OCTOBER 2014
Vol 207
I B C 2014
was simply a very good show. There are always new products of interest unveiled in Amsterdam and not only by European manufacturers who don’t appear at NAB. The traditional big areas for us of cameras, lighting and storage solutions showed further growth, but the overall winner was video over IP. Some even commented that this was going to be more ubiquitous than broadcast in two years – but then 3D was going to be huge once upon a time too. However, a wise person would take heed of IP developments even if it were only to ensure that their new camera was IP Blackmagic’s URSA featured large at the show. capable. There were many small and large solutions on offer and you will be The first question that I want to start off with, before we presented with a fine selection in these pages over the go into the new product from Blackmagic, and there next two issues. certainly is some new product here at IBC – we’re continually amazed and impressed by how quickly We will start with Blackmagic Design who, yet again, sent product gets to market … there’s one product that hasn’t shockwaves through the established players with their acquisition and innovation actions. Read on. come to market yet and people are desperate to get their hands on it, and that’s the URSA. What’s the shipping news?
Blackmagic Design
We are at Blackmagic Design with Stuart Ashton, a director of EMEA ( Europe, Middle East and Africa ) for Blackmagic. Ed: Now Stuart, you’re going to do your best to answer some of my questions even though you are not responsible for our region, so I promise to be gentle.
Stuart: Well it’s actually already there in part. We started shipping the product around about 2-3 weeks ago. We’ve released our first few cameras into the marketplace and we’ve started to see some of the results from those cameras coming back to us, which we’re very happy about. We’re happy with the manufacturing process, there’s obviously a process now which requires us to ramp up manufacturing to start meeting those back
body of the URSA to benefit from that 10 inch screen, the audio monitors, the audio connections, the 12GSDI output. So the HDMI module on the front basically allows that. You can take an HDMI out of any camera into the URSA and utilise the whole back end of the camera. Ed: Or example? Stuart:
any
head
for
Yes, absolutely.
Ed: So even a GoPro with an HDMI out you could plug that into your URSA body if you really wanted to. I’m sure there will be someone who will want to? Stuart: Any camera that has an HDMI out will be able to benefit from that. Ed: Okay. Now along with the URSA there have been some improvements in the other cameras?
Stuart Ashton from Blackmagic.
orders. Like anything, you don’t want to go and build 10,000 of something and then drop them on everybody’s toes … you know you have to get them out into the marketplace and start filtering those through. So anybody who has an order for an URSA at the moment will start to see delivery very shortly. Ed: Excellent. Now already there are at least four models that I’ve noticed. Just run us through the variations on those – and I think this might even be a new one, there’s one there with a body and a Canon camera connected to the front of it? Stuart: Well the URSA camera was always designed to be a camera that could be very versatile in a number of different ways – I guess the first being that we announced an EF and a PL mount version. That was predominantly because the lenses that would work on such a body are generally the larger size lenses, so lenses from Canon, lenses from ARRI, lenses from Zeiss and so on. So the EF version is the one that’s actually just started shipping; the PL version is coming very, very shortly … and then we’ve got two others which we announced at NAB which are the B4 mount, which we’ve not given any indication as to when that’s going to be out, but we made a commitment at NAB that it would be a product that we would be doing; it was a bit of a tech preview really. And then the other one is the model which is the body only with an HDMI input mount on the front … and going back to what I was just saying in terms of having versatility, our thoughts were that, wouldn’t it be great if you could attach a third party camera, whether it be a DSLR or whether it be a different type of camera, a video camera, to the actual
Stuart: Yes, we obviously have got the other two cameras which are the 2½K and the 4K and then we’ve got the little Pocket Cinema Camera as well. When we set out to design the 2½K about three years ago, we initially thought “let’s produce a RAW base camera with a PL mount” and it wasn’t until we really started to do some market research, listen to what customers are using the cameras for and where we thought that camera would work, that we decided to go down the route of the EF, mainly because a lot of DSLR users were the guys who were really going to gravitate towards that camera. Ed: What were they looking for … were they wanting the RAW capability or …? Stuart: I think the main one being that they wanted wide latitude and they wanted RAW capture capability and they wanted a camera that was engineered and designed for digital film. I think that we achieved that very well in delivering first a 2½K camera that, within a matter of months, we saw guys going out in the field, not only with our camera, but with a DSLR as well, and using their lenses, their group of lenses to interchange between the two types of bodies. We really wanted not to destroy the DSLR market like many people said that we were trying to do – it was about giving people options, you know, as the right camera for the right job, and in some cases you might go “actually, you know what, this body might suit this process better” and when you started to see two cameras being used with the same lenses, it meant that a guy didn’t have to go out and invest in getting multiple types of lenses and increasing his backpack to
Go www.finnzed.co.nz and follow the link to NZVN for more news.
LOTS OF REALLY GOOD STUFF ACTUALLY. Page 2
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Ed: Now one of the other areas that has come up – a dealer comment that the little pocket camera gets very hot sometimes when it’s being used a lot. Have you heard of this before? Stuart: It’s not something that we’re familiar with in terms of it overheating or becoming too hot to handle. The Pocket Cinema Camera of all the cameras that we have is the one that’s probably being used in the most versatile way. It’s being used by everybody from the guy next door to feature films and they are using it for long, long periods of time in very tricky and awkward situations – it’s become a real workhorse.
store these extra lenses in. what we wanted.
So we achieved exactly
But coming back to the original decision of a PL mount camera, we felt that once we’d done the EF and once we’d done the micro four-thirds version, the next step was to go in and do the PL mount. So at IBC we’ve announced two cameras – the 2½K PL and the 4K PL, and that means now you get access to all those beautiful PL lenses plus 20, 30, 40 years with the vintage lenses that you couldn’t access before with an EF or micro four-thirds mount. Ed: It sounds as though it’s very important that your customers are educated in the range of cameras that are available and to pick the best one for their needs. Is this where you do rely on a dealer network? Stuart: The dealer network is hugely important to us because they also have access to third party lenses, third party accessories and they have a wide experience of selling to customers of all different needs and at all different levels. As a manufacturer, our aim is to ensure that we provide a number of different solutions so that a customer can make a calculated decision on their purchase. Sometimes that decision may be based upon price; sometimes that decision may be made upon format and ergonomics; another time it might be made on what they already own and how that fits into their current setup. Ed:
Can they access information on your website?
There are examples where, over the last few months, we’ve had some very high profile customers using it in very condensed and confined environments, and it produces great results. So in terms of actually overheating or being too hot, it’s not something that we see as being a common thing with the camera. We would obviously have to dig more into that in terms of if there’s a particular issue which a certain customer has seen. Ed: Now of course the big piece of information that was released just before the show was yet another acquisition and that’s Fusion or Eyeon … what’s the correct name for it? Stuart: Eyeon is the company and it’s been around for about 26 years. It’s really become a key player within the Hollywood feature film market in that if you talk to anybody within DFX or compositing they’ll tell you that Fusion is really the Rolls Royce, the driving product for compositing, for Paint, for 3D particles and really kind of the stuff that you see that makes a feature film extra special. When we started to look at Fusion, we realised that there were a lot of similarities between Eyeon and DaVinci. When we bought DaVinci 4½ years ago, we set off on this new path to bring what was a Hollywood tool to the mass market and really educate people about colour correction. At that time, colour correction was seen as being something for the rich guys in Hollywood and it wasn’t really part of the process that was considered to be expected of everybody. I think what we have been able to do along with other
Stuart: You can find information about all the technical specs of the cameras on <blackmagicdesign.com> Ed: Yes, but it’s understanding those. Is there any training information? Stuart: We don’t actually offer any direct training from our website. Ed:
Then it should be the dealer?
Stuart: And this is where the dealers are doing a fantastic job. I think that there are a lot of courses out there, there are a lot of dealers who really add value to the process and in delivering their understanding of what some of the terminology is and where the benefits are comparative to maybe other cameras in the marketplace. So we very heavily rely upon them to do their bit in the process as well. Page 4
companies that have seen an interest around colour correction in the last 3-4 years, is now make that a practice to most productions whether it be documentary drama corporate or short film or feature, and we look at Fusion and we think to ourselves well how many people actually take their project into a compositing environment; how many people actually do use a compositor, and with the experience that we’ve gained from Resolve, our aim is to educate people in understanding that this is probably the best kept secret in Hollywood, but also probably the best kept secret in your workflow that you don’t actually know about. Ed: I know in other companies, they’ve made great success about incorporating their colour correction and their effects into one package. Are we going to see this as two separates softwares that Blackmagic’s going to sell, or some sort of package with DaVinci? Stuart: Well it’s very early days, I mean the acquisition only happened 10 days ago … Ed:
Oh, well, come on?
Stuart: I think that the options are open on a number of different levels. The first thing to do is to ensure that the product is going to fit within our current product range and it absolutely meets that criteria. We’re going to now take that product and take the development team with all our 26 years of experience and we’re going to sit down with them and start to talk about what can we now do to make this product more available and more accessible to our existing and to new customers. Ed:
Oh I know, add an editing package?
Stuart: Well we can go to Resolve for that you see. The editing features within Resolve have now become extensive and, at the show, we’ve announced another dozen or so more features within the editing environment in Resolve.
may be that they ask you to return that product for repair or replacement for something new. Ed: And if you have bought it from a good dealer who has looked after you in the past, maybe they’ll be able to lend you something in the meantime, but that’s up to that relationship that you have with your dealer? Stuart: We’ve got a lot of value added resellers throughout the world, and sometimes the dealer doesn’t want to be sidestepped or stepped over – he’s invested a relationship in you as a customer, as much as you’ve invested a relationship in him as a vendor and I often have conversations with resellers where they say to me that if somebody contacts you or has an issue, they’ll make us aware of it, because next time they call me up for a product and they want to buy a product, I want to be in the picture and I want to know what’s going on. So it really depends on the circumstances of you as a customer; it also depends on the relationship that your reseller has with you yourself and we’re happy to mould and adjust to whichever suits you best. Ed: Fantastic. And I can comment from one dealer in New Zealand who told me about his Blackmagic sales, that they’re going “gangbusters” and it’s a lot of the “glue” product, a lot of those little boxes, the little converters that you guys have made for a long, long time still going really well, still very important. What’s happened since NAB – any additions? Stuart: Well IBC obviously is another platform for us to announce new products. We announced a new SmartView 4K monitor, which is fully Ultra HD, it’s 2160 and it’s 60p; it’s got 12G-SDI on there with loop through as well as the ability for when those 12G optical
There’s definitely a trend to go with Blackmagic in terms of editing and colour correction and now there’s the compositing – how we align all those in the future is yet to be determined, but I guess anybody who is interested in following Blackmagic and what we’re doing, or anybody who is interested in looking in the compositing world right now, should be very excited as we are, because in four years we’ve done 600-700 features for Resolve and we’ve really kind of brought it to the forefront of the industry and I really think that Fusion is going to go in the same direction. Ed: Okay, we’ve talked about dealers and how important the relationship with a dealer is for helping you choose the best piece of equipment for the job that you’re doing and obviously within Blackmagic cameras there’s quite a range there, so there’s a lot of flexibility. However, what happens when something goes wrong – the piece of equipment doesn’t work. Are you wanting the customer to take it back to the dealer or do you have another channel? Stuart: Well the decision is up to you as an end user. What we try to do is keep communication lines as open as possible. If you have got a good relationship with your dealer and your dealer is educated in supporting you in that process, then by all means, go back to your dealer as the first port of contact. If you want to actually contact Blackmagic directly then you need to call your local Blackmagic office and speak with our technical support department, and our technical support department will troubleshoot those issues with you and they will look into trying to resolve the problem. If the problem can’t be resolved, then it Page 6
more on page 9
Page 7
Lenses and accessories shown are not included
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Stuart: Yes, the way we sometimes talk about it over here in Europe is it’s the best HD product in the market, but it also does Ultra HD. Ed:
That’s being very modest.
Stuart: Well we have to try and work to obviously deliver high quality products to a wide audience of customers.
fibre connections come available, it will actually accept 12G optical fibre. As well AC and DC power options, you can mount it on a VESA mount. It has built-in look up tables; it has a safe area on there as well, plus horizontal and vertical blanking. So we’ve really tried to create a high end broadcast monitor at a price that’s affordable to the market and in Euros that comes in at about Є1425 I think. We announced a new multiviewer – MultiView 16, which again is another Ultra HD product with 16 6G-SDI inputs that allows you to see a 2x2, 3x3 and a 4x4 view of those incoming sources. They can all be mixed and matched in terms of resolution so you can accept SD HD Ultra HD. One of the nice things with that is if you have a 2x2 and you’re viewing that on an Ultra HD monitor, then each of those quadrants is going to be 1080p, so very high quality image at, again, a very affordable price of around about Є1125. We’ve then got a new DeckLink card which is four times faster than the existing DeckLink card and that’s the DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G. That’s got two 12G-SDIs so that will do two simultaneous 2160 at 60p key infill. There’s also going to be an optical fibre module on there as well, and HDMI. So if you’re working with a high end compositor or you’re working with Resolve and you’re looking for a very fast card, this card is going to be right up your street. All the miniconverters, the glue products that you’re talking about, we’ve upgraded all those now to Ultra HD …
You know when you actually look from a global perspective and you take a geographical split, there are some people … I was talking to a Nigerian customer today who is literally just going through the switchover from analogue to digital, and one of the things that you have to be very, very careful of as a manufacturer, is that you don’t neglect people. What we don’t want to do is go right, everything stays Ultra HD and that’s the direction we’re forcing you down. You know you have to be very careful that people may still be in an SD environment or an HD environment. I think you’ve got to give people choices, but you’ve also got to give people that flexibility as well. Ed: Right, a personal question – what’s your favourite bit of kit from Blackmagic. What’s the piece that, if you had a chance to sell or use yourself that you think “wow, these guys have made something that is outstanding”. What would it be? Stuart: That’s a difficult question. All of them are very close to my heart, but I’d say that probably the one for me that would … if I was going out today and I was looking to produce creative content, the product that for me personally I believe I could get the most out of, I’d say is Resolve. I think that when you look at the toolset that that offers you, not just within colour correction, but within editing; and also the fact that we have a development team that has just absolutely rocked it for the last 3-4 years and added everything that is required, and more and more keeps coming all the time. I think that if someone was to give me that and I was to start implementing that, and then they tried to take it away, I’d be wrestling them to the ground and I’d be snatching it back.
Ed: But you don’t have to be using Ultra HD do you – I mean, they’re Ultra HD capable? Stuart: Well the way that we look at it is that Ultra HD shouldn’t be a premium; you shouldn’t pay more just because it’s Ultra HD. The transition of taking a product from HD to Ultra HD is a decision that we’ve made as a manufacturer to give people the latest technology. We don’t want to charge you any more, we want to give you the features that you already had and those extra features. So they’re essentially free updates if you’re in the market for one today to buy. Ed: What it means though is that you only sell the Ultra HD, you don’t need to sell HD because the Ultra HD does it as well?
The Resolve timeline.
