nzvn june 2014

about NAB is the variety – there’s something foreveryone. Someone may be about to make the move into4K cinema recording. They can get a taste of what’s onoffer and so educate themselves as to where they mightlike to investigate further. Another might realise thatadding a streaming service to what they do might not beso challenging after all. And then there will be someonewho reads of a product or service that they had nevereven thought of, that provides a solution to somethingthat’s been nagging them for years. Yes, it’s a bit like a“goodie bag” – you never quite know what’s in it until youput your hand in. Sadly, we can’t put every story in assoon as it’s “hot news” so a couple of NAB interviews andrecent events in New Zealand will have to wait until July– but well worth waiting for I promise you.

Now, let’s get June underway and I’m sure most of youwill agree with my choice of cover photo. With manythanks to our cover sponsors, you get her in full colour –but do read the article too. Enjoy. Ed

It took a lot of smooth talk to get Tony to agree tohaving this pic taken. “But what if my wife sees it?”

was his concern. We’re impressed.

JUNE 2014 Vol 203

NAB 2014 Part Two

Protel – AtomosFor Protel, we’re at Atomos with a real Ocker in TonyTrent.

Ed: Tony, you’ve got the Devil’s girlfriend on the standthere, what’s the idea of that?

Tony: We have to point our cameras at something,so we thought we’d do something where we can reallyexplore the detail and immerse ourselves in thedifferences in colour – we’ve chosen wisely don’t youthink?

Ed: I reckon – there’s a good turnout at your stand,that’s for sure. So what have we got here?

Tony: We’ve had the Samurai Blade for a while;Ninja Blade is a recent addition. In the same way a Ninjais an HDMI field recorder, it takes the better screen of aSamurai Blade and adds in HDMI. So now they’re realsimple – Samurai is for SDI and Ninja is for HDMI. That’sa recent addition, but the new stuff for this show is reallyfrom that base. That’s really what we’re famous for, thisall-in-one monitor and field recorder. Now we’vebranched out into two ways, both equally exciting I think.The Ninja Star takes the internals of a Ninja Blade, so ittakes all that grade off the sensor, 422 at the ProRes

It took a lot of smooth talk to get Tony to agreeto having this pic taken. “But what if my wifesees it?” was his concern. We’re impressed.

Well, if you thought Part One was packed with goodies,

you can look forward to more in Part Two. The great thing

output. Aclassic one isthe Sony mo-del the Alpha7S that waslaunched lastnight. Theyactually laun-ched it in con-junction withus, so ourproduct waslaunched atthe Sonylaunch be-cause it’s a 4Kcamera, abeautiful cam-era and that,but all of that4K comes outonly via theHDMI. Sothey need aShogun thatcan record in4K as a pairfor it to make sure it goes hand in hand. Apart fromthat, it’s a very clever monitor as well. If you just wantto do 1080 HD, you can do up to 120 frames per second,so it’s good super slow mo; it’s got HDMI in and out andit’s also got SDI in and out and a converter inside, so youcan have HDMI in SDI out, or SDI in and HDMI out andit’s got balanced XLR on the side as well, so that wouldsplit out to a pair so that you could have balanced audiocoming into it. And it’s got all those other pieces that wetalked about in terms of flexible …

Ed: Which is ideal for a DSLR that has its own prettycrummy microphone?

Tony: Oh yes, absolutely. So that’s going to belaunched later on in the year. But we should talk aboutwhat the actual media is – that’s a really important pointwith Atomos as well. We don’t force consumers into theirown proprietary hard drive or solid state drive that mightbe more expensive than what you can get at Amazon orplaces like that. We’ve got a little caddy that just slots inand you’ve got the choice of either solid state or spinningdisc to go in there and you can choose what size youwant and what price you’re going to get it for. We’ve gota list of recommended drives on our website that tell youhow to do it. So it’s a very flexible system to be able totake advantage of probably the weakest link out of allthese beautiful cameras – they’ve got lovely lenses,great sensors, and their weakness is when they cruncheverything down to 8 bit for their own storage, and wepick up on that and make devices to make your owncamera better.

Ed: And they’re compact devices?

Tony: Yeah, they’re quite small. You want yourphoto with the little painted devil?

Ed: No, our readers expect more culture from theireditor – I’ll take the pic, you have a go.

Lots more from

NAB 2014

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recording, but takes away the monitor. At a price pointof US$295, you’re getting ProRes essentially in yourpocket. I’ll take you over and show you, but the formfactor is really small. It means that if you’ve already gota monitor that you really like, you can just use that to doProRes recording or, because it’s so small and light now,you can put it on an action cam like a GoPro or ahelicopter and you’re getting ProRes recording on thosedevices as well. So that is really exciting. I’ve even hadguys come through who have explained to me just thefact that it has physical buttons, if you’re filming in reallyhot locations and you don’t want to have to use atouchscreen, just having physical buttons is a real plusas well. So that’s something I didn’t think of.

Ed: I like physical buttons. I also like the idea of themonitor, but is it a confidence monitor?

Tony: Yes, the Ninja 2 is definitely a confidencemonitor. However, depending on the camera and theoverall production value, these can be used as a genuinemonitor. It’s got waveform analysis, zebra, focuspeaking, so you can use it as a monitor function.

Ed: So are you actually seeing the output, or are youseeing the signal that’s going in when you’re looking atthe monitor?

Tony: It still loops through the camera as well, butit just takes it straight off the sensor here, so you’reseeing the image straight off the sensor on a highresolution screen, essentially that’s what it is. So it doesa good job as a monitor as well – the Ninja 2 is aconfidence monitor, but this one here you’re definitelygetting the dual function of higher quality recording anda good quality monitor at the same time.

Ed: But hang on, you say the Ninja 2’s a confidencemonitor, there’s no picture you’re showing on it though?

Tony: You can see here this operates on our latestoperating system, OS5, so it allows you to have anoverlay on the actual thing. This is a menu, so wherethat one is the previous generation of OS, that has to gointo that mode if you like.

Ed: I see, once it’s in the mode, then you see theimage?

Tony: You come out of the menu … you can seethere that it’s got three buttons, record, play and menu;and this has four – monitor – so you actually have thetoggle between going to the monitor or back to thismenu, so that’s the reason.

Ed: Now, just a worthy note here, these devices arenot triggered by the camera, they are triggeredseparately from the screen itself or from the keypad torecord, stop, play or whatever. So your camera cancontinue to record on its own media and you can justrecord the bits that you want, or not. Okay, moving onto the new stuff, what do you mean by “Shogun 4Kunder 2K”?

Tony: We’re going to give you 4K for under $2000– that’s what we’re going to do for later in the year. It’sgoing to be around the September timing, end of thirdquarter calendar year into fourth quarter. That’s theplan. This is really geared around all of the camerabrands now launching 4K product, but what you’refinding is, because of the size expectation with storageof 4K, a lot of them are giving you that 4K just as an NZVN

Protel – Digital RapidsFor Protel, we’re at Digital Rapids which we just heardhas been bought by Imagine Communications, butthat’s not going to make any change to the work thathas been going on and will be going on from the guys atDigital Rapids and to tell us what they’ve been up to wehave Mike Mann.

Ed: Now Mike, we’re shortly going to talk aboutproducts that you’ve launched or improvements thatyou’ve made since the last NAB show, but what I’d liketo start with is to clarify what your company does. Myunderstanding is that you are in the realm of deliveringcontent to a whole variety of devices and, when we lookat the stand here, we can see just some of them.That’s basically what you do isn’t it?

Mike: It is. We actually started the companyback in 2001 on the vision that “TV” was going to bedelivered over IP networks. Now of course, we didn’tenvisage that there would be devices such as tabletsand so forth back then, but things like mobile phones,things like PCs and so forth. So we’ve built up ourarchitecture over the years, fully focused on the ideathat it would be a “multiscreen world” as they now callit. Now for us, anything from Smart TVs and gameconsoles, tablets and phones to PCs and the living roomtelevision set – that’s all part of our focus and makingsure that all of our solutions can target all of thosedevices at the same time.

Ed: And this is something that, if you’re a smalloperator, you can take a project and you can crunch thenumbers in your PC and make various copies in a wholevariety of file formats, but the Digital Rapids productenables you to take in one file and distribute it to awhole range immediately?

Mike: Precisely. You could do anything fromsmall volumes as you said – you know, one file, to highvolumes. We have fully scalable solutions that we havecustomers doing 10,000 files a week. But the idea is“one in, many out” because all the different devices … Imean, even if you talk about one device category likemobile phones, there are so many different variancesbetween them, between IOS devices and Androiddevices and optimal screen resolutions and so forth, sothat we have customers who are creating literally 50different variants for each piece of content, just to haveoptimised delivery for each of those target devices.

Ed: And I see also on the screen here that there’s awhole range of channel partners that have approvedyour system for delivery of their material?

Mike: We’ve got the channel partners, we’ve gottechnology partners, but you know, we’ve got a hugepresence in the median entertainment space as the goldstandard for creating all these different multiscreenoutputs.

We have a fantastic reputation for not only quality, butalso being able to conform to all these different devicetypes and for our software solutions – software basedsolutions to adapt to all the new different device typesthat are coming and all the new different formats on thefly. That’s a really big thing actually for mediaorganisations today, because even though yes, we talkabout standardisation efforts, every year brings a newformat, a new target device, new opportunities forpeople, and you want to be able to very quickly adaptto those.

So we’ve actually done a lot of work over the lastcouple of years on our software platform to make iteven more adaptable than it has been in the past. Soan operator, if they need to go to HEVC or MPEG-Dash,can very quickly integrate that new functionality withoutany disruption to their operations.

Ed: Okay, sohow do peopleget these newcodecs, becausethey’re comingout all the time… is it a simpledownload?

Mike: Wellyou have to payfor them in a lotof cases ofcourse, it’s notquite as simpleas just down-loading it, butone of the keysfor us is that wehave movedaway from ourtraditional soft-ware model shallwe say. Like most companies, we were the kind ofcompany that would have version 4.0 of the software,version 5.0 etc, etc … you know, two big softwarereleases a year, each of which would have like 30different new features. When you have that, one of thechallenges for customers is that if you’re redeployingand upgrading that scale, if you have 10 systems, 20systems, or you’re in the Cloud, that’s verycumbersome and disruptive to be doing all thoseupgrades. One of the things that we did with what wecalled the Kayak platform, is a very modular approach.Now people have talked about modularity before, butwe’ve taken it to a new level where we literally releaseindividual features. So every two months, we’ve beenreleasing a batch of 20 or 30 new features that you canbuy just for the features you need. You don’t have todo a full software upgrade. So that bit is beneficial forthe customers in a couple of different respects. Itmakes the upgrade process a lot easier, because you’rejust adding these new features or upgrading them, youdon’t have to upgrade everything about it. The othergreat thing though is that a lot of customers don’t wantto touch stuff that’s working; they want the newfeature, but they don’t want something that mightaffect their old functionality, especially if they’ve got acertification like MPA certification where it’s all certifiedin a certain software version – they don’t want to touchit. So this allows the customers to just add or upgradethose individual functions they need without doing fullwholesale software upgrades anymore.

Ed: That’s a very clever way to do it and I wish othercompanies would take that concept on too?

Mike: We’re okay with other companies not doingthat, we’re okay with that being unique to us! That’sbeen a big thing for us too, because around the Kayakplatform, we built a partner ecosystem – you werementioning partners. A lot of these companies aredeveloping these individual components to go right ontoour platform and the great thing is they don’t have towait for us on our schedules anymore to have the nextbig software release. You know, there’s a company wepartnered with and we announced just before the showcalled Cinnafilm that does very high end software basedstandards conversion for file based workflows. Thefantastic thing is they were able to do the developmentto the component completely themselves, using ourSDK and as soon as they were ready, they didn’t haveto wait for us to have a new software update, it wasimmediately available to go to market. So that’sanother value proposition of our new approach tosoftware shall we say.

Ed: Have you made any big changes inyour hardware offer?

Mike: Well, one thing to keep inmind is that, even though we offer someof our things as appliance based formfactors, which is the use case a lot of thecustomers want, at heart, they’re stillsoftware solutions. So even if you lookat one of our rack mount encoders, allthe brain power that’s going on in thereis software based.

We did release a new appliance seriescalled the EXs, the live encoders that welaunched at IBC. We’re showcasing ithere at this show again. All theevolution since IBC of that product linethough has happened on the softwarewithin it. That’s a full line of multiscreenencoding solutions, so again targeting allthe different devices from tablets tomobile phones and so forth, for live andlinear applications, so linear over the topchannels, live event streaming and soforth. And we put a new DashBoardbased interface on top of it. Now one ofthe really cool things, when we’re talking about thedevices, is even if you’re already streaming, if you wantto add another device type, you know if you’re a 24/7channel, you could just add that new device type in theDashBoard without starting and stopping the unit allover again. So it doesn’t interrupt any of the existingstreams that are going on.

Ed: It’s a clever way to work.

Mike: It is, and again all enabled by the fact that

it’s powered by the same technology platform under the

hood, so we can just start up using individual

components without it disrupting anything else going on

operationally.

Ed: That’s gotta be good.

Now Ken tells me Protel have supplied a number of

Digital Rapids products for use by broadcasters and

postproduction facilities in New Zealand so if you need

Digital Rapids products or have a streaming

requirement call Protel.

NZVN

A small selection of devices to receive streaming.

Protel – NewTekFor Protel, we have Carter Holland from NewTek.

Ed: To those who have been around a while, NewTekis famous for its Video Toaster many, many years ago,but you don’t call it the Toaster anymore, do you?

Carter: We don’t, we call it the TriCaster. So sinceNAB last year, we’ve been very, very busy. At IBC, weintroduced a whole new line of TriCasters – professionalTriCasters. That’s four products, so very quickly theproducts are the TriCaster 410, the 460, the 860 andthe 8000. Now the 8000 had existed before and wemade major enhancements to that product, but theother three models were brand new. All of thoseproducts have a core feature set that’s common acrossthe board. So for example, all of the TriCasters haverows of Mix Effects and so one of the things that’s reallycompelling about that is that MEs allow you to do somevery complex sequences and work on things in sort ofan offline mode while you’re in, and then you can switchback and forth. Our trick for the 410, the price point forthat is under US$10,000. You can’t find anywhere onthe market a 4 ME system at that price point. But thenon top of that, we offer ISO recording for all camerainputs on all of the devices. We offer virtual sets withrealistic virtual camera movements that we’veintroduced. So no longer do you need any cameraoperators; our cameras can be controlled with aTriCaster. In addition to PTZ cameras that we support,or robotic cameras, we can do jib moves, panning,zooms, all of that. We have something calledHolographic Live Sets which in addition to the virtualsets we provide allows you to take any panoramicimage – in fact you could shoot a panorama with yourSmartphone, drop it into TriCaster and now have yourset be that environment. You get the full masking,compositing layers that you would have in a virtual setenvironment, so it really opens the doors of possibilityfor where I want my show to take place.

Ed: And this is available over all four in the series?

Carter: All four of them as of last IBC.

Ed: So basically the difference is the number ofoutputs or inputs?

Carter: That’s one primary difference, and thensome of the capabilities in terms of, for example, weship all TriCasters with a library of virtual sets. Thatcontent expands as you go up the line. We have othergraphics capabilities that expand as you go up the line.We’ve introduced a lot of control capability in a coupleof ways – one is filming macros, so you can actuallydefine a number of complex sequences ahead of timeand execute those sequences with the push of a button.So it takes a lot of that. You can pre-plan some complex events before yourshow and then that simplifies theexecution during the show. On top ofthat, we’ve also introduced things likeMIDI support.

So any device that is MIDI capable, youcan connect to a TriCaster and control it.

I can actually download a MIDI app on

my iPad and, let’s say I wanted to

execute a simple switch from camera

one to camera three, somebody can

control that from my iPad. We have also

media publishing features right within

the TriCaster, so I can mark an in-pointand an out-point while my show is going

on and just with the push of one button,

publish that clip to YouTube or Twitter …

Ed: A part of that clip?

Carter: A part of that clip – all of that could becontrolled actually by somebody else. If I wanted tobring in somebody to just work on publishing socialmedia clips, I can do it directly from the control servers,but if I’ve got a lot of complex operations, I can bring ina colleague of mine who can do the same thing. And allof these capabilities span all four of those systems. Soa lot to talk about there and the sort of theme behind itall is that the TriCasters have super powers, that’s whatwe talked about at IBC.

Ed: I see, unlike the presenting couple on stage,you’re not wearing a tight costume with an “N” on yourbelt?

Carter: No, I’m not.

Ed: They tried to get you to do that did they?

Carter: No they didn’t.

The presenters were in tight body suits with big “N”s as buckles.

Ed: Oh okay, you must be the boss?

Carter: You could say I had a littleinfluence on the outcome of that. So atNAB this year, we’ve launched a new lineof our 3Play systems. Now 3Play is ourintegrated sports production product.Essentially, a lot of companies makereplay products that are focused onreplay in slow motion, but they do so interms of how linear tape-based replayused to be done. We’re not looking at itthat way. We have a completelydifferent approach, similar to what we dowith the TriCaster, which is when welook at all of the things that go into acreating a live sports production, howcan we take those capabilities and putthem into a 3Play, including replay inslow motion, but you know lower thirdtitles and motion graphic transitions –and you know what, even a switcher, if Ididn’t have a TriCaster or a switcher, Icould now switch a multi-camera showwith a 3Play system. So we’ve takenthose super powers if you will and addedthem to 3Play. We’ve enhanced our topof the line 3Play 4800 with these new capabilities –that’s just under US$40,000.

We’ve introduced a new replay model, the 3Play 440,which is a four input device that has pretty much thesame software capabilities as the 4800, but it’s asmaller more compact device, more mobile. That pricepoint is US$24,995. And we have a 3Play 425 systemwhich is also a four channel – a little less of the newcapabilities, but it’s under US$10,000. Now replay, fouror five years ago, a four camera replay solution device– six figures, well into the six figures to get that.

Ed: And are any of these upgradeable?

Carter: The 440 and the 4800 are upgradeable, butthe 425 is not. The 425 has been in the market forprobably three years and so for us we see a hugeopportunity where replay was never affordable inschools and local teams and sporting events …

Ed: You keep the basic one there, so you can keepthe price point?

Carter: Exactly.

Ed: So where does the “3” in the 3Play come from?

Carter: The 3 in the 3Play is really a creative namearound when we first introduced the product in terms of“replay” … 3Play had a good ring to it.

Ed: So you don’t want to advance on that?

Carter: Well you know the number 3 is actually asmall number in terms of all the things that a 3Play can

do, but it’s been gaining significant traction in themarketplace as a sports production system, so we feelit’s a good name that fits for a sports production.

Ed: I have to say that the market is getting fuller andfuller of this type of product, the “television station in abox”, which I think was a name that you guys coinedmany years ago, but others have taken it onboard. Themarket’s filling up, but it seems as though your point ofdifference is the MEs, that sort of extra technology thatyou add, so it’s not just a switcher?

Carter: That’s right. As I said, we’re alwayslooking at all the things that go into a live production,many different components, and saying how many ofthose can we pack into one system, to really streamlinehow much gear I need, or how many staff I need toproduce a live show. In some cases, it is as simple astaking what 10 people used to do and having oneperson do it. But, truth be told, some of theseproductions are complex, you know you’re doing aneight camera shoot and you’re publishing to socialmedia, you’ve got a lot of challenges. One person isgoing to have their hands full, and so we’ve also madeit easier for other people to join in with the things likeautomation and control that I’ve talked about, and I willsay that we are starting to see other companies lookingat how they integrate solutions into a turnkey system,and we actually think that’s pretty validating for thepath that we’ve been on for decades. NZVN

Panavision –Tiffen Filters

For Panavision, we are at Tiffen Filterswith Carey Duffy and Brett Smith fromTiffen Australia.

Ed: Carey I want to start by askingyou about the hat. This is a “showspecial” is it?

Carey: Yes, well you know whatthey say – “Get ahead, get a hat” – andit worked yesterday for me in our pre-sales meeting. This is my hat, I alwayswear a hat – or I try to, because peopledon’t recognise me if I don’t wear a hat.That’s why I camouflage myself. But I’mout on display today, full peacock!

Ed: Fantastic, but we’re going to talkabout filters, and I see a new film lookfilter, in other words you’re taking a sharp image andyou’re softening it?

Carey: Yes, we’ve been working very hard onranges of diffusion because, as someone in PanavisionLondon said the other day to me, “diffusion is king”.Everybody, every cameraman’s looking for a “look” todefine themselves. Everybody’s very used to the ALEXAlook now, that sort of rules the world and people wantto move away from it. We’ve got different resolutionscoming out from different cameras and people want tobe able to differentiate the look that they produce fromother DPs and the biggest way of doing that now, for aDP, is obviously with glass, with lenses, and with filters.So we’re pushing hard at selling that message to peopleand that film look has been born out of some new filtersthat we designed last year that we now have at theshow this year. Some of the DPs who tested them saidthey had the film look. In fact, I had a lovely quotefrom Ben Davis BSc who is shooting Ultratron theAvengers – Marvel and from the Black Satins wedesigned, he said to me, and I can quote this as histestimonial, he said “Carey, by using these filters, it’sthe first time I’ve felt digital’s moved into the realm oflooking like film.” I said “thank you very much, takethat to the bank.” We had the Pearlescents, which werea really luscious, sort of luxury look, very bright widehalations on them; and then we have the Satin range,the Black Satin and the regular Satin, and then we’vegot three new black filters that we’ll be coming out withthis year just to give DPs a different look and differentedge on whatever they’re using. Filters are a thing thatDPs can own themselves, so if they want to make theirlook “their look”, they can own them – it’s not justdown to the rental house all of the time. Obviously,rental houses get orders and they run out of stock, soyou know we’re pushing this concept to rental housesand we’re pushing it to the DPs so they get to get thelook they want.

