NZVNJune2013

JUNE 2013 Vol 192

Last month, I led with the theme of 4K. Naturally, there were other productsand services that weren’t 4K or even needed to be but, nevertheless, weregood improvements in technology in their field. I didn’t notice any real “break-through” products but a number that were smaller, faster and cheaper thanbefore. For example, in the “smaller” category, the WEVI and Marshall videotransmission systems were highlights; for “faster”, there were the Fusion ioand HP’s Z820 while for “cheaper”, Avid MC, helicopters and Atomosrecorders were all surprises.

In the “I’m not so sure” category, the Adobe Creative Cloud model has yet toconvince me that it’s better for me; the plethora of cheap LED lights can’t allbe as good as they claim and the increasing buyout by some managed fundcompanies of small, highly technical manufacturers – sacrifice goodtechnology for immediate profits? We need to keep a watch on good brandsgoing bad because of the new owners’ business model.

I think I’m right in commenting that advances in many areas have narrowedthe technology spectrum. It’s getting harder and harder to make usefulimprovements at the “top end” while the bottom is getting pushed up to meetit. A good example is the mobile phone camera. There are segments beingbroadcast that were shot on mobiles; the GoPro sized camera is being usedmore and more in combination with high end camera material, and whatconstitutes a “broadcast” editing programme is no longer a question anyoneasks.

So, how do you know what’s good? Reading it here is a start; then there’sweb research and, most valuable of all, there’s the relationship you have witha supplier that you have shared for a long time and has served you well. Iknow some people play the game of going around the dealers and saying “Xoffered me this price, what’s yours?” and good luck to them I say. I prefer toknow that I’m being offered a fair price that has an expectation of goodservice behind it should something go wrong. Maintaining a successfulbusiness is finding a good balance between cost and benefit.

Anyway, enough of my business model, read on and increase your know-ledge of what’s now available to us all. Ed.

NAB 2013 - Las Vegas - Part Two

See if you can guess whatthe photos are of.Answers on page 3.

Adobe for DVTWe’re at Adobe with Dave Helmly and Stuart Barnaby

for DVT.

Ed: Dave, look, I’ve just got working with Premiere 6

and now you’ve launched 7. I mean, come one, what

can I do?

Dave: Well you can join the Cloud right. So right

Grant if you join the Cloud revolution …

Ed: The Cloud or the Crowd?

Dave: The crowd is going to the Cloud, so if you

join the Cloud revolution, you’ll never be out of date

again. Imagine, you can pay a small amount each

month and never be out of date. There’s a train leaving

Adobe every month and on that train are updates that

will just start to download. There will be movies to tell

you what those updates are and new camera support,

new plug in support, maybe transitions, maybe major

upgrades. As a Cloud member, you are never out of

date … and it’s a lot less expensive than just buying the

programme outright. Now if you want to pay us a lot of

money upfront, I’m sure there’s a way we can work that

out.

Ed: Is this a good thing for you Stuart, as a reseller in

New Zealand?

Stuart: Yes absolutely, we’ve got more and more

people taking on the Cloud option because it gives them

flexibility in a broader range of applications that they

can use. You don’t have to be an expert in all of them

– certainly we video guys have a very strong focus on

the video world, but using InDesign and Illustrator and

some of the other apps that we may not necessarily

use, to be able to have them at your disposal and to be

able to use them as you need to, it’s increasinglybecome an option that more and more people are

embracing.

Ed: But how does this allow you to keep in contact

with your customers?

Stuart: Oh we’re in constant contact with our

customers, because we give them advice around their

solutions, production workflows, the best methods of

working between the applications – all that sort of stuff.

There’s a lot of work that we do as a reseller and of

course we’re involved in doing their renewals for their

subscription to the Creative Cloud as well. So there’s

lots of touch points that we have with our customers.

Ed: So a customer can still do this through you rather

than go on the Adobe website?

Stuart: Absolutely. We’re a member of the VIP

programme and can roll out the Creative Cloud for all of

our customers.