Ed: OK, on that recommendation, I’ll be sure and have a look too. NZVN
Page 9
ABonAir for Quinto For Quinto Communications we have Alan McIlwaine at ABonAir. Ed: Alan, we’ve been to this booth before, very recognisable because of a very bright red box that goes on your camera for wireless transmission. What really impressed me while I was reading the brochure to get a bit of background on this, was that Australia features rather a lot in their advertising. You’ve obviously done a sterling job in promoting this product in Australia. Was that difficult for you? Alan: I think to promote any product in Australia is difficult. Ed: Is that to say something about Australians? Alan: Well Australians, like many customers, are very discerning both in quality and price. They want the best value for money that’s available and that applies right across the spectrum from broadcast products to almost the household consumer goods. When it comes to wireless systems such as ABonAir, there’s obviously quite a few of them out there and customers are looking not necessarily for the cheapest one, but the one that offers them really good value for money. And that equates, particularly in wireless work, to robustness of the signal they’re transmitting for the cameras – what the range is going to be like and how robust it’s going to be whenever it gets to the receive point. During many tests with many systems, ABonAir seems to excel in that. Ed: And it seems again, reading the brochure, that there is some software in there that buffers the signal, so if there is a dropout, it resends that little piece of information, so you are covering those dropouts that will occur in any wireless transmission? Alan: That’s right. As I said, robust is the key to any camera wireless transmission system, whether that be for news or sports. One of the new areas that we have found for this camera is in sports production work – horse racing is a very good example of that and right through to many other sporting events. Now to talk to the man himself, Eran Igler, owner of ABonAir. Eran: Hello, lovely to see you here. Ed: Eran, I firstly want to know about this Ferrari stripy thing that you’ve got here. Did you get this when you bought your Ferrari? Eran: Unfortunately I was unable to buy the Ferrari, but I will do so shortly, I promise you that. All our products are red, just to remind me that I need to buy a Ferrari. Ed: Now I have sat down and read the brochures as you instructed, and it seems as though you are right on the money in terms of fitting that middle market, fitting that market that’s not the most expensive and not the cheapest option, but it is a robust product that has the ability to fix any little transmission errors that might occur, which a cheaper system wouldn’t do. I guess that’s really got to be a major selling feature? Eran: Yes, this was the strategy when we started six years ago. We defined to the development team that we wanted to have the quality of the big players’ product and the robustness of the link and the picture
Alan and Eran Igler.
quality was the No 1 priority for us. But at the same time, we identified that there is a gap in the market between the $70-100K systems and the $2000-3000 systems – there’s nothing in between. So we defined to the R&D team that they not only make a robust and high picture quality system, but they also have to feed their second tier channels and broadcasters and system integrators who need systems that are reliable, but can’t afford to pay 70-100K per system. So that was their product definition six years ago and I’m happy to say that we’ve achieved that. Ed: And it’s using the H.264 codec – that’s been a real winner for you? Eran: Yes, this is using H.264 codec but this is based on a DSP, so we are able to change the codec to be specifically robust for wireless application. That means that the codec can mitigate errors very strongly. So if there is a problem, if there is a noise, if there is a skip of a frame, it knows how to compensate and hide those so the picture on the screen will always be perfect. Our team invested a lot of time and effort, not only on the radio to be robust and reliable, but also on the codec, the encoder and decoder to be suitable for this kind of application. Ed: To me, the proof of that is that it’s used in the MotoGP in Australia, and MotoGP is not going to use something that is going to downgrade their pictures – it’s got to be the best quality? Eran: Yes. Actually we are very proud of the stability and the picture quality that we have. We have a long list of customers from MotoGP to NASCAR racing to NBA basketball teams, to FIFA that are using our system in tough events and appreciate the picture quality. Also this year just at IBC, we introduced a MIMO system – that means our system is transmitting on 2 channels all the time so the system is double the bandwidth of normal systems. Ed: Is that a diversity system? Eran: It’s a MIMO. Actually, diversity means you select only one of the receivers at each time. This is a MIMO technology, that means both receivers receive and combine the signal together to have double the energy in the reception, and because of that, we are capable of having a more robust link that also captures reflection from the walls so you don’t necessarily have to be in clear line of sight. It can be near line of sight and behind the wall and you still have a perfect reception.
Page 10
Ed: Now back to Alan – I understand there’s a big show coming up in Sydney very shortly, all about broadcasting sports, and you’re going to feature this at that show? Alan: That’s correct. The broadcast market has expanded; originally it was television stations and now the market has expanded out to include content providers and many other niche facets and one of the growing and very important ones is in the world of sports.
Ed: But it works in the diversity style in that you only need one of those channels really to get a good picture, but you’re compensating for any errors involved in one of those channels? Eran: That is correct. We can work with one channel as it was previously with the 300 family, but now with the 400 family, we can work with one channel, but we have two, so all the time the system is enhanced, the reception, because we have two channels. Also another thing we introduced this year was a new codec which tends to be more in the picture quality. So now our picture quality is around 10dB better. This is amazing quality that we think is better than most solutions that you can find here in the IBC show. Ed: But it’s still based on the H.264?
So this year, for the first time in Melbourne, there’s going to be a sportscasting exhibition and Quinto have taken a stand at this. It’s going to cover all facets of sport and we have got a stand there on which we will be featuring the ABonAir products because we see a move worldwide towards, not only the broadcasting of the sports matches themselves, but also teams using video for analysis of the events and analysis of their player performances. When you have equipment such as the ABonAir wireless equipment, then that becomes a very valuable tool to any football team. Ed: Because it brings the cost way down but still maintains that broadcast quality? Alan: Well you want to see what’s happening, but at a reasonable price and importantly, you want to see what’s happening in high quality. It’s no use having a very cheap system and then suddenly you’ve got packet losses all over the place; you want to see the robust signal there. NZVN
Eran: Yes, this is H.264 but we improve the codec again to get better picture quality. Ed: Now the other thing I notice that I guess was released this year, was your fibre – how you cleverly used fibre in the system to separate the truck from the antennae in the stadium? Eran: Yes, this is actually based on a lot of feedback we got from customers. Customers told us that they have the problem that the OB truck is always parked outside of the stadium, but they want to place the antenna inside the stadium and for that, they need to place long, expensive and difficult to use RF cables, that also contribute to attenuation of the signal. We came up with a solution where we put the antennae inside the stadium and we have what we call the fibre coverage extender that connects to these antennae. The output of the fibre coverage extender is a fibre that you can pull up to 10 kilometres and put the OB truck anywhere in the parking lot and you still get all the signal and all the antennae inside the stadium. This enables a very easy quick and cheap installation in the stadium event. But, on top of that, it enables customers to use in a multi-venue scenario, they put one fibre coverage extender inside the stadium and another one in either the parking lot, or in a camping area near the site, and can cover every place with just a single transmitter. So the cameraman can go in the morning to the camping area and then in the afternoon, or when the game starts, inside and still be working with the same OB van with one media centre. Ed: And even more applicable to a track situation where you’ve got a big area that you’ve got to cover? Eran: Exactly that, you’re absolutely correct. Page 12
Marshall for Quinto For Quinto, we are at Marshall Electronics and we have Devan Cress. Ed: Now Devan, I came past the other day and immediately my eye spotted some little cameras there. You’ve had cameras for some time, you’ve had the security type cameras, but these little ones …? Devan: These little ones are built for the broadcast market. These are miniature HD-SDI cameras that can fit into the palm of your hand. These have list costs that are really attractive. They have HD-SDI as well as composite video output. What’s nice is that you don’t have any external boxes to do the control on something like this; everything is an onscreen menu, the control the joystick is built into the camera, I can adjust the white balance, the colour, the resolutions that I’ll be using, so in one very small form factor, you’re able to get an HD-SDI high quality up to 1080p 50 signal out. You also have the added benefit of easy exchange of lenses. We use two forms of lenses – an M12 lens and we have about 12 of those available, so you can specify if you want a wide-angle or a close-up view; we can certainly change those, they simply unscrew and screw back on. What’s new at the IBC show here is that we now have a CS mount. So now there are not just 12 lenses available, there’s thousands of lenses available to fit just about any and every application for a camera like this. Ed: We’ve got to make a comparison here with the GoPro where you’ve got everything built into one and obviously they’re very, very popular, but these provide another solution because, well the interchangeable lenses, the higher quality output that comes from that camera head, but it also has remote recording? Devan: Sure, absolutely. So we might see these being used in a reality TV show of some sort. You would put some of these in the car. It’s quite nice to be able to output via HD-SDI. If you have a product like the GoPro, the GoPro requires a converter to change to an HD-SDI signal. That can become a point of failure and obviously in a recording session, you can’t have points of failure; you need to have the most robust solution that you possibly can. The Marshall pure HD-SDI output on this certainly creates a robust solution that is giving more and more filmmakers the confidence that they need to use these types of cameras in those applications. Ed: And to monitor those you’ve got the solution for that too? Devan: So to monitor those, yes, that’s what Marshall is best known for. These camera top monitors can be associated or paired with these cameras so that you can simply see the signal via a confidence monitor, to make sure that it’s coming through. Ed: And all the way up to 4K?
Devan: Marshall has got into the 4K field. We have a number of 4K monitors that are on display here. We’re doing a few things that are unique to try to bring the price point down in 4K monitoring. We’re doing 4 sizes – a 17 inch, a 24 inch, a 27 inch and a 31 inch size. When you look at our 17 and our 24 inch size monitors, they have multiple functions. They can be based as a quad view monitor, or they can take in a 2K or a 4K signal. We’re inputting 4K via 4 3G HD-SDI inputs. What we do is we seamlessly stitch all of those together and then we scale them to fit the monitor. So for the 17 and the 24 inch monitor, those are actually 1920x1080 panels and then we scale the 4K signal to fit the monitor. On the 27 inch, that is a 2560x1440 panel – once again we scale to fit it. What’s new is our 31 inch 4K monitor, which is a true 4096 panel – it’s absolutely spectacular with an 850 nit panel on it. So when you need things like colour grading, 3D LUT in the professional market, Marshall has a 31 inch that is available. We’ve really brought down the price points on these products; you look at comparable products made by other companies and they’re 2-3 times as much as what Marshall is producing this at. So as this market opens up, we’re seeing more and more people and more cameras and more filming in 4K … Marshall is ready for that. Ed: And from what I’ve discovered at this show, there is a difference between 4K and Ultra High Definition? Devan: Absolutely. That’s where I was clear to mention the 4096. If you take a UHD signal, you’re not going to have as high a resolution. It’s not what the cameras are recording in. You have to be able to see the full field of view; you can’t just go to a Best Buy or a consumer panel, get a UHD panel and see what the RED cameras are actually filming; you have to have a true 4096 panel to see the full field of view that’s being used by the cameras today. Ed: And we did mention encoders before? Devan: Marshall has been doing encoding and decoding for about 2½-3 years now. One of the largest requests that we have continued to get with our current based solutions was that in the broadcast market they wanted to have embedded audio. So Marshall is proud to introduce the VS-104. The VS-104 allows for a full resolution up to 1080p 50 or 60 video signals with embedded audio. So no longer will you have lip sync issues or correction; you’re going to get a very clean signal with low latency. You’re looking at an entire time to encode and decode of about 2-3 frames, so that is a very quick processor that we put together with this. Solutions like this can be used as point to point, or point to multi-point, but where we often see them being displayed or used is removing fibre lines. Fibre can be very expensive for some stations, so if they need to
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move a signal from one point to another, this is a very economical way to accomplish that and still maintain the integrity of the sync. Ed:
Because is that done by CAT cable?
Devan: It is, it’s done over the CAT5 or CAT6 cable. It can be done on an Intranet or it can be done over the Internet. So there is really no distance limitation. I could go from New Zealand to the US; I could go from the US to Dubai – there is no limitation. Ed:
And you’re only two frames behind?
Devan: network. Ed:
But
2-3
frames behind in an internal
Aaaah, okay.
Devan:
Now if you’re going over the Internet …
Ed: I thought there was a magic solution from Marshall here? Devan: There are certainly things that we can’t control and those are the thousands of switches and delays that are inherent within any Internet network. Ed:
But you’re working on it?
Devan: We’re not going to fix this, but what we do do is a very clean encoding and decoding of high definition signals with embedded audio. We also have some new cameras that were released – the VS-577 and VS-547. The improvement versus our previous version of PTZ and fixed IP based cameras is that these are very low latency on the HD-SDI output. We had a number of customers who were using our VS-571s and, when utilising the HD-SDI output, you could have 10
frames of delay, which was unacceptable in the broadcast market. We wired directly into the camera block on the VS-577 so that the HD-SDI feed has little to no delay on it. It would be half a frame or so. So now this is a true broadcast quality PTZ or fixed box camera that can be used in professional applications. Ed: Fantastic. And to complete this Marshall story, we have a very small form factor test generator in 4K? Devan: This is new – a signal generator with a small OLED screen on it. This is going to be able to display multiple screens onto any monitor as well as different resolutions. It’s very simple to use, there’s only four buttons that really need to be utilised. You have an up and down button to scroll through the various different patterns that can be displayed. Some of these patterns also have movement, they have lines so that you can really get a taste of the quality of a monitor. You also have the ability to change the resolutions. Those are used with our left and right button. So I simply push the button to the left and it can change to any number of 27 different resolutions that are available going down to 480 all the way up to a true 4K 4096 signal. So this is a handy little tool that we’re offering at a very good price that should be in everybody’s toolbox. Ed: This is something for a studio to regularly check their monitors to make sure that they’re up to spec? Devan: Absolutely, up to spec, that they’re accepting the correct signal, that that signal is being NZVN maintained and that the monitors are in balance.
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JVC for Quinto For Quinto, we are at JVC and I guess the camera story continues because for me anyway, seeing the rebirth of JVC in the small camera market has been very interesting. I appreciate the work that JVC have done in getting back into that super professional space and dare I say now knocking on the broadcasters’ doors. Obviously, there have been some big, big sales to broadcasters and it continues to grow. To tell us all about it, we have Paul Pasveer, European Marketing Manager for JVC Professional Europe. Ed: Now Paul we’re sitting here in front of a very elegant JVC camera, tell us about this one to start with? Paul: We are looking now at the GY-HM890E. This is our latest model in the shouldercam range and this is a camcorder that has some unique features. For example, on the back, we have a USB port and this USB port can be used for a 4G LTE telephone connection to stream your video; you can use it for a WiFi dongle to stream via WiFi to your router; but what you also can do is stream via cable, so you have a USB connection to a LAN connector. That means this camera is able to stream live video from every location around the world into your studio. Our slogan for this year on the booth is “First on Air, First on Line” and this means that we’re bringing a new revolutionary product to the market where you can save a lot of costs in your production workflow. Ed: But you’re still recording to onboard cards? Paul: We have SDXC cards – actually we were the first in the market. We started with SDHC cards and you see now that a lot of manufacturers have adopted these cards. So that means that, even if there is a major breakdown on your Internet, you’re still recording your footage on full HD on your SDXC cards. You can use any of the SD range of cards actually but the simpler ones will not be capable of high data rate recording. Ed: Now correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re going back to the streaming solution, so you’re saying there’s actually three possibilities there, that I guess if you’re stuck in Vanuatu or somewhere and you really only have some sort of wireless possibility, you can use that, but if you have the connection to a full broadcast network, you can use that instead. So you have now a variety of streaming solutions as opposed to, in the past, one?
Paul: No, actually not. We started with the 650 – this was our first handheld camcorder with the streaming possibility and now we’re extending every new camera with this feature. We are now showing also our new GY-LS300 on our booth, which is our new 4K camcorder with 35mm sensor. This also has the capability to stream – of course not in 4K yet, still in HD or SD, but it’s equipped with streaming video capability. If you go a long way back, in 1999 we had our first StreamCorder with a stream adapter plate, but we have kept it in the closet until the market was ready, because in 1999, the market was not ready for streaming video although we were at that time. Ed: Now this little 4K camera, we have seen it in a mock-up version at NAB in a Perspex case. We’re getting a little bit closer to production, but it’s not quite there? Paul: That’s correct, we are finalising the concept. Of course, we will use all the interviews we had here at IBC and all the reaction from the potential customers and we are aiming for delivery in February 2015. Ed: And this is a cinema camera as opposed to a video camera? Paul: Actually you can do a lot of things with it. We’re not only targeting the cinema market, because from the interviews here on the booth, you see a lot of reporters who also use 35mm cameras. So it’s not only for the cinematography market, it’s a wide variety, a wide market.
Paul: Yes, that’s totally correct what you’re saying. Imagine you’re in the wilds of South Otago and you want to have some live footage for your 8 o’clock news or you want to have some streaming and you see a lot of webcast coming up, then you can transmit via your satellite telephone for example or, if you have connection with your 4G telephone card, you can instantly stream your video direct into your studio. So you can have a live report instantly, on the spot, from where you are. We have a live coverage on our booth where we have a reporter in Rotterdam who has a live connection here via the Internet to our host, Lisa. So yes, you’re correct, we have three possibilities. Ed:
The GY-LS300.
And is that only with this 890 camera? Page 16
in the past, a studio configuration and this continues?
4K 35mm Elise prototype.
Ed:
It has a single large sensor?