Ed: And there’s no problem now with the size of thefilter because you’re using …?

Carey: PV size, or 4x5.65 is the standard to covermost lenses. That’s what we’re doing on diffusion.We’ve also got a range that we’re bringing to market ofvariable NDs which are professional size variable NDstaken out from the stills concept market with theexplosion of the 5D four or five years ago, where peoplewere using variable NDs in the stills market, for “runand gun” for motion capture on still cameras. We’vebrought to show here a 130A variable ND that goes in

the back of any matte box that accepts a 130A gonnahin the back end, so that’s very simple to use. And we’realso looking at a new LMB-5 Tri Clip on variable ND in atray. I can’t show it to you, we’re just doing some finaltesting on it, but the 130A one is deliverable and it’sgoing to come out shortly. It’s a really cool tool.

Ed: Now this is a very large filter?

Carey: Yes, it’s a 130A to go in the back of a LMB-18, LMB-17 …

Ed: And you’ve got markings on the ring there to tellyou what ND you’re at?

Carey: Well the ND changes over focal length andincident of light over the focal length of lens you use.So a wide angle will only get a couple of stops out of it,and a longer standard or telephoto lens will get morestops out of it. It’s just the way that the physics ofthese two filters cross-polarising works. But it’s also avery quick tool. It’s really neutral; when you’re lookingon a waveform you can quickly ND down because youcan see on the waveform how much light you’rebringing down. It’s just a tool, and a lot of people havegot used to using this tool and I wouldn’t say that old-school DPs would necessarily be in favour of this, but alot of younger DPs have to do all sorts of work, they getused to using variable NDs and so therefore they bringit into their workflow on bigger productions.

Ed: And it’s a lot quicker?

Carey: It can be a lot quicker – you need to knowwhat you’re doing with it, but any tool you’ve got to getused to using it, even a hammer.

Tim: Go to Panavision New Zealand for help.

Carey: Yes, they’ll know exactly what they’re doingwith this.

Ed: Okay, let’s just go back a bit to the Pearlescentfilm look filter. Why wouldn’t you just adjust the backfocus a little bit to take it slightly out of focus?Wouldn’t you get the same effect?

Carey: No, because the Pearlescent itself adds ahalation to a light source as it lowers contrast,smoothes out skin detail that you may want to keep theapparent sharpness in your image. So all three of thesehave got film looks. If that’s just the feedback we gotfrom DPs, it’s given them a film look in a digital world,and obviously that’s what projection or theatricalrelease DPs want or long-term dramas want; they wantthe film look. We’re working on digital formats, buteverybody is used to the film look, which is why they’re

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HD-SDI video out and 12V power for monitoring

Mounting points for V-Lock or Anton Bauer battery mounting plates

Compatible with quick release tripod base plates

XLR connectors with phantom power for professional external microphones

Adjust camera settings and monitoring tools with advanced touchscreen controls

Removable handle with multiple mounting points

Built in rail mounts for large lenses, matte boxes and more

Unique user upgradeable sensor and lens mount turret

Push button menu selection for focus, iris and more

having bigger sensors. I’m not talkingshooting everything at T2 or T1.4 so youcan’t get focus from your nose to youreye, but people want that look, that’swhy they’re going with big sensors, andthis just enhances the look, gives peopletheir defined look down to their lightingtechnique as well. So the more toolsthere are the better. I liken it to paint,you know you can watercolour or oilpaint, you have a palette and filters area palette, they’re just a part of thepalette; the other part of the palette isthe glass and then there’s the sensorand matching them all up to get yourend desired look.

Ed: So you get everything else rightfirst and then you polish your look with afilter?

Carey: Well yes, or you get thefilter and it helps you to polish your look.One of the things is that people – youknow this term’s been bandied aroundfor many years now “fixing it in post” and I always sayfix it in post, why did you shoot it broken, because“fixing” in terminology to me means something’sbroken. You don’t want to shoot anything broken, youwant to shoot it the best way you can. We had a showhere in Vegas a few weeks back for the wedding andportrait photographers and the guys told me one of thestrap lines they used as a sales pitch was “filters arelike Photoshop on the front of your lens.” You know,you’re burning in that look, and film is very much likethat when you’re working in continuity. You have a lookand you have to address that look over a continuouspiece of information that you’re filming and so thereforeyou don’t chop and change lenses that much … or if youdo in post, it’s because you’re using a GoPro, you’reusing C300, you’re using an ALEXA, using all thoseformat cameras for different reasons, maybe to get intotight areas or fix on the side of cars, but then in postyou try and make them look the same, it’s all to do withthe workflow. But if you can have three or fourcameras, or two cameras that you’re shooting thesame, be they a 5D, an F5 or whatever, you knowfilters can marry up a look and that saves time in post.Post is expensive now we’re moving into 4K. You havemassive data and it’s a lot of money.

Ed: And the filters to use are?

Carey: From Tiffen.

Brett: Carey’s done a full 4K video that will beavailable to Panavision for Cinematographer Societyfunctions where they can see the difference at 4K.Even on a Mac, if you de-resolve, you’re not going tosee the subtleties, but for a DOP to come along on 4Kand see that, then you will get the gaps between whatCarey is saying in terms of description and the visualresult. You can see there, that’s a simple thing with thehalation on the lamps, but the subtle differences withCarey’s voiceover and those images in 4K complete thestory. That’s the tool that we’ll be providing, as well assplit filters, so Panavision can actually drop in and havea half size filter so they can see with/without on screenin the test room. So when they do the camera testbefore their production, they’ve actually got a splitsystem that we’ve got – it’s a little box over there – anda choice of filters that they can actually test … like,don’t like, whatever, move on, or I need a higherdensity, that kind of thing. Because it is a subtle black

art shall we say, and so the differences now are muchbetter explained between Carey and the visuals. NZVN

Panavision – O’ConnorFor Panavision, we are at O’Connor support systemswith Steve Turner.

Ed: Now Steve, we’ve just taken a photo of you doingyour muscle act, holding up a 209 pound capacity tripodwith one finger and that must have been hard work?

Steve: It was relatively hard work. It’s our newlightweight Mitchell tripod, the 60L Mitchell, so it’scapable of taking a fully loaded, 25-75 pan and tilt headbut, as you can see, I can lift it with one finger. Youknow the usual city tripods, like our own tripod and the

Ronford-Baker tripods, they’re a real pain, right, butthis is lightweight, so it’s portable, so good for alocation shoot and that kind of thing. We’ve just had ittested – it’s the most torsionally rigid tripod in its class,so if it’s a lightweight configuration tripod, if you applya torque to it, it doesn’t twist up.

Ed: Which is especially important I’ve noticed with jibarms?

Steve: Yes, it will cope with jib arms and justanything actually when you’ve got a high drag on yourhead, so you want a real heavy friction feel. What youdon’t want is for the tripod to wind up, because thenwhen you stop and let go, it springs back off target.

Ed: Yes, I have experienced that.

Steve: Other than that, we’re also launching ourfollow focus pro kits. The pro kits include absolutelyeverything you need to shoot regardless of thesituation, so it will take 15mm lightweight rods – there’sa bridge in there for that – but also 15mm studio and19mm studio. You get absolutely all of the gears thatyou need for all of the different lenses; you’ve got afriction driver for lenses that don’t have gears; you’vegot a whip in there for remote control and the whipactually has this quite nice little idler handle, so thatyou can get very precise finger control, because youisolate off this shaft here. And also uniquely you canplug the speed crank into the end of the whip, so thatyou can do remote fast follow focuses too, so it’s great.

There’s been a lot of positive feedback on this. If youwere to buy all these items, including the case with thecustom forms, you’d be paying over US$1000 morethan if you buy it in a kit, so it’s a good discount there.What we want is for people to buy everything theyactually need – and the only reason they don’t buy allthis stuff all at once is because it’s a bit one-offexpenditure. But now we’ve put a heavy discount onthere to try and get people to take what they need.This floor spreader is also new. We’ve now got a floorspreader for our 30L, 60L Mitchell and 60L and 150spherical tripods too, because the city guys like it onthe floor, put sandbags on it and that kind of thing. NZVN

Panavision – IDXFor Panavision, we are at IDX and we are delighted to,once again, have Cathy Fercano to tell us what’s new.

Ed: Cathy, please start by telling me the two modelswe saw last year?

Cathy: Last year you saw our CW7 WirelessTransmission system which has a range of about 380feet and zero frame delay because it’s uncompressedsignal. The other system you saw last year was our CW-1, our HDMI type Wireless system with a range of 330feet – again uncompressed signal so zero frame delay.This year, we’re introducing our CW-3 which is a 3G HD-SDI system, the lightest 3G system on the market –you can feel that.

Ed: It feels as though there’s nothing in there?

Cathy: Yes it does. This is a one-to-one system,so you can’t do multicast on this at this time. Againzero frame delay, about 380 to 410 feet line of sight.We’re very excited about this. Like all of our wirelesssystems it’s “plug and play”, very, very easy to use.

Ed: So if the CW-3 and CW-7 have about the samerange, why would you choose one over the other?

Cathy: Well because, with the CW-7, you can domulticast groupings. So you can use as many receivers

to a transmitter as you want. You can also dogroupings, you can use up to four transmitters withgroupings that you dial into the frequency for eachtransmitter, so it gives you a lot more versatility.

Ed: Does that take HD-SDI?

Cathy: Yes, that’s HD-SDI. The CW-3 is 3G HD-

SDI.

Ed: So really you’ve got a transmitter and receiver for

the whole range of cameras out there?

Cathy: Exactly.

Ed: The rough price on the CW-3?

Cathy: The CW-3 street price is US$1880.

Ed: Wow, for a complete unit?

Cathy: For a complete unit, and for the cables also

to come with it.

Ed: So Cam-Wave is really progressing there?

Cathy: Yes it is. You know, we came out with

wireless transmission, we were the first, and we just

continue to explore new opportunities with wireless.

Ed: And the IDX battery range?

Cathy: We have our Q-D95 battery. It’s 91 Watt,

has one built-in DTap and four LED readouts for battery

capacity. We also have the Q-D75 which is the same –

one DTap, 73 Watt. We have the Q-D150 which is 146Watt, again one DTap built-in and that also is a high

load 10 Amp at 120 Watt; and we have our EHL 10DS

which is 96 Watt, DTap built-in, also high power

battery.

Now these batteries are very economical because we

purchase ourselves through Sanyo, and because they’re

seeing our competitiveness now within their market and

we’ve been working with them for so many years, we’ve

been able to reduce the costs, while maintaining thequality of the batteries. So these are top of the line and

much more economical.

Ed: Another important thing is that the high load

capability of some of these batteries is really important

for some of the large sensor Hi Def and 4K cameras

that are very power hungry?

Cathy: Absolutely. We see that as a total demand

nowadays for the ALEXAs and the RED series of

cameras.

Ed: So the Q–D150 will power an ALEXA, just one

battery?

Cathy: Yes it will. Also we have

enhanced the internal design of our new

line-up of batteries. There are cradles

and they’re designed to hold each cell

securely to minimise movement and

friction between the cells during use and

transportation. So the enhanced internal

design makes IDX’s new batteries the

safest and most reliable professional

batteries on the market.

Ed: I certainly see them in TV scrums

where you’ve got News crews chasing

after somebody … you quite often see

IDX on the back of many of those

cameras?

Cathy: Yes you do, because they

can take the movement and the running

– you know, kind of run and gun type

environments.

Ed: Okay, so that’s in the large

batteries. How are you going in the smaller ones?

Cathy: The smaller ones – we’re actually notmaking any of the 7.4 Volt ones now. We do have twochargers out – an LC-2C for the Canon batteries; andLC-2S for the Sony batteries. They are both twochannel, simultaneous quick chargers, but becausethere are so many smaller profile cameras and thebatteries are so different, and you can buy themanywhere now, we’ve decided to stay with our Enduraline.

Ed: Stuck to your knitting?

Cathy: Yes, exactly. NZVN

NZVN

Lacklands – ManfrottoWe are at the Vitec Group for Lacklands and we’relooking at the Manfrotto product in the stands, lightsand things with Will Holowka.

Ed: Will, you’ve been coming to many of these shows,probably almost as many as me, but you’ve still got asmile on your face and you’re still pleased with the wayManfrotto is developing product?

Will: The great thing about our company is that we arevery much an innovative company. What we try tobring to the market is new innovations that hopefullymake the life of the videographer in this case,photographer and motion picture guy, that much moreuser friendly. The new line of LEDs that we have herewill hopefully address that. We’re really going after theindependent videographer who wants value for theirmoney and, at the same time, wants a quality productthat’s going to be consistent, and that’s what they lookfor. We also developed some new products like stands.We have a new stand that we’ve introduced here, firstof its kind in the world; we also have a new tilt top thatwe’ve introduced – all related to the lighting side of thebusiness. And then finally we’ve come up with a newclamp called a Pico Clamp for people who want toattach things to rails if they’re working with rigs, orcamera pan bars if they’re working with tripods. So wealways try to be innovative with what we come outwith. What we’re looking at right now is the Spectraseries, we have the Spectra LEDs, these are our prolevel LEDs. We have our consumer entry level LEDswhich we’ve had in the market for a couple of years.Pro LEDs we start at US$169.99 price point. They workwith double A batteries.

Then we go up to a bicolour unit and these are onboardunits. We have five onboard camera units and theystart at US$169.99 and they go as high as US$469.99.Then in our “one by one” range, we have a flood, a spotand we have a bicolour unit, and the nice thing aboutthese particular units, we start at US$779 – we justannounced a brand new price on them, and they go toUS$1079.99 for the bicolour unit. The great thing isthat they do come with AC; if you like though, there willbe an adapter so you can plug it into a battery so youcan have a different type of power source if needed.Another great thing is they have a CRI of higher than95 CRI and consistently – and that’s the big thing in themarket. There are a lot of other units out there, we allknow this, but the problem is the consistency during theday. They’re flicker-free at any setting, and the colourtemperature is maintained at any setting and that’s thekey.

Ed: And longevity is the other one – how long thatphosphor will last?

Will: Indefinitely. That has to be key and with any ofthe products we make in this portfolio, the longevity willcertainly be there in the LEDs that we’re using.

Ed: So lights are new for Manfrotto, but within theVitec Group, you have Light Panels. How does that allfit in?

Will: Correct, you bring up a good point and the bigthing here is that, at Manfrotto, we handle from

Will with the Nanopole stand.

NZVN

broadcast down; they handle from broadcast up. Oneof the differentiations between our LEDs and theirs is,for instance, our LEDs are not capable of being on aDMX board; theirs are. Again, they’re tailoring to adifferent type of customer that maybe sets them up andputs them in TV studios; we’re tailoring to a customerwho is a “run and gun” type of customer, or theindependent who wants to be able to have a solution tobe portable to go on set, or go onto a location, or createa set. That’s what we’re bringing to the market withour LEDs, and that’s where we’re driving with right now.

Ed: Obviously, with the background of Manfrottomaking stands, you have all the stands to go withthem?

Will: Yes, as you are aware, we are known for ourstands. We have everything from our Quick Stackstands to a brand new Nanopole stand. What’s reallykey on this particular stand from an innovation point ofview, you look at it, it’s a light stand, it’s small – foldedup it’s under 20 inches in length; it also has a levellingleg … but the cool part is, I can pull the column and Ican hold my light up now without having another lightstand. Then, when I’m ready to go back into the lightstand, I just have to take it and put it back in, and nowI’ve got a light stand again. This is an innovation thatnobody has seen prior to this show. A very cool piece,rated for about four pounds. Human nature is humannature, we know people will try and put six on it – andit will take it.

Ed: And it has that very versatile Manfrotto functionof if you’ve got a number of them, they all cliptogether?

Will: Not in this case.

Ed: Oh no!

Will: We still have the Quick Stack family – the QuickStack is a different family, but this Nanopole is designedfor the person who wants something that will go intothe luggage or go into a kit and it’s under 20 inches inlength.

Ed: It’s a very portable and capable little stand?

Will: The Nano stand is one of our most popular standsand we sell a number of them throughout the year; withthis new feature I think we’ll sell even more. Added tothat family, we’ve introduced on the top of the Nanostand, a brand new technology called a Snap head and

the cool thingabout this is,when you put iton, you just kindof push it downand it locks.Again, these twoitems happen tobe patented andthe nice thing iswhen you dothat, you justtake it and youlock it in placelike so.

Ed: And what’sthat to hold?

Will: The nicething is you canput an LED on thetop here; you canput a flash onhere if you’re aphotographer;

anything with a cold shoe mount or a hot shoe mountwill mount on the top of this adapter.

The great thing is, for instance, there’s a lot of people

who like to get a light up high, so the beauty of theNanopole stand is we can take the pole, separate it, and

now we can have the person hold the light up high if

they desire, and they already have an access point to

mount the light on top by using the quick connect that’s

available on the Snap Tilthead.

Here’s one other cool product, a new product called the

Pico Clamp. What’s very cool about this, is this will

mount anything from 8 to 15mm in diameter; it will

hold just over a 4½ pound load.

It comes with a little screw called a 147, which is three-eighths and quarter-twenty and allows you to mountmonitor arms, allows you to mount anything that youdesire or you need to have – either on a rig system oron a light stand or on a pan bar, and you’re doing itwith this nice little clamp. This allows you to mount lotsof items around the camera. The great thing is also anamazing price point of US$29.99.

Ed: Wow. Well that’s it – in the past I’ve done storiesabout Manfrotto and the huge variety of clamps that areavailable for the video and the photographic market,and it really is a case of if you’ve got a situation, youcan find a clamp arrangement that will solve it?

Will: Right and the big thing is that, what we bring tothe market is a lot of widgets and gadgets that get youout of trouble, and people look at them and right afterthat they may not have an idea for it, but then thingsclick and all of a sudden an idea comes and they say“hey I have an application for that.”

That’s what we try to do, is we innovate and developnew products.

Ed: And it’s red and black and very cool?

Will: Correct. Anodised red, nicely done, it reflects ourheritage of the red that we’ve always had in theManfrotto world.Snap head action.

And now we continue with Jodi Palm – the tripod lady.

Ed: Jodi, one special new tripod this year?

Now for the Manfrotto bags we have Paul Zakrzewski.

Ed: We’re here to see what’s new in Manfrotto bagsbut, for those of you who don’t realise it, Manfrottohave purchased Kata, so the Kata bags are nowbranded Manfrotto and they’ve undergone a colourchange – you’ve taken away the yellow, they are nowgrey and black with a little bit of red highlighting. Soyou’ve done that to the bags, but there’s still the sameKata quality in there, the same materials, the samewonderful parachute zippers, clips, clamps, all the bitsand pieces, but you have made some improvements?

Paul: Absolutely. So what we’ve done is that, inOctober, we launched our Pro line of camera bags,specifically for the photo industry, but as you know,with the prevalence of DSLR usage within the videoindustry, we actually feel like these bags are a very niceaddition to the video line. We learnt a lot byintroducing these pro camera bags here, and we’veincorporated a lot of the technology out of these bagsinto the video bags. So two things – we have what’scalled the Exo-tough, which is a compressed foamexterior coated with material, which starts out at aboutfour inches of foam, and through a heat process, wecompress it down to about an eighth of an inch. Whatthat gives you is a very strong, but at the same time,very flexible exterior. Now our feeling is, when youhave a camera bag, your gear should not be thesupport structure for your camera bag, and with a lot ofour competitors, there is no support structure until youput your gear in the bag. With these – and it’s kind ofhard, but when you press down on this bag, youcompress that as hard as you want and you are notgoing to compress the bag. That is a combination of

Jodi: Yes, we have the new 535 aluminium tripod.Previously, we had a carbon fibre version and whatwe’ve done this year is we’ve launched an aluminiumversion.

This now actually rounds out our entire BridgingTechnology series with an aluminium single leg tripod togo with the current club and twin leg tripods that wehave.

Ed: A single leg tripod – this has got three?

Jodi: Instead of our previous midi tripods, as we calledthem, that would have twin tubes on each leg, this is asingle tube per each leg.

Ed: Right, okay – but how high can it go?

Jodi: It goes to about 7 feet tall, it folds up to foursections, so it folds up a little bit smaller than what theprevious carbon fibre did, but it still gives you a full sizetripod.

Ed: And I guess the aluminium is a little heavier thanthe carbon fibre, but it’s considerably cheaper?

Jodi: Yes.

It’s about 2½ pounds heavier than the carbon when youhave a head on top of it, but what it does is it gives usprice ranges from US$380 up to US$799 for astandalone tripod or a full kitted solution.

Ed: So it’s customer’s choice?

Jodi: Yes.

what we callthe Exo-toughexterior pro-tection, butthen you havewhat we callthe cameraprotection sys-tem. What italmost does isthat it workslike an I-beamand it createsa line of pro-tection downthe centre ofthe bag, de-noted by allthe red.

So anywherewhere you seered, that iswhere yourExo-toughconstruction is.It’s the same

material as this exterior, but used on the inside.

Ed: I can attest to the fact that it is very flexiblelaterally, but when you put any vertical load on it, it’sas solid as.

Paul: Then you also have the dividers. Now thedividers are made of the material which is very muchlike a memory foam. If you look at a memory foammattress and you put weight on it, it conforms to yourshape.

