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Sony - Part TwoScott Webster continues thestory for Sony.

Ed: A display area that I’vebeen looking forward to seeingcovers Sony’s Optical DiscArchive solutions.

Scott: We’re showing alittle application that is beingdeveloped to go with theOptical Disc Archive and showsthe power of metadata search.What we’re doing here is whenthe video comes in, the audiohas actually been transcribedto text, so you can then do asearch for any audio cuesbased on a text word that youtype in. What we’re demon-strating here is the word“Washington”. It’s searchingfor that word on the video fileswithin the Optical Disc Archive.

Ed: Is this an automatic tran-scribe – the words?

Scott: Yes. “I’m holding in my hand …” says Scott.

NAB 2012 - PART TWO

TTThe stories concerning what good things are to come continue with more interviews from the NAB show in LasVegas. In the “great leap forward” section, another technology that has been hyped out of sight has been“cloud computing”. This year, a number of vendors in our space were somewhat quieter with their cloud visionswhich, told to me by a number of respected journalists ( don’t bother commenting ) and engineers, is due tothese realisations and more –

Who actually owns the data you put in the cloud?

What happens to it if you don’t keep paying your subscription?

Can the FBI look in anytime they want?

Who is responsible for replacing the data if the system fails?

What if your local telco has a problem with their part of the pipeline?

For us, this last one is the biggie. We don’t have the pipe size necessary except in a very few places and I for onecertainly don’t trust our telcos to deliver 100% any time soon. Don’t despair, there are other options.

You read about Apace last month and now a deep archive solution from Sony. Ed

JUNE 2012 Vol 181

it off and read it. The other thing is that, as we knowwith other disc formats, they’re backward compatible.You’ve got a Blu-ray player today that can play a DVDand it can play a CD, so what we’re saying here is that,all you need is a laser mechanism to read this back andwe believe that’s a lot more future-proof than some sortof complex spinning head, magnetic mechanism with acomplicated tape transport. So we think Optical DiscArchive is a very real alternative.

Ed: I think there’ll be many people who would agreewith you Nick.

Nick: What we’ve announced as the base product is thedrive unit plus the cartridge itself which holds 12 opticaldiscs. We’ll release these towards the end of this yearand so at its simplest form, you could use this drivewith a cartridge in a desktop situation where you havedata to store. It doesn’t matter what the data is, itcould be XDCAM files, it could be XDCAM EX files, itcould be PowerPoint, it could be other video formatfiles, it could be anything.

Ed: It’s just a data disc isn’t it, and it’s got to beseparated from a video format … it’s totally formatindependent?

Nick: That’s right, but we are consciously pitching thisat entertainment production type applications. In fact,Sony has established an advisory group of majorbroadcasters and postproduction organisations aroundthe world, to work on trying to establish this as aformat for the future. We’re also working with variousthird-party manufacturers as to how we could integratethis into robotic systems. Whilst I’ve shown you just asimple drive here, sitting on the desktop, conceptually,we could use these to build a scalable library withrobotic access, right up to a massive storage system ofsay 30,000 hours of 50 megabits per second video asan example.

Ed: And to me, for the smaller producer, the reallygood thing is that you can record stuff onto this, take itout of the cart and stick it on your shelf and you canleave it there for 20 years, not use it, and know thatwhen you put it back in it will spin up and read thedata?

Nick: As long as you’ve got an application that can readthe files, the data should be able to be recoverable, yes.So this is quite an interesting step forward for Sony.

Ed: I see there’s already an XDCAM Juke application?

Nick: Well that’s something different. XDCAM Juke isthis product here … XDCAM Juke is already a product,basically it’s a juke box with two XDCAM disc drives andit can hold up to 30 XDCAM discs. So this is designedfor facilities that have a lot of throughput, that need toingest or write back a lot of content. So, for example,rather than having an operator standing there, moving

Ed: So it recognises all these differentlanguages and converts it to a textdocument … six languages, even with anAustralian accent?

Scott: Yes, so then it finds the clipsand gives you in and out points to wherethat word is used in the video.

Ed: That is seriously cool and that’sthe difference between a dumb archiveand a clever archive.

Scott: We also have other searchcategories.

Ed: I guess of course you can searchfor clip names and dates and things likethat?

Scott: But we’ve also got face recognition.

Ed: Nooo! Type in “Scott Webster” – see what we get… okay, so you have a little bin of faces and it finds allthe matches. So the roadmap … this is really clevernow, but it’s going to get even more clever when therecan be a subset search or you can put in for a particularface at a particular date range?

Scott: That’s right. I think the important thingwhen we start getting into very large volumes of data,is actually the ability to find the clip that we want or thematerial that we want and we need easy tools to dothat and this is just a preview of what Sony’s doing withthis technology, for Optical Disc Archive … very exciting.

Ed: Nick, you remember a few months ago I did astory about archiving and how clouds and spinning harddiscs are not necessarily the way to go. They still haveissues and it seemed to be that Optical Disc was themost stable, but it’s always been a little bit hard tohandle because you haven’t got too much data on onedisc. Sony have come up with a solution Nick?

Nick: Well this is something that we’re putting forwardas a future deep archive solution. I suppose if you wantto think of the alternative currently, something like LTOtape storage would be the current format that somewould use. One of the issues with LTO is that it’s amagnetic format, a magnetic tape and it’s onlybackward compatible across two generations, so whenLTO-3 came along, you weren’t able to play LTO-1tapes and, as each successive generation comes along,you need to migrate your data from your oldergenerations across, every 5 or 6 years. So what we’reproposing here is not strictly an XDCAM product but itderives from the XDCAM optical disc technology, so it’s

an optical discarchive systemusing a cartridgeof up to 1.5terabytes capa-city. That cart-ridge has 12optical discs in it.Now just like theXDCAM system,we have alwaysstated that it’sextremely archi-vally stable – a50 year shelf life– plus, being anoptical disc readby a laser, if thedisc is flooded orfull of mud orsomething, it’spossible to clean

Count them - 12 discs in one.

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discs in and out of decks for hours, they can load thediscs up, set it to work, walk away and come back nextmorning …

Ed: I imagine there will be similar software availablefor this disc system?

Nick: Juke is more hardware than software. It’s astorage solution and we’re working with various thirdparty providers as to how it could be integrated; youobviously need a management system to sit over thetop of it. So we’re working with a bunch of wellrespected partners.

Ed: Now of course, Sony seems to be making theclearest, best colour, most beautiful monitors that I’ve

to be a backlight there. That means that, unless youturn off that backlight, black is not black, black is grey,whereas on an OLED, there is no backlight – each pixelgenerates its own light. So when there’s no signalthere, or in the black areas, there is no backlightshining through, so black is black and that’s really theline we use to promote the OLED. They have fantasticblacks – people have not been used to seeing true blacksince the CRT days. There are some very high gradeLCD monitors around purporting to have excellentblacks, but they’re generally very high cost, very lowvolume monitors that you just don’t commonly see.We’re talking about a 17 inch monitor that starts ataround NZ$5,400 for the PVM version – it’s very price-

competitive against LCD and puttingthem side by side is just chalk andcheese. You really want accurate colourin a production monitor and the OLEDdelivers.

Ed: When are we going to see them inthe home?

Nick: OLEDs … well that’s a goodquestion. There are some technicalchallenges in making large ones.Currently, we make three sizes, 25 inchis the largest, 17 inch, and a 7 inch forportable applications.

Ed: Because people at home want 50inch?

Nick: Well that’s right, the demand inthe home is for bigger and bigger setsand it’s possible that OLED is not theright technology for that, because there

are some challenges to make very large panels andthere are other technologies under development, whichwe can’t talk too much about, for the consumer market.I’m not talking about professional, so larger screensmight be the answer, but for now, the home screensare LCD or plasmas. We don’t make plasmas at Sony,so we won’t talk about plasma thank you! Okay, thisproduct here is the NXL-IP55. It doesn’t sound veryexciting and it doesn’t even look very exciting but to behonest …

Ed: It’s a box, come on?

Nick: It’s a box, and this, in my rounds of talking topeople about what we’re showing here, excited a lot ofpeople more than just about anything else, and there’sbeen a lot of people here looking at it. It’s all aboutvideo over IP. Now video over IP is not necessarilynew, there are boxes on the market that take a regularSDI video signal and transmit it via a network, that’sgreat …

Ed: But it doesn’t always work very well?

Nick: Well maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But that’salso rather simplistic if you’re looking at setting up asystem.

So what we’re talking about here is a system that iscapable of taking four video channels, take it as threecameras and a return video feed, or two cameras andtwo return video feeds, but it’s a total of four channels,over a network, with full genlock which is what’srequired in a multi-camera system, with camera controlsignals being able to be incorporated over that networkas well as audio, both on the embedded SDI inputs andseparate audio input, with tallies going back to thecameras, with intercom going back to the cameras. Allthe facilities that you expect of a studio camera, butwithout needing to install triax or fibre infrastructure, soyou can have about 100 metres between the box and

seen in the OLED format. This is doing well in theworld?

Nick: Absolutely. We fully unveiled the OLED range atlast year’s NAB and we’ve now been shipping them overthe past 12 months. As with many hot newtechnologies, demand has tended to outstrip supply,but we were told just a few days ago over 10,000 havenow been shipped around the world. In Australia andNew Zealand there is demand particularly for the PVMOLED source monitors which are so brilliantly priced. Anumber of the big outside broadcast companies havebought reasonable quantities to use as CCU positionmonitors, which is a great affirmation of the quality,and really there is nothing to match them. We’ve seenquite a number of postproduction houses and also somebroadcasters start to adopt the higher grade OLEDs, theBVM-E and BVM-F. We have two high grade serieswithin the range, BVM-E is the top of the tree, for thepostproduction houses, and BVM-F is aimed at thebroadcasters who don’t need all the bells and whistlesthat are used in postproduction, but still need a gradereference monitor for a technical director’s position,maybe a lighting director’s position, that type of thing.

Ed: What sort of things are they telling you that theyfind as improvements in these monitors, over what theywere using before?

Nick: I think the “blacks” is probably the first thing thateveryone sees. They deliver true black – “black” is“black” on an OLED.

Ed: And that’s the thing, they can tell when they’relooking at it that that picture is not a true black and weneed some adjustments?

Nick: Well in simple terms, an LCD is essentially abacklight shining through an LCD panel, so there isalways going to be a backlight – whether it’s an LEDbacklight or a fluorescent tube backlight, there is going

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the network switch on your gigabit Ethernet LAN andthen here, represented by the pink cable, that’s yournetwork, that could be a few kilometres, depending onthe performance of your switch, or it could even be afibre link which could be many kilometres.

Ed: You can have a remote studio?

Nick: You can essentially have a remote studio over

Cat6 network infrastructure – and we’re talking about

full 1920x1080 HD quality; also ultra low latency, I

mean you can see on this monitor, any latency you’re

observing is more likely from the monitor. Latency is

less than one field, so less than half a frame. It’s really

quite something unique and the possibilities it

represents are what’s got people excited.

Ed: I can well imagine …

Nick: And this allows very affordable systems to be put

together, you’ve got two boxes, there’s not a “send”

and “receive” box, they’re both the same, you simply

have the two boxes …

Ed: Well you say “affordable”, so what’s the ballpark?

Nick: Well a final price hasn’t been announced, but we

expect it will be in the order of around US$10,000 per

box.

Ed: That’s a bargain when you’re setting up a studio

or two?

Nick: We think so and it even has applications in the

higher studio or outside broadcast environment. As an

example, our HDC-2000 series cameras which are being

adopted by the major broadcasters and OB providers,

have a 3G fibre connection back to the van; but within

that fibre connection is an Ethernet LAN trunk, so there

is an Ethernet trunk running out to the camera.

So for example, in a golf outside broadcast, you might

run fibre a kilometre or something out to a camera at a

distant hole, but there’s a fibre trunk incorporated in

that, so you could also use one of these boxes to feed

up to an additional three cameras back to that camera

head, down the fibre trunk, pick it off at the other end

and you’ve got three more cameras … so that might be

other angles on that hole, or there might be a pole

camera up above, or maybe even another hole.

You know it adds all sorts of possibilities even to high

level broadcast systems.

Ed: And it’s going to carry a much more stable signal

and I guess at a higher bandwidth signal than any

wireless option?

Nick: Well, yes, while wireless systems can do many of

the functions we’ve just talked about, they become

quite pricey and, as you say, not necessarily as stable.

It’s more about situations or venues where the

traditional broadcast infrastructure’s just not in place or

might not be commercially viable.

Ed: And of course you’re not limited by the camera or

any of the other infrastructure around it are you – it’s

just you plug it in and away you go?

Nick: Well that’s right, and this whole area here is

about putting together lower cost live production

systems. Of course we offer vision switchers from

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under $10,000 up to half a million dollars, but here

we’re talking about lower end production systems, so

we have a small switcher – it’s not a brand new

product, it’s been out for a while, the MCS8, a very

capable small switcher which is around NZ$8,500.

We also have a new remote camera, the BRC-H900,

which we just announced for NAB and this is now the

highest performance remote pan / tilt / zoom camera

on the market. It sits at the top of our range of what is

now four models and it’s a half inch 3 chip design, so it

has very good low light capability, very high picture

Nick: Well audio is 90% of any video programme andvery important. No one watches television with thesound down!

Ed: Oh I can tell what part of the industry you camefrom.

Nick: So what we’ve introduced here are a number ofnew microphones – for example, the ECS-MS2 which isa single point stereo mic designed to be used on-camera, for small cameras like those that we’ve justlooked at such as the PMW-100, to get higher qualitystereo ambient sounds or atmosphere.

We’ve also added to our range oflavalier mics. Some of our lavaliermics are just totally industrystandard, like the ECM-77. It’s beenaround a long time and it’s still anindustry standard in television andENG. However, we do have a numberof mics in the range and what we’vejust introduced is this ECM-FT5 whichis a flat lavalier mic rather than thetraditional cylindrical design. Othermanufacturers have produced flatmics over the years – however this isour first. These are quite easy tohide, in fact, the mic has beendesigned with a bit of a highfrequency boost so that, if it is tapedunder clothing, it still gives goodintelligibility. So that’s a very highquality lapel mic that’s very wellpriced and that’s available with anumber of different plug fittings forour various radio mic systems …which takes us to radio mics.

Ed: Wireless mics, this is a big topicand it continues to be?

Nick: Well Australia and New Zealand are both going

through the same thing that other countries have, and

that is they’re clearing the existing spectrum that has

been used for wireless mics for many years, clearing

that spectrum off, removing the television services from

that spectrum and restacking them into other parts of

the spectrum and clearing ( in our case ) the 800 MHz

area so that it can be sold off for other purposes – data

casting, whatever.

Ed: Yes, we know the government’s selling it to the

Telcos.

Nick: It’s something along those lines. So as a result,

we’re faced with having to move all the wireless

microphones to other areas and the problem ( and I’m

really speaking mainly from the Australian perspective

here ) is that the government has not come out hard

and fast and said “this is the frequency block that you

can use.” However, there are various lobby groups

including Free TV, who represent the commercial

broadcasters, who have been working with the relevant

government authority, the ACMA ( Australian

Communications and Media Authority ) to establish that

there is a block down in the 520 to 694 MHz range that

will be used for radio microphones and so that’s where

we expect to go. I believe the situation is very similar

in New Zealand and we’ve always sold the same “AU”

versions in Australia and New Zealand – that’s the only

place in the world that particular version has been sold.

So what will happen in the future is we will not have an

AU version; we will use blocks that fit into that

quality, a high degree of control over picture, HD-SDI

output, remote control of course, and a very quiet and

smooth mechanism so it can be used in situations

where you don’t necessarily want it to draw too much

attention to itself.

Ed: Like a very small studio?

Nick: Possible applications are a small studio or a

courtroom or a conference room or a boardroom or any

situation where you want a high quality … of course we

have other options like our HDC-P1 if you want to go

even further into a small camera on a pan / tilt / zoom

but that’s a higher cost example for full-on broadcast.

One area of growth we’re seeing, for example, is radio

stations wanting to put one or more cameras into their

radio studios, because they’re streaming live … as well

as broadcasting radio to air they’re streaming live video

coverage ( as if you’d want to watch it ) of the radio

announcers.

Ed: The jocks doing their thing?

Nick: And some radio stations are actually doing live

music, so they bring a live band in to do a live

performance, they want to actually stream video of that

as well, so they’re putting in one or more of these types

of cameras which can be centrally controlled from a

joystick type control panel through a simple switcher,

and you’re talking about a multi-camera system that

can be put together for the cost of one high end

broadcast camera.

Ed: Now, moving on, into the audio side of Sony?

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frequency range that I mentioned

earlier, probably in common with

the UK. It means the television

channels don’t necessari ly

correspond, but that doesn’t really

matter, it’s the frequencies that

matter and sound recordists, TV

audio guys and camera people can

tune the gear over whatever

frequencies they need to work with

that are clear of local television

services.

We’ve had our DWX digital

wireless system on the market

globally for some time now, that

has never been introduced in

Australia and New Zealand

because of the uncertainty over

what was going to happen. I think

we’re going to benefit from that,

because we’re now into the second

generation of the digital wireless,

and when we introduce this later

across Australia and New Zealand, users will benefit

from this amazing digital system, which is very high

quality. So this is for the higher end, for the broadcast

users, basically replacing the higher end analogue

systems that we’ve sold for many years.

We’ve got a digital slot-in two channel receiver that can

fit straight into the XDCAM camcorder’s slot. We’ve got

a bodypack transmitter of course; also we’ll have a plug

-on transmitter that can be plugged onto an existing

microphone which is great – we haven’t had one of

those before. By using these overseas blocks rather

than AU ones,

there will be new

products available

to us that we

haven’t had be-

fore, like a plug-

on transmitter

that can be used

with existing

hand mi c ro -

phones.

We’ve also got a

new range of

handheld digital

wireless mics,

which have inter-

changeable cap-

sules and Sony

has a range of

capsules such as

dynamic in vari-

ous pickup pat-

terns, also con-

denser, but impor

-tantly, the head

( which is inter-

changeable ) is

an industry stan-

dard thread.

Here we’ve got a

microphone with

a Shure SM58

head, that’s the industry standard for rock singers and

vocalists etc. That’s not made by Sony, that’s a Shure

head, but of course the fitting is universal. That Shure

head can be fitted onto our wonderful digital handheld

wireless mic.

We’ve also got capsules on show here, for example aNeumann condenser head, that’s a very venerableGerman company, and they also make capsules usingthe same fitting, so that could be fitted to those whoprefer that sound. This then makes the system usablefor musical applications, vocals … we have also rackmount receivers, so it’s not just about slot-in camerabased receivers, we also have rack mount receivers – inthis case six channels – for use in studios and smallvenues.

We’re not trying to compete with the huge multichannel systems from other manufacturers that areused in theatres at this stage, but for a studio or aconference centre, a small stage, a church … you know,this is a fully digital system, very high quality audio andreally quite unique. Nobody else has got anything likeit.

The other thing you can do – I showed you the slot-inreceiver earlier, that drops into the back of the XDCAMs… we also have this device which allows that receiver tobe fitted into this box which can then be used by asound recordist separately from the camera. He cantake the output of that to his recorder or to his mixerand use the slot-in. So we will no longer produce aseparate standalone portable receiver, simply use thisto take the slot-in receiver. And these slot-in receiversand also the rack mount receivers have a very widetuning range now – about 72 MHz which givesversatility, gives the sound people a wider range offrequencies that they can access and try and find thesweet spot where they’re not going to be interfered withby anybody. Because wireless mics are regarded as asecondary service you know, we have to findsomewhere to slot in. If there’s a television stationnearby or someone else using those frequencies, we’vegot to move to find a clear space.

Ed: Is there any big new technology on the horizon?

Nick: Yes always, but not that I can talk about!

NZVN

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Fujinon for GencomFor Gencom, we are here at Fujinon withLawrie Hitchens and Ray Sanders.

Ed: Lawrie, this year we are fortunatethat you do have some new products?

Lawrie: We have quite a few newproducts this year. There’s some new PLmount lenses with servo packages onthem that, in seven days, we’vemanaged to sell in excess of 250 lensesat US$38K each.

Ed: So you’ve been manufacturing PLmounts for quite a while?

Lawrie: Yes, we’ve been manufac-turing for around five years now andthere’s a full range of 4K plus lensesthere, going from 14.5mm up to 400mm,ranging around the $80,000-odd US orAussie each, so that’s the high end of themarket. They’re eminently suitable forthe Sony F65 and other 4K cameras.The one that has been taking this bystorm is the Cabrio and that’s Cabrio asin convertible car. It has a removableservo package on it, so you can operateit like an existing PL mount film styleshoot, or you can have it on the shoulderwith a servo package, or interface it tothe Prestons or other controllers therehaving to add your own motors. Soquite a few advantages.

Ed: Does that have the potential tohave one servo and a range of lenses that would fit thatservo?

Lawrie: That’s a good question. I don’t anticipatethat it’s possible at the moment because of calibrationissues. In the cabinet here, we have the one to bereleased at IBC which is the 85-300mm servo and sothat servo will have its model and serial number anddata held within that servo package. So it’s unlikely tobe changeable, but who knows in the future.

Ed: Right, that’s for the big boys, anything for thetraditional television market?

Lawrie: There’s a 19x7.4 mini box lens. That’savailable in a mini box, but also in an ENG lens, so

we’ve taken an ENG lens and put it into a box and thenadded a few extra bits that you’d expect in a box lens.In comparison, we have a 22x that is a full box lensthat’s been made small. So we’ve attacked this fromboth angles, obviously one’s cheaper than the other,but one has a much better performance than the other.

Ed: Now tell me, I remember in the days when we

went from standard definition to high definition, a whole

new lens range came out because the … well let’s call

them “errors” that could occur in a lens, that weren’t

visible in the standard definition, would be in high

definition, so the precision had to go up. Has the same

step happened in going to lenses suitable for 4K?

Lawrie: Absolutely, yes. If you put a2K lens on a 4K camera then you’restarting to see the errors again.

Ed: So you’re defeating the purpose ofgoing to 4K?

Lawrie: With a 2K lens – yes,absolutely. It’s a sliding scale, so thecameras get better the lenses need toget better …

Ed: And therefore more expensive?

Lawrie: And more expensive. But,having said that, you mentioned that wewent to the new lenses for HD; becausethe price of HD cameras has come downso much, there’s now a range that wecall Exceed – an Exceed range of lenses –and now we’re starting to add extendersto those lenses, so there’s a 20x lenswith extender, plus ALAC. Did we talkabout ALAC before?

Ed: Remind me again Lawrie, ALAC?

Lawrie: Well we may not havediscussed it …

Ray, Lawrie and Nicky.

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Ed: It’s nothing to do with alcoholics is it?

Lawrie: No, ALAC is the Automatic Lens AberrationCompensation – basically, automatic correction forchromatic errors. You’re able to re-time horizontal linesred, green and blue to line them up, based on theknown errors on that lens at particular focal lengths andfocus points.

Ed: Isn’t that a function of the camera software andnot the lens?

Lawrie: Yes it is, but then the lens needs to feedthe camera the data in the form that it wants.Panasonic’s taken one approach in that they have a CACand that will allow a similar thing, just under a differentname, except that the look-up table is in the camera.So if you want to put a new lens on, you need to

download; whereas in the Sony one, the look-up table’sin the lens and the lens sends the data to the camera.

Ed: So that’s a software solution for a more costeffective lens that will still give you good results?

Lawrie: Yes, so it allows you to use your lessexpensive lenses in HD applications and still get greatresults.

Ed: Now, of course, with this sort of rush to largeformat sensors and shallow depth of field, people arerushing out and finding old lenses that grandfather usedto use on his Hasselblad and they’re putting them ontheir video cameras. Is this a good thing, or are thereissues?

Lawrie: The main issue about that is the fact thatit’s a fixed focal length lens, rather than a zoom, sostills cameras don’t hold focus while you zoom. Wemake zoom lenses, we’re not making primes, and we’renot making fixed focal length lenses, we’re only makingzooms. Zooms of course hold focus while you zoom.So to get around the lack of movement, you see peoplebuy sliding rigs where they sit on a tripod and theymove the camera backwards and forwards becausethere’s no movement in the picture. And so to getaround the fact that they’re using a fixed focal lengthlens, they’re doing that rather than using a zoom, whichis what they might have traditionally done. So there’sall sorts of merits and all sorts of quality in lenses. It’shard to comment on that, but certainly the Zeiss primesare very popular at the moment I think for primes, butif wanted zoom now we have a really good alternative.

Ed: Right now Lawrie, can we clarify the Fujinon lenssupply situation in New Zealand going forward please?

Lawrie: We’ve made some changes recently. We’vedecided to broaden our lens distribution strategiesthroughout New Zealand, but Gencom still remains verysignificant in forming part of our distribution strategyinside New Zealand and we’re looking forward tocontinuing the good relationships that we’ve had in thepast.

