nzvn may14

MAY 2014 Vol 202

NAB 2014 Part OneI must say that I enjoyed this year’s show more thanmost. Perhaps it was that there were some realimprovements in the products that many vendors hadto offer; perhaps I’m getting better at timemanagement so I can spend it where I want and not beracing from one end of the halls to the other ( at least10 minutes at a fast clip ); perhaps the fact that I got tobed early each show night or perhaps the incentive thatI had two weeks travelling around the National Parks ofColorado, Utah and California with my wife after theshow was over. Anyway, it was a very good show andthere are lots of things to tell you. I’ll start with DVTbecause I wanted you to see the photo in colour andthey deserve to be first because they are such greatsupporters of our little publication. Let us begin back inNew Zealand with Chris Barr from DVT because,somehow, we didn’t quite get to meet at NAB –however, that’s another story. We will include a photoof Chris “Photoshopped” into a typical Las Vegas scene,so you know what he looks like, as he’s telling us whathe found interesting this year when he wasn’t with me.

Chris: I think the biggest thing I got from NABwas the fact that the ability to get access to a 4Kcamera is easier than it ever has been, but also thatthere is a camera to suite any budget. But of coursetoo its all well and good that you can get access andhave the ability to shoot 4K, you still need to ensurethat you have a post-production workflow that will allowyou to do so. What we have now, and what was shownat the show, are vendors providing software andhardware solutions making it possible to considershooting 4K. For those that are unsure as why theyneed to consider 4K, they need to know I guess,situations where consideration needs to be made infavour of 4K eg. is the content saleable to an overseasmarket, is it an historical event? Do you shoot forcreative needs, eg. green screen or template?“Now where was I supposed to meet Grant?”

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Ed: Okay, what about in the more traditional areasthat DVT offers, say for example, Blackmagic. What didyou find exciting on offer this year?

Chris: Blackmagic had a bit to show once again atNAB this year. They introduced three new cameras totheir range, two studio cameras and more interestinglythe URSA. The URSA is not the type of camera youthrow on your shoulder however, but designed morearound a production/film environment as the camera is7kg, without a lens. This was at times a hard camera toget in front of at their booth. A lot of interest camefrom the public.

If you’re a church, a university, or anyone who wants toset up their own studio, you can now do so quite costeffectively without having to lose an arm and a legthanks to the two new studio cameras. Secondly,DaVinci Resolve 11 was announced. It was interestingto see that they’ve now introduced an editor to DaVinci,allowing the ability, like other NLE tools, to edit, workwith mixed formats, frame rates and resolutions, as wellas the ability to resize, re-time video, mix audio and somuch more. So rather than doing a round trip process,you now have one tool that achieves much more thanjust grading.

Ed: The question is how can you sell DaVinci Resolvebecause it’s free?

Chris: Well there is a lite version that isdownloadable for free, however certain features are notavailable unless you get the paid version, for example –noise reduction and motion blur effects, real time noise

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I guess the way I see it, and many others, no one isasking for 4K. If you believe it’s worth acquiring in 4Kbut only need HD, down-sample and master to HD, thenarchive both an HD and a 4K for the future. When youshoot 4K then down-sample to HD you in theory end upwith a better quality HD than if you had shot it at HD.Of course workflow is important to ensure the bestpossible down-sample.

Ed: But surely there’s definitely an understanding outthere that if you’re actually doing an HD production,you’re better off to shoot it in HD and not do the down-sample?

Chris: You always want to capture your content atthe best possible quality. We have done that for yearswith HD content, where broadcasters were only everasking for SD. The reality was, productions wereacquiring in HD ( in some cases, not all ) and thensupplying an SD master on DigiBeta to the broadcaster.Why? We end up with a better quality SD master aswell as an HD master for broadcast in the future.

Ed: Carry on.

Chris: Other things I found interesting ... I noticedthis year that every man and their dog were offeringsome kind of gyro-stabilised gimbal. The previous yearwe had a company called Freefly who introduced aproduct called the MōVI, which was unique and new to the market. It was a product that allowed productionsto get shots that were unique, that could not have beencaptured as easily by other methods and in turn acquirethose shots more affordably.

DJI was one of thecompanies that I had thechance to get hands on withtheir solution for stabilisa-tion. DJI call their productthe Ronin. It was light-weight, but not as light-weight as the MoVi but stilleasy to set up and only tookfive minutes approx. It canalso take a max payload of7kg/16lb, meaning you canput a Red Epic underneathit. So DJI is a companythat’s already developedgyro-stabilised solutions forthe likes of GoPro camerasto sit underneath theirPhantom/drones cameras,so the ability to turn thisinto a handheld stabilisationrig, I guess, was just anevolutionary process.

Ed: So this involves battery powered gyros?

Chris: Yes these types of systems require a power

source. One of the nice things about it will be its price

point; they’re expecting it to come under US$5000. So

it becomes an affordable option for users.

reduction, ability to work with steroscopic, and theability to have a collaborative workflow and much more.

Ed: That gives an option for people to download thatfree version, try it out, see how it works on highdefinition projects and, if they really like it, they canspend a bit of money ( not a lot ) to go that next step?

The DaVinci Resolve timeline looks very familiar.

Chris: Yes, that’s correct. As a segue into othersoftware offerings, I also had a look at Adobe. Adobehave introduced into Premiere Pro and After Effects anew tool, tracking and masking. I guess thinkcourthouse, witness protection. So if you’ve been giventhe task, for example, of masking people’s faces whileat a courthouse, this can now be done now by an editorquite easily, rather than actually having to push thatout to an After Effects user. They have a new MasterClip Effects feature – this is the ability to apply a gradeor apply an effect to a master clip and have thatreplicated or ripple for a better word, through everypart of that clip that has been used within thesequence.

Ed: Well since we’re on Adobe, what else wasexciting?

camera is positioned at customers who requireshallower depth of field and the ability to capture highquality 4K, and have the ability to capture high framerates up to 120fps. So productions, films, even smallindie films, this is a great camera. The way I look at itthey both have their merits, it’s a matter of picking thetool that suites the job. Also important to note is theteaming up with Codex. Codex have designed a rawrecorder for use on their 35mm Varicam. I was told onthe stand that there is zero compression to their rawcodec, not like other competitors in the market.

Ed: But it comes at a price?

Chris: It does come at a price. To date, thenumber that’s been thrown around has been around thesub $60,000 mark for the 35mm, and I am unsureabout the HS model. Panasonic haven’t necessarily

confirmed any pricing on the HS that Iknow of so “we will have to wait andsee.”

Ed: I notice that Sony this year cameout with some quite astoundingimprovements to their range and a newstill movie camera?

Chris: Yes. So from the rangefrom Sony, let’s start with sort of yourprosumer cameras – they’ve released anew camera called the PXW-X180. Itreplaces the NX5 camera and it replacesthe PMW-100 camera, so it sort of sits inthe middle there now as an offering foryour corporates and weddingvideographers. It’s a little bit moreexpensive than an NX5, but quite a fully-fledged product at an affordable price.

They’ve also released the new XDCAMHD camera which is to replace the PDW-700 and 800. This is called the PDW-

850. So rather than having two separate products thatwere very close in terms of features, they’ve combinedthe two into one.

Sony announced new firmware for the PMW-F5/55cameras, with features like cache recording and usergenerated LUT support. Users can now as a paidupgrade include ProRes and DNxHD codecs to theircameras. However I am not sure how many will. Usersalready have an equivalent codec on their cameras, it’scalled the SR codec and in particular the SR lite codecthat has the same data rate at 220mbps as ProRes andDNxHD. It’s a codec that most have the ability to workwith in their editing application. However if you wantProRes or DNxHD, you can.

Also announced was the new ENG doc for the PMW-F5/55, designed for those cameramen who want accessto controls that they are familiar with in the 2/3” camerarange. Unfortunate Sony had this product under lockand key so, I was unable to play with it.

A little less important for the masses, but I also took alook at Sony’s 4K live camera system for the F65 andF55. The solution provided live productions with up to120fps for slow motion reply with their new AV storageunit. The system also allowed the ability to take HD cutouts from the 4K footage, allowing zooming in on awide scene. An option other than EVS at a moreaffordable price yet providing controls EVS users arefamiliar with

Ed: Were you impressed by the Alpha 7S?

Chris: Yes, once again another 4K offering to themarket, just like Panasonic’s GH4 that they’ve brought

Chris: Live text templates, another new featurewithin Premiere Pro, allowing editors to edit AfterEffects compositions within Premier Pro. In AfterEffects you can now get better keying results fromfootage that might be compressed or terribly shot andmuch more. I think the best thing for Adobe users whowould like to know more about new features in CreativeCloud, is to jump onto the Adobe TV website and watchsome of the videos that have been posted.

Ed: And you obviously went by the AJA booth?

Chris: Yes, AJA have got a new offering – I

shouldn’t be surprised, but they released the AJA CION

which is very much an “on the shoulder” ENG stylecamera, comes in a PL mount, up to 120 frames per

second. Really, in terms of a price point and

affordability, if someone was looking for a 4K camera, it

really comes in at an affordable price US$9K, making it

a very, very affordable option for someone who wants a

4K camera without having to buy a bunch of accessories

for shoulder rigging a camera. It’s affordable; it’s easy

and comfortable over the shoulder. I was very

impressed with the balance of it.

Ed: And, speaking of cameras, you went to thePanasonic stand and had a look at the new VariCam?

Chris: Yes, so Panasonic have announced two newVaricams. They’ve got a 35mm and the HS model,which are a 35mm 4k sensor and a 2/3” sensor camera.I think I see the HS model as an ENG style cameratargeting markets like live events, think rugby or winterOlympics due to its large depth of field and the ability toshoot at frame rates up to 240fps. Then the 35mm

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to market, it’s another affordable solution to jump intoa 4K workflow. I must note that I say “affordable”, butSony has not announced pricing to date. I guess theywill gauge the market. This camera had an impressivefeature set, and I think if teamed up with an externalrecorder, like Atomos Shogun, users will get somefantastic footage both in HD and 4K. I want thiscamera for my own personal use. I love toys. JVC wasanother vendor on the market that had a 4K camera toannounce. They announced four new 4K large sensorcameras to the market. They had a shoulder mount,handheld and even a small compact model. Sorealistically, if you’re unsure what to get, obviouslycome and talk to us at DVT and we’ll point you in theright direction.

Ed: That’s actually sensible advice Chris, because,with all the variation that a lot of people are offering,it’s a bit mind-boggling to know which one to go for, soit’s pretty important for someone knowledgeable to beable to steer people in the direction that theirproductions should be taking them?

Chris: Look, that’s why I like talking to customersabout what they’re doing, what they intend on doingwith the camera eg. type of work, documentaries, shortfilm etc, and not just what type of production or theimmediate work they may use the camera for, but whattheir intentions are for future productions, so that wecan obviously help navigate customers in the rightdirection so they can make the best sound decision.

Ed: Did you see lots of little helicopter drones at theshow?

Chris: I did see them, but to be honest I did notspend much time getting into detail with what was onoffer, but once again very interesting and they are agreat tool to help diversify any production. Moreimportantly they are a lot of fun to play with. Here atDVT we have access to DJI’s range of quad and multiblade-copters and we had the pleasure of flying orshould I say crashing our Phantom. Just don’t fly themindoors when you are learning to fly (laughing).

Ed: Did you look at any audio product?

Chris: Yes, I looked at Sony’s wireless solutionofferings. Sony has a new PDW-D wireless series. Akey feature I liked was the interface ability on thebottom of the new transmitters. You have the ability toadd the transmitter to cameras that use the new multiinterface shoe. The Sony PXW-180 that was announcedis one camera that has this mount. It means you donot need any connecting cables from transmitter tocamera. I think it’s important to note the new rangefrom Sony now fits within the new frequency range of

unlicensed frequencies, since the shut off of analogueTV. This is important to users as you do not want toturn up to a job and then have issues with getting afrequency to work with. The old UWPV models sit welloutside that range. For those who are unsure abouttheir wireless kits, just give us a ring and we willprovide you with the information you need.

Ed: You’ll trade old models will you?

Chris: Well we can help you decide what offering

from Sony’s range of wireless transmitter kits you

require. Sony’s new PDW-D range is a cost effective

solution for the amount of features you get.

Ed: Well perhaps I’ll find somebody who will trade

mine in, because I’ve got three of them! What about in

lighting – I’ve noticed over the last couple of years

especially, there’s a huge number of companies offering

lighting solutions, especially in the LED area?

Chris: There are, and we have an array of

offerings available for on camera as well

as free standing LED lights.

DVT have been selling iKan and Cineroidon-cameras lights for some time.However there was nothing really new inthis area that I looked at. For freestanding lights we work closely withProfessional Lighting Service’s team tohelp assist with directing our customersinto the right solutions. I think the bestLED panel that I have seen prior to NABas well as at NAB was BB&S’s AREA 48.

Ed: Because that’s it, I mean, youcan’t be masters of everything and Iguess that’s the value of the service thatDVT offers, is that you’re not preciousabout what you sell, you will look outthere in the market and find the best

One of the smaller DJI copters with camera.

product for the person and, quite often, there arecompanies that do certain lines of product very, verywell?

Chris: My brain can only hold so much

information, hence why we work closely with suppliers

to assist in helping our customers get the right solution

for the jobs that they have up and coming.

Ed: Did you find anything new in the area of

production workflow? I’m still a great user of tape and

I was impressed to see that Sony is continuing with its

disc cameras, but for many people, they really don’t

have the option anymore, they’ve got a solid state card

in the camera, they’ve got to decide what they do with

that footage after they’ve made their programme?

Chris: There are a lot of customers who don’t use

tape now that we are in a solid state workflow with

cameras. But regardless of whether you are working

with tape based footage or solid-state based footage,

the fundamental of having robustness and redundancy

in your storage does not change.

With the introduction of Thunderbolt, the cost of fast

reliable storage and particularly Raided storage

solutions has never been easier and more accessible.

An advantage of Thunderbolt storage is the ability now

to work with large files, in particular 4K, without the

fear of hitting performance issues. Basically you want

confidence in your hardware to allow you to deliver

quality content. If you have confidence in your

hardware your can have confidence in your workflow.

Having fast robust storage still does not offerredundancy. You still need to replicate that content.You can’t rely on just one copy of it, so teaming anydirect attached storage solution with the likes ofSynology NAS array will allow any post-house to haveconfidence that they have more than one copy if theunthinkable was to occur. Once you have robustnessand redundancy you can then work on archiving, andthere are solutions that mean you do not have toarchive back to tape.

Ed: Well you can go to LTO surely?

Chris: Well what I mean by “tape” is I mean likemastering to HDCAM SR. If you want to keep all yourRAW footage and other project related data there is LTOand I did come across a new product from mLogic.They have just announced the first Thunderbolt LTO-6tape drive, basically a very cost effective solution toallow users to archive product off and not have to spenda fortune doing so due to the cost effectiveness ofThunderbolt.

Ed: And was it all hard work Chris?

Chris: It was great to catch up with vendors andcustomers and see what people are up to and howthey’re using products in the market; in particular whatsells in the likes of the American market.

Ed: That’s part of what Las Vegas is all about isn’t it?

Chris: It’s important to network, it’s important tobe engaged with your customers, it’s how we are ableto point customers in the right direction when theycome to us with questions and also problems. NZVN

Blackmagic DesignWe are at Blackmagic and we have Kendall Eckman.Kendall has shown me a really special camera with thebiggest flip-out screen I’ve ever seen.

The user can do that or go back to the reseller and havethem do it. You can see here it has XLR audio. There’sa 12 Volt here that powers the camera, but there’sanother option up here to have SDI out and 12 Volt if

you want to go to anothermonitor or you want to go toan eye piece, that comesout there. It has yourreference in, SDI out, SDIin, timecode, so it does haveGenlock on it. You can hookon that, you play fromsomeone like IDX or AntonBauer and actually stick thebattery in right here. Thiscamera will shoot up to 60frames a second also, so it’swater cooled and it willeither shoot HD or you canshoot Ultra HD at 60 framesa second.

Ed: Th i s camera i s

capable of shooting 4K?

Kendall: Yes, up to 4K.

Ed: And that’s onto

internal cards?

Kendall: Yes, the CFast cards. There’s two slots,and once one fills it automatically switches over to thenext one. X Mark and Sandisk are making those rightnow – 120 gig and I guess in the future they’replanning on making 256.

Ed: Okay, and the codec that will go onto that?

Kendall: ProRes right now and then in the futurewe’re going to update that to a Cinema DNG RAW file.So it has the same sensor that a 4K production camerahas, with a Super 35 size sensor, global shutter …

Ed: Wow.

Kendall: And then down the road, probably at theend of the year, we’ll have something in the B4 mount.The other thing that is later – I’m not sure exactly whenthey’re going to come out with this one, but there’ll bea whole body here that you see without a sensor andyou can add on any camera that you want; if you havea favourite DSLR for instance you can go HDMI into the

body. So you have all the options, allthe features of this body, but you wouldbe coming off of your DSLR camera.

Ed: Okay, now I must make acomparison in size between this cameraand your other 4K production camera.Why is it so much bigger?

Kendall: Well, the purpose of thosewhen they came out was to be more ofan intimate camera that can get intotight places, maybe carry around withouthaving any shoulder mounts or handlesand things like that. Then people startedto rig them up, which is fine, we havethird party companies we work with, youcan accessorise the camera, customise itany way you want, which is great, butthere were tons of people with thingshanging off of them, they’re trying to doXLR, all these other options; we figuredwe should make a camera where theyalready have these things built-in and ontop of that, make it where you can do a

Ed: Kendall, this is called an URSA?

Kendall: Yes, a Blackmagic URSA camera. This is a10 inch, 1920x1080 screen here; then you can see youhave touch screens on either side of the camera, so youcan go in and you can do all your menu settings in here.You can also get video display. Really the URSA camerais set up as a workflow camera, so you can have anaudio person on one side, get all the audio scopes,meters and then you can have someone doing focusassist on the other side. The great thing about thiscamera is that it shoots to CFast cards, there are twoslots, so once one fills, it will automatically fill the nextone. In July, we’re planning on shipping an EF versionof this, it will be US$6000, then there will be a PL alsoavailable for US$6500. The great thing about thiscamera that I really like, is that you can change out thesensor eventually. So in a couple of years, if a bettersensor comes along, there’s four bolts on here, you canpull the sensor out and change it, put a new one in.

The URSA is big and affordable.

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higher frame rate, similar to 60p. We’re still upgradingthe other cameras, the Pocket, the original cinemacamera, and the 4K camera. Actually the 4K cameraright after NAB will have an update and we’re going toinclude the RAW for the 4K in that. So we arecontinuing to use those cameras and update them aswe go. But this is just more choices, more options,depending on your workflow.

Ed: And really, for a price, it goes even further – the

lens becomes the most expensive part of this camera?

Kendall: Exactly. I mean, you can get up there in

the lenses, but the nice thing is you can actually just

grab pretty much any EF lens – the Canon EF lenses –

and just pop it on there, or go PL … and it’s coming out

in July.

Ed: Wow. And you’re using the same monitor here asyou have in the URSA?

Kendall: Exactly, it’s a 1920x1080, it’s a 10 inchscreen on here. We also include some software calledCamera Control, so it will go into the ATEM switcher andyou can control the camera and you can do live colourgrading. So all of our ATEM switchers will be updatedwith that and there’ll also be a whole new interface thatwill go across the board of all the ATEM switchers.

Ed: And it’s a very small form factor?

Kendall: It is, yes, it’s lightweight, you can throw iton a tripod, it’s really easy to use, it comes with thisnice shield here too.

Ed: Well, alright, keep wowing me … now apart fromproduction switchers which, if anybody wants a

production switcher, then the best thingto do is to talk to your Blackmagicrepresentative, but in the other areas,Teranex Express?

Kendall: Teranex Express is an optionthere with the Teranex family ofproducts, so that you can upgrade fromHD to Ultra HD. You can convert any ofthe footage that you have from HD toUltra HD. You can go from Ultra HD andconvert it down to HD if you need to. Italso has a 12 gig SDI connection, so ifyou need to get up into the higher framerates like 60p it will handle that –US$1395. We also have updated all themini converters and a couple of our SDcards, so it rounds out the family ofthose products with the 6 gig SDI;they’re now all Ultra HD 4K capable.

Ed: And the DeckLink which has beena very popular product for you Iunderstand?

Kendall: Yes, I mean that product’s been aroundpretty much since the existence of the company Ibelieve – yeah 2001 …

Ed: And it’s kept the same form factor hasn’t it?

Kendall: Yes. They’ve now updated the SDIs onhere so that you have the 6 gig connection, singleconnection so you can go Ultra HD on these. With all of

Ed: But wait, there’s more?

Kendall: There is more. We have a studio camera intwo versions – there’s an HD version and there’s anUltra HD version. The HD version will be US$2000; theUltra HD version will be US$3000. They both come witha micro four-thirds lens mount so, of course, you can doring adapters and hook on pretty much any lens youwant on there; XLR audio, there’s a linein here for a mic, headphone jack so youcan do like the robust aviation headsetsin there; and you can do talkback andtally through the camera. There’s a lighton the front and there’s a light on herethat will light up right when you’re doingthe tally. Focus and iris – if you have anelectronic lens on here it will control thefocus and the iris on here. Both thesecameras will shoot in 60p also. This isnot a recording device at all, because thepurpose of this camera is for live events,so for instance, you can go optical fibreright into our ATEM switchers. They alsohave SCI in and out, you have referenceso you can Genlock these, and then youhave a 12 Volt coming out for power.These cameras do have an internalbattery that will last four hours, so if youdid want to take it off of the tripod andrun around with it, you could do it in astadium or something, and you’d stillhave four hours of battery life. The HyperDeck shuttle continues to be very popular.

Behind the hood is a full sized screen.

Ed: Bob, you’re one of the people who have beenworking on DaVinci Resolve for a long time and Iunderstand version 11 is really big time?

Bob: Yes 11 was a major upgrade. Last year version10 sort of set the foundation for what we did in 11 byadding a lot more editing features – we added 70 newimprovements to the editing side and another 70 plusimprovements on the colour correction side, metadatahandling and more. What we really are striving to doby improving our editing is that now, you can actuallyjust go on Resolve editing and colour grading andfinishing. The improved tools help us interact betterwith the other NLEs, so we can do better round trippingnow because we have better tools so it’s easier to moveback and forth. But one of the other things we did thisyear was to add collaborative editing. So you can haveone editor on a timeline and one or two colouristsworking on the same timeline and, as they gradescenes, the editor can accept them or vice versa,depending on who is the master session holder. Whatthis does is, say you’re in a colour grading session andsomebody wants to slip the edit even though it’ssupposed to be locked, it’s not; call up the editor, havehim do it. And you can do it remotely – if media is intwo different locations, you can do it remotely but theycan all work on the same timeline. That kind ofcollaboration is designed to speed up the entire processand give people a lot more freedom. Soone of the things we did in 11 was … ifyou own version 10, 11 is a free upgradeagain and there’ll still be a lite version.The lite version won’t have thecollaborative editing, but it will have allthe other editing tools in it.