What we’ve done, is we’ve built that down the centre ofthe bag because, when you put a lens in here, insteadof having a lens that will then rattle around betweenyour dividers, these will conform to the actual lens thatyou have or to the configuration of the body of thecamera.

We took the Kata bags and we kept the DNA of the Katabags and we’ve incorporated them into the newManfrotto, what we call “CC bags” and also our videobackpacks. What I talked about earlier with the photobags is the camera protection system. What we’vedone, is we’ve built the camera protection system intothe base of this bag, so it gives you extra protectionfrom the bottom of the bag where, in our experience,the camera bag actually takes a lot of the hits. We’vealso modified the Exo-tough, so you’re not going to feelthat same material on the outside, but you can seethere’s a significant structure to the bag because,again, we feel like your gear should not be the structureof your bag; the bag should have structure to protectyour gear.

So we built this; this comes in four sizes, everythingfrom a small camcorder right up to a larger videorecorder – we wanted to have a specific size bag thatcovers each one. We then also have two sizes of abackpack – we have the Pro-V 610 and the Pro-V 410which again incorporate all the same camera protectionsystem on the inside, every place where it’s red. All thered denotes the camera protection and it has that samestiffness that the Pro backpacks have and all the Probags. These are brand new; they’re shipping in the USmarket probably the first week of June; we’re showing

them actually for the first time anywhere here at NAB.And then we also have a set of roller bags.

We know that light stands are a videographer’s bestfriend, so we have three rolling bags which againincorporate all these same structural improvements andcome in three different sizes because, as we all know,of the different size light stands that a videographer willchoose to use, so we make one for each.

They’re fully checkable from an airline standpoint and

also have locking mechanisms so that you don’t have to

worry about everything opening up. This again is very

ergonomic from a backpack standpoint, with a full waist

harness that takes the load off your shoulders and puts

it on your hips, and again the rubber straps which are

incredibly comfortable especially when you’re carrying a

heavy load.

So from a videographer’s standpoint, we’re looking at

our Pro line of bags which are DSLR bags specifically.

You can move into the backpacks that are in our video

line that can carry either a traditional video camera or

DSLR with multiple lenses; and then what we call the

CC bags which are designed specifically for camcorders

and larger video recorders.

Ed: So you’ve got every base covered?

Paul: That’s our goal. Our goal is to say

“Manfrotto, we have a bag for every need” so that’s

really where we’re going, for sure. NZVN

Quinto – AutocueWe are at Autocue for Quinto and we’re going to talkfirstly to Aaron Brady.

location and have it connected back to the main studio,where it’s controlled by the operator in the studio,rather than sending the operator and full kit out on

location.

Ed: So if there’s a change in the script,it’s done back at head office and up itcomes?

Aaron: The script is controlled fromback at the office, that’s the other thingthat’s pretty huge. Just as an example,a traditional way of doing this is that youwould send the video signal up to thesatellite and then you’d send it backdown from the satellite to the OB truck,and the truck would then send the videoout to the prompter. The problem withthat is you have a 1½ second encodedelay and a 1½ second decode delay,plus whatever other latency you have inyour signal flow, and that means theprompter operator is having to jockey a3 second delay when trying to prompt fortalent in a remote location. This is aterrible disaster, you can’t do that, it’sjust untenable. What we’ve done iswe’ve cut that delay down to 60

milliseconds, because instead of sending the video,we’re producing the video onsite and we’re just using IPto send the text data information and the control datainformation.

Ed: Now we’re all go, what is happening here?

Aaron: This is the script that I’m sending from mycomputer in New York to this QBox over 4G. Now I’mgoing to go and control it by bringing on the onscreenscroll panel. I’m going to go out of prompt mode – I’mgoing to give myself an onscreen display …

Ed: This would be even more precise if you had atablet I’m sure where your big fat fingers don’t reallymatter so much?

Aaron: Exactly.

Ed: Not that you’ve got big fat fingers …

Aaron: I have sausage fingers, they’re enormous,it doesn’t come across on audio. Right, so we’reprompting …

Ed: Hey, and away we go.

Aaron: From Las Vegas to New York and back, andyou can see what the latency is. As soonas I hit “halt” …

Ed: Wow, that’s real quick, yes I cansee. Now that’s certainly got applica-tions.

And to continue the Autocue story I haveRichard Satchell and Richard’s going totalk to us about a virtual product …

Richard: No, no sorry, our newMaster series monitors.

Ed: But you haven’t got any here?

Richard: Oh I see – yes, they’re dueto start shipping in the summer and sowe’re at the prototyping stage now, justabout to go into production. The newmonitors will have much the same formfactor and features of the current range,but the principal addition will be HD-SDIinput as standard, which we’vepreviously offered as a separate addition

Aaron: I’m about to take control of this QBox overthe 4K data network.

Ed: Okay, what’s a QBox?

Aaron: Our QMaster teleprompting software sendsthe script to a separate hardware device called theQBox – the scripts are sent over IP, rather than beingphysically connected to the prompter PC. The QBoxthen generates the video output that is subsequentlyfed to the on-camera units. The fact that it’s IP-basedgives a lot of flexibility around your studio set up, butthere are also very powerful applications for OB use,and that’s what I want to demo to you today. The 4Gmodem here puts this QBox on the Internet, it’s apublic IP address, I’m able to launch my QMasterapplication back in New York via VNC and we’re justgoing to zoom in to the QBox status panel within theQMaster screen and we’re going to show it connectingto this QBox here in Las Vegas.

Ed: So the application for this?

Aaron: An OB prompter on an ENG prompter – itmeans you can send a prompter in to the field in any

Pete and Aaron.

and charged for it. It will now beincluded as standard. As well as that,we’ll take the opportunity to update thepanels, just to the very latest LEDtechnology, so they’ll be slightly morepower efficient, slightly brighter, slightlybetter.

Ed: So it’s HD-SDI input?

Richard: That’s right, yes. Andstudios are obviously increasingly usingor wanting to run SDI rather thancomposite, so up until this point, we’vebeen adding that on a “by request” basisand now we’re just offering that asstandard.

Ed: And for the people in the HDMIarea?

Richard: We get asked about HDMI

more often in the non-broadcast space

and so we have that input as standard

on the SSP or Starter Series Units.

Ed: So there’s something for everybody?

Richard: Absolutely.

Ed: Now I do remember years ago that you were thefirst ones to come out with the prompter with the iPad.That’s been good for you?

Richard: That’s right, yes. Ever since the iPadlaunched, it’s been a very popular excuse for people tobuy an iPad to have an iPad prompter. So yes, moreand more people are using that for field use, for simplepieces to camera, it’s a very quick and an easy way toincorporate a prompter into your production.

Ed: And you obviously provide the mechanics, thescreen etc, but also the software?

Richard: Yes, we’ve got an Autocue app called

iAutocue. What’s unique about that product is that we

can generate a video output from the iPad. So a lot of

the iPad prompters that you’ll see on the market, they

use the iPad as the prompter display, mounted beneath

a piece of glass. We can do that of course, but what we

can also do with the video output is use the iPad in

place of the laptop software and controller that youwould typically have in a prompting set up, and use the

iPad to feed a traditional teleprompter monitor. It kind

of gives you the best of both worlds and minimises the

amount of kit that you need to take on location.

Ed: That’s always good. NZVN

Quinto – Marshall ElectronicsWith Pete Fullerton from Quinto we have Devan Cressfrom Marshall Electronics.

Ed: Since last NAB, Marshall haven’t been sitting ontheir bottoms?

Devan: No, not at all, we have some fantastic newproducts. To start with, Marshall has introduced a valueline. This is our LYNX series and it comes in twoformats. The first is the M-LYNX-702.This has a list cost US$695; it has a lotof feature sets on it.

Ed: So this is a 7 inch monitor?

Devan: This is a dual 7 inch monitoractually.

Ed: What, you get two for that price?

Devan: Two for the price of half!This is going to have multiple inputs on itas well – you’re going to havecomposite, component, HDMI, HD-SDI –you can also do audio de-embedding onthis, so there will be a headphone jack inthe front, or you have the ability to dothe audio de-embedding in the back.This particular product also has all thecontrols located in the front. You canturn it on and off, you have the fullmenu feature sets on this. This productis US$695. We also have anotherversion of the LYNX-702, the LYNX-702W. It has all those feature sets thatI mentioned but also a waveform

vectorscope as well as audio bars on it. So for theperson in the broadcast industry who needs thosefeature sets, we came out with a value priced monitorto do that.

Ed: And that’s US$3000 is it?

Devan: Not $3000 – divide it by three, so it’sUS$995. That’s going to be a dual 7 inch withwaveform vectorscope audio bars, with all those inputs

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on the back, all the controls on the front. It’s in ourvalue priced LYNX series and it’s been very popular.We’ve had these out since about January, we can’t keepthem in stock, it’s something that your readers shouldcertainly be looking at. So the LYNX-702 is availablenow and the low cost dual 7 with waveform and vectorthe LYNX-702W is available this July.

Ed: So what’s the downside – I mean obviously,you’re known for your high quality monitors, these havegot to be lesser quality in some way to come in at thatprice point, so what’s the difference between this andyour standard high spec’s monitors?

Devan: These aren’t going to be colour calibrated,so I would put these more towards confidence viewing.If this was intended as a colour grader, I don’t thinkthey’re the best monitors for that, but when you wantto see that a video signal is coming through, you wantto see the scopes on it, these are fantastic monitors forthat purpose. Now of course Marshall still has its higherend of monitors that are colour graded, that have muchmore accurate colour on them, but as you can see bylooking at this, the pictures are fantastic, they’ve donea great job on this, if you’re looking for a confidencemonitor, these are the monitors you should be lookingat.

Ed: And they’re still in a metal chassis?

Devan: Yes absolutely. Likewise, to the left, you’regoing to see a new miniature HD-SDI camera. This isour CB500. This camera has an HD-SDI output,requires 12 Volt. It also has multiple lenses that areavailable on it. So depending upon what yourapplication is, we have wide angle lenses, there areabout 15 of them that are available, those have a listcost of US$20 for the lenses and the camera is US$499,so it’s a very nice camera that gives an excellentpicture. So where are we placing these cameras?We’ve have applications in reality TV shows, we’ve hadapplications where staging and rental companies wantto put one of these on a drum set. They’re very small,about 1 inch by 1 inch and have an excellent picturequality. This has been another popular product for us.

Ed: I can attest to the picture quality, because I’mbeing recorded at the moment and I’ve never looked asgood!

Devan: You look absolutely fantastic.

Ed: Oh thank you sir.

Devan: A lot of people are using the GoProcameras these days. Now they do a fantastic job, butyou have to pull the SD card out of it. This is a livecamera, it has a fantastic picture quality that I wouldsay is built for the broadcast industry.

Ed: And it’s certainly a lot smaller?

Devan: Absolutely.

Pete: Devan, if we think about the Marshall rangein general, the one word that occurs to me is “options”– there’s a wide range of monitors that suit lots ofdifferent applications. If you’re after a high endmonitor, then we’ve got those covered; if you’re afterlow end confidence monitors, maybe a bit more budgetsensitive, we’ve got those covered as well, so it’s allabout options for Marshall. Marshall has a wide range,would that be correct?

Devan: It would. I like to categorise all of ourproduct into three categories. I think that thatsimplifies it for a lot of people. Marshall has always hadthe high end broadcast quality monitors – we still do.

Ed: And I can see one here, the OR-3210, Grade One.You can’t get higher than Grade One can you?

Devan: I don’t think so, there’s nothing higher thanthat. So our Orchid series is going to be our high endbroadcast centric, colour calibrated, Grade Onemonitors. They have waveform vectorscope audio bars,all the features that the broadcasters are looking for.We then have our MD, or Modular Design, series thatoffers a lot of flexibility. Instead of purchasing all thevideo inputs, you have the ability to tune the monitor towhat you need. There are modules on the back thatcan accept HD-SDI, DVI, HDMI. If you have a triplewide rack mount monitor, I can make one screen anHDMI screen and make another a composite screen andthen I have the flexibility to change that over time aswell, so I don’t have to continue to purchase as mysystems change, new monitors. I just have to buymodules for that. And then of course, as we alreadydescribed, we have the new LYNX series that’s going tobe our value priced monitors that obviously have afantastic picture quality as well.

Ed: And you’ll be having larger sizes than just 7 inch?

Devan: We’re starting out in the LYNX line with the7 inch but there are certainly possibilities that we’llcome out with others.

Ed: I would hope so. Now security cameras – you’vebeen known to produce quite a range of securitycameras, are you still doing that?

Devan: If we go around to the side over here,we’re going to see Marshall’s line of IP product. We doencoders, decoders as well as PTZ cameras and boxcameras. Now one of the nice feature sets of ourcameras is that they do 1080p 60 resolution. They’reusing two megapixel, up to 30X zoom, blocks so a lot ofthese are utilised as broadcast cameras for TV stations.If you want to get a picture of the traffic and thenbroadcast that on air, these cameras can do that.When you’re looking for a higher quality solution,Marshall certainly has that.

Something new to the cameras that we’re doing is our

577 series that you see here. It actually has a very

minimal delay on the HD-SDI output because of a new

technology where we’re pulling that HD-SDI directly off

the block. So when delay is an issue which can happen

with a lot of what are termed “security cameras”,

Marshall has solved that to make it more of a broadcast

centric product. You’ll also see here our encoders /

decoders. New at the show is our VS-104 3GHD-SDI.

This is going to have the availability to do 1080p 60

video as well as embedded audio, so there will be no lip

sync correct issues – everything goes over one HD-SDI

or HDMI cable and we do that with the VS-104. These

have the availability to do HD-SDI, HDMI as well as

composite video.

Ed: And of course it will take a hood, so you can workit in bright sunlight?

Devan: Sure, absolutely, and at 600 nits it’s stillgoing to be able to go out in the sunlight. All MarshallElectronic products are available through QuintoCommunications (NZ) Ltd email [email protected] orcontact Pete Fullerton on 09 486 1204 for moreinformation. NZVN

Pete: And these tie in directly with what JVC aredoing. JVC are making streaming cameras. If you wantto know what you use to receive the stream, to codethe stream and output the signals in HD-SDI or SDI,these are the units.

Devan: Further product that we have includessome of our 2K/4K monitors.

Ed: A 4K monitor?

Devan: Yes, we now have some 4K monitors. Sowhat you’re going to be looking at is our QVW series.We make these in multiple sizes – we have them in 17,24 as well as 27 inch in size. These are going to beable to take four 3GHD-SDI signals. These are alldivided into quadrants.

Basically, what we’re doing is scaling each of those tothe resolution of the monitor. One of the higherresolution monitors we have is the QVW-2710. This isgoing to have a resolution of 2560x1440. You can takeyour 4K 4096 content and you can view it on thismonitor. It comes at the very economical price ofaround US$6000 to be able to view 4K. You can seethe picture and it looks absolutely excellent. Thisparticular monitor is going to be true 4K, so this willaccept 4096 resolution – it’s our V-4K-3110. Sametechnology as I was describing in the QVW – we’regoing to accept four 3GHD-SDI signals; each of thequadrants that we have is going to have 1080p 60resolution, that we seamlessly stitch together. This is avery bright monitor, it has an 800 nit panel, it has afantastic picture quality on it.

Ed: It sure does. That’s clever technology … you’reactually taking four smaller monitors and stitching themtogether into one big one?

Devan: That would be correct. That is currentlythe standard if you’re looking at the Sony F55s or theCanon cameras that have the native 4K on them,they’re utilising four 3GHD-SDI outputs and each one ofthose is going to be carrying approximately a 1080p 60signal and that is how you’re able to put together the4K image. The difficulty of it is actually stitching it alltogether seamlessly and our engineers have done afantastic job at that.

Ed: They sure have – I can’t see the lines at all. Youwouldn’t class this as a Grade One monitor though?

Devan: This would be a Grade One monitor,absolutely. So this is a colour calibrated monitor; thiswould be utilised for those people who are shooting 4Kcontent and the director who needed to be able to do aframe-out and see the accurate colours of it.

Ed: Wow – and would this one be 800 nits as well?

Devan: This is an 800 nit panel, yes that’s correct.

Ed: Which is going to be very good for outsideviewing?

Devan: Outside viewing a very,very bright panel, absolutely. Othernew products that we have – we’regoing to be in our camera-top side.Marshall just came out with theindustry’s first 7 inch, full resolution,1920x1080 camera-top monitor. Thiscomes from our MD series, so it’s avery flexible design where you canhave multiple modules to put indifferent signals. It comes nativelywith HDMI and then you can put HD-SDI input modules on it; it’s going tocome with false colour, waveform, apeaking filter, but really the newtechnology is that we’ve been able to

find panels in this particular size, our most popularcamera-top at 7 inches, that are 1920x1080 resolution.So for the high end market that needs no scaling, thisparticular monitor can fit those needs.

Ed: And again, 800 nits?

Devan: This particular panel is going to be less.This is great for outdoors, it’s not going to be 800 nits –I believe this one’s in the 600, I don’t know the exactspecification on it.

PLS – Kino FloFor PLS, we are at Kino Flo and we are talking withFrieder Hochheim.

the result of that research. So we now actuallyunderstand what the colour points are. It’s not CRI.CRI is strictly the eye’s perception of light, which is

fabulous for your eye, but ask anymanufacturer are their cameras set oneye response – hell, no. So I think a CRImeter is a great thing if you’re trying tocompare sources, trying to understandthe differences, but as a definitive meterto tell you how it will perform, as animaging link, the CRI meter will fallshort, because it’s merely for opticalcomparison.

Ed: So again, how do you adjust thecolour of an LED?

Frieder: Well it’s very simple. We’redealing with a warm tone and a daylighttone and we’re blending the two.

Ed: Okay, so there are two differentLEDs in there …?

Frieder: Yes, and they’re fullspectrum in each of their elements.There’s no RGB, none of that.

Ed: That all makes sense – and whatI’ve noticed makes the difference withyour panels is this honeycomb?

Frieder: Well the honeycomb is essentially there tocollimate the light. We’re dealing with a broad softsource. If we try to direct it and collimate it somewhatmore, I can’t do that with a barn door. If I put a barndoor on this and it’s a soft source, if I try to close thebarn doors, it essentially acts as a douser – it literallydims the light; whereas if I put a honeycomb on it, nowit actually channels the light and I can dictate thedegree. So we have a 90 degree louvre, a 60 degreelouvre; on some instruments we actually even feature a45 degree louvre, and what it does, is it just narrowsthat beam down so that you have a nice soft edgedspot.

Ed: Okay, so that’s the Celeb series, what else haveyou done?

Frieder: The classic Kino Flo … our Kino Flo 4Bank,which is a very mature product, it’s been around nowfor 27 years. We’ve developed some new electronicsfor it, so now the 4Bank ballast is operating onuniversal voltage. Anywhere from 90-240 Volt is power

Frieder: Last year we introduced the Celeb 200which was a Kelvin variable LED fixture soft light. Wealso gave a sneak preview of the Celeb 400 at the time,which was a yoke mounted fixture. The Celeb 400 isnow showcased at the show here as a centre mount, soit’s a location lighting instrument, it allows orientationeither vertically or horizontally. It’s also got universalvoltage input 90-240, colour variable between 2700 and5500. It’s DC operable on 24 Volt DC; as well as DMX.So you basically have the entire range of control thatyou would expect of an instrument like that.

Ed: Now there are many other lights that adjust theircolour temperature by either switching LEDs so theyhave a different LED that lights up for that, or you put afilter in front of it. How do you get a colour range?

Frieder: In the Celeb 400, we have approximately1800 LEDs in there. Even before we went into thewhole LED product range, it was important for us tounderstand the new technologies. Electronic cinema isnot film, yet electronic cinema is the new film stock. Soeach camera, really, you have to view itas a new film stock. Even though I siton the Technology Committee at theAmerican Society of Cinematographers,the data that we want as a lightingcompany, meaning the spectral responsecurve of the camera, is something that isnot shared with any manufacturer. It isnot public information. Now in the filmdays, Kodak, Fuji would share thatinformation with us readily. As amanufacturer, we would get an Excelspreadsheet and we knew exactly whatthe film was capable of seeing andrecording and how it was recording it.Now, with electronic cinema, that is datathat’s just not available. So we’veactually gone ahead and analysed thecameras, modelled them and essentiallyreversed out their spectral responsecurves, and the Celeb line of product is

Frieder from Kino Flo.

Phone: 09 302 4100 Email: [email protected] www.kelpls.co.nz

LED equivalent of the famous 4 ft. 4Bank

CRI of 95 (very high)

2700 to 5500 kelvin

Full range dimming (no flicker)

Silent Operation

Can be powered by 24V DC

Honeycomb Louvre, Gel Frame, Stand or Grid mounts available

The classic 4 ft. 4Bank fitting is

Still available as the Tegra

Kino Flo Celeb 200 & Celeb 400 – 2ft. & 4ft. LED’s

On-Board Power & Dimming

Individual lamp select

Uses Kino True Match lamps

DMX control & Barndoors

factor corrected, resulting in a power saving of half asmuch as it’s put out. So basically we’ve cut our powerconsumption in half on what was already an energysaving product. This in comparison to LEDs is far moreenergy efficient, let’s say, than most LEDs of this size,this nature, that put out this kind of light. Again, we’retalking about a soft quality of light, high colourrendering … try and compare that to an LED source,short of our own Celeb 400s, you’d be hard pressed todo a comparison. So those are our two new things … Idon’t know if you saw the Tegra last year. We’ve madea few little cosmetic changes on that, but essentially it’slike a Diva light, but it’s a 4 foot 4Bank, universalvoltage, dimming, DMX, also individual lamp switchingon the head. It’s a great cosmetic light for portraiture,any kind of interview situations where you want to havenice broad soft wrap around. It’s works as a beautifulsoft key.