Ed: Your comment Ray?

Ray: Yes, Fujinon has been a large part of Gencom’shistory and we’ve worked with the market for many,many years with lenses from the very early ones rightthrough till now. Distribution strategies change, but ourcommitment is just the same in terms of the lenses andseeing the market looked after in terms of support.We’ve always done support as well as sales and we’rehappy to continue that. NZVN

JVC for GencomWe are now at JVC and having a well-earned drink ofPerrier water with Noel Oakes and Ray Sanders.

Ed: Ray, Gencom is now the sole distributor of JVCprojectors and professional products for Australia andNew Zealand – this is a good thing?

Ray: Absolutely. We had the opportunity to take JVCon in Australia after Hagemeyer was sold and the resulthas been that it gives us a broader scope across theJVC range and has allowed us to take on some of the ex-Hagemeyer staff and a few others as well, giving usmuch more bandwidth to address that area of themarket. In doing so, we’ve brought Noel Oakes on tomanage that area of the business. He obviously residesin Australia, and is assisting the New Zealand team intheir sales efforts as well. So it’s been a real bonus forus to have that team on board and they are alsoaddressing other non-JVC products where necessary.

Ed: So they can integrate their JVC products andproduct knowledge with other products that Gencomoffers?

Ray: Right, yes, and particularly where we have otherproducts that suit the same people who buy camerasand other JVC equipment, so it makes sense if theyhave a broader portfolio to discuss when they’re out inthe field as well.

Ed: So Noel, of the JVC range that you’re nowoffering across the Ditch, both sides, what would beyour biggest range that you’d be selling … would it bethe monitors?

Noel: Well for the professional products it would beprobably neck and neck cameras and monitors to behonest, but we also are exclusively doing the JVCprojector business now for both the professional andconsumer channels, so that’s a big chunk of thebusiness overall. Again, JVC professional would be –yes, cameras, monitors and, soon HD-SDI Blu-rayrecorders.

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Ed: And I guess releasing a 4Kcamera, 4K projectors in the past,that 4K is going to be big for JVC?

Noel: Yes, that’s creating a lot oftalk at the show here. The 4Kcamera we have here is a verycost effective entry level unit. Itcould be used as a high quality fillor POV camera in 4K productions,in education for training studentson 4K shooting and post work-flows, etc, so we’re very excitedabout that. A lot of people havealso expressed interest in usingthe camera to shoot their currentprojects in 4K, keep the files as anative 4K archive while deliveringto their clients requirements asdown converted 2K files only.We’re also very excited about thelatest evolution of the JVC Blu-rayrecorders which have done verywell too. At the show here wehave a unit called the SR-HD2500.What differentiates this from thepast models is that it takes a directHD-SDI feed in, can burn that feeddirectly to Blu-ray disc and plays HD-SDI back outagain. So that will make an excellent ISO recorder for alot of broadcast and professional applications, whichcustomers have been really screaming for, for a longtime … and it will be unique as a one-piece standaloneBlu ray disc recorder for original content.

Ed: Is that a desktop model?

Noel: Yes it is, very much so. It can sit on your deskor will fit in a rack mount if required, but looks verymuch like a traditional VCR from the old days, yes.

Ed: Now what about in the camera area, what are theplans there?

Noel: Aside from the 4K camera, JVC are announcingtwo new cameras here which are the GYHM 600 and a

GYHM 650. Now, in somewhat of a departure for JVCwith these new cameras, is that they are 1/3” 3CCDCMOS units. They have a newly developed 23x Fujinonlens as standard with separate lens rings to controlfocus, iris and zoom.

A key feature of the GYHM 650 is that it has its own IPaddress which allows you to put scene metadata intothe camera as the operator is shooting, or load it uponto the SD cards beforehand. But the killer feature isthat you can send recorded files immediately from thiscamera back to your base station over the internet orupload them to an FTP site out in the field. So, whetherit’s for broadcast use, events, ENG or any other purposeyou can have peace of mind knowing that your footageexists in places other than just the camera’s HDD orSDHC cards. We see this inbuilt wireless capability, FTPupload and metadata ability as key features for the unit.Also, the 650 camera will support most codecs and fileformats known to man including MXF, AVCHD, .MOV,XDCAM-EX, MP4, H.264 and even AVI for people whomay still want to shoot and deliver in standard def.

So, really, these new cameras have some awesome

credentials, 3 x 1/3” CMOS sensors delivering extra-

ordinarily low light capability at F11, and a very wide-

angle, 23x lens, from a trusted name in Fujinon. I thinkthey will really be killer products for JVC going forward

and we expect them to be released around October this

year.

Ed: But the 700 will continue in its present form?

Noel: Yes, the 700 will continue, or the 750 series as it

is now. These two new cameras, the 600 series are

smaller, more handheld type cameras, but going

forward, the 750’s have been around now for close to

two years. Traditionally, JVC have shown a three yearcycle with camera series so I’d say that many of the

same features announced in the new 600 series – at

least the wireless capability, wireless transmission

ability etc, will feature in the next generation of JVC’s

larger shoulder mount cameras which will be announced

around IBC time this year.

Ed: Because people do like to have that choice of

handheld or shoulder mount. It seems to be apreference that is hard to change?

Noel has a life size one for you.

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and also have front of plane capabilitywhich it didn’t have in its first release.However, whilst that’s still available forthe broadcast and post markets as a rackmount unit, Fox Studios recentlyapproached JVC to produce a specificsoftware based solution, using thealgorithms that JVC proprietarily have, toallow them to convert their existingarchive of 2D films for repurposing andrelease as true 3D productions. Thecurrent example of what’s happened withthis product is that the movie I, Robot,which was originally shot as a twodimensional feature, has now beenrepurposed using the JVC technology andis going to be released to the Blu-raymarket in a 3D version. So Fox Studioshave obviously seen the opportunitythere and chose JVC’s technology as thebest suited to them, and will continue torepurpose their archive materials for 3Drelease on Blu-ray. So we’re very, veryexcited about that and I anticipate thatthat should get us a lot of interest in the

product, especially with the New Zealand and Australiafilm and production markets.

Ed: So Noel, the whole invigoration of the market thatGencom is going to bring to JVC throughout Australiaand New Zealand, you can only see this getting betterand hopefully we can look forward to some bigannouncements soon?

Noel: Look it is a very, very good blending of theproducts from JVC with Gencom’s expertise – especiallythe technical expertise. It gives it a whole new lift Ithink for this market, whilst the previous distributionwas perhaps quite …

Ed: Patchy?

Noel: Patchy – patchy’s the word, the experience ofthe staff, the technical level that the Gencom staffsbring is a real lift …

Ed: And the all-round niceness?

Noel: And the all-round niceness, we’ll certainly bringthat … but I think that the additional products thatGencom have in their portfolio are going to be verycomplementary and will assist to move more of the JVCproducts because we can offer some complete solutionsto markets. I think it’s going to be very good. Gencompeople I think understand – they’ve been around for avery long time, they’re extremely well respected.

Ed: And Gencom is a solutions company?

Noel: And it is a solutions company. So the greatreputation Gencom have in the broadcast, telco, postproduction and Pro AV markets can only go to enhancethe sales and profile for JVC in Australia and NewZealand.

Now, a lesson for young journalists – never let your

subject loose with the transcription, but if you do, check

it before it goes to print. I hereby disclaim the

remainder of this story as ever being penned by me. Ed

Ed: Noel, finally I’d like to unreservedly apologise tothe people of Australia for the underhanded way inwhich we Kiwis cheated the mighty Wallabies out of thelast Rugby World Cup. You undoubtedly have thegreatest Rugby team on earth and we are very sorry tohave treated you so badly.

Noel: That’s okay Grant – we take it as payback forthat cricket incident in days of yore. As long as the cupstays here in the Antipodes we are good.

NZVN

Noel: Yes, 100%. Here in America they really arepitching these little cameras very hard at the Newsgathering area and they’re being successful. I thinkthings are changing very fast on this front with the shiftto content delivery over the internet as the drivingforce. We are undoubtedly seeing a move away fromlarger cameras for many applications, but for trulycritical shooting you will always want a fully featured,shoulder mount camera with lens interchange abilityetc.

Ed: And in the monitor stakes, any major changes, orjust different sizes … 4K monitor?

Noel: 4K monitor from JVC … they are working on a 4Kmonitor. We might see, again, a prototype of it at IBCbut there aren’t any plans probably for the next 6-12months for a 4K monitor display.

Ed: Does that mean that it’s got to be really big, orcan you pack a lot of pixels into a small area. Howsmall could you make a 4K monitor?

Noel: Well at this point in time, the smallest 4Kmonitor I’ve seen has probably been about a 32 inch.Now there’s not a lot of 4K monitors around – Toshibahave made some, there’s a couple of specialistcompanies. The Toshiba ones are larger than 32 … it’san area that I’m not an expert in, but at this point intime, because of the resolution that’s required, I’dimagine the Grail will be to get to 24” – that will be thenext step. And I know JVC and other companies areworking on those technologies.

Ed: Now JVC have been known as innovators and Iknow I was very impressed a year or so ago when I sawthe 2D to 3D converter. I thought initially it was a bitof a gimmick, but I’m warming to it, because some ofthe constructed TV programmes I’ve seen in 3D reallyhaven’t got it right; there’s some bad jumps whichseem to affect my brain. JVC seem to have made aclever little piece of software which actually produces anice result. I mean, it’s not a perfect 3D, but it’s adamn site better than 2D. And somebody else has seenthis and has had a good idea?

Noel: Yes, well about 18 months ago, JVC introduced adevice called an IF-2D3D that was specifically forconverting existing 2D material to 3D and that box isstill being marketed. In fact, it has been improvedrecently to have a lot more functionality and features

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Autodesk forDVT

We are now at the home ofeffects, Autodesk withStuart Barnaby.

Ed: Stuart, you’ve got agrin from ear to ear,because something obvi-ously has tickled youimmensely – and her namewasn’t Sin-dy?

Stuart: No, some veryexciting announcementsfrom Autodesk this yeararound Smoke on the Mac.Three years ago theybrought out a new product“Smoke on the Mac” the firsttime they’ve got one of theirhigh end visual effectspackages and brought itacross to the Appleplatform, and they launchedthat at an amazing new price point so we were veryexcited about that. We had a great run with that inNew Zealand in terms of providing it to high endcustomers who understood what Smoke was and knewhow to drive it, most of them coming from the AutodeskFlame background. So Smoke was a very high endeffects compositing application and its point ofdifferentiation from other products is that it has atimeline that you can use for editing, but beneath thattimeline it has extremely deep powerful compositingcapabilities – and particularly using action in a 3Denvironment, that is a true real 3D such as you’d use insomething like Maya. In fact you can bring modelsdirectly from Maya into that 3D compositingenvironment with lights and move and spin around anddo wonderful effects that just can’t be done on otherplatforms. And so this year what they’ve basically doneis three key things with Smoke on the Mac. Smoke onthe Mac’s user interface was the Discreet user interfacewhich was completely foreign to anyone who has comefrom Avid or Final Cut or Premiere or …

Ed: So that’s the timeline and the tools and the binsand all that sort of thing?

Stuart: Yes, that’s right, there’s no menu on thetop, you can’t just go “File” “Open” like you can in justabout every other mainstream package on the planet –it was quite a different user interface. And so from thatperspective it was quite a difficult product for peoplecoming from that background to try and learn. Thesecond aspect of Smoke on the Mac was that it wasquite a complex product. It came from a Linuxheritage, it was highly reliant on the network setup ofyour environment being set up correctly, the way inwhich you brought in your media was done through acomplex process. And then the third aspect, of course,was the price and the hardware requirements wrappedaround that. So you had the software cost plus a 12core MacPro, Quadro 4000, Kona 3G, storage that’scapable of pushing around at least 400MB/sec if notfaster so it was really a NZ$80-90,000 solution.

Ed: So it was a specialised solution requiringspecialised operators?

Stuart: Yes it was, and we’ve had great successwith that over the last three years, so we’re veryexcited about what that product enabled us to do.

Ed: Because even then it did things that otherproducts couldn’t do and therefore it paid for itself?

Stuart: Absolutely. For what it has been over thelast three years, absolutely phenomenal, but obviouslyAutodesk are looking at growing the number of seatsfor this product and although they’ve penetrated themarket that it went into very well, they realise thatthere’s a bigger market out there for Smoke on the Macand so they wanted to address those three areas.

They wanted to first of all change the user interface sothat it was more like a Mac environment, more likeAfter Effects, more like Final Cut, more like Premiereand Media Composer, to make it easier for those editorsto be able to come across to the product. The secondthing they wanted to do is reduce the hardwarerequirements, and obviously in the last 12-18 monthswe’ve seen the advent of very high performanceThunderbolt storage become available; we’ve seen theSandy Bridge architecture go into MacBook Pros andiMacs, making them extremely capable. We can nowput up to 32 gigabytes of RAM in an iMac, so this is nota desktop anymore; these MacBook Pros and iMacs areactually performing like workstation machines – they’vegot the hardware, the GPU grunt, the CPU power, theRAM, the storage and now with things like the AJA Io XTyou’ve got very inexpensive Thunderbolt Video I/Os.So all of the elements have fallen into place, to enablethe hardware cost to come down dramatically. That’sthe second thing that Autodesk have done with Smokeon the Mac, dramatically reduced the complexity of howit works in terms of the hardware requirement. Sothat’s much simpler; it’s no more heavily reliant onhaving your network set up all correctly and all that sortof stuff.

Ed: So it sounds like it’s becoming more like an“Edit”-ing product?

Stuart: Yes, absolutely. The user interface is … ifyou know Final Cut you can sit down …

Ed: Well I remember Edit.

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Stuart: Well look, if you know Final Cut, Premiereor Media Composer, the time that it would take you toactually get reasonably good at editing inside Smoke,you could do it within one day. It’s not that hard anymore. You know, if you want to open a file, you go“File” “Open” or go into their media browser which issimilar to other products as well. And the third keyelement they’ve done with Smoke on the Mac is todramatically reduce the price of the software. So it’sgone down to $8,900+GST for a floating licence so it’s adramatic improvement at the price point as well. Thisfloating licence is the one that will additionally allow youto use a burn node for rendering on another systemwhile you keep working on the Smoke system.

Ed: And it’s not lost anything, it’s gained?

Stuart: And it’s gained a huge amount. They’vedone some other things, so just going back – thetechnical capabilities are a lot lighter, so it’s easier touse …

Ed: You say it’s “lighter” and that normally means it’snot doing as much, but in fact it’s just easier to use, oris it not doing as much?

Stuart: No, I would argue that with the currentiMac with 32 gig of RAM and Thunderbolt storage, thatperforms easily as well as an 8 core 2008 MacPro.

its easy ability to edit, is the deep ability to get into theother areas of the visual effects side of the product.And so, with a single mouse click, you can get into whatAutodesk call “Connect FX”. Connect FX is a proceduralnode based compositing environment which is similar toBatch that they have on their high end Flame andInferno products. So they’ve brought that compositingenvironment across into Smoke on the Mac as well. Sothis is a very big deal to be able to have Batch orConnect FX working directly with one button click awayfrom the timeline. And of course, as part of theConnect FX is the module called Action which is the full3D compositing environment inside Smoke on the Macand unlike other products that sort of do 3D, but kind ofnot really, they’re sort of faking it a little bit. You cancreate some text and extrude it and move it and light itat different angles, but really what they’re doing is justrendering that out and presenting it as a 2D objectinside the application. Smoke is different.

Action inside Smoke on the Mac is a full 3D compositingenvironment and unlike other products around it is areal 3D compositing environment. Some products looklike they’ve got 3D, but they’re sort of faking it a littlebit, they’re just putting in Elements rendering 3Dthings, and looping them round. So Smoke on the Mac,for example, can take a model that’s been created in

Maya, bring it in to Smoke on the Macand it remains as a full 3D model. Ofcourse you can then add lights and lensflares and ray effects to that, move thelight to different angles; it all hasshadows and reflections that come offthe 3D objects. It’s a full 3Dcompositing environment.

Ed: Could you then take it back intoMaya if you wanted to do something?

Stuart: No.

Ed: It’s a one-way process?

Stuart: It’s a one-way process, butthat’s how it’s designed. So if you needto create a model to composite with,you’ll create it in Maya, bring it across toSmoke, do the final composite andoutput. So Smoke is really a finishingsystem; it’s the thing you do whenyou’ve got your footage shot, you’ve gotyour models made, you’ve got yourgraphics elements, your texture’s alldone – bring it all into Smoke andliterally finish the job.

Ed: This sounds like finally there’s a really costeffective teaching tool for a workflow path to the higherlevels of Autodesk products?

Stuart: Well Smoke is very high end and now withthe new price point and the lower cost hardwarecapabilities it is much more accessible. It’s so mucheasier to use with the new interface, anybody can pickit up and learn it, and of course, getting into Connect FXand the complexities of that with all the different nodesthat you can use for different functions, getting into thecomplexity of Action, the 3D environment, the ability tobring 3D models in, may take a little bit longer to learn.But in terms of getting it in and using it at an AfterEffects level, mimicking some of the work you’re doingin After Effects, that could easily be achieved in arelatively short space of time now, because of theeasier user interface. But then, of course, the depth –you know you never run into the brick wall. When youuse a range of other products and you’re trying to becreative, trying different things, checking this out –you’re wanting to make it 10% happier or a little

These new products – they really crank, they do awonderful job of driving the software product reallywell. The hardware requirements are a lot easier, thecost is a lot lower, but the most important aspect thatthey’ve done with Smoke on the Mac is what you can doin the user interface – you know, the creative features.

They’ve significantly refined the front end, so it’s gotfour main areas, one of which is Conform which iswhere you bring in all your media, process that, youcan bring in timelines from Premiere, Final Cut or MediaComposer, so you can just edit in those applications ifyou’re happy editing in those and bring them straightinto Smoke on the Mac. Now Smoke on the Mac is justas easy to edit in as any of those other applications, soyou could just edit directly in Smoke on the Mac if youwant to. It’s got a source and programme window; it’sgot a bin window; it’s got a timeline – you drag anddrop in the timeline, you drag and drop in the binwindow, just like we do in all the other applications, soit’s not a heavy learning curve for anyone used toediting. The second aspect, apart from the timeline and

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warmer or something like that … you can actually getinto this product and do that stuff and keep tryingdifferent things and experimenting. It’s a far morecreative, more fun sort of tool to use, and you neverrun into a brick wall. That’s the real beauty of Smoke.If you want to get more and more complex you can.

Ed: So the key I see, is this new user interface, okay… is it going to mean that there’s a roadmap going tothe upper level, so people who do come in at the Smokeon the Mac stage with this new UI, they learn theprocess, they’re going to be able to migrate to thehigher end Autodesk products?

Stuart: Yes, absolutely. I mean Smoke on the Macis a wonderful tool, but we still have a higher endproduct, Flame Premium, which offers all of thecapabilities of Smoke on the Mac, but a whole lot moreas well. So Smoke on the Mac is a great way to comein; you know Connect FX gives them an introduction tosome of the tools that Flame has, but Flame takeseverything that’s Smoke’s got and extends that further.The same with Action – the Action environment as well,getting used to that in Smoke on the Mac – thatcurrently works very similarly on Flame as well. Sodefinitely it’s a great opportunity for people to get inand learn this product if they want to step up to thebigger Autodesk products.

Ed: And of course, for Premiere, Final Cut, MediaComposer users who want to migrate to a productthat’s a lot more graphic connected, it’s now easier?

Stuart: Absolutely, the new user interface istargeted at Final Cut, Premiere and Media Composerusers who want to come across and use this product.They’ll be very comfortable using Smoke in a very smallspace of time and unlike Adobe who have a range ofproducts to do a range of functions, Autodesk integratethem all in Smoke on the Mac. So the capabilities thatPremiere has for editing, Smoke on the Mac now hasthose in a very similar fashion; the capabilities thatAfter Effects has for compositing, Smoke on the Maccan do all of that and a whole lot more; the capabilitiesthat SpeedGrade now has with Adobe, Smoke has all ofthose capabilities as well. So it’s a single product thatintegrates that workflow together – audio capabilities,everything is inside Smoke on the Mac, plus a whole lotmore that you can’t do in other products – bringing in3D models from Maya and really getting into aprocedural node based compositing environment, into afull 3D compositing environment with Action is justabsolutely phenomenal.

Ed: Alright, enough, enough, enough … now arepeople going to be able to come into DVT and try this,because it’s good hearing about it, but to actually try it…?

Stuart: Absolutely, you know we’d be very excited

to come out and help our customers understand the

product, give a full understanding of what it’s going to

do to change their lives.

I mean Smoke is changing everything, it’s really good.

Ed: You’re sounding very evangelical Stuart – I think

you’re going a bit far here.

Stuart: Alright – the other thing you’ll be able to do

is come to DVT on the 26th of June to see it in action at

our Smoke and Mirrors event.

Rob O’Neill from Autodesk will be in town to show off all

the new features and more!

Ed: But of course they can come into DVT?

Stuart: They can come to us, or we’ll come to you

– 24 hours a day.

Ed: Because it’s on a MacBook?

Stuart: Absolutely, it’s on a MacBook Pro with aThunderbolt drive and an Io XD from AJA … it’s all tooeasy.

NZVN

Page

Telestream for DVTAnd a new one this year for DVT, we’re at Telestream.

Ed: Stuart, this is a product that’s available to all, but

especially to your customers – you see this as being a

very useful product?

Stuart: Yes, Telestream have got quite a range of

different encoding solutions which are useful in a

number of different applications.

Episode Pro is very well known and understood as a

desktop encoding application, it is very sophisticated

and enables you to setup specific workflows.

You can setup watch folders so that when you’re

finished with your content you can drop it in a folder on

your desktop or on your NAS and Episode will look at

that folder and process that material into different

formats. And increasingly today people want to output

their content to YouTube and iTunes and do a digital

master as well. You might want to “top and tail” them

with images at the beginning and end and …

Ed: That’s it, there’s not just sort of one programme

made now on a tape and then that’s duplicated, you’re

going to send it out to a whole number of devices, and

the easier you can do that, the better?

Stuart: Yes absolutely, the number of screens in

the world is increasing exponentially. Whether it’s on

an iPhone, iPad or Android, there’s many different

formats required from the same content to fill all those

screens and that’s what a lot of the Telestream products

are all about.

Another product that they do at the Enterprise level is a

wonderful product called Vantage. Vantage is a high

end Enterprise encoding tool that does the similar types

of things as Episode Pro, but at a much more

sophisticated level. It’s got a full workflow manager

and you can go in and deliver XML to Media Asset

Management systems off the back of it; once files have

been encoded it’s got a sophisticated monitoring system

built into it and it’s a really good product at that end of

the market. Also with the Vantage they’ve just released

a hardware server called Vantage HE which is a highly

accelerated H.264 encoding solution. With many of the

delivery mechanisms now based on H.264 ( such as

iTunes and YouTube ), the new Vantage HE Lightstream

server will encode those files up to 5 or 10 times faster

than traditional methods.

So it’s a wonderful platform for that.

Ed: Now just to wrap us up Stuart, your general

impressions of the show this year and the sort of

products that are here, that are available to DVT and

your customers that help support the core things you

do?

Stuart: Yes absolutely – there’s a wide range of

choice in terms of software, whether it’s Avid, Adobe or

Autodesk. There’s a wide range of choice in terms of

the I/O hardware that you can put under the hood,

whether it’s Blackmagic, AJA or Matrox. There’s a wide

range of hardware platforms you can run that on,

whether it’s Apple or HP based.

There’s a huge amount of flexibility that you have and

really the key and most important thing is looking at

what you’re doing in terms of your business, what you

need to have in terms of the quality of the product

you’re producing, and how you want to approach that

from a productivity standpoint.

Also, how much time you want to spend moving mediaaround, what sort of storage you need, what sort ofinfrastructure capability do you have … and then finally,and most importantly, how that’s going to impact onthe creativity that you can have in your production aswell.

At DVT that’s what we’re here for; we’re here to helpyou get world-class quality and world-class productivityso you can focus on being as creative as you canpossibly be, producing fantastic productions.

Ed: Is it getting easier or harder?

Stuart: It’s getting easier on one degree, becauseyou’ve got lots of choice and much more lower costproduct, but more difficult on the other hand, becauseit’s harder to know which product is really right for me –and sometimes you can sort of think that this product ischeap and maybe that’s going to do the job for me, butultimately you spend more time – for whatever reason– managing media and shuffling that around from oneplace to the other and you find you’ve got to spendhours, if not days, pushing data round in the wrongplaces that can have a very detrimental impact on yourbusiness.

So there are ways of making yourself more efficient,more creative, at lower cost now and that’s what DVT ishere to help with.