Ed: And how much is the lite version?

Bob: That would be free.

Ed: That was the answer I thought youwere going to say – and if you want thecollaborative version?

our 6 gig connections, you can still do SD and HD, butnow have the ability to move up to Ultra HD whenneeded.

Another key product for Blackmagic is DaVinci Resolve

and we have Bob Caniglia from Blackmagic to tell us

what’s new.

Bob: AU$995. Many of our cameras come with a fullversion of Resolve so you can get it with a camera.

Ed: Is this a case of world domination?

Bob: Well I think it’s a case of trying to enable themasses to be able to have a better workflow and thisway … you know, back in the day when I was young

and I wanted to do a project, I’d eithershoot on video which wouldn’t look allthat good, or try to find the money forfilm and that wasn’t going to work.Today, people can tell a really good storywith our cameras and colour grade at areally low price and this way, they workon a better story. So they’re judged bythe story and not by the pieces ofequipment they use.

Ed: And of course, being an editormyself, one of the big issues is that,you’ve learnt a particular system andhow things work in a particular workflow,and then you want to go to a differentone – what’s the easiest migration, whatwould be the closest comparison in theediting field to Resolve?

Bob: Well I think we’ve borrowed a lotof features from various NLEs and whatwe’ve done in Resolve is actually addtools to bring other people in. Forinstance, we added the colour wheels

that Apple Colour had to bring those guys in. This yearwe’ve done another thing in the colour grading bybringing in tools that the still photographers are usedto.

When still photographers started to use Resolve, they

didn’t understand some of the nomenclature, so we put

in tools this year that you can use the terminology that

is familiar to still photographers and this way they

transition – “oh, that means this” and so it’s easier for

them to learn.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people from the various NLEs,

when they got onto Resolve’s editing, they said “oh thisfeels familiar to me” because we have multiple ways to

do things.

So whether you’re a keyboard shortcut guy or you’re a

mouse guy, you can do almost everything one way or

the other, so we’re trying to be very homogenous in

that sense.

Ed: And you can try your lite version – just go to

www.blackmagicdesign.com

Bob: Yes just go into the download section … now the

new 11 software will be ready in June, but version 10

which already had some editing is also free online, and

so they can try that.

Ed: You can’t get better than that. NZVN

Bob from Blackmagic.

PLS – MatthewsWe are up to 117 interviews for NAB 2014 and who

better to do the 117th interview but Linda Swope from

Matthews Studio Equipment for PLS.

Ed: Linda, still new things – there’s big things, there’s

little things but I’d really like to start with a little thing

that we’ve actually done before, because I find this is

really, really clever and I’m hoping that everyone will

get to see and touch. Once you handle this little thing,

you’ll know that you won’t want to handle anything else

again – what are we looking at?

Linda: Exactly – it’s our new Quick Release

Adapter for the NOGA Arms. It’s the simplest and

quickest way to mount a lightweight camera, a light, a

monitor – anything that’s lightweight that will go onto

the NOGA Arms that weighs 12-14 pounds. It’s a click

on, click off, the hot shoe mount stays on your device,

so you’re not turning and turning and turning and

turning to screw it on and then it snaps right in.

Ed: Yes, we need to see more of these.

Linda: It’s a great little product.

Ed: Okay, now onto the big things?

Linda: So here we have a revamp of a stand that

we used to make in what we called our Vator line. This

is the Low Boy Crank-O-Vator.

Ed: Crank-O-Vator?

Linda: Yes, Low Boy Crank-O-Vator. So we’ve

brought back the Low Boy Crank and it’s basically a

double riser unit, that’s as high as it goes (3 feet) a

single riser unit that stops about here; it’s a studio and

a location rolling crank stand that will hold about 150

pounds, so the big cinema lights, and allow them to

move them around well.

Ed: But normally you have to get lights up high?

Linda: Normally you do and there are stands out

there that do that. Our hope with this, since we

redesigned the castings, is that the Low Boy will soon

become a Crank-O-Vator and a Super Crank-O-Vator

that will get the lights much higher.

Ed: Okay, because you can’t add an extra pole onto

that?

Linda: No.

Ed: Otherwise it’s just too unstable?

Linda: Yes. But like I said, all the castings will be

common so the thing is you have to make longer legs

for the bigger stands; we’ll just get longer tubing, or

make it a triple riser and get higher for sure.

Ed: It’s just puzzling to me that one would want to

have lights that low?

Linda: But they do; but another really interesting

thing is that lighting companies that burn out lights so

they come back in, they have to be serviced, this is the

perfect height for them to put this on, to sit on their

little stool to service their light. So you see them all

over for different reasons. They were a really big seller

when we made them.

Ed: And you’re making them again?

Linda: And we’re making them again.

Ed: But better?

Linda: Better, much better yes.

Ed: Now, stands – what you’re most famous for?

Linda: We have some new lightweight aluminium

stands, just lightweight versions of the ones we’ve been

making for years. This is an aluminium Combo, all

aluminium, black powder coat, so it does the same

thing it just is a lightweight. It won’t hold as much

weight of course, but there are people out there that

are like “I don’t want to carry that 30 pound stand

around”; and then we’ve got a lightweight aluminium

Baby which is all aluminium except the top riser is steel.

Then this is a new triple riser Combo aluminium with

the steel top riser and they’re all black powder coat.

It’s made the exact same way, just out of aluminium

instead of steel for those who are concerned about

lugging those heavy stands around.

Ed: It’s still very stable and very secure?

Linda: Oh yes, and the top riser being steel, that

just gives it a little extra stability at the top when you’re

using all three risers.

Ed: Now I did notice something as I came in that

caught my eye, and again it’s in the smaller version of

the Matthews equipment, and you’ve got a camera

mounted on top of it?

Linda: Yes, and this you’ve seen before. This is a

couple of years old.

Ed: Well sometimes I miss things Linda. I’m not the

man I used to be.

Linda: I’m just going to show you. It’s a Baby Ball

Head Adapter, so it’s Baby here, so it can mount on any

Baby pin. It terminates on the top of the three-eighths

male thread, so a standard ball head just screws right

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

Full range of MICROgrip equipment available

Genuine Israeli NOGA Arms

3/8”s system designed for tabletop photography &

miniature work Clamping, extending, flexible camera mount system

o Smart Phone Adapter o Weighed bases and micro shot o Hot Shoe Adapter o Rigging Camera & Accessories

“Try this, you’ll like it, I guarantee it” Ed Philips, CEO Matthews.

Pair your NOGA Arm with the new Matthews Quick Release system. It’s great for mounting

Monitors, iPads, Camera Lights and easy accessory swapping.

on. So you can

mount that on any

Baby stand, any

Baby clamp, a

Baby plate –

anything with a

Baby pin. So you

could get this

camera just about

anywhere.

Ed: I see some

people standing on

a stand here, just

showing how

secure it is?

Linda: Yes ,

that’s the Mini-

Vator stand. We

made it several

years ago but

discontinued it

because there

were issues with

the gear that was in there. We’ve redesigned the gear,

we’ve redesigned all the insides and beefed up the

castings, the spider castings, and just made it a lot

stronger, brought it back new and improved. That will

hold about an 80 pound light – not as heavy duty as the

Crank-O-Vator but it’s a good cranking stand.

Ed: And cranking stands are important just to get

that slight variation in where you want to throw your

light and you don’t want to have to bring the whole

thing down and adjust it and then put it back up again?

Linda: You want to get it up there, get it as close

as you can and get it up and get your shot.

Ed: And talking about getting it up, we’ve got a very

long jib?

Linda: Yes, what we’ve done is we’ve taken a

standard Intel-A-Jib and added two extensions to it and

a cable kit which increases your length to … that’s

probably about 16 feet I would say off the top of my

head.

Ed: That’s about 5 metre.

Linda: Yes, and it just basically turns our regular

Intel-A-Jib into a crane – a small crane.

Ed: And it’s got quite a decent sized camera on the

end there?

Linda: Yes, it will hold 35 pounds at full extension

and the good thing is, if you are an owner of an Intel-A-

Jib, you can buy an upgrade kit and then you have an

Intel-A-Big.

Ed: All these names. Who comes up with them?

Linda: Ed Phillips, our boss, our leader,

Ed: So they haven’t called anything a “Linda” yet?

Linda: No.

Ed: Oh, I must have a talk to Ed. NZVN

PLS – BB&S LightingFor PLS, we are at BBS Lighting ( Brother, Brother &

Sons ) and we have Peter Plesner.

Ed: Peter, we had this visit from Jelle just a couple ofmonths ago in Auckland and all of us who attended theshow were extremely impressed, in fact, so impressed,that I just brought Phil Keoghan along here to have alook at your Soft Area light. He’s gone away withbrochures and hopefully we’ll see the BBS light on someof his shows in the time to come, but in the meantime,you haven’t been resting on any laurels, you’ve actuallybeen working, so what’s new?

Peter: Well the newest thing that we’re showing is

more and new additional accessories for the AREA 48.

So we’ve now made a set of detachable barn doors that

clicks on and off very easily. We made a new softbox

that is hard, so it also clicks on very easily; and then we

made this “run and gun” unit. There’s now one with

handles and we have a belt pack battery pack so you

don’t have the weight of the

battery on the unit itself.

This is very lightweight, it’s

just 6 pounds and this will

give you a lot of fun running

with this one.

Ed: Just tell me, in terms

of run and gun, I imagine,

because of the arrangement

of the phosphor panel in the

front and no shadows, this is

quite different from putting

any other single panel in a

run and gun situation

because, with any little

movement you would see

the shadows?

Peter: Yes exactly and

that’s the beauty about this

one. Shadow rendition is

really, really soft; it wraps

really nicely around the

face. You can run and you

don’t have to be thatA super-sized Intel-A-Jib from Matthews.

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

Extremely High Light Output

Remote Phosphor Panels

Ultra High CRI, 95+

Silent Operation (no fan)

Very Compact, Versatile Unit

Max power consumption 150W

Premium LED Array, 50,000 hour life

Flicker-Free Dimming from 0 - 100% with

no colour shift

Panels: 2700k, 3200k, 4300k, 5600k, 6500k

Chroma Green & Chroma Blue Panels

Option to run on batteries

“I am very impressed with the colour, output

and build quality. This truly is superior to

other LED units”.

“In an industry full of false hype, the area 48

stands out as a true innovation”

NZ Cinematographer

THE PERFECT LED SOFT LIGHT

Unit Displayed Folded

accurate in your movements, because the intensity over

the whole width of the beam spread is very similar, so

it’s a lot easier than running with a small 200 Watt

battery on your belt.

The next thing I would like to show youis that we have now made a clamp. Youtake four standard AREA 48s and wemade a kit with this clamp. It comesapart, it’s just three parts held together.This is a really powerful machine withfour units together. This has just gotteninto production over the last week here.

Ed: And each one has its own littlepanel, but you would of course alwaysuse the same panel on each of the fourwouldn’t you?

Peter: Yes. Of course you cancontrol them individually, but you wouldprobably do that.

Ed: Okay, anything else? What aboutpublic interest? We’re still on day one,but it looks as though you’ve had plentyof people coming through the booth,even though you’re not really in thelighting area?

Peter: It’s already been really,really good for us, so a lot of goodcontacts – really good. So of courseworldwide now there are a lot of gaffers

using these, a lot of DOPs are using these. In Australia,we made some very big softboxes – they are 8x8 feet,like a standard 8x8 foot frame, mounted with a half gridin front of it and reflector behind that. It’s only two feet

deep; and then in that we mounted eightAREA 48s and that is a really powerfullight source and a really soft light sourcefor larger studios.

Ed: So that’s it. Take a standard paneland put them together in a sensible wayand you’ve got a huge variety possible.

Peter: Exactly. And the good thingis that you don’t just buy this thing andthen leave them like that there; you cande-rig it and use the units as single unitsor as 2 by 2, so that’s an advantage alsofor rental companies that they don’t haveto buy something that is then collectingdust for half a year on the shelf until it’sgot to be used again. Because normallyfor space lights and for large screens, ifyou buy LED space lights, they are atthis point extremely expensive – so youhave to be able to use it for somethingelse as well.

Ed: Clever technology, clever thinking.NZVN

Peter holds the AREA 48 soft in “run and gun” mode.

You can now clamp four together.

Atomise – AvidRichard Kelly from Atomise is telling us theNAB highlights from Avid.

Ed: Of course we’re at Avid – he hasn’thad the purple tattoo yet, but it’s coming …

Richard: It’s on the back of my neck.

Ed: Right, what have you found exciting?

Richard: It’s been a really exciting showthis time. It’s been great catching up with awhole pile of old friends and colleagues andseeing what’s going on out there. I’ve beenin the US for two weeks already; I’ve beenoff at the Purple Mothership in Burlingtondoing an Avid Certified Support Repre-sentative Interplay course

Ed: Do you get a grade?

Richard: I did – I nailed it.

Ed: So you’re A+ are you?

Richard: Yeah, that’s right.

Ed: Exactly, exactly, we won’t ask for thereport card. But, what have you learnt atthe show?

Richard: I’ve learnt that Avid haschanged their way of doing business dramatically, as ofnow.

Ed: For the better?

Richard: Yes, it’s all positive. They’ve brought outsome things that customers have been asking for, for along time and they’ve also brought a new paradigm forinteracting in our broadcasting environment andcommunity. So the first thing a lot of our users willnotice is that we’ve got a massive change to the waythe professional editors – so Media Composer and ProTools – are licensed. When you purchase, you’ve nowgot three options. You’ve got a “by the month” or “bythe year” subscription, which is very, very costeffective; or you’ve got permanent licences – effectivelythe same way we work now; and you have the HolyGrail that bigger sites have been asking for, for quitesome time – fully floating licences, concurrent licensing.So you drop a licensed server onto the network, let’ssay you’ve got Media Composer installed on 50machines, you’ve got 20 licences because you knowyou’re only ever going to need 20 at a time, someonestarts up Media Composer, it picks up an availablelicence, hands it back when they finish.

Ed: Aaah you don’t have to carry a dongle around?

Richard: You don’t have to carry a dongle around,you’ve got full management, so you can have astandard build go out to all your workstations and, forsomebody like TVNZ for example, where you’ve got anEnterprise level system, it makes scalability verypalatable, because you don’t have to have multiplebuilds of workstations. So a very nice feature and Iknow something that a lot of people have been askingfor.

Ed: Well, that’s very clever, and I must say that’s thefirst I’ve heard, because there’s certainly been somegrumblings about other people who have just gone thesubscription model and offering nothing else, but thissounds like it’s for the customer?

Richard: It’s not only for the customer – Avid havebeen very clear that they are 100% committed tomaintaining their relationship with their channelpartners. They haven’t gone the Adobe route; theyhaven’t dropped their local partners, so they’ve beenvery careful to make sure that there is going to be agood continuation of both support and communication

in our local market, which in New Zealand especially isincredibly important. We’re a long way away fromeverywhere else …

Ed: Don’t we know it, yes.

Richard: So I think it’s a really good thing.

Ed: Excellent. Now I understand Interplay has reallytaken off in your market Richard?

Richard: Interplay has become a massive feature ofwhat we’re doing. Obviously, we’re known for sharedstorage and collaborative environments and the NewZealand market has been the “go-to” place for that.What we’ve seen in the last year ( and obviously we’vehad some reasonably successful installations ) at TVNZfor example, with the Blacksand Post and now at WetaDigital, is a real uptake of Interplay. Partly it’s becausethe price has come down to something palatable in ourmarket; part of that is also because the functionality isso good that it’s hard to look past. What we’ve seen isa change from people looking at just storage, to nowvirtually all of our quotes are storage plus Interplay –and that’s allowing a real shift in both workflows andcapabilities in-house. That’s another one of the reallybig things – you’ll notice that the big sign this year overon the Avid stand is “Avid Everywhere”.

Ed: Just give us a quick run through again ofInterplay. What does that mean to an Avid user – whowould use Interplay and why?

Richard: Avid Interplay – the one we’re talkingabout – is a Production Asset Management system. Ifwe start at the real base level of it … when you’reworking with just storage, you’ve got a big bucket thatyou’re just pouring storage into and your managementof that is completely manual. At its base level, whatInterplay does is it allows you to know what media andassets or what assets you have on your system, whatthey are being used for, who is using them, what rightsyou have for them; and then, if you move beyond that,it allows you to bring in automated workflows andfunctionality. So one of the really amazing things hereis Cloud workflows, in this case, private Cloudworkflows. If you have Interplay, you have your MediaComposer; you can have capability to have a remotelyattached Media Composer or Pro Tools that worksstreaming data live from your ISIS via your Interplay toa remote site. Let’s say you’ve got a VFX show

happening, your production editorial is in Vancouver,your VFX house is in Wellington, you can have acompletely tight real time relationship with completecontrol of versioning and asset management ofhandover. So it removes that manual handover flow.For ENG, for example, it means you can be out thereshooting, you can bring up all of your resources youhave back at base, cut to story, drop in your newmaterial, it will send back high res and proxies of thenew material, and the story goes to air. Then the nextstage, your reporter can pull out their iPad, check thatthey’ve written their rundown correctly, proof it, checkthat approval has been made, use it as a teleprompter,send the whole lot back to base.

Ed: So that’s Avid Everywhere?

Richard: It’s everywhere … and what Avid is pitchingthis time, Avid Everywhere with the Avid Media CentralUX is a platform. I’m going to watch your face really,really carefully when I say this next part, but what theyhave announced is a full connectivity toolkit to open upthe system 100% to both their collaborative parties andtheir competitors to allow anybody to join Avid’splatform.

Ed: Wow – that is a bit of a turnaround Richard Imust say, after years and years of Avid being rather“retentive”, shall we say, to be so open. What’sbrought this about?

Richard: We’re working in a world where people arecollaborating across the globe …

Ed: And they don’t all have Avid?

Richard: They don’t all have Avid. We’re working inenvironments where you’ve got very key systems incustomers’ environments. That might not be Avid,obviously we’d like them to be Avid for storage, formanagement and for editors, because those are thethings that I look after and we’re really known for, butthere’s room for lots of different products. Now it iscompletely open for any developer to plug in and workdirectly with that environment. That’s a massivechange. So you can imagine what that means to alarge broadcaster who might be using an ingest serverfrom X company and a playout server from Y company… now you can have full integration with the Avidplatform. Most likely they’ve already got iNEWS, theymight have Command, so that gives them a really tightintegration of their entire system, just simply by beingon the Avid platform. The really cool thing is the vastmajority of our existing clients are already there, justneeding to upgrade software. It’s not a new buy, it’sjust upgrading to the next level.

Ed: That’s very cool. Okay, that’s for the big boys,now what about the smaller users of the Avid product –any news there with developments with MediaComposer, etc – it’s now 4K is it?

Richard: Media Composer has been 4K for quite awhile. That was something we announced last year, butthis year we’ve got support on all the ISIS products for4K in a collaborative storage environment.

Ed: Alright, so 4K’s already there – what otherdevelopments?

Richard: ISIS 5500, one of the favourites in ourmarket, it now scales all the way up to 12 chassis whichmakes 768 Terabytes of storage. That’s a massivechange from the six chassis we’ve done up till now.They’ve already increased the file count with the currentversion of software, so in our market, that’s going to bea really important thing. That means anybody who hasbought an ISIS 5000 over the last few years now has acontinuing upgrade path for adding capability onto theirsystem – and of course it’s 4K supported, so even if youbought your system three years ago with an HD

workflow, we upgrade the software, it becomes 4Kcapable. It’s a great story.

Ed: So in terms of the Avid updates, how is that goingto work … not like the others I hope?

Richard: No, you get a notification that an update isthere and you certainly get to manage it completelywhich, of course, in our tightly managed environmentsand workflows, is incredibly important. Avid is veryaware of who uses their products and what they usethem for and they’re not going to go and do somethinglike that other “A” company has done, which has causeda bit of angst amongst its users.

Ed: Yes, one especially!

Richard: The last thing to talk about here wassomething that actually happened in the lead-up to theshow – it started on Thursday night – and that was theinaugural Avid Customer Association event. I attendedthat and I was interested to see what this thing maylook like and do, and I was pleasantly amazed andhappy to see that there were 1100 creativeprofessionals, the vast majority of whom were clients atexecutive level and engineering level, as well as somechannel partners like myself, getting together. Avid hastaken the step of saying “you’re our users, tell us whatyou want, we’re listening and we’re going to build ourproducts the way that you want us to do.” So they’veset up a number of boards, with some ratherexperienced and respected industry professional peopleon them, and so the executive team is gettinginformation directly from their user base.

Ed: That’s got to be good for the brand. NZVN

Editing Solutions Experts

Atomise Limited is proud to supply and support the Post Solutions for leading NZ facilities including:

The Hobbit – Avid Media Composer | Avid ISIS 7000 | Apace VSTOR OctopaNatural History NZ – Avid Media Composer | Avid ISIS 5000

The experts providing end–to–end editorial solutions to New Zealand’s film & television industry

Authorised Elite Reseller for the complete Avid Video, Interplay & Storage ranges.Official New Zealand Distributor for Avid Media Composer, Avid ISIS 5000 & JMR Storage.

We are proud to have been selected as one of Avid’s top 100 partners Worldwide.

www.atomise.co.nz | [email protected] | 04 380 5010

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

Atomise – ApaceWith Richard Kelly from Atomise, we are with Dr Lee Hufrom Apace Systems.

Ed: I understand you’ve done something clever yetagain Dr Lee?

Dr Lee: Thank you, yes. We are the firm thatprovided the new solution and the new workflow for thisvery dynamic environment. At this show, we areinvolved in the solution for “Adobe Anywhere” so if youlook at this, we are working out from a data server sideto support the postproduction in the broadcastenvironment. With Adobe and Avid and ITP, we viewthem like from an application perspective, from a userperspective. So Adobe Anywhere is from a user and anapplication perspective that is anywhere, but wepromote “Anywhere” since we released the postMAMfour years ago, and we talk about “data anywhere”. Soyou have three elements to deal with – data, user,application.

Ed: And it’s good to have the “Anywhere” being onyour own server?