Paul: It’s a single large sensor and I have to tell you that it’s our own sensor. We have our own sensor factory in San Francisco and it’s part of the JVC Camera Group. We use this 35mm sensor and actually, it’s more than 4K, because on this camera, we have the micro four-third lens mount and you can imagine that you can mount a lot of lens types. There is an electronic connection between the lens mount and the software which recognises what kind of settings each lens needs for the sensor. Ed: Now just back on the 890 – this particular shape has been around for a number of years and I’ve noticed
Paul: Yes this continues. Regarding the shape, I will start with that first. The shape is very well balanced and of course, what we found out in the market is that they really like the shape and the balancing of the camera. So this is the reason that, if you look very closely, you can see a lot of difference in the moulding and in the camera itself, but if you look from a distance you think “hey, this is the same camera”. This is what we did, we listened very carefully to our users and it means that we have the 890 and the 850. The 890 is the studio conversion; the studio model which we use in a special equipped studio configuration set with a sledge where you can enter the camera. So it has the possibility to use it for multicore or the possibility to use fibre. So we have all kinds of fibre solutions – if you want SMPTE or you want Neutrik or anything else, we have it and it’s a really module basis. The camera can be taken very easily out, it’s only click connection, in and out of the sledge for the studio configuration. Ed: Now Alan, I guess for somebody to seriously look at a JVC camera at this level, they want to get their hands on one – this is possible in Auckland is it? Alan: Yes, we have a range of cameras which are held in our Auckland office with Pete Fullerton. We’ve had the cameras out with broadcasters, with the
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wireless streaming and we can arrange for temporary licences for people to do their own evaluations to show how robust the cameras are. So if anybody wants to try or evaluate the cameras, they can contact Pete. Ed: Now just off the camera market and a box that we’ve seen before, but which continues to be very popular, and that is an optical disc recorder? Paul: Yes, that’s correct. Actually we have it already a long time in our line-up. We started with the 70, we have now the 2500 as a flagship model. The 2500 is actually triggered for the broadcast market, so it has the HD-SDI in and out and it records on DVD and Blu-ray, but also has the possibility to put in your SDHC or SDXC card so that you can take off your content from your camera direct on the hard disc. So it has three functionalities – it has a DVD Blu-ray, it has a hard disc and the possibility to enter your card from your camera. So it’s a multi-format codec and it can be used for several applications in the broadcast industry, but also in the standard audio video industry for all kinds of industrial applications. On the right side on the bottom you have two slots to enter your SD cards. So the footage you record on the GY-HM600 or GY-HM890 or 850, you can instantly insert the card into the recorder and put it on your hard disc. Ed: And then can you transfer that data onto an optical disc? Paul: Yes, what you can do is you can put the data into an optical disc and you also have a small possibility to do some editing. So that means you can add a full front page, you can add a logo, you can also add some menus in between, so don’t overestimate that this is a full editing; it’s a small editing, but you have the possibility. Ed: But I would see the critical application as a very robust and simple device as backup for your data? Paul: Yes, for example, it could be a backup for your data, but also if you have fast content you need on a DVD disc you want to give away or something else, you can do that. Alan: We’ve sold a lot of these into universities and colleges for media studies so that the students can go out, shoot their material, bring it back and then take away a Blu-ray or a DVD of their work … Ed:
And then edit it at home?
Alan: Edit it at home … it gives you a very fast way of being able to turn around work from cameras or other video sources into a disc format that people can take away. It’s proved in Australia and New Zealand to be a very popular choice and it’s just something that sells on a continuous basis. Ed:
One last camera in the 4K range?
Paul: Yes. What’s really new also and was not at NAB is the 4K block cam. This is a 4K native 35mm block cam which you can put in a pan and tilt head for using in a remote controlled area, a studio without any technicians. This is of course a study model but we expect very soon to come on the market with it and again this is the 35mm sensor and there’s a lot of demand on the market for remote studios. NZVN Page 18
Autodesk for DVT For DVT, we are at Autodesk and we have Maurice Patel.
based production management tool that we acquired in June – Shotgun Software – which is all about improving the production management process within visual effects and content creation. That’s kind of been what we’re showing here. What else is new in Flame? Planar Tracker – there’s been a lot of tracking tools in Flame, but this is now directly in the 3D compositing environment which people have wanted. That’s a great creative capability directly within Action. We’re also announcing a whole bunch of improvements to the workflow. We changed the entire workflow for Flame a couple of years ago to modernise it, it was a rearchitecturing of the product and we’re adding some new enhancements in this release – the ability to group within the desktop reel so you can create basically groups of clips, and also within the batch tree, better kind of nesting, so that when you nest modes and explode them, the process of basically working with much more complex data processes is easier. And then as I mentioned, we’ve announced the Shotgun integration with Flame. When we acquired Shotgun we tripled the R&D resources on that, because we believe that production management is definitely critical in our industry, budgets are tighter, you have to do more in less time, less budget … Ed: And you’ve got to keep track of that, you’ve got to keep track of the dollars? Maurice: Exactly, keep track of the dollars and keep track of your data and there’s more of your data. So production management is a key area of investment for us and, since we’ve acquired Shotgun, we’ve already launched four new capabilities. The first thing we did was a review app for the iPhone so that anyone working, whether they’re working in Maya, Nuke or Flame, can now send their work to be reviewed remotely. Someone can play back video, mark it up, send it back with comments, directly from their iPhone. Ed: But do they get the resolution on iPhone that you would be after if you had a product such as Flame? Maurice: Well they get a good enough resolution for making comments on a work in progress, yes. That’s essentially what it’s done for.
Ed: Maurice, in the past, we’ve talked about Autodesk in terms of “Smoke on the Mac” as being the way Autodesk has hit a new video market, but Smoke on the Mac has become much more popular, there are more people using it and now they’re looking for the even greater creative tools that Flame offers? Maurice: Flame has been around for quite a while, it’s at the high end of postproduction. We do see interest from people who have used Smoke to augment their workflows with Flame, but also ultimately, when we introduced Smoke, it wasn’t necessarily that we expected people who used to Smoke to move to Flame, and we have a lot of customers who use Smoke and it meets their requirements and allows them to do creative editorial finishing with a huge amount of capabilities. The other thing we did on Smoke was we made it available as a Desktop Subscription which is a rental model, so people can rent it. That gives them a lot of flexibility. So that’s been quite popular and we’ve seen that also with Maya LT, so these are two products that we have been trying to target more towards the independents, the small studios. In terms of having the high end postproduction tools whether it’s Flame or for Maya, those continue to obviously show a strong appeal, and here at IBC, we’ve announced both an extension for Smoke as well as a new extension for Flame. The Flame extension includes something called Shotgun Integration, which is integration with the new cloud-
Ed:
Is that grey enough, for example?
Maurice: Very grey. Talking about colour management and things like that, one of the things we’ve done is to put ACES and OpencolorIO support in our products to try and manage the colour. I’m not sure you’re going to be checking colour grading, on your iPhone – this is more for visual effects creation, this is not for finishing. This is the visual effects creation process. So someone’s created an animation, is it the right animation, the right speed, does it look right for the character design, does it have to go back for remodelling – those kind of things can be easily made. So you know, horses for courses, we’re not saying that anyone’s going to be reviewing and approving the final master on their iPhone … Ed:
Oh, thank goodness.
Maurice: Yes, I think that’s a bit of a stretch, but we know that visual effects supervisors can check in on the work in progress, you know they’re on set, on location, and they want to see “so how’s the animation coming, is the animation cycle right, is the walk cycle right, is it realistic enough, is it believable enough?”. Those kinds of decisions could easily be made on an iPhone, commented up and say “you know what, that background maybe you need some more dressing here, maybe the prop is not quite right”. That kind of feedback you can give and that’s what it’s designed to do.
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Ed: Now there is also a tool that helps people get into that Flame area and I believe that’s called Flame Assist? Maurice: Actually there are two tools Flame Assist and Flare, so both are tools which help build out your Flame workflow, or get into understanding how Flame works, so assistants can work with the Flame guy, learn the software, master the software. If you’re coming from Smoke it’s a pretty easy transition, there are a lot of similarities between Smoke and Flame, and that’s part of what you were mentioning earlier. Someone can start out in Smoke, they become very familiar with the workflow, if they want to move onto a Flame, they can then move directly to the Flame, it will be very familiar. Or a facility which always uses a Flame and hires some junior staff they want to train up, they can put them on the Flame Assist or the Flare and they can help the Flame artist and learn the ropes. Ed: For the uninitiated, just give us three key differences between Smoke and Flame? Maurice: Ultimately Smoke is really an editorial product so the key difference in Flame is the visual effects capability, you know the advanced 3D tools. Whereas Smoke is essentially a timeline with a lot of effects capability that you can do, Flame is a visual effects powerhouse with an integrated timeline, so it’s kind of a slightly different focus. A lot of the toolset is similar, but Flame is really designed for very sophisticated visual effects creation, a lot of 3D tools … Ed: I think we saw an example of the Brazil World Cup, where there were soccer players montaged with flames pouring off them and soccer balls … that was a Flame job? Maurice: Yes exactly, all the very sophisticated kind of visual effects that you want to do typically tend to be done in a Flame, because that’s really what it’s good at – so the World Cup commercials or the commercials that were using the World Cup as a theme, or car
commercials, Nike spots, Coca Cola spots, those kind of things will often end up using a Flame for the visual effects creation. Ed:
So where does it go to from here?
Maurice: Our focus going forward is really going to continue to be on the production management side of things. I mean, we’re not neglecting our animation products or Flame, these are core parts of our business and we’re still continuing to invest heavily in that, but in terms of new areas where we’re also starting to pay a lot of attention, production management is one of them. And, as we were saying before, that is because it’s become one of the most painful parts of the production process given the sheer amount of data and the pressure on budgets, you know, being able to do everything efficiently on budget, on time, at the quality required and keep track of the massive amounts of data that are being produced throughout the production – digital data, because everything’s digital so we just create more and more digital data and then keeping track of it, versioning it, finding out who is doing what and where and what state is everything in, reviewing it, approving it, all those are very real problems that our customers face that we want to help solve. Ed: Right, education. I know myself it’s a very difficult choice to change an editing platform, but for younger people, if you can get them early and show them how Smoke on the Mac works, you’re going to keep those people for a long time. Does Autodesk have a future strategy for that? Maurice: I think we have multiple strategies to introduce people to our software, whether it’s through education, through training, through the book we just published with Wylie, the Autodesk Smoke Essentials book, so we create a lot of training materials. At the same time, a large part of it has been access to the software, making it more affordable and that’s why we have it available as a subscription. Our products are available as a desktop subscription or rental plan, it allows people to access the
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software more easily. We recently launched a global initiative to support our very extensive educational programme. In the past Autodesk has provided software for free for students. We just announced that we’ve expanded that program to provide free software not just to students, but to faculty and institutions as well. . Ed:
What country is that in?
Maurice: It started in North America in the spring and just recently expanded to include A-NZ, Japan and Korea.. Ed: Well it’s good to say you’ve got free software there, but it’s like you’ve got your computer, you’ve got your own system on that, and then you download something to try it out – are you going to use it as a mission critical tool until you really know and understand how it‘s used, if you don’t know anything about it beforehand? Having some sort of formal education, with somebody showing you what it’s capable of - Training 101 – that’s where you’ve got to kick-start it? Maurice: Ultimately, I think part of it is the work that we do with various institutions in terms of making sure that they have access to the software. We ourselves provide a bunch of materials and tools online; we provide tutorials and training, so the materials are there and then I think it’s up to the schools whether they want to teach it or not. NZVN
Adobe for DVT For DVT, we are at Adobe and we have Denis-Pierre Guidot from the Paris office of Adobe.
Ed: Denis-Pierre, what’s intrigued me is that your sign says “Adobe Creative Cloud for broadcast”. This is obviously a big step, Adobe’s put its hand up and said “yes, you can use our editing platform for broadcast”. How can broadcasters be assured that you’ve got the tools to do that? Denis-Pierre: Okay, so 2 things – what is Creative Cloud and why do we say broadcast. So broadcast is more, I would say, on the features we’ve built inside our products, like Premiere Pro for broadcasters, and what we are in Creative Cloud is your Adobe identity, because we don’t have any more say in numbers on that software, we have an activation by identity. So that means you can install your identity on two stations and work on either. For example, I can go to work for a company, I know Premiere, I know After Effects, I have my own settings, my workspace that I take with me. I just log inside the application with my Adobe ID and we go to the Cloud to fetch all my preferences and take them back and I’ve got all my UI as I’m used to work. So things like that are very nice. Also, when I’m editing inside Premiere Pro, I’ve got a note to autosave my project on the place in my hard drive. We never know if the electricity goes down, something like that, but I can also ask to have a backup of my timeline in my topic folder, my own folder on the Cloud. In that case, if my machine burns, I know that I can start again because I’ve got my project – not the media, only the project, so it’s not lost, my work is still there. So the part I can put on my space on the Cloud, it’s a safety space, it’s owned by Amazon and Amazon has all the security about that; it’s completely encrypted only I can go and get my things and I can share if I want, but I’m not obliged to. If I’m working in Europe, my files will go into servers in Europe. Ed: So Homeland Security does not get to look at them? Denis-Pierre: Maybe … it’s encrypted so they shouldn’t see anything anyway. So that’s one thing. So now Premiere Pro for broadcast; we have many features ready for broadcast. When you’re doing broadcast you need to go fast. You don’t have time to work, you have to do it very fast. Ed: And when it says “broadcast” it means for reporters to use in the field at any moment, or is it for long-form documentaries? Denis-Pierre: Both of them. It’s a very open workflow. So if we choose one for example. I’m working on a sport TV show and I’m doing the editing, I’m going fast because they are coming directly from the camera and I’ve got some animated titles coming from After Effects. I can directly place those titles on the timeline of Premiere Pro, they are not rendered and they are titles but I will need to change the names of the people without going to After Effects, so I will be able to edit the text layer of After Effects inside Premiere Pro. That’s very fast, no render. Another thing, I’m editing and I’ve got a special clip and I want to put a special effect on that video. From Premiere Pro, I can ask to replace my clip with an After Effects project. It will launch After Effects, I will be able to do all my effects, text, animations, colour, anything and all what I do in After Effects is automatically seen inside After Effects without any render. So I’m saving a lot of time and also quality because I’m not degrading the footage because I render again and again and again. So that makes it very, very fast. Also we know that we have more and more footage coming from a lot of different types of camera – DSLR,
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Ed: Yes but that’s been there for quite some time hasn’t it – I mean, even in CS6 I can do that. Denis-Pierre: Okay, so in the new version, I would say what’s very nice is to have these searchable bins, that’s very important; and something also very nice we have in that new Premiere Pro is the ability to see a project that is already done and to compare it on two timelines, the timeline of my project and the timeline of the other project and to drag and drop footage if I want to. That’s absolutely marvellous, that is very interesting. Ed: In the older versions, if it’s in the same project and you’ve got a different sequence, you go and you can grab a chunk of that sequence and drop it into a new timeline, but this is actually projects, not just sequences? small cameras like GoPros, or RED 6K cameras – things like that. With Premiere Pro, it will read the footage natively with no necessity to transcode them in another codec and I will be able to put them in different files on the same timeline and see them straightaway very fast, very easy, so that is a big, big timesaver. And now, as I have many, many, many files of different types, we made a new feature inside Premiere Pro and it’s the “searchable bin”. You know that we work a lot on metadata and what we want is to be able to search for files through their metadata. So when I’m inside Premiere Pro, I can make a bin and say I will share some old metadata, maybe all our 3D files, and when I click, I’ve got the folder telling where every piece of data related to that bin description is. That makes it very, very fast. Ed: But it also works for the individual too. If you have a lot of client projects to be able to find information that might be across a number of clients, you can find it immediately? Denis-Pierre: Yes, absolutely. We won’t need to use proxies because we will be able to work directly on all the files natively very easily all along the project, and you will be able to export at the end on different types of settings. For example, I’m working on a documentary and I know that I want to put something very quickly on the Net, on YouTube. It won’t be the same settings that I put to broadcast on the TV, or I want to have an export to be able to see that on a Tablet, like an iPad, something like that. All those exports will be different settings.