Ed: That’s why it gives you the sleepless nights?

Stuart: No, the solutions we provide are so robustand so reliable … that we sleep like babies!

Ed: Swing on.

NZVN

Page

Watch Out! – it’s Guard Bot.I couldn’t pass this stand without checking out aproduct called GuardBot which looks like something outof The Prisoner. To tell us about it we have Lily Bayrockfrom GuardBot.

Ed: Lily, you don’t look very scary, but this ball does?

Lily: It’s about as big as I am, so it’s quite intimidating– it’s very powerful.

Ed: What does it do?

Lily: Well it’s a robotic system. It can go over all sortsof terrain, over gravel and rock, through high grasses,through mud, even over snow – and then it can gostraight into water and it floats. It’s got two cameras inclear domes on either side, but actually it’s a roboticsystem that could have any sort of technology in thedome completely waterproof and protected. It’s greatfor commercial applications, also for surveillance.

Ed: How fast does it go?

Lily: On land it goes up to 8 miles an hour; in water upto 2-3 miles an hour.

Ed: Can it climb steep mountains?

Lily: It can climb pretty steep hills; it can go up to 20degrees.

Ed: Wow – that’s pretty good. And if it’s going downa steep hill, does it get out of control?

Lily: No, it’s got great control; it’s very powerful andit’s quite heavy … it’s substantial, it weighs about 60pounds.

Ed: Okay … and those domes look fairly substantialtoo. If you hit a rock with those, you’re not going toshatter them?

Lily: No, they’re not going to shatter. They can getscratched, but they’re very easily replaceable.

Ed: And it comes in a range of colours?

Lily: It does, it can be painted. The surface canactually be a different material, a different texture aswell. We’re looking at fitting it with kind of small finsinstead of these bumps and then it would move evenfaster in water.

Ed: And it’s all controlled by …?

Lily: It’s controlled remotely through the computer and

then we use a video game controller.

Ed: Aaaah, so the geeks would really be at home?

Lily: Oh yes – hand it to any 11 year old and they’ll be

able to control it better than I can, I’m

sure.

Ed: Chase the dog around the lawn?

Lily: Yes, it’s a pretty great toy.

Ed: Right, so at the moment it’s

controlled by WiFi, but ...?

Lily: Yes, we’re working with a couple of

other companies to update the wireless

technology so that it’s got a longer range

that it can be controlled from, and also

to update the cameras with new gimbals

that are actively stabilised on three axes

instead of two and they’ll be able to have

HD cameras.

Ed: Are the military interested?

Lily: Actually it was developed for

military use and we’ve done a lot of

research and development with the

Marine Corps. This is our first time at

NAB and our first time bridging over into

commercial applications for it.

Check it out at www.guardbot.com NZVN

Time for a swim?

You could do some serious damage with this puppy.

Page

JMR for AtomiseJMR is another company represented in New Zealand byAtomise and Richard Kelly.

Ed: Richard, JMR is still storage, but this is smallerlevel storage?

Richard: This is enterprise level desk side RAIDstorage. We’re using it where clients have two levels ofrequirement; one is a desk side RAID storage where alot of data gets put on a system; the second one is foran online environment for very high data rates – and by“high data rates” I mean 1900 megabytes per second,so 4K and 5K full frame, full res. We’ve got thesesystems in operation already in Wellington with some ofour clients, and they have proved extremely good.They’re really nice bits of kit and really good people todeal with.

Ed: And cost effective I understand?

Richard: Extremely cost effective – it really is very,very good bang for the buck.

Ed: But reliable, and that’s the main thing?

Richard: Yes, a really good level of reliability. It’sbuilt on a very good industry core – the RAID cards arevery good. The units themselves are beautifully made;it’s not a piece of flimsy plastic, it’s proper broadcastlevel gear.

Ed: You can either have their drives or you can putyour own in, but you would recommend what theyshould have I would imagine?

Richard: The client’s needs dictate which way they’llgo, so it is very nice having a turnkey solution, such aswe did with our very high bandwidth system. It comesout certified to work to the level that we need, we plugit in and it goes, and that’s a great level of reliabilitythat I certainly appreciate.

Ed: But what about the ins and outs – I mean, that’sbecome more and more important these days, withApple coming out with Thunderbolt. Does this have aThunderbolt connection?

Richard: No Thunderbolt – it is on the roadmap forthe products, but certainly at the moment we’re talkingSAS, so they’re SATA to SAS RAID boxes, SAS beingSerial Attached SCSI – very, very fast – much fasterthan eSATA for example.

Ed: So how does that connect to your computer –you’ve got to have an eSAS on your computer as well?

Richard: You have an ATTO R380 or R680 RAID cardthat is a host in the computer, that is the RAIDcontroller.

Ed: And then the single cable to this device?

Richard: Or two cables, depending on yourconfiguration. If you had an R680 you could have twocables to one chassis and get double bandwidth, or youcould have one cable to two chassis and get double thestorage.

Ed: But certainly the industry standard in theWindows environment, I believe, is eSATA, so why nothave eSATA?

Richard: This is a level above what eSATA can dealwith in terms of data rates, so while eSATAis still a good standard, this is a step up. Sowe’re talking eSATA will do less than 800megabytes per second. This will do 1900megabytes per second sustained, so it’s alevel of magnitude beyond what eSATAdoes.

Ed: Now just to tell us a little bit moreabout the ins and outs of the systems here,we have Miguel Saldate, technical specialistat JMR Electronics. Now, “ins and outs”give us the lowdown?

Miguel: Okay, so the Silverstor line-upis a whole range of not only storage devicesbut also now a complete desktop rackmount convertible workstation.

So what we’re able to offer is complete 6gig, generation 2 storage, so you can do 4,8, 10 and 18 drives of SAS, SATA or solidstate drives at speeds in excess of 4000megabytes per second. Our PCIA expressexpansion in our expansion boxes and our

Where’s Richard?

Free up online edit storage reducing capital expenditure through use of lower cost storage

Long term Archive and Disaster Recovery

Improved file based workflows between facilities

Simple to perform background operation

!"#$%&'

© 1998-2011 Marquis Broadcast Ltd. All rights reserved. Head office: 23 Horseshoe Park Pangbourne Berkshire RG8 7JW UK. www.marquisbroadcast.com

("#)*%+

UK Head Office

Marquis Broadcast Limited 23 Horseshoe Park Pangbourne Berkshire, RG8 7JW United Kingdom

Phone +44 (0)118 984 4111

Email [email protected]

Sales Contacts

Americas Jason DanielsonPhone +1 650 743 6644Email [email protected]

EMEA/Asia Pacific Neil ColesPhone +44 (0)118 984 4111Email [email protected]

Cache-A Archive Appliances Pro-Cache 4

Pro-Cache 5

Prime-Cache 4

Prime-Cache 5

(LTO & LTFS)

Edit SystemsAvid Media

Composer

Avid NewsCutter

Avid Symphony

Apple Final Cut Pro

System Requirements

Typical Applications

Park sequences directly to LTO tapes

Create archives for Disaster Recovery or for later Reworking

Transfer complex sequences between facilities

Park any type of media

Key Benefits

Parking Server Windows 2008

Windows 2008 R2, 7

Windows 2003, Vista,

XP Pro

Minimum Spec P4 3GHz, 1GB Ram,

10G Drive Space, 1G NIC

Edit Storage Apple XSAN

Avid Interplay

Avid Unity

Avid ISIS

Standalone workstation

Shared NAS/SAN

Edit Storage

Clips Sequences

Edit Clients

Atomise LimitedAuthorised Reseller of Professional Editing Equipment

Visit www.atomise.co.nz; email [email protected] or call Richard Kelly on 04 380 5010 / 021 86 33 94

for information & demos.

Apace Systems

Editing Solutions Experts

marquis

bridgingSequence Converter for Avid and FCP Editors D

ata

sheet

b

Overview

Bridging enables Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid operators

to exchange sequences by simply dropping them from

one timeline into the other. Media and timeline

structures are moved as background operations and

converted on the fly.

Aimed at multiple users of both Avid and FCP this cost

effective utility enables facility managers to benefit from

improved flexibility when organising projects and

allocating resources as Avid and Apple systems can be

easily integrated into a single workflow.

How It Works

Using a Client Server architecture up to 20 simultaneous

Clients can initiate Bridging conversions. The background

Service locates, re-wraps sequence media and converts

the sequence structure for the destination editor. Edit

workstations are free to continue editing while

sequences are bridged.

Based on the shots that appear in the sequence Bridging

will transfer media from the source editor to the

destination editor. Media is converting on the fly

between the different wrappers, MXF OPAtom for Avid

and QuickTime self-contained media for Apple.

Sequence information is converted between Avid AAF

and Apple XML formats to create the required sequence

structure. Audio and video track layout is preserved with

tails automatically added to all edit points.

Bridging is an automatic background utility that enables editors to exchange sequences for cross platform collaboration and workflow migration

Convert sequences and move media in the background

Facilitate production collaboration

Save time and effort transferring editsTypical Use Cases

Media producers with investments in both Avid and FCP

Shared production workflows using different people / edit systems

Off line shot selection / on line edit production

Overflow management from one production resource to another

Key Benefits

More freedom in planning and organising productions


Save time and effort transferring edits

Easier to use best-of-breed tools for different stages of production

Bridging V2.6 Available Now

Includes full support for Avid Interplay

parkingMedia Mover for Avid and FCP Editors D

ata

sheetp

Overview

Parking is an easy to use, cost-effective utility for creating

re-editable archives or transferring sequences between

different edit locations.

It is particularly relevant for HD and 3D production where

the larger file sizes impact significantly on limited edit

resources.

Sequence Parking

Parking provides a powerful and cost effective 'one click'

method for moving both edit sequences and media in a

single background operation.

Parking consolidates sequence media with definable

handles, automatically creating a reduced version to allow

deletion of excess rushes whilst maximising the throughput

of the edit environment.

The portable nature of parked sequences makes them ideal

candidates to support disaster recovery, business

continuity and inter-site workflows.

Project Parking

Project Parking enables Avid users to safely archive

complete projects. It extends the ’parking’ concept to allow

users to move complete projects quickly and easily

between systems within the same facility or between sites.

By parking not only the sequence edits, effects and project

settings but also the original rushes, Project Parking

provides a simple vehicle for archiving all media associated

with a project.

Although archives are saved to and restored from disk,

project archives can be easily moved into managed or

cloud-based storage or become an asset within an

Hierarchical Storage Management system.

Parking is a Sequence and Project Mover for Archive Storage, Distribution and Disaster Recovery

marquis

Typical Use Cases

Broadcast content creators needing to re-edit short form - News/Sports

Facilities needing to reversion programme or promo content

Maintaining look and feel when moving Sequences for localisation

Edit environments needing to free up edit space

Key Benefits

Reduce capital expenditure

Protect your assets

Distribute content across facilities

Parking V2.6 Available Now

Avid Interplay integration

Support for mixed Avid and FCP clients on a single system

‘Full copy’ Parking mode option

Introduction of ‘Pre Flight Check’

Avid Project Archiving Available Q4

Fast and cost effective archive and restore process

Create files for Disaster Recovery or later reworking

Improve file based workflows between facilities

Park media onto lower cost edit shared storage

Bridging is an automatic background utility that enables editors to exchange sequences for cross platform collaboration and workflow migration.

Convert sequences and move media in the background. Facilitate production collaboration.

Save time and effort transferring edits.


Fast and cost effective archive and restore process Create files for Disaster Recovery or later reworking

Improve file based workflows between facilities Park media onto lower cost edit shared storage

parkingMedia Mover for Avid and FCP Editors D

ata

sheetp

Overview

Parking is an easy to use, cost-effective utility for creating

re-editable archives or transferring sequences between

different edit locations.

It is particularly relevant for HD and 3D production where

the larger file sizes impact significantly on limited edit

resources.

Sequence Parking

Parking provides a powerful and cost effective 'one click'

method for moving both edit sequences and media in a

single background operation.

Parking consolidates sequence media with definable

handles, automatically creating a reduced version to allow

deletion of excess rushes whilst maximising the throughput

of the edit environment.

The portable nature of parked sequences makes them ideal

candidates to support disaster recovery, business

continuity and inter-site workflows.

Project Parking

Project Parking enables Avid users to safely archive

complete projects. It extends the ’parking’ concept to allow

users to move complete projects quickly and easily

between systems within the same facility or between sites.

By parking not only the sequence edits, effects and project

settings but also the original rushes, Project Parking

provides a simple vehicle for archiving all media associated

with a project.

Although archives are saved to and restored from disk,

project archives can be easily moved into managed or

cloud-based storage or become an asset within an

Hierarchical Storage Management system.


marquis

Typical Use Cases

Broadcast content creators needing to re-edit short form - News/Sports

Facilities needing to reversion programme or promo content

Maintaining look and feel when moving Sequences for localisation

Edit environments needing to free up edit space

Key Benefits

Reduce capital expenditure

Protect your assets

Distribute content across facilities

Parking V2.6 Available Now

Avid Interplay integration

Support for mixed Avid and FCP clients on a single system

‘Full copy’ Parking mode option

Introduction of ‘Pre Flight Check’

Avid Project Archiving Available Q4

Fast and cost effective archive and restore process

Create files for Disaster Recovery or later reworking

Improve file based workflows between facilities

Park media onto lower cost edit shared storage

marquis

bridgingSequence Converter for Avid and FCP Editors D

ata

sheet

b

Overview

Bridging enables Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid operators

to exchange sequences by simply dropping them from

one timeline into the other. Media and timeline

structures are moved as background operations and

converted on the fly.

Aimed at multiple users of both Avid and FCP this cost

effective utility enables facility managers to benefit from

improved flexibility when organising projects and

allocating resources as Avid and Apple systems can be

easily integrated into a single workflow.

How It Works

Using a Client Server architecture up to 20 simultaneous

Clients can initiate Bridging conversions. The background

Service locates, re-wraps sequence media and converts

the sequence structure for the destination editor. Edit

workstations are free to continue editing while

sequences are bridged.

Based on the shots that appear in the sequence Bridging

will transfer media from the source editor to the

destination editor. Media is converting on the fly

between the different wrappers, MXF OPAtom for Avid

and QuickTime self-contained media for Apple.

Sequence information is converted between Avid AAF

and Apple XML formats to create the required sequence

structure. Audio and video track layout is preserved with

tails automatically added to all edit points.

Bridging is an automatic background utility that enables editors to exchange sequences for cross platform collaboration and workflow migration

Convert sequences and move media in the background


Save time and effort transferring editsTypical Use Cases

Media producers with investments in both Avid and FCP

Shared production workflows using different people / edit systems

Off line shot selection / on line edit production

Overflow management from one production resource to another

Key Benefits

More freedom in planning and organising productions


Save time and effort transferring edits

Easier to use best-of-breed tools for different stages of production

Bridging V2.6 Available Now

Includes full support for Avid Interplay

Flexible, Cost Effective Archiving with Cache-A single tape

or library solutions

Creating and managing digital archives is an essential step in file

based workflows.

The combination of Sequence Parking from Marquis and LTO

based Archive Appliances from Cache-A creates a very cost

effective solution.

Background media transfers, and an easy to manage Archive cata-

logue, create a very flexible archive solution, easily deployed and highly

cost effective in terms of capital and operating investment.

Page

new desktop workstation features a selection of eitherIntel’s Sandy Bridge E5 series processors, plus there’sAMD’s Opteron 6200 series processors and integrated 8drive storage array controlled by 6 gig SAS capable oftaking again SAS, SATA or SSD, latest processors. It’sall in a rack mount workstation, it’s highly customisableand it features PCI Express 3.0 up to four PCI Express3.0 slots.

So if you want to do multi-GPU computing, multi-acceleration computing, really the sky’s the limit withthe products. It’s all fully customisable and all fullyinteroperates with each other. So whether you’rebuilding a small single editor workstation or you’reworking as a part of a larger environment with multipleeditors, artists, colourers – whatever it is in digitalcontent creation, we can find the right product for you,whether it’s the Bluestor line, the Silverstor line or acombination of either of the two.

Ed: But the flavour of the month is Thunderbolt?

Miguel: Correct. With our SSD based arrays andour PCI Express 3.0 we’re already exceedingThunderbolt speeds. Right now, in its current iteration,Thunderbolt’s about 10 gigabit as the real max, but ifyou look at what we’re doing with PCI 3.0 … a PCI3.0x16 slot has I believe an 8000 megabyte per secondtransfer rate, so that far exceeds anything Thunderboltor any other device out there in the market can reallymatch. So we can match and surpass the speedsalready with our devices and you don’t have to go to doanything that’s non-standard, any proprietaryconnections. It’s all very industry standard. We’re aset of building blocks and you know what, where anybuilding is, people’s business, people’s projects,people’s ambitions, we’re able to take them and lettheir minds go and really expand and build the dreamthey want to do.

Ed: And a final word from Richard to summarise hislittle tour of NAB, a variety of storage solutions?

Richard: I think you’ll find that with everything we’redoing here, the products that we’re representing, thereemerges a common thread.

The products are all made by people who are dedicatedto this industry and stand 100% behind the products.It’s not rebadged “something else”, it is designed to dothe job that it is implemented for and the support thatwe get from JMR, as with the other vendors we’vevisited, is fantastic and we have used their support forour clients. The clients really appreciate the level ofassistance that is available – especially from Miguel,he’s done a great job the last few weeks with us,helping a client who had an issue and it’s a really greatstory to be able to tell.

NZVN

NZVN

Miguel with the smaller JMR options.

Miguel: So all our products will be Thunderboltready. Right now, we’re currently in the process offinishing our engineering on the Thunderbolt partsthemselves. JMR is a true engineering company, so allthe boards, everything that goes into our product ismade by JMR; we do not OEM them from somewhereelse. We write the firmware, we lay out the boarddesigns, we verify everything down to the trace level,so that when you get a product from us, it is a solidproduct, it is a robust product and it’s a veryserviceable product.

Ed: Okay, so I guess for Thunderbolt users, you wantto wait until the Thunderbolt option that’s coming out,because to change it, one needs to change the chassisand JMR will do that. Thunderbolt is lauded as beingthe great thing, but in fact you’ve already got fastersolutions?

Page

SWIT for A2ZFor A2Z we are at SWIT with Neal Ni,Sales Manager, SWIT Electronics.

Ed: Neal, you’ve increased the batteryrange, I can see by your display?

Neal: Firstly, we see the heavy dutybatteries. This is our new battery now.They have max power 180 Watt. Anormal battery is 100 Watt.

Ed: Is it lithium?

Neal: Yes.

Ed: But you can’t take this on anaircraft can you, if it’s 180 Watt … that’stoo big for an aircraft isn’t it? So these180 Watt heavy duty batteries are land-based only?

Neal: They are mainly for the cinecameras, so like the ALEXA camera, theirpower consumption is very high … theseheavy duty batteries can power theALEXA and other equipment together.So this is why we made a heavy dutybattery now.

Ed: Is there anything new in thesmaller batteries; any new designs in the chargers?

Neal: No.

Ed: They’re all good as they are. You don’t need newones?

Neal: Yes, that’s right.

Ed: Now we come into the lights and this looks like alarger light than the ones I’ve seen before?

Neal: Yes, this light is unique. We embedded all theLED array to a single chip, so it’s called a “Chip ArrayLED” with 80W high brightness output but smaller insize and provides equal spread, soft, glareless lightsimilar to older halogen bulbs. The traditional LED chiparray always generates several highlight spots; incomparison, the Chip Array LED has a one bulbappearance and with the reflective bowl does not

Neal stands before the SWIT battery range.

Page

produce any highlight spots, making it is most suitablefor close interview situations. The beam angle is wider,with no visible edge and casts a single shadow. Youcan see the traditional light panel has more shadowsand our chip array light has a single shadow.

Ed: But on this you’re carrying the battery on theback of it?

Neal: The battery is a slim type of battery and also youcan use many kinds of DV batteries; also through the D-tap for input.

Ed: So this one light you can use either with thebattery on the back of it or you can use the D-Tap offthe camera battery?

Neal: Yes. There’s a special slim battery which is

lighter than your standard DV battery, but with an

adapter plate you can put a standard DV battery on the

back.

Ed: So I was right – you have the flexibility of either

the slimline battery that clips on the back, or with an

adapter plate your larger camera battery can go on the

back and then you can mount this on a tripod or on a

stand or any way you like off the camera.

Or you can use it on the camera and the cord from the

camera or the camera battery, ( providing you’ve got a

SWIT battery of course ) with the tap for the light.

So very flexible, very versatile, and also

with a … oh I see, that’s a large battery

that you’re using there – right. Well you

could plug it into any of the SWIT

batteries with the adapter cable.

So a very flexible light. Adjustable level

light?

Neal: Yes the light is dimmable.

Ed: And in the monitor range – a new

range of monitors?

Neal: This NAB we have introduced the

S-1090T 9” high resolution monitor with

3D Assist.

This monitor has all the professional

functions plus with 3D assist, we take

the two HD-SDI inputs and you can

either have “side by side” mode or “line

by line” to help a cameraman check the

3D signals.

As you see – it is impressive! NZVN

ikan for A2ZWe are at ikan and we have BarryGarcia.

Ed: Barry it just says “ikan” on yourbadge, so I guess you’re fairly high up inthe business?

Barry: I am a product manager forikan. I handle mainly the lights, theCinemage and also the Elements, sothose three things.

Ed: But the ikan story is a bigger storythan that – let’s start with monitors shallwe?

Barry: Okay, the first monitor wehave is our new D7 monitor which is partof our “D” line. We have a D7 and a D5.The nice thing about the D7 – it is adigital monitor, it has HD-SDI and HDMIin and out, it does HD-SDI 3G so thatyou can get pretty much any signal thatyou need to into it. The other nice thingabout it is that the monitor itself has aWaveform, Vectorscope and RGB Parade.You can also set it as the Tri-set or as alower third so that it basically doesn’t getin the way of being able to see your picture. It has allthe same software features that we’ve had on ourprevious monitors with having false colour, peaking, clipguide (which basically lets you know that you’re eitheroverexposed or underexposed) …

Barry ready to go.

Ed: How does it show you overexposure?

Barry: Okay, with the clip guide, what it does isthat it shows you if you’re overexposed orunderexposed, by showing you two different blinkingcolours. The overexposure is typically a fuchsia or hot

Page

pink that blinks to show you that those parts areoverexposed for your lighting. On the other end, it’s adeep purple colour that will blink as well and that tellsyou that you’re underexposed – you’re under your zero.So it gives you kind of an idea of where you are as faras exposure on your camera. All these monitors willhave the new Waveform, Vectorscope including RGBParade. We will also sell them without them, so there’san opportunity for folks if they want to purchase it for$200 more, that’s what it will cost to go and doWaveform, Vector and RGB Parade. We still have ourVX7 and VX9 monitors, still in the line, still doeverything that they need to do with all the differenttypes of software with the overscan, underscan, falsecolour, clip guides, everything else, so they’re still goodmonitors to have.

Ed: The D series – is that a more sophisticated level?

Barry: More sophisticated, higher end levelmonitor, because of the fact that it does HD-SDI andHDMI ins and outs.

Ed: Whereas the VX series …?

Barry: The VX series will do an HDMI in, but noHDMI out – but it will do HD-SDI in and out as well.

Ed: Alright, so if you only need HDMI?

Barry: If you only need HDMI, we’ve got the VH8,the VK7, the VK5 and the VL5. We’ve got an 8 inchpanel again with the VH8 … we’re very excited aboutthis monitor, it’s an HDMI in and out; it has the clipguides; it’s got false colour; it’s also got the overscanand underscan and then peaking in the movable pixel topixel. So it’s got a lot of the same features that thehigher end monitors have on the software side, but at alittle bit more economical price in an 8 inch panel. Thesame with the VK7 – we call it the cousin to the VX7e.It has everything that the VX7e does, except it doesn’thave HD-SDI on it. We added a tally light for that sothis monitor can be used for on-camera.

Ed: But in terms of affordability, I see this VK7US$449?

Barry: Yes, US$449 … a lot of our HDMI are themuch more economical monitors, because most folkswith the HDMI may be using it for a DSLR market, ormaybe just have a more economical monitor in mind forHDMI out of their video camera. So the same with theVK5 – smaller 5.6 inch panel 1024x600 HDMI input.

It’s got the peaking, underscan andaspect ratios; also does an RGB so youcan adjust the colour; and then you’vebasically got an HDMI in and componentand composite. It’s for some of thoseolder cameras that you still need to dothat, you’ve still got the opportunity tohave a nice sized monitor to work.

The last one we have is the VL5. TheVL5 we’ve had in business now foralmost a year. It’s become our “go to”HDMI monitor for the DSLR folks. Theylike it a lot – the size, the colour,everything about it really and truly, andit’s strictly an HDMI in.

Ed: And it takes a standard camerabattery?