Dr Lee: Yes. Now with Adobe Anywhere, we canseamlessly integrate it inside anywhere in Premiere,you can access your media anywhere; you can accessthe search engine and timeline markers and export andingest all these things always in the environment, so it’sreally very good and exciting things from ourperspective. And now, with Adobe Anywhere andPremiere and Apace postMAM and also storage system,you have an entire solution for the customer in a singlesite.

Ed: Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume thatan Apace system like this, you can have AdobeAnywhere as part of that system, but you could alsohave other editing platforms that connect to thisstorage system? You could have a photo storage file,you could have any sort of file stored here in differentbins and places and it’s all going to work seamlessly.So you’re not limited to one particular vendor in termsof their editing software for example?

Dr Lee: Yes we are application and the vendor andthe platform agnostic. So basically, we support AAV toFCP and also all this access is browser based, theworldwide access through the PM. Also we provide asystem we call Media Data Machine. Basically it’s self-managed, so you can have two tiers, so we have apostMAM Global on top of that postMAM, so you can dothe local search or have like a big organisation like ABCor CNN, they can have like a single search window;Global all the different branch and the searchconcurrently. So then they will return the search result.All these things we designed with scalability in mind.So heterogeneously, you have our older system, newsystem, they all can work together, but the key part isthat the media data is the most essential thing. Youcan have a different processing application, you have adifferent OS environment, all that, but at the end of theday the content is the king, you need to have a way toaccess from a mobile device, from a local and anetwork.

Ed: So it’s anywhere and any file?

Dr Lee: Yes, anywhere, any file, any format andany price form and application.

Ed: But also security, so I’m pretty sure you can saythat you can lock off certain parts of the system so youcan provide access to people to certain bins, to certainapplications, whatever, within the system, and allowthem to use those, but lock them out of others?

Dr Lee: Yes,which is veryimportant fromour users’ pers-pective. You havea workspace togather each groupand read and writeaccess control,and besides thatwe actually havethings beyondthat. Fundamen-tally, we think thedata for mediacompanies is themost importantasset. So like abank that carriesno cash. So thisthing is the key.So we look at it asa private Cloudconcept. Basicallyyou have owner-ship of the data,you have totalcontrol of access of the data, and this is very differentfrom a public account at for example Google. Everythree months they say “okay, we have a privacy policychange – do you agree or not?”

Ed: Do you want the US government to have a look atwhat you’ve got on your storage?

Dr Lee: Exactly. So you have total control of that.You can yank out this, not allow any outside access, oryou can have access through VPN – this is your choice,and that’s as we see it very different, because you knowlike interstate commerce is governed by the differentlaws, the same thing is that between companies the lawis different. That you have control of your data is verykey for us.

Ed: Is this a good system Richard?

Richard: It’s a fantastic system. I’m very proud touse the Apace system on The Hobbit as a disasterrecovery system.

Ed: And having said that, you’ve already told me inthe past that in fact it could have actually replaced theother system that was running?

Richard: There are some limitations on it that wecan only have four editing clients running live, butshould we have an issue that one building is no longeravailable, we can keep our production completely going.We’ve tested that, it works beautifully and I ( asAtomise ), and also our client, have been very happywith both the product and the fantastic support we’vehad from Apace. It’s really working well for us.

Ed: Because that’s really important to you, to keepyour name there that you are getting that support tokeep your good name within the New Zealandcommunity?

Richard: That’s right. Support is key to everythingthat we do. We’re not a sales driven company, we area support driven company and that is the culture I’mtrying to bring and keep within what we do, so it’sincredibly important that the relationships we have forthe products we have, are with companies that areequally as support driven. I’m not interested in boxmovers; I want people who are there for the long hauland to help maintain and grow those relationships withour clients. NZVN


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Atomise – StorageDNARichard Kelly from Atomise took me to another of his

suppliers, StorageDNA.

Ed: Richard, yet another storage system – there’s got

to be something different about this one?

Richard: This system tags onto the end of the

editorial process or the delivery process. What

StorageDNA do is manage an archive of media to long-

term storage. So, for the purpose of this, we’re going

to talk about LTO, because it’s the familiar one. What

StorageDNA have is a range of different levels of

product from a single tape drive, workstation based

product through to server based and tape library based

products, up to very large library based products. So

something that meets all of the range in archive at a

really good price point, but the really cool thing that

these guys have in Avid workflow, is that their software

understands an Avid project, an Avid bin and an Avid

sequence. So you can take your finished Avid show

that lives on your local storage or on your ISIS storage

and it will gather up all the bits and pieces it needs to

drop it all onto a tape for you, which may form your

delivery mechanism to your end user, or it may be for

your personal archive. Where this is great over

everybody else, everybody else requires you to back up

on a workspace or a drive, leaving you to drop stuff on

there and then you bring it all back. This is very

definable, so you can do a broad drop onto a tape, but

it’s very aware of the edit environment; it allows you to

do a completely definable drop onto a tape.

Ed: So it’s your whole project, your metadata, your

files, everything?

Richard: Everything. It gives you a very simple

transport, restore and deep archive methodology at a

price point that is fantastic. We’ve got these in the field

working and they are beautiful – absolutely beautiful.

Ed: What other options are there in terms of the

technology … if you’re not going to LTO tape, what else

can you do?

Richard: In theory you can plug anything you like

into their system.

Ed: Okay, so you’re not tied to LTO tape – if you had

some other archive medium, you could use that?

Richard: That’s right. They’re providing an

appliance that manages and remembers what is where,

and then allows you to restore and backup from your

deep archive. The last part of that chain in our world is

as we talked about before – Interplay is becoming a

massive force in our market; this product is Interplay

aware. That means that, when you archive your

project, all that metadata can stay on in Interplay and

Interplay understands that that media is no longer on

your spinning disc, it’s on an LTO tape and knows how

to talk to StorageDNA to bring that media back online.

Ed: Well it’s got to be good?

Richard: It is very good – very, very good. We’ve

had a very successful installation at the Open Wānanga.

Those guys have really enjoyed the implementation of

the product and it’s working very successfully for them.

Again, it’s great to find another small company; the

gentleman at the

booth we’re look-

ing at there is the

owner of the

company. He de-

signs the pro-

ducts. It brings

back that theme

that we have of

the last three

companies we’ve

been to, you’re

dealing directly

with the people

who make the

stuff … when you

need something,

you can get an

answer, really

straightforward &

they listen when

you need chan-

ges.

Ed: That’s al-

ways good.

Richard: It’s fantastic. NZVN

Gencom – PluraFor Gencom, we are at Plura Broadcast Inc with RayKalo.

Ray: Well we have two sizes in this series – we have a7” and 9”. What we’re looking at here is 9 inch.

Ed: Right – and the screen resolution?

Ray: It’s 1280 by 800, so it’s a high resscreen resolution.

Ed: Now something this clever andwith so many nits, one would expect avery high price, but?

Ray: Not really. Currently we’rerunning it for US$2500 list.

Ed: That’s for the 9 inch?

Ray: That’s for the 9 inch and the 7 inchas well.

Ed: Oh, so you can have 2 inches forfree?

Ray: Yes, Plura is so generous, aren’twe!!

Ed: Now, we’re just having a littlepeak round the back – lots ofconnectors, all that one would require inthere and of course at the moment it’son mains but it will run on battery. Nowat the back here it looks like Ethernetconnectors. What are they for?

Ray: These are for firmware updatesand GPI.

Ed: What’s GPI?

Ray: GPI is General Purpose Interconnection – so youcan use it for tally, you can control the monitor overusing contacts closure.

Ed: Right, so again all of the connectors that oneexpects with a Plura?

Ray: Yes, everything you see with a PBM 3G series asfar as the connectivity and the feature-set.

Ed: And it’s all aluminium, it’s all solid and there arelots of little screw-holes in there for attaching it tovarious things?

Ray: You can rack mount it, if you have a flight pack,but also a desk stand.

Ed: Right, but you haven’t stopped there – have youmade anything else?

Ray: Yes we did … we have added another size

monitor. We’ve added a 10 inch to the PBM 3G family,

so now we have a 7, 9 and 10 as well. It’s a bigger size

with higher resolution.

Ed: But this is an inside one?

Ray: Yes, it’s for indoors.

Ray and the DBM-155 monitor.

Ed: Nicki sent me here to look at a new 7 inchmonitor and immediately I can see why. This is thePHB-209-3G multi-format Plura monitor. What’s reallyexciting about it is that they’ve got a whopping greatlight shining down on it like the sun, and you can seethe picture as clear as day. So what have you done?

Ray: Well, we are using a new high brightness panel.We did not just increase the brightness, we maintainedthe colourimetry; it’s not just making it brighter, youhave to make it colour accurate, so that’s what we did.

Ed: So you’re telling me that a standard monitor ofthis size would be around 100 nits?

Ray: That’s correct. In a regular standard broadcastfacility, the SMPTE standard is 100 nits. Of coursesome panels can produce up to 200 or 300, but this onegoes up to a 1300.

Ed: And the purpose of that is not to have it inside astudio, but …?

Ray: Outside – outdoor applications under the sun andin direct sunlight.

Ed: Especially with Steadicam operators?

Ray: Yes, for anyone who is shooting outside andlooking at the video, it will be as if he is watching insidethe facility.

Ed: And they don’t need a hood, they don’t need tohide in the shadows?

Ray: No hood, nothing at all as you can see. You cansee the difference when it’s regular 100 nits and 1300.

Ed: Wow … and that’s it, it’s not just a super-brightmonitor but it maintains its clear crisp colourful pictureeven in this bright light and it’s not only that, there arelots of buttons on it Ray?

Ray: Yes we’ve included all the beautiful standard Plurafeatures – waveform, vector, audio metering, speakers,audio decoding and de-embedding, all multi-formatinputs including 3G, so you have two inputs with twooutputs, DVI HDMI PC component S-Video andcomposite.

Ed: And is 7 inch really big enough?

Ed: So what is the technology that allows you to havethat extra brightness in there?

Ray: It’s the back light control, calibration and driver.

Ed: Is this something that sort of reduces the life ofthe monitor?

Ray: No, not really, it’s a powerful panel, it’s going toneed a little bit more power, but it’s meant for that use.There are a lot of applications where LCD monitors arerequired outdoors, so our supplier delivered a goodpanel and we’re using it.

Ed: Now in the big monitor series, you’ve released abit of a whopper?

Ray: It’s the DBM-155. 55 inch with a slim bezel,mainly is used for multi-viewer applications, so big wallsystems or master control in production rooms.

Ed: Or client viewing – but it’s not a master monitoris it?

Ray: No, it’s not meant for colour critical application.

Ed: So have you got a 4K monitor in the pipeline?

Ray: A 4K monitor will be in the pipeline once we knowwhere we’re going with the standards. The standardsare not set to stone yet; it’s very hard to speculate …

Ed: Because I guess, if you get the dimensionswrong, nobody’s going to buy it?

Ray: That’s exactly right. I would rather invest ourresources in the technologies that are practical at thiscurrent time.

Ed: Now I’ve recently spoken to an illustrious cameramanufacturer and their take on this is that theresolution is actually only part of the picture. To get agood picture, there are lots of other things and I guessdoes that go with monitors too?

Ray: Oh absolutely – there are a lot of factors involvedin that and with 4K, there’s not just the panel, it’s notthe driver, there’s a lot of inputs specification going intoit. You know you have to consider all of those aspects.

Ed: Not just the number of pixels?

Ray: Not just the number of pixels, not at all. Thenumber of pixels is just one tiny part of it.

Ed: So what are the other parts?

Ray: I would say the client – to me, any technologyhas to be driven from the bottom up, and you needdemands. If there are demands, if there are people orviewers who are going to be willing to invest in the 4Kto look at a great picture. Facilities have to reinvest ina lot of gear to deploy a 4K; it’s not just buying acamera, it’s not just buying a monitor.

Ed: Some of them still haven’t got to the HD level?

Ray: Exactly, there are some people still usinganalogue, so factor all that in, including the economicalatmosphere we’re living in now – cash flow is king. Sofor us we’re going to be careful and we’re going to waitand see what happens.

Ed: Because then you might be here tomorrow?

Ray: That’s a great thought – we will be here as longas we continue to provide affordable, reliable andquality products our customers can buy and use formany years to come. NZVN

All the connectors you might need.

Gencom – AJAWe are here at AJA for Gencom and we have TonyCacciarelli to tell us about TruZoom for AJA.

Ed: Tony, I see you’ve also got Corvid Ultra in here,so obviously it ties in well?

Tony: Yes, Corvid Ultra is a key part of theTruZoom software. We’ve been working on this for alittle while, primarily as a sports replay and evaluationtool. We’ve done some work initially to be able tocapture a 4K image and then, using the power of theCorvid Ultra in the TruZoom software, as well as ourTrueScale hardware, we’re able to go in and isolate aparticular area within a 4K image and highlight theaction without having to actually move the camera. Sowe can keep the camera on a wide shot and whereverthe action’s moving, we’re able to move our Region ofInterest around that 4K image and extract out HDresolution video that can then be fed into the televisionstream.

Ed: So you’re doing this live rather than in post?

Tony: Correct yes. This is designed to be usedlive at the event, primarily for replay. So we’rerecording all the time and then, if they have aparticularly exciting play, they can use this system to

zoom in on that and really get theframing they want. You know, they’vealways got cameras that are covering allthe angles and those guys are great atbeing able to cover it; this gives themthat one more level of coverage, as wellas being able to do slow motion, pauses.

TruZoom has a full timeline so you can

control variable speed playback as well

as the framing and you can build up a

move that can then be fed out live. The

whole system can be driven live on air if

you want to do that, but primarily,

they’ve been using it for replays where

they’ll come back, set up a move and

then they’ll be able to go to the TruZoom

system to show the playback and show the detail of

that play from an angle that may not have been

covered by the other cameras.

Ed: And you’ve always got the safety of that wide

shot to go back to if you get your zoom wrong?

Tony: Exactly, yes. You can always go back and

change the point of interest. So sometimes, for the

first pass through, maybe the point of interest is on a

particular area of the play, but they may also want to

be able to show another area where a particular player

was out of position in a football match or something like

that, where they show how that person being out of

position affected the whole play. It gives them a ton of

flexibility for being able to move around the playing

field and pinpoint which particular bits of action they

want.

Ed: As you say, the heart of this is the Corvid Ultra,

but this isn’t the only thing that Corvid Ultra can do?

Tony: Absolutely. Corvid Ultra is a high quality

processing engine. It’s able to take 4K in and out and it

has a heavy duty processing engine around it and we’ve

got development partners that have been tying into that

as well. Colorfront is a colour grading system using

Corvid Ultra as their 4K I/O into their colour grading

system as well as Quantel. We have Grass Valley that’s

onboard now as a partner with Corvid Ultra and they’re

doing some work on a modified version of TruZoom.

We have a long list of partners that are actually working

with Corvid Ultra using it as 4K I/O and a very powerful

processing engine to drive their software.

Ed: And in terms of using this in post, you could

always do it in software but it’s going to take you a long

time and you’re not going to get the same quality as

you do with a hardware option?

Tony: Absolutely yes. The hardware speed of

Corvid Ultra really gives you a real time power that you

just can’t get any other way.

Ed: The “Ultra” sort of gives it away?

Tony: Yes, we put that in there specifically so that

we set ourselves apart.

Ed: Now I know another area that Gencom has been

particularly keen on with AJA in the past has been the

FS1 and now you’ve added an “X” to it?

Tony: Yes, we’ve added an X and it’s a whole new

product really, but it is based off of our FS line, doing all

of the same up, down cross-conversion and frame

synchronisation, that people who are familiar with the

FS1 and the FS2 love and know and have used for quite

some time. FS1-X is the next evolution of that, adding

in the frame rate conversion capabilities that people

Connections on the AJA FSI-X.

have really been asking for and now we’ve got the

ability to convert realistically anything in and anything

out from this box. So we’re showing on our booth here

a demonstration of converting 1080 59.94 to 1080p 50,

a classic example of being able to take in and change

frame rates. So that’s one of the primary features

that’s new with the FS1-X and it’s a really nice motion

adaptive conversion, so we really wanted to have

something that was going to be above and beyond the

normal conversions that you might see.

Ed: And just looking at the two screens here, as

regards their picture clarity, I can’t tell the difference;

in terms of the speed of it, it’s a fraction of a second

difference, so virtually it’s live?

Tony: Yes, we have a small delay between the

two because of the processing that we’re doing in the

FS1-X but …

Ed: It’s a couple of frames?

Tony: Yes, about a frame or two, but as far as the

actual motion within the frame, it’s very smooth, very

clean, much cleaner than you would see again in other

typical frame rate conversions. One of the other things

that we’ve added on to the FS1-X as part of the whole

“X” is MADI audio support. This has really grown with

the rise of 5.1 and 7.1 audio, the need to handle a lot of

audio has increased, so we now have direct coax and

fibre inputs and outputs for MADI audio right on the

back of the FS1-X. You combine that with the

embedded audio that we have in our SDI and fibre and

HDMI, the analogue audio inputs, the AES audio inputs

and outputs, all of that gives us a 224x224 channel

audio matrix router in this device.

Ed: Everyone needs one of those?

Tony: I’ve got one at home! In a professional

environment, just the audio routing capabilities of this

box are almost worth the price of admission, so it really

gives you an incredible amount of power over

remapping your audio.

You know, one of the funny things with 5.1 and 7.1

audio is that there’s no real defined standard for which

channel is which speaker. Some may do left and right

on channels 1 and 2, then the centre channel, then the

sub, then the rear surrounds; others might do left,

centre, right on 1, 2, 3. So audio remapping becomes a

real issue if you’re getting something coming in with

audio configured one way and you need to reconfigure

it, that’s where that audio matrix routeing really shines.

Ed: No defined standards – that’s sounds like

television?

Tony: That’s television today. NZVN

Gencom – RossFor Gencom, we are here at Ross Video and we arestarting with Dae Yung Choe.

Ed: Dae, you look after Asia-Pacific, is that right?

Dae: Yes. I take care of the business operations forAsia-Pacific as well as Oceanic which is New Zealand,Australia and the South Pacific.

Ed: Now we’re starting where we’ve started manytimes before, but for good reason – we’re starting atCarbonite?

Dae: Absolutely. Carbonite is the No 1 selling switcherfor Ross Video. What we’re showing at NAB this year isour version 9 software which adds tons of new featureson top of the rich feature set we have today. So withversion 9 software, users will get an additional .5 MLEcapability on their 2 MLE carbonite switcher giving thema 2.5 MLE engine. So any customers who havepurchased a 2 MLE Carbonite switcher from serialnumber 1 to the latest Carbonite switcher we sold, candownload the software for free and enable this extrahorsepower.

Ed: How can you have half a switcher capability?

Dae: .5 MLE is quite common and very useful oncertain applications. While it doesn’t provide the fullMLE functions such as DVE’s, it does provide 2 Linear /Luma Keyes and a Program / Preset Bus with the abilityto perform cuts, dissolves and mediawipes.

Ed: Right.

Dae: To support the additional .5 MLE, we are alsointroducing 2 new Carbonite control panels, a “3S” anda “3X”. “3S” is a 3 MLE 24 crosspoint button panel anda “3X” is a 3 MLE 32 crosspoint button panel. Thesenew panels allow the user to have a dedicated buttonrow for their .5 MLEs. Existing users with a 2 MLECarbonite panel can access the .5 MLE by toggling oneof the MLE rows on their panel. Version 9 also bringsyou MiniMEs. MiniME is like an internal miniature MLEthat’s available in conjunction with the regular full MLE.4 MiniME’s are available in a system and each MiniMEcomes with an independent mixer and 2 keyers that canbe used anywhere in the signal path. It can be used forpre-keying of a source, downstream keying, midstreamkey layering, all without touching the resources of thetraditonal MLE. Another cool function the MiniMEprovides is the ability to support Multiscreenapplications. These are IMAG applications. In thisapplication, Carbonite is able to output a single sourceto be scaled over all four outputs in multiple screenlayouts. Keying and DVEs can also be included tocreate visually rich effects. Bezel compensation andedge blending functions are all included. So today, withversion 9 software, Carbonite offers 9 various controlpanels and 4 types of frames to build your perfectCarbonite system to address any production application.

Ed: That should be enough for most people?

Dae: It’s an outrageously powerful switcher at the midsize production range but we’re not done. We still havelots of future plans for the Carbonite series. Next, let’slook at Acuity. This is our new flagship productionswitcher which we just launched about 18 hours ago.

And to tell us about Acuity we have Les O’Reilly

Les: Acuity is our next generation production switcher.It’s building off of the vision production series and it’sgoing to the next level. One of the definitions for theword Acuity is “sharpness of vision”, so it’s a bit of aplay on words. We’ve taken Vision, we’ve recieved a lotof feedback from customers about how we could makeit better, right down to how we could do the design of

the physical buttons, the spacing between them,spacing and gapping the ME modules, creating a menucontrol module. As opposed to leaving the controlsurface on the touchscreen, we now have the panel tonavigate my menus right from the surface, with theknobs for the values. We’ve gone to a 16x9touchscreen, putting more information on the screen,but still maintaining the similar menu workflow thatpeople have been used to since Synergy, then SynergyMDX, then Vision and now Acuity. We’ve now gone totwo new frame chassis – one is 8RU which is the exactsame size and footprint as our previous generationVision large frame; the other is 4RU. We went slightlylarger to a 4RU chassis because the customer feedbackwe had was 3RU but limited IO is not as good as 4RU.So we said alright, they’re okay with going 1RU bigger.Our 4RU system is 60 in with 40 out. It’s up to 6 MEsall in that chassis. Every ME has 10 channels of 2D DVEand 4 channels of ME store with 4 gigabytes of RAMcache standard, plus a 4 channel global store with 4gigbytes of cache also standard. 3D DVE is optional,and those can be added in on an ME by ME basis andit’s a 2 channel with Alpha card and that just plugs in.And that can share between MEs, so ME 1 and 2 canshare their 3D DVEs, 3 and 4, 5 and 6.

Ed: What sort of production would require thatamount of technology?

Les: Well it’s not necessarily what kind of production –

we have plenty of customers, they want to put 8

windows up you know – CNBC Asia’s done it, I’m sure

there’s a few stations in Australia and New Zealand who

have needed to put 5, 6, 7 boxes up. So having the

DVEs just allows you to put it up.

