cards. Now you’ve also got in your stable this new camera with …? Nick: Well that’s true, but prior to this camera came the PMW-500 which is a shoulder mount CCD camera that records to card, but can record either the same file format as the disc cameras, that’s HD 422 50 megabits per second, or the XDCAM EX 35 megabits per second codec as well. That camera has been out for a couple of years now and it does both. This new camera is aimed at the handheld market, people who need a very compact camera, so it’s not really a big jump in terms of codec. Of course, we’ve offered that in the PMW-500 in a larger shoulder mount camera and now we’ve got a handheld model. But 422 I suppose has become a little bit of a buzz word in recent times. There have been other manufacturers who are offering 422 cameras and, in some cases, people do have to look carefully at their understanding of that and what it actually means. As an example, take the very well regarded XDCAM EX cameras, the EX1 and EX3 – now there are thousands of hours of footage from those cameras airing all round the world, yet they are not 422, but they have an outstanding reputation for picture quality. However, in some situations, the extra colour information that’s available from the 422 signal means that, in some environments, people want that picture quality and this is a camera that will do that. Ed: So the PMW-100 …? Nick: Okay, the PMW-100 is recording to card exactly the same as the PMW-500 larger shoulder mount camera is capable of doing, switchable between a 422
Nick: Yes, these are just examples of our partnerships, because when you introduce any new kind of file format, obviously it’s very important to have support across the industry, not only from the manufacturers of the editing and grading products, but also the people who use them. Part of our mission is to let the post houses know that working with this new format is not necessarily as difficult as they might think. Ed: Now we’re back to cameras and I saw an early Press Release on this little baby and I was very impressed? Nick: This is the PMW-100. This is our first HD 422 handheld camcorder, basically now the “baby” member of the XDCAM family. So this
Scott Webster holding the PMW-100. Page 69
50 megabits per second mode or a 35 megabits per second 420 mode. Ed: Right – Scott, do you want to add anything on that camera? Scott: Well the PMW-100 makes a great second camera for anyone working with XDCAM. We’ve got such a large installed base of XDCAM within New Zealand – a lot of freelance guys running around with PDW-700 and this is just an easy second camera to introduce into that workflow, because the format is the same and obviously with the TVNZ adoption of the PMW -500 and 700, they can also have this as a nice low cost second camera for their crews. Nick: It’s ideal for compact situations, such as a backup camera in the News car, you know these sorts of situations, but also for one man video journalists, documentary makers etc. It’s not all about broadcast, it’s also well suited for corporate and educational productions.
Nick: Yes it really does – here’s me doing a very dodgy handheld pan which, on the monitor, is quite stable; it certainly assists. For handheld situations and shooting from moving vehicles and boats etc, it’s a really nice feature. The other very unique feature that this camera has is a built-in projector, as we’re demonstrating here … the camera actually has a projector built into the side of it. It could be quite useful where more than one or two people want to review some footage or a group of students in a small environment want to quickly review what they’re doing. The target market for this is everything from schools and journocam users to people who want something special. I mean, by the time you take off the bracket at the top and the XLR input box,
Ed: So really it’s part of the Sony family, it shares many similarities with the previous cameras? Nick: Well it does, but it is a third inch single chip camera whereas the existing EX cameras are both 3 chip cameras. But it has a lot of features in common with the EX1 in terms of its controls, audio controls, assignable buttons, the way you control iris and focus, etc. Very much part of the Sony family, but a new class if you like within XDCAM. Ed: Okay, now going down into what is a really little camera, but you’d still call this a professional camera Nick? Nick: We do, in fact this is the new entry point to our NXCAM range – NXCAM being our range of professional cameras that record with the AVCHD codec, but provide professional features such as XLR inputs for audio, etc. So we have a very successful model in the HXR-NX70P which is our weatherproof and dustproof model that was launched here last year and so this new HXR-NX30P slots in below that model, with a lot of similar features, but some very unique new ones as well. It’s a very small camera, priced around NZ$3,000 which is very good for a camera this powerful. Probably one of the key killer features is the Balanced Optical SteadyShot and here we’ve got the camera running on a vibrating table where you can see how unstable the picture is, and this is the stabilised picture here on the monitor. You can see how rock solid it is – even if I start getting a bit aggressive with the table, you can see it takes a fair bit before the SteadyShot loses track of the subject. Ed: And that’s it, I mean we’ve seen some fairly dodgy optical stabilisation systems years back ( not from Sony of course ) … Nick: Never! Ed: … but I can concur – I don’t think I could wobble the camera that much …? Nick: No, so I think for small handheld shooting situations, this Balanced Optical SteadyShot system is very powerful. It’s one of the key things that just adds to what’s already a very powerful little camera. Ed: Does it still work when you’re doing a pan … does it take out a lot of wobbles on a pan?
you’ve got quite a tiny camera for doing covert stuff … that also has some possibilities, the SteadyShot would help there. Ed: And it’s true HD? Nick: It’s true HD – AVCHD, up to 28 megabits per second depending on what recording format you choose. It’s also got uncompressed PCM audio … Ed: And it’s going on to what sort of card? Nick: It’s got 96 GB of built-in memory and you can use either a SDHC card or Sony Memory Stick for removable storage. They’re available in sizes up to about 64 GB these days. Scott: And the good thing is you can use the camera in the “small mode”, without the lens hood or the microphone package or the XLR connections there, and it really is a very, very small form factor. You can put it in your pocket. Once you add all the bits and pieces on it, it’s looking like a big camera. Nick: Well it doesn’t look too big, but it certainly adds to the features as soon as you get the XLR inputs and levelling controls and for the audio and phantom power and that sort of thing, plus microphone … but also, that includes quite a nice handheld bracket; so if you want to be able to carry the camera handheld, it adds to the package. So while I think the two killer features are the Balanced Optical SteadyShot and the projector, they just add to NZVN what is already a very capable little camera. More from Sony in June.
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