Dave: One of the things Grant, you bring up a

very good point with Stuart. We actually have a new

concept called Cloud Teams. These guys are going to

be all about selling teams. So if you go into a

corporation, they may not want their individual users

downloading these updates. That can be fully controlled

by them back in IT to decide how these updates could

apply or not apply; as a customer might bring in new

employees, or employees leave, they can start to take

those users down or add them. Complete control.

In our reseller network, our systems integrators are a

valued part of that to actually give that to the customer

and make it easy.

So there’s all sorts of different options. A lot of people

get confused by the individual option, like maybe I’m a

student and I’m paying US$19, kind of an individual

licence for everything, or US$29 or US$49 in a different

user. But that’s kind of a one off; that’s like I’m just by

myself doing my thing, but when you start moving into

work groups and things, it’s a whole different deal and

that’s where we need the “smarts”, if you will, of a

reseller. There’s all sorts of programmes for them and I

think customers are going to count on your knowledge.

These guys are the trusted advisers, they’re working

hand in hand with Adobe. Adobe is big on partners.

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Go to www.finnzed.co.nz and follow the link to NZVN for more news.

The top pic shows six GoPros mounted in a 3D printedholder. The images can be stitched together to providea spherical point of view.

The lower picture is not an IUD for a blue whale, but aTV transmitter - just don’t ask me for any tech details.

David from Adobe.

Ed: You could make it a bit easier to use?

Dave: Oh I love Encore – I dunno, some usersmight say that there’s lots of training videos but youknow it uses Photoshop and things.

You bring up a valuable point Grant, if it’s not easy touse then you’ve maybe suffered through how to use it,because it is a scripting type programme.

We’re not changing that on you either, so the tool’sgoing to stay the same. So long as you have access toit, and there’s compatibility to the existing versions, Ithink we’ve done our homework.

Ed: Okay, now let’s look at what is new in CS7 interms of Premiere especially?

Dave: Right, so we should do a retake, it’s notcalled CS7.

Ed: Aaaah okay.

Dave: We just call it the new version. Just so youguys know there’s a new marketing campaign which iscoming out – the next version …

Ed: So the next version of Premiere?

Dave: Okay so we’ve been working onlots of things Grant. First of all we’ve hadpeople who have been very frustrated ( andI don’t blame them ) with our relinking.Relinking has never been a pretty thing inPremiere Pro – I think you guys wouldagree? After Effects has actually done afairly decent job. I’m going to come in hereand unlink these files. This is really cool …I’m going to make these offline. So that’stypically what you would see. Now all youhave to do in the new model, I could clickon a folder or an individual file; I’ll click onthe folder where all the files were and saylink that media. As you’ll see here, you geta whole new dialogue box, linked by a filename – you can turn it on or off becauseyou might have changed the file name,extensions, tape, start, align, relink othersautomatically. My favourite is to use themedia browser to link and locate those files.So I’m going to hit that; that brings up themedia browser, I got display exact namesand look I can Hover Scrub over that; if the

name doesn’t match I can make sure that’s the clip Iwant. Once I click “okay” it instantly brings everythingback online. So it’s a very intelligent link programme. Ithink a lot of people will really dig that thing.

The new timeline … if you look at some of this timelinethat’s here, you’ll see that it’s got audio waveform, sonow you’ve never seen that before. That’s because Ihave this ability now to hit my scroll wheel here tomake these go up or down. I can also right mouse clickand go to “customise” and I can decide what buttons,where these menu meters live or audio meters live, andhave much more control.

Once I design this the way that I want it, I can come up

here and I can decide to save that as a preset. So that

I think is going to be really, really powerful.

Let’s say that I’m using a clip a couple of times in the

video and I want to know where am I duplicatingframes … am I seeing the same frames?

Actually an end user came up with the idea. We can

just come over here and say “show me the duplicate

frame markers.”