The other benefit is if I need to move and manipulategraphics or chroma keys that require two channels. Soit’s not just about boxes, but I need to shift and resizegraphics. So having two channels, they’re alwaysthere, always available to me. That’s why the 3D DVEthere’s fewer channels of it. There’s no need to optionout tons of 3D channels because I only need a little bitand that’s where you get into the 3D manipulation.Now the ME stores, that’s something that becomes a lotmore powerful. Most productions are now very heavilygraphics driven, I need bugs, I need wipes, I needelements that I bring into my production. So instead ofbeing just 8 channels wide, every ME is 4 channels plus4 channels globally. So now in a 4 ME switcher, we’retalking about 20 channels; in an 8 ME switcher we’retalking 36 channels and they’re scattered across. ThoseMEs can also be repurposed. If I would rather have,like I’ve got here, a 4 ME switcher where I’ve taken thehalf ME and attached it as four more keyers to theprogramme ME, I’ve gone and I’ve used those other 4

Les with a lot of mixing choices at his fingertips.

MEs as multi-viewers. So now I’ve got these multi-viewers. Each multi-viewer has two heads out of it, sothey use the common pool of inputs that I assign andthen there’s two heads with separate layouts. So reallywhat I’ve got is a 4 multi-viewer system, but I wouldhave 8 different layouts that I could currently besending out of the production switcher. It’s not allabout whether it’s the Ross multi-viewer or the externalmulti-viewer, but think of it as how they can beleveraged together, right. I can get lots of heads ofmulti-viewer out of my production switcher. All themnemonics and everything pass through. But when Italk about ME programmes, ME previews, still storemonitoring, these things that I was wasting lots ofproduction outputs on my production switchers just tofeed back in, now I can bring just a few outputs outwith these multi-viewers in them that have thosesources, leaving me a lot more outputs to send to myfacility. On our outputs, a standard feature, is theability to take groups of four and turn on aux keys, so Ican mix, cut and even do a single linear key all on anaux output, using no resources from my MEs, notransition engines and no keyer engines – nothing, it’sstandard. When I start looking at how I reduce thenumber of outputs that I would consume formonitoring, I now have a ton of outputs I can use nowfor onset monitoring, feeding other little MiniMEs,looping them back into the switcher so I can pre-keyinto a box. So I start really growing the productionplatform. And all of this is in 8RU, 8 MEs, 120 inputs,60 outputs, right … all of that is all in 8RU including thepower supplies. There isn’t a separate chassis forpower supplies; there isn’t a separate chassis for DVE;there isn’t a separate chassis for device control.Everything is contained in the one 8RU chassis. That’sa lot of power.

Ed: So how much training does it take to runsomething like this?

Les: For an experienced TD – it depends. Have theyused a Vision or a Synergy switcher? A day, becauseit’s all pretty much the same. Is it a TD who istransitioning from a Sony or a Grass switcher? Maybethree days – and that’s just because now we’d reallylike to sit down and talk about what is your show. Notonly are we going to train you, in those three days let’srebuild your show while we’re doing the training.

Ed: Because there’d be things in there that theywouldn’t know that it was capable of, so you can saywell you can actually do this and …?

Les: That’s right, like practical examples when you’redoing training is the best way, because having the endresult that you need to achieve and knowing in yourmind’s eye what you want, makes that trainingexperience also stick with you. So from an operatorstandpoint, when I build something that I need to use,I’m going to remember that feature and how I did it andwe’re going to roll through it, as opposed to just beingthe guy which I would call “giving a demo”. This doesthis, this does this, this does this … it’s like okay, this ishow it works, now let’s apply that, let’s build this thing.I need to build this – okay, let’s sit down, the best wayto do it would be to use this feature, or thisfunctionality – this is how we’re going to build it. Nowyou do it. Right – that’s how we train.

We are continuing Ross Video and we have JeevithanMuttulingam.

Ed: One of the areas that I am always fascinated byis the Ross openGear platform. I think it’s a very cleverand very friendly system that you have here, and it’sproven its worth, it continues to develop and I see

there’s quite a list of new items on the openGearplatform this year?

Jeevithan: Absolutely, and we’re really thrilled aboutit. We started off with a handful of openGear partnerseight years ago and now we have about 68 partnersand hundreds of different solutions available off-the-shelf. Together, the partners and solutions are whatmake the openGear ecosystem, and it’s continuing togrow and evolve with more partners and more productsevery year. For NAB 2014, we continue to expand ourofferings in the openGear line. Last year, we launchedan openGear card-based master control solution, whichwas fully controllable through our DashBoard controlsystem. Given our huge success with the mastercontrol switcher, we decided to provide a hard controlpanel to complement DashBoard. We are alsointroducing a new VANC data processor (TES-8643) forNAB 2014, so, if someone is looking for a solution forcustomised data packets being sent over SDI stream orfor SCTE-104 triggers for digital programme insertion,that’s all now being taken care of in this card-basedsolution. We are also introducing a master referenceand test pattern generator. It is not an openGear card,but it complements openGear in the sense that it’sbeing controlled by the same unified DashBoard controlsystem. Along the same lines, we have an audiomonitoring bridge (MB-650) that we are launching here,which provides full monitoring of up to 16 channels ofembedded audio and supports 3G/ HD/ SD SDI inputs.Again, it comes with the same DashBoard control andcomplements the rest of the Ross infrastructure productlines. These are just a few of the highlights.

Ed: Just tell me what about in the streaming area –do you have a lot of people supplying cards for videostreaming purposes?

Jeevithan: At NAB 2014, we have a partner solutionfor streaming to the web, which is totally consistentwith Ross being an openGear evangelist. We’re workingwith a solution provider who provides an MPEG encoderas well as direct streaming for the web, which includesRTMP, direct HTTP and HLS streaming. The card iscontrolled by DashBoard and is available for anyonewho is running an openGear system.

Ed: Do you know all of the 68 partners’ cards thatopenGear has – this is a test?

Jeevithan: It’s certainly a challenge to name them alloff the top of my head, but the openGear website(www.opengear.tv) provides the list of all openGearpartners and the products that are available.

Ed: And it’s growing, which is good?

Jeevithan: Exactly.

Ed: And you reckon the advantage for Ross is?

quite likely that it’s controllable by DashBoard, becausewe can send and receive messages over UDP, TCP, orHTTP. We’ve got a couple of examples of that on thebooth here … we’re controlling a Yamaha deck from acustom panel and also a Blackmagic HyperDeck from acustom panel.

Ed: And we’ve got a special England versus NewZealand app here?

John: That’s a cricket scoring app, it’s to driveXPression and the idea is that you can go and drivegraphics for your game and you don’t need tounderstand graphics …

Ed: You understand the rules of cricket though?

John: Yes, you need to understand a lot more;you need to understand the rules of cricket. The waythe interface works is … we’ll start a new game hereand put England into bat and we have the events thatcan happen in a cricket game, like some guy scores arun, or a dot ball, somebody’s LBW’d and we keep thescore going here and anytime you want to actuallymake a graphic out of what’s happened, then we cansay we’ll have a bowler to the batsman, so we’ve gotAbbots bowling to Pieterson, and take it to air as agraphic, clear it, or we might want to have the battinganalysis come which just requires the operator to pressthis button. This application is an example that I wroteand it’s available on our website for a free download,along with the XPression project, so people can basicallylearn DashBoard and how to build a fairly substantialapp with it. We’ve also got lots of little smaller code-snippet apps. We’ve got one for VDCP that shows youhow to control a BlackStorm via VDCP and there’s allsorts of other stuff up there as well.

Ed: So a lot of the power is in that collaborativecommunity if you like, the DashBoard community?

John: Absolutely and there’s a linked-in group forDashBoard, it’s called DashBoard Custom Panels andI’m dying for somebody else other than me to post to it!It’s really there for us to help people create theirsolutions and streamline their workflows. If somebodyisn’t feeling comfortable, or up to the task of doing thescripting necessary to do that, then we also offer it as aservice. We’ve got a couple of customers already whowe’ve managed to help out with workflows … one guysaid “it streamlines our workflow and it saves us 2-3hours a week” … that’s the kind of stuff we did for oneof our clients.

Ed: A great product.

John: Thank you. NZVN

Jeevithan: Working together with partners, meanswider distribution of the platform, higher volumes, anda wide variety of solutions that are available to ourcustomers. It’s also that we are delivering a uniquesolution. Our customers are not single sourced forvendors and there’s no vendor lock-in. Customers havechoice, and best in class products. It helps us deliverincredible added value to our customers.

Now any interview at Ross Video would not be completewithout talking about DashBoard and we have JohnNaylor.

John: So what’s new at DashBoard at NAB 2014?We’ve just released version 6.1 and the significantfeatures in that are that we’ve basically putPanelBuilder on steroids. It’s an awesome interface forcreating custom panels.

A custom panel is a method of integrating aworkflow that can be operated very simply in astreamlined fashion, no matter how complex theactual operation is. We’ve got an example hereon the booth of our latest control system thatallows a single operator to produce a multi-camHD production with graphics, all from one screenand with a training curve of maybe one hour. Theother stuff that we’ve done in DashBoard 6.1 –we’ve got things called Network Listeners whichmeans that we’ve added to the already largeuniverse of devices that can be controlled fromDashBoard which previously was any openGeardevice, over 300 or 400 solutions from Ross andour 68 other openGear partners, all of thosedevices have been DashBoard controllable fromday one. We’ve Ross Carbonite, Ross XPression,Ross Robotics, Ross BlackStorm – those arecontrollable from DashBoard now and basically if adevice out there has an Ethernet port on it, it’s Cricket scoring will never be the same.

Avere SystemsHere's one that is just "interesting" as they say in QI.We’re at Avere Systems, just doing this because we’veheard all about them and how important their particularproduct is. We’re not going to say where it is, but thereare some New Zealanders using your products and totell us more we have Mark Renault.

Ed: Now is this a product that’s applicable to asmaller user – a production house that might have afew people who are doing animations?

Mark: We’re all over, we’re scattered betweenanimation houses that would have 60 or 70,000 cores ina render farm all the way down to companies that have100. And why we do that, is we sell this system as aclustered environment. You can start with one, you canend up with 50, which is really cool. The other thing wedo because we accelerate locally to the clients, ourcluster has to be physically close to the clients, becausewe want to keep the latency between the data that theywant and the devices really low so we can push databack and forth. However, we don’t care where thestorage is, so probably half of our customers have ourdevices sitting in front of artists, render farms,transcoding units, but the storage could be 40milliseconds away, 100 milliseconds away, halfwayaround the world. We have our boxes within one largehouse that has facilities in Las Vegas, the Bay area,Southern California and India, and we’re building thisnamespace, we’re allowing them to share assetsbetween all these locations. So all of the major studiosuse our stuff both locally and through this LANenvironment.

Now, the reason why we’re here today is, not only canwe aggregate multiple NAS into a single namespace andhide that latency behind us, we have now announcedthat we can also integrate ObjectStore into that set ofstorage behind us. So you could go with an Amazon S3ObjectStore; we work another company down the roadhere called Cleversafe, they have a private ObjectStoreand you can have your net app, your Isilon or whatever… we can aggregate that all together into a namespace– it doesn’t matter if it’s sitting as file based or asObjectStore. We have utilities that allow you to movefiles to the ObjectStore, ObjectStore back to the filesbehind us, so you can migrate things on and off thedifferent storage, yet we can cache all that data up tothe clients and hide the latency – and that latency iseither between us and the NAS which isn’t usually toobad a latency, or us and the Cloud which would be ahigher latency. We can hide all that, present the dataup to the clients really quickly, really fast, at very, verylow latency and that’s the name of the game. It’sbasically a very intelligent read/write cache thataggregates different types of storage together, eitherObjectStore or NAS.

Ed: And in very simple terms it’s all about speed isn’tit. It’s about how quickly you can get that project out.Just as a yardstick, have you got a sort of a factor thatyou could say by putting your product in, wouldincrease the speed of a system by how many times?

Mark: It depends how many of our boxes youwant to buy. I can increase with just 1 or 2 of myboxes a pretty high speed NAS by a factor of 3, 4, or 5.I put 6 or 7 of my boxes in a cluster, it’s orders ofmagnitude. What we really do in simple terms is weallow the customer to separate capacity fromperformance; in the old days you had to buy yourcapacity, and capacity and performance wasintermingled together, and some people end up buyingway too much capacity because they needed those discsto handle all the IOPS. Now you don’t do it that way,you just buy – quite frankly I call it “cheap and dirtyNAS” and you use that just for capacity, you buy acouple of the Averes, you run your process, you needmore capacity – buy some more SATA3 terabyte SATAdrives. That’s for capacity, you want moreperformance, throw another Avere in there. So we’vemade it simple; we’ve separated capacity fromperformance. NZVN

Ed: Oh my goodness, your family is named after acar! Mark tell us what Avere does?

Mark: We have a product that will optimise andaggregate NAS environments into a single namespaceand increase the performance and allow you to separatethe capacity from the performance in your application.So we’re here at NAB because we do that for rendering,transcoding and compositing of special effects andanimation.

Ed: Right, so these are not just hard drives thatyou’ve tinkered with – you’ve got some clevertechnology added on?

Mark: What we do is we do supply appliances toour customers, but our value add is definitely a tieredfile system that basically learns what the applicationworkflow is and then we start moving blocks of files tothe proper storage media that that block is required forits performance level. So we figure out what the hotfiles are and, within those hot files that you want toperform on, we figure out what the blocks are withinthose hot files and we put those in the fastest storagemedia with DRAM basically and we can feed those outto CPUs that will do rendering, transcoding and thattype of thing. We’ve been doing this for about fiveyears now. We’ve got about every major studio usingour gear – the top 12 blockbuster hits of 2013, everyframe on every one of those movies has been runthrough an Avere to supply the shots into the CPUrender nodes, to get the job rendered, completed,special effects done.

Ed: So this is actually a combination of hardware andsoftware that you supply?

Mark: Yes, we sell an appliance, but we are not ahardware company. Frankly, we buy gear massproduced by another company and we load our softwarein it.

Ed: So it’s not a case of somebody’s already got ahardware solution that they can load in your softwareinto their system?

Mark: No, but what we’ll do, they’ll usually have a“hardware solution” where they have a NAS productthere, a network appliance machine, an Isilon, aBlueArc, and ZFS system. What we do is we sitbetween the clients and that storage and we optimisethe throughput, we aggregate multiple NAS devices intoa single namespace, we offload the load from those netapps and Isilons and so forth and we end up servingdata out to the clients faster than they could.

Techtel – LYNX-TechnikFor Techtel, we are here at LYNX-Technik and we haveJoehan Tohkingkeo, managing director accompanied byDavid Colthorpe from Techtel.

Ed: Now, Yellobrik, you’ve been around for quitesome time and certainly, in this area of the market,there have been glue products made by all sorts ofpeople from all around the world in all sorts of colours,but you’re the original and one and only Yellobrik. Just

tell me in general, how doesyour product range differ-entiate from the others?

Joehan: Since we startedin Asia-Pacific about two yearsback we have received con-siderable recognition from thebroadcast industry for ourspecs, reliability and qualityand we always take greatpride in that. All our productsare designed and tested inGermany at our head-quartersin Weiterstadt outside Frank-furt. So that German buildquality and reliability havebecome very important fac-tors for our broadcast industrycustomers.

And, of course, we pack a lotof features into our littleyellow boxes. Yellobrikmodules can be used as astandalone product and,additionally, they can be rackmounted so providing greatversatility. Yellobrik is the

David and Joehan looking very dashing in their yellow sunnies.

only company in the world that offers products thatallow you to mix SDI, HDMI etc and fibre optictransmission at the same time, even after theconversion process, so reliable and high quality links ofup to 10Kms between modules can be easily achieved.

We also wish to emphasise our reputation for good after-sales support – this is pretty important for ourcustomers.

Ed: So you must give a very long warranty on yourproducts?

Joehan: Our warranty is three years. Of course,sometimes you can be flexible, we can always helpcustomers. At the end of the day, we want customersto be happy.

Ed: I guess it’s important too that if one does fail, yousee it and know why it failed so the problem can beavoided in future product?

Joehan: Definitely. I would say the good thing is,so far, the failure rate is very low, but we offer verygood service support. The first year, if anything fails,we do a one-to-one swap – that’s how we support ourcustomers.

Ed: That’s good, and you can concur with this David?

David: Yes, I must say that’s certainly been myexperience with Yellobrik and with LYNX products. Theyare absolutely fantastic. There have been a significantnumber of installations in New Zealand already in thebroadcast area and those involved in linking within OBtrucks, arenas, racetracks and so on …

Ed: Where you really don’t want anything to go downin the middle of a race for example?

David: That’s right, we’re talking about fairlymission critical applications here. They are solidbroadcasting applications where things must continue towork 100% and often in quite trying conditions.

Ed: So what would be your biggest sellers in thisrange?

Joehan: Our current biggest seller I would saywould be the SDI to HDMI converter. This supports theSDI format up to 3G and you can also access all 16embedded audio channels. One of the unique featuresis that you can slot in a fibre SFP and, after yourconversion, you can send it by fibre “point to point” to adistance. Another added feature is that we haveYelloGUI, which is a free software control applicationthat allows a computer to change the parameters of theunit. One of the unique features of the Yellobrik is thatyou don’t need to read the manual because all theinformation is on the housing itself.

Ed: It’s very good for men then?

Joehan: Exactly! As you know, most people wouldnot read amanual, sothat’s whythe design isvery intuitiveand userfriendly, be-cause all thecontrols areon the frontof the box.So looking atit, you cantruly under-stand thetrue flow ofthe designand alsowhich buttonto push andwhich DIPswitch toposition cor-rectly. This isa very intuit-tive and userfriendly de-sign.

Ed: That’s what I was going to say … when looking atit, it’s got a whole lot of little switches and little rotaryknobs but some of your other brick products don’t haveany switches?

Joehan: It depends on the product range. If you’retalking about DA, you’ve got nothing to switch. Ofcourse, you don’t see any control panels there. So itvaries from product to product. We also have a rangeof fibre optic solutions and, as I mentioned earlier, theuniqueness of this product is that you can use it as astandalone, or you can rack mount it. So if you look atthe fibre optics product range, we have a very smallform factor and also, we have a range of differentconnector types for our customers to choose, dependingon what sort of connector type you want – you want anSD, you want an LC or you want an SC, we can providethe solution for you. Our sender products cater up to10 kilometres, but if you have a specific requirement forup to 100 kilometres, we can provide an SFP to caterfor that distance.

Ed: It’s a long way to send a cameraman from hisbase?

Joehan: Definitely – at least he doesn’t have to runthat far.

Ed: And looking at this here, your 19 inch rack mountlooks very nice – it’s a genuine Yellobrik rack and thatwill take any of the Yellobriks?

Joehan: You can mix and match, you can put up to14 modules in there and it offers redundancy as well;

two power supplies. Also, we can offer a standard rackmount just for one Yellobrik, just in case in certainapplications you only want to rack mount one singleYellobrik, this rack mount will take care of it. But thestandard 19 inch rack mount racks will house up to 14modules, mix and match.

Ed: Okay, so that was your biggest seller, now whathave you got new for the show this year?

Joehan: At the show we are pleased to introduceour Testor Lite 3G. As you can see the orange colour isvery nice, very unique and very handy. It’s full offeatures but with a price point of US$995 ( RRP in NZ is$1095 exc GST ). I would say we are very confidentthat this product will fly because to date, we have somany interested people who come along and say this isvery compact, very unique and comes free with all thebuilt-in different test patterns that we have, including3D patterns and dynamic patterns. As you go along,LYNX-Technik has always had the policy of updatingnew software, new patterns and customers candownload from our website free of charge. This will bea very ideal tool for service engineers in facilities. It’scompact, it’s versatile, and we have the optional softcase that you can mount it to your belt. So this istouchscreen, a high resolution screen whereby you canchange the different requirements with a touch of thescreen.

Ed: And you’ve made it orange because it’s not aYellobrik?

Joehan: Yes, because this is not part of the Yellobrikrange and of course the point is the colour is still veryattractive.

David: You can find it in your electronicserviceman’s bag which is often a big dark cave.

Ed: Okay. Now I know you mentioned fibre and I seequite a few products here that are fibre related – basicfibre, CWDM fibre, fibre splitters, SDI to fibre, that’s themain one for you?

Joehan: Yes. At this point in time, I would say, asfar as the fibre optics range, the SDI to fibre is ourbiggest seller. In fact, we are also selling to one of thebiggest TV stations in India. They have embraced theYellobrik using our fibre optics solution. Of course, onething is we have a CWDM solution whereby in certainscenarios when you have only limited fibre cableavailable, you can send up to 18 channels of SDI overone single fibre using CWDM technology and we canachieve that. No loss, no degradation, uncompressedvideo, real time.

Ed: So as you say David, it’s …

David: … a veritable cornucopia of solutions.There’s pretty much everything you need to connectanything to anything, wherever it is.

Ed: So customers can go on your website and search?

David: They can. They can see on the website(http://shop.techtel.co.nz/) where individualproducts are described and download all the PDFs forthe full brochures and the diagrams.

Ed: And if they’re confused, they can call you?

David: Certainly they can.

Ed: Will that help?

David: I hope so. But as Joehan said, Yellobriksare very intuitive to use.

Ed: They’re plug and play?

Joehan: I’d like to say it’s not “plug and pray” it’s“plug and play”! NZVN

Sound Techniques – MozeGearFor Sound Techniques we are here at MozeGear and wehave Reg Webb, senior development engineer andStephen Buckland.

you already own. So if you’ve got a 4 channel mixeryou can add another 4 channels to it. Line level inputs– it’s active, it’s got 26dB of gain, pan switches ... left,centre and right pan switches, and a peak indicator on

each channel. The outputs are on a miniXLR and are independently controllable,so if you’ve got two different devices thatyou want to send it to, you can send it tothose two devices independently.

Ed: So this is not designed to be usedon its own, it’s not a mixer but a mixerexpander?

Reg: On its own, maybe. If you’rewanting to connect to a DSLR, then youcan take the output from this directlyinto the DSLR and use the monitoringand metering on the DSLR. You canexternally power it from 4.5 to 20 Volt orinternally from two 9 Volt batteries, orfour double A batteries. So it’s an optionwhen you buy it as to which type ofbatteries you want to use.

Ed: And this one’s actually indevelopment still?

Reg: Yes. It’s almost ready for sale, butit’s pretty close to release, yes.

Ed: This is something you’ve beenwaiting for Stephen?

Stephen: Well the business of syncingup picture and audio when shot on a

DSLR is one that’s complicated things.

Ed: And you get people coming to you asking youwhat can I do?

Stephen: Yes, the odd thing is the sound mixer, forsome historical reason, has become primarilyresponsible for timecode. Now the sound can happilyplay all by its own without necessarily being in sync

Reg with the add-on mixer.

Ed: Now you have got a number of little boxes hereReg, but the one that we’re particularly interested in isa very small little black box.