Denis-Pierre: Yes, we go and fetch a specific sequence and open it in a source monitor and I can make a comparison with another project I’m working on and take the elements I need to and drag and drop from one to the other – that’s very nice. Ed: Wow, the photo should show two timelines open on the same screen. Denis-Pierre: And I want to tell you something else also. We have a feature called Project Manager. With this manager, you will be able to collect in the same folder, all the clips you have from different hard drives and the sequence. That’s already there. But now we can ask it to condense and transcode, so I can say “okay, we will put all the footage in the same folder but with only one codec” and I can choose the codec so it will be DNX, MXF, QuickTime and what’s important, we can choose the new file format, CineForm Wavelet format, very good intelligent codec format that is in 4444 with the Alpha and so it will give you very nice footage with all the – I’d say the quality inside you can use to edit again. So that’s new things really interesting in our product. Hey, if you don’t follow all of that, don’t worry, talk to NZVN the team at DVT about your Adobe solution.
With Premiere Pro, I will be able to export, it will go to Adobe Media Encoder which is our specific software to encode and I will ask Adobe Media Encoder to encode directly in those different formats and it will read the Premiere Pro timeline and at the same time encode in that 3 different formats I ask for. So that makes it also very, very fast. Ed: In the last year or so, what would have been perhaps the 3 most important or valuable improvements in Premiere Pro that you would have seen? Denis-Pierre: As a user, what I like the most is that it is completely free about the format on the fly. I just can see on the timeline … Page 23
Matthews for PLS We are at the Matthews stand for PLS with the beautiful and vivacious Linda Swope once more. Ed: Linda, I know that the PLS boys have been very happy with your little slider stands, and I understand that you’ve upped your production for these? Linda: We have. The slider stands themselves were oversold. We can’t make them fast enough. Ed: That’s good. Why has there been this gap in the market? Linda: Well traditionally, sliders themselves have been mounted on Low Boy combos, which is just a little too high. You can’t get down low enough if you want a low shot, so we’ve just developed a new stand which is black with red braces – it’s very cool looking, by the way – that gets you to that little point and will extend up as high as you need to go. Just a different stand, doing the same thing that other stands can do but getting you to a lower loading point. Ed:
The slider stands are a Matthews design?
Linda:
Oh they’re a Matthews design, 100%.
Ed: So you’re now making the slider stands and the sliders? Linda:
Yes.
Ed: Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit more Linda? Linda: Yes! The sliders were made by the inventor, a gaffer from Montreal, but we’ve now brought the production in-house, so we’re manufacturing the sliders and the slider stands. Ed: I guess one of the difficulties in making these things is that you’re tooling has to be very accurate otherwise you’re going to have a little bit of wobble or it’s going to grip the wrong place? Linda: That’s especially true with the sliders, because the rails are precision. If you have any off tooling, you’re not going to have the smooth camera glide that you need. So yes, extremely. Ed: I guess that’s why they have to be heavy, or robust should we say? Linda: For our sliders, yes, because they’re not made for little cameras, they’re made for big camera packages. Our sliders will hold about 40 kilos, so they take big packages. There are a lot of sliders out there that will take small packages, a lot of sliders that aren’t so great. Ours is … Ed:
Industrial?
Linda’s obviously happy with her slider stands.
Linda: Ed:
Oh very industrial – it’s a tough one.
Well that’s a Matthews’ standard isn’t it?
Linda: It is. We make heavy duty grip equipment. It’s not the lightest in the world, it’s the best. Ed: But speaking of “lighter”, you do have those smaller arms, I know the MICRO arms, but the NOGA arms seem to be something that’s pretty popular? Linda: The NOGA arms are new for us. Last IBC was the first time we introduced them. They’re just small, our version of the Magic arm with camera
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The new Slider Stand from Matthews. A strong, wide-based stand with a low working height for those using camera Sliders, Monitors, Speed Rail/Pipe Dolly etc. • • • • • •
Working Height 61cm to 117cm Operating Capacity 36.3 kg Incredibly stable with dual adjustable legs Stylish Aerospace Inspired design Welded Junior (1-1/8") Receiver Stand Adapters can convert to; (sold separately) o 5/8" baby pin (16mm) o 3/8" Tripod Mount o 5/8" Magic Finger
Works great with the big lights and pairs well with the new DIT Laptop tray Noga Arm • MICROgrip • GoPro Mount …now @ PLS The Matthews innovative 3/8” - 1/4" 20 camera mount system. Attach lights, monitors, iPads. Rig your DSLR / GoPro at any angle.
“Try this, you’ll like it, I guarantee it” Ed Philips, CEO Matthews. Phone: Phone: 09 302 4100
Email: info@kelpls.co.nz info@kelpls.co.nz
Website: www.kelpls.co.nz www.kelpls.co.nz
mounts or light mounts that you get in little tiny places, lightweight cameras. So we go from one end of the heavy robust items, to the other end of like small camera mounting options. They’re not made by Matthews, they’re made by NOGA. It’s not a spring that’s inside the arm, they’re actually steel rods. So after a while a spring – like a rubber band – it stretches and it stretches and doesn’t regain its shape, so some other brands don’t last as long. Ours will last for quite a long time, because they’re steel rods. Ed: NOGA sounds Japanese – is it a Japanese company? Linda: No, it’s an Israeli company and they have been making them for a very long time. Ed: Now Linda I notice there’s some wooden boxes here with Matthews all over them. Is this a new product line? Linda: No. We’ve had Apple Boxes since the day I started working at Matthews. They’ve been in the industry forever. Basically there are four different sizes, there’s a full Apple Box, a half, a quarter and a pancake and they’re used anywhere from mounting a light – you need to get a light real low on the ground, you would put a baby plate, a Nano plate on this, and you’ve got a light down there. Or you take a full one and you put a cushion on it and the grips sit on it. Or, you’re a short person and you need to get up taller for the camera, they stand on it. There are many varied uses for Apple Boxes. Ed: Does it have a weight loading stamped in there somewhere? Linda: No it sure doesn’t, but ours are reinforced inside … you see inside there, there’s a reinforcement in the middle, so they’re pretty sturdy. Ed:
You can’t actually open them I see?
Linda:
No, they do not open.
Ed: So you can’t put your lunch in there … well you could put your lunch in, but you’d never get it out again! Linda: No, you’d never get it back out. But these aren’t new, they’ve been around for as long as they’ve been making movies I think. Ed:
Oh okay – has Chris bought any?
Linda:
I don’t think so.
Ed: We would probably have trouble getting the wood in, but maybe he could make them under licence? Linda: He could … he could make them without my permission. There are a lot of people who make Apple Boxes, but ours are so pretty with the logo. I could add another logo, but the Matthews logo would stay. So on the other side we could do a PLS logo … Ed:
Could we get them individually signed Linda?
Linda: You want me to sign it? probably do that.
Yeah, I could NZVN
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A more subdued Linda with apple boxes.
Dedolight for PLS We are now at Dedolight for PLS with Roman Hoffmann, marketing manager. Ed: Roman, what impresses me with Dedolight is the range that you offer. You’ve obviously taken on LED, but you’ve taken on LED in areas where it is suitable. But for other areas, you are continuing with tungsten, you’re continuing with HMI, so you’re offering lights for the quality of the light, not just necessarily the convenience that LED alone offers? Roman: Exactly. We try to build light instruments. What I always try to make understood is that, it doesn’t matter which light source we offer, it is still a very convenient and very precise instrument around it. So we have our tungsten range, which offers perfect colour … tungsten lights still offer perfect colour. We have our HMI range – the 200s, the 400s and of course now we offer the same quality of light, the same quality of light control in our LED fixtures as well. LEDs offer a couple of advantages like the battery operation is more convenient, not only because of the lower power consumption of the LED light source, or because the LED light source is so much brighter, but it shines to the front, it shines to the lens so you lose less light in the fixture. And of course, the capability to use it as a bicolour light is a big, big advantage if you have a bicolour LED.
Roman with LEDRAMA panel.
Ed: Let’s start with the HMI light. I know I was very impressed seeing how easy it is now to change the bulb. In those early fixtures, it was quite a long operation and if suddenly your bulb failed during a shoot, well it might take you 20 minutes to half an hour to reset. Nowadays, with the Dedolight fixture, it’s a lot easier and you’ve extended that design into a smaller light I understand? Roman: It was not 20 minutes, but 40 minutes. An experienced maintenance person could manage it in 40 minutes – it was a big problem. The light itself was wonderful, the quality of light was perfect, but the housing was not easy to maintain. So Dedo first tried to change the housing on our 1200 HMI. It worked, the new housing is very simple. You can open it from the side and you can easily reach the bulb or repair anything that is inside the housing. That design is now transferred to the smaller lights – from the 1200 he transferred it to the 400 series, so the 650 tungsten light now has the same housing as the 1200, but it’s a size smaller; same you have on the 400 series and the ballast design also changed. It looks now like the 1200 ballast. Ed: So it’s not just about the quality of light, but it’s also about maintaining the light that you’ve got? Roman: Exactly. We still have the double lens aspherical system inside it, so the quality of light, the control of light is still the same, but the maintenance is much easier. Ed: Right now, the LEDs, you are continuing to develop the range that you’re offering in LED? Roman: Yes. We were very successful with our Tecpro Felloni range, but this range is limited in light output. So the Fellonis still are used for mobile work or for very small studios because the output is limited to 50 Watt. Dedo always listens to his customers and of course we also try to satisfy the TV studio customers. So for the last couple of years, Dedo worked on high output LED panels, big ones, and he introduced the first one at NAB this year. It is called the LEDRAMA. The power consumption of this light is around 250 Watt which is not that much, but the light output is amazing. The light output at six metre is still 700 Lux, so you can easily work over bigger distances, especially when you hang such a light in a studio somewhere up towards the
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ceiling, you can easily work with it over bigger distances. So the light output is one thing … Ed: Also I guess it’s the spread of that light isn’t it – the difference with an LED panel is that the light doesn’t obey the inverse square law because you’re not sending it out in three dimensions? Roman:
Actually yes.
Ed: I’m throwing a bit of physics in there you see – in a former life, I used to be a physics teacher. Roman: You’re right, the square law on a soft light is to be differently considered as on a beam. So this is why we simply say how much light you have over how much distance. That’s it. Just to make it understood that for example there are a lot of fantastic soft lights on the market like the Kino Flo Celeb or the Celeb 200, the Celeb 400 or the Cineo. But there are differences. The Cineo for example is a fantastic light in colour and light output, but it consumes 400 Watt and it has less light than ours at the same distance. So this is just to make it understood that the Wattage of a light does not say everything. Ed:
It’s the Wattage at a distance?
Roman: Exactly. And also the quality of the LEDs. So the LEDRAMA now, it is a very heavy animal, but it is meant to work in studios. So you hang it once on your rail system and there it is and you use the light output. You have it as a daylight fixture, but of course, also as a bicolour. The interesting thing about this light is that, if we take a look at the bicolour version … you have both the tungsten and daylight dyes in one place covered by a lens. So it doesn’t work in LED rows, like you have one daylight row and one tungsten row and then you switch between them. You switch below the lens, so the light source remains on the same place when you switch between the colours. This makes it very convenient and the shadows do not change. So that’s basically it, but this one of course it is DMX controllable; we have it as PO ( Pole Operated ) version and the very first prototype we brought to this year’s IBC stand, the LEDRAMA 40x40, so far it has a metal housing and it is quite heavy, but it is meant to be a mobile version. It has a bigger surface, so 40x40cm which many customers ask for, because very often the 30x30 versions are not soft enough. Ed: But we don’t want to get their hopes up too early do we Roman, because this is going to be a little while in development? Roman: Yes. Let’s wait another year. Of course, we bring such prototypes to exhibitions to get feedback and to get to know what we have to change or to add. Ed: If the customers come along and say “Wow, that’s exactly what we want” you know that you can put the money into the tooling and actually go into production? Roman: We already had a couple of such customers and feedback. Ed: You need more than a couple. Now I know one of the areas that Chris is particularly keen on is your kits and I see that you’ve gone to town and made some really nice kits this year? Roman: Yes. Our traditional kit system is based on a combination of a soft light or a couple of soft lights and a couple of focusing lights, just to offer two different light characters – a soft light for a portrait and focusing lights for backlights or effect lights, whatever. We have this system for our traditional tungsten and
HMI kits and we now offer the same kits in LED versions. So we have many, many new kits. Just to point out the differences … as we also have small portable battery operated LED lights like the Ledzilla and the 2.1, we combine them now in smaller kits. So the kits can be made much, much smaller and we have now a very small kit for documentaries which is not much bigger than hand carry luggage. It is a combination of Nano stands and up to four lights, so you can go either for focusing lights or let’s say two focusing and two soft lights or you can also add some accessories like a small projection attachment and it makes it very convenient for people who work on their own. Of course, the bigger cases that we already have can also be filled with our 4.1s and Fellonis. There is a huge variety of kit combinations, so it’s better to ask. Ed: Ask a professional, and that’s where Chris McKenzie and the team at PLS come in. Something like light at this level is not an easy subject to get right and so it’s good to rely on a good distributor who knows what they’re talking about to help you into the decision that’s best for your operation? Roman: Absolutely, that’s the way. But of course we also try to prepare standard kit variations because you have customers who want to have it absolutely individually and for this, we have the cases and the lights and you can put it together your way. For the catalogues of course, we want to offer ready solutions and there are enough people who want to have a kit that has everything and you just open it and you go. So we have that as well.
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LED dedocolor® sources; daylight, tungsten & bicolour versions from 2700K to 6500K
The 40W DLED 4.1 and the 90W DLED 9.1 • Separate dimming control adjusts the intensity with no colour change • Wide 60° to extremely narrow 4° clean beam no stray light Wide range of accessories • Passive cooling, no fan – no noise, for all dedo available for the Dedo LED focusing LED lights from 8W to 90 W series includes Soft Boxes • Dedolight patented aspherical optics & Projection Imagers. • Providing astoundingly high efficiency • Dedolight clean beam concept • Precise barn door shadows • Perfectly Even Light Distribution Battery Power Supplies now available for the DLED 4.1 & 9.1 With Single Colour & BiColour Battery Power Supplies released for both the 40W & 90W DLED’s, you have a truly portable lighting solution. Combine with the V-Lock Mount Plate accessory for a cable-free shoot. Phone: Phone: 09 302 4100
Email: info@kelpls.co.nz info@kelpls.co.nz
Website: www.kelpls.co.nz www.kelpls.co.nz
Ed: And here’s the master himself. hearing wonderful stories Mr Weigert …
We’re just
Dedo:
Interesting ain’t it? Ed:
Very interesting.
Dedo: no. Ed:
Can we understand this …
It’s alchemy.
Dedo: The only thing that we care about – it works. Go and talk to Mr Itō at Tokina. Tell him I sent you and ask him about any film … what was the first Fellini film, who played in it, when was it shot. He knows everything. Ed: I have … I shouldn’t say fond memories, but I have quite graphic memories of Fellini’s Roma. When I first saw that I wondered what was going on in his mind?
Dedo shares a good story with Roman and us.
Dedo: So I won’t disrupt you because from me you only hear negative things. Ed: No, no, Roman is singing your praises – that’s why he’s employed isn’t he? Dedo:
Somebody has to be positive.
Ed: But hopefully you’re passing on your wisdom to the young man? Dedo: wisdom. Ed:
Wisdom … German dinosaurs know no
Okay, you’re a flat earther then are you?
Dedo:
Yes, it suits my mentality.
Ed: Now do you think Chris would be interested in your Tokina lenses? Dedo: It’s not for New Zealand; it’s not “our” Tokina lenses. I think we could put him in contact with the Tokina boys and for anybody who is a film person to talk to Mr Itō is pure joy. Ask him for any film that Marcel Carné shot in 1932 and who was the costume designer, who was the cameraman, who acted in it … he knows everything about it, so he’s not only a lens person. And there’s another product that they have that may be of interest; it’s called a hydrophilic filter. Ed:
Does that repel water?
Dedo: Ed:
Yes. We used to have rain deflectors …
Oh, those spinning things?
Dedo: That were spinning or shaking or vibrating, but they leave those to the sex shops now and now this is on its own magically, no water stays on it. Except that it gets tired, like filters in the old days when dinosaurs were young, you put filters in the dark because sunlight was no good for filters. This filter needs ultraviolet, so if it has a bit fallen asleep, you give it a shock of ultraviolet and it becomes hydrophilic again. Ed:
Wow.