Ed: Has the BarFly been popular?

Frieder: The BarFly’s proven to be very popular.We’ve outfitted entire studios with those now.

It’s a nice shallow profile, the colour’s great on it.Again, you know, it’s another soft light tool.

Ed: Well that’s what Kino Flo’s all about isn’t it?

Frieder: We’re all about soft light.

We haven’t done a point source yet, but I think for usit’s important to get the colour right, get the spectrumright, understanding where this technology shift isgoing.

We’ve been on silver halides for the last 115-odd years,now we’re going into the wild world of zeros and onesand hard drives, you know, it’s no more celluloid. Soit’s a new game entirely and we need to stay relevant tothat industry. NZVN

PLS – LowelWe are at Lowel lighting for PLS and wehave Eric Druker from Lowel and BrettSmith from Tiffen Australia.

Ed: Eric, Lowel lighting has beenaround a long, long time – but stilldeveloping?

Eric: Absolutely. We’ve been aroundsince 1959, that’s when Ross created thefirst fixture that we had. We’ve alwaystried to innovate since then, but Lowel’sforte has always been with reallylightweight, also very rugged, durable,portable kits used on location. As smallas possible, as easy to carry as possibleand we’re carrying on with that conceptwith some new fixtures that we’redeveloping more and more with LEDtechnology.

Ed: Now this little handgun here, I’mintrigued. We saw it last year when ithad just come out, but it’s still here andyou’ve got some new versions of it?

Eric: Well new versions and differentversions too. The first one that we werejust talking about was the GL-1 which was reallydesigned for the high end wedding photographer andpeople shooting stills. So if you’re in a big dancehall,you can give the light to an assistant, just get a little bitof light on somebody’s face, get some separations fromthe background. You can also, very selectively, lightother things within the dancehall, you can paint withlight with it … but the key to it was the efficiency andthe quality of the colour, also the focus mechanism. Wehad something which gave you a really gorgeous qualityof light, very even beam, very high colour renderingand extremely efficient. Now if we take that light,which my youthful assistant has in his hand, and heaimed it up at the ceiling of the Convention Centre andspotted it down … how many metres is that, I can stillsee it. So is that enough to work with at that distance?Maybe, maybe not. If you just want to get a little bit oflight on somebody’s face, you can.

Ed: That’s what it’s all about these days with moderncameras – they’re so low light, it’s just that little spot,that little lift that makes the difference?

Eric: Exactly true. You just want to catch the light insomebody’s eyes, get some separations from thebackground, because if you’re over-lighting, then you’reforced to stop down, your background goes dark and

you can’t see anything. So you don’t want tooverpower your background. But we took thattechnology, in the handheld form with a self-containedbattery, and we’ve come up with a new fixture calledthe Power Pro LED.

The engine is essentially the same, the focusmechanism is essentially the same, but this is reallygoing to get us back to what Lowel’s been known for,because these are lights we can take and put into a kitcase. We’ve got a fixture that’s drawing about 17.6Watt. I can find several tungsten halogen fixtures thatare drawing 300 Watt that this is giving us more lightthan, in full spot, so extremely efficient. Again, qualityof colour is excellent.

We have two different versions – there’s either adaylight balance version or a tungsten balance version,one or the other. But here are two, and now we’regetting back into more production oriented accessories,so there’ll be a bracket which if anybody’s used to allLowel light, you get that familiar sort of keyhole shape,so you could take an umbrella and put it in there; youcould use a gel frame if you wanted to add colour,maybe diffuse it a bit more. But here again, the samesituation where we could spot to flood by moving thefront back and forth, get a lot of control out of the

Eric from Lowel.

Phone: 09 302 4100 Email: [email protected] www.kelpls.co.nz www.kelpls.co.nz

Designed for Wedding and Event Lighting

Dimming from 5.0-100%. 8:1 spot-to-flood ratio

1 hand operation with locking trigger

Stand on flat surface or use 1/4"-20 tripod mount

Photo-quality 3,000K can be cooled to 5,300K with optional 82mm Lens

Perfect for high ISO cameras in low light shoots

Rechargeable DC batteries / AC Power

Quiet diaphragm cooling

Above photo taken by Richard Leonard with the Gl-1 LED at Muriwai Beach, NZ

LED Lights from...

GL-1 Power LED

Lowel Blender 5000K Daylight & 3000K Tungsten

Rotary dimmer /mixing controls

Compact size 4” x 3” x 3” Fits on a pistol grip or light stand

AC, 12V, Battery Sleds

Supplied with a set of front diffusers

output and then if we ever did want to use it similar tothe way the other one was described, we can attach ahandle onto the bottom, use it like an old schoolSungun and then run it off of DC as well. We have ourown battery holders for it, keyed up so you can put astrap onto it, you can carry it over your shoulder, youcould leave it at the base of a stand if you wanted to …

Ed: It’s a very versatile light?

Eric: Absolutely and the kick on top of all that is theprice. So we’re coming in at about US$599.

Ed: Excellent. Now the panels?

Eric: Right. Well we’ve been workingwith a series of studio fixtures forapproximately three years now. We’vehad a tremendous amount of success – Iknow Australian Broadcasting has a hugenumber, maybe 90 of them, but themain draw on these has been, again, thequality of colour, the construction, easeof repair if anything ever happens, andoutput. So if we’re looking at this one,which is a new version, this is called thePrime Location LED; same type of LEDsand you can see from looking at thesethat it looks like daylight. You know, wecan talk about CRI, we can talk aboutcolour rendering all day, and a lot ofother companies have done things tosort of juggle the numbers a little bit;we’re very solid and I wouldn’t want tobet on this, but what we alwaysrecommend to anybody is take the light,stick somebody down in a chair, turn on

the camera and shoot a test. When you look at skintones, when you look at all the other colours on yourset, it’s the best way to judge.

Every time somebody has done that with one of theseor with one of our studio lights, the results have beentremendous.

So this is available in either daylight balance ortungsten balance, and you can see the quality of colouragain, it looks like tungsten, it looks like daylight.

Ed: And it’s a good solid frame – what do you put inthe slot at the front?

Eric: You can drop a gel frame into it; we’re going tohave a softbox; there’ll also be barn doors eventually.They’re mostly just to contain the spill a little bit,because again, it is a big soft source and if you want tohang additional diffusion in front of it, you can increasethe size of the source and make it bigger. A couple ofthings that are really nice about this one, like you say,all metal. So for rental houses especially, you gotsomething, you could just take a bunch of these – herein the States we just throw a bunch of lights into ahamper, wheel it out to the truck, you’re off.

Ed: I understand the grips in the States are prettybrutal with gear?

Eric: I don’t know what to say about that actually.

Ed: You’re an ex-grip are you?

Eric: Well, on behalf of my brethren …

Ed: Oh it’s a union thing is it … and this looks asthough it’s mains powered or battery?

Eric: It is exactly, and we’ll have either the V-Lock orthe Anton Bauer in the back and just a simple switch onthe back will let you go from one to the next. Now theother thing, in addition to the ruggedness and quality ofoutput, the amount of light that’s coming out of it also,which if you compared it to a lot of other 1x1 panels,you’re probably getting 1½-2 times more light,depending on who we’re talking about. The final thingis that we have an IP rating of 65 for these. So youcould use those outside in virtually any weatherconditions. You can’t immerse it in water, but if you’reoutside, even in the driving rain, you have no problemby using it.

Ed: You don’t have to put a cover over it?

Eric: You don’t have to put a cover over it. The onlything we have to address is the battery itself may notbe done to that spec, so that might take some sort ofrain-hat, but other than that, the fixture itself –hurricane, you’re fine!

Ed: That’s a very valuable thing to have, especiallywith Auckland weather. Now I understand this has adiffusion filter on it?

Eric: Well what we have in the front – this is actuallynew. What we have on some of the other fixtures ( andI’m assuming this is going to do the same thing ) wellthis looks like it’s just going to soften up the edges alittle bit. Again we’re dealing with a multiple pointsource fixture so that you can sometimes run the risk ofgetting multiple shadows; with this, it will even that outa little bit, just merge them all into one source a littlebit more, than if it were bare. You’re going to cut downon some of the shadows, you’re going to cut down oncolour fringing and you’re not going to have to addressthat problem any other way.

Ed: Brett, do you want to tell us about the kits?

Brett: We’ve got our traditional pro light tungstenlight, which has high light output, focusable, barn door-able, with our new Lowel Blender LED. So it gives youa combination of the high output of tungsten, butyou’ve also got the low voltage, low power consumptionof LED in a single kit. It keeps the price down insteadof a full LED kit; so it gives you the best of both worldsand we’ve always made tungsten in that beautiful Lowellight characteristic. What we do with the Blender is weput a light that has a similar characteristic, whereasyou’ll often get an LED with a tungsten, and you caninstantly see the difference, no matter whether they’recalled tungsten or daylight. We’ve got kits that blendboth technologies into the one kit; they’re compact asLowel always is, but they’re like uber-compact, so thisis a sling over your shoulder and you can still do a three-point production with a shoulder kit.

Eric: One of the most popular kits that we’ve had inthe States of that series consists of two of the Blenderlights, the LED fixtures that are colour changing andalso one of our 300 Watt Rifa lights which, if anybody’snot familiar with it, it sort of pops open like anumbrella, but it’s its own self-contained softlight. Itgives you this gorgeous quality of light, just wrapsaround, fills in its own shadows, great on people’sfaces, great on products, so the whole kit gives you theability to key with the big soft source, or key with thehard source, depending on what you want to do; so Ihave two more lights, one that you can throw ontosomebody as a hair light or maybe something else youcould put onto the background, but especially with theBlenders, since you can do bi-colour and you can mix,you can walk into almost any environment of ambientlight and just by eye balance sort things out so you canshoot in a room. Rifa’s tungsten, but it also comes witha couple of sheets of blue gel CTB so that way you canbalance to that first and then balance your Blenders tothat if you wanted to.

Ed: And again, it just reinforces the idea that lightingthese days is not about throwing lots of light on, it’sabout the look that you get by correct lighting?

Eric: Absolutely. I mean, back years ago, we neededhuge volumes of light, a huge amount of Watts. Nowwe still need a quantity of fixtures to create a goodthree-dimensional image, but we don’t need a hugevolume of output any longer.

Ed: And this little kit is the one bag, and it comeswith the stands as well?

Eric: Right – it’s about the size of a trumpet casesomebody once said to me. NZVN

Brett with Lowel kit.

NZVN

Sennheiser – NAB 2014We are at the Sennheiser stand and wehave James Waldron from SennheiserANZ.

Ed: James, you look after and comeover to New Zealand every now and againdon’t you?

James: I do, we’ll be there in May, todo some training on wirelessmicrophones.

Ed: Fantastic, we’ll report on that in anupcoming issue. But we’re here now andI guess we’re looking at microphones?

James: We’re looking at microphones– the MK4 is a Sennheiser cardioidmicrophone. It’s our first side addressmicrophone, it’s been out for about a yearnow; it’s a 1 inch diaphragm truecondenser mic. It’s been really wellreceived in the market. Later this year,we’ll introduce the MK8 which is a dualdiaphragm design, so it’s switchable, fivepatterns – the first time that Sennheiserhas produced a microphone like this at allat this kind of price point.

Ed: And the value of this type of mic, which obviouslyhas a particular direction you have to hold it in whenyou’re recording, as opposed to one of those circularones?

James: Yes, well it’s a side address microphonedesigned for studio voice work.

Ed: Oh, this isn’t one you carry around? You’respeaking to a video person here.

James: I’m sure you need to get voiceovers fromtime to time Grant?

Ed: Yeah, okay, I get called a lot for that. So …?

James: It’s a studio mic for voice work, for singers,for voice – so for voiceovers and those kinds of things.It’s also used a lot for instruments – electric guitars,overheads around a drum kit, brass, all of those things..So to have a switchable pattern version of this mic willbe very popular.

Ed: Well it’s already popular by the look of it – thisMark II has a “Pro Sound Best of Show” label?

James: It does, it’s nice to see. Let’s go over andhave a look at the Esfera which will be a lot of interestto people recording sounds outside.

Ed: I think we’ve seen this before; this is this littlestereo mic arrangement isn’t it?

James: I doubt you have seen this before Grant –this is the first time it has been shown publicly Ibelieve. Esfera is a microphone system which consistsof two main elements, a stereo pair of microphones forrecording out in the field, and a signal processor that isable to upmix that stereo signal from the microphonesup to 5.1. You can take this stereo pair of mics into thefield, bring the signals back to your OB truck or to yourrecording as a stereo pair and that signal can then befed into the Esfera Upmixing processor to deliver you a5.1 surround sound output, from this stereo pair ofmicrophones. The mics are a specially selected pair ofMKH 8040 cardioid condenser microphones, selected inthe factory for really fine accuracy between the twomics in terms of their directional pattern and their off-axis response; and by selecting them very carefully, thebox is able to map or interpret the sound field to deliver

you 5.1. It works very, very well. So it takes a 2channel input from the microphones, or from arecording from those microphones, and then delivers5.1 output in the form of three AES stereo signals.

Ed: So you don’t actually have to put it through the

box live … you can record it on separate channels and

then process it?

James: Correct. So you could take your little 2

channel mic arrangement, plug it into your zoom

recorder or something like that onsite and then post-

produce it later on to deliver you your 5.1. For location

sound recording for atmospheres for example, or forsports broadcasting, it’s a fabulous system.

Ed: Right, we’ve moved on and what are we looking

at now?

James: We’re looking at Sennheiser’s pinnacleWireless Microphone system, the D9000 which is a fullydigital wireless microphone system – there’s no datacompression, no audio compression either. So it’s alinear PCM wireless microphone. If we start at thereceiver rack, there are eight receiver cards in thereceiver chassis, fed from a single pair of antennasockets. The antennas that go with the system areintelligent; they have a booster on the antenna itself,with eight separate very selective 24 megahertz widefilters. When you turn the system on, it communicateswith the antenna, the antenna sends a test signal to thereceiver, the receiver knows what to expect andcalibrates its input gain to compensate for the antennacable loss. You always have exactly the right RF levelgoing into the receiver, no chance of overload, whichcan be a problem. There are “loop-outs” on thereceiver so you can loop three of the racks together for24 channels from one pair of antennae. While we’re onthe back panel, you have analogue and digital audiooutput capabilities and you can mix and match thoseoutput modules when you order your system. If westart with the digital one, there are eight XLRconnectors there, you can configure those as eightmono outputs or as two sets of four stereo pairs. Soyou can configure that to give you two separate sets ofeight AES outputs. And then there’s the D-Subconnector which gives you another set of digital audio

James says “Not me, it’s the mic!”

D9000 front.

outputs. It basically does your mic split for you at theradio mic rack. The analogue output module istransformer balanced analogue out on eight XLRs and asecond set on another 25 pin D-type connectors – thereis a separate set of output transformers for those, sothey’re completely isolated; again, this is your mic split.

There’s a blank spot here and it’s been announced thisweek that there will be a Dante digital audio cardavailable to fit in there; and then the last card here isyour networking card. That can be your word clockmaster if you want it to be, it’s very stable, veryaccurate; or it can slave to an external word clock if youwish as well. There’s Ethernet control of the system, sothere’s a nice GUI; it alsointerfaces well with theWireless System Managersoftware. The power supplyis a medical grade powersupply, so it is highlyreliable for the long-term.From the receiver frontyou’ll see it has a nice largecolour LCD display, somebuttons across the bottomwhich relate to the 8channels or the 8 frequencybands available and themenu system is driventhrough the jog dial wheel.The receiver is able to tunefrom 470 MHz up to 798MHz, so wherever you go inthe world, it doesn’t matter,one receiver does the job for D9000 back.

you. The antennas have a tuning range of 8 x 24 MHz.

It’s just a bit more than half of the switching bandwidthof the receiver. So when you come to a new venue,frequency scan is where you start, then you can adjustyour output levels, you can set your word clock rate,you can see what your RF levels are there, and there’sthe ability to load configurations into the system thatyou might have saved from previous jobs, or to savethe configuration where you are now. It has two modesof operation; one with no data compression at all, andthe other which has some data compression to help giveyou even greater reception reliability over longerdistances because the bit rate is lower.

Ed: So if you chose a channel that somebody else wasusing, what would happen?

James: You won’t get any audio – it will mute.

Ed: Oh okay, so you can’t listen in on somebodyelse’s?

James: Well no, because it’s digital, so it can’tdecode an FM signal.

Ed: So it just sees its receiving an FM signal, can’t doanything with it and so it blocks it for you?

James: Yes, there’s no digitally modulated signalavailable, so there’s no output.

So from there you can then manually choose whereyou’re going to tune your frequencies and you can justdial them in to the quieter parts of the spectrum and offyou go. It’s really nice. This is operating it from thefront panel; there’s a really nice control systemavailable for it as well, which also does all yourfrequency calculations.

Ed: What transmitters have you here?

James: In handheld transmitters, we have a rangeof new interchangeable capsules with the standard 2000series fittings. There’s also a range of Neumanncapsules available to go on the handheld transmittertoo.

The Sennheiser condenser capsules have a newsuspension built-in – there’s a new suspension for thecapsules to minimise handling noise, so the patentedsnowflake suspension here at the top and at the bottomgives you another 10dB of isolation of handling noise,compared to the normal sort of capsule mounts. It’sjust remarkable. This is developed by Sennheiser inGermany and they hold some patents on that now. Thebattery pack is lithium ion, so it’s able to give you a realreadout of the remaining time in hours and minutes;

more on page 34

Q: I hear that there are changes taking place that will

affect users of radio microphones?

Yes, anyone who currently operates a radio microphone inthe 698-806 MHz frequency range will need to make somechanges before March 2015.

This is because, from 11 March 2015, radio microphones willonly be permitted to operate in the frequency ranges 502-606 MHz and 622-698 MHz.

Q: Why are these changes taking place?

Radio microphones operate within the frequencies allocatedprimarily for television broadcasting. They utilise frequencieswhich are not being used in a particular area (that is ‘gaps’ inthe television usage). Previously, the entire 510-806 MHzfrequency range was allocated for television broadcastingservices. Now that analogue television has been switchedoff, the 698–806 MHz frequency range (the 700 MHz band)is no longer required for television as the new digital servicesuse less spectrum.

As a result, the 700 MHz band has been allocated for nextgeneration mobile broadband such as fourth generation (4G)cellular. While radio microphones were compatible with thetelevision services that previously utilised the 700 MHz band,they are not compatible with the new 4G cellular services.This is because 4G cellular services don’t leave the same‘gaps’ in the spectrum and interference will be more likely.

When the General User Spectrum Licence expires on 11March 2015, it will no longer be permitted to operate radiomicrophones in the 700 MHz band.

Q: What frequencies can radio microphones use in the

future?

From 11 March 2015, radio microphones must operate

within the frequency ranges, 502-606 MHz and 622-698

MHz.

The specific frequencies available for radio microphones inany particular area will depend on the frequencies used bytelevision in that area. Radio microphone suppliers shouldbe able to provide advice on the most suitable frequency

range for specific devices, depending on where they will beused.

From time to time, changes to digital television services mayaffect the frequencies that can be used by radiomicrophones in a particular area. We therefore recommendthat users purchase radio microphones capable of beingtuned to different frequencies rather than single frequencydevices.

The 174-230 MHz band remains available for radiomicrophone users under General User Spectrum Licence202568. There are also other frequency ranges that may besuitable for use under the General User Radio Licences forShort Range Devices (GURL-SRD). However, many of thesefrequency ranges are shared with other users.

Q: So how can people prepare for these changes?

Users of radio microphones need to check to see if theirexisting radio microphones can be retuned to a permittedfrequency range (these being 502-606 MHz and 622-698MHz). If radio microphones cannot be retuned then userswill need to purchase new equipment.

Q: What do radio microphone users need to know when

purchasing new equipment?

It is recommended that new equipment is flexible, meaningthat it can be used on the widest possible frequency range. Itmust not operate in the 606-622 MHz or 698-806 MHzfrequency range.

Q: When is the best time to replace equipment?

If a radio microphone cannot be retuned then new equipmentwill need to be purchased before 11 March 2015. However,we would recommend that new equipment is purchased assoon as is practicable.

Q: What happens if a radio microphone user continuesto use their radio microphone in the frequency range

698-806 MHz after 11 March 2015?

If radio microphones continue to be operated in a non-permitted frequency after 11 March 2015 compliance actionmay be taken against the user.

Q: How will the changes affect suppliers of radio

microphones?

Sale or supply of devices that operate in the 700 MHz bandis no longer permitted (this took effect on 1 January 2014).Suppliers have been provided with brochures they can handout to their radio microphone customers to ensure they areaware of, and prepared for, the changes.

Q: Why is the frequency range 606-622 MHz

unavailable?

The 606–622 MHz frequency range is allocated for the Māori Television Service. The management rights for thisfrequency range are controlled by Te Putahi Paoho. Thismeans that we do not have the ability to grant a general userlicence (or other licences) relating to these frequencies.

Q: How can radio microphone users confirm what

frequency their radio microphone is operating on?

502 606 622 698 806

AvailableNot

availableAvailable Not permitted from 11 March 2015

Changes to Radio MicrophoneUsage in New Zealand

‘Q & A’ with Len Starling from

Radio Spectrum Management *

The first place to check is the radio microphone receiver;look for markings that indicate the frequency it operates on.If there are no markings on the receiver, then have a lookthrough the user manual. If frequency information can’t befound in either of those places, then contact the supplier orretailer.