Reg: Yes, we’ve got the TIG which is an echo timecodegenerator, .5 PPM. It’s designed primarily to connect toDSLRs, but people have been using it as just a regulartimecode generator with the BNC out. One of theunique features of it is we can take theleft and right audio signal into the boxand combine it with the timecode so thatyou get a timecode output on oneconnection on the 3.5mm and thecombined audio on the other, to godirectly into a DSLR. The output is avariable level from 6 millivolts to 3 Volt,to be able to match to the camera. Itruns from two AAA batteries, for about15 hours and will do all the normaltimecode rates from 23.97 all the way upto 30 frames. It can be jammed fromany external device and cross-jammedfor any external device.

Ed: So this is a SMPTE timecode, not

User Bits?

Reg: It’s SMPTE timecode with User

Bits. It will copy the User Bits from the

device that you’re jamming.

Ed: Are people still using User Bits?

Reg: I don’t know whether they do ornot, but if there’s information there, it will take it andput it back out again.

Ed: Right, okay, so that’s this little device … what elsehave you got?

Reg: The other device is a mixer expander. It’sdesigned to be used as an addition to something that

Stephen with the TIG.

with the picture, so Sound Techniques has alwayslooked at different timecode options and when thiscame along, it seemed compact, it did what it did andnothing else, and we thought we would give it a try.

Ed: And what about the add-on mixer – a worthy

product to add to your line?

Stephen: There are situations when it could beuseful.

Ed: Time will tell?

Stephen: It really is a case of time will tell. Youknow people get tripped up in a situation where theydon’t have the equipment requirements and the mixerexpander would do.

Ed: I guess you’ve got to see what the final productlooks like and what the price is?

Stephen: That’s exactly right, yes. It’s notsomething that I would have myself been looking for,but I can see the use for it in the market. I think it willhave its place, yes.

Sound Techniques – Sound DevicesFor Sound Techniques, we’re here at Sound Deviceswith Paul Isaacs and Stephen Buckland.

ProRes and DNxHD files which can be directly importedinto Avid and Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere. It canalso embed up to 64 channels of audio, which is likecrazy. But this is an amazing product for live events,where there’s a lot of audio sources you need to capturehigh quality video feeds, for live music concerts, forcorporate, for studio production, for postproduction.

Ed: In this situation, you’ve got it as a rack mount,

but I guess you can take it out as a single unit?

Paul: Yes, you can take it out as a single unit.

We’re showing four in the picture.

But one of the key features of the 270 is that it’s ascalable system. Yes, it can be used as a single halfrack 2U product with one video input and 64 channelaudio capability, but it can actually be grouped withmultiple other 270s or 250s. So you can actually scalea system depending on your job. If you invest in oneand you need to grow that to two, to three, maybeyou’re working in a production next year which is fivecameras, as opposed to just three cameras – you justadd another unit. You haven’t wasted that investment.You know, with so many of our competitors, you haveto buy four channels upfront, or eight channels upfront,which is a huge investment. You’re talking $70,000 andabove for that sort of thing. This is a much more costeffective way to get in.

So when I mention “scalable”, the units – the 270s and

the 250s – they can be linked together via Ethernet.

They can either be daisy chained or you can go via a

network switch; then once they are connected that way,

they automatically discover each other, and then you

can allocate them to a group.

If you allocate them to the same group, they then

effectively act as a single unit. And when I say single

unit, it’s totally frame accurate record playback as if

they’re one machine. That’s a pretty incredible feature.

Think about playback applications where you’re doing

like a large image across multiple screens, like video

walls. So you’d have multiples of these driving each

segment of that video wall and the video would be

totally frame accurate in sync as a key feature. In

multicam scenarios, where you’re recording multiple

camera feeds in a studio, like ISOs from different

angles, you can make sure all of these units drop into

record at exactly the same frame and they’re totally

locked and synchronised. So it’s a pretty crucial

feature.

That’s one thing … the Ethernet actually is a very

powerful interface in this product. It provides that

grouping control, but it also allows you to transfer

recorded files into a remote location. You don’t have to

deliver now on a physical media. You can still do that

via just a 2½ inch drive to take that out and hand

deliver it, and since we can record on multiple drives,

this is another really key feature – and this is totally

unique in the industry – these devices can record up to

four drives simultaneously.

Why is that important? Well, when you’re dealing with

terabytes of data which you typically can have at the

end of a day’s recording, to copy that data via a Mac or

something like that is a really laborious process. If you

can just hand off copies there and then, that is a huge

timesaver.

Ed: So it’s not a RAID, you’re actually makingsimultaneous identical copies?

Paul: Exactly … readymade, ready for delivery,that is huge. We are getting hit so hard by people

NZVN

Ed: Well I think your booth is getting bigger and it’sgetting busier year by year Paul – so what are youshowing us this time?

Paul: Well this year, we’re showing anothercouple of the brand new video decks which are shippingthis month. We have the 270i and the 250i. We’re alsoshowing an audio only deck too, called the 970 but I’mgoing to focus on the video deck, the 270i, becausethat’s really the flagship of all the features – like it’s thesuperset of everything. The 270i is a really highperformance, quality, robust, reliable video deck formission critical applications. It replaces any linear videodeck with a file based solution and it records edit-ready,

going “have you got that feature, we’vebeen after that feature for years” – andnone of our competitors do it.

Ed: So you don’t have to have that

data wrangler making a copy, making

another copy just to be safe, you can doit on the recorder …?

Paul: On the fly, it’s all done. Hit

“stop” at the end of recording and it’s all

there, ready to go. That provides instant

deliverables, but also backups. So this

whole idea of multi-drive and backups,

that’s obviously a safety issue.

These devices are aimed at reallymission critical applications, wherethere’s actually no room for loss of data.So there’s the issue of drives – you canrecord to four drives and you’ve got fourlevels of protection there, but what aboutpower? What happens if all power isremoved in the middle of recording? Well, if you look atthe rear panel of the 270 here – and the 970 has this aswell – it’s got two redundant DC supplies. So if onecuts out, the other one seamlessly takes over as ifnothing had happened. Now what about in the situationwhere both of them got cut out? Well there’s aninternal UPS – we call it Powersafe. Powersafe is thename of the technology, basically it’s a UPS in there andif all power is pulled, it will still power the unit for 10seconds, wrap up the recording, close all filesintelligently, so there’s no lost data. Beyond that, we

also have the file header savings scheme, whichautomatically updates the file headers every 30seconds, so you can never lose more than 30 secondsanyway. So there are all these mission criticaltechnologies which we’ve included in this product.

Ed: And of course the big question that everybody

talks about at this show – 4K – are these 4K capable?

Paul: No, these are HD and there’s still a vast

application and market set requiring that, you know …

so these particular products are not, no.

Ed: And?

Paul: I want to talk a little bit about the audio capability

as well. So the 270 has, as I said, 64 tracks. I think

this is like crazy right – but we have 160 audio inputs

and 160 audio outputs. What are they? Well we’ve got

MADI on fibre or coaxial, that’s 64 channels in and out

on MADI. MADI is a very widely used multichannel

digital audio interface, it’s very prevalent in broadcast

circles still. Obviously we have 64 channels over Dante

– that’s audio over IP, and Dante has really rapidly

taken off. There are so many consoles out now that

support it, and what that means is we can just use one

simple bit of CAT5 cable to connect from a huge console

to the device and have 64 channels going out. In fact,

we can connect multiple Dante devices. In that corner

over there, we have a Shure Dante radio receiver … if

it’s sitting on the same network, I could take channels

from that, I could take channels from a console, I could

take channels from anywhere on a network and bring

them into this device. Then we have 8 channels of line-

in line-out, 8 channels of AES in and out, we have 16

channels of audio on the SDI in and out, the video input

and output, and then we have 8 channels of HDMI in

and out too. There are two rear eSATA ports for

connecting two further drives for recording. It’s got

RS422 for machine control, still a widely used remote

control platform.

So I’ve given you an overview of the 270, I want to talk

to you about the PIX 250i and then the 970, just to

show you what the differences are, because they all

look identical. We don’t actually have a 250 in this

rack, but I can show you one in a minute, it looks pretty

much identical from the front. The 250 again is a video

recorder with all the same features that I’ve just told

you about the 270i. We’ve really mainly just reduced

the audio in and out count and the number of drives

that you can record to. We don’t have 64 tracks, we

only have 16 tracks, but that’s still pretty good right?

We haven’t got any MADI or Dante on there, but you’ve

still got your line in and out, you’ve got SDI, you’ve got

AES in and out, so it’s still a powerful audio recorder.

Instead of having four drives that you can record to,

you can only record to two drives, but that’s still really

cool, because you’ve still got a readymade backup or

deliverable. The other thing that it doesn’t have is the

second DC input, but it does still have the UPS, the

Powersafe UPS inside, so it still has that solid mission

critical feel about it. If a client doesn’t need all those

bells and whistles, they have another option.

Now the 970 which I’m showing just here, is an audio

only version of the 270. We’ve stripped out just the

video input and output. So no SDI in, no SDI out, no

HDMI in, no HDMI out – but it has all the MADI, the

Dante, the line, the AES audio inputs and outputs, and

it’s a very, very powerful tool. It can still record to four

drives, it has the redundant power supplies as the

Powersafe technology … now one thing I didn’t mention

in my enthusiasm is that all of these units can be

grouped together. You can mix and match 250s with

270s and 970s if you so wish, and they can all be

controlled by our web browser. This could be done

wirelessly if you had a wireless router on the Ethernet

port. So the PIXNET we call it, the web client which can

be run on Chrome, Safari, whatever browser you really

want – that shows you a list of all the devices on the

network, then you can pick and choose which one you

want to control, click on it and it will bring up a

transport window like this, and then you can group

them all together and put them all into record together,

start them together, play them together, you can set

parameters across multiple drives … it’s really like a

universal control for grouped devices and this is like a

really powerful tool because it can all be done remotely.

All these devices can sit in a remote machine room

somewhere … and you can even instigate file transfers

over Ethernet remotely. So if you’re sitting in a

postproduction studio and somebody’s just recorded a

file and they say right, it’s done, they could remotely

pull that file off while they start to record another take.

Isn’t that cool? I mean we’re getting away now from a

physical deliverable. This is really setting a new bar in

what’s possible with audio card based audio,

postproduction video decks – a really powerful tool.

Ed: A very powerful tool, singly or as a group

Stephen?

Stephen: Yes, and it was interesting because

yesterday I attended a presentation on the Sound

Devices stand from a guy who works for Google

Hangouts and it opened up this

whole other area of possibilities, of

not just this equipment, but the

whole Sound Devices range for

video conferencing and you know,

its interconnectivity makes it very

versatile and not necessarily in the

obvious ways that you would

think. You’re likely to look at this

and think oh that’s a video

recorder; yes it’s a video recorder

but it does a whole lot of other

stuff as well.

Paul: You’re sort of limited byyour imagination.

Stephen: Well it’s a bit like Legoreally.

Paul: We’re sort of like learning somany new applications – peopleare going I’m using it for this andyou’re going really, I neverthought of that one. NZVN

Quinto – JVCWe are at JVC for Quinto with Pete Fullerton and NickCritelli.

loss of quality at 1.5 megabits per second and theimage looked fantastic. So for low budget, especiallyfor news gathering organisations, that camera would be

ideal.

Ed: And it’s also controllable from thestudio?

Nick: Yes absolutely, you’ve got remotecapabilities, so the producer or thedirector can be looking at the image and,if they want to add a little bit more lightetc, they have got full CCU control viathe LTE or 4G network.

Ed: So that’s something I guess,where the possibilities really only comeabout when you start thinking aboutwhat you could do with it – that thepeople back in the studio or back at thefacility, if you’re out there recordingsome documentary or something couldhave a look at the picture and tell you“Ah no, just move a bit closer or overthere a bit” and they can see exactlywhat you’re shooting at the time; theycan see the live stream, but alsosimultaneously you can record to ahigher level onto the built-in cards onthe camera?

Nick: Absolutely, yes that’s correct andif they’re not happy with the framing

they can even zoom in. It has got those extendedcapabilities.

Pete: So for remote news gathering it means that thestudio can send one person out with a camera, thatperson stands in front of the camera, the studio canadjust the camera so the picture looks good on air … forthings like marginal sports events, you can stream themlive to the web. We know there’s games out there likelocal rugby for a start that could be streamed live to theweb. So essentially, you can have your own OB van inone camera.

Ed: Or multiple people with multiple cameras aroundthe ground all streaming at the same time and back inthe studio they can decide which shot they take?

Pete: That’s correct, and there is some excitingsoftware out there that will allow you to have a switcherin the Cloud – you can switch the streams, you can add

Pete and Nick.

Ed: Nick, we’ll start with you, because you’ve comealong with Noel Oakes from various JVC sellers inAustralasia and you know all about what JVC has got onoffer this year?

Nick: The cameras that JVC will be releasing this yearare exciting. JVC will be continuing with the GY-HM150that has been very popular amongst the entry levelusers, as well as schools and universities. The HM600and 650 will also be continuing with new firmware to bereleased in the coming months. The new units are theHM850 and HM890. They are already creating a buzz inAustralia and generating a lot of interest.

Ed: And that’s a camera that’s been highly acceptedworldwide by News organisations I understand?

Nick: Yes absolutely, there has been some recentacquisitions by American broadcasters, the SinclairBroadcast Group, to buy more than 70 units. Thoseunits have been extremely popular;offering the 20X zoom lens is very handyfor news gathering and it gives youextreme low light capabilities as well as avery good wide angle, so covering allbases. They also have 60p and 50p FullHD recording at 50Mbps as opposed tothe 35Mbps which was used before.

Ed: But the really exciting news in thatlevel of camera for the newsorganisations and for people who want todo live streaming, is that JVC have comeup with a camera that’s got pretty welleverything built-in?

Nick: Yes, the new range of shouldermount units, the 850 and the 890 havethe built-in streaming capabilities. Wesaw from a demo here at the standwhere they crossed live to L.A and had acorrespondent there just using a 4Gmodem, a one man team basically, andhe presented on the screen without any

graphics, you can mix, cut and you can have multiplestreams coming back. You can have a multiple cameraOB with 3, 4 cameras and you can either choose whatshot people want to watch –choose what shot to show –or people at home can choose their own shot, what theywant to see.

Ed: Gosh, it’s all getting very complicated. But then

you haven’t stopped there – I’m very pleased to see

that JVC has now gone back to the roots of offering a

really top end broadcast camera that JVC was famous

for years ago. Now you’re getting back into that space?

Nick: Yes definitely. The big buzz word for the last

couple of years has been 4K. JVC are proud to present

the new 4K handheld unit with the full frame 35mm

sensor and it will accept the industry standard MFT

mount lenses.

Pete: We’ve got a large camera that’s going to have a

PL mount and then we’ve got some other options with

other cameras that same sensor is being put into, that

has a Micro Four Third inch mount. So you’ll have a

large frame sensor camera, a 35mm sensor, with the

most adaptable mounting system on the market, which

is the MFT or Micro Four Third inch mount.

Nick: We see these great opportunities within

education, military and the budget filmmaker or

Ed: And what’s that little one with the remote head –that looks particularly exciting because of its capabilityto pop on a drone?

Pete: That’s the GW-SPLS1 camera module with 35mmsensor with MFT mount. So we have a small portablehead which is remote back to a record unit. Not only

can you have a 4K sensormounted on the dashboardof a car for in-car shots witha nice wide angle lens, butwe’ve actually got on thestand here a remote dronewith that same unit mountedin it, for remote helicoptershots.

Ed: Okay, so since youactually don’t have your ownshowroom in New Zealand,how are people going to getto see and handle and, well,touch these new cameras?

Pete: We will be sellingthese through the NewZealand dealer network sothe best thing is to approachyour favourite dealer andenquire about the JVC. Youcan approach Quinto directand we can point you in thedirection of who has actuallygot the demo models. NZVN

4K on a drone - the pictures were amazing.

To be fair, I conned him into this photo - but the girls enjoyed it.

documentary maker to record fantastic footage using

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A very slim 4K offering.

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For more information contact us

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Quinto – PAGFor Quinto, we are at PAG batteries with Nigel Gardiner.We always enjoy these interviews with Nigel, partly forthe humour, but partly because you speak so clearly forMiss Hellfinger. You don’t have the twang that we getin some of the interviews – you’re an exponent of theQueen’s English, you must have gone to a good school?

Nigel: Not a remand school anyway.

we’re up to a 10 Amp individually on the 3-stud system.Both systems provide 12A when batteries are linked.

Ed: And this is particularly important for today’s verypower hungry, single sensor, large cameras?

Nigel: Yes absolutely. You know, if we’re lookingat digital cinema, the F65 from Sony, and the ALEXA,are very high current cameras. Sony and Panasoniccameras used to be 20-35W, now we’re looking at 75Watt cameras. By the time the camera’s had monitors,microwave links and other things added, we’restruggling with a standard battery. So we’ve had toenhance the battery, giving you a higher current andthen linking batteries for longer run-time. So you getthe best of both worlds.

Ed: So you’ve got an F65, you wouldn’t stick one ofthese on the back would you, you’d put a number ofthem. How many would you put on?

Nigel: I think you’d be looking at maybe 2 to 3 –2 minimum. An F65 draws about 110 Watts withoutanything extra.

Ed: Okay, so you put three on and then whathappens – after some time which one goes down first?

Nigel: The battery nearest the camera is thecontrolling battery and it will discharge one or two ofthe others first. If it can manage on discharging one,that’s fine, you then have a hot swap capability,because the battery that’s nearest the camera will keepthe camera working while you take the empty batteryoff and put a new battery on. So you’ve got as near asdammit, continuous power – until such time as the onethat’s nearest the camera actually runs out.

Ed: And that could be a very long time?

Nigel has an Anton Bauer alternative from PAG.

Ed: Right, well, there’s been a number of times we’vecome here and there hasn’t been anything really toshow, so we’ve sort of talked about PAG and the brandand the reliability of the product, but this year we’vegot something new and it’s really excited theAmericans?

Nigel: Yes. We’ve taken the linking battery, whichyou did an exposé of about a couple of years ago, whichwas a V-Mount linking system and, for the Americanmarket, we’ve created a 3-stud battery linking system;similar features of the V but we’ve changed theconnector for compatibility with the Anton Bauer mount.

Ed: So it has all the features of the V-Lock, theconnectivity … well just run us through that wholeinterconnectivity of the linking system?

Nigel: Linking batteries together does traditionallyhave problems but we conquered the problems with ourV system. The PAGlink 3-stud system is, let’s say,enhanced, because we’ve chosen to up the cell standardon current. The cells in the 3-stud battery deliver morecurrent, so instead of a maximum of 8 Amp with the V,

Nigel: It could be a very long time.

Ed: And the really good thing is that these are muchlighter than the Anton Bauer ones that you can replace?

Nigel: This is one of the smallest and lightestbatteries around, let’s say, the highest energy density.We’ve made it as small and as tight as possible; we’vegot to think about shipping, we’ve got to think aboutbasic weights … these are all things to consider whenyou’re designing a battery. The cameraman, thebroadcaster, doesn’t want excess space you know, it’scost.

Ed: And all of these link back to the camera if thecamera has got that ability, you can see the battery runhours etc in the camera viewfinder?

Nigel: Yes, all our batteries now have a talkingcapability with the camera. Again, you get the sameinformation on the battery itself when you press thebutton, you’ll get the remaining capacity of the batteryand then you press it a second time, it’ll tell you howlong that stack whether it’s 1, 2, or 3 batteries, will runthe camera for, in hours and minutes. So you’ve got allthe information on the battery, but all that informationis transmitted through to the viewfinder.

Ed: And you also allow these batteries to be chargedon an Anton Bauer charger?

Nigel: If you’re making a replacement battery,you have to make it so that it will charge on thecustomer’s charger, otherwise there’s no incentive forthem to take your battery.

Ed: Yes well that’s logic Nigel, but sometimes in thisindustry, logic doesn’t actually make sense otherwiseeveryone would be using your batteries?

Nigel: That’s true. We do try to put some sort oflogic on this which often doesn’t seem to work, butthere we go. Yes, there are an awful lot of Anton Bauerchargers around and we must make sure that thebattery will charge on any Anton Bauer charger.

Ed: But in terms of the technology of the charger, isthe battery going to be better or worse off by beingcharged on an Anton Bauer charger, or if someone isgoing into this long-term should they really get a PAGcharger?

Nigel: Ideally we would like people to buy a PAGcharger, but I think that’s secondary at this moment,because the battery is dictating what the charger does.

Ed: Oh, so it works that way, the battery tells thecharger what to do?

Nigel: That’s right. The battery is designed sothat you can’t overcharge it. It tells the charger “I’vehad enough”, so nothing’s impossible, but it’s verydifficult for any charger to damage our battery. This isthe same for the V as it is for the others … the regimeof charging and discharging is controlled by the battery,so you can’t over-discharge it and you can’t overchargeit, and they’re primarily the only ways that you’re goingto destroy the battery.

Ed: That’s pretty fool-proof Nigel?

Nigel: We normally talk about error-proof.

Ed: Oh, because there are no fools in our industry?

Nigel: I make no comment on that.

Ed: And I guess also, one of the big incentives to buya PAG battery is this lovely little black and yellowsticker that you’ve put on there?

Nigel: Yes, it’s our own invention, but it looksofficial. It gives the cameraman a bit of confidencewhen he’s going through security, because he can’t

check these batteries – it is tamper-proof. Grant’strying to pick it off, but you can’t, it’s tamper-proof, butwhen they’re going through security, people look at itand think “oh well, that looks official”.

PAG batteries being charged by an Anton Bauer charger.

Ed: Because it’s got a picture of a plane on it and itsays …?

Nigel: It’s got a picture of a plane and it gives ourtest certificate number, because all lithium ion batteriesmust be type tested. I’m afraid to say again, as we’vetalked about previously, probably only 2 or 3 companiesin the world do this. Most don’t. We send between 16to 20 batteries to an independent test house – we areprobably looking at about a £5-6000 cost, so that theycan put these batteries through a rigorous testprocedure. Then you get the certification and thatmeans that you have passed the United Nations advisedregulations for air transport and therefore thecameraman can go through with confidence to say thatthis battery has been tested.

With the battery itself, we also give a copy of the test

certificate, so if there’s any ‘jobs-worth’* people in

security, you can put that in front of them.

Ed: Yet more confidence in the product?

Nigel: Well the poor cameraman’s got a lot of

gear and the last thing he wants to do is to turn up at

the airport and they say “sorry, you can’t ship that.”

You know, what does he do – he gets out the other end

and he’s got no batteries.