One day one of them has papa’s car, it’s a cabriolet and they drive out of town in the morning, but it’s already hot and they have street workers doing the asphalt and it’s beastly and steamy and so on, and as they drive by one of them stands up in the car and does an obscene gesture, saying laboratori (followed by a raspberry) which means “phark the workers” and at that moment the engine starts stuttering, the car stops … Ed:
Let me guess – it got filled with asphalt?
Dedo: …
Yes, but you’re Bavarian?
Dedo: I’m not, don’t insult me! If you want to know when I am at home, if I want to paint a picture where I feel at home, give me a ruler to make a straight line. That’s where I’m at home. Bavaria has these bumps in the landscape. Ed:
Dedo: For me a classic one is I Vitelloni – that’s a group of kids that live in a small town and they don’t know what to do and so they roam around and they drink and they don’t do much and they don’t have jobs and so on.
Ed:
So whenever I go to my Italian restaurant
That’s how you call a waiter is it?
Dedo: … where the owner is working in the kitchen all day long, we greet each other, because I’m also a laboratori – a stupid worker. But you see they’re intelligent people, they don’t need to work as hard. They have weekends, they have holidays, they have families. But if you’re totally stupid and do the maximum damage by starting a company … Ed: But then you’ve got children like Roman to look after? Dedo: If you have a company, that’s incurable. You’re stuck. Ed: I’m sure Chris will be nodding at this point. well, somebody’s got to do it.
Ah
Dedo: But there’s relief. We should send you the video of a guru from Oregon I think. It’s quite famous, I never knew about him. He talks about the most versatile word in the English language – the word “phark” ( not really but you can replace this with another homophone.) It can fall into many grammatical categories. It can be used transitive – John “pharked” Mary. It can be used intransitive – Mary got “pharked” by John. It can even be used as a noun – Mary is a good “phark”. It can express many, many emotions, like anger – I got “pharked” at the used car lot; aggression – I knock your “pharking” head off; innovation – get a “pharking” bigger hammer … and it goes on and on and on. It can also be very healthy – in the morning when you get up, repeat a mantra after me, say five times a “phark” – it clears your throat too! Ed: Well, I think that will be my last interview for the day. NZVN
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ARRI Cameras On the ARRI stand surrounded by cameras and lenses we have Markus Duerr. Ed: Now Markus tells me that he hasn’t been out on the karaoke last night, but he’s sounding a little bit husky; I think he’s been talking a lot because the ARRI stand has been very popular. I notice a lot of people around it and all of those sceptics who might have said “oh the AMIRA, oh they should have done something better” have been proved wrong. It’s been very popular and very well received. Correct Markus? Markus: Totally correct, we are very happy with the success of the AMIRA, we have very good feedback, we have very good numbers of orders.
Marcus demonstrates how light the AMIRA really is.
Ed: It took a little longer to get out than you hoped though didn’t it? Markus: Yes we couldn’t ramp up the production in the speed as we would have wished for, so that gave us a little delay, but they’re catching up, so we hope to deliver more cameras even sooner. Ed: Have you already made some upgrades in the software? Markus: Yes we have. The first major update in AMIRA is the SUP 1.1. This delivers a couple of features we have announced at the beginning; a wireless remote capability, Bluetooth audio monitoring, a pre-record buffer so you can record into a buffer before you hit the record button so that that is then added to your record to clip. We have already implemented a lot of the feedback from users that we got in the first month that AMIRA was delivered, so we have improved our boot-up time of the camera by more than 25% so it boots up now in less than 15 seconds. We have implemented a waveform display – a lot of users asked for that in addition to the zebra function and the false colour function for exposure control. They also wanted to have a waveform to check the exposure. We have done this. We have colour bars implemented to match monitors and more. A lot of things also happened under the hood – we have a new debayer algorithm, we have improved a lot of different things as part of SUP 1.1.
camera, because there was just no demand for it, no technology for it, so that is all possible because our electronics architecture is FPGA based and that allows us to do dramatic changes in the functionality of the camera just with a software update. Ed: So that’s four years with the same basic camera technology in the background that you’ve been able to update? Markus: We have also updated the camera on the electronics side, but a customer who purchased this ALEXA four years ago benefits from the same software updates as the customer who purchases a new ALEXA. So yes, the same functionality in terms of software updates as the new ALEXA. Ed: Have you ever done a comparison – put the two side by side, your first firmware installed versus the latest firmware and looked at the differences? Markus: We could do that. We sometimes remembered the first version and thought “oh wow, that’s quite a while ago” and lots has happened in between.
Ed: And the good thing is that the users haven’t had to buy a new camera, as some other manufacturers tend to do? Markus: Absolutely. That is our strategy with AMIRA, the same as the strategy with ALEXA. With ALEXA, we’re now at SUP 10.0 and over the course of more than four years, we are always able to update our cameras with totally new functionality that we have not thought about when we developed the Page 31
Ed:
And they’re all good things?
Markus: They are hopefully all good things yes. The feedback is good and that also leads us to an announcement we made a few weeks ago on the AMIRA that we now can record ProRes UHD. That is also by a software update; that is also because the sensor is the main foundation of the camera and it’s so good and then we can implement new functionality just through updating our image path on the FPGAs. Ed: So this UHD for the uninitiated is nearly 4K – it’s 3,840? Markus: We could probably talk for 2 hours about certain aspects of 4K or not 4K. One of these is the confusion about the terminology. 4K is what everybody talks about, but 4K is only relevant for a cinema screen. 4K has a little bit of a broader image. If people talk about 4K, 90% mean UHD, because UHD is the format which is on every monitor and that is what people associate with 4K. We have here a 4K monitor if you like, but of course, it’s really a UHD resolution because it’s a monitor. If you would go to the big screen hall here at IBC or go to a movie theatre, then that would be a 4K resolution on the projector and that is the difference. People talk about 4K but mean UHD. Ed:
You’re keeping them honest?
Markus: What we do in our marketing language is sometimes also talk about 4K because that is what people understand and what people want to read, but when we talk about what the camera does, it’s always UHD. Ed: And at the moment, I’m actually being recorded in UHD and I’m looking at the picture on the screen and luckily Markus has slightly soft focused it, because there’s too much resolution there Markus. One thing I have noticed is that I have this stripy shirt on and, if I just do even a little slight movement, I can see the blurring in the stripes and this is at 25p, correct? Markus: Exactly and that is also another aspect of the whole resolution topic. Just increasing the spatial resolution of an image does not necessarily improve the quality of the image. It’s only one aspect of the image quality. So just to take one step further back – we don’t have a new sensor in the camera, we use the same sensor. How we achieve that ProRes UHD recording is by a software update. On the sensor, we take a larger portion of the sensor, approximately 3.2K cut out of the sensor and then internally in the camera, upscale that to the UHD resolution, to 3.8K if you want, or 4K if you want. So that is what we do by software and what we see at the end is the delivery format in UHD. The basic quality of our sensor is so good that it can easily accommodate that higher resolution and we have done a lot of comparison between competitor cameras and our test cameras and we feel very, very well positioned against our competition. We feel that our images are even superior to some competitors also in terms of sharpness and resolution, so we are very positive about that. And of course, that is only one aspect and if you talk about the kind of behaviour when things move in images – that is the other topic. If you go to a TV shop, a shop selling TV screens, or if you go to the 4K shows here from other manufacturers, you will notice that they most often show either stills or slow motion images, and that is not by accident. That is because you only benefit from the higher resolution if your image does not move, because as soon as something is moving in the image, you get motion blur and motion blur you can only avoid if you run on higher frame rates. If you now would run 4K also on higher frame rates, then 4K needs a lot more data ( pretty much 4 times the data ); if you
also want to increase the frame rate of the images to avoid motion blur and to benefit from higher resolutions with moving images, then you would increase that even further. So I imagine you would do 50p which is not outrageous, I mean, that’s kind of a reasonable frame rate, then you would double it again. So that makes that all very difficult to handle for most of the workflows typically customers in our area are … Ed: But you can easily switch the AMIRA to 50p if you wanted? Markus: You can run any frame rate up to 200 frames, that’s no problem. On UHD, we are limited to 60 frames per second but that would still be a good frame rate. But people won’t do that anyway because the amount of generated data would be much too big. So if you do 4K, that’s nice, you can do that, but you need to live with the truth that, if things move in your image, they’re going to be softer and they are even softer as they would be in HD. Ed:
That’s 4K 25p?
Markus:
Yes.
Ed: Because I use this comparison on a number of occasions, that to get 4K, you have to have every little different piece of light falling on a different pixel. As soon as you have any slight movement, either in the camera or in the subject, and your light is falling across two pixels within one 25 frame, 1/50th of a second at 180 degree shutter, you’re immediately down to high definition? Markus:
Right, exactly.
Ed: And also, in the cinematic sense, which part of that image is actually in 4K, because you have such a tight focus if you’re doing an interview for example. Is it the nose, is it the cheek, is it the ear – which part is actually in 4K? So it just tends to reinforce this concept
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that, yes, 4K is a good idea, but there are lots of other things that make up a nice image? Markus:
I couldn’t have said that better myself.
Ed: Oh thank you, you’ve got a vacancy in marketing have you? Markus: Leave your CV at reception next time you’re in Munich … but that’s exactly the point. For 4K, the resolution is nice, but you need to increase image quality. It’s a big misunderstanding that people always associate 4K with better image quality. That is totally not true; it’s just a higher space for resolution and to get a better image quality you need to consider a couple of other factors as well. Ed: Excellent. Now you were talking about bringing in the improvements that your customers have asked for from the initial release of the AMIRA, and I know one of them was “oh this is heavy.” Have you put the AMIRA on a diet or are there plans to do that?
delivers a very high image quality; and then you need a hardware architecture where you can do a lot of updates. We think that, with the ALEXA and AMIRA using the same sensor, it is a benefit with AMIRA, a benefit from that sensor for the ProRes UHD capabilities. What we do with the ALEXA is that we have two kinds of functionality to accommodate the requirements for having a 4K or UHD delivery. One is we have an open gate mode where people can record the full sensor section, the full sensor range into ARRI RAW which is then again a lot of data. Now we have announced the functionality that you also can use a 3.2K cut out like the AMIRA uses for the internal upscaling. You can take that 3.2K cut out on the ALEXA to record that to ProRes directly, so you have a ProRes 3.2K. That is a very data efficient workflow to then in postproduction upscale that to UHD and that is your final delivery format. Ed: So you’ve taken some of the things you’ve learnt in the development of the AMIRA and introduced those into the ALEXA software? Markus: Right. It’s pretty much, on the sensor side, a kind of common development. We don’t have two development teams for the AMIRA and the ALEXA, and there’s one development team for the sensor. In the AMIRA, we have higher processing power to do that internal upsampling out to the workflow; in the AMIRA world, it’s much more that people want the final delivery format already recorded to the card.
Markus: On a what … on a diet, no, no I think the feedback sometimes went in that direction. That’s not only because of the camera, it’s also because of the lenses. If you shoot with a large sensor, you need large lenses and they have a certain portion of the weight. We think the AMIRA is a very nicely balanced camera, so the feedback we got is that, if you put that on your shoulder and you balance it out, it’s perfect for handheld work. We have a lot of feedback from people saying that it’s just exactly the right weight because, while you’re doing smooth handheld work, you also need some kind of mass to have smoother movements of the camera … Ed:
More inertia?
Markus: Yes. The camera can be too light as well, so I think we’re pretty well suited there, but of course we are always working on improvements on all sides and maybe we can get also a little bit of weight reduction sometimes. Ed: Okay, so that’s the AMIRA, now the ALEXA. We don’t normally cover the ALEXA because that’s really your top end, but there have been so many examples of major TV productions being recorded on the ALEXA and that trend continues? Markus: That is … I wouldn’t say surprising, but it’s a very positive experience that our ALEXA sales are still maintaining on a very high level and that is after the camera is now on the market for more than four years. That kind of proves our concept that the first thing you need is to have a really good sensor – a sensor which
On the other side, in the ALEXA domain, there’s normally a larger post process involved so people can also easily upscale their images in the post process. That is where we see the kind of differences in the workflows and that’s why we implemented different functionality here in terms of the final delivery format. Ed: Now let’s move onto glass. I understand that, in the AMIRA, you’ve actually made a new offer in lens mounts? Markus: From the beginning, the AMIRA concept was that we have very easily interchangeable lens mounts. You can change the lens mount within 40 seconds. At the first place, the PL mount is the typical mount and the typical glass for a large sensor camera – but we also offer a B4 mount where you can use your two-third inch glass or the zooms you have on your ENG cameras. You can put that on the AMIRA, use them in the same way, you have the same angle of view with these lenses by using our mount. Also, we offer an adapter for that. So that is one way to (a) have a lower investment in the first place because you may own that glass already from your previous camera; and (b) also to increase the possibilities to use the camera for longer focal lengths – all that stuff which is easier to accommodate with these kinds of two-third inch lenses. The other option is the EF mount. With the EF mount, you have access to the whole world of still lenses from Canon or from other third party manufacturers which support that standard. That is also a very good compromise because they offer very good image quality for still images. Of course, they are compromised in mechanical quality and compromised in image breathing and that kind of stuff which is not that relevant for stills. But if you want to have an affordable solution in
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the first place and you already have these kinds of lenses on your shelf, then you have a very nice way to use other lenses on the AMIRA camera. So you can always use the best camera you can get and fit the lenses you have or you can afford to that camera. Ed: That’s it, you’ve answered my next question – the perfect solution is an ARRI camera, ARRI glass, but if you’re starting out, you buy the ARRI camera, you make do with what glass you’ve got or can afford; if you really need something special, just hire it for the shoot, but the investment to work on next is the glass? Markus: Right, yes. Ed: And of course ARRI is very well known for the high quality accessories that it manufactures, not just for ARRI cameras, but for a whole range of cameras. Any hot items in the last six months to one year? Markus: We introduced at NAB our new SMB-1 which is a high end matte box which can also be tilted, so you can avoid reflections in the further stage by tilting the matte box. We have news on electronic control systems, so we have a motor controller for accessing the servos from the ENG style lenses like the Fujinon Cabrio series or the Canon 17-120mm and we have also a single motor controller which is a more affordable solution if you only want to control one lens factor, like the focus for example via wireless or remote device. Ed: So you’re always innovating? Markus: We try to – that’s what we’re paid for. Ed: “That’s what we love to do” you should say or “we’re German, what do you expect?” Can I put down that you said one of those? NZVN Markus: That’s okay.
Storage DNA for Atomise We are at StorageDNA for Atomise and we have Dan Bright from the United States. Ed: Now Dan, StorageDNA, this is something that Richard Kelly’s particularly proud of. What do you guys do, for those that don’t know? Dan: StorageDNA … at our core we’re an archival system, but we are heavily tied into the media and entertainment world and we’ve built a lot of intelligence within our archival system that differentiates us from the other systems that are out there. What we do is we allow you to archive your data, whether that be a simple archive where you’ve got a bunch of folders that you’re writing to LTO tape, or a more complex workflow where you want to actually archive things from one of your editing systems; let’s say you’re using Avid or Final Cut or Adobe and you want to archive the material from a particular sequence or a Final Cut project, you can actually export a file to StorageDNA, we can pick up the media files that are relevant to that, and archive that off automatically for you.
recognise is that people often have their own metadata that they also want to tag their assets with. So we allow you to create custom metadata templates that you can then apply to the assets that you’ve archived, so you can tag particular media or clips with the particular metadata and then search on those metadata fields within your archive. Ed:
Now does it only work with LTO?