Q: Is there any further information available on these

changes?

For further information visit: www.retune.co.nz Factsheetson the changes can be downloaded from the website, whichalso features a comprehensive list of questions and answersto help users and suppliers prepare for the changes.

A brochure with information on the changes can bedownloaded from www.retune.co.nz or please email

[email protected] and a brochure can be sent to you.

If you would like a more detailed overview of the usage ofthe digital television channels a chart with this information isavailable on our website (www.rsm.govt.nz).

Q: If new equipment is purchased, what can be done

with the old equipment?

It is worth contacting the supplier to find out whether they willbe offering a trade-in deal. If this is not the case there is a list

of e-recyclers available on www.retune.co.nz

* Radio Spectrum Management (RSM) is responsible for

efficiently and effectively managing the radio spectrum,including allocating rights for the use of the spectrum, andenforcing compliance with the requirements that protect it as acontinuing resource.

In addition RSM is responsible for providing policy advice to thegovernment on spectrum issues, and administering theallocation of any spectrum the government decides to makeavailable as tradable property rights.

Major points and key dates

Radio microphones (including in-ear pieces) will notbe permitted to operate within the frequency range698-806 MHz from 11 March 2015.

It is not permitted to sell or supply radio microphones

that operate in the 698-806 MHz frequency range(this came into effect on 1 January 2014).

Users of radio microphones must either retune theirexisting radio microphone to a permitted frequencyor, if they are unable to do this, replace their existingequipment with equipment that can be operatedwithin the permitted frequencies.

Permitted frequency ranges are 502-606 MHz and622-698 MHz.

The primary use of the 698-806 MHz band ischanging from analogue television transmission to 4Gmobile network technology.

Radio microphone users are a secondary user in the

spectrum and therefore have to work around theprimary user (digital television), utilising unusedchannels and spaces in the spectrum.

When replacing equipment it is recommended thatequipment that can be used on the widest possiblefrequency range is purchased, in order to workaround television and other users.

This flexibility is important as the introduction ofdigital television, combined with the possibility of agradual increase in television channels, will affect thefrequencies available in the future.

Those operating a radio microphone at a non-permitted frequency from 11 March 2015 may facecompliance action.

Sennheiser – RycoteFor Sennheiser, we are at Rycote withSimon Davies.

Ed: Now Simon, one can’t go past thestand without noticing that your fluffiesare no longer fluffy?

Simon: Yes, we’ve been developinga few new things. This is the firstgeneration that will see the newmaterial, 3D Tex. You’ll see it on a lot ofproducts nowadays, like running shoes,even on car seats and things like that.That’s where the similarity stops withours. We’ve developed this materialspecifically to be acoustically transparentbut, at the same time, gainingperformance that you would normallyexpect from a fur windscreen. So thismaterial is very robust, very transparentand offers great wind protection. It’s thefirst of a few more products to come.

standard you’ll get about five hours out of a batterypack in a handheld. You can also have a battery carrierto use standard alkaline double A’s if you wish.

Ed: And there’s a belt pack?

James: There is also a belt pack. When you put

the new battery in, it powers on automatically and it

boots up really, really quickly, it’s ready to go. That’s

quick. The body pack has the standard LEMO connector

as the mic input that we’ve been using for years and

years and years. There are a range of different mics

available and also line input cables and instrument

cables are available for it as well, so you can plug in an

electric guitar and things like that. Again, it’s a lithium

ion battery pack which will plug into a charger, the

same recharger.

Ed: And with that belt pack, can you get a receiver

just for a single unit?

James: No, there’s no single receiver at this point

in time.

Ed: Okay, so in the single units there’s nothing new,

there’s nothing new in the shotguns?

James: No, there’s no new shotguns from

Sennheiser at this point in time. Well obviously the

8060 continues on.

Ed: It’s all good stuff anyway?

James: It’s all lovely product, there’s no need to

change any of that. What I am keen to show you

though is the Neumann TLM 107 which is a brand new

model from Neumann – a large diaphragm condenser

microphone in the true Neumann tradition. As I said,

brand new electronics and this is the first time that they

have had a five pattern switchable Neumann

microphone at this particular price point. In New

Zealand, the price point is NZD$2,499 retail, which is

the first time that Neumann’s been anywhere near that

price point for a switchable pattern mic.

Ed: So how does it compare with the Sennheiser one

you’ve just shown us?

James: Well it’s a completely different microphone,

there’s no common components whatsoever.

Ed: No, no, no, but in terms of the sound?

James: W e l l

it has the tradit-

ional Neumann

sound – I mean,

sound is a very

difficult thing to …

Ed: Well I’m

sure the audiopeople under-

stand that, so to

me it looks like,

well they’re both

sort of silver, but

one’s Neumann

and one’s Senn-

heiser, you sellthem both, so

there is actually a

perceivable differ-

ence to the

sound?

James: Oh

there’s a perceiv-

able difference in

the sound cer-tainly. This has

the more tradit-

ional Neumann

classic sound of

the classic micro-

phones ; t he

Sennheiser is …

how do I describe the Sennheiser? It’s probably a little

brighter, a little …

Ed: And different people have different interests andreally, to know which one you want, you’ve got to listento them both?

James: You need to have a listen to them both anddecide what you’d like, that’s right. I’m sure Dan Rowein our Auckland office will be able to assist in thatprocess. The more time that we spend talking to peopleabout wireless microphones, the more we realise thereis for people to learn, and from our point of view aneducated customer is a much better customer to have.

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Ed: And if you dropped it in the mud it’s going toclean easier than fur?

Simon: Exactly, yes. Whereas with fur, you get itwet, you get it dirty, it’s starts matting and you get HFloss or something like that, but with the Super-Softie ifit gets wet you just shake it off; if it gets dirty you justrinse it off and you’re good to go.

Ed: And it comes in a number of shapes and sizes?

Simon: At the moment we’ve got three lengths tomatch the most popular microphones, 12cm, 15cm and18cm. That relates to the bore length, so it coversmost popular microphones like the Sennheisers, RØDEs,AKGs and brands like that. There will be more tofollow, but it’s the shape that really counts with thematerial, so we just want to launch this as the premiumsoftie. We’re keeping the original softie, it’s going tobecome the classic, but this is coming in as the top ofthe line softie product we do at the moment.

Ed: Right, and in the microphone support area – Ican’t see anything but Lyres on your stand?

whether it’s a transducer that’s going and recordingsound or whether it’s actually going in someone’s gearor on top of someone’s gear, that’s what they’re reallyinterested in, and the actual isolation of handling noiseor wind noise to us is exciting – we love that sort ofstuff; to them it’s a pain in the what’s a name.

That’s our main focus. We know what we’re good at,we turn down stuff as well, so if jobs come in that wejust don’t feel that we’re the right people, we’ll be ashonest as we can be and say we’re engineers, we dohandling noise and wind noise, there’s someone elsebetter for other sorts of things. Yes, it’s great to seethe stuff out there, but we’re still the same people –we’re tucked away in a nice part of the UK, we’ve gotengineers and designers who love what they do. Thegreat part about our product is that there’s a solutionfor someone who has had a problem and it’s recognisedstraightaway. It’s not complicated what we do, but itcomes across as simple because we work so hard andwe test in the real sense. Rather than putting it in sortof like a weird environment to test for sweat oranything like that, we’ll hang it from a tree in Canadaand hang it from a tree in a hot place in France and itstays there for 1 month, 2 months something like that,and it’s real time testing. That’s what we enjoy.

Ed: And I see you haven’t given up on your fluffies –you’ve got two particularly bright models here. Haveyou had any takers?

Simon: We started earlier on in the year with acouple of skunks and badgers and various things likethat, and then we got a couple of requests for the flags.I have to say the sales guys are shaking in their bootsthat anyone would actually want to buy them. Theytake about five times as long to make, but it’s nice andit’s a talking point as well.

The fur has been around since 1985 and the animalones that we’re doing at the moment, it’s ironic becausewhen they first tried to convince people to take the fur,we actually had to make little fur dogs to convincepeople. They were gimmick giveaway fur dogs and wesold more of the dogs than we did of the windjammerswhen we started, so we’re coming full circle.

Ed: I believe there’d be plenty of badger peltsavailable for making windsocks at the moment?

Simon: Yes, that’s very topical around us as well.We usually get rid of most of the incriminating evidence… no …

Ed: You don’t leave the paws on?

Simon: No, definitely not. We’ve even got stampsnow to say everything is synthetic, I hasten to add.There is not a farm of gerbils at our place at all, I canconfirm. NZVN

Simon: When we introduced the Lyre in 2007 itwas one of the biggest things that we’ve ever spent themoney with the lawyers on the IP

Ed: They’ve got families to feed too Simon – youobviously fed a lot?

Simon: Yes well, we decided to use it in everyapplication we can, whether it’s our product or whetherit’s a product for anyone else that we make.Technically, it’s a great product; commercially it’s agreat product as well, because it’s a very simpleproduct, easily adjustable, it can be used for a weight ofmicrophone from Neumann TLM103 or U87 all the waydown to a little pencil mic by Ambient. It’s a greatsolution and I’m sure you’ll see more Lyres out there tocome.

Ed: Now to me, one of the great successes of Rycoteis that you’re not just selling Rycote product ( andthere’s plenty of that out there ) but you go to some ofthe big manufacturers, the big suppliers of microphonesand their accessories and you look under their brandthat it’s actually made by Rycote. That must be veryheart warming for you?

Simon: In some ways, the best thing about ourapproach – and I’ve taken it on from my mother whoran the company from the very early 90s until 2-3 yearsago – is that the only thing we do are windshields andshock mounts. We’ve dabbled and we do a little inboom poles, but really, our main focus is just those twoareas and when you’re talking to any company all youwant is someone who can take a problem away. So forthe microphone manufacturers, at the end of the day,

The Rycote Super-Softie.

The famous Rycote Lyre mount.

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Sennheiser – Jünger AudioFor Sennheiser, we are at Jünger Audio and just toget us started, we’re with James Waldron fromSennheiser Australia.

Ed: James, Jünger, Sennheiser you know, bothaudio companies, but they can collaborate nicelybecause, in fact, they work in different areas?

James: Well they do work in different areas.Obviously, Sennheiser with microphones andheadphones and the Neumann monitors and so on,but there is also the tie-up because Jünger is adynamics processing company. Essentially andtraditionally, their products have been at the end ofthe broadcast chain or somewhere in the productionchain and I know that they have a voice processorproduct now as well, which ties in nicely with thestudio market that uses studio microphones fromSennheiser and Neumann.

Ed: So you could say Sennheiser’s in the captureand that early processing …?

James: Sennheiser and Neumann are there inthe sound capture and then the voice processor fromJünger in the studio production and then of coursedynamics processing for the broadcast chain.

Ed: So you’re covering it from one side to the other?

James: That’s right – from breakfast to cigars!

And to carry us on with the Junger story, we haveAnthony Wilkins from Junger.

Ed: So what have you been up to since IBC?

Anthony: Since IBC, we have fulfilled the promisethat we gave. At IBC we talked about the fact that wewere moving towards two common hardware platformsfor our 1RU boxes – an 8 channel box and a 4 channelbox – and within those boxes we were going to beoffering different firmware packages which created theend product. Now we have that here at NAB. The 4channel boxes comprise two firmware packages, whatwe call an LM additional Level Magic edition – that’s theloudness manager product that finds a place in the TVtransmission path, that does the loudness measuringand scaling to give you compliance with all the relevantstandards. The second box is the one James hasmentioned – the voice processor. That’s a full ondynamics package aimed at radio applications,voiceover, ADR type situations. It has the option of ahigh quality mic preamp input, so that dovetails nicelywith the Sennheiser products, capture via theSennheiser microphone, feed through the box, and ithas a comprehensive range of dynamics processing,upwards downwards compressor expander, limiter, “de-esser”, static EQ, dynamic EQ – the whole range ofeverything you need for voice processing.

Ed: And a lot of this is automatic, is that right?

Anthony: All of it is automatable in the sense that,the way we set up and address the boxes through ourweb browser, if you need to integrate that into anautomated environment, presets, settings, parametersare possible to be recalled through GPI commands,through automation systems, so they sit verycomfortably into an automated situation. Then on the 8channel box format, the new products that we have arean MAP monitoring audio processor. This is a kind of a3-in-1 unit; it’s an audio monitor in the sense that youhave a DA card possibility so you can listen to your mix;you have the capability to run in 7.1, 5.1, it will down-mix, you can audition the mix, you can AB speakers,you can mute isolate etc. Secondly, it is a loudnessmeasuring tool, which also gives logging and storagecapabilities; and thirdly it’s a Dolby toolbox with theability to do metadata emulation. So this is a box thatcan actually replace the Dolby DP570 which is no longeravailable from Dolby. It’s a comprehensive 3-in-1package.

Another product we have here which is not in a releasedversion yet, but we’re showing a working version of it …also it’s based on our DAP A chassis and we’re callingthis the codec edition. This is rather like the MAP butwithout the audio processing built-in. It really is acomplete Dolby toolset. You can equip it with decoding,encoding, metadata emulation, by configuring it in theright way it becomes a replacement for all of thediscontinued Dolby boxes.

Ed: So inside the box there is the Dolby hardware,and it’s preloaded with the Dolby software necessary todo all that Dolby processing?

Anthony: Yes exactly. It’s the Dolby OEM hardwaremodules which sit with our motherboard inside our boxand, when compiled together, will allow you to build abox which replicates the functionality of all the nowdiscontinued Dolby blue boxes, the DP series.

Ed: It was very nice of them to give it to you?

Anthony: We’ve long been OEM customers of theirsand we’re actually the first manufacturer to bring tomarket the box that uses their new generation decoder,the so-called CAT 1100 decoder … we’re the first one tomarket with a box that has that inside it. So at themoment, if you need to source a replacement for one ofyour Dolby blue boxes, Jünger is the place to go and getit.

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James and Anthony.

David, Alicia and Andrew.

Techtel – TVLogicWe’re here at TVLogic for Techtel with David Colthorpeand Andrew Kim for TVLogic who is going to take usthrough the TVLogic range of monitors. Now these arenot your average monitor, but a huge variety right fromthe on-camera LED right up to the 4K area.

Ed: There are some very nice little on-cameramonitors here.

Andrew: For on-board use with DSLRs, camcordersand ENG we have a range of monitors from 5.5 inchesto 9 inches. Of these, this new VFM-058W isparticularly exciting as it offers full 1920 x 1080resolution for easier focus finding and more pictureinformation and detail.

Ed: I guess you can either supply them with powerfrom the camera or from an external battery?

Andrew: Yes, there are three ways to power themonitors. You can use the normal AC adapter for 12volts, or use the data cable from the camera, and ofcourse we have various battery mounts. Our mountingbrackets take various batteries from Sony, Panasonicand Canon, or even AA batteries.

Ed: That’s a very handy thing to have in anemergency.

Andrew: Also in the case of the 7 inch LVM-074Wand 9 inch LVM-095W, you can use either Sony V-mount, or Anton Bauer Gold Mount, the V-mount beingstandard on the LVM-095W so no bracket required.

Ed: Okay, now there are two important things ofcourse with on-camera monitors – one is weight, andthe second is the number of nits. We’ll start withweight – are these heavy monitors?

Andrew: The 5.5 inch VFM-056W is very light, beingmade of magnesium it only weighs 300 grams,excluding the battery bracket. And the new 5.8 inchVFM-058W weighs only around 400 grams, which isgreat for a full HD resolution monitor.

Ed: Now, do you have any of these monitors that areespecially high luminance, the nit count is very high,especially for the Steadicam operator?

Andrew: Yes, the 7 inch SRM-074W is a sunlightreadable model idea for bright conditions. This modelhas a max bright function as a hard key on the front ofthe panel. So if you press the max bright button then itgoes up to 1000 candelas per square meter to give youhigh brightness pictures … 1000 nits.

Ed: And I’ve learnt something today,that a candela per square meter is a nit.That makes a lot of sense. Now let’s tryit, let’s press the button and see whathappens …yes, it gets much brighter.Andrew, is there a good reason why youhave a button and you don’t just have itat that full illumination all the time?

Andrew: You don’t always need thefull brightness all the time, for examplethis would be tiring in a darkenvironment. So you can set it tonormal brightness, which is about 350-400 nits for normal purposes, and in verybright circumstances, you can see thepicture clearly with high brightness on.

Ed: That makes sense. Right, now inthe precision monitor area, there are thelarger wall mounted ones, and of course,I see the signs up there “4K OLED” as

well as Class One, so you obviously are at the top endin these precision monitors?

Andrew: Yes, the biggest advantage of using

TVLogic monitor products is that we have a full line-upfrom small monitors to big sized monitors and

classifications from general purpose, through broadcast

to critical reference. In fact there are nearly 40 models

in total. For example we have sizes in 17 inch, 24 inch

and 32 inch, which are the typical sizes that people are

using in studio and control rooms. The popular sizes of

17 inch and 24 inch are represented by the new general

purpose use LVM-176W and LVM-246W, and forbroadcast use the LVM-173W-3G and the new LVM-

245W. And we have three sizes of critical reference

monitor, the XVM-175W, XVM-245W and XVM-325W.

There’s also new value priced 18.5 inch and 23 inch

models, the TSM-182W and TSM-232W, being released

shortly.

Ed: Where do we see the OLEDs?

Andrew: Actually TVLogic introduced the world’s firstAM-OLED broadcast monitor back in 2010. That wasthe LEM-150, a 15 inch HD resolution OLED. Now weoffer a new AM-OLED monitor, the LEM-250A which is a24.5 inch FHD 10-bit critical reference monitor.

Ed: Right, but I see a new one here, a LUM-300A?

Andrew: Yes, that’s our new true 4K monitor with aDCI colour gamut. That’s the full 4096 x 2160 with acolour depth of 1.27 billion colours with true 10 bit LEDbacklit panel. It’s designed for high-end 4K cinemapost as well as high-resolution industrial or CADapplications.

Ed: I can see there’s quite a large dynamic rangethere in the colour?

Andrew: That is correct.

Ed: And a lot of detail in the black which is exactlywhat we look for?

Andrew: Yes, this one gives you 1450 to 1 contrastratio which provides a very good black level.

Ed: Okay, now going even larger, we have what lookslike a 55 inch monitor in multi-view mode?

Andrew: Yes, we have three completely new largeformat monitors. These are the LVM-420A, the LVM-460A and the LVM-550A – 42, 46 and 55 inches

respectively. They have new 10-bit panels – and as youcan see a nicely designed front bezel free of distractinglights or controls. Ideal for studio, control room or OBvan multi-viewer systems.

Ed: Okay, now swinging to you David, in the market

for monitors, there are numerous people making these,

so why would you suggest someone should choose a

TVLogic?

David: Well I think there is a significant range of

monitors to select from for sure. The thing about

TVLogic, the thing that I’ve noticed about them – and

I’ve been to Seoul and seen the factory and seen the

quality that these guys build into these products –

they’re really extremely conscientious designers,

conscientious manufacturers, they take a lot of trouble

in the quality assurance, the testing of every monitor.

Every monitor is thermally stressed for 24 hours before

it gets completed – every monitor is analysed and

aligned, and so the result is something that’s extremely

reliable, something that’s a real professional piece of

equipment.

Ed: And good true colour?

David: High colour accuracy, yes.

Ed: Andrew, what’s the warranty that you provide on

your monitors?

Andrew: We normally provide two years warranty

for all products.

Ed: Now at the top of the line, I guess, 4K multi-

viewer?

Andrew: Yes, we’re showing here theTWV-100, which is a 4K multi-viewersystem that can put multiple HD imageson a 4K display, with the ability to adjustimage sizes and locations. Here we have16 channels of full HD displayed. TheTWV-100 maintains the maximumresolution and exploits the very highresolution of the 4K monitor irrespectiveof the number of channels displayed, soproviding better picture quality than anyother multi-viewer systems at themoment.

Ed: Okay, so other systems have totake that 4K signal, dumb it down to anHD and then feed it into their multi-viewer?

Andrew: That is correct.

Ed: Got it – and this is especiallyimportant in OB vans that are doingsports events with 4K cameras. NZVN

Sony – Part TwoIn the archive solutions section of the Sony stand, I met

Sam Farnsworth to hear about Optical Disc Archive

Technology.

Ed: Sam, this is something that I’ve been looking at

for a number of years from basically, just a single Blu-

ray disc as an archive format, which I think is a superb

way to store critical data, but Sony have developed this

a lot further – tell us all about it?

Sam: Optical Disc Archive uses 12 Blu-ray discs

in a caddy as an easy way to deal with storing

information. Open up the caddy, there’s a little

thumbcap to push each individual disc out and there’s

all your data right there. The cool thing about ODA is

that they are very disaster tolerant. We’re doing some

tests on them right now and they have a 50 year shelf

life and that’s under extreme conditions, so 104

degrees and like, 80% humidity. They’ll last about 50

years, whereas tape-based formats are not going to last

that long. Also with the ODAs, let’s say if Hurricane

Katrina comes through or stormwater or any kind of

water gets into these, with tape, it’s going to be

completely ruined. With these, because they’re

individual discs, you can just open up the cartridge,

take all the discs out, clean them off, put

them back in together and you’re good

to go and you won’t lose any of your

data. So a very good safe alternative for

data archiving.

Ed: And because it’s a laser written

optical disc, it’s not going to be affected

by magnetic fields?

Sam: Yes exactly, so if any bomb

goes off or there’s a magnet and it gets

too close to it, all your data will still be

on there because it’s laser burnt in.

Ed: I guess the only thing you’ve got

to keep away is bright light?