But the important thing is, and we must remind people

again and again and again – you must NEVER checklithium ion batteries. They must always be hand

carried.

Ed: Wise words from Nigel yet again.

* A jobs-worth is an official who says “ I can’t let you dothat, it’s more than my job’s worth”. NZVN

EDIUS for AVAWe are at Grass Valley talking about EDIUS with MattScott, demo artist. The reason we are here is that MikeSymes at AVA in Christchurch has been very positiveabout EDIUS for many, many years and he’s managedto sell quite a few units into the Christchurch area.There is even a qualified EDIUS tutor in Christchurch forthose who wish training. We would just like to supportMike’s initiative because EDIUS really is a very powerfulediting tool, as Matt I’m sure agrees.

and now that is their tagline, it says “edit anything” –that’s a huge deal. But 5-6 years past that, they reallystarted to push the craft editing side of things. Whatthey nailed from the get-go was like performancereliability and their acceptance of more cameras andformats than any other editor.

Ed: Let’s go back to this “edit anything”. I knowsome other companies offer that too, and you dragthings in and you put them on the timeline and yes, youcan scroll through them etc, etc, but when you come to

output it, suddenly it says “pause while Irender this.” Do you get that withEDIUS too?

Matt: Rendering is a toughquestion. Generally speaking, no, thereis no rendering. But if someone goes“hey, I’ve got a 16 bit TIF sequence anda logo animation that I want you to playin real time”, it’s not going to happen.But if we’re talking 10 bit 422 or 444and if we’re looking at intermediatecodecs like DNxHD, then you’re going toget real time performance and it’sunparalleled real time performance,especially when you start doing colourcorrection.

I’m going to show you how to do thatand stuff in a second … but that’s goingto look really good on audio! Whilewe’re speaking of customisation,because this is important too with EDIUSproducts, not only can we edit 8K – soEDIUS now supports 8K in an upcomingversion and I actually have that Betaversion right here – at the moment we’relooking at a 4K resolution, but the coolthing is, it’s not limited to Ultra HD, it’s

actually full scope 4K; but then we can customise thatframe size, so it’s not just limited to broadcaststandards, we can actually customise that to say1496x1708 which is equivalent to 2.4 to 1 aspect ratio.So you can actually have any frame size you want. Youcould literally have a 50x50 if you wanted to.

So now that we’re in EDIUS, it just looks like any othereditor really. I mean, it’s broken up into three stages.We have our timeline, we have our bin and we have ourpreview monitors. What’s cool about it is this actuallyworks exactly like I used to work on my Avid. So mybin is in the same place as the Avid; my timeline is setup like Avid; my keyboard shortcuts are like Avid andall of those settings can be saved into a profile and thatprofile can be saved on a USB stick or distributedthrough a network and permissions can be set in thatprofile too, so in a News working environment you cansay “hey guys, who edit News, you’re not allowed toedit in 4K. I know you want to, but you’re stuck at720p.” You know what I mean?

Ed: Can you make it look like a Final Cut Pro or aPremiere timeline?

Matt: Almost. I can make it pink. If you want itto look pink we can go to user settings …

Ed: I don’t want it too gay I want it looking likesomething that somebody’s used to.

Matt: You said Final Cut Pro!

Ed: Oh, okay, yeah.

Matt: So here we are, now it’s looking like FinalCut Pro. Anyway, let’s have a look at some of theaspects that do make it fast. I’m not just talking about

Ed: So Matt, you’re going to tell us what the specialfeatures of EDIUS are that some of the other editingsystems don’t have, or that EDIUS does better. Let’sstart with that?

Matt: Okay. Let’s start at square one, and eventhough you can’t see the screen …

Ed: We can imagine it.

Matt: Yes, let’s imagine this beautiful screen withall of these numbers and stuff on it.

Ed: But you can have two monitors surely, you canspread your workstation across two or three?

Matt: Unlimited. If you want to have a bin on sixmonitors, as long as you’ve got a “Quattro 56 billion”,you should be fine with that. Some of the features arethe reasons I like EDIUS and actually, it’s good to noteright now that I’m not employed by Grass Valley. I’m acinematographer from Australia and I just have a veryextensive post knowledge. My background is actuallyas a News editor, so I grew up with Avid. I liked Avidbut it was way out of my price range and what I didn’tlike about Avid was that it was very fussy. It wouldonly work with a small numbers of formats, it wasn’tvery flexible and it kept crashing on me. Those thingsannoyed me so I looked elsewhere, and when I lookedelsewhere, the performance was just killing me. Like, Iwanted to have my own home edit station and then oneday someone put me onto this thing called EDIUS andI’m like, “what the hell is EDIUS?” Anyway, Idownloaded this free 30 day trial and from there (1) Iwas just blown away by the performance; (2) I wasblown away by the fact that I could import anything –

Matt and Mark Hall from EDIUS supplier, Corsair Solutions.

real time performance … what about simple things thatspeed up workflow? So if we have a look at my harddrive here, I’ve got a folder structure, and in my folderstructure is footage, and in my footage – blah, blah,blah there’s music, sound effects, graphics etc. Let’sopen a folder and press “okay” and now we’re bringingin almost a terabyte of footage very quickly, but what’smore important than that is the folder structure’s thesame.

So we’re ready to start editing straight away – sothere’s no transcoding, no intermediate codecs, we’reready to go, its 4K footage on the timeline right now.We’re also monitoring this in 10 bit using a new Matroxcard and we’re monitoring that in 4K. So what’s cool iswe can start colour grading this and there’s still realtime performance; it’s out of control!

Ed: And so your whole file structure really just lookslike Windows Explorer?

Matt: Exactly.

Ed: You can have clips or you can have details and …?

Matt: Oh yeah, that’s a good point. So let’schange the view of the bin to a detailed view and let’sget rid of this horrible pink because it’s starting toannoy me …

Ed: Oh, go on, you know you liked it.

Matt: Let’s have a look at the bin and go to ourfootage and we can change the details of the view. Wecan change it to clip view, thumbnail view, and theseare the green lights that let us know that these clipshave actually been used so if I delete some of those,some of the lights go off.

Ed: That’s such a simple thing that’s so important toknow – “have I used that clip”?

Matt: Yes, it’s super cool. Usually I don’t demothis stuff, because no one cares about it. I care! Solet’s change the view to the detail view … and we canadd and remove details just like in Windows Explorer.One of the important ones is frame rate. So if you’remixing frame rates on a timeline, it’s important to knowwhat frame rate’s what; but even cooler than that, ifyou’ve got 60p footage and you want to play it at slowmotion, instead of slowing it down in your clip using afilter, changing the speed, drawing power from yourCPU, you just highlight all the 60p clips and change theframe rate here, and bang – they conform to the sameframe rate as your timeline and then they play withoutartefacts in slow motion.

Another really cool but simple feature – where in“Finally” Cut Pro you need to exit, go to Compressor orsome crap like that, do all this transcoding, in EDIUSit’s a click. So real time performance aside, I’m talkingabout just the way EDIUS handles media. It’s very,very powerful.

Ed: What about controls – since there are so fewEDIUS users in New Zealand, apart from inChristchurch, people have to migrate from anotherediting platform, how are they going to learn all thesesymbols? I see arrows and buttons and things but Idon’t know what they mean?

Matt: That’s a good question and actually …

Ed: I’m full of good questions.

Matt: You’ll keep ‘em coming, because I’m

enjoying this.

Ed: You wait!

Matt: Actually in my spare time, I get paid bigbucks to go and train people who have come from Avidor “Finally” Cut Pro and I train them how to use thissoftware, and honestly, like the buttons and logosyou’re talking about, they’re pretty straightforward. Imean this little one with the dials, that’s your audiomixer; and this one is scopes …

Ed: Are you telling me that if you hover the arrowover it, it tells you what it is?

Matt: Exactly. So I don’t even have to be theredemanding all this money … really you could just hoveryour mouse over something and whamo! But you’llnotice my screen layout is quite clean. There’s normally1064 or 1065 buttons here that I’ve taken away. Sogetting back to the customisation, normally all thisspace is filled up and there are buttons and crapeverywhere. You can customise that to exactly the wayyou want. If we go to “button” for example, and we canadd this audio channel map down here, and you watch… there it is down there. But you canalso remove buttons as well. So wecould remove that, remove that and thenthey disappear. You can reallycustomise, not only the timeline, but theplayers, recorders, the bin etc.

Ed: Okay, have you got a simple littlefeature like “copy and paste effects” on atransition?

Matt: That’s a good one. Let’shave a look. I spent hours calibratingthis shot ( actually I do it in about 30seconds ) but anyway, let‘s go to oureffects and you’ll notice I’ve saved onehere and it’s called “Beautiful Mirrors”.That is dropped down on top of there –look how beautiful that shot looks, andwe can just compare that before andafter … looking pretty good. That’s justa saved preset. You can save, not onlymultitudes of filters, you can save speedchanges, you can save layout changes,so here we are in the layout tool.Remember, this is real time, no other software can dothis in real time. So I’m going to animate this acrossthe screen in 4K, in 3D space, in real time – who thehell can do that, that’s impossible? So the cool thing is,we can actually save that movement. If you’ve got asuper that needs to fly in from the corner, you can savethat animation and apply it to a super, apply it to alogo, apply it to actual footage. It’s just a simple click.So for example, if we go up here to the transformproperties and we just grab a new clip …

Ed: Oh, I just saw the timeline all red, what does thatmean?

Matt: That means I’m pushing it to its limits.

Ed: So you have to render that?

Matt: Well let’s hold on a second. We’ve got 1, 2,3, 4, 5 plus we’ve got five colour correction effects, akeyer a layout manipulation in 3D and it’s 4K …

Ed: Are you looking for sympathy?

Matt: Yeah a little bit – can I have something,have you got a coffee or something? I’ve been talkingall day, trying to stay positive man. Do you want to beblown away by some colour correction?

Ed: No I just want to see the simple things. If I’mgoing to transition from another editing platform to this,

I want to know the basics, I want to know very simple…

Matt: You’ve made your mind up then?

Ed: No, not yet, I want to know some very simple

things like your audio tracks – why can’t I see a

waveform on there?

Matt: That’s because we don’t have any audio

down there. Let’s have a look at some audio, that’s a

very good one. What we’re going to do is drag some

music down to our timeline here and you’ll see by

default, EDIUS will split left and right and separate it

onto two separate tracks. That can be annoying

sometimes, I think that’s a stupid idea.

Ed: Oh no, I like that. I like to change the stereo

tracks into two mono’s.

Matt: Well there you go. I hate doing that, soI’m going to change it just with this little button here( as you can’t see ) and I’m going to drop down on thetimeline and expand it. Here we have a waveform

A very familiar timeline - not hard to learn.

monitor which is generated in the background so it’s notgoing to take up valuable time every time you open aclip. But let me show you something really cool … wecan edit audio just like any other thingee, okay that’spretty standard, but we can also do things like this – dotwo at once, or we can also right click and move all ofthem on a scale, so like 50% so the same pattern willstay.

What’s even cooler than that is, I mean, this is allstandard features right … what we can do is, if we had ahardware board set up to this – we don’t actually needone but it would be cool if we did – we could press“play” and we can add keyframes in real time to ouraudio. That’s pretty cool. But even cooler than that,I’m just going to add an “inpoint” here and an“outpoint” here and I’m going to press No 6 for loop andthis is just going to continuously loop. That’s not veryimpressive, but what is impressive is we go up to here…

Ed: No, I think they’re impressive.

Matt: Let’s go to the parametric equaliser ( thatmakes me sound smart ) … if we double click that now,what we can do in real time is monitor the guy’s voicewe’re trying to fix up and some “tst- tst- tst” up in the10K range, give him a bit of bass because his voice

hasn’t broken yet and sort of just pump up the mid-range of that voice, and we can hear it in real time, it’slooping, this is really powerful stuff. So we can colourcorrect in real time, we can do audio changes in realtime and the performance is simply amazing.

Ed: Okay, now let’s look at output. So you’ve gotyour little sequence there and you want to output it asan H.264 1080i file. What do you do?

Matt: Okay, so normally, you just press F11, butI’m going to export just this little section here, and so Igo “file export, print to file”. Now EDIUS is supposed tosupport more formats than any other editor, so if youwant to export, EDIUS can do it.

Ed: When a new codec comes along, how do you getthat new codec – do you have to buy the next versionof EDIUS?

Matt: Not always. This is where Grass Valley isahead of the game. I think they’ve got friends in Japanwho know people in Japan. When a new camera comesout, they take each other out for dinner and they talkabout codecs and then they implement them.

Ed: Okay, so normally you have to do upgradesrather than just download codecs. Do you have a DVDauthoring programme built-in?

Matt: Oh now you’re talking. We can author aBlu-ray straight off the timeline, or a DVD straight offthe timeline.

Ed: This sounds like Avid Liquid?

Matt: Yeah, but Avid Liquid doesn’t actually work.

Ed: Not anymore. You got me there.

Matt: Remember those little simple things wewere talking about – check this out. Lots of authoringtools put effort into making beautiful menus, which youcan do, but generally speaking, you just want to givesomeone a DVD as a preview disc or something likethat, so adding chapters and stuff can be a pain in thearse. But all I’m going to do now is just press V formarker …

Ed: Are you allowed to say “arse” on television justlike Paul Henry?

Matt: I’m not allowed to say shit or arse, but Icontinually get in trouble for saying both of them.Anyway, so here we have some markers on our timelineand they’re generally useful in editing situations to addnotes, etc, but what they’re cool for is, if we go to burna disc from a timeline “file, export, burn to disc” – thosemarker points actually become chapter points. A really,really simple feature; a really, really cool feature. Soremember we can burn Blu-rays straight from thetimeline, DVDs straight from the timeline and it’s alsogot its own DVD authoring programme as well.

Ed: Alright, my last question – the big one though –photo manipulation. So many productions these daysneed graphics, need photos, need titles, etc. I’m surethere’s a titling programme built-in that has got everyfont imaginable, what about photos – is there a quickway to manipulate photos with something likePhotoshop?

Matt: It integrates in that it accepts Photoshopfiles and, if you have both programmes open at onceand you open the Photoshop file that’s on your timeline,you go back to Photoshop, make changes and save it,that will instantly update on EDIUS’ timeline. So in away, yes.

Ed: What about the support now for BlackmagicDesign cards in EDIUS 7?

Matt: AJA cards, Blackmagic cards and we’reactually using a Matrox card right now as well. SoGrass Valley finally opened up third party hardwaresupport, which is really cool, so they’re not justrestricting you to use Grass Valley hardware.

Ed: Well it all sounds too good to be true, but if youwant to get a demo of this, apart from talking to MikeSymes in Christchurch, Mark Hall from Corsair Solutionsis the supplier of the EDIUS product and you can goonline at www.corsairsolutions.com.au and have alook.

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Panavision – ChroszielWe are at Schneider Optics for Panavision because they

are the resellers for Chrosziel matte boxes in the USA.

Sebastian Merkel is going to tell us what’s new.

Ed: Now Sebastian, Chro-sziel’s not just matte boxesby the look of this gadgetyou’ve got here?

Sebastian: This is a colli-mator we are showing. Thecollimator is for measuringthe back focus of lenses andthe collimator has againbecome a very importantdevice with the growth inthe use of PL mount lenses.They have to be measuredwith a collimator accordingto the back focus.

This is an item we havebeen selling very success-fully in the last few yearsand that’s why we areshowing it here.

Ed: Because quite a fewof the modern cameras A well engineered collimator from Chrosziel.

don’t actually have a back focus adjustment, is thatright?

Sebastian: That’s correct, especially the two-thirdsinch ENG cameras, you could adjust the back focus at

the camera, but the PL or Super 35 or full framecameras, it’s not possible. So if you see that the backfocus is out of line of the lens, you have to shim thelens. And to see how much it is out of focus, you needthe collimator.

Ed: It’s not something you could do yourself with afile I guess?

Sebastian: No, absolutely not. It’s a long-terminvestment, so it lasts forever if you want and it’simportant especially for rental houses.

Ed: And the importance of having your back focus in

adjustment, especially with 4K, it’s even more

important?

Sebastian: Absolutely, because the higher the

resolution, the harder it is to pull the focus, so if your

back focus is not in the right position and you have your

setup and your subject which you want to have sharp in

a certain distance, and the certain distance is not

according with the distance on the lens scale, you have

a big problem. And that’s why you have to have a

correct back focus.

Ed: So you’re not actually recording 4K, at most

you’re recording 2K?

Sebastian: Yes.

Ed: Right, that’s the big stuff, now matte boxes?

Sebastian: Matte boxes, nothing new. However, with

this little fellow, we can make setups with our so-called

Multicage or CustomCage, which is fully adjustable to

the size of the camera. It comes with different modules

so you can adjust the width and the height of the cage

according to the width and height of the camera body.

Ed: Okay, so this is for the DSLR user mainly I guess?

Sebastian: This is for DSLR also but not only. It is

good for any camera, also the C300 where you want to

attach additional features – audio, light, you know the

cage comes with threads, so you can attach different

accessories to the cage. And you have a nice handgrip

because some cameras don’t have a handgrip. So that

is something.

Ed: And of course it perfectly fits your matte boxes

onto it?

Sebastian: Yes, absolutely. Then what else do we

have here … this is something which becomes more and

more important for broadcasters if they want to get

Ultra HD or 4K content and their two-thirds inch

cameras and lenses do not allow this, they change to a

4K cinema camera and lenses and these lenses need to

be controlled.

What we did here is we used our Aladin as an interface.

You see there is a lens with three motors and this lens

can be controlled via the Aladin interface when the

camera demands focus and zoom. This is for live

production, so this is broadcast, this is not cinema.

This is, in a way, a kind of merging of cinema

equipment with a broadcast application.

Ed: And this fits any of those standard zoom lenses?

Sebastian: Yes, any. You take the Angénieux, you

take the Canons, you take the Zeiss, you take the

Sebastian with Multicage.

NZVN

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Sachtler FSB range, because then you’re into a cast

aluminium type body, but you know these go through

very vigorous testing, they’re very tough and we’ve had

the Ace out on the market now for two years – the Ace

L and the Ace M head tripod systems.

Ed: So there’s nothing actually new in the Sachtler

tripod area?

Jake: Not at this stage, no. We have some exciting

stuff going on in the lab but I can’t tell you about that.

Ed: We might see it at IBC you mean?

Jake: You’ll see it at NAB next year, so we’ll make a

splash then. It’s a bit early days right now – but we’re

very excited about the matte box and the follow focus

rig. It’s really nice, you can see that Sachtler quality on

that system.

Ed: Well that’s what we expect with the name.

Jake: Well absolutely. We put in a lot of effort – there

are a lot of these products out there, but you’ve got to

look beyond the regular design … it’s how the products

get tested, how they actually get validated, how the

actual ergonomics work, you know all of these little

touches, that’s what you get out of the Sachtler brand,

so we put a lot of effort into making sure that you’re

really going to enjoy using the product.

Panavision – SachtlerFor Panavision, we have Jake Dodson to tell us about

Sachtler.

Ed: Jake, the latest and greatest?

Jake: Well the latest and greatest is the Sachtler Ace

range, the Ace accessories. This includes three main

elements – it’s a matte box with two main filter holders

which can be rotated through 90 degrees with a really

nice stop on those.

And then the second element is a variable height base

plate, so that we’ve got a nice range for adjusting the

camera height relative to the follow focus …

Ed: So on which cameras do you need the

height adjustment?

Jake: Well the idea is that you buy a rig and it

gives you flexibility across a whole range of

cameras. We were talking to a guy earlier who

wants to use his on a D800 for example, so a

DSLR with a classic kind of 80-200mm lens … the

third component being the follow focus. What’s

critical about the follow focus is that it has zero

backlash. Now having a zero backlash mechanism

at the price point – you’re talking about US$1500

for all of those three elements together in a kit,

which is a very competitive price point, especially

with a zero backlash mechanism. So we think

that, in terms of price performance, this is right at

the leading edge.

Ed: And it fits on any of the range of Ace

tripods?

Jake: Yes. It will actually go on any standard or

any regular baseplate, so it doesn’t just have to

be Ace. But typically, if you’re really looking to

pull the price down of your system, you would

actually put this on maybe an Ace M, where you’re

talking about a head and a tripod combination in

that sort of US$600 territory. If you want to go

up to carbon fibre on the tripod, so for further

weight you’d go up to the Ace L, and then you’re

looking at around about that US$1100 mark for a

carbon fibre tripod with a head – and these are all

Sachtler fluid heads, so you’re getting a very high

level of performance for videography work.

Ed: That’s right – so the weight capacity that

earlier Sachtler tripods had for the lighter cameras

nowadays?

Jake: Exactly. So it just gives you a bit more

flexibility, a bit more portability. If you want a

tripod that’s going to last you for 20 years, you

might go for the next range up, which is the

Fujinon Cabrio there. Any of these lenses can be used

and controlled with these external motors, no problem.

Ed: So Chrosziel’s really branching out?

Sebastian: Yes absolutely. We are looking for new

business fields and this is one of these new fields.

Next coming up is the World Soccer Championship in

Brazil where Sony intends to produce Ultra HD content

and maybe we will be there with our units.

Ed: We’ll keep an eye on the cameras.

NZVN

NZVN

Jake from Sachtler.

Sony – Part OneWe are at Sony with Nick Buchner from Sony Australia-New Zealand.

commercial use, for drama, for feature film making etc.So you’ve really got a very versatile product that’s notjust dedicated to one style of shooting, versus the

approach that at least one of ourcompetitors is taking. So we’re trying todevelop a really versatile package, whilstenhancing what people have already got.We haven’t brought out a new camera,we’ve enhanced the F5 and F55.

Ed: It’s still a cinema camera thoughtisn’t it – it’s got a large sensor, it has ashort depth of field and so people justhave to know how to use that?

Nick: Exactly. Whilst I’ve just mademuch of the fact that all the controls arein the same places as an operator usedto working with our 2/3” cameras wouldexpect – yes, you still need to be able tofocus accurately which means becomingproficient at controlling that shallowdepth of focus. No disrespect to anyparticular cameraperson, but it is a skillto be mastered and we’re certainlyhearing from some production companiesthat it’s causing them difficulties – thatit’s sometimes not so practical to work in

this style even though they’d love to go with a largesensor look. In fact, some of them are moving back toshooting with 2/3” type traditional cameras.

Ed: Well surely a lot of their problems can be fixed byusing the right lens?

Nick: Not necessarily. It doesn’t matter what the lensis, you’ve still got to focus it. You’ve still got to be onthe money.

Ed: But if you have a nice big wide angle it mitigatesit, shall we say?