Those frames right there and right there are the sameframes, so if I come over here and I start to pull someof this out, you’ll notice now I have more of the sameframes repeated and that will go all throughout the

Adobe is really the first one to go to the Cloud in this

way. You know we’ll see people like Microsoft going

into the Cloud, but some people have told me they’re

not exactly excited about the next font that comes out

right.

So maybe subscription works for some models and

some people looking at this, but when I show them

what can happen with new plug in support … there’s a

new camera coming out all the time. We just saw some

new ones, that awesome little PC, Personal Cinema

from Blackmagic – I’m a big fan of looking at that. I

have 15 of those lenses by the way.

Ed: So in other words we don’t have to wait for the

next release to get the codec support for a new

camera?

Dave: Now that’s a great example. A lot of

people don’t realise this and maybe your readers would

like to know – there are government restrictions thatwe cannot upgrade the product unless we can reach like

80% of the market with that notification that this has

been updated. So there’s all sorts of restrictions and

trade restrictions that now prevent us from doing that,

because we have, as I said, a train that leaves every

month with features on it; and a lot of people want to

know how often do I have to touch the Cloud to verify

my licence? Well let me tell you, I think you’ll be

touching the Cloud a lot just checking on updates.

Ed: Hang on, what if you don’t like the updates that

you come up with?

Dave: Well then you don’t have to upgrade them.

You’ll have your choice of whether or not you want to

upgrade or not.

Ed: But can you go back?

Dave: You can go back, absolutely. You can

actually go back a version, so wouldn’t it be great if you

started with us in CS6 and you want to go back from

the current version and because of a compatibility issue

you’ll have that access. That’s very powerful and I

don’t think there’s anybody else doing this. Also with

products like Encore, a lot of people are asking about

Encore … you know you’ll have full access to Encore

CS6. Now we feel that Encore is a very mature robust

DVD and Blu-ray authoring system, right – not a whole

lot more I think we can do for that now …

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project, they’ll start to changecolours.

Ed: And this is a little purple lineon the lower part of the clip?

Dave: Yes – a red line,green, it will start to cycle throughabout 10 or so different colours.That’s really cool. We’ve had a lotof people who want to know “I’vecome in and I’ve taken a razorblade to a clip and I’m movingsome clips around and I want toknow what clips are actually stilljoined together, because theseclips are still joined. I made a cut,I didn’t mean to make a cut, it’s ahalf hour later I can’t undo.” I cango into the wrench up here andshow through edit. Now you seethese little bowties down here?That tells me that’s the same clip.I can right mouse click, jointhrough edit and it heals thoseback together, which is pretty cool.So there’s like 200 little things likethat in the new version, which ispretty neat. So let me show you some of the real niceones that I think will make a difference to morecomplex projects. If I bring up a timeline, you guysknow that green means “nested” typically in this, sowhat if I don’t want the nest, I want all the individualclips that come from that sequence. If I happen to graba sequence and bring it over ... look at my audio as Ibrought this nested sequence in. It’s starting tooverwrite in some places. I don’t want it to do that, socheck this out. I can now drag a sequence, replace asequence up here in the source monitor and I can draginto that if it’s one clip. So right now, there’s a buttonhere that says “bring that in as a nest,” because I’mgoing to show you two ways to do this. I’m just goingto take the video only and drag it here, because I don’tneed the audio, or I can just take the audio. So whatabout if I want to bring all the clips in – look at this, Iflick this button here, it’s going to break that apart intoseparate clips for me and allow me to take maybe justthe video from that now it’s all the individual clips fromthe timeline. A lot of people have been asking for that.Another one is – look at that, you see feather now. Ican see that that’s feathered out; you see the littlepurple badge right here?

Ed: Yes, that’s an effect that you add to the clip.