Sam: Essentially yes, but because

they are in the cases, they’re safe.

Ed: So the case you’re holding is a

clear one, but that’s just for display

purposes, because the real ones are opaque black and

you’re not getting any light in those?

Sam: Exactly. There is something about thediscs themselves – it’s not the typical laser burn thatyou’ll be using …

Ed: It’s a deeper burn is it?

Sam: I believe so.

Ed: Now in terms of size, this is one of the thingsthat’s been the issue in the past – a Blu-ray disc takes25 GB, but you’ve gone further, not only with theindividual discs, but in the caddy?

Sam: In the caddy, the highest capacity we haveright now is a 1.5 TB and that’s a write-only. We dohave a 1.2 TB that is a rewritable, so with LTOs, I knowthat they are currently rated for about 200 rewrites butwith the rewrites on ODAs, you have about a thousandrewrites. In terms of “reads”, the laser is never goingto get up to a temperature that’s going to damage thedisc itself, so you have probably about a million readson these drives. It’s definitely a very good alternativeright now. The 300 GB and 600 GB are both writableand rewritable.

Ed: Another good thing is that nothing’s actuallytouching the disc – there’s no physical contact to themedia, so it’s not going to wear out?

Sam: Exactly yes, because nothing ever actually

physically touches the disc, whereas with tape the

heads make constant contact and a tape head could end

up being too far forward, too far back and end up

cutting the tape, and then you’re ruined at that point.

With the lasers and these cartridges, they’re able to last

you potentially up to a hundred years if you’re storing

them correctly.

Ed: And I would think that the time for accessing

different discs is much quicker than any tape-based

system?

Sam: Oh yes, it’s definitely quicker. The

potential speed is I think anywhere from 2 or 3 seconds

to be accessing your data up to the longest, I think, is

around 27 seconds – and that’s from loading a cartridge

to accessing your data is about 27 seconds, whereas

with LTO you could be up for waiting about 100

seconds, almost two minutes.

Ed: Now I’m pretty sure that, at the moment, in

terms of cost, if cost is one of your concerns, this is

going to be more expensive than LTO?

Sam: Yes it will be a little more expensive than

LTO. Right now, it’s about 10 cents a gigabyte, so

you’re looking at the 1.5 TB costing about US$150, but

the future is that the capacity is increasing and the cost

will likely continue to decrease per gigabyte.

Ed: Okay, so there we’re talking about just a single

unit dub, a single drive bay, you can manually replace

the caddies into that, but then you go up in size to a

twin drive unit which has a robotic feed, so how many

caddies can you put in that?

Sam: The robotic one is the L10. The L10 has 10

slots – you know 10 for 10 – it has two drives in the

back. You can upgrade from the single drive into the

L10 … basically it has two drives stacked on top of each

other and then a front robotic arm that’ll move itself

around and it stores all of your data onto there through

Content Manager which comes with the drives. With

the Content Manager software, you’re able to see all of

your information whether you’re online or offline, so

after you’ve ejected a drive, if you’re using the single

unit, it will let you know what was on that drive, even

though it’s offline, whereas with LTO, after loading your

tape you have to search through it and rely on what

you’ve labelled the tape as. With ODA, when you load

in the drive, it’s going to keep it on there

and then store it offline. So you can still

search it and then when you need to find

a file that could be potentially offline it

will let you know which caddy it’s on and

then you just put it in and get your files.

Ed: You mean it stores it as a filename

or actually as a sub-clip?

Sam: It stores it as a filename, it

has some proxy info, a little thumbnail

that also goes on there as well, so you

can watch all the resolution proxy that’s

on there and any other metadata that

you store with it.

Ed: Wow, that’s very clever. And then

for the big boys, you go up into quite a

large robotic system?

Sam: Yes, so for the bigger boys,

we have the L10 over there, which has

the 10 slots and the two drives and then the larger one

which is the L30 which has 30 slots and two drives.

Then as you go into the largest stack, which is the

PetaSite, it has 18 drives and 532 slots, so if you’re

loading each of the slots with a 1.5 TB, you’re looking at

just over 800 TB with the information, so almost a

petabyte worth of data in there.

Ed: How many of those have you sold personally?

Sam: Personally, I might have sold quite a few

over this week! We’ve had some people very interested

in them – one guy wanted to know how many can you

potentially link together, and because you can be

working with this for the CatDV and other forms of MAM

software, your computer will look at it as just an

external hard drive they can dump it onto, so

potentially, you can link many of them together. He

was asking me if he could link four together, and I’m

like you could definitely be linking four together. I

might have sold four right there, so who knows.

Ed: Maybe we’ll just start with the single unit for

now?

Sam: That would be nice too.

In the “still camera section”, I met with Mark Weir from

Sony Electronics to get the word on the new Alpha 7S.

Ed: Mark, one of the highlights of the press show was

the unveiling of the Alpha 7S. It’s an amazing little

camera – it’s a still camera, but it’s a movie camera.

There have been comparisons with the Canon DSLRs,

but this is a game changer for Sony and the Alpha

section isn’t it?

Mark: Well thanks very much. Yes, the A7S is the

latest member of our Alpha 7 series. It’s really the

same size and shape and control layout as the Alpha 7

and the Alpha 7R which we introduced last fall. What’s

different is that we have an all new image sensor with

12 megapixels. It’s a full frame image sensor, just like

the Alpha 7 and 7R, but with just 12 megapixels, we’re

able to achieve a balance of resolution, sensitivity and

dynamic range that really no other camera can. By

using just 12 megapixels, we’re able to have very, very

large photo sites which can gather a tremendous

amount of light and have very high saturation level

capabilities. In so doing, we can reach ISO from as low

as 50 to as high as 409,600 with very, very low noise

throughout. We can also have tremendously wide

dynamic range from highlight to shadow – we can avoid

blowing out the highlights and still maintain tremendous

detail in the shadows.

So we have extraordinary dynamic range and sensitivity

with low noise with this image sensor. We believe that

this will appeal to photographers tremendously. We use

the sensitivity of the image sensor to improve focusing

so that this camera can actually autofocus in light as

low as minus 4 EV and I don’t know of any other

camera that can focus in light that low – certainly no

digital SLRs. So we’ve got a lot of appeal for stills

photographers, but for videographers we’ve also added

a number of features.

This is our first camera with the XAVC-S codec, so we

can shoot full HD at up to 50 Mbps, so very high data

rate of full HD video. We can also shoot AVCHD like our

other cameras. We can also

shoot a low data rate MP4

for a transfer to the

Internet, because the

camera has wireless and

NFC just like all of the other

Alpha 7 models. What a lot

of people are very interested

in and eager to see, is the

camera can also capture 4K

video. It is only the second

camera ever made with a

full frame image sensor to

capture 4K video, the first

being the Canon 1D C.

However, unlike the Canon

1D C, we capture the full

frame; we capture the full

width of the full frame

sensor for 8.3 megapixels

without any line skipping, or

pixel binning. So unlike

pretty much every other

digital SLR which skips lines

of pixels because it has too

many pixels for full HD or 4K

capture, we avoid that, so it’s aliasing and artifact-free

video, no colour falsing, no moire and tremendous

sensitivity, tremendous dynamic range.

Like the other models, it uses our E-mount so it’s

friendly with many different lenses, including our five

available full frame E-mount lenses, and our 13 other

sub-frame E-mount lenses. Countless adapters are

available to allow third-party lenses to be used with this

camera, very popular for Canon and Leica and Nikon as

well. We’re showing here at NAB, Zeiss CP.2 Primes –

there’s a series of about 6 or 7 Zeiss CP.2 Primes in the

native full frame EF E-mount that are available now.

We’re also showing a new Sony lens that’s under

development. It’s a 28-135mm, constant aperture, F4

servo zoom lens which will be particularly interesting to

videographers who want to shoot full frame video with

the tremendous sensitivity and dynamic range of the

Alpha 7S.

Ed: Now one question I have about lens mounts … it

says up there Alpha Mount System, but you keep

talking about E-mount?

Mark: Yes, well all of our lenses are part of the

Alpha Mount System which encompasses both E-mount

and A-mount and all of our lenses – 54 of them in total

right now – can be used directly with this camera,

either by direct attachment in the E-mount system or A-

mount lenses can be used through the two adapters

that we have, the LA-EA4 or LA-EA3 so all of our Alpha

Mount System are available for use with the Alpha 7

cameras.

Ed: Is the E-mount a newer version, a new type of

mount?

Mark: Sure. We introduced E-mount in 2010,

about four years ago, with the first E-mount camera,

the NEX series, and the nature of an E-mount lens is

slightly different than an A-mount lens, because it’s

built around the mirrorless structure and the contrast

AF which is common to most all mirrorless cameras.

It’s a very different type of lens construction to the

conventional or traditional lenses built for SLRs,

because these types of lenses have silent AF electronic

iris control rather than mechanical iris control, which is

common to traditional digital SLR lenses.

You’ll see that these types of lenses are beginning toemerge from other manufacturers as well, as theyventure into the world of mirrorless cameras, or evennon-sensor phase detect AF systems.

So Canon, for instance, has dual pixel AF which workswith a new series of lenses they’re creating called STMand you’ll see a lot of lens development to supportthese kinds of cameras as we move into the future.

Ed: So from now on, are all the lens mounts going tobe E-mount or will you continue with the A-mount?

Mark: Oh we are certainly continuing with our A-mount system.

We’ve recently introduced a number of A-mount lensesand we’re absolutely supporting the A-mount systemwith the SLT cameras as well as the E-mount systemwith the Alpha 5000, the Alpha 6000, the Alpha 3000and the Alpha 7 series that we just introduced here –the Alpha 7S.

Ed: Fantastic. NZVN

Mark with the Alpha 7S.

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NZVN

Gencom – EnsembleDesigns

For Gencom, we are at EnsembleDesigns and Cindy Zuelsdorf is a little bitthroaty, but we like that.

Cindy: Hey Grant, good to see youagain, my favourite person to dointerviews with.

Ed: Oh, you’re so kind.

Cindy: It’s all true, I’ve been doinginterviews all day and this is the bestone.

Ed: You’re looking forward to this andI’ve just seen a sign that says “HDMIclean switching instantaneous” and Imean, even I know that’s somethingthat’s a hard nut to crack, but you’vedone it?

Cindy: It’s true. HDMI switchingusually means pops with the audio and glitches or goingto black on the monitor, and that’s always a tough one,people don’t want to have that; you want to have aninstant and clean perfect switching.

Ed: Yes, in any situation and for a lot of people in thatarena market, church market with HDMI cabling, cleanswitching is very important?

Cindy: Correct, and with the BrightEye NXTcompact router on your 2.0 here at NAB …

Ed: What’s its number?

Cindy: Your favourite … our focus group has comeup with a number with you in mind Grant. BrightEyeNXT 410 we used some letters in there and we’ve gotseveral numbers.

Ed: That’s a bit of a departure from the normal isn’tit, that many letters?

Cindy: Yes, we wanted to mix it up, keep itmemorable. But, more importantly, we wanted to keepit useful – so the product lets you mix between HDMIand SDI. You can mix between two different types ofsignals and I did say “mix” I didn’t say just cut; you canactually mix now, so that’s part of our new 2.0 versionof this product – you can do mixes.

Ed: As well as HDMI to HDMI?

Cindy: Absolutely, so you can cut cleanly betweenHDMI and HDMI; cut cleanly between HDMI and SDI;cut cleanly between SDI and SDI – the built-in cleanswitches give you that, and now brand new is the abilityto mix – mix transitions, really increase the usefulnessof this product out in the field.

Ed: And that’s between any of the formats?

Cindy: Between any of the formats. In fact, one ofthe News companies we’re working with has a Newshelicopter and they were wanting to do this type ofswitching between HDMI and SDI, maybe movebetween a point of view camera, reporter camera, a ballturret camera, and wanted to take it a step further inthat they wanted to also be able to have audiobreakaway and salvo memory registers so the memoryregisters help them get back to the settings that theywant and also be able to switch multiple outputssimultaneously.

Ed: And that’s in just one little blue box?

Cindy: It is … and for customers who already havethis product, they can get this update free on our

Cindy showing the alarm feature on the Avenue Multiviewer 2.0.

website starting April 25th. You know, in the old days,there’d just be a brand new product with completelynew hardware and we would say “oh yeah, that was lastyear’s model, please buy this one”. We want to providesomething better than that; we give this update free topeople who already own the product and then anybodywho buys it today gets these awesome capabilities.

Ed: Now I don’t see a mixing bar on the device, sohow do you do your mixing?

Cindy: From the front here, you can see there’s apush button and you can push the take button to togglebetween cuts or mixes, so you just push it twice …

Ed: And you get a fixed time, or can you adjust thetime?

Cindy: Of course you can adjust it, so if you wantto set it to 25 or …

Ed: Is there nothing you can’t do Cindy?

Cindy: I’m sure there’s something.

Ed: I’m still waiting. Now this helicopter company, isthat a local one for us?

Cindy: In fact it was. We were working withGencom and with ABC in Australia who made some ofthese requests – in particular, the salvo registers, andthey needed that audio breakaway and audio leveladjustment for their application.

Ed: And now that you’ve done it, are you findinginterest from other operators?

Cindy: We are – in fact one of the things thatNASCAR wanted to do was to be able to use thisparticular BrightEye NXT compact router in the truckand then they wanted to have the same type of audiocontrols. Additionally, they asked for RS232 control sothat the camera operators could use their momentaryswitches to bring up the signals they want, programme,preview, slo mo, and look at it in their viewfinder. Sothe things that ABC asked for, other places are usingand NASCAR asked for RS232 and we implemented that– and it goes on and on and it just expands thecapability throughout the whole customer base.

Ed: Because customers are so demanding aren’t they… they want you to do backflips?

Cindy: Hey, the only reason we build anything isfor our customers, so we love getting those requests.

Ed: Now there’s more – you haven’t just been doingthat surely?

Cindy: We do have another product and it’s ourbrand new Avenue Multiviewer 2.0. This came aboutbecause some of our customers were asking for supportmodes for the operators versus the engineering staff.So engineering staff want to set up the multiviewer, putall the alarms in, some of the alarming we offer is new,set up captioning which is useful in various markets,have GPIs GPOs set up – all those types of things thatthe engineering staff want to set up in a precise way.

just pull up their layouts that they’ve made in advance.

Gencom will like it because they will be able to create

all the layouts that their customers need for them and

maybe email those set ups to them, wherever they are.

Engineers like it – they can log into the multiviewer

using the IP address of the multiviewer and look at it

from home if they want to.

Ed: On their tablet at the beach?

Cindy: On their tablet, on their iPhone, any of

those things, yes.

Ed: Wow, so they can take their work home at the

weekends – that’s what engineers like to do I know.

Cindy: We know they don’t want to do it, but at

least they don’t have to go in at 2am to deal with the

problem, so maybe there’s an upside for them right.

Ed: When the boss calls and says “No 3’s down, come

on in”!

Cindy: It’s true, they need to be able to address

that one way or another and if they can still be at home

and troubleshoot the multiviewer, much better for them

right.

Ed: Exactly. So what does an alarm look like?

Cindy: An alarm pops up on the screen and says

“video frozen” or “video’s gone away” – it gives the

information, maybe “audio’s silent” and the alarm can

be set up by engineering to either be persistent, maybe

stay on until it is cleared manually, either with a GPI or

with the touch of a button from the iPhone or a tablet or

a PC; or it can be set up to just appear while the alarm

case is occurring and as soon as the alarm situation is

cleared, the alarm could go away. It can be

customised.

Ed: A very valuable tool. In the old days, somebodywould have had to be looking at the picture and see thefault and then try and describe it to somebody else andthen go and look at it and see if they can find it, ratherthan having a visual display. Very clever.

NZVN

Now the operators, maybe someone in the controlroom, a segment producer or someone like that, theyhave different needs and so we came up with this greatsystem where the operator has his or her own panelwhere he could recall the morning show multiviewer setup, so maybe he’s got eight images up on the screen.And then later in the day, they’re going to pull up thesports weekend edition layout. I actually heard fromsome customers yesterday that they have separatemultiviewers for different shows – actual separatehardware, right.

Ed: Well that would be good for you in a way?

Cindy: In a way, because we give them a way tosave money and it’s more efficient because they can

Gencom -Playbox

For Gencom, we are at

PlayBox with Marketing

Manager, Peter Petrov.

Ed: Peter, the last time I

think we saw PlayBox was at

SMPTE in Sydney. You’d

made some big improve-

ments, but you’re here at

NAB so obviously things

have got even bigger and

better?

Peter: Yes, things are

going very well for us and

this is the 10th NAB for

PlayBox Technology. More

exciting times are to come

now since we are partnering

with Masstech, a leading

provider of powerful tools

for media asset manage-

ment and transcoding Peter and Iulian.

technology for the media and entertainment industries,

based in Canada. Working together, we will be able to

offer A to Z workflows for any broadcaster. I am sure

this will strengthen our positions even more and

PlayBox Technology will continue dictating global

Channel-in-a-Box trends. As far as PlayBox Technology

product announcements go, we are announcing three

new products at the NAB: Production AirBox,

CaptureBox Pro and TimeShiftBox DUO. These brand

new products will cover all kinds of broadcast demands

from +1 channels to production houses allowing the

ingest of four independent channels.

Along with the new products we are changing our

graphical user interface as well.

Ed: Are any of the new products available and

shipping now?

Peter: Yes, they are available and demos are done

at our five demo spots on our booth.

Customers are very happy with our latest solutions, not

only because of their functionality but because of the

new graphical user interface we have. The feedback we

are getting from customers is excellent.

Ed: That is one of the things that I have heard about

PlayBox – the stability. Once you get it up and running,

it just keeps going. How can you manage that where

perhaps some of your competition can’t?

Peter: The key is our team of professionals at the

R&D Centre based in Bulgaria. They are receiving all

kinds of requests and ideas from our 13 country offices

worldwide, so they are able to prepare really great

products. 24/7 worldwide support is available as well.

Ed: Now your background platform is Windows 7 and

I know from personal experience that is a very stable

version of Windows.

Peter: It is a reliable platform but you also need

reliable broadcast software in order to have your

operations running smoothly.

We’ve now been joined by Iulian Ionesku who is familiar

with the New Zealand and Australia markets. He is also

familiar with the playout codecs that PlayBox

Technology supplies.

Ed: You’re not going 4K yet, but in the HD area, what

are you sending out?

Iulian: We can send out two types of signal – SDI

as the main digital signal along stream out; and this

simultaneously with the new MPO engine. On the

stream side, our customers can configure H264 or

MPEG2 UDP transport streams. Using an agnostic

playlist with our mixed playback engine, any type of

content SD or HD with different format and containers

can be delivered in any configured output, mentioned

above.

Ed: We’ve recently had a discussion with the TVNZ

OnDemand people and it seems as though H.264 is the

way to go for streaming?

Iulian: For the moment I think it’s the best way to

go. In future, there will be new codecs such as H265 /

HEVC, which will be implemented in our technology as

well.

Ed: And that’s it, it is a software upgrade, so

somebody who has bought PlayBox can quite often

upgrade the software to allow them to use these new

codecs, or do they have to buy a whole new system?

Iulian: No, they can upgrade easily having two

options on the table. One is to benefit from our on-

going promotion called Hardware Replacement

Programme, which gives our customers the opportunity

to replace existing systems with a brand new unit, while

keeping the cost significantly lower. The second option

is just a software upgrade, intended mostly for our two

years old customers in which the hardware can stillkeep up with the latest features and functions of our

software. In both cases, the customers will gain a multi

parallel output, more format supports, enhanced

features and the latest GPU-enhanced graphics mixing

engine which allows video rotation effects and depth

order laying effects to be performed in real time.

Ed: And that’s it – I suppose if you were to answer

“what is the major difference PlayBox has, or majoradvantage PlayBox has over the competition”, it is that

you are both – you are the streaming and you are the

SDI broadcast output?

Iulian: And we do this using our MPO engine, multi

parallel output over SDI and UDP.

Ed: Now we’ve already talked to Peter about the

stability of the system, but is there anything else that

PlayBox can add – why one would choose PlayBox as

opposed to something else?

Iulian: We offer to our customers a lot of features

inside the system and it’s really tailored for what they

need, avoiding paying extra costs for bundled solutions.

And we have a unique flexibility in how to operate our

system, and when this is attached to the easiness of

use, our solutions become the number one Channel-in-a

-Box solutions. Another important aspect is that with

assistance from our local partner, Gencom, we are able

to provide localised training and installation with firstlevel support for New Zealand and Australia.

NZVN

Sound Techniques – LectrosonicsWe are at the Lectrosonics booth for Sound Techniqueswith Mr Buckland and Peter More from Lectrosonics.

Stephen: It’s a good thing, yes. It’s been common inLectrosonics, this is just an upgrade of the entry levelequipment which we’ve sold from Lectrosonics for quite

some years – the LMa transmitter, anolder model, now about to be supersededwith incorporating all the other stuff thatLectrosonics has included in the last fewyears in other models.

Ed: And the 80 MHz bandwidth is

totally safe in New Zealand – nobody’s

going to grab it?

Stephen: No, but it gives you a lot of

flexibility around the frequencies you can

use, because up till now, Lectrosonics

gear’s only had 25.6 MHz which is kind of

the equivalent of three television blocks,

whereas this is giving you a wider choice

of frequencies that you can use.

Ed: So there’s going to be something

in that 80 MHz range?

Stephen: A better chance that there’s

something in that range, yes.