Nick: If you’re always shooting wide angle that mayhelp reduce focus problems – but you’re not alwaysgoing to be shooting wide angle! So you’ve got to takeyour focusing skills to a new level. The cameras helpyou there, offering various focusing tools in theviewfinder such as peaking etc.

Ed: It gives you the option?

Nick: It does.

Ed: Now I understand there’s a very good upgradefrom F5 to 55?

Nick: Well that’s the second of the trio of greatannouncements. We will offer an upgrade kit for peoplewho have got F5s to upgrade their camera completelyto F55 functionality. It’s a hardware-based upgrade,the sensor has to be replaced, you get all the featuresand performance of an F55. So that’s great for peoplewho’ve possibly put their toe in the water with the F5,weren’t necessarily sure they needed what the F55offered, but have since discovered that the extrafeatures and performance would be useful … they’ll beable to get an upgrade for a very similar cost to thedifference between the cameras in the first place.Along with the shoulder mount adapter, this upgradewill be coming towards the end of the year, probablyaround October-November.

Ed: But I’m sure there are plenty of people who havebought an F5 knowing what they want and that’s whatthey want and they’re happy with it, because it doeswhat they’ve asked for?

Nick: Well absolutely. Generally, what we’re seeing isthat the freelancers who shoot lots of different content

Nick with the PDW-850.

Ed: Nick, we had a very interesting press conference– there were lots of quite exciting things mentionedthere but I guess the big one that everyone was veryimpressed by was the clever shoulder mount kit for theF55 and F5 because so far, everyone’s been coming upwith rigs that look atrocious and probably don’t workvery well. Now there’s something from Sony that thecamera just clips in and every function is in the rightplace for somebody who wants to shoot off theirshoulder?

Nick: That was one of a trio of announcements forenhancements to the F5 and the F55. Probably justcalling it a shoulder mount is not doing it justice; we’recalling it a build-up kit. The aim is to turn the F5 andF55 operationally into something that’s very similar toan XDCAM shoulder-mount camcorder.

A lot of freelance shooters for television are used to theXDCAM camera, they’re used to where the controls andswitches are, so what this kit does is not only add anadjustable shoulder pad – that’s just part of it – but itadds a module under the front of the camera that hasall the key controls -– white balance, gain, audio levels– exactly where an XDCAM user would expect them tobe. Further back to the rear of the camera, we’ve gotan audio block where audio levels and audio inputswitching are exactly where you would expect them tobe. On top is a radio mic receiver slot where our twochannel digital wireless mic system can be easily slottedin. At the back, there’s also a row of input and outputconnectors for audio and power, including a D-Tap.There’s a new handle that fits on the top with amounting point for a shotgun mic, plus another inputpoint for that mic.. So what you end up with is acamera that an XDCAM shooter can pick up and feelvery comfortable with … in fact, at the pressconference, we heard noted documentarian and XDCAMshooter Alister Chapman from the UK, say that he justpicked this camera up and the controls and overalllayout felt very familiar. That’s the idea, to give that“run and gun” style shooter that option. Now, havingsaid that, just take the camera out of the rig and youcould put a RAW recorder on it, you can do lots of otherthings, it’s a very powerful production style camera for

and have no idea what kind of job they’re going to bedoing from week to week, have tended to go for theF55 because it gives them the most versatility. Thereare some very good reasons that people haveappreciated, for example the Frame Image Scan featurethat eliminates any rolling shutter problems, or wanting4K onboard recording etc. But where people areshooting particular types of programming – realityprogramming, documentary, corporate, that type ofthing, it’s often been the F5 which is very good value,particularly with the bundles that we’re offering at themoment with viewfinders and other accessories.

Ed: And the third thing?

Nick: Well the third big announcement was the optionto fit additional codecs. The cameras are very versatile– right now they have XAVC, they have 50 megabitXDCAM format, they have HDCAM SR format and withthe RAW recorder, they can do RAW. But sometimesthere are other codecs out there that people wish for –for example, those that are still working in Final Cut 7,which has no XAVC support, so they like to shootProRes. So what we’ve announced is a chargeablehardware update, that will add ProRes and DNxHDcodecs to the camera, making them surely the mostversatile cameras around in terms of choice of recordingcodec.

Ed: But I do remember something from the pressconference, that there was quite a famous person who,when asked what codec he used said XAVC and he’sdoing major documentary programmes using thatcodec, not an off-board recorder?

Nick: That’s true and I think there was also anothervery good example at the press conference of a livegrading session where they put up some large night-time images shot in Los Angeles. Curtis Clark ASC shotthese and he had a noted colourist from SonyColorworks in Hollywood. They graded this shot liveand they did comment at the end that this was shot inXAVC, it wasn’t shot RAW, yet they felt they got a lot oflatitude out of it, they were able to bring a lot of detailup out of the shadows. XAVC is a new-generationcodec and it’s a very good codec, but we want to makethe cameras totally versatile for those who wish achoice. ProRes is something that a lot of people havewished for, while DNxHD is something that thoseworking in Avid are keen to possibly work with using anative file rather than having to transcode – so this isan option. If they don’t want it, they don’t have to buyit, but it is an option. All of this comeson the back of the release of Version 4software for the cameras which was justreleased a day or two before NAB andadds a bunch of new features to thecameras – things like cache recordingwhere you can get up to 15 seconds ofcache recording, so you can basically runthe cache and when you hit the recordbutton you’ve captured the previous 15seconds of material. This can be great insome documentary and action situations.We’ve also added the ability to apply 3Duser LUTs to the camera plus variousother features, quite a raft of them. Andthat’s all available as a free update.Interval recording where you could set toshoot X number of frames at X intervalwas also due with Version 4, howeverthis has just been slightly delayed andthat will come out in Version 4.1 which isdue for the end of May.

Ed: It looks like you’ve got some pretty good basecameras there – the F65, 55 and 5 and now it’s a caseof upping the software into them, the accessories thatgo with them, to keep them up to date?

Nick: Well, they’re amazing cameras to begin with, andwe’ve always promised an upgrade path. The F65 hasalso just had a Version 4 upgrade, that adds a wholebunch of new features, but different to the F5/55.

I just had Hugh Calverley here from Imagezone, a Kiwiwho has been working with F65s and he went throughthe whole Version 4 feature set with the productmanager from Japan and was very pleased with what’sbeen added. So all our F Series cameras continue toevolve and that’s what we’ve promised – we’re notgoing to just bring out a new camera every six months– we’re enhancing what’s there, making them moreversatile, adding more features, more options, for allstyles of shooting.

Ed: So does this mean that the 3 chip broadcastcamera is dead – is it now going to be only single chip,short depth of field cameras?

Nick: I would say absolutely not. I think that oldmaxim of “horses for courses” does apply and there area lot of situations where a small sensor camera, a 2/3”camera or smaller, is the better weapon of choice. It’snot a fad that people like to shoot with that shallowdepth of focus – it’s a cinematic look and it allows morepeople than ever before to achieve that look at a muchmore realistic cost than was ever possible in the filmworld or the early days of digital cinematography. Butthat doesn’t mean that look is necessary for every typeof production, nor is it practical for every type ofproduction.

I alluded to an example earlier where a reality show hadlooked to go to large sensor, had a lot of difficulty withthe camera guys not really being able to captureeverything that was necessary and the feeling was thatthey’ll go back to 2/3” for the next series. So I thinkcertainly, in the field production world, there’s a lot oflegs left yet for XDCAM and for 2/3” generally – in thestudio camera domain 2/3” continues to rule and I don’tthink that will change in a hurry as we’re not evenbroadcasting our primary channels in HD in Australia,let alone 4K, you guys are ahead of us there! So no, Idon’t pronounce the 2/3” camera dead.

Ed: In fact, you’ve come out with a new one haven’tyou?

Nick: We have. The PDW-850 is a new XDCAMshoulder-mount camcorder – the successor model tothe venerable PDW-F800 and PDW-700, our extremelypopular disc-based camcorders. This is a new disc-based model, showing just how committed we are tothe optical disc format. The PDW-850 essentially has allthe features and functions of the F800 but is more likethe price of the 700, with improvements such as a moreadvanced digital signal processing circuit that achieveslower noise, better sensitivity. It’s still a 3 chip CCDcamera and still recording to the optical disc that somany users find provides a very easy and cost-effectiveworkflow.

Ed: Now you say CCD for the 850 but there’s certainlybeen a huge success with the CMOS chips in the smallercameras, in the 1/2” and 1/3” cameras – why not go toCMOS in those broadcast cameras?

Nick: I think in the broadcast world, there’s still afeeling that CCD is superior to CMOS. That gap isnarrowing, but there are some laws of physics thatgovern how a CMOS sensor will perform. For example,the rolling shutter or “jello” effect – with a CMOSsensor, it is very real and, unless you have either amechanical or some form of electronic shutter – forexample, the F65 has a mechanical shutter, while theF55 has a Frame Image Scan function which essentiallyis an electronic global shutter – unless you havesomething like that, you will suffer from some form ofdistortion in elements of the picture – vertical elements,moving elements – because of the physics of how aCMOS sensor works. They’ve certainly come a long wayand we sell a lot of CMOS cameras, so I’m not standinghere putting down CMOS, but I think in the broadcastworld, a lot of the engineering people still feel that CCDis superior, so we’re continuing to make studiocameras, OB cameras and ENG/EFP cameras such asthis new PDW-850, using CCD sensors.

Ed: It is a look isn’t it. I mean, you talk about “look”for a cinema camera – there is a certain look to a CCDimage compared to a CMOS image?

Nick: Well as I said, the gap is narrowing, and I’dcertainly be challenged myself, to necessarily pick thelook just based on an A-B comparison on a monitor of astatic subject. Once you start putting motion in, theremay be a difference, but look, CMOS sensors havecome a long way. I can remember standing here in LasVegas 15 years ago in the early days of digital stillphotography when someone came out with a CMOSsensor for a still camera, a certaindesign, and we all just laughed and saidyou’ve got to be joking. But it wasn’ttoo many years after that that certainlyseveral major manufacturers of digitalSLR cameras were using nothing butCMOS and today that technology is inour F65, our F55 and in lots of our top-line products. However as long asthere’s a demand for CCD inbroadcasting, we will continue to offerCCD too.

Ed: Right, now in the smaller camerasthat we know and love from Sony?

Nick: One of the new cameras we’velaunched here at NAB is the PXW-X180and this is a camera that bridges theworlds of NXCAM and XDCAM. We havea range of NXCAM cameras that use theAVCHD codec and that’s really where ourprofessional offerings start. A very

venerable NXCAM model has been the HXR-NX5P – thetop of that range when it comes to a small sensorcamcorder with a fixed lens. Then we have a range ofsmall handheld XDCAM camcorders – the PMW-100, the150, the 200. This new camera actually replaces theNX5 and also the two lower end models of the XDCAMrange, the PMW-100 and 150 and becomes a bridgebetween those two worlds. It’s a 3 chip, 1/3” CMOScamcorder with a 25X zoom lens, a brand new lensdesign. It’s a wide lens too, going to 26mm equivalent,so it’s really class-leading in its performance. It’s gotsome really cool new features – it’s got a variable ND,so whilst it has three ND filter positions, it also has anelectronically controlled variable ND filter that using athumbwheel, you can dial up any ND value between 1/4and 1/128 and that’s a technology that we’re seeing forthe first time in this model. Another key interestingfeature is we’ve introduced the use of a hot shoe calleda Multi Interface (MI) shoe. We have an adapter for ourUWP-D wireless mic receivers and by fitting thatcombination to the camera’s MI shoe, the audio signalfrom the receiver goes straight through into thecamera, no cable required; the power for the wirelessmic receiver comes up from the camera, no cablerequired and when you switch the camera on and off ofcourse you’re also switching off the wireless micreceiver.

Ed: Oh that’s very clever.

Nick: It integrates beautifully into the new PXW-X180camera.

Ed: Is it only one shoe?

Nick: There’s a single MI shoe, plus there are other cold

shoes on the camera. So if you want to mount a light,

such as our new HVL-LBPC which also integrates well

with this camera via the MI shoe and can be switched

on and off by the camera, you can or if you need awireless mic too, you could still put a light on the cold

shoe further back on the handle. So this camera’s

really a great all-rounder – it records the 50 Megabit

codec, it records XAVC, it records AVCHD, so it gives

you a range of codecs.

Ed: Hang on, I’m just getting confused about these

codec numbers …

Nick: Okay, AVCHD is an HD codec running at amaximum of 28 Megabits per second, so used for HD

only – that’s the basis of our whole NXCAM range –

they are all AVCHD cameras.

Ed: Is that an MP4?

Nick: AVCHD is an MPEG-4 file format.

The new XAVC codec is also MPEG-4 based and was

introduced with the F5 and the F55 and is now

proliferating across more of our models. It’s a newer

codec, very scalable, it’s capable of doing HD, 2K and

4K – however, note that the PXW-X180 is not a 4K

camera, this is an HD camera – but the beauty of theXAVC codec is that it’s very efficient, it looks great, it’s

becoming increasingly well supported by all the NLE

manufacturers – with the exception of Final Cut 7 as

that’s not under any further development – but it is

supported by Final Cut X. So the camera has a

versatile set of codecs and a really versatile set of

features. The NX5 has been a very popular workhorse

camera and the new PXW-X180 is really set to take itsplace as an even more powerful workhorse for someone

who wants a relatively small handheld camera with a

very powerful lens.

Ed: Okay, quickly past monitors?

Nick: Yes, probably the star of the monitor display here

is a prototype 30” 4K OLED monitor designed for

reference and grading purposes. This will be out within

the next 12 months and is really the pinnacle of our

OLED technology. Our PVM and BVM OLED modelshave been really well accepted in all areas of production

and this is sitting at the top of the tree.

Ed: Well I can attest to that because, it’s a very dark

picture and you can still see detail in the black – and

that’s the test of a good monitor. Okay, in the audio

area, radio mics, it’s really a big area because we’ve got

to chuck out all our old ones shortly.

Nick: March next year.

Ed: So you’ve come to the party?

Nick: We certainly have. The situation in New Zealand

is that you’re just a few months behind Australia in

having to vacate the higher frequencies and move to

the new 502 – 606 and 622 – 698MHz ranges. We’ve

got radio mic systems at various levels that fit withinthat range. There’s one main frequency block available

for New Zea-

land, which is

638 – 694MHz.

We’ve got fully

d ig i t a l and

analogue hybrid

systems within

that range, butit’s also cleared

the way for

digital modula-

tion of radio

mics wh i ch

wasn’t per-

mitted pre-

viously under

the GeneralUser Licence in

New Zealand.

So that means

our DWX sys-

tem, which has

been available

in North Amer-

ica and Europefor about five

years, is now

available in Australia and New Zealand. This system is

fully digital, so from the output of the microphone’s

preamp right through the signal path, transmission

path, receiver and into something like an XDCAM

camcorder, it’s digital all the way. We have a beautiful

integration with any current XDCAM camcorder that’s

got a slot, so cameras like the PDW-F800, PDW-700,

PMW-350, PMW-400 – these all feature a wireless micslot. We have a two channel digital wireless receiver

that fits into that slot, it’s the only two channel slot-in

receiver that delivers two channels through the slot –

others you generally have to use a cable to jump out

the side of the camera. We’ve got a range of plug–on,

handheld and bodypack type transmitters. The other

big thing about DWX is through the tight integration

with XDCAM, you can control the receiver through themenus in the camera, which is fantastic for a one man

camera operator. You’ve also got control and status

monitoring of the transmitter back from the receiver.

So there’s actually a 2.4GHz signal that allows you to

remotely control the gain or switch off or change the

channel or switch in the low roll-off filter remotely from

the receiver.

Ed: This is one of the benefits of digital?

Nick: It’s not specifically a benefit of digital, but it’s abenefit of designing a system where there is that

facility. We’ve had great success with this with the

BBC, with CNN, with various other American networks,

and I should add, we also do rack mounted systems for

studios and performance venues, so there are opera

houses and theatres and other places that have also put

in these rack mount receivers using the same

transmitters and the same digital technology. Being

digital – fantastic signal to noise ratio, fantasticfrequency range, very natural sounding and really it’s

the pinnacle of radio mic technology and it’s just ideal

for XDCAM users.

We also have adapters so you can take the slot-in

receiver off the camera for use by a sound recordist or

on a camera without a wireless slot. So DWX is a great

system for high-end users.

It’s complemented by our most recently introducedUWP-D Series, which is a lower cost range designed for

small camcorders. We have various kits – bodypack

kits, hand mic kits, plug-on kits. The UWP-D system

uses digital processing in the transmitter and receiver,

but the transmission is still analogue. That design

means these mics have very good transient response

and a great sound – and again we have all types of

transmitters available plus some very nice operational

features such as headphone monitoring output on thereceiver which is handy for a second pair of

headphones, all metal construction so they’re really

tough and switchable mic/line inputs.

Ed: Well that’s a very good replacement for the …

Nick: UWP-D replaces the previous UWP-V Series. Theother big thing about UWP-D is they have quite a widetuning range, so with the new world of frequencies thatare available to use with wireless mics, we’re all goingto be pushed into less space. The system we’re sellingin New Zealand is 638 – 694 MHz, so a 56MHz range.

Ed: That’s over twice I think what it was before?

Nick: The old UWPs were 24 MHz and some of ourcompetitors are still 24 MHz. Some are a little greaterbut no one matches our range at the price, so you getgreater versatility to find clear space.

Ed: Excellent, good way to finish.

NZVN

See if you can count the number oflittle cameras in this picture.

Hint: it’s less than 10.

Protel – FacilisFor Protel, we are at Facilis Technology Inc and we haveJim McKenna.

Ed: So Jim, Facilis TerraBlock is the big sign you’vegot up?

Jim: TerraBlock is our original and still leading productat Facilis and we’ve been shipping it for 10 years. It isour flagship product, it’s our shared storage server, itcomes in many different options in terms of the driveset and connectivity options. TerraBlock is in version 6right now, so it’s been around multiple releases. Thelast few releases have been centred around our sharedfile system and that is a layer of management layer inTerraBlock. We are a software company after all andwe just wrap it in a turnkey product in a server; but ourshared file system allows us to send out fibre channeland Ethernet connected clients volumes that arewriteable to every location where they’re mounted.This is especially important because this not a NetworkAttached Storage, this is not a volume level locked fibrechannel SAN environment … this is a shared file systemacross fibre channel and Ethernet that has interestingattributes, one of them being emulation mode for Avid.Emulation mode for Avid allows us to appear to theoperating system, whether it be Mac or Windows,exactly like we’re a Unity or ISIS – and when I say“exact” I mean exact in that all of the sub-directorycreation in the MXF media files folder, all of the binlocks and all of the icons for network clips – they’re allintact when you use emulation mode on TerraBlock.

Ed: And they must be happy with that, because I seetheir name on your wall here – or did you just put thatthere?

Jim: Well the solutions partners that we call out aremore based on our implementations in customerenvironments, and certainly there are more seats ofAvid on our storage than I think any other third party –tens of thousands. This is because of the fact that wedesigned the product early on around Avid workgroups,because most of us are ex-Avid at Facilis. So westarted out with the product that we knew would bemost difficult to support, which is via the mediacompression. But from there, we branched into all themore popular applications in Final Cut and AdobePremiere, Scratch, Resolve and any number of otherapplications that are commonly used in postproduction,especially content creation in high qualitypostproductions.

Ed: Now you say that, over the years, the hardwarehasn’t changed apart from that the drives have gotbigger and faster, but I hear you saying that thesoftware has changed and I guess also the inputs andoutputs have changed. So how has the softwarechanged – what have been the improvements in thesoftware?

Jim: When we first started shipping the product, wewere fibre channel only at the time – it was 2 gig fibrechannel only, but we’ve gone to 4 gig and 8 gig andnow 16 gig from there. It was a volume level lot, singleuser right, so you had one writer and multiple readerson every volume. The workflow was a bit handicappedwhen it came to that, and we were competing withsystems like Unity which, even though they were muchmore expensive, had a better workflow. So about fiveyears ago, we developed a shared file system, whichwas a major improvement in the software beyond justthe improvements in interface, improvements inusability, operating system support and things like that,

that you do along the way when you’re a softwaredeveloper. We made a big improvement in the sharedfile system – that’s the major change and the platformsof the server have kept up with us, because we’vechanged our motherboards five times now, connectivitymethods as you say have changed, controllers havechanged from SATA to SAS, everything’s gotten muchfaster. In some cases, we’re doubling the speed of theserver as compared to what we called out as a streamcount early on, in the early days of the system. Soeven though the drive count hasn’t changed, drivespeeds have increased, motherboard speeds haveincreased and our software has increased in efficiency.

Ed: So as opposed to having a dedicated hardwarearray for your editing system, having a FacilisTerraBlock enables you to have that plus have storagefor other functionality – maybe you’ve got somegraphics, maybe you’ve got some other programmes inthere and you can create compartments within yourstorage and controlling system, to enable you to do allof this in one bin basically?

Jim: At the very least, it’s centralised storage, whichmeans that even if you’re not collaborating, you cancentralise all of your assets in one location, so if youneed an asset management, or archiving functionality,it can all be in one place. Most of our customers will atleast migrate jobs room to room which does requiresome level of centralisation and also requires somelevel of permissioning across rooms – you can see thisvolume, you can’t see this volume – and most of ourcustomers will also do some collaboration. So even ifthey’re in environments where collaboration isn’tespecially necessary, like maybe an advertising agency

where there’s just really one project per room, theymay even send it off – you render this for me, you bringthis in for me, you ingest this or record this for me, thatis collaboration. It’s allowing multiple systems to worktowards the same end goal, on the same media set, onthe same drives. So that’s very important in thefunctionality of a postproduction facility to hit thedeadlines on time. It does give you what local storagedoes; because of the speed of the system it can takethe place of local storage while at the same timeenabling so much more across your workstations incollaboration.

Ed: Okay, that’s for the big boys, now for the oneman band, the small person, the small operator, youstill have something for them?

Jim: Well we have a direct attached storage, which isour T8 model and that’s simply a SAS attached 16 or 32terabyte drive array – 8 drives. We’ve changed thepricing in January and actually the T8 is half its pricewhen you consider that a 32 terabyte now drops inwhere a 16 terabyte was pricewise. So I think it’s avery good deal for the one man operations and folksusing local attached storage instead of a SAN.

Ed: And the connection is Thunderbolt or …?