Dan: No, we are making plans at the end of year to ship a product that will archive to Sony ODA, and we also have unofficially – I don’t know when we will be
Ed: It sounds as though your expertise is in metadata. Anybody can store footage onto some drive somewhere, but the big question is being able to find it again in a hurry? Dan: Yes, so one of the things that StorageDNA really wanted to do was, not just to let you archive the material but, as you said, index, catalogue, extract the metadata, make it accessible, make it searchable. So StorageDNA in our new 3.5 evolution product, that’s been the real goal, to enhance what we call the miniMAM, which, as we archive the material, we’re extracting clip information, so we’re getting a catalogue of your clips and we’re extracting the metadata for all those files of clips and making them presentable in the interface and searchable. But one of the things that we Page 34
presenting it, but we also may allow you to archive to NearLine disc as well. Ed: You mean hard discs? Dan: Yes. Ed: It’s interesting you mention the Sony optical disc, or the Blu-ray disc, because Sony has its own solution for that, but I guess you’ve recognised that the longevity of optical disc is there, but you can do the search and retrieve better? Dan: Right – well there’s a couple of points to that. Obviously, the robustness of the optical disc and its retrieval speed is key. We’ve been able to do some things with LTFS that we’ll be launching later this year that will do a lot of things with tape, and allow it to act more like a NearLine than ever before. So we’ve got some things coming up that will actually enable you to treat your LTFS in certain situations, just like a NearLine, where you’ll be able to transcode directly from LTO rather than having to pull it off onto a hard drive and then run your transcode. So doing workflows now directly from LTO tape, which previously was a nightmare because you’re at the mercy of how applications access the LTO files, but we’ve been able to narrow down a set of media types that we can work with, where we can actually prevent a lot of that thrashing about on tape. Ed: How can that be possible because you might have something right at the start of the tape and you might have the next bit right at the end of the tape? Dan: What we’re doing is we’re actually loading particular areas of the tape and then caching those into memory and allowing the application to work with sort of a hybrid of tape and RAM to enable us to access the file quickly. Ed: You must have quite a bit of RAM there? Dan: Well believe it or not, the information in a lot of the media files that’s needed is not huge sections of the tape; it’s really the header information and metadata information. It’s specific to certain file types, but we’ve been testing it so far and the results have been very positive. Ed: Okay, 100% open archive – I guess that’s got to be a moving target though; that’s got to be now, but these manufacturers keep coming up with something new? Dan: Well the nice thing about the system that we have is that we built it on LTFS which is already a nonproprietary open format, and if you’re familiar with LTFS, basically IBM, Quantum and HP have a consortium where they agree upon what the next set of standards are, and anyone that has an LTO 5 or 6 drive with LTFS loaded can take a tape that’s been written in LTFS and load it up and mount those files just like a hard drive. So it is a bit of a moving target in some respects, but we’ve built our application on LTFS to prevent a lot of the proprietary problems that have been around with traditional tape archive solutions. Ed: Now you’re saying that somebody who might be currently looking at an LTO tape solution might best wait until you’ve got the optical disc solution? Dan: No, not at all, because we think that the LTO tape with LTFS is actually going to be just as big as optical disc … it’s already much bigger. The speed at which the LTO tapes are already writing
and the proposed speeds that are supposedly coming out with generation 7, and the price which the LTO cartridges are at right now, all make it a very compelling solution for not just long-term archive now, but with some of the things we’ve come out with, actually using it in your daily workflows. We have several customers who are using LTO in a more active NearLine format by archiving their RAW footage on LTO tape and then running conforms every day to bring back a hi res media that they’re editing from. Yes, optical disc is certainly a challenger in the market and, because of the way we’ve written the software, we can write to optical disc, but we still see a huge future for LTFS and LTO tape. Ed: I guess there’s no reason why you couldn’t have both, but as you wanted to increase your archive storage or your capabilities, you would start to add the optical disc rather than more LTO? Dan: Well it really depends on how comfortable the client is. A lot of customers can expand their existing libraries to increase their LTO capacity, but if there is a compelling workflow that requires optical disc or if a customer is more comfortable with the speed and durability of optical disc … you know LTO tapes are meant to last, with the materials they’re coming out with now, 40-50 year shelf life, so the days of tapes deteriorating within 10-20 years are done, and now tape technology has really moved in leaps and bounds over the past 5 years, and with the advent of LTFS it’s really opened up a lot of application vendors as well to be able to use it as a viable media. Now optical discs are still in their infancy right now, so it will be interesting to see how the market responds, but StorageDNA is committed to at least offering customers the option of going in either direction. The ODA product is still being developed and tested right now – we don’t expect it until probably the end of the year, but we have a demo even set up today where we’re actually writing to optical disc. It really depends on the customer’s comfort levels. The ODA offers some of the things that the LTO … they have libraries now for the ODA where you can have several ODAs loaded into a library at once, but again cost, speed, durability and access are all going to become critical factors in that decision. But we hope that with the introduction of what we’re calling our Smart Access Technology, which is going to allow you to access LTO more like a NearLine, that we’ll be able to bridge that gap a little bit between the random access speed of ODA and the sequential access of LTO.
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Ed: I couldn’t have put it better myself. Now Dan, one of the issues with LTO is that read/write speed of an individual tape which has been solved in the hard disc world by having a RAID arrangement; you’re looking at doing something similar with tape? Dan: Yes. One of the issues that we’ve seen is when you’re dealing with certain file systems where maybe the write speeds for writing files on a single stream to a single tape drive aren’t performing quite as fast as they’d like. One of the things that StorageDNA is moving towards now, with our 4.0 product towards the end of the year, is to start doing things in parallel. So this means that I can take a large collection of data sitting out on my SAN or my hard drives and tell StorageDNA that this is what I need archived and tell us “I’ve got 2 tapes or 4 tapes or 8 tape drives” and we can actually split the data and they’ll write in parallel so that your aggregate throughput now is 4x, 8x or whatever it is that your capacity of drives are. Where we’ve noticed that’s really critical is not just on the archival side to get things onto tape, but when people are trying to bring things back quickly, they’ve got a couple of clips they have to get back as soon as possible, now we can tell them look, we can actually now break up that restore process assuming that the
Avid for Atomise We are at Avid for Atomise with Ren Middleton from Avid Australia. Ed: Ren, the big news has got to be Media Composer 4K. Everybody’s been waiting for this for quite some time – there have been workarounds, but people in this industry don’t like workarounds, they like to work native and no mucking round – now it’s there? Ren: That’s right and now they have it. We haven’t delayed it, but we’ve looked at the whole workflow, so it’s not just about having 4K in Media Composer, it’s about the full workflow and as part of our Avid Everywhere strategy and the media central platform, it’s an important part of that. So we just don’t want people to be able to access Media Composer on their desktop as an application, be it 1K, HD, 4K, 2K … we want to be able to expose that to multiple users with remote workflows as well. So it’s a really important strategy and part of the media central platform that we join all the dots and release it as a full workflow product suite, not just focusing on single point products.
clips are on different tapes, we can load 2 tapes, 4 tapes, 8 tapes at a time as part of that restore collection of files and bring them back in parallel as well. Parallelisation is a very important thing that we’re moving toward because we recognise that it’s not only important to the enterprise level guys, but even the mid and small market guys can really benefit from this technology. Ed: So you’re moving to NearLine storage as opposed to archive I guess? Dan: Well yes … conceptually we’re trying to move towards making LTO and LTFS a more of a NearLine medium than it is today and part of the advantage of a NearLine and disc is yes, I can write as many files as I want at a time. But we’re trying to again push the boundaries of what we’re doing with LTFS to make it as close to a NearLine as we can. Ed: Was that parallelisation? Dan: Yes. Ed: Z’s or S’s? Dan: I guess it’s a “z” for us, but … Ed: That’s okay, I’ll throw you back there.
NZVN
You may be aware of DNxHD which has been a very successful HD codec made for Avid but that’s being used by everybody. We’ve now released a new codec which is DNxHR, so high resolution. You can still have low bitrate 4K media if you like, so that means you can reduce your storage capacity and you don’t have to have as much bandwidth requirement on your storage. Now the important thing is that you could edit in that resolution if you wanted to, then relink to the full native hi res files at a later date. So we’re really covering off all areas of the requirement here. Ed:
In terms of resolution, what’s the comparison?
Ren: DNxHD is the HD codec that we have, 1920x1080 and now we’ve released DNxHR which has various flavours up to 4K.
Ed: If I can make a slight diversion here – I’ve come to realise in the last year or so in doing these shows that 4K on its own isn’t actually the only thing. Just because something’s 4K it doesn’t mean that it’s the best. Is that true also in your side of the business? Ren: Yes, I agree and I think the important distinction is resolution independence, so whilst we’re releasing and highlighting 4K at this show, things will change. Japan, for instance, is very focused on 8K at the moment and this will continue to grow up and up, so we’re making sure that the whole platform is ready for resolution independence, be it 4K or whatever. I think probably the other distinction is that native 4K editing is okay, but it takes up huge bandwidth and huge storage as well, so one of the other important things is that we’ve released a new codec. Page 36
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We are now talking to Deepraj Sandhar from Avid in Dubai. Deepraj: The DNxHR codec is a codec for resolutions higher than HD, so any of those resolutions we support in the project, so 2K, UHD, 4K can be encompassed within this wrapper. As Ren was saying, a lot of people are acquiring 4K but usually the camera acquisition is not the format you want to edit in, because it’s either going to be highly compressed or it’s not actually an editable codec. So you need an interim place to go to and, in many senses, DPX files which are uncompressed are great to work with, but have a huge bandwidth and also cost on postproduction houses. We support ProRes for example, we support DNxHR, so you’ll be going to a high resolution codec, you will edit in that codec and then for TV, you may just output from that codec. But for film or high end commercials, you may then relink to the hi res DPX and then do a finish on those DPX and output DPX files as well. So much like the workflows we were seeing in HD, but it’s dependent on who you’re delivering to. You will choose to work in a normal codec which is, for example, DNX or ProRes within Avid, and then if you’re going to the commercials or films, you would move on to a DPX workflow and finish on the DPX files at the same time. Ed: So why wouldn’t you go in a generic type like an H.264, H.265 type codec? Deepraj: Well our DNX codec has been used with our HD codecs as well, so it’s a SMPTE standard which we ratified and it’s also a codec which the application has been ratified for as well. So going for an H.264 or an H.265 wrapper within an MXF format isn’t necessarily going to give us the bandwidth for the data rates we’re trying to get to our customers. If you look at our DNxHR codec, it’s around about 650 megabits a second, which is four times larger than DNxHD 220, but for the 4x more in terms of data rate, you’re getting more bandwidth, you’re getting an efficient codec and more importantly, you’re getting the best quality on the actual screen which you may not get with other types of compression. Ed: So are you getting the camera manufacturers onside? Deepraj: It’s a bit early to say … they get onside with their HD for example, having a QuickTime with a DNxHD codec inside the camera as well, so that’s something we’ll be working with, but not at the moment. If the camera codecs are their own types of format, like RED for example, then from that we’ll generate a DNX file. But what wouldn’t surprise me in
the future is if they had native DNX recording cameras, like you have at the moment with the ARRI for example – they’re going to implement those codecs well. But I couldn’t say, we can’t confirm whether it’s going to happen yet or not. Ed: It would be quicker to start with some of the offboard recorders such as the Codex? Deepraj: Yes definitely. Codex is a big partner of ours; AJA with the Ki Pro are a big partner of ours as well, so as this becomes more prominent as this application gets released, then we’ll start to see those partners coming onboard as well. Ed: On the other side of it, isn’t it a case of “oh dear, not another codec”? Deepraj: I wouldn’t say “oh dear, not another codec” – you need a codec, there has to be a codec somewhere and luckily the codec is an established codec rather than a new codec that’s coming out in the field or anything like that. A codec is needed unless you’ve got a lot of money, a lot of storage and a lot of computers. Ed: No, none of us have that. Deepraj: then.
A free codec is probably the best option
Ed: Right, what else is Media Composer now offering? Ren: Well Media Composer is probably just one component of part of the bigger story I mentioned before, but there’s other workflows that go with it, so I’ll jump into a product called Media Director which is fairly new and it’s for file based ingest. That’s also 4K capable, so if you have file formats that you want to bring in, you can transcode them to one of the DNX codecs, DNxHR codecs that Deepraj has just mentioned, but that will also push the hi res media onto third party storage or onto our storage, so that’s part of that workflow whereby you can relink to that hi res file if you want to output in full hi res at a later date. Ed: Of course, the common belief is that people want to work in their native format – however, if you’re working in a collaborative environment, which Avid is obviously the leader in, you’ve got to have a common format for everybody? Ren: Yes and that’s fine. You can do that – if you have the storage and the bandwidth capability, you can absolutely do that with hi res. There’s no issue about that. But, in general, what most production houses and broadcasters do is that they’ll use a lower res, so DNxHR to edit and then if they need to send it to playback or if they want to master then they’ll relink to the other media files. So that just keeps your storage and your bandwidth and your network requirements down to as low as you can possibly go. But yes, if you have the bandwidth and infrastructure we can have collaborative workflows with native files. Ed:
Okay, next?
Ren: MediaCentral | UX I think is something that is quite important. I’m not sure whether you’ve seen it before … Ed:
I’ve heard of MediaCentral.
Ren: It all started with our storage products. We have ingest and playout devices and ISIS 5500, ISIS 7500 for our collaborative workflows. We’ve got also an artist suite which has our traditional products like Media Composer or like Pro Tools and products like that – Sibelius is another one – so the way that we’re doing with the Avid Everywhere strategy in
Deepraj (left) from Avid. Page 38
So we’re round circling the whole production things, we don’t have this linear hand off anymore, so it’s a good story. Ed: So it’s a good thing is it Ren? Ren: Of course it’s a good thing Grant. Get on the platform, Avid Everywhere, that’s what it’s all about. Ed: Now Ren, the other two stories that I’ve done for Atomise have been StorageDNA and MOG and both of them have said they work really well with Avid. How do you feel about that – wouldn’t you like to have all that business yourself?
MediaCentral is we can expose this media out through the Internet effectively in a number of ways. So you may have an IOS device, you may have a web browser or you may have Media Composer in the field somewhere and you can remotely connect to this media which is pretty powerful and pretty effective. Even from that Media Composer point of view, if you’re out in the field, you can ingest media locally and then you can send that media back into the centralised collaborative environment as well. All of the metadata is retained with that media as you’re sending it. So it’s a two-way workflow. With the web browser only, you’re still capable of doing edits, you can do dissolves, you can look at your Newsroom rundown, you can combine your Newsroom rundown with the media, you can edit together so that you can retain the metadata, the slug information from the iNews rundown all the way through the workflow. For a journalist in the field, they can also write their script and if you’re a News producer, you can even approve things remotely via an IOS device or an Android or a web browser. I guess I’m trying to describe that it has really grown out to a very powerful sort of workflow. There’s even another layer on top of that which is Interplay Media Asset Management (Interplay MAM) which enables larger enterprises to hook up with their business systems, be it traffic systems or third party products, transcode devices or archives when you can store in archive and retrieve and do other different workflows that you may require, from site to site, externally or perhaps internally. The other product that we’ve got is Media | Distribute and this is for social media publishing. It’s really good … Ed: Really – and you want to get into that space too? Ren: We’re doing it, we’re doing it. So you can take your Media Composer sequence that you’ve edited in a Media Composer or in MediaCentral remotely and then using that same MediaCentral interface, but a different tab on it, it can then determine where you want to publish that media. You might click the Facebook button, the Twitter button or YouTube button; you can add scripting information or, if you’re in the News environment, you can suck that straight in from your Newsroom system, edit it and then post it directly, and then we’ll integrate with transcode devices in the back end, all seamlessly to the operator and then actually publish that to those sites. We have a lot of interest in that because it brings that social media publishing back into the Newsroom or into the production house. The other thing is analytics. Our goal – and we’ve started this journey – is to retrieve analytics from Twitter or Facebook on how many people have viewed things, and display that information back in your interface or in iNews, so you can start making live editorial decisions on what you may want to produce or publish or change.