Dave: That’s an effect and there’s a new FX badgethat’s an effects badge. What effect has been applied?I don’t know. What happens if I put an effect likemaybe a three-way colour corrector and I drag this onhere … how will I know what effect is on there? Now allyou have to do while you’re deep in your timeline isright mouse click – oh there’s a crop with a feather,there’s a three-way colour corrector … oh look at that, Ican pick three presets and be able to maybe changethat. Another thing I can do that’s brand new is I cancopy that and look at this …

Ed: Oh, finally.

Dave: Paste Attributes – we’ve brought this back.

Ed: Paste Attributes …

Dave: Remember from Premiere, not Premiere Proversion 5, 6 and 6.5 from like eight years ago. Butwe’ve added the ability to say I just want crop and nothree-way …

Ed: I have to ask, why would you take it out?

Dave: It just kept falling off the list, becausethere was 9,000 things we had to do with Premiere Proto get it right. We can’t do it all, you would have beenwaiting so much … you guys expect a new versionalmost every year.

Ed: But we expect things that we’ve used and lovedto stay there?

Dave: I do agree, and sometimes it’s hard, they

fall off the list. Sometimes we try to prioritise, but

you’re absolutely right, we should have had that one a

long, long time ago, I don’t argue with that at all. Over

here I wanted to show you guys that edged feather …

for audio. We now have a radar sweep which will give

you those government required audio levels and you

can sort of sweep that, so now it’s built into both

Premiere and Audition. Loudness, like loudness meter,

but we call it the radar. So that’s in there. We also

have looks I think are really important. There’s a lot of

people who want to start seeing our new integration

with SpeedGrade which also has a lot of changes in it.

it’s got a lot of Premiere looks to it now – Media

Browser and other things.

But what if I want to be able to apply an effect for like a

LUT or a look, it could be from another colouring

grading programme, maybe Photoshop. I can come

over here and I can type the word “LUT” or “look”,

you’ll notice there’s a brand new lumatory effect. I can

drag these in here and it’s going to ask me to select a

look or a LUT which is pretty cool.

I’m going to undo that, and what if I don’t know how to

create those, but I want the advantage of that engine.

Check this out, right over here you’ve got a whole

library of LUTs based on some very well known Bleach

Bypass; I can just sort of drag these in and have those

effects. Users can just start to use that and I think this

is going to be huge.

Ed: I guess that’s an easy thing to sell this on, every

month you can have new templates, new effects added

to the package that’s there?

Dave: I think this is a clear example of where

we’re trying to go with a product, to make it easier for

people to use. NZVN

Dynamic Drive Pool for DVTFor DVT, we are at Dynamic Drive Pool (DDP) an

Ethernet based SAN.

Ed: Stuart, we’ve never been here before, well I

haven’t – what does this do for you?

Stuart: DDP is a cost effective high performance

Storage Area Network that allows for easy connectivity

via either gigabit Ethernet or 10 gig Ethernet to

workstations. The really key advantage is that all of the

workstations are seeing the same hard drive at the

same time.

On top of that, DDP is a very simple and flexible way of

doing a SAN because it’s just using ordinary Ethernet

connectivity – either gigE or 10 gigE. You can

effectively aggregate multiple connections if you want

higher performance and there’s no licencing with each

client that you add onto the system as well. So it’s very

easy to expand your capability and either raise capacity

or with the number of clients that you want to have

connected to the system.

Ed: So from what I understand, the hardware part of

it everybody does, a lot of people do the hardware, it’s

just a whole lot of drives packed in a bay and then a lot

of wires connecting that to your editing platform or your

network, but DDP’s secret is in the technology and the

ease of adjusting or constructing that technology?

Stuart: So a lot of other SAN systems that are

available are very complex. You have to have metadata

controllers which are separate servers that have to

manage the multiple clients to make sure that they’re

not writing over each other’s files and you know these

systems that are quite complex in terms of the physical

connectivity – you have to have one computer network

to manage the metadata controllers, another network to

manage fibre channel connected storage and fibre

channel switchers and it can get very complex, but also

very expensive.