Peter: The wide tuning range is avery important feature. The previous

generation has a tuning range of 25.6 MHz. The newerone’s got 80 MHz, so it’s three times the tuning rangeand it gives you a lot more flexibility as you move fromarea to area, especially in RF congestedneighbourhoods.

Ed: Doesn’t the higher frequency though mean thatthe transmission distance is reduced?

Peter: Not necessarily. It’s more efficient at thehigher frequency up to a certain point, and that is oneof the reasons why the cellphone companies wanted touse the 700 MHz band, because it’s got penetration intooffice buildings. If you don’t have a Microsoft Officeavailable, you can still get email on your cellphone, andthat is one of the reasons why they used the 700 MHz,800 MHz band, so they can penetrate into the building.Consequently we lost that band for wireless mic use.We’re down in the below 700 MHz range, which isprobably a very efficient way for us to do our productionwork.

Ed: Okay, now?

Peter: We have this SR receiver which is a drop inreceiver into most professional cameras. It’s a dual

Ed: Peter, you’ve got something pretty small in yourhand there?

Peter: This is the Lectrosonics LMb transmitter. Itis a belt pack transmitter, 50 milliWatt output, 80 MHzbandwidth wide – the tuning range is 80 MHz. It is adigital hybrid transmitter, which means it has a veryhigh dynamic range, no compander … it is companderfree …

Ed: No what?

Stephen: Compander = compressor / expander. It’sa means of squeezing an audio signal into limitedbandwidth and can cause audible audio artefacts.

Peter: No compander artefacts using the digitalhybrid mode, which is a Lectrosonics exclusive feature.It offers the advantage of analogue FM with digitalaudio quality. So this is the Lectrosonics LMb – it ispowered by two AA batteries and this has an LCDscreen for you to programme your frequency, gain andoperating mode.

Ed: And it comes with a compatible receiver?

Peter: It comes with a compatible receiver. Thesecond transmitter I’m going to showyou is the LT transmitter with aremovable antenna and this one has theadded feature that our microphone inputuses TA5 Switchcraft connectors and wecan programme one of the pins for linelevel or Hi-Z input ( high impedanceinput ). So you can plug your instrumentcable directly into the transmitter. Alsoit has 80 MHz tuning range.

Ed: Is it also hybrid?

Peter: All of our transmitters aredigital hybrid, yes.

Ed: So what does “digital hybrid” meanto the New Zealand market Stephen?

Stephen: Well digital hybrid – thequality of digital audio coupled with therange of analogue audio.

Ed: So it’s a good thing?

Peter with the LMb transmitter.

channel – a two channel receiver, so in a very smallpackage. And this is an interface connector for aPanasonic camera. The baseplate is interchangeable –you can put in a plate that would interface with Sonycameras. The same receiver, we have a standardbattery pack that would mix as a self-powered twochannel receiver. TA3 connector outputs, you can alsorun external power – DC power.

Ed: Are these upgradable … so if you just get theSRb, the standard drop in one, you can add the base toit and have the SRb5P?

Peter: This is an SR BATTSLED adapter that fitsover the SR battery that will allow your receiver to beself-powered. The same receiver can drop into this newdual pack. The dual pack has two lithium batteriesinside in a very compact package that will power thereceiver without using an external battery like this. It isa very clean packaging – TA3 connectors output,external power in and you can charge the lithiumbattery pack inside; very neat packaging here. Ournew receiver is the LR, a digital hybrid receiver, singlechannel, very compact and there’s an accessory wherethis can be mounted on a shoe for SLR recording; TA3connector output that will plug into your SLR camera;digital hybrid of course.

Ed: Now Stephen, I guess for the smaller market, thecorporate market, the LR series is the way to go?

Stephen: The LR series would be very useful in thecorporate market yes, because it can be attached to a

camera. To date, Lectrosonics haven’t had anything atthat sort of level that was so convenient, plus the factthat it’s got dual antenna, so it replaces somethingwhich only had a single antenna, so the dual antennaguarantees much better reception.

Ed: Is that called diversity?

Stephen: It is called diversity.

Lectrosonics has its own way of doing diversity wherethey switch from one antenna to the other. Othercompanies have two complete receivers inside the bodyof the thing, but of course they have to compromise onthe quality of electronics to get it at the same sort ofprice.

One of the issues we have in New Zealand is trying tomatch the frequencies the manufacturers supply withwhat is usable or legitimate in New Zealand, and SoundTechniques is exploring the options of knocking outfrequencies which are not allowed to be used in NewZealand, so we comply with the regulations and usersdon’t have to worry about that stuff.

Ed: So that’s something that has to be done in themanufacturing process or can you do it in yourworkshop?

Stephen: The preferred option is to be able to do itourselves, because the quantities which sell into NewZealand make for major work for the supplier. So weare exploring the option of being able to do it ourselves– having the gear to do it. NZVN

the scenes before they put it on the market, becausemost bags are made by companies that make bags forcameras, and so audio is an offshoot. I thought it wasgreat that K-Tek was exclusively targeting the audio

professional. We’re still abit concerned about whatyou do with the Y-front butwe’ll have a look at that inthe photo.

Ed: So in terms ofchoosing the materialsBrenda, you have got yourown bag designer?

Brenda: We do. Wehave a bag designer whohas created bags for ourindustry in the past, whohas specialised in thematerials that are needed inthe set environment, in arugged environment. So heunderstands the needs ofour customers. We alsohave our audio specialistswho have worked with thebag designer, so we havethe best of both worlds …we’ve got the manufactur-ing, the materials and wealso have the audioknowledge, and we putthem together to create theStingray audio bags.

Ed: Now I see a gentleman that you’ve got kitted uphere and he looks rather comfortable in his bag,because there’s a very large back brace?

Brenda: Yes, this is Manny and Manny is sportingour new Stingray audio bag for the Sound Devices 664which we’re introducing at NAB. Manny is introducingour new audio harness. What makes this harnessunique is it actually has a spine, so we have aluminiumfixed into the back of the harness, so it keeps your backupright; we have three points of connection to the bagso it puts the weight distribution on your hips and onthe second point below your shoulders and your hips,and you do have shoulder straps but you don’t have anykind of weight leaning down on your shoulders. It’s abeautiful harness, we’re very proud of it as well.

Ed: Is there a mounting point for a K-Tek pole?

Brenda: Right now with your K-Tek pole, you couldlay it across the top. I’ve also seen some people lay itunderneath the front – I call it “the underwear” – butthe front underwear of the bag, you can actually haveyour pole sitting in there, so there are various points.Again, the sound mixer is going to choose how theywant to use this bag, there’s so many different optionswith it.

Ed: So now there are a couple of sizes as well –

you’ve got the bag for the 633, but there’s another

couple of bags there too, by the look of it?

Brenda: Yes, we also have the bag for the 664. And

we have our boom pole case bags, so we have the

KBLT35 and the 52. So it’s a solid travel bag for your

boom pole – you can put two boom poles in it if you’d

like a shock mount to your microphone. It’s a great

way to travel; it’s got a shoulder strap.

Ed: As well as the pole, so any development in poletechnology?

Ed: Brenda, bags – K-Tek bags. This is somethingthat I know Stephen’s been looking forward to?

Brenda: We are extremely excited with the K-Tek

audio bag division. We’ve taken the customer feedbackand suggestions and tried to make the best bag that we

can for our customers. We began with the Stingray

audio bags. We have one that’s dedicated for the

Sound Devices 633 or the Zaxcom MAXX. It’s a black

exterior bag with blue interior and the top is completely

open, the sides can completely open and you have

bottom access as well. It has a dedicated place for

multiple wireless transmitter receivers. It has a frontpocket that you can use for camera hops, or you can

put your headphones, you can put your BDS. It gives

you various cabling options; it’s got loops on the front

so you can put our cable hangers on the loops and hang

your cables neatly. It has a concave back with some

mesh so you can get airflow, and it also has a rain

cover. The handles retract, it comes with a shoulder

strap and it’s absolutely beautiful.

Ed: Stephen, bags have been around for a long time– people have been making audio bags, so what could K-Tek add to the market do you feel?

Stephen: Well the delight in presenting this bag –and we’ve had one shipment which was sold before itarrived in the country – was that no one could findanything wrong with it. It suited them.

Ed: Wow, that’s pretty amazing for audio people, notfinding anything wrong?

Stephen: Well it was also extraordinary for a bagbecause usually someone would wish the manufacturerhad done this or that, or could they add on a bit here ora bit there. The K-Tek bag, the original Stingray bag,came ready to sell and that was testament to theamount of research that they must have done behind

Sound Techniques – K-TekFor Sound Techniques and Stephen Buckland we are atK-Tek with Brenda Parker.

Brenda with bag model front and back.

Brenda: We have been making our

classic boom poles for almost 20 years

and we have tried to make modifications

to it, and every time we do people yell at

us. So we’ve actually gone back to our

original design from top to bottom and

you’ll find our dimpled aluminium collars,

you’ll find beautiful smooth graphite andit’ll be incredibly lightweight and it

works.

Ed: Now we can’t leave you without

talking about Nautilus because this is

something where we showed a wonderful

picture last year of Brenda stretching a

Nautilus and it bounced back to where it

was. A very clever microphone holder –doing well for you?

Brenda: It’s doing great. We were

actually nominated for a Cinema Audio

Society award this year, which we were

very proud of, for the design of the

Nautilus suspension mount.

Ed: And it comes in black or black?

Brenda: It comes in black or black … yes, exactly! I

wanted to make pink ones but they wouldn’t let me, Idon’t know. Dave said they wouldn’t go; I’m not sure, I

think pink would have done very well.

Ed: What do you reckon Stephen?

Stephen: About the Nautilus?

Ed: Yes, pink ones?

Stephen: Oh any colour is always popular. In otherthings like windscreens we have a range of colours andevery now and then someone comes along wantingsomething out of the ordinary.

Ed: Well in the soundie world they like differentthings don’t they?

Stephen: Yes, but let’s be practical – pink is not agreat colour if it reflects pink into shot or whatever.Black is the new black in sound equipment. NZVN

Atomise – JMRElectronics

For Atomise we are now at JMRElectronics – innovators in storagetechnologies and we have MiguelSaldate, engineer along with RichardKelly.

Ed: So Miguel, what do you engineer?

Miguel: I’m a technical productspecialist, a product engineer at JMRElectronics and we make a variety ofhigh performance storage systems,server solutions and also some networkaccelerator products. A couple ofproducts that we’re focusing on are ourNetwork Storage Server which is astorage server which offers AFPconnectivity, NFS connectivity, SMB. Wealso offer an Apple file protocol clusterwhich nobody else offers, even if you goto some of the big three letter storagecompanies it’s a capability they don’thave. We have full failover, hyper-redundancy, multiple 10 gigabit Ethernetlinks, multiple gigabit links; we offer PCI expansion, socustomers who don’t necessarily want to invest in aswitch can actually deploy several network cards anddirect connect their users to that en masse, providingreal fast streaming for media files for IT for oil and gas,so we go across verticals. If you have a mass dataneed, JMR can fit that solution and tailor fit it towhatever your needs may be. Now our Net Acceleratorproduct is actually a very unique product. What’sunique about that is, if you have an existing SAN orNAS infrastructure, you can connect two of these nodesat remote locations – so Node 1 for example could be inLos Angeles; Node 2 could be in New York – and just inpreliminary testing we’re moving about a terabyte ofdata over a 10 gigabit Ethernet line in about 10 minutesfrom New York to Los Angeles, which is prettyremarkable. Also, if you don’t have, let’s say, thefastest storage infrastructure to handle that kind ofthroughput, we can provide you another appliance,again with the software already preloaded,preconfigured drive pool to ensure quality of servicefrom “point to point”. In conjunction with that, we stilloffer our BlueStor product line which is 16 bay and soonto be 24 bay rack mount storage enclosures, serverenclosures, and our SilverStor line of products whichalso includes our ThunderStor – our SilverStor-ThunderStor product which is an 8 bay Thunderboltattached product with a SAS expansion available, whichis also something that is unique to JMR. So instead ofhaving to daisy-chain additional Thunderbolt storagesboxes on the line and actually slow down yourThunderbolt connection, we expand via SAS so thatyou’re able to get and maintain a high level ofperformance and expand your storage to massivestorage amounts, all on the fly.

Ed: Richard, those sorts of speeds, I mean wecouldn’t manage that could we – 10 minutes for aterabyte?

Richard: Simply – no, so quite impressive. Well,within New Zealand, most people know they couldn’t,but there are certainly clients that I work with who doactually have that level of bandwidth. So it issomething that’s very applicable …

Ed: And it’s going to come?

Richard: It is going to come, but our problem is thelast mile of infrastructure. We’ve got the connectivity

out of our country and into our country, but what wehave for some people is the challenge of that last mileback to the exchange.

Ed: But certainly on a local area network it wouldwork, wouldn’t it?

Richard: Absolutely. I think there’s room for thisproduct knowing the price point it’s at and what it doesfor independent filmmakers for example doing a shoot,and having a really resilient way of moving their mediafrom out on location back to base. You know we’retalking about a smaller amount of data usually, but itgives a CRC Checksum data pass through, so you knowwhat’s going from one to the other, is what’s supposedto get from one end to the other. I think it’s going tobe a great solution and I look forward to using it.

Ed: So the Thunderbolt’s a big thing, or SAS is theother big thing?

Richard: Thunderbolt is a huge thing. Thunderbolt isout everywhere now, so whether you’ve got an HP or anApple, it gives you a really solid way of connecting tostorage and it’s a really great product that these guyshave built. That expandability takes some of theircompetitors’ products and just kicks them out of theballpark. Once you’ve seen this product, this is whatyou’re going to buy.

Ed: Okay, so one of the cute little things here on theJMR stand is actually a product by Apple, a new Mac Prowhich is a little cylinder and Miguel, you’ve developedsomething interesting for it?

Miguel: Yes, actually JMR has developed a Mac Promounting kit, so you’re able to mount your Mac Proeither in a rack mount, in a horizontal configuration soyou can mount two machines side by side, or we alsooffer a vertical configuration where you can mountmachines vertically in your rack. It is of aluminiumdesign, so it keeps the machine cool, it’s very well puttogether metal, you have padding to make sure thatyour Mac Pro doesn’t get marked and you’re able tomake the most efficient use of your rack space whilestill using the latest technology that Apple has to offer.So those are actually on sale now, you can get themthrough the JMR website or through one of our resellersor distributors, like Atomise in New Zealand. If youneed any more information on the JMR product, you canalways reach us on http://www.jmr.com

Miguel and Richard.

Ed: Now tell me, as an engineer, can you see a valuein having a cylindrical computer like that?

Miguel: Well absolutely. The thing about it is thatApple always push the envelope in terms of design andengineering when it comes to their products and in ourpreliminary tests with the Mac Pro it’s a very powerfulmachine with PCI SSDs built-in, dual graphics, graphicsports for processing, so it does have a place and alsohas Thunderbolt multiple Thunderbolt 2 connectionswhich work well with our Thunderbolt attached storage

array. So we only see things getting faster and fasterin the industry and Apple’s really pushing that, so thatgives people good options on both the Apple OSX sideand also the PC side.

Ed: My question is really about the cylinder design,rather than a box … is there any engineering value inthe cylinder, or is it just aesthetic?

Miguel: Well it does have some engineering value

in terms of saving desk space and stuff like that. The

fact that they’ve deployed PCI SSD as a standard is a

big deal because you know eventually the whole

industry is going to move more towards SSDs. But at

the same time it does create some challenges in terms

of folks who have legacy PCIE cards and stuff like that –

especially in the professional video market.

You know, if you’ve invested lots of money in PCIEcards for processing for SDI output, this does present achallenge, but that’s something that we are to meet aswell. JMR is actually going to be putting out a series ofThunderbolt 2 to PCIE expansion enclosures, so if youhave legacy PCIE product that you need to put in andconnect to your Thunderbolt Mac, we’ll provide you a 3-slot enclosure or a 1-slot enclosure that you can justsimply plug in your card, plug in your Thunderboltconnection and you’re good to go.

Ed: Available from Atomise.

NZVN

AJA – NAB 2014We are at AJA with Tony Cacciarellitalking about one exciting product thatthey’ve just released at this show.

Tony: For five years we’ve beenkeeping a very big secret but the secret’sout now and it’s called CION. It’s aproduction camera that’s capable ofworking at HD, 2K, UHD and 4Kresolutions. We record directly onto SSDmedia onboard on the camera. It’s thesame media that we use with our Ki ProQuad and really, the recording side ofthis is an extension of the Ki Pro Quad.We’ve taken the same concept ofrecording to ProRes which has reallyhelped accelerate that workflow ofgetting from your camera into your editand now you have the front end of thecamera. We’ve been saying that we’vebeen building the back end of camerasfor some time and now we’re buildingthe whole thing. So CION is a very open camera in alot of respects and it’s also the culmination of a lot ofthought and really purposeful placement of everythingon the camera. We’ve put a lot of effort into designingthe camera and thinking through how people want touse the camera, how this camera’s going to be used,and making sure that all the connections that we have –and we have a lot of them – are in the place where youwould want them for the purpose for which they’redesigned. So at the front end of the camera areconnections for the viewfinder, you have an SDI and anHDMI connector at the front end so you can plug in anykind of viewfinder at the front. We have a power tap atthe front of the camera, for being able to poweraccessories like viewfinders and other poweredaccessories you might want to put on the front. On theback, we have the standard outputs, four SDIs, whichcan output a 4K baseband output, but we’re also able tooutput 120 frames per second as our AJA RAW format

Tony with the CION from AJA.

out of those four SDIs, and then we can feed that intoother devices that can then decode that.

Ed: So this is a cinema camera?

Tony: We are going for the cinema cameramarket with this, yes. We’re not trying to be “the”camera to solve every problem; we think there’s aparticular place in the market that was looking for acamera like this.

Ed: That’s refreshing.

Tony: I hope it is … and really, aiming to design acamera for a very specific market of workingprofessionals who are doing high end work on a regularbasis. They need a camera that’s fairly affordable, butstill gives them those high quality features. We thinkthere are other cameras that are at the higher end forfolks who are doing very high end cinema work, andthey have features and image quality and capabilitiesthat are really important to that market. With CION,

more on page 61

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Stow and Share Your New Mac Pro®

JMR ProBracket …the solution for securing your new Mac Pro!

The new Mac Pro® and its revolutionary design have taken the market by storm, but Apple is leaving some users and IT pros scratching their heads. How can multiple users share the power of the Mac Pro? How can I get it off my desk or the floor?

The new patent pending, JMR ProBracket is an innovative racking system that enables you to securely install your new Mac Pro under a desk, aside a desk pedestal, to a wall, or into a rack cabinet.

The unique family of mounts allows for the quick, convenient mounting of the computer, with I-O ports readily available or hidden, and includes cable management and secure integrated straps that hold the computer in place, along with rubber gasketed “cradles” that protect them from vibration and scratches. The ProBracket family includes:

Mounting a single Mac Pro computer under a desk or against a wall: MPRO-DESK Mounting a single computer into a rack cabinet, or against a wall/pedestal: MPRO-HORZ

Dimensions: MPRO-DESK wall or desk side mount: 9.75” (247.7mm) L x 9.75” (247.7mm) W MPRO-HORZ rack mount: 7.00” (177.8mm) H x 15.75” (400mm) D, when installed and nested

The ProBrackets are all finished in high gloss black baked-on powder coating over 18 gauge galvanized steel and allow for sliding the computer(s) in and out of a cabinet, or may be used for wall/pedestal mounting. The JMR ProBracket is American made and brought to you by JMR ELECTRONICS INC. JMR was awarded BEST OF SHOW by Digital Video Magazine at NAB 2014 for the “storage” category. For more information or to order contact JMR at 818-993-4801 or www.jmr.com.

The new Mac Pro® and its revolutionary design have taken the market by storm, but Apple is leaving some users and IT pros scratching their heads. How can multiple

users share the power of the Mac Pro? How can I get it off my desk or the floor?

The new patent pending, JMR ProBracket is an innovative racking system that enables you to securely install your new Mac Pro under a desk, aside a desk pedestal, to a wall, or into a rack

cabinet. The unique family of mounts allows for the quick, convenient mounting of the computer, with I-O ports readily available or hidden, and includes cable management and

secure integrated straps that hold the computer in place, along with rubber gasketed “cradles” that protect them from vibration and scratches.

The ProBracket family includes: • Mounting a single Mac Pro computer under a desk or against a wall: MPRO-DESK

• Mounting a single Mac Pro into a rack cabinetl: MPRO-HORZ

DVT – AutodeskSmoke and moreWe’re here in Auckland with

Stuart from DVT to talk about

Autodesk post NAB.

Ed: Autodesk really has

made a big impact on the

postproduction industry over

recent years, not just the

graphics side of it, but the

whole editing workflow. With

the latest additions to Smoke,

they seem to have just gone

even further Stuart?

Stuart: Yes they’ve done

a great job. Obviously, the

advances in Autodesk Smoke

were planned to democratise

visual effects and bring them

to anybody who was an editor

or doing basic things with

compositing in After Effects or

grading in Resolve. So with Smoke over the years,

they’ve certainly added more features and they’ve put a

lot of effort into making it much easier to use and of

course bringing it up to date with the modern

paradigms that people are used to … for example, if

you’re an Adobe Premiere or a Final Cut editor, they

wanted to make it very easy for you to move ahead and

use their product instead.

Ed: How can you test that – I mean, it’s good to saythat, but do you have to go out and buy a Smokesystem to actually see whether you could drive ityourself?

Half an hour before the show closed and there was still interest at the Autodesk demo.