Barry: Yes, it takes a standardcamera battery. Each one of ourmonitors will actually take whateverstandard camera battery you need –whether it be Sony, Canon, Panasonic,BPU or the Canon E6 for the 5D or 7D.

Ed: Do you buy a separate backingplate or what?

Barry: Basically, when you purchase the monitor,you request that you want a specific battery back andthat’s what we give you.

Ed: Now into the lighting range – LED prettyprominent?

Barry: LED has become very important for us. Infact, our lights have become a really good seller for alot of reasons – they’re economical and they do whatwe say. They basically give you enough light to light,whether it be on-camera or the typical interview setupor 3 camera position – whatever it may be, they’regreat for that. Starting with the China Bowl, a brandnew light that we’ve just started, it’s a nice soft lightthat you can hang pretty much from anywhere and giveyour subject a nice soft key and then basically fill inwhatever you need with anything else in a backlight.It’s very simple, very easy, very nice light.

Some of the other lights we have – the ID1000, theID1500, the ID36 and the ID500 – all very popularlights for us. Our lights come in either a bi-colour(which is a tungsten-daylight switch), or just a single5600 degrees Kelvin. One of the new lights that we’relooking at bringing in is the ID3000. It’s 3000 LEDs, it’sa very, very bright light – basically Watts equivalent towell over 1K in traditional tungsten lighting. The nicething about a lot of these lights is the low power

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consumption and also they don’t “cook” your talent soto speak – they don’t make you hot or anything.

Ed: So how do you get rid of the heat out of the backof these?

Barry: We’ve got small louvers. We don’t reallyneed any fans or anything like that, because there’sreally not that much heat that they produce. That’s thenice thing about the LED. The other thing is that theLED itself is good for 8-10 years depending on the lifeof that and you’re probably going to have a part of theinside of the fixture go out before you actually lose anyof the LEDs.

Ed: Okay, so these are on-camera lights and studiolights and portable lights – a whole range of square,rectangular, circular … you’ve got about everythingcovered here?

Barry: We pretty much do, we’ve got everythingwe need. One of the newest ones is an LED Fresnel.The Fresnel that folks know from traditionalincandescent lighting, we’re going to do in an LED –looking at about 5500 Kelvin; it’s roughly got a CRI ofabout 81 or so. We’re still getting the colourmetric dataas far as the brightness, but if I had to guess, I wouldsay it’s probably close to about 500 Watt equivalency.So it’s a pretty bright light, it really is – very nicethough.

Ed: Now just run us through thecolours here, because I see one inparticular that I’m looking at, it’s white,orange and red, but when I hold myhand up to it I’m not seeing thosecolours. What’s the reason for that?

Barry: The Multi-K line uses threedifferent coloured lights – like you said,the white, yellow and the red. What itdoes, is it actually lets you go in betweendifferent colour temperatures, whether itbe 2800 all the way up to 6700 Kelvinand anything in between. It gives youan opportunity to switch between. Thosethree lights help create that colourtemperature accurately. The nice thingabout the Multi-K is that it has a veryhigh CRI rating, so the colour renditionon it is excellent. It’s one of the bestthat we have. It’s a bright light, but it’snot too bad as far as having it on top ofyour camera and blinding your subject,so to speak, when you’re doing aninterview or something like that.

Ed: I’m standing right in front of it now, and I couldactually look into the light, although I’m frowning a littlebit, but certainly if I’m looking just slightly off the light,there’s no discomfort at all?

Barry: It has a very beautiful colour, it really does.

Ed: Oh, so it makes me look beautiful does it?

Barry: It makes you look fantastic – that’s whatI’m trying to say right now. It’s not that I’m hitting onyou!

Ed: Oh Barry …

Barry: It’s a fantastic light that we’re very happywith, that we’re bringing in.

Ed: We’d better move on!

Barry: Moving on to teleprompters. We have acouple of teleprompters that we’re showing today, thePT2500 and the PT Elite. The PT2500 is a simple rod-based system that you can put most medium sizedcameras on – anything up to like an EX1 or EX3 from

Sony, or Canon 305, depending on which you have asfar as video cameras go; and then any of the DSLRsthat are out there on the market. The nice thing aboutboth of these teleprompters, with the PT Elite as well,it’s a teleprompter that you use your iPad for. It easilymounts inside there, it’s very simple and easy to useand the great thing about it is the fact that you cancontrol this iPad with another iPad. We also have aseparate accessory that we sell with it, called the Eliteremote and the Elite remote works in a Bluetoothcapacity between the actual iPad and the remote itself,so you can control this actual prompter from Bluetoothremote control, faster, slower, whatever that personneeds to be able to read back at. So it’s very nice –economical – US$599 is what we’re selling that guy forand we’re very excited about it.

Ed: And for US$899 you’ve got the PT2500 – is thisusing one of your monitors?

Barry: Yes sir, it’s using one of our 8 inch monitorsthat we’ve had pretty much since the life of ikan. It’sbeen a very dependable monitor, very easy to use …

Ed: But it has the software built-in?

Barry: Actually the software comes with both ofthese; the software comes with all of our lines ofteleprompters, including our 15 inch and 21 inch.

Ed: Right, now on to the front of the stand – the ikanElements and to explain what “Elements” are, they’rereally accessories that make you use your handheldcamera like a shoulder mount camera. Is that right?

Barry: That’s true. The Elements were somethingthat we designed because ikan has always been knownas a monitor company. We actually had a tough timegetting our monitors on to some of the other rigs thatare out there in the market and we came up with a wayof mounting them and it just kinda grew from there.We actually have lots of different small parts and piecesthat you can put together, to be able to put yourcamera on a rig and then mount your monitor to it.That’s the whole plan behind the ikan Elements. We’vemoved from Evolution 1 to Evolution 2; Evolution 2being much more conforming to the body, easy to use,able to manipulate very simply, add a piece here or apiece there depending on what you want to add as faras parts go, or a monitor or anything along those lines.The EV2 also makes it easier to add the traditional

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accessories that you need with these, suchas a matte box or follow focus or any ofthose types of things. It comes withstandard rails so you could use other partsand pieces that you have from some of theother manufacturers out there.

We work and play well with some of the

other manufacturers out there as well. So

it’s very easy to use, sort of an Erector type

set or Lego is what we like to call it.

Ed: So it pretty well covers every camera

model in any configuration and accessory

that you want to add to it, whether it’s an

ikan accessory or somebody else’s?

Barry: Yes sir, it really does.

With the EV2, the different type that we

have with the baseplates, the large and

small – the smaller baseplate tends to move

more towards the DSLRs, where the larger

baseplate will move more towards the

traditional video cameras, whether it be

some of the newer ones that we see out there on the

market – F3, things along those lines from Sony,

Panasonic – the traditional manufacturers.

We’re very popular with the DSLR crowd, because they

like the way they can add a lot of stuff to their small

form factor, and depending on lens size, they can add

the matte box or their accessories with the follow focus

and some of the other things.

Ed: And that’s about it from ikan?

Barry: That’s about it from ikan, that’s prettymuch everything we’ve got going on and we hope tohear from some of these guys.

Ed: And thank you for calling me “sir” – it’s not oftenI get such respect from people I interview.

Barry: That’s the Texan in me I guess – growingup in the South you refer to everyone as “sir”.

Ed: Oh, I thought I was special.

Barry: Yes sir, you are! NZVN

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Canon at NAB 2012We are with Mieke van der Walle, Canon

Professional Services, Canon New

Zealand.

Ed: Here at NAB, this is a big, big year

for Canon. Not only is this stand bigger

than I’ve ever seen it, but there’s a lot of

talk about the Canon C500 and of coursethe Canon C300 which has been out for a

wee while. This is really the top of

where Canon has been in the cinema

area, but it’s not just a cinema camera,

it’s something that does have quite a

major place in the video market as well.

Is Canon proud of this?

Mieke: Extremely proud. Thisproduct is revolutionising filmmaking. It

really is opening up all new possibilities

for filmmakers to create motion that

before, was quite hard to do. This is

opening up a lot of new doors and it’s

super-exciting for Canon to be involved.

Two or three years ago, we never

envisaged this. We never knew this would happen.

We’ve always been known for our still cameras and ourDigital SLRs …

Ed: And lenses?

Mieke: And lenses. Of course. We’ve been

producing cameras and lenses for 75 years. It’s our

passion.

Ed: And you’re here at the biggest television show in

the world with a big stand and it’s packed?

Mieke: This is the first time I’ve been to NAB and I

walked through the door and I almost fell on the floor …I was in awe of our stand …

Ed: So you’re a geek at heart?

Mieke: I’m a total geek, yes. My father owns a

photographic hardware shop, so I’ve been in the

photographic industry my whole life. I was vacuuming

the floors from the age of 5. I sold my first camera at

8, so it’s something that I’ve always done. I decided to

take on video as a new challenge. I’m big on stills and

a year and a half ago I went “I want to take this project

on” and I’m absolutely loving it. I’m meeting new

people and I’m shooting more video, it’s awesome.

Ed: Now tell me the roadmap – the C500 and C300

didn’t come out of nowhere. Where did Canon start

with this cinematographic move?

Mieke: We released the 5D Mark II four years ago

which had Full HD Video, your frame rates were limited.

You could only shoot at 30p. The thought process

behind this was this video was designed for web-based

videos. Suddenly we had a lot of filmmakers knocking

on our door wanting to use the camera for situations we

never anticipated. They wanted the full frame sensor,

the shallow depth of field and the Canon glass. So we

did a firmware upgrade which really revolutionised the

camera.

Ed: And the audio was an issue?

Mieke: The audio was an issue, yes, because the

5D wasn’t designed for audio. We didn’t release the 5D

for that; we released the 5D Mark II as a stills camera.

That was its purpose.

Ed: That was the thing – this is what got Canonstarted thinking “hey, there’s a market here that reallyneeds to be looked after and we’ve got the glass, we’vegot the technology to be able to do this, we just need totweak it a bit” … and then what happened?

Mieke: So then we did a firmware upgrade inwhich the 5D Mark II went from 30 frames a second to24 and 25p and you also had audio controls in there aswell. You were now able to use this camera for aspecific job. It made it a lot easier.

Mieke on the Canon stand.

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Ed: But it was still that sort of DSLR form factor and

still had that …?

Mieke: I have a lot of people contacting me,

providing feedback on the 5D and the limitations of the

camera for video. At the end of the day, the 5D Mark II

is a stills camera and that’s what it’s designed to do.

The majority of people are using that camera for that

purpose.

Ed: And it’s very good for that purpose?

Mieke: Yes, it’s very, very good for that purpose.

Ed: But then …?

Mieke: Then we saw the opportunity.

Ed: Because alongside this, I have to say, you have

been producing video cameras … I mean the XL1 was

ground breaking, it was a leader, everybody wanted an

XL1 – that was in the DV days. Along came HDV and

you produced a whole range of those; then along came…

Mieke: The XF range …

Ed: Yes and the top of that at the moment, is the

305?

which is MXF at 4.2.2, 50 megabytes per second – andit’s been a stunner

Ed: So, then the shallow depth of field, the large

format sensor was further developed, and for that you

went out to the market?

Mieke: We called out to all the guys who were

using the 5D Mark II’s or using the big super cine

cameras and we spent a number of years researching

this product – we asked the film makers, the DOP’s, the

Cinematographers what they wanted.

We dealt with Ron Howard and George Lucas as well as

the Academy. They have been behind us since Day

Dot, and along came the C300

Ed: And now gone one step further with the C500?

Mieke: Now we’re at 4K with the C500.

Ed: So if Canon was asked “where do you think it’s

going, 4K or 3D” you’d say?

Mieke: 4K.

Ed: Okay, so let’s just run through some of the

features of the C300 and then perhaps talk about

what’s been added to it or changed in it, to make it into

a C500 because really, the form factor is very similar.

You can use the same lenses, in fact it has the same

sensor, so a lot of things are interchangeable, but it’s a

different camera. So the C300 … what’s exciting people

about the C300?

Mieke: The EOS C300 is Canon's first foray into

digital cinema. It’s equipped with an 8.29 megapixel

CMOS sensor that is capable of Super 35 format, and

your choice of 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 50, and 59.94 fps

recording.

You’ve got a super range of ISOs ranging from 320 all

the way up to 20,000 and its native ISO is 800.

Ed: So you can shoot in a cinema mode or you can

shoot in high definition as standard, or an industry

accepted high definition standard?

Mieke: Yes, that’s correct. The BBC actually gave

the go ahead to use the C300 in its external and

internal HD channels, which means this camera has

meet the requirements of the European Broadcasting

Union.

What makes the C300 different from other Cine

Cameras is its low light capability. I’ve seen footage

shot with a 15 Watt bulb and no other light source, and

they were using 6400 ISO with a 50mm lens opened up

at 1.4 and there was absolutely no noise.

This is all down to the technology that we use with our

cameras and the pixilations that we use on our sensors.

We use a very large gapless technology with our pixels,

which produces extremely high detailed images, but

with low noise. That’s why you can shoot at such high

ISO levels.

Ed: And because of the lens situation, I imagine you

could buy yourself a quite affordable package of camera

and a small zoom lens for yourself and then, when

necessary, you could hire those prime lenses or those

really expensive ones to do that super, super job?

Mieke: I’ve done a bit of testing on the C300

myself and I’ve just been using a range of our lenses

and I’m very impressed with our standard 50mm 1.4

lens which retails for about $700-800; it’s absolutely

perfect. It’s very affordable.

Mieke: Which is brilliant. You know we’ve donereally well out of that camera, not only in New Zealand…

Ed: Especially with the BBC I understand, who use itas their benchmark?

Mieke: Yes. It just really revolutionised things andI think it gave us the confidence in the productcategory.

Ed: And you’ve got the glass?

Mieke: I was just about to say “we’ve got theglass”. So, we combined glass, the Universal CODEC

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

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Ed: But what about the form factor – I mean you look

at this and it’s quite a “boxy” little thing, it’s certainly

not a shoulder mount?

Ed: Now there’s also another slot on the side here for

an SD card?

Mieke: It’s just to record or save all your custom

functions and metedata It doesn’t take

stills.

Ed: Ooooh, I was just going to ask

“does it take stills?”

Mieke: I knew you were going to

say that … it doesn’t take stills.

Ed: Oh dear, we’re going to wait for an

EOS C300A … but it’s got a lovely LCD

viewfinder?

Mieke: Yes, this is all included as

well.

A lot of the other super size sensor cine

cameras that are out there, you have to

buy all the extra accessories with the

cameras. With the C300 and C500, you

get the monitor, which is included with

the cables, you get a handle, basically it

is straight out of the box ready to go,

you chuck a lens on there, you’re ready

to shoot.

Ed: And speaking of accessories, everyone has comeon board and produced accessories for this … I knowI’ve been to the Chrosziel booth and seen that thematte box is already there, and I guess it’s the samethroughout the market?

Mieke: Yes – at Canon, we’re not going to go downthat road. There are people out there who are doing itright and we’re supporting that market. It’s all aboutbeing part of the community.

Ed: And in the community of the camera, the nextone up, the C500 which we’re going to try and battleour way through the crowds to get a photo of later on –in terms of what it offers, it’s just that next step, it’sthat 4K picture. How do you define 4K?

Mieke: Amazing …

Ed: That was a trick question, I’m sorry, because ifyou go and ask people about 4K, there are as manydifferent definitions of 4K out there as there are people?

Mieke: No it’s not, but that’s what the guyswanted. They wanted something that was small andcompact that they could stick in a hole if they weredoing a documentary, using it free hand, mounting it toa car – but then, if need be, you can rig or plate it up.

Ed: Accessorise, accessorise …

Mieke: Accessorise – just look at NAB. Everysecond stand here is about rigging or DSLR accessories.

Ed: Now what about internal recording? That’ssomething that I haven’t seen, I can’t even see a sloton it?

Mieke: We shoot on CompactFlash, so you’ve gotdual slots here; when one has been used, itautomatically switches to the other and you just keeprecording. The C300 can shoot 160 minutes of videoonto a 64GB CF card running at a 50Mbps bitrate at1080p. You’ve also got your two XLR inputs here foraudio.

Ed: But what’s the topcodec you can record to onthat? You can’t record 444surely?

Mieke: No, 422 and it’san MXF codec as well. Soit’s exactly the same codecthat we shoot with our XFseries.

Ed: Talking of accessories,of course, what a lot ofpeople do with camerasthese days is takesomething out of the HD-SDI port and record ontoanother device at 444 orwhatever. I’m sure theCanon will allow you to dothis?

Mieke: Yes, you can goto an external recorder –either HD-SDI or HDMI outof this.

Accessorise to the max.

Page

Mieke: 4K has been widely sought in the industry,

especially in a form factor of a camera of this size, and

it does look beautiful and it does give a lot more artistic

possibilities for people to fix in post or change in post. I

think you know that the C500 offers all that and more

including 2k at 10 bit at 120 frames per second.

Ed: Well that’s the other thing isn’t it … it does a slo-

mo?

Mieke: Yes, it does. People were expecting 4K

from us, but I just think we didn’t expect it at that high

a specification, so it really is rather ground breaking,

the C500, it really is.

Ed: And one day we’ll actually have 4K television

sets?

Mieke: I know, can you imagine!

Ed: I’m looking forward to it.

Mieke: Yes, me too.

Ed: Okay, but in all of this we don’t want to lose sight

of the true videographer, the corporate user and the

vast bulk of the BBC who are actually using this for

News – the phenomenal success of the 305?

Mieke: Yes, absolutely.

Ed: But again it’s had a roadmap hasn’t it, right fromthat XL1 which really took the DV market by storm,

HDV and now the 305, which is using that Sony EX

codec, correct?

Mieke: The MXF codec it’s using, yes … so, again,

it was down to just really fine-tuning what the guys out

there wanted as well. Canon has done a really good job

talking to shooters and film makers about what they

want out of a camera. And that’s the same thing that

happened with the XF range as well. We spoke to a lot

of guys in the market.

Ed: But the big difference, of course, this is a fixed

lens, you’re not changing the lens on this one?

Mieke: Yes it’s a fixed lens, it’s an 18x fixed optical

lens. You’ve got that true Canon L series glass so

you’ve got lots of Fluoride in there. You’ve also got

ultra dispersion, which is actually a new kind of coating

system that we’re using. It’s designed for harsh

weather conditions. It’s extremely rugged.

Ed: Really Canon’s taken two parts of the market –

it’s taken a part with the 305; it’s taken a part with theC300 / C500 but they are different

parts of the market?

Mieke: We are offering solutionsfor every part of the market – I thinkthat’s how we look at it. We’ve gotour stills market and we’ve got ourcine market and then we’ve got ourfilmmaker, videographer, corporatemarket there as well. We’ve got asolution for every type ofprofessional.

Ed: And what links it all together isthe glass?

Mieke: It’s that L series glass –it’s beautiful. You look at the EOSrange of lenses; we make over 75different EOS lenses, so there’s a lensfor everyone, and now we’ve got ournew cine range of lenses which areavailable in 4K resolution in either EFor PL mount.

Ed: We look forward to more?

Mieke: Yes, I can’t wait it’s areally exciting time.

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NewTek for ProtelHere we are at NewTek and we have KenBrooke from Protel.

Ed: Ken, Protel is a seller of NewTekTricaster products in New Zealand andby the look of the crowd at the stand onday three, NewTek are still getting a lotof attention here?

Ken: Yes the NewTek stand has had agreat deal of attention every day – it’spacked out. As far as I’m concerned theTricaster 8000 is one of the bestproducts released at NAB this year.

The Tricaster 8000 is a complete liveproduction and media publishingsolution, with fantastic versatility.

It’s a 24-channel switcher, with 8 fully re-entrant M/E rows. Its inputs extend toexternal router support for large-scale,multi-camera production in native full-resolution HD, 8 channels of ISOrecording in up to 1080p, and live outputto up to 14 different display destinations.It has integrated live streaming at the touch of abutton. With a powerful integrated effects system, it’smind-blowing what it can do.

Ed: So this is an outside broadcast product, is thatright?

Ken: It certainly can be used in an OB Van or Truck orused to replace an entire television studio. Thebeautiful thing is you don’t usually need to buy anythingelse, other than the cameras, tripods, lights. TheTricaster has built in 3D visual effects, virtual sets,graphics and transitions; it caters for all your audio( analogue and digital ) mixing, all your video inputs.You can broadcast, stream, publish, project and record– all at the same time.

Ed: And that’s what they’re showing here today?These people are being keyed into live sets and couldlook like they are anywhere in the world, but in factthey’re just on a green screen?

Ken: Exactly.

Ed: Who have Tricasters in New Zealand?

Ken: There are many, some in education and others atstreaming TV stations and broadcasters such asTelevision New Zealand and Triangle TV and there’sanother at MediaCom who do the production andbroadcasting for Chinese Television TV33. The latest

models released at NAB are the 8000, 855 and the 455.Tricaster 455 and Tricaster 855 are brand new productsthat get their DNA from previous models.

Ed: So it’s a case of, with any of these, you could

build up your own studio with a whole lot of bits and

pieces from different manufacturers, or you could buy

one of these?

Ken: That’s right. You could buy, for instance, a high

end graphics station which alone could cost as much as

the Tricaster. So not only does the Tricaster 8000 work

with SD, HD and analogue inputs, but it also can

process stereoscopic 3D. Just use two ME’s and track

the cameras and you can record and playback

stereoscopic 3D Video. It’s an amazing product. You

can also zoom in and out on the two cameras, with the

two locked together and apply effects.

Ed: Not yet 4K?

Ken: Not 4K – I guess that will come in futuregenerations. Another neat feature is motion trackingand you can wiggle something around in your handswith video keyed into the object and it will track it andstabilise it as well. You can also attach a graphic to itwhich will attach to whatever object you’ve got in yourhands, so you could put video on a card or whateveryou like. It does virtually unlimited layers, so you could

Ken’s ditched the girls and is back to technology.

streaming TV station or for transmission.

A very, very nice product.

Ed: Well this is all NewTek too isn’t it?

Ken: Yes, they have a range of productsto suit your budget and scale ofapplication. There’s one other thing …this company is different in that thepeople in it, they really are a team. Atthe end of the distributor meeting, theyall got up, grabbed a guitar, a drum or amic and they sang us a song. That wasquite unique, nice to see.

Ed: But you must feel a bit sad ifyou’re already got one of these andsuddenly the new models come out.You’re stuck are you?

Ken: No you’re definitely not stuck.NewTek have an upgrade path for peoplewho have just recently purchased the450 Extreme and the 850 Extreme.There is a low cost firmware upgrade ifthey require it.

Ed: And what’s this, in the earlierversions you had to pay extra for a

keyboard, but now …?

Ken: That’s right, the 8000, 855, 455 are shipped with

control panels as part of the price, it makes them so

much easier to use.

Ed: For more information and pricing for NewTek

products call Protel ph 0800Protel. NZVN

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create all of these objects on the screen and just keepon going. It’s amazing.

Ed: Does it make you want to start your own TVstation Ken?

Ken: Not personally, but it is great technology entirely

suitable for a start up TV station whether it be a

AJA for ProtelAJA are another major product line for Protel.

Ed: I went to the AJA Press function where they werevery happy about the range of new products andimprovements on existing products that have come outthis year. AJA have been working hard, and one of thesmallest items is?

Ed: The star of the AJA show must be the new Ki ProMini but it’s a slightly fatter Ki Pro Mini isn’t it Ken?

Ken: Yes, it’s called the Ki Pro Quad, 4K/Quad HD/2K/HD Solid State Recorder. From camera capture toeditorial and monitoring, Ki Pro Quad unites thecomponents of a 4K workflow in a compact, powerfuland affordable package. It’s attached here at NAB to aCanon EOS C500 which Protel are dealers for as well.The beauty of the AJA product is it’s built rugged andwe know it works. We will let you know when the Ki-Pro Quad is shipping.

Ed: I was told that AJA worked with Canon before therelease of this camera, to make sure the wholeworkflow actually happened. It’s not a case of thecamera came out and suddenly they jiggered aroundand got a connector, it was well planned to work?

Ken: Yes, it was a joint effort between Canon and AJAand we can see it working now on the stand. This givesconfidence both products work well together.

Ed: That must be good for you as a Canon and an AJAdealer, that you can sell both products quite happily?

Ken: You bet, it definitely is a great bundle.

Ed: And you have to look at the back of this thing toreally believe how many ins and outs it has – a wholerange of HD-SDI and it’s got a Thunderbolt connection,it’s got HDMI monitoring and a reference signal, so it’svery versatile and I guess having that larger form factorgives you more place for buttons?

Ken: Yes, it definitely does have a few more controlbuttons and a small viewing screen to look at recordedmedia. On the 4K version, there are two card slots. Onthe Ki Pro Mini, there’s just the one. Basically, theyhold high spec pre-tested SSD cards from AJA to ensuresuitability.