Ren: No, in a sense. So as part of our … and I know I’m harping on about the Avid Everywhere strategy, but a part of the strategy in the MediaCentral platform is our openness and we’re now the most open vendor around. We’ve just released our connectivity toolkit, so this enables third parties through various APIs and SDKs … Ed: What’s an API and an SDK – I thought that was a type of tape wasn’t it? Ren: No, that was TDK. So, different ways of integrating third party products. We work very closely with lots of third party products so that they can be part of the platform as well. So in fact what they can do, they can come onboard, they can develop effectively an application if you like and then we’ll certify it and we even give them the capability through a public marketplace to be able to sell their product integration through the Avid marketplace. We have about 600 development partners that work with Avid and that integrate with Avid, so we are the most open platform available. In fact, here at this show, we’re highlighting 10 different manufacturers that we’ve integrated in as part of the MediaCentral platform. Some of them are competitive products. We have an asset management company that we just want to highlight the fact that we’re open and that we want to work … it’s all about the solution for the customer at the end of the day. They spend a lot of time and money trying to glue these different components together. We want to make it easier through MediaCentral platform and the connectivity toolkit to make that happen. So we’re incredibly open and yes, we do work with MOG, we have a good relationship with them and StorageDNA as well, and we’ve got plenty of sites that integrate that, and we’ve got some in New Zealand. Ed: That’s got to be good for the customer. Now, we’ve talked about this before, where you’ve got to start is with the students haven’t you? You’ve got to get Avid out there to the students and hopefully we’re going to be doing something on the education market in New Zealand very shortly with Richard … is that right? Ren: That’s right. Look we’ve made really good inroads into the education area. I know that Richard has been flat out there and he’s working with a lot of educators and I know that many of them really are onboard with Avid products now with Media Composer and ISIS. From an Australian perspective as well, we’ve kicked some really good goals and so we’ve brought a lot of universities on to the platform with full workflows, which is tremendous because it has to be relevant to the market and Media Composer and Avid is the market leader by far in production and broadcast, so educators are realising that they need to be relevant and train their students on relevant products. Ed: Well, we’ll see what Richard comes up with very shortly shall we? Ren: We shall, I’ll prompt him.
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Lupolux Lights for Gencom For Gencom, we are at Lupolux and we have Andrea Lupo from Italy. Ed: Lupolux – this is something new for us. Andrea, how many years have you been in business making lights – I guess this is a family business? Andrea: The company was born in 1932 with the name Lupo which is my last name. It was founded by my grandfather and we specialised in professional cameras for photographers, so it’s very old. Then it got Note: This is not split in 2010 and Lupolux was born, so the new company is now four years old and we decided to specialise in the small Fresnels, beginning with small HMI Fresnels and now LED Fresnels which we see as actually the future of lighting.
Andrea in the photo, but who’s complaining?
Andrea: Yes. Actually the core market is studio and videographers, cinematographers, photographers and rentals.
Ed: Did you see some opening in the market where these sorts of lights weren’t being produced to the best possible standards … why did you choose this particular style of light?
Ed: And also what impresses me – you’ve only got two sizes of fixture, but then within those two sizes, you can either have a daylight or a tungsten, so really there are four varieties in light and that covers quite a wide spectrum of uses?
Andrea: We chose the Fresnels because we saw that there was a possibility of making good sales with small Fresnels because usually Fresnels are quite big. That’s good for studios, but some customers, like video customers, ENG customers, even photographers, they need something lightweight and so we add small bodies to fit in HMI lamps and when the LED came of age, like two years ago, with big LED COB chips, we tried to fit them inside the two fixtures we had and they fit very well. So we understood that customers didn’t want any more the HMIs and they were very excited about the new LED Fresnels.
Andrea: Yes, we now have a 50 Watt equivalent to 650 Watt tungsten and a 90 Watt equivalent to 1K tungsten and they sell very well. We are planning on expanding the line with something equivalent to 2K, but differently from other companies we are waiting because we don’t want to make something big and heavy and super expensive. We want to make something quite small with a big lens, but still small and lightweight so that people can have a 2K equivalent LED Fresnel but at a reasonable price, a reasonable size. So we will expand the line with something bigger, it just takes time.
Now tenders are made with specifications for LED Fresnels equivalent to 600 Watt, equivalent to 1K, even 2K because a lot of people in the video market, in TV studios, they have tungsten lights and they need to replace them because of going “green”, because of heat, because of power consumption. At the beginning, like three years ago, they didn’t have the choice of LED Fresnels, but now they’ve realised that several companies are making good LED Fresnels which work, which have a good output, a good quality of light, so they can really put away the old tungsten and go with this new technology.
Ed: And also they’re very clean because there’s no external ballast – everything’s inside the lamp body. Of course, being Fresnels they’re focusable – what’s the focus range that you offer?
Ed: What really impresses me immediately with these lights is that they are very light. That of course would be a concern if they were plastic, but I have seen that they are certainly very robust because you’re not using plastic, you’ve got a special material here? Andrea: Yes, we use an alloy, nylon injected with carbon fibre. We couldn’t use plastic for HMIs because it would melt, so we had to inject the nylon with carbon fibre and we still do this for LEDs, even if we could just use plastic. In this way it’s more robust and it can take a beating. Obviously it’s not as tough as metal, but it’s a very good compromise between weight and toughness. Ed:
They’re still used in rental houses I understand?
Andrea: It goes from 12 degrees to 55 degrees in flood, so it’s like a traditional tungsten or HMI. Ed: But of course the real test is how even the spread is in that flood? Andrea: Actually, customers usually find that it’s more even than tungsten or HMIs because there’s no reflector. You know the problem with evenness with bulbs is that you have a reflector and it projects shadows. With LEDs, there’s no reflector. All the light goes forward, so it’s very even. Ed: And the only accessory that goes on the front of this is a set of barn doors to which you can clip your gels or your softs or whatever you want to put on the front. So a really simple easy package? Andrea: We also have the option to have gels put in front of the lens, like round gels, traditional but semirigid filters, so you don’t need a frame. You just put the rigid filter and it stays like a gel clip in the metal frame and it’s very easy. The point of these lights, and also of the company, is making a few products sold in good numbers, easy to use, easy to sell, so we believe in making things easy for everybody.
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the kit together yourself because it’s cheaper – because we make lights ourselves but we buy cases, we buy stands, so customers will pay twice to buy the accessories from us. They should buy the lights from us … I mean if they want all the rest we can provide it, but we specialise in lighting and lights. Ed: There’s not a lot of colour on this stand Andrea, it’s black and white? Andrea: Yes it’s simple – like the website and all the adverts we do are in black and white because we like the colours. We used to sell a lot in photography and in that field this combination is very appreciated, it’s very stylish … Ed: Ed: Now what about the stands – are they yours as well, or do you have to get your own stands?
Italian fashion huh?
Ed: I see that there are bags here with kits – so your kits are just the lights and the customer provides their own stands?
Andrea: We take a great deal of effort in offering something professional which works in time, which is reliable, but which also has a very nice design, because now I don’t think it’s like 20 years ago when you could sell anything, any shape … now everybody wants something nice from the Smart Phone to the car, so we want to offer also good design.
Andrea: Yes. We can provide very professional kits if customers want them, but usually the advice is put
Andrea:
Andrea: We sell stands on request. We make lights so we offer stands.
Elemental for Gencom We are at Elemental Technologies for Gencom with Keith Wymbs. Ed: Now this is something a little bit new to all of us and I see in a number of places the words “Cloud” and “server” so that gives us an idea of what you’re all about – just give us your “ten cent” version? Keith: Elemental is a video processing software company. Over the last four years, we’ve been focused on the multiscreen space, so we offer a variety of products that are helping content owners and content distributors get their video from what was typically destined for a TV set, and convert that content over so that it can go to a multiscreen environment with delivery to Smart Phones, Tablets, gaming consoles, and Smart TVs. Over the last four years, we primarily have been focused on two areas – one is file based encoding which entails con-verting files that were typically going to a video-on-demand (VOD) set top box and converting those over for multiscreen delivery or over-the-top TV types of applications that you would find on an iPad and, as well, live processing. We have two flagship products. Elemental Server performs filebased processing, and Ele-mental Live live streams content. That live streaming can be sporting events that last an hour long or 24x7 types of operations where we’re taking down live feeds from satellite and converting those over for different types of multiscreen delivery. We’ve powered a lot of landmark customers in this area all over the world. We’ve sold in 50 countries and we now have more than 500 accounts. On a global basis, we work with media leaders such as HBO, ESPN, Comcast, the BBC, Telefónica – and many other companies like that. Customers in your region that we’ve publicly disclosed include Foxtel in Australia, Sky Racing in Australia, and
Ed:
And quality too? And quality too, of course.
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the University of Auckland in New Zealand. All of these were actually some of our early customers for Elemental Server. In New Zealand, we’re proud to partner with Gencom as our in-country distributor. Ed: So this is a service you sell, it’s not actually a box? Keith: It’s software. We productise in a variety of ways – one way is as an appliance, so it’s a full turnkey system, but we have a very powerful solution that is built on the acceleration from graphics processors, so in general we can do more in a given footprint than any of our competitors. As a software company, everything that we do is on “off the shelf” hardware. We can virtualise in standard data centre environments, private Cloud environments, as well as going all the way to the public Cloud environment. About a year and a half ago, we launched our Elemental Cloud platform which is built on AWS ( Amazon Web Services ) so we can enable Cloud scenarios, sometimes pure environments. An example of a customer that is relevant in that area for us, is Access Digital Entertainment. In New Zealand and Australia, they own the rights for a lot of Hollywood content and they do all the processing on Elemental Cloud for their applications. Ed: So to put it simply, what they buy from you is the software, they have to have their own hardware and everything that they do, if they wanted to, could be totally in-house. There’s nothing that goes out, there’s nothing that goes to the Cloud unless they want it to … unless they wanted the Cloud as part of their storage or distribution system? Keith: Yes, and if our customers want to have a hybrid where they build infrastructure for their known demand, they can build the infrastructure for that, and for big increases in demand they could spike it to the
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experiences that can be very customised and very efficient in terms of how the content is actually delivered. In the multiscreen world, there are a lot of complexities to delivering to all the different devices. At times, you want to deliver very high quality, high bitrate content to a Smart TV, but you wouldn’t want to necessarily do that for an iPhone, because you could deliver to the iPhone but you wouldn’t see the quality difference.
Keith with some Elemental tonic.
Cloud. We call this Cloud-bursting, where you can basically fit the demand curve through peaks and valleys. Demand for processing can spike dramatically within a given day – or even a couple hours – for some customers. So having the ability to spike the processing to the Cloud prevents wasted capital expenditures. If you’re building fixed infrastructure for the peak in video processing demand, then you could have 30, 40, 50, 60% of your infrastructure not being used at any one point in time. Elemental Cloud helps eliminate that waste. Ed: Do you also offer the service where the particular client doesn’t have any of their own software or any of their own server systems, that you can take a stream and do all the conversions for them? Keith: No we don’t act as a managed service provider in any way; we enable companies that do that and we’re actually an enabler for probably a dozen different managed services companies. We made an announcement in this area with The Platform at IBC 2014 earlier in September. They are a managed services CMS and we’re the underlying encoding provider for them. We have a number of others that we haven’t announced yet. This is an area where we provide a video processing engine that’s extremely powerful and robust and flexible because it is software. To showcase the flexibility of our software engines, at IBC we also announced our new video delivery platform, Elemental Delta. Delta is our move to the right in the video value chain beyond the encoding and video preparation market to the video distribution side of the value chain. Ed: You’re moving to the right which is conservative, but is there a left? Keith: Funny! Going to the left in video vernacular would be going into the contribution encoding side; we’re not necessarily doing that. We’re known for being at the core, creating the assets and we haven’t done much in the delivery side. Elemental Delta essentially takes inputs from our compression systems and helps customers create customer
Elemental Delta helps with that, and it also helps with applications like catch-up TV, pause TV, start-over TV, or live to VOD conversion where you take a live stream of a sporting event and create clips of highlights or clips of different periods in a match, or innings in a baseball game. The business owners of pay TV operators and content producers are really thinking about consumers and how they want to consume the content. Things are moving away from a traditional linear mindset for video delivery and the willingness to sit back and watch video on the terms of the provider. Consumers want instant gratification. They want to instantly get clips and snippets of videos relevant to them or go into an environment where they can start over if they miss the first 20 minutes of their favourite show. In a linear world, you can’t really go back to the beginning but with an iPad delivery or Smart TV you can easily go back to the earlier part of content that you may have missed. Ed: Okay, just as a general question – there are I know, a number of big players who don’t get into owning their own software, and I know there’s an example in TVNZ with their Video On Demand service. They have a provider who does everything for them. Whereas, what you’re offering here is something that they would have internally; they would have the software internally, the server internally – it would certainly seem to be a quicker version, but do you need to have a greater technical team to manage this rather than that external platform? Keith: In general, we have the three flavours, where you can either have a full turnkey system or a virtualised machine instance or a Cloud platform. It does require a technical team to kind of run it, but in the Cloud environment in particular, we’ve built a platform that is basically built on rules. There needs to be a certain setup and we tend to target the high end of the market where they’re extremely concerned about the experience that’s being delivered to the consumer. There are companies that will take an end to end managed services solution and a lot of them are actually using Elemental underneath for the video processing, but we don’t stand as that kind of outsourced arm on behalf of the customer. It’s something that we could do, maybe over time, but what we’re really good at is building the core technology and we want the world to use that technology for processing and delivering multiscreen video.
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Ed: I would think that the two benefits of having it yourself is firstly security, and secondly speed – that you get it back to air quicker than you would if you sent it out to some external provider? Keith: I think you’re right, especially from a security standpoint. One of the things that we’re enabling with our new delivery solution Elemental Delta is we’re taking a lot of our capabilities in digital rights management (DRM) and encryption – which are key to protecting content – and providing that end to end. Because we do encryption we can do decryption; we’ve allowed for scenarios where, if you’re storing an asset for VOD types of playback, we actually store it in an encrypted format and then do Just-In-Time encryption and packaging for delivery to the different player devices that are out there. There are a lot of times where you actually change the DRM – it may be PlayReady DRM, but it could be version 1.5 for a TV set which cycles upgrades over a yearly basis, or it could be version 2.1 for a tablet. You don’t want to have to store all those different versions. Being able to do this on the fly ensures that you have content protected end to end, because while it may be at rest sitting on a storage system, it’s encrypted in that system.
processing for a live event is just transcoding off a camera and then sending it up to the Cloud and making the different versions that are required from the Cloud directly. Ed: And they can build on that can they, so if you start out with a small package, you can add streams?
The other point that you bring up in terms of speed – yes, when you have it all in-house, particularly with us, we can take assets that are 2 hours long and create a VOD asset in less than 20 minutes. So that’s extremely fast. Most systems take at least real time, sometimes longer than real time.
Keith: Yes, you can start out and not utilise the full system and it will get capped out only when it’s fully utilised later. We have probably five different levels of system based on performance. It’s based on the underlying “off the shelf” hardware that’s in there, but customers frequently buy with the future in mind, and they’ll be maybe utilising 20 or 30% of the system and then over time grow it, without having to pay anything additional.
When you get into the 4K world, then next generation video compression like HEVC, it takes even longer. Our systems happen to be very, very powerful and able to apply that power to that more extreme processing scenario that is coming in the future. With more pixels for 4K, or when you’re doing next generation compression there are more decisions that are made in the encoding algorithm, and it all takes more time to do this next generation processing.
We have a very straightforward pricing model, it’s basically “all you can eat” based on the system. If you have a system that can do a lot, then you pay a little bit more, because you’re paying for the value that that can provide; but we don’t nickel and dime and say well you know you can pay this basic level and then if you want to do anything else with it, you have to pay. We don’t really do that, we make it very simple and straightforward.
Ed: How small a solution can you provide? One of the areas that is obviously growing is these little web channels, the smaller broadcasters – well they’re not really broadcasters, they’re webcasters, and they might have set themselves up in a garage somewhere and they might have a few programmes that they’re running, but if they want to deliver on multiple levels, is Elemental a bit too much of a Mercedes for them?
Ed: So really, somebody who has a small TV station, who might be traditionally doing local broadcast at the moment, with the addition of Elemental software and the services that, for example, Gencom can provide in New Zealand, has perhaps a new way of distributing the content that they should talk to Gencom about?