The DDP system is simply a chassis full of discs that you

plug the power to and then you can take an individual

connection out of the back of it to each of your client

machines. So very, very simple topology to set up and

of course the administration side of the system is

extremely simple and easy to use as well.

We are joined by Elvin Jasarevic from Dynamic Drive

Pool.

Ed: Elvin, isthere anythingmore you can addto that – I meanhe’s pretty cluedup isn’t he?

Elvin: Yes,Stuart has quite alot of experiencewith a SAN stor-age system, socoming to oursystem is a mucheasier path as heexplained. Witha typical SANsystem, you havetwo networks …one is Ethernet,one is fibrechannel.

With our IP SAN system, there’s only one network for

the performance in let’s say broadcast or

postproduction. With the low res, we can use only one

gigabit Ethernet but, for example, some facility working

with a high definition uncompressed 10 bit would use a

10 gigabit Ethernet or fibre channel.

Thanks to our technology which we called MCS (Multiple

Connections per Session), we can bond two Ethernet

cables and we can get an access speed of 200 megabits

per second, which means you don’t have to use those

expensive cards and expensive fibre optic cables. It’s

basically a one stop shop. You want to connect like a

low res, high res, even like a 2K or even 4K, you can

plug into our system and as Stuart mentioned earlier

PC, Mac, Linux, they all can share the same volume at

the same time with our read and write access.

Ed: Is it easy to expand. Is it scalable?

Elvin: Yes it’s fully scalable. On the back of every

system we have a Fast connector so we can add like a

JBOD which means it’s just a bunch of discs without any

server, which is obviously much easier and simpler and

cheaper, most economical. You just have to plug it in

with a Fast cable and new volumes will pop up and it

takes like 2-3 minutes to be offline in order to have a

new storage.

Ed: So if a customer has somebody else’s system,can they add yours to their network and everybody willplay nicely together?

Elvin: Yes of course. For example, there are lotsof customers who have an Xsan or a Bright system orsomething like that. You could plug in our DDP andhave a simultaneous access to the current Xsan storageand DDP so you don’t have to throw away, if I can say,all Xsan system and so on; you can simply use DDP.For example, in the postproduction or broadcast weknow that most of the users use Avid Media Composeror Symphony, so what you could do if you have, let’ssay, Isis 5000 or Isis 7000 which are very goodsystems, but you know we consider that we are a littlebit better and more cost effective … you could save theproject on for example Isis system, but keep yourmedia on DDP so two of them they can live together.So we are in the replacement market for those kinds ofstorage as well as beginning new customers every day.

Stuart: One of the other major features of the DDP

system is that it will do project sharing and bin locking

Elvin from DDP.

for Media Composer and the way in which it does that is

completely seamless to the user, there’s no third party

application or other application you have to go in to set

that up.

You just literally open Media Composer on one of theclient machines, create a new project, create the binsand import your footage. Somebody on another clientmachine can then open the same project at the sametime, they can open the same bins, access the samemedia, and it does bin locking as well so that each usercan have their own bins that they’ve got read and writeaccess to it and it will lock the bins that you’ve createdon one machine on the other machine, so that theycan’t mess with your material, but they can still shareyour media and files.

Tape LoversCorner

Between scheduled stand

meetings, I paused with

Patrick Johnston from

AheadTeK.

Ed: Patrick, I was very

intrigued by your sign that

says “Not quite tapeless –

think AheadTeK.” I guess

there’s a lot of tape out

there and you’re providing a

solution for people who have

machines that have worn

heads and the manufacturers

have long since stopped

supplying parts?

Patrick: Well that’s cor-

rect Grant. Our company

started in 1972, named CMC back then, with our

original product which was rebuilding Ampex quad

heads for the AVR series machines. Since that time

we’ve gone through building just about every broadcast

format heads required. Right now, we’re doing a lot of

U-matic, a lot of one inch still; actually we anticipate

the U-matic and one inch will increase over the next few

years and there’s even a resurgence in BetacamSP. In

the last five years, we’ve reverse engineered whatever

the demand is. We’re a head manufacturing company,

we make heads for the disc drive industry but we also

make a recording head that is used as a tool in the

manufacturing process of data storage tape, like LTO.