Ken: It’s the AJA T-Tap Thunderbolt™-powered SDIand HDMI output device. Get 10-bit SD, HD and 2Koutput from any Thunderbolt™-enabled Mac.

Ed: So it’s only an Apple product?

Ken: It only works with Apple laptops and iMacs atpresent.

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Ed: I see AJA have also released a SSD card reader,so you offload the cards. The SSD Reader connectsdirectly to your Mac via a Thunderbolt™ connectionallowing you to rapidly transfer ProRes files that areready for use immediately in your non-linear editingsystem.

Now the Ki Pro, going from Ki Pro, Ki Pro Mini and nowKi Pro 4K, but they haven’t stopped there, they’ve goneone step further and catered to the studio setup andthere is now Ki Pro Rack. To tell us more, here’s Bobfrom AJA.

Bob: Ki Pro Rack is basically the same as the Ki Pro. Ithas both ProRes 422 and Avid DNx codecs built-in –support for both; SSD drives, SATA based hard drivesthat are proprietary AJA drives and a few extraconnectors on the back.

Ed: A few! Okay, so just tell me a little bit aboutthese hard drives, they look like cartridges so you canobviously load up into the cartridge and then pop it out?

Bob: You can pop it out, it’s got a FireWire 800connector, it’s bus powered so just plug it in …

Ed: A standard connector?

Bob: I’m not exactly sure if “standard” is the word thatI would use, but it connects through like a mini SATA ora SATA connection. I have a Ki Pro here, but I don’twant to pull out any of these drives.

Ed: On both the Ki Pro 4K and the rack version, whatdo you use the LAN connection for?

Bob: You can network these, so if you want to networkyour rack and be able to control it remotely, you can dothat. It also has RS 422 machine connector on it.

Ed: So you can not only control it, but you can alsotransfer data via the LAN?

Bob: And view information.

Ken: And the other thing is it can act just like a remotetape machine with the RS 422 connection for control.

Ed: And the rack version had HDMI in and out, as wellas audio in and out, which one would expect in anygood rack mounted product. And my other question is

answered because the drives that are inthe rack mount are actually solid statedrives, so there’s not a great problem inputting these on the shelf and leavingthem there for a while, unlike spinningdrives. So a very good thing.

Okay, for ever and ever, AJA have beenmaking cross-converters haven’t theyKen?

Ken: Yes, and we’ve got a new onehere. It’s a UDC. The UDC is abroadcast quality Up/Down/Cross Mini-Converter which can convert betweenSD, HD, and 3G video formats. Usingthe same AJA industry leadingconversion technology as in their modelFS2, the UDC provides very high qualityconversions at a low price. I/Os includeSD/HD/3G SDI Input and Output, HDMIoutput, and 2-channel RCA style audiooutput. The UDC can be controlled bylocal dipswitches with additional controlavailable via USB and AJA's MiniConfigapplication. A Reference Input allowsthe UDC to be locked to a localreference.

Ed: And I guess it’s very hard to keep what all ofthese do in your brain, but when you’re in a studiosituation and you have an issue, you need to have somesort of connection or transfer, then have a look at

Accessorise your Canon with AJA.

Page

what’s available from AJA and they quite often have aconverter for you?

Ken: Yes, one of the reasons for attending trade shows

is because, believe it or not, 2-3 months later when a

customer asks I remember that I saw a particular

product to solve a problem, and AJA have plenty of

solutions in the form of digital glue.

Ed: And the KONA card continues to be the market

leader?

Ken: Yes the KONA 3G I/O 10bit card now supports 4K

resolution, so future proof for 4K workflows. KONA 3G

is future proof, allowing you to easily work in HD and

2K and switch to working at 4K all on the same

hardware. KONA 3G supports Dual Link 4:4:4 HD-SDI,

with full-bandwidth 4:4:4 RGB at 10-bits for 1080i,

1080p, 1080PsF and 720p formats. KONA 3G can also

convert between 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 formats for single link

HD-SDI monitoring and output. With a broadcast-

quality up/down/cross converter and the ability to work

in 3D, KONA 3G has the power for the work you do

today and into the future.

Ed: And what’s your take on this Ken … I mean at the

show last year 3D was what they were all raving about,

but I haven’t seen much 3D this year?

Ken: 3D capability is progressing and is being

incorporated into the higher end vision mixers and AJA

video cards.

The industry is beginning to cater for 3D, I guess

gearing to the film production for theatre and games at

present and likely to expand to 3D live streaming.

There is a bit of a trend this year for 4K. Sony and

Canon and a few other camera manufacturers are

pushing 4K i.e 4K monitors, 4K cameras, 4K projectors.

It seems to be the new standard to aspire to. I guess

this is again being driven by the movie industry.

Theatres are moving to 4K digital projectors when they

make the move from film to digital, as you need that

much resolution for larger sized screens.

Even if you are only creating 720p or 1080p content,

capturing and editing in 4K can still be incredibly useful.

Since it's basically 4 times larger than a 1080p video

frame, you can reframe content in postproduction to get

a desired effect e.g if the end content is going to be

1080p, you can use the 4K image you have and zoom

into it for a closer shot with no loss of quality or

sharpness. Isn’t technology incredible?

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Avid Pro Toolsfor Protel

We are at Avid with Pro Tools for Proteland we have Michael Pearson-Adamsfrom Avid and Glenn Miers from Protel.

Ed: Portable sound solutions – ProTools 10?

Michael: So what we’ve got here isPro Tools 10 running through one of thenewer Mbox Pro’s which gives us great Ato D and great D to A. We’ve improvedthe mic pre second to none. We’re alsorunning it with our newest version of ProTools 10 which gives you more tracks,more power; it gives you the ability touse your RAM to cache the audio into theRAM, so therefore you can not only runon slower drives or drives with lessperformance, but it also gives you fullplayback and record options on anetwork – whether it’s our ISIS systemsor it’s on a simple SAN network – onridiculous things like drop box, thumbdrives, etc. So you’ve got a lot more power when itcomes to Pro Tools straight out of the box, regardless ofwhether you’re running Pro Tools 10 native or Pro ToolsHD software. The other thing that we’ve got here iswe’re showing off our new Artist Series. We’ve got theArtist Mix which is an eight fader control surface basedout of Ethernet. Next to that, we’ve got the ArtistControl which has over 500 of Pro Tools shortcuts setinto it. You can pretty much control Pro Tools or MediaComposer ( depending on which app you’re workingin ), or any other app that takes the SDK, so you don’tspend as much time going mouse-click, mouse-click,mouse-click … especially in audio, it gives you thechance to get back to using a mixing console, so you’renot actually using your eyes to mix, but you’re usingyour ears to mix, which is an amazingly originalconcept.

Ed: It must be very difficult to do in thesesurroundings though I imagine?

Michael: Absolutely – and it’s like I’m deaf.

Ed: Now of course the interface that we’ve got here isnot a typical computer interface … as you say, there’sno mouse, the laptop has a keypad but there’s theseother two really cool control surfaces that I believe havecome from a recent merger with Euphonix?

Michael: Yes, absolutely right. When we broughtEuphonix into the Avid family, one of the things that weloved about what they’d done, was they’d created thesevery compact, but incredibly powerful Ethernet basedcontrol surfaces especially with audio, namely the ArtistControl which has four faders and a touch screen and ajog wheel and the Artist Mix which has eight faders andgives you complete control over plug-ins, etc. Now we

Glenn and Michael.

Page

didn’t actually do a lot of tweaking because thehardware was fantastic.

What we did do was we tweaked the software, so thatthey worked better with our software being either MediaComposer or Pro Tools. In both of them, you’ve gotabout 80% of all shortcuts and functionality of theactual software available to you by the touch screen, orthe touch sensitive faders, or the knobs on both of theconsoles. So even though on the Artist Control you’veonly got four faders, you can bank or nudge thosefaders so it doesn’t matter how many tracks you’ve gotin a video session you can go as many as you want, youcan keep on scrolling. In an audio session as well, youcan keep on scrolling those eight faders. But the otherbeautiful thing is they’re totally expandable, so you canbuy one of them and then clip it to another and anotherand another when you get the chance. You can have amaximum of four Artist Mix’s, giving you 32 faders andadd them to an Artist Control, so you’ve got 36 fadersall up. So it’s a fully controlled mixing console in a verysmall form.

Ed: The term “portable sound solution” – it’s notsomething you’d take to the beach, but it’s somethingthat if you were going around the country to differentvenues, setting up sound systems, this is obviouslygoing to fit into a couple of quite small cases?

Michael: Absolutely, I mean I’ve got two differentways I travel. I spend 3½-4 weeks of the month on theroad sometimes. I’ve got an Artist Mix and an ArtistControl that I fit in a laptop bag – both sides of a laptopbag, and I carry it with me on the plane. If I’m carryingmore than that then I’ve got a $200 Pelican case I putthem all in and I check it with the foam around it.Nothing’s broken yet.

Ed: That’s it – one Pelican case and you’ve got apretty well complete audio solution?

Michael: Absolutely. It doesn’t matter whetheryou’re running a Magna chassis with an HD nativesystem or you’re running an Mbox Pro FireWire interfacewith a console and then a laptop, you’re good to go.

Ed: So in New Zealand – and we’re talking here nowto Glenn Miers – having the Euphonix or ex-EuphonixArtist Series control surfaces has really taken off withyour customers?

Glenn: Oh for sure. It’s been an extremelypopular product line. The fact that there’s really tightintegration with the Pro Tools product has been

fantastic and obviously there’s other applications that itwill run with as well, and just the control that you’vegot through the Artist control panel and being able toswitch between layers of controls has been fantastic.

Ed: So with the addition of the Euphonix controlsurfaces, is it something that Pro Tools users are nowmuch happier with, because finally they’ve got a controlsurface that is more ergonomic for them?

Michael: Absolutely. I mean when we broughtEuphonix into the family, we were actually kind ofsurprised to find out how many of the little consoles,the Artist Series, were actually being bought by ProTools users and the functionality wasn’t where wewanted it to be. So the first thing we did was updatethe Eucon Control software completely so that we nowhave up to 500 app sets of controls out of Pro Tools inEucon. So that means that anybody who bought onepreviously doesn’t have to update their hardware, theycan actually just update the software and it will work alot better.

Ed: Even if they bought it from Euphonix in theEuphonix days?

Michael: It really doesn’t matter – we’re happy thatthey bought it. I mean Euphonix is now part of Avid,we just want them to be happy with what they bought.So, yes, update the software and you’ll be good to go.

And now we talk to Ozzie Sutherland at a desk with lotsof knobs.

Ozzie: Lots of knobs. What we’re showing here isSystem 5 with Pro Tools HDX on PC and also on Mac –two card HDX system, where we have HD MADI hookedup, video satellite and it’s all running off of ISIS. Heavyduty stuff.

Ed: Way to go.

Ozzie: Yes, we’ve got a lot of things going on hereat the Avid booth on the audio side. All of the actualaudio pods are playing off of the same ISIS, so we’re allsharing the same session and playing it at the sametime.

Ed: But having the connection to ISIS doesn’t meananything for the operator does it, apart from the factthat everything is now linked into the system andanyone can access this anytime, anywhere …?

Ozzie: Yes, anyone can access it at any time …and then we’re also showing some of the new Euconimprovements for Pro Tools 10 and System 5 and how

Pro Tools and Eucon are communicatingbetter on the surface for all of our usersout there who love our stuff.

Ed: So give me an example of whatspecific improvements there would be fora station having this system?

Ozzie: Well for anyone owning aSystem 5 you know, they would be ableto get control over Pro Tools now andwith the new Channel Strip plug-in in ProTools 10, it’s an exact duplicate of thesame exact algorithm in the System 5console. So it’s the same EQ dynamicsfiltering that’s built into Pro Tools 10 andif you’re bringing up a Pro Tools channelon the surface or a System 5 channel onthe surface, they look identical next toeach other now. So you can be mixingin the box or you can be mixing out ofthe box on the DSP itself and youshouldn’t notice any difference becausethey’re both transparent and we’re allone company now.

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Page

Ed: Hey, togetherness, good thing.

Ozzie: “Synergy” – there’s the word for you. It’s

all synergy.

Ed: And to finish us off here at Avid, Glenn, what do

you want to tell us?

Glenn: We’re just here looking at the new Magma

Chassis which is a PCI Express Box – Express Box 3T

and the idea is that it’s got a Thunderbolt connection forconnection into laptops and iMacs, the Apple product

lines, and you can slot PCI Express Cards into the box

for interfacing into your laptop, so what we’ve just seen

here with the System 5 console and Pro Tools HDX, the

cards are in the Magma Box, interfacing to the laptop

and it’s all running on a laptop system.

Ed: And one has to do this because?

Glenn: Because it allows us to use more affordablecomputers in some situations.

We no longer have to always build our solutions around

a computer that contains PCIe slots. Plus the use of

more portable computers sporting Thunderbolt has

advantages for some of our customers.

Ed: So Magma has come up with this clever little box

which houses processing and I/O cards outside the

computer?

Glenn: Exactly.

We’ve a long history with Magma and this new

Thunderbolt chassis is another great example of how

Protel’s solutions remain flexible and adaptable, yet

incredibly powerful.

Ed: Call the good folk at Protel for all your Pro-Tools

and Magma requirements. NZVN

Page

TECHNODOLLY

for

Dolly ShopWe are now at the

TECHNODOLLY stand and we

have Martin Ovsky because

Horst has lost his voice.

Ed: Now Martin, the

improvements in your

TECHNODOLLY I guess

physically, it’s pretty much

the same as it has been for

years?

Martin: Everything’s still

the same, but we continually

improve the software which

allows you to control the

crane very comfortably.

Ed: But that’s good for

people who have already

purchased the crane, and

are already using it, because

they’ve got the crane …

Martin: We will always upgrade the software even

for people who acquired the crane before.

Ed: So for example, what are the software updates

that you’ve done recently?

Martin: The Matrix function which is very new and

very popular, which allows you to jump between the

frames …

Ed: Okay, so the traditional TECHNODOLLY move was

you programmed in a series of moves from point to

point and then it worked out the smooth move between

them.

What this now enables you to do with this Matrix is that

any of those points that you programmed in there, you

can tell the camera crane to jump to that point and

then you can start taking pictures at that point.

I understand two of your customers who have

purchased the TECHNODOLLY are in German Television

and they’re using it in a studio configuration?

Martin: They run all their daily programmes in this

virtual studio. They start at 5 o’clock in the morning

and they finish – I don’t know, at 11 in the evening,

and all these programmes are managed by these two

TECHNODOLLYS with the support of a virtual set.

Ed: So that’s it, rather than have any fixed cameras,

they’re all moving?

Martin: They programme all the movement and this

movement will repeat every hour, so with the News and

some entertainment programmes, they don’t need

cameramen anymore, they just push the buttons and it

runs!

Ed: Yes, who needs cameramen. NZVN

Martin does like his product and was really trying to smile.

Page

Vinpower Digital Duplicatorsfor Imaging Technology

Ed: Ryan, apart from the inkjet printer, Vinpower’swell known for duplicators?

Ryan: Yes, exactly. We started off as a systemintegrator and then we transitioned into manufacturingour own controllers and our own duplicators. Thebenefit of that is we know how the system’s working inconjunction with the drives and all the components inthe casing. Companies like Acard just make thecontroller only, so they only know a limited factor ofwhat the end user is dealing with, whereas we know theentire aspect. So when you’re looking at controllers, welook at okay how is the end user going to use this, andwhat are some of the factors that they could beconfronted with, and we try and overcome that forthem, so it makes it easier. Not only that, we also havea lot of additional features. We have what we call “copyconnect” which allows you to connect the duplicator to acomputer so that you can transfer the file directly from

Ed: What intrigues me is this very slim case – you callit the “naked case.” How come it’s so small?

Ryan: Basically this is meant for somebody whojust kind of like uses a lot of duplication and eitherneeds something that’s very portable, or just needssomething very inexpensive. The naked case, in itsessence is something that’s typically a 1:7 that can beexpanded up to a 1:11 or maybe even higher. It’s kindof like an erector set, you can keep adding higher to it.So it’s not meant as something professional …

Ed: You wouldn’t put it on your front desk, you’d putit in the back room?

Ryan: Exactly. This is something that’s kind ofdown and dirty; you want to use it, you need somethingthat you can just use heavily and then when it’s done,you can switch off the drives really easily, because youcan burn out the drives.

Ed: Oh, okay. One of the things that intrigues me, isthat no one hasyet come up witha duplicator thatyou can actuallydirect link to yourcomputer and itwill read an ISOfile off the com-puter.

You always haveto have a harddrive within theduplicator bayitself. Is this nota solvable prob-lem?

Ryan: Theproblem is thecontrollers have afinite space forthe coding and soconnecting … it’skind of like twodifferent langua-ges between likeusing say Micro-

Ryan Swerdloff, VP of Marketing at Vinpower Digital withArnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California at theCeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany March 2009.

the computer to the duplicator’s hard drive; we have acopy protection feature that allows you to put copyprotection onto DVD video disc; we have so many – likelightscribe capability – we have so many differentfeatures that are unique to Vinpower, or something thatVinpower introduced. We also offer the controller as astandalone component that you can purchase out ofTaiwan, out of the US, wherever’s most convenient andit’s something that gives you a little bit more flexibility.We are working a lot with Blu-ray which is really kind ofthe next standard, so we’re really finely attuned atdoing the fast 12x Blu-ray duplication speed. Just a lotof things … we work with a lot of archival mediacompanies, so if you’re doing archival media we’ll workwith some discs that other controllers can’t work with.

Vinpower Digital has released a new Eco Solvent Ink system that can print on nearly any surface with spectacular results for mere pennies per print

The availability of Eco Solvent Ink printers is nothing new, but they typically cost many thousands of dollars

and tend to be very large complicated machines. The Venetian is far more affordable and easy to use in a

compact device that can fit nearly anywhere.

The Venetian printer using the Eco Solvent Ink can print across many different surfaces without requiring any

special coating or treatment. In fact, it is perfect for use with optical discs (i.e. CD, DVD, or Blu-ray), Security

ID cards, Fabric, Paper, and many other surfaces. In addition to being able to print on a variety of surfaces, the

Eco Solvent Ink is also extremely water and scratch resistant ensuring the printed image will endure day-to-day

use or handling. The Venetian uses a Continuous Ink System (CIS) with 100ml exterior clear tanks, so the user

can tell at a glance if the ink is running low to prevent running out of ink again in the middle of an important

job.

In addition, our Eco Solvent Ink is very Earth friendly, as the solvent does not release any harsh chemicals that

would negatively affect the planet. The Eco Solvent Ink will not clog or damage the print head either, making

the Venetian a true cost effective print solution for so many applications.

Venetian Printer at $1,195+gst, and comes with 6 colour Solvent ink bottles at 100ml each

Optional: 100 disk Autoloader at $945+gst, each 100ml solvent costs $119+gst

www.imagingtechnology.co.nz; 12 Holloway Place, Penrose; PO Box 62-157, Auckland; Tel: 09 5257888 Fax: 09 5257898

Page

soft or Apple’s programme, or some type of Linuxcommunication, so having the duplicator work directlyfrom the computer, it either has to be operated directlyfrom the motherboard or you have to have some typeof bridge that allows it to communicate between theduplicator and the motherboard of the operating systemthat the user is using.

Ed: And that’s too difficult?

Ryan: It’s not that it’s too difficult, it becomes …

Ed: It’s not cost effective?

Ryan: Right. It becomes a cost factor. Once youget to a certain cost point, then it doesn’t make anysense.

Ed: That makes sense.

Ryan: Yes. A key benefit is the hot swappabilityof the drives with the Vinpower controllers.

If you do have a drive fail, you just take it out yourself,stick in a new one and it recognises the new drive andyou carry on. You don’t have to take it back to yoursupplier and have firmware updated or anything else.You can do it all yourself.

Ed: What about copy protection – it’s actually yourown software?

Ryan: Correct, it’s our own software.

What it does is it allows you to add copy protection onyour PC to your master file and then using our softwaretransfers it through USB onto the duplicator’s harddrive, and then from the duplicator you can make asmany copies as you want and every copy has theprotection ingrained into it. So they can’t rip it andthey can’t … I mean nothing’s fool-proof 100%, I’m not

going to tell you that, but for the most part it gives avery strong deterrent. Just like CSS is not 100%, itgives you a very strong deterrent to keep people fromripping or burning your content.

Ed: And you don’t have to pay for every one you do?

Ryan: No. Actually it’s a pay for one licence, butafter that you can make as many as you want, youdon’t have to pay for each individual disc.

NZVN

Nigel always has that PAG smile.

Duplicate discs or sticks.

PAG for QuintoWe are at PAG with – yes, it is Nigel Gardiner from PAGUK.

Ed: Nigel – you’ve been busy, or someone in the backroom’s been busy?

Nigel: Well we talked to you at IBC about our new“linking” battery and now it has time linking.

Ed: What does the “time” mean Nigel … I’ve heardyou’ve had difficulties with some clients understandingwhat “time” means on a battery?

Nigel: I think, yes, there are other people whohave other forms of time. We like to think that we giveyou actual time and not just a guess.

Ed: So you press the button and it tells you …?

Nigel: When you connect this to a device, i.e acamera, you press the button and it will tell you theremaining runtime at the current discharge rate of thebattery – in hours and minutes.

Ed: On the battery, or in the camera?

Nigel: On the battery. This is, I think, quite auseful feature. We have made time batteries in thepast and for the more “switched on” and bigger user it’sa valuable thing.

Ed: But Nigel, in my little camera, it tells me howmany hours or how many minutes I’ve got runtime onmy battery, but I don’t actually trust it and in fact I’venoticed some times that I think I’ve got a lot left and itstarts flashing. Why would that be?

Nigel: Well rather than me criticising acompetitor’s product, what I’m saying is that the waythat some get the time is a measure of voltage and this

is not going to be accurate, because suddenly thevoltage changes and you’re suddenly going to end upwhere you think you’ve maybe got 30 minutes left, butactually the battery is dead and that’s the end of it.

Page

You cannot measure time in regards to voltage, but itgives you a very coarse thing and I guess it givespeople a bit of confidence.

Ed: Well if it’s not voltage, how do you measure it?

Nigel: Well we’re measuring how much goes inthe battery and we’re measuring the rate it comes outof the battery.

Ed: That sounds a lot more clever?

Nigel: Yes, it’s quite difficult, because you thenhave to adjust for self-discharge; you’ve got to adjustfor temperature; you’ve also got to adjust for the age ofthe battery … and all these have a detrimental effect onthe actual efficiency of the measurement. That’s aboutas good as it gets.

Ed: Yes, that sounds pretty good. Now this timebattery also clips together with other batteries … dothey all have to be time batteries or do you only needone in the chain?

Nigel: Well you’re right, you only need one in thechain, because it’s telling you the time for the chain andnot for itself. Therefore, the cost of the time battery ismaybe about 15% more than the non-time battery, soinstead of having to pay 15% extra for every battery,you only have to do one in three or whatever your mixon your usage is. So a typical person might have sixbatteries and he might be using three at a time, so heonly needs two “time”.

Ed: And even if the time battery is itself nearly flat, ifyou leave it on the back it will tell you the timeremaining for the rest of them?

Nigel: Yes, the relevance of the battery itself – itscapacity is irrelevant when you’re looking at the timeregarding the stack.

Ed: But, as you say, it has to be connected to thecamera otherwise it doesn’t work?

Nigel: Absolutely, because you’ve got those indischarge.

Ed: I’m still very impressed with this connectionarrangement. It really is just one quick click and itgoes together and solid as a rock, you’d never breakthose apart. And in fact, even with three of themtogether, I can pick it up in one hand and what’s reallycool is this little sticker on the bottom which says “airtransport safe” with a UN test number.And the Americans would take heed ofthat would they?

Nigel: Well the problem with this isthat, as far as CAA, FAA and all of theassociations round the world areconcerned, a lithium ion battery shouldbe tested under harsh constraints. A lotof people actually don’t do this, so thatwhat we do is we put a sticker on whichmeans that at least the people who buyour products can acknowledge the factthat it has been tested. The sticker – itlooks like it’s official, but actually it’s ourown little design. We have certificationto go with it and I think one of the otherlittle problems is that somemanufacturers rely on the fact that thecells themselves are CAA, FAA, FAapproved, but that doesn’t mean to saythe battery’s approved.

Also related to our linking system, abattery is normally working in a direction

where current is being drawn off by the camera.Because we have a linking system, that means we haveoutput terminals on the other side of the battery. Nowwe’ve come up with a nice little device called a “powerhub” which will then click onto the other side of thebattery. This power hub will give you the opportunity tohave extra outputs. So you might want to have D-taps,you might want PP90s, , you might want LEMOconnectors … this is an option you can have. We alsohave an option to have a USB so you can run yourMacBook, you will be able to charge your iPhone, youriPad from the same battery set that you are using torun your camera.