Keith: You know, it is a high end option, even for those guys, but I would say that we’ve probably done thousands of YouTube Live streams over the course of the last 3 years. YouTube Live was one of the first integrations that we did. We were one of the first two vendors qualified by YouTube for live streaming, and so that goes all the way down to the individual not quite prosumer level, but those that are trying to disrupt the media industry. So we do have a lower level of system that we provide to them that is 1) space efficient, 2) quiet, portable and more cost effective, because a lot of those streams, it’s just a one to one translation. We tend to specialise in applications that require converting content from a mezzanine input to 20 different versions, where it requires a lot of horsepower, but we also have applications that are one to one. Sometimes ground
Keith: Gencom is a great partner for us and what we’re doing with them is really taking a lot of what we’ve done in other parts of the world and bringing it to New Zealand. We do have a lot of customers who are just getting into the streaming side and we have solutions that can be more of a starter package and get them into the encoding business at a very high level of quality, and do so very easily. It’s all integrated with different content delivery network (CDN) technologies; it’s integrated with all the encryption that’s required and because we’ve been able to grow very quickly internationally, it has all the international subtitling capabilities and different standards that are required, and translating those from the traditional broadcast world over into the new media world so that it’s very seamless for them. Ed:
So go and talk to Gencom.
Keith:
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Absolutely.
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G-Technology for Protel And now for Protel, we are at g-technology.com and in the G-Team today we have Mark Anderson. Ed: Mark, you’ve got a big black thing here – it looks like a mini fridge? Mark: It does indeed, but it’s much more exciting than a mini fridge. Have you ever seen a mini fridge that has 64 terabytes of storage in it? Ed:
No, show me?
Mark: There it is. So we’re part of HGST, we’ve always used Hitachi drives even before Hitachi ( now called HGST ) bought us, so the great thing about now being part of HGST for the last 5 years is that we get access to all the newest in their pool of stuff. On Mark with Tyrone and some very fast drives. Tuesday of last week, HGST announced 8 terabyte helium drives as well as 6 Mark: This is all Thunderbolt 2. We do have terabyte air drives and down the road coming a 10 another system called eS PRO that is PCI based. We’ve terabyte drive as well. had it for a while now, where you can use the PCI RAID controller and so you can similarly have up to 8 drives Ed: What’s the helium for? Mark: The helium enables you to fit more platters in the drive. The biggest thing in a hard drive is air resistance. As the platters are spinning, they’re spinning at very fast speeds, 7200 rpm, and the heads which read the data off the platters are essentially little air foils. So with all that air resistance, it causes turbulence in the drive, causes the heads to move, so you can only put everything a certain distance apart. By putting something in that’s far less dense – helium – you can put everything closer together and so, in the case of our helium drive, you can fit 7 platters and 14 heads in the space where you’d normally fit 5 platters and 10 heads. But on top of that, it actually creates some other benefits. Because there’s no air resistance, it’s much quieter; it’s also completely sealed, so it’s less sensitive to dust; and it also consumes far less power. So especially when you’re talking about multi-drive units involved in large data centres, but even in something now where we’re getting into an 8 drive system, that consumes far less power. Ed:
And produces a lot less heat?
Mark: And produces a lot less heat and of course, for editors, they’re very sensitive to sound as well, so it’s much quieter. Ed: Yes fantastic. The design looks very sort of Apple modern. Is that deliberate? Mark: Yes. We follow the Apple design. From the beginning, that’s been part of the secret to our success, is also being very design concerned and making products that really complement Apple, though they do also work on PC and the nice thing about the black design is it looks great next to a Z820 or whatever system you’re looking at as well. Ed: So it’s all Thunderbolt or are there other options in terms of getting data in and out? Page 46
in a RAID array and get similar performance to what you see on here, especially as we’re also putting our faster drives on there as well. Because the other advantage of the drives getting bigger is they’re getting faster. With the 8 terabyte helium drive, we’ll get up to 195 megabytes per second per drive; with the 6 terabyte air drives they’re even faster because they have fewer platters against the other drives. With those we’re seeing up to 215 megabytes per second. So the absolute fastest performance version of this will be the one with the 6 terabyte air drives and in that we will see up to 1350 megabyte per second RAID 0.
Mark: It is, that’s the legacy technology … well we consider it the legacy technology, for the Windows users and those using tower workstations, it really still makes more sense in a certain way because, for example, on your HPs, your Dells, your Lenovo workstations, while they are bringing Thunderbolt to them, there tends to be a single port, or at best 2 ports and so you’re very limited in your amount of ports. So it’s better to use something that takes up one of the PCI slots which they tend to have many of, and in this case it’s a very fast performing system, also very configurable, very reliable.
Ed:
Ed: And Tyrone, is this good for you because I guess now it covers both bases, you can look after the Mac users and the PC users?
Wow.
Mark: And then in RAID 5, you don’t see a huge decrease in performance. I can actually show you … this one’s in RAID 0 here, but I did run a speed test earlier today and that was what we saw. Ed: Yeah, that’s quick. And for those of us who don’t want such a big monster? Mark: We have a 4 drive version as well – that was what we announced and are currently shipping. We announced that at NAB. That’s our GSP Studio; the big one is called the GSP Studio XL, its little brother is the GSP Studio, 4 bays, uses the same RAID controller, it’s an enterprise RAID controller, does RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD, RAID 50, RAID 60. So it’s very configurable, depending on your needs. Now granted of course, some of those RAID levels aren’t necessary with 4 drives, but as we have an 8 drive system, it makes more sense. Ed: Okay, and then if you didn’t want the black, you still have the silver. Is that the older technology?
Tyrone: Absolutely. We’ve done a lot of G-Tech over the years. Certainly storage is a major concern with just about anybody in our industry and they’re looking for reliability, they’re looking for products which are going to do the job that they need them to do, everything is going the Thunderbolt direction these days. FireWire and USB are still around and they’re still supported obviously, but the future is these new Thunderbolt products and storage requirements are getting greater and greater. Ed: And the good thing is, if you do as it were “bite the bullet” and pay for a high safety RAID configuration, the whole problem with hard drives failing is done away with? Tyrone: … Ed:
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Well I wouldn’t say it’s done away with, but
It’s lessened?
Tyrone: It has. People out there who have had the pain of a drive fail will know that you can’t do enough to backup and double insure your content. Mark: And one nice thing about this is that all of our studio line plus our new G-RAID with removable drives, which is essentially a legacy equivalent of our GRAID Studio, all use the same drive modules now. So if you get one of the systems, or even multiple systems throughout your facility, as long as they’re all populated with the same size drives, you can have on
hand a single replacement module if you want to for that security. And one added feature, of course, in addition to having the secure RAID levels, we’re the only ones shipping Enterprise on the drives – especially at anywhere the price point that we’re at. These are 2 million hour mean time before failure. They’re the most reliable drives you can buy. Even our competitors Enterprise fast drives, they at best have a 1.2 or 1.4 million hour meantime before failure. We go the extra mile and we’ve gotten our sort of hype for 2 million hour meantime before failure. NZVN
Datavideo for Protel At Datavideo, we have Valentijn Diemel. Ed: Now Tyrone’s brought me along here because he’s very impressed with some new products from Datavideo and let’s start with a camera. Now this is not your handheld camera, this is a PTZ camera. What does PTZ stand for? Valentijn: That stands for “pan tilt and zoom”. Ed: Right, so it’s a little robotic camera that you mount on something and leave it there? Valentijn: Yes, you can mount it on the roof of something, you can mount it on a tripod, or you can also mount it upside down to the ceiling or to the wall. It doesn’t really matter, you can flip the image anyway you like, and with the little joystick control you can cascade up to seven cameras and control them remotely. Ed:
Valentijn from Datavideo.
Wow. Is it mains fed or is it battery powered?
Valentijn: It is fed from a wall outlet, but it is low power like all of our equipment so you can actually do it battery powered, but you have to make your separate installation with that. Ed:
Right. Resolution?
Valentijn: 3G-HD, so it’s a 1080p 60 maximum resolution. Ed: That’s high. for this Tyrone?
So what application would you see
Tyrone: Well, we’ve sold the previous model, the PTZ-100 into theatres in Auckland. I think the issue we saw with the camera at that point was the latency, so it was great to see Datavideo come out with these newer PTZs which have much improved latency and we’re pretty positive about it. Ed: No chance of a firmware update on the previous models to bring them up to this spec, or do you just have to get the new cameras?
Valentijn: Anything on this table is quite new. This is the TC-200 which is a nifty little box that transforms the HDMI output into an alpha and title layer, so you can overlay them in your switcher; also HDCG graphics are available now on the move without a whole PC rig, for only US$675 which is fairly nothing! Ed: That’s really what Datavideo started out doing wasn’t it, making little boxes, and you continue in that direction? Valentijn: Yes, we like to use all the available techniques in the market to make things smarter and more affordable. Ed: Tyrone is also pointing at this large black box here with lots of wires coming out of it. What is interesting you about this Tyrone? Tyrone: This is basically a complete studio in a box, but more importantly, what Datavideo’s done is that they’ve set up this website called rack builder and you
Valentijn: Sadly, you have to get the new cameras because there are hardware limitations with the previous camera. We needed to start from scratch and so we launched the new cameras. Ed: Now it’s not just the reduced latency is it Tyrone, there’s a whole raft of little improvements? Tyrone: There’s a whole tonne of them, the ability to daisy chain so many cameras versus the old model; the joystick which I think just works wonderfully – the one button push to swap between the cameras, etc. Yes, there’s a whole heap of changes. Ed: And to go along with this, some other products that are new? Page 48
can then build your configuration and they’ll make it to order. Ed:
A bit like Subway?
Tyrone: Yes like business, no sauce.
Subway,
it’s
a
Ed: Valentijn, would you like to bring some intelligence to this conversation? Valentijn: Well the rack builder is all about versatility. With the right builder, our end users have all the freedom to build up their own racks and to see the end result directly on their screen. So the end user is getting educated about the possibilities of our OBV racks. Ed: So what sort of variations would be the main ones that they would look at in this? Valentijn: You start out by choosing the amount of OBV racks you like to configure and after that you can choose the main switcher. So our main switchers are choosable within a wide region of input channels, but also you have the choice of an HD or SD switcher. Ed: Right, so that’s it. I guess it’s the number of channels you want to have in there and then the flavour or the level of video you want to work with? Valentijn: Exactly. And after that you can choose your standard peripherals like recorders or multiviewers or talk back equipment, audio mixing, audio delay, streaming encoders or pretty much anything that a video serves that can be mounted in a rack you can configure in the rack builder. Ed: And I guess the really good thing is that, if one piece of the hardware needs upgrading, you can just take that out and replace it and you keep running? Valentijn: Yes, definitely. That’s completely correct. Moving on to the Datavideo visual mixers, we have Mark Ederveen. Mark: Here we have our 12 input vision mixer for HD-SDI signals, model 2800. It comes as a box solution with a talkback system, vectorscope system, hard drive and 17 inch preview monitor and with the fly away kit it’s available at the price Є15,000. It can take 12 high definition cameras; it records onto a hard drive
and after the event has ended just take the hard drive out, connect it to your editing system and you can start immediately to drag and drop the files into your editing system and do your job. Ed: So this is only recording the mixed output – there’s no safety record of any of the inputs? Mark: For this system no, there is only one recorder built-in, but if needed we can also configure such a system with an extra ISO recorder for special customer requirements. Ed: So for example, if you wanted to keep a wide shot, you could keep recording that wide shot or I suppose you could use the camera recorder for that anyway? Mark: Yes, just add an extra recorder and then you can record two streams. But in the standard setup it comes only with one recorder. Ed: And the advantages of this version over previous models, because you’ve been making vision mixers for quite some time now? Mark: I think the first professional mixer by Datavideo was introduced in the year 2000 or 2001 and of course, it was only analogue or standard definition quality and now we’re talking for 12 channels HD at a very competitive price level and as you can see on the model on your lefthand side, we can make it even smaller and more compact as we use the same technology in our HS systems, the hand carry systems, for making mobile switchers with 12 inputs also with talkback and preview, and then we have a very lightweight version. But everything is smaller now, higher in quality compared to the previous generations. Ed: And while Mark’s been talking, I’ve been playing with the buttons and the rocker and yes, easy-peasy. Mark: It’s very easy to operate, no hidden menus. Of course you have a set up menu which you only have to use once, but as soon as you want to go live, it’s direct cutting on the programme where we have some basic wipes and dissolves onboard. Anybody with any interest in video or any interest in live switching can operate this unit within NZVN only 5 or 10 minutes.
Mark from Datavideo. Page 49
Avid Audio for Protel At Avid, we are talking audio for Protel with Tyrone Payne. Ed: Tyrone, you’ve got something here that you’re really interested in and you’re calling it – what is it, a “rock ‘n roll” editor? Tyrone: This is the S3L which we first got at the end of last year and really, at that point in time, all this desk was – well I would call it a “rock ‘n roll desk” but it was a desk for the live sound industry. In the last few days, Avid have upgraded it and now it’s become a useful desk for the editing industry as well. It’s something you can pick up Chris and Tyrone at Avid Audio. pretty easily, put in the car, Right, to tell us more detail about this we have Chris go off to your rock ‘n roll, do your recording, come back Lambrechts from Avid. the next day and edit. Ed: And of course, all the people who bought them way back then – it’s just a firmware upgrade is it? Tyrone:
Yes, absolutely.
Ed:
Chris, was that a fair introduction?
Chris: Absolutely, it was spot on. One of the addons that we’ve done now is that it’s a EuCon DAW
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time and that’s really not enough if you’re mixing a live show. So you need hardware controllers. Those hardware controllers are tactile, they give you hands-on on virtually any parameter that’s part of the software and, where we used to have analogue circuits, for example, to control an EQ on a digital desk, that EQ is embedded in the software, but it still needs to be tactile to be useful in most hands-on live sound environments. Ed: So this is all networkable and, Tyrone, this is really the way Avid Audio is going, is that right?
controller so you can effectively bring it back from your live sound environment and use it in your studio environment and use it for mixing and editing. Ed: Aaaah, that’s what he means by a rock ‘n roll editor. So you can have it out in the field, do that live mix, but then bring it back in the studio and do your post mix? Chris: Absolutely. You could even do some overdubs with it if you wanted, because it has some local IO, same mic reads in the back of the surface as on your stage boxes, so whatever you recorded during the live show, those same mic reads are available in your post environment, do some overdubs and mix everything. Ed:
Basically, this is still running Pro Tools isn’t it?
Chris: Yes, so we have two environments here – we have the VENUE D-Show Live Sound software which runs for the live mode and then the integration with Pro Tools makes it possible in live mode to do a 64 channel recording over CAT5 straight into your laptop or ADB capable Mac. Then once you go into studio mode you just take that same CAT5, hook it up to that same computer and at that point it becomes your IO interface for your Pro Tools environment. At that point it’s a DAW controller and it controls Pro Tools. Ed: Right. What I’m always trying to get my head around is this mix between software and hardware. For many, many years it was all hardware – the audio/video side of the business was hardware controlled, then software came along and people started to say “well, you can replace all of this hardware with software”. But now it’s going back the other way – but it’s a bit of a hybrid situation, the best of both worlds. Would that be right?
Tyrone: Well yes, I think so. I think Avid would love to have brought this out a little bit sooner than they have, but certainly for those who are Pro Tools lovers, this is the way forward for them and it’s affordable, it’s something they can pick up and carry around and place it anywhere, so you don’t need a pallet and a crane and all that sort of thing that you might need with some of these bigger consoles, and of course, take it home and start your editing in the wee hours of the morning. Ed: Are there smaller versions of this. This looks as though it’s about 16 faders? Chris: This is the smallest desk that we do. I think it’s actually one of the smallest live sound desks in the world and, like Tyrone just mentioned, we come out of an era where, if you were doing a festival, you had to have a crane or one of those forklifts to bring your analogue desk out to the middle of the terrain where you’re setting up front of house, right. That had its charms, but these days with the need for speed, people expect you to be doing a show one day and then the next day you might be thousands of kilometres away so you have to pack that up, not only put it in trucks, but also in airplanes and just fly it to the next location, and you’re expected to do that exact same thing on the next location the next day. This kind of desk allows you to pack it up, put it in the hold of an airplane and you’re actually carrying around a 64 channel full blown digital desk with integrated multitrack recorder. Ed:
So it’s all there, all in one?
Chris:
Chris: To some extent yes. I think for us, for a live sound environment, any digital desk will have software running on it and that software needs an operating system, so to some extent, any digital desk could be looked on as a computer. But software only has limitations – if you use your standard computer keyboard and a mouse for example, you have 10 fingers, what do you do with all your faders? With a mouse, you can only grab one fader at a Page 51
Yes.
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