Jim: The connection is dual port 6 gig SAS, so it’s veryfast. The thing that the folks at Protel may want toknow about is version 6. Version 6 LDAP integration,active directory synchronisation for user accounts,resizing of volumes down as well as up, so moreefficiency with the sizing of volumes has been realisedwith the version 6. More usability factors like keyboardcommands, new normal user mode within the interfaceitself to keep some information away from normal usersand non-admins that don’t need to see and the AdobeAnywhere qualification as well. So we can sit on theback end of Adobe Anywhere which, in a place like NewZealand, may be very popular because it allows forremote access worldwide for users and editors acrossthe world to be able to access your personal storageacross the Adobe Anywhere server. So it gives youopportunity to take your assets and expose them youknow if you have the software, and the servers enableanyone anywhere in the world without having to createindividual proxy files for those files.

Ed: And is this a free upgrade for existing users?

Jim: Yes, if you’re on support contract, version 6 isfree to download; version 6 will however only work on64 bit servers. We made a change back in 2008 thatallowed us to upgrade servers after March of 2008 to 64bit and as long as you’re on that upgrade path, or havebought your server after August of 2010, it’s already 64bit, you can go to version 6.

Ed: Fantastic and for local sales and support callProtel in New Zealand. NZVN

Protel – DatavideoWe’re here at Datavideo and we have Cathy Aung from

Datavideo Corporation.

Ed: Now a new product in a little box?

Cathy: This is our VP-597 3G/HD/SD-SDI

Distribution Amplifier, so it takes two HD-SDI signals in,

you can switch it, like an AB switch, and you can

distribute to six SDI Streams. If one input disappears,

the other one kicks in and it’s just a DA for HD-SDI.

Also new is the MCU-100 which will now control up to 4

Panasonic or Sony video cameras remotely; MCU-100

(Hand-Held) or MCU-200 (Rack-Mounted) Multi-Camera

Controller.

Ed: And this is all by WiFi is it?

Cathy: No it’s all via Ethernet. It goes into thislittle guy right here, and this end of the connectorconnects to the Sony camera, and this is just acomposite out so you can monitor it, and this Ethernetcontrol connects to here. So you can control up to fourof them. And we also have a new SE-1200 switcher;it’s four input, HDMI, you can control it with a computer

Cathy with one of the many greatconnection solutions offered by Datavideo.

interface, so connect it to a computer. So just connectthe Ethernet and with audio inputs you can have SDI orHDMI in … HDMI in, HDMI out. So I think it’s the threeand four you can change your data to SDI or HDMI.

Ed: So there’s a lot more Ethernet control coming

now?

Cathy: Yes, most of our products, definitely. We

have the NVS-20 Video streaming server as well. It’salso connected to the computer by Ethernet. It has

HDMI and HD/SD-SDI inputs for streaming. You can

also connect a USB stick to it and record the stream at

the same time as streaming out.

Ed: So what do you need at the other end of that, thestreaming server?

Cathy: You connect it to a streaming server andthis is just a browser base, so when you want toconnect it to the computer, there’s a computer interfacethat comes up that you type in an IP address and thenthat’s how you connect it. You have to use a streamingserver like Ustream or Justin.tv or Twitch.tv and that’show you connect it.

Ed: Is it an expensive product that one?

Cathy: From Protel NZ$1,107.00+GST.

Ed: It’s mains powered or battery as well.

Cathy: You can use a DTap battery and connect itto the 12v input. This is the AD-200 an Audio Delaybox with source level controls. You can delay up to fouraudio channels.

Ed: And this box?

Cathy: This one is actually the WirelessDistribution Device NVW-150/250 WiFi Bridges totransfer Video signal over WiFi. So you connect this toa WiFi network and then you can transmit VU signalwirelessly over WiFi. So that’s another new product.

Ed: And really the plates on here are just to connectthe batteries to?

Cathy: Yes. You can connect it to a V-mount.

Ed: Well you have been busy in the last year comingup with new products! NZVN

Ed: Now Mark, you were the cover boy in our lastissue when you did the show at Protel in Auckland, buteven since then, there have been some releases at NABfrom Livestream?

Mark: There have been some very excitingannouncements which we’ll run you through. One ofthe first major announcements is Livestream workingwith Google Glass. You can actually use Google Glassand use your voice commands to start streaming fromthe Google Glass and even bring that in as a remotecamera source into your studio software. The nextfeature is the ability to take in any external source and

Protel – LivestreamFor Protel, we are at Livestream with Mark Hall fromCorsair Solutions in Australia.

bring them into the studio software as a remote camerasource. What you can do now, with the Broadcaster,which is the on-camera mounted encoder, rather than

go into the Cloud and then coming backinto the Livestream studio which has alatency maybe of about 10 seconds, youcan go direct from the Broadcaster overthe WiFi or LAN in as a remote camerasource. So that has been updated in thefirmware of the Broadcaster and you’vegot like a couple of seconds latency, sothat’s a very good addition.

Ed: And a much shorter pipe – I guesstherefore with less potential problems?

Mark: Yes, definitely. The nextmajor announcement is the Livestream510 which is the next version from the51. So this one, apart from being a rackmount unit, has a touchscreen foldablescreen that’s inbuilt in the unit, whichcan actually fold down and come up asneeded. It still comes with the metalcover and you get the carry bag so it’sflight friendly; you can take it on theplane very easily and transport it. In

addition, we’re actually running the Livestream Studio 2software. This is going to become available in aroundabout May and this will be, from what they’re saying, afree upgrade, with all their other free upgrades, fromthe Studio 1 to Studio 2.

One of the very major things for the Studio 2 softwareis the ability to support bonded modems in the unitnatively. So where you might have previously had likea LiveU or a Teradeck for a bonded solution, you canactually have up to four 3G/4G modems in this and itsupports bonded straight out of the unit, which isfantastic. So you can have a complete flyaway kit by

plugging four USB modems in here with redundant3G/4G modems. With that, there’s a lot of otherfeatures that have been introduced into the Studio 2software – that includes the ability to take externalfeeds of RSS and XML; also Facebook and Twitterintegration into your live feeds, so you can have thatcome up from all your followers on the display. There’sa new GUI with it so the layout has changed; it’s amore funkier type layout, and you’ve also got threegraphics engines in there as well rather than two. Whatyou can also see in front of this is the brand new Studioconsole that’s just come out. It’s a very nice lookingunit, a very smooth T-Bar; you’ve got your threedisplays which show all your medias and yourprogrammes and your times and your recording. Itssliders are all motorised, so we can use it from theaudio mixer and you can actually see it move – sothat’s fully motorised and very good quality componentsas in all the Livestream products.

Ed: And I can attest to the frame being a very solidaluminium frame so it would be very hard to damagethis?

Mark: That’s right, there are a lot of people whohave been waiting for this and it’s going to suit them …a very nice looking unit. We have the larger systemwith another separate audio dedicated console whichyou can extend this to. It’s very well featured, you’vegot all your displays there, all your displays change – ifI change my camera source from Media-1 or Cam-2 to adifferent name, that automatically follows through anddisplays through on the displays as well.

Ed: They’re very precise touch buttons. I justchanged the output programme and it was verysmooth.

Mark: You can see the glow effect that it has andjust the quality – it’s just amazing and we’ve had a verygood response from people seeing this product here atLivestream. Moving on, here we’re looking at one ofthe stream that’s going out live from NAB. At themoment we can see we’ve got currently 56,328 viewersall around the world … oooh 335, 56,336 viewers allaround the world, so they’re probably hearing us talk atthe moment if they’re streaming; you can also seewhere they’re located. So that’s just really showing thestream that goes out and how people are viewingwhat’s actually happening live at NAB at the moment.So it’s very, very exciting.

Ed: And that’s only one stream, so obviously thereare lots of other people producing content anddelivering it via Livestream around the world and that’seven more?

Mark: That’s right, but they might even be pullingthis as a remote feed in and they might be taking thisas a Picture in Picture for their stream. You can seesome of the channels there, we’ve got Cornell Hallwe’ve got Without Limits TV, Mexico Beats, Nova Arena– some of the people are at universities, so they’re allpopping up as to who is actually using the screen aswell.

Ed: And in a quieter area?

Mark: We have the next version of the 1700which is the HD1710, 17 input, live production switcher.We’ve got the same control surface we had over there,but in addition, we’ve got the additional audio surfacesthat sort of hang on the end of that.

You’ll also see that we’ve got an Onyx Blackjack USBrecording interface which we can use for taking externalaudio feeds in, in addition to the audio that may beembedded with our SDI channels, and use that withinour mix as we want. Looking closer at the unit here,you’ll see that there are bays at the front, so we’ve gotswappable media that can be taken in and out of thechassis. For example, you might be recordingsomething and you might just want to literally pop itout and give that to someone else. So apart from theeSATA, the USB3 and obviously the GigLAN that it hason it, you can also swap the drives there as needed.It’s running the new Studio 2 software which is going tobe available very soon. You can also see some of therecent upgrades that have come through on the currentStudio software … and people with Studio will know, any

Take it anywhere.

sort of update comes through completely free. So, assoon as it comes out, it pops up when you start and itgives you the option to install that or not install thatupdate. I’ll run you through some of the recentadditions. We have the four ISO records so we canhave four records that are being done simultaneously.Now that can be done up to 120 meg per recording andthey can be instantly accessible in either the Media 1 orthe Media Pool 2 or both. So apart from those four thatare constantly recording, they may be a combination ofany of your camera inputs come in, you might have twocameras … those can be also brought back and playedback as media clips while they’re still recording at thesame time. So we might have an instance where thereis a basketball match and we want to subclip that andhave that which will be instantly available for playbackas a Picture in Picture say on our graphics channel.We’ve also introduced a button that you can hit forreplay, that you can designate so if you see somethingyou hit the button, it will go back any number ofseconds up to ten, and have that already cut, ready toplayback when you’re ready to go.

Ed: But the normal programme’s still recording?

Mark: That’s correct. So you’ve got those fourrecords happening and they’re available in either onemedia pool or the other media pool, or both at any onetime. In addition, we’ve got an H264 encoder that’sintroduced in the unit and you have basic controls forthe touchscreen which reflects the new 510 unit.They’re some of the main features that have beenbrought in, in addition to ( as we mentioned earlier )

the ability to take in new data feeds. We did talk aboutRSS and XML, we can even do stuff from, say, GoogleDocs, so we could take in data from a Google layer or aTwitter layer as well and bring that in. So it’s not justfor your standard sports scores – there’s other sorts ofdata that you can bring in.

Ed: And I guess that now that this has reached thislevel, it’s up to the consumers to come along and say,“great this is fantastic, but can you add” … and onceyou’ve got some bulk of customer feedback, thenLivestream can look at what they’re going to do next?

Mark: It’s quite amazing how far they’ve comeover the last few years compared to last year and justthe flexibility going from someone can buy the softwareand use it with their existing Blackmagic cards or theycan buy the turnkey systems, but just flexibility … youcould have an iPhone and bring that stream live fromyour iPhone, or you could bring that in remotely as acamera feed and mix it in. So it’s a very, very flexiblesystem. And it’s also open I should say, the Studiosoftware. If you don’t have a Livestream platform thatyou stream to, if you stay with Wowza or Akamai youcan still stream to that, you’re not locked in. It’scompletely open, which is one of the great things aboutit.

Ed: I have just been advised by Protel that a reallygood value promotion has just kicked in and will nodoubt be of interest to customers consideringLivestream solutions.

Call Protel to arrange a quotation or demonstration ofthe Livestream products.

NZVN

ARRI CamerasWe are at the ARRI booth with StefanSedlmeier and lots of camera gear.

Ed: Stefan, we’re very pleased to seesome AMIRAs on the stand. I guesswe’ve been promised some demo modelsvery soon, perhaps in the next couple ofmonths?

Stefan: Yes, this is correct. Weordered two demo cameras for ARRIAustralia and have our first customers’orders in. Also, we will do everything toget the first to one of our New Zealandclients and have a workshop togetherwith our lighting distributor, ourcustomers and the New ZealandCinematographers Society. We will letyou know when but we well endeavour todo this during May. So this should be agood event to get all the customerstogether and of course a lot of tech talk,but maybe also some beer and ‘nibblies’.

Ed: That will be good and we’llcertainly keep everybody informed as towhen that might be. Now we’ve coveredthe AMIRA, and there’s obviously a lot ofinterest in that, but you’re still supplyingpeople ALEXAs – it’s a highly regardedand popular camera?

Stefan: That is right. The ALEXA is still goingstrong, we have already sold and shipped seven ALEXAsystems in 2014, the total number sold in Australia andNew Zealand is about 150 – I would say it’s about 110in Australia, maybe 115 and about 35-40 in NewZealand. It’s still the camera of choice and we supply

It’s plain to see that Stefan is happy with his AMIRA.

to everybody. We have owner/operators who operatewith one or two cameras up to rental houses who own10 ALEXAs.

Ed: Now one of the problems that you’ve been tellingme about is support – that you offer the support for theproduct that you sell, the ALEXAs, but you’re having a

problem with the people who own them actually comingto you?

Stefan: Yes we have a positive problem becausesometimes you want to do preventative maintenancewhich is sensor cover glass cleaning, CMOS sensorcalibration, also small cosmetic repairs like tapemeasure marks or a cover glass for the optical display –the LCD on the righthand side of the camera, just tomake sure no screws are missing, everything is fine,but we can’t get the cameras because they arecontinuously shooting. Even if I tell customers justsend them to us for preventative maintenance, they say“no, the camera is fine, it’s not broken, it doesn’t break,we’ll keep rolling”. So it’s a positive problem to have,but on the other hand it’s like a car, you should keep itmaintained, well looked after and there are somecheckpoints which we sometimes would like just tomake sure that all patches are installed, the latestfirmware is up and running and if any questions arisefrom our customers, also to train them up on softwareupgrade packages – we are now at version 9.1, soon weare releasing version 10, and we also want to makesure that they know all the latest gimmicks and featuresof the camera.

Ed: Perhaps you should ask the engineers to build ina little timer or something that, after a certain numberof hours, a little red flag appears in front of the sensor –that would bring them in in a hurry?

Stefan: Yes exactly. This is like a car as I say, nextpreventative oil service, or inspection due in 4000kms.But we are proud, because we only get really hardcases – this is when the camera hits the ground or goesunderwater, or hits a brick wall like it happened on MadMax: Fury Road where the car with the camera on thebonnet drove through the brick wall. The stunt didn’treally work out as it should and the camera wascompletely destroyed. So there was nothing we couldeven fix anymore; that was just fixed by replacing thecamera with a new body.

Ed: Now obviously, you’ve got lots of very satisfiedcustomers and people are still buying the ALEXA andare lined up for the AMIRA, how does this fit in with thebuzz at the show here which, as everybody knows, is4K but your cameras are not 4K, however people stillwant them. How does this make sense?

Stefan: I am very thankful that you are asking methis question because it’s really important to understandthis properly. Resolution is one of many factors whichmake a good camera imaging sensor. As important asresolution is dynamic range, colour separation,authentic skin tones, exposure latitude, a good signal tonoise ratio – so low noise floor, and a high frame rate.According to your subjective perception of resolution offocus, dynamic range is even more important thanresolution. ARRI has a native 3K sensor, we run thecamera in HD1920 or in 2K 2048, in RAW we output 3K.Now there is a new feature for the ALEXA XTs which is aso called Open Gate mode and we read out the entiresensor width, which is 3.4K. We have a show stagehere, where customers talk about their experience andthey continuously up-res to 4K for IMAX and 4K DCP fordigital cinema and we are still beating real 4K camerasin terms of image quality, not because we have a higherresolution, but because at 3 or 3½K resolution we stilldeliver a better dynamic range, better colour fidelity, sothe images still look better. You can’t compensate thatby just having a higher resolution when you have to buythat for the price where you justify signal to noise, oryou justify good colour rendering.

Ed: But of course, if you’ve got any image that’s gotdepth, how much of that image is actually going to beat 4K – only the exact point of focus, where you’ve gotone bit of light landing on one pixel and not beingspread across two pixels?

Stefan: Yes, it’s always the composition of thesensor in relation to the lens. You always take the lensinto consideration and, in the real world, not all scenesreally deliver 4K in terms of modulation. It reallydepends on the scene. As I said before, only looking atresolution doesn’t make a good picture, because thereare cameras out there which shoot 4K but the imagesdon’t look pleasant to the human eye, and customerskeep telling me that – yes, this is a 4K image, but theskin tones look wrong or the colour rendering is justbad, or the colour separation, or it can’t do 14½ Fstops. Under perfect conditions, you can achieve 15 Fstops with the ALEXA, you don’t have a problem withnoise and the camera is still very flexible and fast – fastin terms of turnaround, in terms of data wrangling, interms of post paths, so there is no number crunchingrequired. Also, with ARRIRAW, this is straightforward;the last features in Australia were shot in ARRIRAW andeven Roger Deakins’ Skyfall was shot with ALEXA andupscaled to 4K for DCP. Gravity was shot with ALEXA –I think this was even shot in 2K, this was not evenARRIRAW. Look at that in IMAX to see how beautifulthis looks. So it’s all about image processing and reallyhaving a good capturing at the front end. Resolution isimportant, but you wouldn’t justify having a highresolution if it would jeopardise other factors whichmake the beautiful images from the ALEXA, and this isprobably the reason why we are still standing strong onALEXA. And of course, we are watching 4K and beyond,6K and there will be a sensor, a camera, a technologywhen we can handle the data backbone at the sameframe rate up to 120 or 200 frames, 14 bit colour depthat the sensor, 12 bit on the output, 14½ F stops andthe same image quality in 4K. This is what we need.But on the other hand, production companies don’twant to pay more for doing 4K. Don’t forget that 4K isfour times the data than 2K. I always mention projectswhen you shoot 4K … when you shoot 4K you shouldalso shoot high frame rate don’t forget, because it’s nopoint shooting 4K at 24 frames. If you shoot 4K youshould be shooting at 48 or 50 frames. This has moreaesthetical reasons, otherwise you have too muchmotion blur when the camera is panning, but to do itproperly like Peter Jackson, once you shoot 4K youshould shoot at 48 or 50 frames. When you shoot thisin 3D, suddenly you have 16 times the data comparedto a single camera shooting 2K or 3K at 25 frames. Sodon’t underestimate the complexity in post and theturnaround time to have the capture drives empty forthe next day of shooting, and the costs involved withthat. Of course we’re looking into that and see howeasy we did the transition to 2K and also, don’t forgetthat we did 4K or 6K for years – our film recorders, theArrilaser film recorder is a 4K machine; our filmscanner, the ARRISCAN is a 6K scanner, we oversampleby scanning in 6K while we output 4K; 35mm film was4K for years, for centuries and nobody is even talkingabout that. So for us, 4K is nothing new, but capturing4K with a digital imaging sensor, this is new andhandling a data backbone on set and post with 4K. Filmcould handle 1 gigabyte a second – this is the capacityyou get on 35mm film stock, 1 gigabyte a secondwithout even thinking about it. Nowadays, there’s newrecording media, stronger processing power, new mix,new rendering farms. It’s all part of the system and

you need this as well. It’s not aboutacquisition, but having the entire path tothe delivery. The deliverable is quiteunlikely 4K, not for the cinemas becausethe cinemas have just upgraded to DCP2K and for the average audience youdon’t see a difference between 2K and 4Kunless you’re sitting less than sevenmetres away from the screen.

So there’s an entire part to be taken into

consideration – the viewing distance, alsothe screen size in relation to the viewing

distance and don’t forget that film

shooting is also a business; business has

to be economical for the production

company and if you overdo it on the

technical side, then you miss out having

more money for setup, for actors or

makeup or post or good editors.

This is one part of it and at the end it hasto be a pleasant experience also for the audience

watching this movie, and you see the entire food chain;

the resolution of the imaging sensor is one part of it,

but the audience will not probably tell or judge, the

pictures just look great, they look pleasant, they look

authentic and this makes the difference. And it’s also

about lighting and having good lenses, having a good

DOP, a good cameraman, good operators – the entirecomposition of the image.

Ed: On the subject of resolution, again I just bring up

this point that, if you’re taking a frame, you’ve got a

foreground, you’ve got a mid-ground and a background

… if you decide in your foreground there’s one particular

head that you want to be focusing on, that’s the bit

that’s going to be 4K. The rest of your scene, because

it is slightly out of focus is not going to be 4K, so the

resolution there doesn’t matter. It’s not aboutresolution as you say?

Stefan: That is just the cinematographic look –

people want to have shallow depth of field. This is also

part of the artistic creation of the image. Of course, it’s

important for faces in the foreground to be in focus and

really spot on. It’s also a challenge for the focus puller

to really be spot on, because in 4K you see immediately

when you are off.

We discussed helicopter shots and you shouldn’t forgetabout compression. It’s always important to consider

what your recording media and codec is and nowadays

it’s best to record transparent, so uncompressed RAW

native and if you have the choice between a highly

compressed 4K or a native 2K uncompressed, I would

always go for native 2K uncompressed, because this will

still deliver better results and less compression

artefacts.

Ed: That makes sense. Now ARRI, in terms of

camera development, you’ve sort of got that middle

upper ground sewn up and you talk about 6K … are you

looking both ways?

Stefan: We always look left and right and we

always look at the business model of course if it makes

sense. One part is technology, but the other part is

having a product which you can sell at the right price

point, so our customers are happy with the product interms of quality and of course price and availability.

If there is a niche to fill for us with our knowledge, our

background and image processing, we could still

contribute. This is also what we see – all the positive

feedback we have now with the AMIRA, the customers

say this is really a proper camera, they love it, they put

it on their shoulder; we have five AMIRAs here on the

showfloor and the cameras – two of them are basically

mounted on a quick release digi-cine bridgeplate and

they are on customers’ shoulders all day. This is what

they like, they can really run it, they can test it and thisis exactly how they love it.

We have this adjustable shoulder pad, adjustable

viewfinder mount, so the ergonomics to take it out of

the soft bag, have it on your shoulder fast and start

rolling. It’s like a car or a good shoe, you know it has

to fit, and this is the fit that I get all day from

customers – that they don’t even have to look at where

the buttons are, they know it intuitively and they can

operate it, because you have to concentrate on the

scene, not on your camera.

Ed: Stefan, customer experience – what have they

been telling you?

Stefan: I like it when we are here at NAB 2014, it’s

basically my 18th NAB this year and I still love it when I

see happy eyes from customers who have a camera on

the shoulder or they play around with the light and I

encourage customers to run it, push the buttons, take it

off the tripod, push it hard.

We make products, they are built to last, test them out,

if not here, then they won’t last on set, so I really stress

to them switch them on, switch them off, turn them

around, play with them. This is why we have a trade

show and this is why everything is to be operated and

to put your hands on. NZVN

What’s on the other side.

* 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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