Ed: And this will work when it’s not actuallyconnected to the camera, just as a battery sitting onthe bench?

Nigel: As you see now, the light is lit and I cancharge my phone.

Ed: Fantastic. And it’s a bit more clever than puttingit in between the camera and the battery pack … thereare some situations I know with your older packs, youradapter plates were always between the camera andthe batteries?

Nigel: That’s right. We feel that this way, if wehave an opportunity to use the other side of thebattery, why not use it. We can actually take theconnector out and change them in any combination thatis necessary. An interesting development of this is thatwith Sony, they now have a device called the XM Pilotwhich will record the metadata from their camera andyou then download an app for your Smartphone and allthe metadata from the camera is then transferred toyour Smartphone. We have been asked at this showand at a previous show I went to, whether we couldmake a cradle so that we can actually put the iPhone orSmartphone onto this power hub, hence everything iscontained, you’re charging your iPhone and you’re alsoreceiving the metadata from the XM Pilot.

Ed: Very cool and cool to be asked by Sony to do it?

Nigel: Absolutely. It’s interesting … it’s a strangeconcept of putting product to the other side of thebattery, but we’re also looking at possible microwavelinks and other things that will go onto this side.

Ed: It was Sony with a “y” wasn’t it?

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Nigel: It was Sony with a “y”, yes. Anyway, wealso are looking to put a 7.2 Volt voltage converter inthere, so that we can run DSLRs and smaller camerasfrom a chosen socket. This potentially means that wecan also put a digital display on it such that you canlook at the cycle life of the battery, how many times ithas charged, its max or its minimum temperature, etcwhich is already stored in the battery. Any more?

Ed: Well I think you’ve covered just about every basepossible there.

Nigel: Is that cool?

Ed: It’s very cool … but wait, there’s more – you’vegot another big battery sitting here?

Nigel: No, this is the CPS100 which is a 100 Wattpower supply.

Ed: Oh, it seems exceedingly light, it looks like abattery but in fact it’s not?

Nigel: It has an XLR output as well as the normalV output, plus two USB outputs.

Ed: But this clip on the back here is to actually cliponto the camera isn’t it?

Nigel: Well CPS stands for “Camera Power Supply”– I thought I wouldn’t have to explain that to youGrant, but I’m sorry, you must be tired or too muchbeer last night.

Ed: Now Nigel, we are friends … but this is cleverbecause here’s your power supply actually going on thecamera, rather than sitting on the floorgetting in the way, and a long cablegoing up to the camera. This way youhave the long cable going to the powersupply and there it is. But, as you say,you’ve got all these taps off it for extrapower in different directions. Clever.

Nigel: Well it’s one of those thingsthat people asked for and we’ve had a 50Watt power supply, but obviously in thisday and age, 50 Watts isn’t big enough,so we just increased it and it seems tobe everything you manufacture needs aUSB, so why not put USBs in – it doesn’tcost much. But here we are, at anotherthing. This little chappie is a softwareupgrade tool, so that if we find duringour experience of our PAGlink batteriesor our PAGlink chargers, that there is asoftware problem, something that wehaven’t envisaged, we can just clip thistool on the battery, or a similar one ontothe charger and it will update thefirmware of the battery or charger.

Ed: Where do you get the stuff intothis little device here?

Nigel: We would supply it to you. We would giveyou this adapter with the software upgrade on it.

Ed: Wow. That sort of exemplifies the PAG servicementality doesn’t it, that you don’t want to have abattery out there that’s not doing the best, you will goout of your way to provide that service to customers ofPAG batteries?

Nigel: Yes, we realise that even with this adapter,it’s not the best way of doing it and we are consideringother ways where you will be able to download from theInternet, your own update programme, which will gointo something that is already part of your kit. Butthat’s going to be then, and now is now.

Ed: And I’m sure if the situation arises where youdon’t feel happy about doing this, you can always goand visit your dealer and they might do it for you?

Nigel: I would hope so. We’ve also brought out avery simple, let’s say “plug in the wall” charger, whichagain it’s a 1.8 amp charge rate, it will charge a PAGlinkbattery in about four hours. But you can also link themtogether, so it’s another form of charger, we wouldhope it to be very economically priced and something togo in your pocket, so you’ve got a spare charger. Youcan charge them linked together, so if you had threebatteries we’re talking about an overnight charge.

Ed: Does it do one after the other, or …?

Nigel: No, simultaneous. All charging now on thisPAGlink system will be simultaneous.

Ed: And the plug’s interchangeable?

Nigel: Yes.

Ed: Just slides off, a new one goes on … and onemore?

Nigel: Yes, but you’ll have to walk with me Grant.

Ed: Oh my goodness here’s a big camera with fourPAGlinks on it, and they’re side by side and one on theback of the other?

Nigel: Yes, this is the Sony F65. This has manyproblems for the user if he wants to run batteries. Thecurrent draw on it is about 110 Watts as it stands, andthat’s without extra viewfinders or monitors.

At the moment, between you and I Grant, Sony don’thave a solution … they don’t have a battery that will runthis device.

But with our F65 adapter plate, we can put four

batteries on here which will run this camera for about

3½ hours. It’s not often going to be used on theshoulder, but when it does, you’re going to need a

battery system – and we believe at this moment, this is

the only real system that’s going to cope with this

camera. Yes, it’s a big digital EFP camera and there are

not going to be massive sales, but I’m sure there will be

a few in New Zealand. What we’ve been able to do is

also give an indication of time, because this camera has

no viewfinder information for time. So we have a little

This baby’s not really for “run and gun” operations.

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time display, so that when you press the button up will

come the time, or how long this battery system will run

the camera. There is another big change in this plate,

in the fact that on a normal linking system, the battery

that is nearest the camera has control of the battery

system. When you have two batteries side by side and

two linked, there is no one battery that is nearest the

camera, so we’ve made it such that the plate itself nowis the control and the plate controls the discharge of the

battery. So we’re still back to only two batteries being

discharged at any time, but it is now being controlled by

the plate and not the camera. This is a prototype. We

would hope to have this within maybe a couple of

months, but this is an interesting thing, we’ve had a lot

of co-operation with Sony and we’re trying to sort this

out … and they’re interested. Sony will not bemarketing this, but it’s a solution to help them on their

usage.

Ed: And you can hot swap these batteries?

Nigel: Absolutely, yes you can hot swap any twoof the four.

Ed: You can only put four on, or could you put six?

Nigel: Oh no, you could put six, you could puteight on.

Ed: Which is the versatility of the PAG loadingsystem?

Nigel: There is no basic limit; it’s only a practicallimit of distance and weight and when you’re swinginground you don’t want too much sticking out over yourshoulder. So, yes, I think this is the adaptability of the

system. And I would say one more thing, and this is it– what we’re finding is that the user, the cameraman, istelling us what he wants. He likes the concept, it’swaking him up and he’s saying “oh, if you can do that, Iwonder if we could do this?” and this is really great stufffor us, because this is what we want. We want peopleto come up with “okay, this is great, can you just fit thisbit on it” and we’re doing our best to do what thecameraman wants.

Ed: And doing it very well.

Nigel: Well we try. Thanks Grant.

Now for his take on the PAGlink system, Alan fromQuinto?

Alan: Right Grant – in the past, batteries have beenknown to go on the back of the cameras and they’dfeed power one way i.e into the camera itself.

PAG, with their PAGlink system, have been veryinnovative in that for the first time, as far as I’m aware,you can feed power not only into the camera itself, butalso out the back to feed a whole host of ancillarygadgets and I think that’s going to be one of the keyfeatures of PAG equipment that will become veryattractive to users of cameras. There will be more andmore gadgets you have to hang on to the end of thecamera and all of these gadgets have to be powered.The idea of just having one battery on the end of yourcamera and the rest sort of coming from a host of othersources I think has gone. If you can stack the batteriestogether on the back of the camera and then powerthem both ways, have two-way traffic, then you’re ontoa winner. NZVN

MicroLite for QuintoWe’ve got Stuart Harvey for Nucomm /IMT MicroLite Transmitters.

Ed: Stuart, this is the world’s smallestsomething?

Stuart: The MicroLite transmitter, isa way to get full 1080p video from acamera back to an OB truck or a studio.So it’s ideal for video transmission.

Ed: Well it is very small – what’s therange?

Stuart: I t depends on thefrequency. This particular model is 5.8gigahertz; the model over there is a 2-2.5 gigahertz, so with the laws ofphysics, the lower the frequency, thefurther the range, so half the frequency,double the range. This is 100 milliwatts,that’s 200 milliwatts, so something likethis would do sort of 700 metres non lineof site; something like that is sort of akilometre and a half, depending on theparticular radio environment. If you’vegot a choice, get down lower in thefrequency. If you want to work in theunlicensed band, we have a solution at5.8 gigs and they’re equally good. So afantastic product, selling like hot cakesas they say in the UK.

Ed: Is that because of the functionality or the price?

Stuart: It’s both. Our mainstay product there isthe CamPAC, a fantastic product, very high end, it’s the

Stuart in soft focus - not so the MicroLite HD.

Ferrari of wireless systems and the system there is soldall round the world, used by all the premiumbroadcasters, very reliable, easy to use, cameramenlove it, technicians love it, but equally, the range from

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that is exactlythe same as this.What you ’ refinding is whereone used to havea cameraman,reporter, a tech-nician and there’sthree people,with this, youjust send thecameraman anda reporter. Obvi-ously, there’scompromise, thathas got fullcamera control,it’s got one framedelay or zeroframe delay, thishas got threeframe delay … soit’s one of thosethings that youknow you can allbuy a Ferrari oryou can buy aToyota Corolla.They get youfrom A to B but Iknow which one Iwould buy if Ihad the money.The best thing todo is to try it. Iknow Alan has

got demo units, so get it out, use it, try it and buy it.

Ed: So who’s tried it in Australia?

Alan: Well we’re finding a lot of niche markets aregoing into it. The main broadcasters are using the highend CamPAC but this one, because of its size and price,it’s going into some really interesting applications.

You were asking about the range, well the AFL inMelbourne, you know Melbourne Football Rules, theyuse them and they have them at the MCG in Melbourneand they can cover the whole ground from one pointand then feed that up into the main scoreboard forpictures. They can follow the players not just into thetunnel, but actually down the tunnel with thesecameras. Another very interesting application was forthe Twenty20 matches this summer in Australia, wherean optician designed a pair of spectacles with a camerain the middle, in the bridge, and he fed that video downto one of these transmitters, which was put on theumpires and it was called “UmpCam” and so you couldwatch the actual umpire’s vision whenever a decisionhad to be made; and two weeks ago an enterprisingcompany put one into a sealed container, took it outonto a surfboard and did coverage from a surfingcarnival with it. So it’s very small, very flexible andvery affordable.

Ed: And the quality is there not only to show live onthe big screen at a football match, but also to record itfor straight to air.

Alan: This is full broadcast HD 1920 – full broadcastpictures.

Stuart: It’s state of the art MPEG4, so what it doesis that it enables you to get video down an 8 MHz RFbandwidth, where other people can’t. So MPEG2 you

just can’t physically do it well; MPEG4 the compression… everybody sells the compression, but thecompression engine in here is first class. The quality ofthe picture is good – when you actually use it and seeit, people say what a stunning picture. Just because it’sMPEG4 doesn’t mean it’s been implemented properlyand there’s different ways of doing it. Theimplementation in here is very good and that’s whyyou’ve got to try it; you’ve got to try it in yourenvironment and let your technicians go through it andsay “it’s good.” Some of the other features it’s gotinclude an IP port, so it can stream to IP for a Newsenvironment, you might be outside your normal region,using a satellite terminal, maybe a BGAN terminal orsomething like that. With a transcoder, you can takethe video out of the IP port, transcode it to a lower bitrate that gives you the satellite uplink off a BGAN,maybe at 300 kilobits and you can broadcast live. Youthink where am I going to use that … the guys in Egypt,when they were doing the Egypt troubles, the biggestproblem was the satellite terminals were on the roof ofthe hotel, they were running cables down the side ofthe hotel and doing all the interviews in the hotel. Theydidn’t want to be in the hotel, they wanted to be on thestreet. With a MicroLite, you put the receiver up on theroof and you’re walking along the streets doing livebroadcast straight to air. So for News guys, it really isquite phenomenal and we are selling lots and lots ofthese things globally.

Ed: And receivers, you have a number of thesearound your football stadium – how many receivers doyou need?

Stuart: One.

Ed: Per transmitter?

Stuart: Well what you find is it depends on theenvironment. If the radio environment is relativelystraightforward – so the cricket guys have got onereceiver and it covers the whole ground and into thetunnel. If you want to do into the tunnel and thechanging rooms, you’d probably need another receiverin towards the changing rooms. We also do an ASIswitch that enables you to bring the video packets to acentral point and dynamically select the video, so thatautomatically gives you a good feed. So if you’reoutside of the radio coverage in one position, it will thenswitch automatically over to another.

Ed: But if you had three cameramen with threetransmitters?

Stuart: You’d need three receivers. One receiver,one transmitter, just the same as a TV.

NZVN

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Matthews for PLSNow as you might be able to guess, we’re here atMatthews with Linda Swope.

Ed: Linda, I can see by the number of people playingwith the sliders that they’re still very popular?

Linda: Very popular. What you see them playingwith though is a heavy duty version which will holdmore weight than the slider we introduced last year.That will hold a 70 pound package, which is the ALEXAcamera package, so yes, that’s what all the excitementis about this year.

Ed: Wow, and they’re still just as long – you’ve stillgot the same amount of travel, but you can carry a lotmore on them?

Linda: Same amount of travel, sameconfigurations – you can make it a jib, you can make ita slider, you can make it a tower, you can use it as atable top – it just holds more weight.

Ed: Well how do you beat that?

Linda: Well you really don’t this year, that’s ourthing, that’s our “Big Boy” this year – the heavy dutyDC-slider.

Ed: Is it a lot more expensive?

Linda: Yes it is – not a lot more, but you know youget what you pay for and because of the beefiness of it,it’s about probably $4000 more.

Ed: And I guess it’s versatile because you can use itas a crane, you can use it as a jib arm, but you can alsouse it like you might have in the old days where youhad to have a track and a dolly to do a tracking shot –you could actually do a tracking shot with this?

Linda: Exactly, exactly. You can take it off of thetripod and do a table top or a ground shot or onstairways, because it comes with levelling feet, so youcan get some very unique shots with it.

Ed: Okay, but that’s not all you do is it?

Linda: That’s not all we do, we do other things,yes. We do something very big and then we dosomething very small, which is our new Matthewsmonitor mount. This is our Matthews Universal Tablet

Ed: Okay, so the heavy duty Big Boy has just hit thestreets, but in the early version, you’ve sold out ofevery production run I understand … what are the sortsof things that people are using it for?

Linda: They’re very popular for documentaries,I’ve got a couple of guys who’ve bought it doingdocumentaries; recently we got some footage ofsomeone who did a mountain bike kind ofenvironmental movie, using the slider solely for all theproduction shots for that; the video guys use it;wedding photographers or videographers are gettinginto using it – so it’s all over, you know, it’s in Newbeatproduction, video production, TV – it’s very versatile.

I tried to con Linda into a pole dance,but she was too clever for me.

The slider in action - also very clever.

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Mount. It will fit any tablet or iPad. Basically it isadjustable out to any size, tightens back on theresimply like this …

Ed: And it’s got nice plastic ends so it doesn’t damageyour iPad?

Linda: Yes, it’s got the Teflon-coated ends, soyour iPad does not get damaged. It comes standardwith this ⅝ pin, so it can go into any grip pad which is a standard item, mounted on any other standard itemthat we have, to make your own desktop unit. Or we’vegot …

Ed: Oh, of course, with a Microgrip version?

Linda: So that’s a new fun thing that we’ve got.

We’ve also got a new Smartphone holder. This is reallypopular with people who want to clamp it under thehandlebars of their bike, or the front of theirskateboard, because everybody who has a Smartphoneis a moviemaker these days, so this can go anywhere …so that’s kinda fun.

Ed: Sort of anywhere, anytime Matthews isn’t it?

Linda: Exactly – anywhere, anytime, all the time …

Ed: Matthews.

Linda: Matthews.

Ed: Okay, now some very industrial looking supportshere, with a very heavy ARRI light on the top of it?

Linda: The big one is holding an ARRI Max; theother is holding a Mole 12k. The one holding the ARRIMax is up 17 feet. It will hold 260 pounds; it’s madestrictly of aluminium with square tubing, so there’s notorqueing or twisting of the tubes as you’re going up ifthe wind gets it. It comes in three versions, the BigBoy, the Middle Boy ( which will go up to about 13 feet Ibelieve ) and then the Low Boy which will go up 13 feetas well, but it’s got a lower lowered height. They allcome with levelling legs; there’s a levelling bubble onthe base of every one – and that’s our Skyscraper line.

Ed: And again it has that Matthews look – it has thatas I call it “industrial” look, but it’s very solid; these arenot going to break are they?

Linda: No, they’re very, very solid. Any versionwill hold 260 pounds.

Ed: Wow … and of course underlying it all are theMatthews stands, the lighting stands, and the gripconnectors that basically connect big bits of somethingto other big bits of other things?

Linda: Exactly, yes, we’ve still got the core, thecore of the plan – we’re just extending into otherproducts as far as the sliders and the mounts and thecranes and the big crank stands.

Just a “one stop shop” – come and get it all atMatthews.

NZVN

Zylight for PLSWe are at the Zylight booth and we haveJeff Hamel.

Ed: Jeff, it’s very ecological orenvironmental or saving the planet,because you’ve made the whole set outof old pallets?

Jeff: That’s correct. What we did is wecontracted a local company here inVegas, and they built us pallets madefrom reclaimed wood products – whetherit be old barns, houses or materials thatwould normally go into a landfill aswaste, put together as a pallet, and wedecided to make it as our feature. Partof the theme is, you know, wemanufacture LED lights, which are“green” in that you have less lampsbeing recycled; you have less materialsgoing into landfills, so we try to carrythat theme into our exhibit.

Ed: Excellent – and you’ll move ontothe clothing next?

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Ed: Wireless … what would you need wireless on alight for?

Jeff: Well you know our other products that are colourchanging use wireless to change colour temperature orcolours, and in this case, being a one colour availableboth in daylight or tungsten, you would be able to dimthe light up or down or remotely turn it on / off.

Ed: Ooooh right, okay. And really, just going back tothe heat sink, it is a fallacy to say that LEDs don’t haveany heat – the heat’s just in a different place?

Jeff: That’s correct. I mean, any time you convertpower to light, the way you measure the efficiency is byhow much heat is given off … and that’s just a by-product of converting from electricity to a light source.So people have the impression that LEDs don’t generateheat. They do, and the important thing about removingheat from LEDs is to give them the longevity of 50,000hours by removing unnecessary heat that would affecteither the colour rating or whatever the LED engine isencapsulated in.

Ed: So what’s the sort of output equivalent of thisparticular light?

Jeff: Well this is the tungsten version, so this is justunder a 650 tungsten unit in the foot candle and luxrange and the daylight one is a little bit more matchedto a 650 equivalent only if you want to do HMI terms, itwould be somewhere between 125 Watt and 200 Wattpocket PAR HMI.

Ed: And this is the new one for this year?

Jeff: This is called the FA model and this would be /Tfor tungsten or /D for daylight. These are not currentlyin production yet, these are our concept lights that wewanted to bring to NAB and get some feedback fromthe customers to see what they’re looking for in an LEDFresnel.

This also has the opportunity or option of mounting a

battery plate on the back – whether it be Anton Bauer

or whoever – and using batteries on the back as well.

It makes the light portable as far as ENG goes – it’s alittle bit on the heavy side compared to other ENG typeLED lights, but you know the fact that you can run it foran hour off a dionic battery and I would suggest amonopole type of a stand if you’re going to be “running

Jeff: That’s a little bit of a touchy subject, but yes.

Ed: So you’re not into wearing hemp?

Jeff: Wearing it, no … there’s other uses for hemp, but

…

Ed: Rope for example?

Jeff: Exactly, rope.

Ed: But let’s get onto lights and this is a rather large

light. It looks like there’s a huge heat sink on the back

of this and, yes, it’s pretty warm on the back?

Jeff: Well this is our attempt at making a one colour

Fresnel and the heat sink is the size that it is because

the LED engine is monitored directly to the heat sink to

dissipate the heat created by the engine itself. Because

we didn’t want to have an internal fan, for two reasons

– 1) for sound and 2) the fact that if we designed this

as a traditional Fresnel, where it had a big empty can

and moved the light source to and from the lens, we

would have needed a fan for the travel of that LED

module away from the heat sink towards the lens. So

what we’ve done instead is eliminated the fan, mounted

right to the heat sink and what we do is we move the

lens away and towards the actual engine itself in order

to change the focus of the lamp.

Ed: So there’s a big rubbery type bellows – is it true

rubber or …?

Jeff: It’s some sort of neoprene rubber. It’s UV proof,

it’s water resistant, the switches on the light are also

water resistant, so it’s good for outdoor environments –

whether it’s rain or dust – this is all enclosed.

Ed: It looks like it’s got an aerial on it?

Jeff: It has wireless built in.

“Move the lens” is the answer.

Phone (09) 3024100 Email: [email protected] Website: www.kelpls.co.nz

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and gunning” with it,because it is a little heavy.But that’s the quality oflight.

Ed: And I guess people

have to ask you – well I’d

like it, but what’s the cost?

Jeff: Well we haven’t

exactly nailed down the

cost, but we’re trying to stay

competitive and we’re look-

ing at somewhere around

US$2,000.

Ed: Okay, and apart from

that, it’s pretty much

“business as usual” with the

Z90 … have you had any

interesting uses that people

have told you they’ve put

them to?

Jeff: Well I don’t know

what other people have

been doing with it, but I

know for myself, in Boston

where I’m from, there’s a

local radio station that does

Sports Talk and they’ve

started simulcasting on Comcast SportsNet and because

the room was so small and ceilings were so low, when I

spec’d it out, I spec’d it out with Z90s from Zylight and

others that I won’t particularly mention, but just

because of the size and the output, we went with the

Z90s. There’s six spots in the radio station for guests

and the two talent that do the main show and there’s

four lights in each spot – we have a direct on key, two

fills and a back light, plus a couple assign, so we ended

up using 27 of them in there, but because of the low

profile, the low heat, so far everybody’s been very

happy and they like the daylight setting because of the

cameras they’re using, so it’s working out great.

Ed: So they’re not using them with any of the colour

variations that are possible?

Jeff: They are not. For set element colour, we went

with less expensive LED lights that can be just set, dip

switches and left alone.

Ed: So even though, for a fancy trick, you can turn

them into any colour you like, in fact they’re best at

daylight, because you’re mixing those colours to make

the daylight?

Jeff: Yes and the particular cameras that are used

work better with daylight on the talent versus tungsten,

so we were able to accomplish that with this particularlight. And if you have a special holiday, then you know

maybe we can do green or whatever flavour of colour

you’d like to do.

Ed: And for a little added bonus, you’ve actually got a

third party add-on to your Z90?

Jeff: We do, it’s a friction mount yoke that has a

quarter twenty thread, so you can mount the Zylight on

it … as you can see, you can mount a DSLR – anything

with a quarter twenty thread. Friction – you adjust the

friction and it’s designed so that once you’ve set it to

the desired friction for the weight you’re putting on it,

it’ll stay wherever you put it.

So you can point it like straight down and straight up or

anywhere in between and it stays there. List price is

roughly US$199.

NZVN

Count the Z90s on the ceiling in this Boston radio station set.

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Rycote for SyntecHere we are for Syntec at Rycote with Stefano Pucello.

Ed: My white fluffy is still doing extremely well andcreating a lot of interest. People always want to knowwhere it came from.

Stefano: Yes well this is still coming from the UK andit’s the product that was launched last year, the MicroWindjammer. It’s a very little device that allows minidevices like portable recorders, iPhones and othercameras to actually have a bit of attenuation to thewind noise that is, otherwise, going to be quite difficultto understand without it.

Ed: We can understand people a lot better now. ButRycote hasn’t stopped with that have they … you’vedeveloped a very interesting mic holder that’s here on aCanon video camera. Tell me about that?

Stefano: Basically one of the weak points of all videocameras is the microphone holder. First of all, as we allknow, it doesn’t actually give any attenuation tohandling noise or vibrations. Therefore, what wecreated is an adapter. You remove altogether thestandard microphone holder that most of the videocameras come supplied with, and this adapter can beadapted to lots of different video cameras – Sony,Panasonic, JVC, Canon. In this case, it’s on the top ofan XF300 Canon. What it does is that it removesaltogether the microphone holder, you put an adapterand that then is connected to a Softie Lyre Mount, thestandard suspension that is used in the softer kit. Sothat allows you to have an anti-vibration system onyour camera and the good thing is that – it’s difficult to

“One size fits all” says Stefano.