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Stuart: Not at all. The thing with Smoke is thatthere’s a 30 day trial where you can download, installand actually use the full version of the software, it’sunlimited. The other really cool thing with AutodeskSmoke is that, on YouTube, there is an Autodesk Smokelearning channel that starts all the way from the basics,how to install the product, how to open it up, createyour first project and bring some footage in and startdoing some basic editing – all the way to the advancedfeatures now of 3D tracking and grading andcompositing and special effects. So it’s very easy.

The real test with these products, when you know FinalCut or Adobe or now even DaVinci Resolve, when theysay you can edit with our product, the reality is thatanyone who is experienced in editing in a normalediting package, the real acid test is that they can sit infront of the software and, without knowing a singlething, they can drag a clip up and down the timeline,can they trim the ends of it, can they do an insert editand mess with the audio levels … and the reality is, theynow all work with a very common paradigm across theboard. That’s why a lot of vendors, including Autodesk,have been making sure that their software looks andfeels like an editing application up the front end.

Ed: You mentioned DaVinci Resolve, you candownload that for free and use it for free, so why wouldyou spend money (a) on Autodesk or (b) on upgradingyour Resolve to the full version?

Stuart: It’s interesting when you look at it from ahistorical perspective. A lot of these products starteddoing one thing really well, but they realised theproblem with that is round-tripping … you know, it’s allvery well to have a special effects package, but you’vegot to grade it as well and then getting your footage outof that special effects package and into a gradingpackage is okay, but then you’ve got to edit it andyou’ve got to take it out of that and put it into youreditor, and that’s a problem. DaVinci Resolve is a goodexample where it’s a very good grading system, butnow of course with the latest versions of DaVinciResolve they’ve also put editing functions into it as well.The same with Autodesk – Smoke was always anediting application with special effects attached. It’salso got very good grading tools as well and one couldsay that Adobe, now you can only buy all of theirproducts, but they’re still separate applications. You’ve

still got Adobe Premiere and After Effects andSpeedGrade and Photoshop all as separate applications,although they do link to each other. You can take aPhotoshop document, embed it in an After Effectscomposition, embed that After Effects composition intoAdobe Premiere’s timeline, and then embed Premiere’stimeline into SpeedGrade and do grading. It’s a littlebit cumbersome. Autodesk Smoke, on the other hand,performs all of those functions in a single integratedpackage, so it’s a few steps ahead I guess of whereAdobe is.

It depends on what you’re doing. Some people are just

editing and, of course, you can use all of these

applications now to do just editing if you want to, but

the nice thing with Autodesk Smoke is that, when you

want to step into moderate to heavy visual effects, you

don’t have to leave the application; or if you want to do

colour grading, you don’t have to leave the application,

and that’s really one of the big advantages of Autodesk

Smoke.

Ed: Now I understand from the press briefing that we

had at NAB that the 3D capability now of Smoke has

really improved … for example, they said it was used on

Gravity?

Stuart: Yes, you know Autodesk Smoke is a very

capable package and the one thing that Smoke can do

that none of the other systems can really do is bring in

a real 3D object and manipulate it in 3D space inside

the timeline of the system. That’s sort of unique I

suppose to Smoke, and of course, with Autodesk’s

legacy of other products like Maya, 3DStudio MAX,

Softimage etc, you’ve got all of the tools available to

you in the Autodesk world to create 3D objects, texture

them, paint them and set them up and render them, or

bring them directly into Autodesk Smoke, because it all

talks the same language and file format compatibility.

Ed: Yes, because we were told a comparison between

Avatar and Gravity and that, in the days of Avatar (andreally it wasn’t that long ago), it was fairly high

maintenance – there was an intensive effort to get that

3D look, but with Gravity, they used Smoke out of the

box?

Stuart: Absolutely. The ease of use of theseproducts has been a strong focus for Autodesk with

Smoke, to make it easier touse. Also, to untangle thetechnical complexity withwhich the product needs torun. In the old days, it wasa Linux only product thatran on proprietary systems,you needed an engineer toset it up for you and tomaintain it; whereas today,it really is just a desktopapplication that you caninstall on any modern Macand run it without anytechnical complexities. Theuser interface looks similar;as we talked about beforewith the editing applications,you can sit there and edit inSmoke with no trainingwhatsoever. It’s very, verystraightforward and, to getinto the advanced featuresis really only a few clicks

away and there’s the Smoke learning channel to showyou how to do that. That’s the change in the last fiveyears – the removing of complexity, streamlining theworkflows and adding in creative tools that people havedemanded into the application – all in one seamlessapplication.

Ed: And you say, it’s working on all the latesthardware, so it’s working on the new Mac Pro?

Stuart: Yes. One of the new features of Smoke2015 is that they’ve made it fully Mavericks compatible.It runs on the very latest Mac operating system; andalso, they decoupled it from the NVIDIA graphics cardsthat were required in the past. They have rewritten it;instead of using OpenGL they now use OpenCL, whichmeans it will run on AMD graphics cards. So now thatyou can run both Mavericks and AMD graphics cards,that means you can now run Autodesk Smoke reallywell on the latest Mac Pro, or the latest iMac. Ofcourse, the latest Mac Pros and iMacs have wonderfulvideo IO options with the Blackmagic Thunderboltdevices and the AJA Thunderbolt devices and one of thenew features in Autodesk Smoke 2015 is the ability todo full stereoscopic work with stereoscopic output fromAJA IO cards.

One of the other newfeatures that they’ve putinto it is the 3D tracker. Ifyou’ve got handheld camerafootage, you might want toput either a 3D element or a2D element into that shotand the only way to do thatrealistically, is to track thecamera movement that theoriginal handheld camerahad so that you can then putelements into the shot thatlook seamless and movewith the image that you’veshot. So having the 3Dtracker added to Smoke2015 is an awesome newfeature. Some of the “underthe hood” stuff that they’vedone in terms of thedevelopment of the product– we talked about theOpenCL being re-written totake advantage of that new modern method of doing 3Din an application. They’ve also taken their Connect FX,which is their high end compositing engine, and they’veredone the timeline, so that also the timeline now usesexactly the same 3D compositing engine as Connect FXdoes. So you can start something on the timeline – ifyou’re an editor, you could do a “picture in picture”effect for example, and then you could say “look, I wantto move this into 3D space somehow” … you can nowstep into Connect FX from the timeline and everythingthat you’ve done in the timeline will carry through andvice versa. So it’s sort of an “under the hood”enhancement to make things just a little bit moreseamless across the application.

Ed: But you can still run the Autodesk application in agroup environment so, if you’re not a 3D person, youcould be the editor and you could pass on this project tosomeone to add the fruity bits?

Stuart: Oh absolutely. Autodesk have ensured, likeevery other vendor, that they can export and importprojects and files in just about any format on the

planet, so there’s full support for XML export whichworks with Adobe Premiere, Media Composer and FinalCut across the board. There’s no problem with startingin one application and bringing stuff into Smoke tofinish it, or starting something in Smoke and thensending it to another application. That whole multi-application workflow has got easier. I guess the pointwith Autodesk Smoke is that, if you are wanting to doeverything in one package, you definitely can stop withjust Smoke.

Ed: So what effect is the new Mac Pro going to haveon the whole editing landscape, especially withAutodesk?

Stuart: I think the new Mac Pro is fascinating.Obviously, everyone in the industry was very keen tosee if Apple were going to come out with a new MacPro; of course they announced a new Mac Pro with aradically different architecture to traditional computing,which is in true Apple style. Now that it’s landed, manyof the software vendors have bent over backwards tohighly optimise their software to work extremely well onthe new Mac Pro and the performance that we’ve seenout of just about every application – whether it’s Adobeor Blackmagic or Autodesk on the new Mac Pro is truly

stunning. So it’s a really wonderful path for peoplemoving forward – and you can run all of theseapplications on the same machine, at the same time,without any issues now too. So those complexities inthe past where we’d set up an Adobe Premiere systemand not touch it for years – and I had one customer inrecently who had a system that was literally 12 yearsold, still working – but you know, these days you canrun multiple applications on the same platform, at thesame time without any issues and it’s remarkable tosee. So the new Mac Pro really is a workhorse for thefuture of this industry for sure.

Ed: And there’s a lot of vendors out there alreadymaking accessories for them, including metal bands tohold them into rack mounts?

Stuart: We’ve had no trouble with doing anythingon a Mac Pro or with Thunderbolt I must say, for quitesome time, so the maturity of the Thunderbolttechnology is phenomenal, all the way from cheap littlevideo output devices to get an output to a big screentele or a broadcast monitor, through to storage,

through to high speed networking,whatever you want to do. One of theother really cool things about Mavericksparticularly is your ability to plugThunderbolt cables between multiplemachines and set up a 20 gigabit highspeed network for free; you literallydon’t even have to configure anything inthe software in order to make thathappen, it’s truly remarkable. You canget a 20 gigabit network set up betweeniMacs and Mac Pros just by pluggingThunderbolt cables between them. Andof course, you can get long Thunderboltcables, now that the Corning opticalcables are available. Some people willconsider them to be pricey at $3-400 fora 30 metre cable, but if you comparethat to the price of a 20 gigabit networkcard at each end and a 20 gigabit switch,it’s still extremely cheap. So there’spretty fascinating high speed networkingoptions that these new Mac Pros giveyou. What that means for us, of course, is that youcould start editing material on one machine and thenpush that content across to a Smoke system blazinglyfast through this 20 gigabit Ethernet network that youcan set up with Thunderbolt cables. We’ve gotcustomers now that we’re working with who are settingthese systems up and I’m pretty sure that that might beone of the things we could talk about in a future issue,showing off some of this technology.

Ed: Yes, look forward to that – but I understandthere’s a big change in how people are buying Autodesknow?

Stuart: Yes. Autodesk started off selling softwareproducts and then doing subscription or maintenanceagreements that kept that software up to date and alsoprovided support. They’ve decided to go down theAdobe route now with their software … this is anincreasingly common method of delivery that softwarevendors in our industry are doing. So Adobe now havegot what they call Creative Cloud subscription andAutodesk have what they call Desktop Subscription socustomers can subscribe to their software for a yearlyperiod. Autodesk are doing the same thing with Maya,3DStudio MAX and all of their other products as well.So with Autodesk Smoke, you can subscribe to theproduct for a month, for a quarter, or for a year.Obviously, the longer you subscribe to it, the cheaper itis, so the yearly subscription is much more costeffective than doing it month by month, but thebeautiful thing is that, if you do subscribe for a year andthen you find you’ve got a particular project that comesin where you need another person to come onboard fora couple of months, you can just subscribe to it for aquarter to fulfil that need and then let the licence go.There’s plenty of flexibility now in terms of licensingoptions for the product.

Ed: Now this is probably a hard question for you toanswer, but the person out there who might beinterested in upgrading their software package, or whatthey want to do their editing and their graphics on – itseems as though they can do everything on the webthese days. They can go on the Autodesk site, they candownload the software, they can go on YouTube, theycan learn how to use it, so why would they actuallycome and see you Stuart?

Stuart: Well I guess the key thing that we have isthe expertise and experience in terms of how to best

Smoke demo at NAB.

put all of these solutions together, and also, mostimportantly these days, is looking at the projects thatpeople are working on and the best way to go about it.It’s true today that there are 20 different cameras thatyou could literally go out and shoot a particular showwith; there are 5 or 6 different editing applications thatyou could potentially use to edit it; there are manydifferent hardware platforms that you could choose.

Having this choice also adds complexity and confusionand one of the things that DVT are experts at is reallylistening to our customers’ needs and being able torecommend solutions that are the right ones for the joband also help with workflows and the best methods ofpushing this data around and massaging it into afinished result. That’s why people constantly come toDVT.

Ed: And also, from my own experience, it’s findingout what you’ve got already that can still work, butwhat extra bits you need to properly use the newsoftware?

Stuart: Oh absolutely. It’s fascinating when, like Isay, you talk to customers about where they are todayand where they want to move to tomorrow and theplans that we put together are very pragmatic.

The nice thing today is that you quite often don’t haveto throw the baby out with the bathwater in order tomove forward, and we spend a lot of time withcustomers saying “right, let’s look at where you want tobe in the future” and putting together a plan for that,and then they’ll go “great”, and we’ll put a process inlike, today you need to do this, tomorrow you need todo that, and then next year you’ll get to where youneed to be.

And then there are other customers where we do haveto be a bit harsh and say look, you’re losing money bycontinuing to use your existing camera or your existingediting system or hardware platform, and you reallyneed to invest in something new so that you can savemore time, spend that time on being more creative,more productive to be able to turn your work aroundquicker. So, you know, it depends on differentcustomers and really what their needs are.

Ed: But you’d never say that to someone with a tapecamera would you?

Stuart: Yes … do you know anyone?

Ed: We’ll stop there. NZVN

we’ve tried to give a good cross-sectionof functionality to an area of the marketthat may not be able to play in thathigher end, but now they havesomething that’s going to do what theyneed at a price point that’s going tomake them actually be able to have abusiness model.

Ed: The word you used – functionality– is what I’ve heard from journaliststalking about this. It’s got everything,it’s all there, you pick up the camera andyou look for where a connector should beor where a button should be, orwhatever it is – and it’s in the rightplace, and you have other options aswell. So it’s been very, very welldesigned. I guess the big thing is thatit’s US$9000?

Tony: Yes – and again that’s thataffordable price point that we’re trying togo for – US$9000 for a magnesium body, so it’s a verysolid camera, it’s going to stand up to the abuse ofbeing out in the field. We went with an over theshoulder design, because we feel like that’s somethingthat people inevitably end up doing. We see a lot ofthese smaller format cameras – the first thing people dois go out and buy a bunch of kit to put it on theirshoulder.

Ed: It’s amazing isn’t it?

Tony: This is all ready to go on your shoulder,nice suede shoulder pad, even down to the engineeringof the shoulder pad that’s slightly angled because yourshoulder isn’t square. I can work out, and you canwork out and our shoulders are never going to getsquare.

Ed: C’mon, look at me, I don’t work out!

Tony: I’m just saying that, no matter how hardyou try, your shoulders are never going to be squareand this is actually designed to sit on your shoulder at anatural angle. It’s very light, it’s less than 6½ pounds,so it’s a very light camera.

Ed: And the thing is that US$9000 includes therecorder. If you have to buy a Ki Pro Quad on its own…?

Tony: Yes, that’s a US$2-3000 investment rightthere. So yes, you get the recorder capable ofrecording 4K ProRes files directly onto the removabledrives and we support all of the flavours of ProRes onthe camera, from Proxy, LT, 422 all the way up to 444.You can record at a very high quality rate; at 422 we’reable to record 4K at 60 frames per second directly onthe camera, so it also is capable of doing those highframe rates that people are looking for with 4K, to kindof eliminate all of that judder that you can get whenyou move the camera around. We also have a globalshutter– the sensor uses a global shutter instead of arolling shutter, so when you pan around, you have anice stable image, you don’t get that rolling shutterartifact.

Ed: So it’s a CMOS chip is it?

Tony: Correct, a CMOS sensor and we’ve donesome clever filtering on the front of it too. This isgetting into a bit more of the esoterics, but with theinfrared filtering that we’ve put on the front of it, thatgives us a cleaner colour image coming in. We’ve putan optical low-pass filter built-in to eliminate some ofthat high frequency noise that you can get with 4K, so

we’ve got a nice clean image, and the infrared filter hasthis nice side effect of allowing you to use normal NDfilters on the front of the camera. You don’t have to goto the more expensive ND IR filters that people typicallyuse if they’re trying to filter out some of that infraredlight. So it has that built into it, which is actually areally nice cost saving again.

Ed: And one very important feature which I hadn’tthought about until it was mentioned – you can actuallyadjust the back focus on this camera?

Tony: Yes, you can adjust the back focus reallyeasily and very precisely. There’s a plate on the top,two screws come off, a little lever in there and it’s arotating cuff that you just move back and forth and youcan get very, very precise back focus adjustment, lockthat down and put the plate back on and you’re readyto go.

Ed: And that’s the important thing with cameras withinterchangeable lenses and 4K – focus has to beprecise?

Tony: Absolutely yes – and this allows you to dothat very quickly and easily … especially for rentalcompanies that are going to be renting out the camera.You know, prepping a camera to go out on a shoot canbe a fairly involved process and back focus is one ofthose critical things they always have to make sure isdone properly, and this is much, much easier to do. Itjust kind of reduces that prep time whether you’redoing it yourself or you’re a rental house prepping thecamera to go out.

Ed: And I guess the last little piece that just gives itan AJA touch – it’s got a wooden handle?

Tony: I believe it’s Australian walnut actually onthere. Yes, a nice wooden handle and that actuallycomes with the base camera. You get the camera bodyand handle for US$9000, and the handle includes aLANC-based start/stop button and tally light so you cantrigger recording directly from there.

Ed: Well, I’m sure it’s going to do well?

Tony: We’ve had a really great response so far, sowe’re pretty excited – and finally to be able to get outand talk about it after all this time is really just … it’s agreat culmination of all the effort and we’re really happyto see the response that’s come back on it.

Ed: Yeah, retention’s very bad for you – it can bevery blocking.

Tony: Absolutely, absolutely.

NZVN

AJA story continues from page 54

ARRI – LensesA large part of the ARRI booth is devoted to lenses.Stefan Sedlmeier talks us through the new releases.

Ed: Stefan, the Alura lenses – and I always getconfused all the “As” that ARRI comes along with,everything is called an “A” – you have a new lens in theAlura range?

Stefan: Yes. With the Alura it’s funny because wehave got ALEXA, AMIRA, Alura, but this is a new ARRIdevelopment, this is an ultra-wide zoom, 9.5-18 forhelicopter shots, very straight lines, no breathing …

Ed: What do you mean “no breathing”?

Stefan: Breathing occurs sometimes on lowerquality optics and lenses when you pull focus, then thefocal length of the lens changes slightly. You couldimagine like filming from parchment paper whichmoves, so its geometry changes in the image while youare changing focus. Lens breathing is basically thatslight geometry change and this looks like altering yourfocal length when you are pulling focus.

Ed: But this lens is not just for helicopters surely?

Stefan: It gives very neat wide angle shots forwhen you do car commercials, when you do internalshots and there is no room to put the camera furtherback, that’s where you need wide angle lenses. Wealways had wide angle lenses like the 8R which is anultra-wide angle Prime lens, the Ultra Prime 8R, thenMaster Primes starting at 12mm and this is now an ultra-wide zoom, so variable focal length.

Ed: It seems very long for a wide angle lens?

Stefan: Yes it is very long. With zoom lenses youcan’t go shorter; it’s also a very fast lens – T2.9. Justhave a look at the monitor then you see what this lensis doing and you show this around.

Ed: And I can concur that it’s a very wide clearpicture and very straight lines.

Stefan: You can see when you focus that thegeometry doesn’t change while you focus.

Ed: Yes, there’s no movement in the picture – nobreathing.

Stefan: Correct, exactly. On some less expensivePrime lenses and smaller Primes you see that when youchange focus the geometry changes and this is what wecall breathing.

Ed: The picture gets larger or smaller, slightly.

Stefan: Slightly, just slightly.

Ed: And that’s breathing.

Now Stefan’s just showed me something that I didn’tknow existed and it is so cool … well it’s very large andit takes more than a driving licence to be able to drivethis one.

Ed: What are we looking at here Stefan?

Stefan: This is the ARRIHEAD 2 – this is a gearedhead and this is supporting the ALEXA XT Studio and wealso show the new Master Anamorphic 135mm lens.

Ed: Okay, we’ll start with the head – it’s not yourtraditional head, there’s no arm here to swing thecamera round with, it’s got a couple of wheels?

Stefan: Yes, it’s got two wheels for horizontal andvertical, so pan and tilt and a gearbox – you have threedifferent gear ratios and DOPs are sometimes used tousing the geared heads rather than a fluid head and thisis just a different way of mounting the camera.

Ed: I had a try myself, and of course my accuracywas not very good, but I could see … Stefan’s very kind,he’s saying it was good, but we know the reality … butyes, you can adjust the gears to different sensitivitiesand it doesn’t matter how much pressure you put onthat wheel, it’s how much turn you give it that actuallycauses the camera to move. So you can’t bump it inother words and go past the point that you want to gopast. So I would imagine a very accurate way of doingpans, tilts, and at the same time.

Now we can talk about this lens –you say it completesthe range?

Stefan: This completes the range of MasterAnamorphics, yes. The first sets we’re shipping the35mm, 50mm and 75mm; now we’re shipping the40mm and 60mm; we already ship the 100mm and thisis the last lens to come, the 135mm.

Ed: So there’s nothing else to do now?

Stefan: No, there’s always something else to do,but this is seven focal lengths for the set of MasterAnamorphic lenses. Let’s see what’s beyond thehorizon.

Ed: Okay – and you reckon you’ve got enough fruithanging off this particular tripod?

Stefan: I guess so, yes. This is a fully loadedcamera system, that’s true.

Ed: I would say it’s fully loaded, yes.

Stefan: It’s similar to Cinetape.

Ed: And this looks like a double barrelled canon onthe front here?

Stefan: That is the Cinetape equivalent from ARRIcalled the UDM-1 – UDM for Ultrasonic DistanceMeasure – and this fully integrates with the ALEXA andthe wireless system.

Ed: So you don’t need a gofer with a tape measure?

Stefan: Not anymore. Sometimes it’s not possiblewhen you’re shooting.

Ed: Another man out of a job. NZVN

A very long lens from ARRI.

* Trial products are subject to the terms and conditions of the license and services agreement that accompanies the software. Autodesk and Smoke are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or a liates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services o erings, and specifications and pricing at anytime without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2012 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.



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