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actually explain it without showing it in terms of like avideo …

Ed: We’ll put a picture in there … I understand theLyre mount, that’s sensible, and also the clamp thatactually holds the microphone, that’s more dampening,but why the long arm?

Stefano: Yes, well the reason why there is thisbracket is to elevate the microphone and put it back aswell, because sometimes you risk, if you put a softie onthe top of the mic and you leave it at the same heightas the microphone holder, to actually be in shot of yourlens.

Ed: No, that’s actually happened to me once and I’vebeen very careful ever since.

Stefano: Exactly, so that is what it is trying to do,apart from again attenuating the handling noise and thevibrations, is to put the microphone back and elevate it.But the other good thing is that, most of the time,people who use these cameras, they put it back in theirbags and they have to remove the microphoneotherwise you cannot actually put it in the bag. Thissystem has a knob that allows you to still have themicrophone on the top of the suspension and then, byrotating it down, you can leave the microphone in there,put it in the bag, done. So this is another good featurethat has been addressed by this little device.

Another one as well, it works in full axis. We actuallynow turn it down, but we can put on the sides as well.Some people might prefer to use it on this way themicrophone, or the other way. As you can see, it’sallowing you that through this little knob thatyou’ve got here. So this is the Softie LyreMount with MHR, where MHR stands for“Microphone Holder Replacement”. Availablenow through our distributors worldwide.

Ed: And this is not just for Canon, it fitseverything?

Stefano: Everything. This adapter has gotdifferent holes – it’s a bit like a Swiss cheesesystem and therefore most of the cameras areactually able to use this system. It comessupplied with two sets of screws and thosescrews are kind of universal for these kinds ofcameras.

Ed: Well, we’ll take a couple of pictures ofthat to show the operation, but that looksseriously cool. And …?

Stefano: The second product here at NABthat’s new is the Lavalier windjammer. It tries

to prevent the wind noise comingthrough.

Ed: And the popping?

Stefano: Yes – but more thananything else, this really cuts thewind noise, that’s the reason there isthe fur to actually kind of “jam” thewind. That’s why we call it a“windjammer”. People werecomplaining at times that it was a bittoo big. Now what we did is …

Ed: You shaved it?

Stefano: No, it’s actually shorterfur, but also smaller in terms of theactual fabric that has been used. Asyou can see, it’s roughly 30% smallerand this is called a Ristretto ( like thecoffee ) you know is smaller versionbut very good.

Ed: Well I’ve never heard of thatcoffee, it must be Italian?

Stefano: Absolutely. Another thing in the Ristrettothat we implemented and has also been implemented inthe standard Lavalier windjammer, is can we supplywith different foams that allows the Lavalier mics to beput into the foam. But what we did is that we alsoadded a little rubber ring where microphones with alittle head like the COS-11 from Sanken can actually beput into …

Ed: Like a rim?

Stefano: Yes, and it doesn’t become loose. So asyou can see here, you know I’m trying to actually shakeit, but the restraint is still there, it doesn’t go anywhere.

Third product – mic flags have been in the market fordonkey’s years, but they always come with a foaminside and yet, to change the foam according to the sizeof the microphone, they actually degrade quite easily.

So we came up with this new design where instead ofthe foam you’ve got these “vanes” that grip into the micand it’s universal. So microphones between 19-38mmin terms of diameter can be accommodated into thismic flag. It comes in two different shapes – triangleand cube, black and white, but once more, if you’ve gotmicrophones that are bigger than 34mm up to 38, whatyou can do is actually open up the mic flag and removethe black vanes. By doing that, you’re creating a largerdiameter. So a bit of engineering on a product that hasbeen, as I said, in the market for a long, long time. Soas usual, Rycote are trying to give a bit of a spin intothis product.

Mic holder up Mic holder down

Page

Ed: So it’s not reinventing the wheel, but just comingup with a better model?

Stefano: Absolutely, yes. Fourth item from Rycoteto be launched in this last quarter …

Ed: You need a bigger stand?

Stefano: Yes we always innovate, otherwise … we’vegot our motto which is “innovate or die” and it’s true. Ifyou don’t innovate then you’re actually going to becompared to the other … anyway, we have incorporatedan inline filter into a 45cm cable. Now this is a Mogamicable with Neutrik connectors, so high quality in termsof the material used, but the benefit of this cable, as wecall it Tac!T ( pronounced Tas-It which stands for“quiet” ) is the Rycote Tac!T filter is an in-line, active"third-order" ( 18dB/octave ) filter with a "knee" atapproximately 60Hz and it fits entirely within the bodyof a Neutrik XX-series XLR connector. So things likewind noise, handling noise, vibration, are going to beattenuated with this system here, through this in-line,active “third-order” filter. It’s not switchable, of courseto switch it off you take the plug and plug it out and it’sPhantom powered. So this again is a little product thatcould be used in conjunction with our windshield andsuspensions, but giving a further attenuation to youraudio stream. So this is the Tac!T.

Ed: Is the 60 Hz something to do with the powersupply in America?

Stefano: No, no 60 Hz is where the actualattenuation kicks in. Up to that point, you don’tactually need to attenuate those kinds of lowfrequencies. So at 60 Hz it kicks in.

Ed: Oh, so from 60 Hz on?

Stefano: Yes – and it’s 18 decibel spread of town.

Ed: Wow, that’s a seriously cool range of productsfor, as you say, an innovative company.

Stefano: Yes, again, these are the four new productsthat are in addition to our already quite wide range ofregular products – you know softies, windshields,accessories and so on. So we look forward to seeingthe feedback from the customers; so far, on some ofthese products, it’s already been very good.

NZVN

Cable with Tac!T filter in line.

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Adobe CS6 –a Great Leap ForwardIt was a “full house” at DVT for thelaunch of Adobe CS6 and it was apleasure to have Jon Barrie, Adobespecialist from Aus, telling us the ins andouts of the good things that you can findin CS6, but before that, Stuart Barnabygave us a short introduction regardingthe necessity of moving to CS6.

Ed: Stuart, I see this is as a majorimprovement for Adobe users. There’sbeen some leaps in the past – I knowwhen CS4 came out, I saw it as a bigchange in the development of Premiere;CS6 is a similar great leap forward?

Stuart: Yes absolutely. They’ve putin over 600 new features across theirproducts, enhanced thousands of others and putmillions of man-hours of development time into thisrelease. Customers may have held off upgradingbecause they haven’t been able to see extra featuresthat are going to benefit their workflow, make themmore productive, provide them with more creativeoptions or add more quality to the product that they’reproducing. Having a fresh look at CS6 I think they’ll bequite surprised at the diverse range of new featuresthat are in there to help them do those things.

Ed: I guess for me the major issue is that I’ve beenworking at 32 bit and now I’ve got to move to 64 bit. Isthis an insurmountable problem?

Stuart: No it’s not Grant. In fact the Adobeproducts have been 64 bit since CS5 and most of thesystems that we’ve been selling for the last 3 years orso are capable of running Windows 7 64 bit, so it’s not aproblem to upgrade for most customers.

Ed: But that brings us back to one of the points that Ikeep making to our readers, and that is, by gettingsoftware through a dealer such as yourselves; a dealercan look at your computer specs and make sure thatyour computer can actually take this upgrade?

Stuart: Absolutely. When you look at new products

that have new features, those features are appealing for

many different reasons. So the next question becomes

“how can I take advantage of this software?” and it’s

not just the software you need to upgrade; you need to

look at the underlying technology that makes that

software work the way you expect it to, such as the

graphics cards, the memory, the hard drive systems

that you’re using inside your system to drive it all.We’ve got a great degree of expertise here at DVT to

help you figure out the best things to do ( not just the

software, but the other aspects of it ) to make sure that

you’re getting the most out of the new software.

Ed: Because you don’t want a weak link in your

system; for example you could upgrade the software

and upgrade your RAM, but it could be your graphics

card that is keeping everything else at the speed it was

before?

Stuart: That’s correct. None of the businesses thatwe deal with can afford to have lost productivitybecause they’ve got a machine that’s not spec’dcorrectly. We really strive to make sure, for whateverbudget a customer’s on, that we’re optimising all of the

elements that will make them as productive as theypossibly can be.

Ed: And it’s also a reason why, even though you candownload the latest version from the web, direct fromAdobe’s site, it’s not necessarily going to work unlessyour machine can handle it – and you won’t know thatuntil you try it?

Stuart: The trial version for the software’sfantastic, so you can download it and try it out on yourmachine. We try to make sure customers aren’tdisappointed with that experience, because they candownload it on a machine that doesn’t have enoughRAM or the wrong graphics card and go “well theproduct didn’t work like I saw it work online” and theyjust think it’s rubbish or that it’s not working the rightway. It may be just the fact that their system is notput together in the right way or upgraded to match.That’s why our demo systems here are great; we canbring people in, they can bring their existing materialand projects in and try them out on a machine that isspec’d properly with our guidance, and make sure thatthey really have a good understanding of what they’regoing to move towards.

Ed: And when they do want to do that upgrade, after

they’ve had a look at the trial, really the two sensible

options are either you get a disc or you go for thelicence?

Stuart: Yes, for the last 3 or 4 years we’ve mostlybeen selling Adobe licences under what Adobe call theTransactional Licensing Programme. Adobe still sellwhat they call a “box product” which is literally a boxwith a disc in it and a serial number on the outside.The problem we have with that is, quite often thedistributors don’t have those products in stock and soyou can be waiting for up to 3 weeks for your product toarrive. The other problem we have is that customerswith those don’t necessarily register their products and,if they lose their disc, they have to buy a replacementdisc; if they lose their serial number, they have to buy areplacement licence – and that gets expensive. SoAdobe has the Transactional Licensing Programme( TLP ) and the beauty of that is that it enablescustomers to get their licences within 48 hours ofplacing their order; it allows them to activate the trialsoftware that they’ve already downloaded and playedwith and can use for 30 days with the serial numberthat they receive from Adobe; it gives them access to

Jon operates CS6 on the night.

A four-channel SDI-to-HDMI® multiviewer. Small and easy-to-use this device lets users monitor up to four SDI inputs on a single HDMI display in quadrant view, or toggle to a full-screen view at the touch of a button. Inputs can be 3G, HD or SD, and all controls are on the unit itself; no computer is required. Matrox MicroQuad ensures a crisp, artifact-free monitoring experience, thanks to it’s state-of-the-art 10-bit scaling engine with advanced fi ltering and de-interlacing.

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Blackmagic Designs UltraStudio Express is a new capture and playback solution featuring 3 Gb/s SDI, HDMI and analog connections with high-speed Thunderbolt technology. UltraStudio Express is extremely portable, as the compact design is powered by its Thunderbolt connection and can be operated from a computer’s battery or power source

A powerful new model of SSD recorder with 4 channels of 3 Gb/s SDI in and out, built-in high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology, and full HDMI and analogue in and out – including standard XLR connectors for audio and timecode. Dramatically higher processing power and quality allows full 4K playback from a single SSD disk using Apple ProRes compression four times the resolution of regular HD 1080 res video.

Blackmagic Design announced two new Battery Converters that feature a built in rechargeable battery and a super tough aluminum design. Battery Converters include the latest 3 Gb/s SDI technology for the highest broadcast quality conversion and are available in two models, Battery Converter SDI to HDMI and Battery Converter HDMI to SDI.

A revolutionary digital cinema camera design with a super wide 13 stops of dynamic range, high resolution 2.5K sensor, built in high bandwidth SSD recorder, open fi le format support, colour correction with full version of DaVinci Resolve and a built in LCD with metadata entry, all in an attractive compact design.

Extremely high quality processing converters, including up and down conversion, SD/HD cross conversion, and SD/HD standards conversion. Features include cadence detect and remove, noise reduction, adjustable scaling, aspect ratio conversion, smart aspect, timecode conversion, subtitle conversion, 16 channel audio, test signals and more. Also includes 3D camera align, 3D dual stream standards conversion, 3D format conversions and incredibly realistic 3D simulation.

Blackmagic Battery Converters

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AJA T-tap

AJA’s T-tap is a very small new bus-powered device that takes advantage of Thunderbolt connectivity for high-quality 10-bit SD, HD and 2K output through SDI and HDMI connections. This new adapter enables a simple, unobtrusive means of getting professional video and audio out of any Thunderbolt™-enabled Mac system.

AJA Ki Pro Quad

The Ki Pro Quad is a new solid-state portable video recorder at NAB Show 2012. Ki Pro Quad is capable of capturing high-quality edit-ready fi les in formats including 4K (4096 x 2160), Quad HD (3840 x 2160), 2K (2048 x 1080), and HD (1920 x 1080), for the fastest path from camera-to-editorial with 10-bit 4:4:4 and 10-bit 4:2:2 colour support.

The Ki Pro Rack uses the same SSD modules as the Ki Pro with recording capacities scaling up to 500GB. Ki Pro Rack simplifi es the acquisition-to-edit workfl ow by creating high-quality Apple ProRes 422 or Avid DNxHD fi les which can be used directly in most standard professional editing systems – no need to import or transcode fi les.

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Adobe’s website to download that software at any timeas well, so they don’t have to worry about discs. One ofthe other really cool features of the TLP licensingprogramme is that you get both a Macintosh and aWindows serial number; you can only use one activationat a time, but if you’ve got a MacBook Pro laptop and anHP workstation in the office and you want to be able togo away, you can deactivate your licence on your HPworkstation in the office, activate it on your MacBookPro and go off and use the software, which is fantastic.So it really has some enormous advantages over buyingthe box product and of course it’s the same price as thebox product, so there’s no penalty in terms of going tothe TLP licensing programme.

Ed: Now one of the issues I faced was the fact thatmost of the work I do with CS4 is with Premiere, so Iwas looking just at upgrading to Premiere Pro version 6– but it’s not possible?

you’ve got a copy of Adobe CS4 Production Premiumand you want to move to the Adobe CS6 MasterCollection, you can do that. If you’ve got the AdobeCS4 Web Premium suite and you want to move to theAdobe CS6 Production Premium bundles you can dothat. So there are lots of upgrades that enable you tomove between the suites.

Ed: All right, I guess I’ll just have to suck it up won’tI. Now a lot of what was actually in CS6 we covered atNAB, but with some of the other points that came up inJon’s presentation, it seemed as though there was a lotof added value in there and quite a bit was mentionedabout “here’s a feature that Final Cut users will findfamiliar”. I certainly found a few that, as a Liquid user,were familiar. Is this something that Adobe’sdeliberately gone out and seen that these are cleverfeatures and now put their versions into the Adobeproduct?

Stuart: There’s an oldsaying that says “goodartists copy; great artistssteal” and I think Adobehave done a wonderful joband an honest job at lookingaround at other applicationsand the way in which theirworkflows work and haveembraced those and addeda lot of that into all of theAdobe products across theboard. Particularly inPremiere; and it makes itmuch easier now for peoplewho are moving from FinalCut across to AdobePremiere, to be able to havesome of the features thatthey really enjoyed in FinalCut, that weren’t previouslyavailable in Premiere. Inthe CS6 release, there are alot of those added features

that add an enormous amount to the ease of use of theproduct, the common sense behind it all.

One particular one that’s straight out of the Final Cut

playbook is the ability to drop a video clip straight into a

new sequence and, if the settings of the sequence don’t

match the video clip, Premiere asks you, just like Final

Cut did “do you want to change the sequence settings

to match the clip?”

Phenomenal, it just makes it so much easier for peopleto throw clips around and go “yes, I know my sequencesettings are set correctly, because I know they matchmy clips.” Fantastic stuff.

Ed: I noticed the colour correction tool seems somuch easier now?

Stuart: Oh absolutely. You know, with the righthardware set up on your system, the ability to now playa video clip in a loop and be messing with the colourtools while it’s playing, gives you a huge boost togetting the colours just right; it’s fantastic.

Ed: There were lots of little things I noticed. One wasthat the audio is now what they call “agnostic”.Previously, when you brought audio in, you had tomake a decision – do you want to bring it in as stereoor as mono; well nowadays it just comes in and it’s onone track, but you have a left and a right, so muchsimpler?

Stuart: That’s right. There are really four keythings that we think our customers should be aware ofregarding how you can upgrade or cross-grade withAdobe products. The first one is that, at the moment,you can upgrade from any single product or any suitethat’s a version CS3 or later – so CS3, CS4, CS5 andCS5.5 you can do upgrades for any of those products.However, at the end of this calendar year, you’ll only beable to upgrade from CS5 and later. So it’s important,if you’ve got any CS3 or CS4 licences, that you eitherupgrade them now or look at doing some sort ofupgrade before this calendar year is finished. Thesecond thing with the CS6 licensing is that you’re notable to upgrade from a single product to a suite. So,for example, if you have a copy of After Effects orPremiere and you decide “hey, I’d really like to be ableto move to the production premium suite – can Iupgrade those single products to the suite?” Adobedon’t have any upgrades for that, you’d just have to goand buy the suite. The third thing is that there is nodowngrade, so you can’t go from a suite to a singleproduct. So if, for example, you had a copy ofproduction premium CS4 and you wanted to move toPremiere 6 like Grant does, you can’t do that sort ofdowngrade or cross-grade as you might want to call it.One thing that Adobe do give you an enormous amountof flexibility over, is the ability to upgrade or transferfrom one suite to another suite. So, for example, if

Sony is pushing the creative boundaries once more with the new NEX-FS700/K FullHD Super Slow Motion camcorder, the latest in Sony’s line-up of NXCAM interchangeable E-Mount camcorders. The new Super 35mm model is designed for high-speed shooting, capable of capturing footage at up to 960 frames per second. Features include 3G HD-SDI output and built-in ND fi lters. Additionally, it also offers several creative options, shooting styles, and enhanced ergonomics – all based on customer feedback – to deliver a fl exible production tool that can fi t seamlessly into a variety of shooting applications.

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Sony is giving video professionals freedom from camera shake with the HXR-NX30P high-defi nition camcorder, a palm-size addition to Sony’s NXCAM line. The new model uses Sony’s breakthrough Balanced Optical SteadyShot™ image stabilisation technology to make it ideal for eliminating camera shake in challenging shooting applications. Convenient features such as a built-in projector, are all combined in Sony’s smallest, lightest handheld professional camcorder.

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Page

Stuart: Yes it is, it’s fantastic, because with the oldversion of Premiere you had to create tracks to bemono or stereo or 5.1 and you couldn’t put 5.1 clips onmono tracks and it didn’t really make logical sense tothe way in which we want to work. We were forced towork in the way that the technology of the programmewas developed; and now the new enhancement thatthey’ve done to Premiere makes it so much easier justto work the way we want to work and not beconstrained by some application. So it’s much, muchbetter.

Ed: And a couple of the tools that I saw there, as aLiquid user, that I know were in 5, but the little cameraas a tool where you just put your cursor on thetimeline, click on the camera and instantly you’ve got abitmap freeze of the timeline at that frame; and theother was the audio meter, it’s now totally scalable, soyou’re not stuck with a tiny little meter, you canactually make it taller vertically or you can make it widehorizontally and put it where you want it?

Stuart: Yes, it’s fantastic. So many little featureslike that just make the product so much of a joy to use.Another major feature they’ve got is the hover scrub,which is straight out of Apple’s iMovie in my opinion,but it’s awesome just to be able to move your mouseover a clip and see the entire clip as you move across.Even while in that mode, you can mark in and outpoints on a whole bunch of clips very quickly and thenyou can select all of those clips and drop them straightinto your sequence on the timeline and you’ve got anedited sequence, a rough cut done in virtually no timeat all. It’s a really good productivity improver.

Ed: I know there’s been some criticism of Premiere inthe past that Adobe have taken effects out of Premiereand put them into After Effects but, in fact, the moveseems to be the other way; there’s a number of effectsthat people were using After Effects for that Adobe havenow decided “hey, that’s probably a good effect to havedirectly in Premiere” – and one that we saw was thewarp stabiliser effect?

Stuart: Absolutely. They realise that the warpstabiliser is something that people are going to want touse in both After Effects and Premiere and so, logically,they said “well let’s make that tool available in bothprogrammes independently”. Of course, you do havewonderful integration between Premiere and AfterEffects, but you don’t always want to go and create anAfter Effects composition out of a clip on the timelinejust to use the warp stabiliser. So, again, Adobe arelooking at the workflows that their customers are using,and making sure that they’re putting the tools in theright place. There’s a lot of the user interface that’s farmore customisable in Premiere now. It’s been designedso that you can put the tools up front that you want touse and get rid of the ones you don’t. These sorts ofenhancements are hard to quantify as to how muchextra productivity it gives you, but I think, over time, itbecomes a joy just to be able to use the tools you wantand not have the ones you don’t worry about.

Ed: And for the really clever people there,SpeedGrade has been added to the whole process?

Stuart: Yes, so you can do colour grading in AfterEffects; you can do colour grading in Adobe Premiereand that’s always been there and those aspects of thoseprogrammes are continually enhanced, but of course atsome point in higher end workflows, if people are doingshort films or feature films or high end TV commercialswhere they want to be able to go in and use specific

colour grading tools, having SpeedGrade added to theAdobe CS6 range of products is fantastic. Adobepurchased IRIDAS last year and that’s where they gotSpeedGrade from. It has an enormously strongreputation in the industry as a good colour grader and,of course, the wonderful thing is, you can do your editin Premiere and, when you‘ve got it in the can you canthen use the magic menu option to send your entiresequence straight over to SpeedGrade. It makes thatintegration between the products work really well. Andthen, of course, once you’ve got your stuff inSpeedGrade, it’s got a wealth of highly advanced andsophisticated colour grading tools to help you give yourproduction a really good look, so it’s a wonderfuladdition to the suites.

Ed: I know in the past, you’ve always been a Macperson and I know that you can run CS6 on a Mac or ona PC, but you also have other options for editing so CS6is not the only platform that DVT is offering?

Stuart: No, we also offer Avid and Autodesk and,because we deal with so many customers, we get areally good understanding about what product fits whatworkflow. We believe that all of these applications havea place in the market and that’s why we sell andsupport them.

What we do mostly now, of course, is sitting down withour customers and going over their workflow – whatcameras are you shooting on, what formats are youusing, how are you taking the data off your cameras,how are you getting them back to your post productionfacility, how do you then need to convert those formatsto be able to give it to your editors, to be able to give itto your colour graders, to be able to give it to yourcompositors? And what do you do after that, how doyou glue it all together and come up with a finishedproduction, and how do you then encode that fordelivery … are you doing it for broadcast, for the web,for Blu-ray or DVD – there’s so many different ways inwhich you can distribute your content as well. So whenwe actually sit down and ask our customers thosequestions and get the answers and work with them tofind out where their workflow’s at, then we look atareas where we can improve that, make them moreefficient and able to do things at better quality; and alsoto be able to manage their data appropriately, to makesure that they’ve got appropriate systems in place to beable to synchronise data, to be able to back the dataup, to restore the data if they need to, and to be able toarchive the data as well. There’s a lot in that process.And of course, once we go through that, you come backto the software that they need to make it all happen.Once we’ve figured whether it’s Avid, Autodesk orAdobe, then we build the hardware underneath that tomake sure that that software is working properly.There’s a lot involved and that’s really where ourexpertise is and we really love being able to help ourcustomers achieve everything that they want to, byputting the right technology in place. That’s what we’repassionate about.

Ed: And you’ve got a new person now to help you?

Stuart: We have a wonderful addition to our staffwith Bryce Adams.

Ed: And here we are with Bryce himself. Bryce, it’sgood to see you again from Singapore – you’re lookinga bit cooler?

Bryce: Yes it is a bit cooler here.

Ed: Did they ask you what value you’re going to addto the business?

Page

Bryce: I think Stu kind of knew before heemployed me …

Ed: Would you like to let the rest of us know?

Bryce: I’m here to work on business developmentand key account management.

Ed: And is DVT a good fit for you – your style, yourpersonality?

Bryce: Yes I think so. Customers like DVTbecause the people here are very knowledgeable andstraightforward, lots of integrity and honesty, so that’sthe sort of style I work under. It’s certainly going to behelpful as we look forward to expanding into otherbusiness areas, my integration experience andbroadcast experience is going to be valuable.

Currently DVT concentrates on postproduction andproduction and does a little bit of value-add integrationfor production and postproduction, so I’ve gotexperience in broadcast integration which is usefulexperience.

Ed: You used to sell cameras?

Bryce: Oh yes, absolutely. I mean that’s not anadditional skill that I can add to what DVT already does… I’ve got experience in selling cameras, lenses,tripods, batteries – production equipment – already.

Ed: And what are you looking forward to learninghere?

Bryce: I’m looking forward to learning more aboutthe postproduction side of the market. I’ve beenconcentrating on the production side for a long time andit will be good to get more experience in thepostproduction area. That will be good … and sometoys to play with.

Ed: And you’re looking forward to talking to people?

Bryce: Absolutely, yes, it’s good to deal with these

kinds of customers in the postproduction space.

Ed: Bryce, you’ve been wonderful!

Bryce: Oh, thank you Grant.

NZVN

The picture on the wall seemedappropriate to me for some reason.

Remote Audio forSound Techniques

We are with Stephen Buckland atRemote Audio – but first ...

Ed: Stephen, you’ve for-given me formy previous comments about your extra-curricular Vegas interests?

Stephen B: I haven’t for-given youactually Grant, because I found that thebar that you’re so fond of has beenreopened on The Strip.

Ed: Oh, you’re inviting me back areyou?

Stephen B: I hope to, but I’m not sureSin-dy’s still on the payroll – I think heryounger sister might be there now.

Ed: Right, enough of that, we’re hereto talk about product – is this somethingnew?

Stephen B: We’re at Remote Audio andRemote Audio make – what’s the by-line– location audio equipment for soundprofessionals. Basically, they make thebits that everybody else has forgottenabout, like over here we’ve got a MEON LiFe system,which is a system for cart power …

We are talking now to Stephen Reter from Remote

Audio.

Ed: The other Stephen seems very enamoured of

your product, so what does it do that the others don’t

do?

Stephen and Stephen.

Stephen R: We’ve got a couple of things that areactually kind of new technologies – our MEON LiFepower system uses a 20 amp-hour lithium ion forcefeed battery, so it’s much more stable, much morelightweight, compact, than previous battery chemistriesthat have been used in cart power. It weighs less than13 pounds and it’s in a single rack space enclosure, soit’s very small inside your cart which is nice. It’s got

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front and back power switches and adjustable rackgear, so it can be mounted in multiple positions,whether you want it recessed or you want it to fliparound, it’s got 10 XLR outputs for different powerdistribution systems and we also have our exclusiveremote for it, which allows you to connect differentaccessories like our remote meter or remote switch.The remote meter is a device that allows you toremotely turn on and off your entire cart. It’s a littlehandheld button that’s got a meter on it that allows youto see your Volt and your Amp draw on your entiresystem and turn everything off remotely. Also, we’reintroducing the Extra LiFe 20 which is an additional 20amp-hour supplemental battery that you can alsoattach to the MEON LiFe to give you a total of 40 amp-hours. So it gives you a good long time on theproduction.

Ed: Okay, so it’s remote powered or battery powered,but what is it exactly, what’s the box?

Stephen R: Basically it allows you to power your entirecart from one unit.

Ed: So it’s a power supply?

Stephen R: Exactly. And you can run AC, when youhave AC available and then whenever you need to moveto a remote location, you pull power and it allows you topower your cart remotely for several hours dependingon your draw.

Ed: Why is it so complicated if it’s a power supply?

Stephen R: It’s a very complicated power supplybecause of the technology with the batteries andgetting them to run the amount of power and regulate itso that you’re able to be protected from any kind ofshort circuits or reverse polarity, anything like that. Soit’s a complex unit, but it’s also very helpful. It’s beenrefined over several years.

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meter that we mentioned before with the MEON LiFe.

The great thing about that is you can plug in all your

different devices and then you can set the entire unit

down into your bag, the remote meter will come off of

it, and it’s got a clip on it and you can attach it to the

strap of your bag, something like that; turn your entire

bag off remotely and not have to pull your BDS out of

your bag to actually turn everything off.

Ed: Aaaah so you can turn everything on and

everything off from a button on your lapel?

Stephen R: Exactly, it’s very handy, it’s very helpful.

We also still have the switched and unswitched port

which allows, say, your recorder to be on the entire

time and turn off the rest of your bag and save any kind

of battery power for your wireless systems. So it’s

pretty handy.

We’ve also added a battery indicator light to the actual

switch, as well as a recess switch to indicate whatever

battery you’ve got attached, whether it be a lithium ion

or a nickel metal, it will give you the right threshold to

tell you when your battery’s running low.

So it’s a pretty handy device. This is our fourth

generation, we’ve been doing it for a long time, so

we’ve continued to refine it.

Ed: And I guess Stephen B, these things have been

around for a while, but not really at this form factor and

so smart?

Stephen B: That’s correct. They’ve evolved over

several years – they’re the sort of things that people

would love to have, but of course if they don’t know

about them …

Ed: That’s why they should come in regularly to

Sound Techniques, to have a look and see what’s in the

showroom … I know I always find something new?

Stephen B: That’s right Grant, thank you.

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Ed: Stephen, is this something that’s really important– this sort of “high quality” power supply?

Stephen B: Yes, two different groups of people use it –location sound mixers use it because all their gear is 12Volt and they want to be able to run it off the generatoror a self-sustaining battery; or video assist is anotherarea where it’s used. You know, everyone on set hasdozens of devices and they don’t necessarily havemains power to run them, but if they’ve got somethinglike this, they’ve got an onboard battery or they canplug in an external battery and they can run severaldevices through the one distribution box.

Ed: Why wouldn’t you just get a truck battery?

Stephen B: Because truck batteries are heavy andyou’ve only got one output on a truck battery, whereasthis is giving you 10 XLR outputs, so you could use onetruck battery, but you wouldn’t be able to power 10different devices.

Ed: What about these little boxes?

Stephen B: Well they too allow you to distribute poweron a set. You plug in a battery, it could be a V-lock or itcould be an MP-1 or whatever and again you can powerup to however many outputs there are, devices andhave them on six outputs. So, especially in a soundmixer’s bag, they’re trying to run radio mics and themixer and all sorts of stuff, it allows them to do it justoff one battery.

Stephen R: This new one is the BDSv4u – it’s gotsome new features on it …

Ed: Oh, USB?

Stephen R: Yes, we’ve added a USB which is very

handy on a long production – people’s phones are

always dying and as a sound mixer, you want toactually have your phone at the end of the day, charged

and able to be used, so we’ve added that. We also

have our exclusive remote port for use with the remote

Bubblebee forSound TechniquesWe are at Bubblebee and we haveKatherine Sondergaard and PoulMejer

Ed: So I guess this is a Scan-dinavian company?

Katherine: It’s a Danish com-pany, yes – it’s Poul and I and wemake these wind-bubbles forLavalier microphones.

We have them in four colours, infour sizes, depending on whichkind of Lavalier microphone you’reusing. See here they are testedfor frequency and for windresponse – they’re doing reallywell.

Ed: Now Poul, I must ask howdifficult can it be to design a goodwindshield for a Lavalier micro-phone?

Poul: Oh it’s very, very tricky,

because you need to have the right material; you need

to make it the right size to build it right, because you

Poul and Katherine with Bubblebees.

have to have the air inside and the air has to come out

again, so it’s quite difficult to do.

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Ed: Aaaah I see, so you’ve got to have that air

movement and that air movement has to go through

the material?

Poul: Yes, you cannot stop all the wind, but the wind

that’s coming inside has to leave again.

Ed: Otherwise your microphone doesn’t work?

Poul: No. And then you have to consider the

frequency response. You can always cover for wind,

just cover with all kinds of material, but with the

Bubblebee material the frequency response through the

material is so excellent and it stops the wind really well.

It took me about two years to find the right material.

Ed: Was that by trial and error, or is there some sort

of formula that you can use?

Poul: Yes, it is indeed trial and error. I started making

them on the coffee table and just testing, testing,

testing. I’m a sound guy – I’ve been a sound engineer

for a long time and I was not satisfied with what was on

the market, so I decided to make my own. And my

friends and colleagues said “where can we get some?”

and I started selling them, which was about four years

ago. It’s very hard to find the right way to do it and

that’s why we tested and tested and tested. I’ve been

testing it for a long time. We have another thing that

you always lose them and they are each made for

specific microphones . It’s very important, so it fits on

it. It’s not a “uni” thing.

Ed: But there’s no space on there for your name and

address for someone to return it! So Stephen, is this

really a worthwhile product … surely the frequency

response is really all to do with the microphone and not

the bit of fluff you put around it?

Stephen: It is a very good product; we’ve got some

samples in the store and we’ve sent them out to people

to use, and they’ve all come back and given us

favourable comment. I mean, if you look around at this

show, you will see there are several things that look the

same, but I think Bubblebee’s gone to the effort to

specialise and make sure that theirs is very effective.

As with most things, it’s very easy to “copy” someone

else’s idea, but for it not to work as well as the original

and I think Poul and Katherine have gone to great effort

to make sure that theirs is unique and that it does what

they want it to do.

Ed: So you’re happy to give Bubblebee your Sound

Techniques “tick of approval”?

Stephen: We have and we’ve got sample stock as I

say. One thing we haven’t got here at NAB is the little

container … they’ve thought about the packaging, not

just from a marketing point of view, but also for this

business where otherwise you might lose them. You

see they come in a little tin which is handy.

Ed: So you can have a kit?

Stephen: That’s right, you have a kit, because one

size doesn’t fit all, which is one of the things most of

the competitors would try; they would hope that one

would fit everything. You could have a whole array of

them and they’re nicely packaged, they’re easy to see

and accessible.

Ed: So which size fits you?

Stephen: Hah – I’m not going to say.

Ed: Obviously the Bubblebee’s been around for a wee

while if you’ve got samples, but Katherine’s got

something new?

Katherine: This is for the Sanken CUB-01. We’ve

made this small windbubble to fit this one.

Poul: And the idea of that is making it as small and

effective as is possible, because the other ones are

making them very, very big and the sound guys who

are testing them for us say “we cannot use the big

ones” so we have to make them small and effective.

We put a red dot on it, so you can see how it faces.

Ed: But surely this is like a conference table

microphone isn’t it, where you wouldn’t have much

wind?

Poul: Well actually the sound guys over here in

Hollywood, they use it a lot for car shooting, so they put

it on the sun visor.

Stephen: The CUB-01 is used a lot in car rigs as

Poul’s saying, and of course, if the camera’s shooting

through the window, the car window will be wound

down and there will be wind blowing through the inside

of the car. So a windshield over the CUB-01 would be

very helpful.

Poul: And this is also built with an air inlet to have

some air space, and that’s the whole secret about a

windjammer.

Ed: Don’t tell everyone else, it will be copied – the

Windbubble.

Poul: OK, we’ll keep it a secret.

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Manfrotto for PanavisionWe are at the Manfrotto lighting stand and we have WillHolowka.

Ed: Will, you said that these have been out for awhile, but I really haven’t seen them, so for me this isnew from Manfrotto?

Will: Okay, it’s a great part of our family. We’re verywell known for our arms – our articulated arms, magicarms – and this is part of the articulated arm series.We have two section, three section arms, light armsthat will handle from roughly 4½ pounds up to ourheavier duty arms (the two rod arms) that will handleup to 11 pounds. We can get them in two section andthree section; we can also add camera plates on tothem. If you want to put a camera in a weird location,or if you want to put a light or fixture or anything elsein a weird location, these articulated arms allow you todo that.

Ed: And the benefit of having two rods, as opposed tothe single ones here?

Will: Typically it’s stability – when you go from a singlearm, you can only hold a max weight of around 4pounds. When I get into the two arm with the lockingmechanism, I’m capable of holding up to 11 pounds.So it definitely will take more load capacity.

Ed: And apart from that, you’ve found no need toimprove your lighting stands?

Will: Well the lighting stands … luckily for us, the QuickStack Stands have been very popular in the market, sowe’ve done very well there and right now that has reallybeen our focus – to keep the Quick Stack Stands going,because the nice thing is they all join and allow the userto carry more stands and have less weight.

Ed: You keep telling me this because I bought minejust before you introduced the Quick Stack Stands.

Will This is our third generation of this series ofstands. The difference is that the first two series usedexternal mechanisms to attach when you attach thestands together.

The nice thing is it’s actually built into the stand. You

push a button incorporating the Manfrotto logo to

release each stand from the stack. That’s what

separates it from the older style that we used to have.

Ed: And it’s all Italian designed?

Will: You got it – all Italian designed.

Now away from lighting and on to the Manfrotto tripods,

we have Ken Enker.

Ken: New this year we have the 502; it’s a 10 pound

capacity, 75mm or flat plate video tripod. It’s infinitely

variable for pan or tilt, has a very large quick release

system now and it’s price effective.

Ed: And you’re showing it here with two different leg

sets?

Ken: We’re showing it with the 535 carbon fibre single

stage tripod – it goes six feet in the air all the way

down to six inches; and then we’re also showing a more

traditional two stage 546 tripod, which is a standard 60

inch, it comes with a mid-level spreader. Again, both of

these are very cost effective.

Ed: With the carbon fibre one, you don’t have that

mid-level spreader … is it not necessary?

Ken: No, you don’t need it. The casting is so well

made there’s zero flex in this tripod – zero. It’s

unbelievably strong. As a matter of fact, the tripod by

itself will hold over 40 pounds. It’s incredibly strong,

and yet it weighs in at about 5 pounds. Super

lightweight, super strong and it’s bullet-proof. I love it,

it’s a great tripod. So that’s the 502 – and again, it

comes 75mm meaning it can go on a Manfrotto flat

Will Holowka at Manfrotto.

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photo tripod if you want, or it has a built-in 75mm

interface. So you buy it either way – the 502AH or a

502A.

Ed: And it looks like a decent handgrip on that arm –that’s the first time I’ve seen a rubberised handgrip?

Ken: Yes, Manfrotto has taken the best ideas of thetool world. The designers go out in the market and findthe best things that are in the home depots or thestores and they get a really nice feel, so it’s comfortablein your hand when you’re shooting all day with it.

Ed: Tell me a little bit more about the Quick Releasemechanism – you said that was important, what do youmean by that?

Ken: Well basically, what we have here is theManfrotto style which is a sliding Quick Release system.So it’s a positive lock – you never feel like “is it in thelock” or “is it not in the lock?” So you always know thatyou’re under control, and our equipment only releasesto the operator or backwards. So now I can slide itback to me, I can never make a mistake and loosen itup and make it slide forward – and of course the screwsare in the way – and dump the load. So it’s kind ofidiot-proof.

Ed: Hey, that’s what we want – cameramen are notknown for their brains.

Ken: No, just their beauty.

Ed: Very good. So the 502 is a fixed counterbalanceand if you want an adjustable counterbalance, you goup to the …?

Ken: 504HD, which is an 18 pound capacity system,75mm interface, it has a lovely illuminated spirit level,which is really nice. On dark nights you can get yourlevel real quick. It also has the provision of addingexternal equipment on it via the ⅜ studs that are on the heads, so no longer do you have to put your

external monitor out on your camera, you can mount itright on the head. So it’s a really nice system. And onelast thing, it has a telescopic handle, so you get almost17 inches of range. Again, it has that very comfortableManfrotto grip. Another nice feature, if you’re in therental market, the handle is attached with rosettes andthe rosettes can be replaced. So if they ever strip outyou just simply buy a $10 part as opposed to a wholenew casting on the left or right side of the tripod head.

Ed: That’s very cool. And if you want to go for theheavy duty, you get up to the 509?

Ken: Yes sir, the 509HD is a 28 pound capacitysystem, very similar to the 504 except it is a biggerversion – another say 33% capacity. What’s really niceabout the 509 is that it has an advanced balancingsystem, meaning I set a balance on the head and thenwhen I take the camera off to do a handheld shot, or ashoulder shot, I can quickly put the camera back on thetripod head, press the button, and it allows me tobalance the system really easily, via a couple of LEDlights. It’s very, very nice. This also has fourcounterbalance settings as the 504HD does, as well asthe illuminated spirit level and this is now a 100mminterface; the 504 is a 75mm; the 502 is a 75mm butthe 509 is 100mm interface. It also has the telescopichandle with a different padding on it.

Ed: That’s still very comfortable to hold.

Ken: It’s very nice.

Ed: Now the question I wanted to ask about tripods ingeneral is that, if you have a large tripod, should youput a small camera on it, or is it not a good thing?

Ken: It’s overkill, you don’t need it, but in the case ofthe 509 and the 504, in an emergency situation you can– just take the counterbalance spring, dial it back downto zero or the first setting, and you can use it. But youdon’t need to, why spend the money?

Ed: But if you’ve already got it, what’s a bad thingabout using a small camera on a large tripod?

Ken: If you can’t change the counterbalance, you’regoing to get whiplash or spring back, so you’d have toadd so much drag to it to hold its position. You don’twant that – at least in the way I shoot, I want as littlecounterbalance and as little drag on it as possible, sowhen I start up, there’s no hesitation, it’s just smoothas glass.

Ed: So providing you can do that, ( and I guess agood quality tripod will allow you to bring yourcounterbalance down to zero ), you could still do that?

Ken: Yes, absolutely.

Ken with the 535 tripod.

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Ed: And you would expect that the more expensivetripod is actually going to have more features, so itshould in fact be smoother than a lightweight tripod?

Ken: Absolutely. The beauty of the Manfrotto productis for the value, for the money, you get a superiorproduct. Nobody makes products that can do what wecan do at the price point that we come in at, and that’swhy people love Manfrotto and our warranty’sexceptional and we stand behind everything we sell.

Ed: And it’s got a cool logo?

Ken: Yes – the peace symbol. They finally listened and

started using some of their Italian design technology

and they’re starting to use some of the red, black and

silver … it’s a beautiful tripod.

Ed: You’ve got one at home have you?

Ken: Yes – maybe 2 or 3. I’m the show manager, Ihave about 200 of ‘em.

NZVN

IDX for PanavisionWe are with Cathy Fercano from Californiaand we are at IDX Battery Systems.

Ed: For a number of years now, the firstthing anyone’s shown me is the WEVIbecause you’re pretty proud of this … it’s alittle bit more technological than a battery,but obviously it relies on an IDX battery topower it, but it’s not a battery. What is itagain?

Cathy: It’s a Wireless High DefinitionTransmission System and we now have ournewest system that we’re introducing here atNAB and it’s the CW-7. There’s been someimprovements over the CW-5 – we’veincreased the range to 200 feet; also now,besides the four selectable channels, it hasdynamic frequency selection.

So say you already have four systems going– channel 1 through 4 – you want to add afifth. You’re going to put it on DFS, it’sgoing to scan the area and pick the nextcleanest signal. So you want to add another system …again, you’re going to put that system on DFS, it’sgoing to pick the next cleanest signal. So ideally youshould be able to run up to 8 systems at a time, if that’swhat your production calls for – and there are situationswhere people are looking for that.

Ed: But you’ve always said that this is really just formonitoring purposes, although I believe people areusing it for actual production?

Cathy: Yes, it really was originally designed for acontrolled environment, for reference monitoring andpeople are just very innovative on their own, and it’snow in sports arenas, it’s been used in medicalapplications. It’s just really blossomed. As you know,wireless can be unpredictable, it depends what’s goingon in the environment.

Ed: So I guess if you’ve got a number of signalscoming back to a base and you’re recording all of them,if it does drop out on one of the signals, well you’ve gotthe others to back it up?

Cathy: Right, absolutely – and if it does lose link, itlinks up much quicker than the CW-5 and even though Ithink the CW-5 picture was beautiful, this is even nicerand it’s still under one millisecond of delay.

Ed: Excellent. Okay, now the batteries that power it– any developments there?

Cathy: We have one new battery over here.

Ed: This looks like a big battery, but it’s not really.

Cathy: It is, it’s the Mega Elite battery. It’s 204Watts of power and it has three PC14 cartridges …

Ed: Why wouldn’t you call them cells because youmake up a battery out of cells, so …?

Cathy: You know, I don’t know, you’d have to talkto whoever makes up the names for our products.

Maybe because it looks kind of like a tape cartridge …but this new Mega Elite has two built-in D-taps and italso has a USB port, because we’ve had lots ofrequests, since directors and suchlike are runningaround now with their iPads and their iPhones, theymight need to charge them or run them, so that’s whatthis is going to allow you to do. This battery is stillairline transportable, because again you open it up, youtake out the three cartridges and you can fly with them.So that should be coming out soon, probably aroundAugust-September.

Ed: Now along with the larger batteries that IDX iswell known for, and the plates etc that allow you toattach it to pretty well any sort of large camera that’sout there, there are some in the smaller battery range,but they are very specific and you’ve got one herethat’s just developed for the JVC 4K camera?

Cathy: Yes we do. It is the LCQJ and that is thedual charger. These batteries were made specificallyfor the JVC 4K and they will be purchased through JVConly.

Ed: And along with that though, there are somebatteries here for Panasonic, again specific to Panasonicor a particular camera?

Cathy: Right. We have our SL-VBD50 – it’s a 7.4Volt lithium ion battery made for specific Panasonicmodels. We have that listed on our website as to whichcameras they work with, along with the SSL-VBG50. Itgives you about a 30 minute longer runtime than theother Panasonic batteries and you still have the full twoyear warranty.

Ed: And this particular device here – is this an IDXspecial, or is this the third party?

Cathy: This is our shoulder adapter. It’s the A-CA74E; it folds up to a very small footprint of about 15

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inches; it can be shoulder mounted, table topped, orput on a tripod. What it does, is it allows you to mountthe smaller profile cameras on it. Put it on the back, it’svery, very adjustable. You can add whichever plate youneed on the back; like for the Panasonic, if it’s a 7.2Volt, it’s a PV257 plate, so you’d have a 12 Volt D-tapand then a 7.2 D-Tap. It’s going to allow you to useour IDX 12 Volt batteries, with a lower voltage camera;and it also allows you to mount many more accessorieson there and the weight is distributed very nicely and ithas a really nice padded shoulder pad.

Ed: It looks a good balance so you can “run and gun”with a small camera, but have all the accessories,including on this one a Ki Pro Mini and a good sizedlight?

Cathy: Yes, absolutely – it’s very nice.

And to talk to us about a specialised IDX product for theCanon C300, we have Tim Arasheben

Ed: Tim, this is a beautiful red colour?

Tim: Thank you, yes, it’s called the Cinoflex type C300camera system and it takes either the Canon EOS C300or the new C500 and it mounts it on a nodal point, sothe image sensor, the lens and the baseplate, theCinoflex, are common form. What that does is it helpswith the correct operation of panning and tilting androlling and keeps the camera operator ona nodal uniform point that they’ve beenused to operating for 100 years of film.Also, it takes one input, 3G from thecamera and it re-clocks it and gives youfour outputs up to 250 feet out, andthose are via Amphenol BNC militarygrade BNC connectors that are goldplated and chrome outside shielding.

On the other side, you have four 3 pin

Fischer 12 Volt outlets for accessories –

either your Preston lens system, your

monitors, your viewfinders, any

accessory that you would have on a

motion picture set. It’s all powered via

one or two IDX batteries with internal

memory so if you take off one, it stillkeeps everything going and you can hot

swap it and have the entire system

running, never having to turn it off

during the whole day of film production.

It has a carrying handle, it’s made of

solid 6061 T6 aluminium and the chassis

is almost water resistant and bullet-proof

… you would have to throw it off a 60

storey building to possibly make a dent – and then it

would probably dent the concrete!

Ed: So you must have had prior knowledge of thiscamera before this was developed … you must haveworked with Canon to develop this particular productsurely?

Tim: A little bit. Canon knew me from a show that I’mthe camera operator on – Wilfred and we were the firstshow to shoot a broadcast television series all onDSLRs. They came to me asking about some of the rigswe were using on that show and how I made it morefilm-friendly and motion picture-friendly to theassistants and the operators and then they told meabout a new C300. From this, I started my companyTM Camera Solutions and basically what we would do is,with all these new cameras and different technologyappearing out of nowhere, we would make themfriendly for a motion picture set. So I had a drawing ofit, and we came up with different conclusions and wewent through about six versions until we came up withthe final Cinoflex type C300.

Ed: Because that’s it, the base camera you can run itwith a small lens and its own battery and you can takepictures that way, but if you want to use it with its fullrange of accessories and a very large lens, you’re notgoing to be able to handhold that?

Tim: No. First of all, it weighs 5 pounds by itself, so ifyou wanted to go for an incredibly small form factor ofsay 10 pounds and go handheld with a prime lens andtwo batteries and a focus system, you could certainly dothat.

But if you want to go for a studio configuration with a12:1 lens and 5 or 6 accessories on here and a followfocus and a matte box, you need this setup. It’s madeto do anything that you expect of a conventionalcamera on a set. There are no limitations to it and it’sincredibly modular and configurable to whatever theuser decides to do with it.

Ed: Have you signed it somewhere?

Tim: I have not. On the inside there are QC checksdone by the person who assembles it and the lastperson who tests it and closes it up!

NZVN

Tim with the Cinoflex system.

Three into one with IDX.

Affordable.

The new Sachtler ACE System with mid or ground level spreaderAvailable Now

www.panavision.co.nz

Sales Support ServiceTim (09) 3608766 318 Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn

[email protected]

nzvn june 2012

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