Ed: So, if you’ve got an old LTO machine and you’ve

got those old LTO tapes that you didn’t get around to

migrating, there’s a chance that they could get a new

head and still play them?

Patrick: No actually we don’t make the read / write

head; these data storage formats use what’s called the

Amplitude Based Server System. Their tape speed is

rather fast and so positioning and speed control is

essential. We make a head that actually writes the

server pattern onto the tape. On LTO for example,

there’s five server bands going from one edge of the

tape to the other, the data recorded in between these

server bands. So the recording head that we make

again writes that servo pattern onto the tape when they

have the tape in what they call a “pancake” before

they’ve loaded it onto cassette. So now our customers

are all the tape manufacturers like Fujifilm, Maxell, TDK,

Sony, Imation.

Ed: Okay, there’s one area here that caught my eye

as one of the products that you potentially help people

with, and that’s D1?

Patrick: Yes that’s right Grant. We’ve got about

130 employees and we have head engineers who are

involved in video, audio, all sorts of different products,

and when there’s a demand for something, then we can

apply our resources to it. To be honest, there really

isn’t demand for D1 right now; I would say D2 is

something we get a little bit more enquiries on, but we

can definitely look at D1.

Ed: There might be a job for you in the years to

come?

Patrick: We also import and export, resell other

components that are in video tape recorders – key

components like circuit boards and motors and

Pentrollers and even front panels – anything that might

break or wear out, we supply. We have over 4,000

Sony parts in stock and maybe close to 2,000 Panasonic

parts.

Ed: It could be the place to go. www.aheadtek.comNZVN

Patrick points out that they can repair D1/D2 heads.

So it works exactly the same as an Avid Isis 5000 or

Isis 7000 system.

Ed: But at a more affordable price?

Stuart: At a more affordable price yes – no client

connection fees, you can set up as many machines on it

as you want, so it’s great.

Elvin: Also there’s another benefit. If you have

an Isis client, Isis storage, and if you mix for example

PC and Mac, the system will slow down. We are always

completely independent, so you can mix and match

Mac, Windows OS, XP, Linux and there’s no slow down

in the system.

So unlimited client licences, unlimited no decision on

operating system, no slowing down of the system. NZVN

HP and Matrox for DVTStuart and I visited the HP booth and gotnew T-shirts.

Ed: Stuart, PCs are not dead?

Stuart: PCs are not dead, definitelynot …

Ed: I know you’re a Mac man, but …?

Stuart: We’ve been selling HPworkstations for a considerable period oftime now and one of the latestincarnations is the HP Z1 which is an allin one solution, very similar to an iMac.The computer is built into the displaydevice, it opens up very easily for addingextra componentry. And then of courseour staples which are really the Z420 andZ820 now, which are the performanceworkstation part of the market. So ifyou’re building a compositing, grading,editing system, visual effects system, 3Danimation system, and you want apremium quality product where you canreally push the bounds on the performance, then thesesystems are for you.

Obviously the Z420 offers you a cost effective singlexeon processor workstation which we can tune up andget really amazing performance out of. But of course, ifyou want the ultimate machine, today you can’t beatthe Z820 where you can get 16 cores of processingpower, huge memory footprints; we can even put thingsin there like Fusion IO cards that give you extremelyhigh performance, video IO and a range of graphics andGPUs to really fuel the performance of the machine. Infact including for Adobe for example, we can do whatthey call the Maximus option, which is where we marryone of the Quadro 6000 cards to a Tesla card which islike a further GPU performance card and you can reallyget the ultimate performance out of these machines.

Ed: So all the talk of HP selling up the business about

a year ago seems to have come to nothing – they’re

continuing to support the PC market?

Stuart: The CEO who made that announcement is

no longer there!

Ed: It’s easy to crash and burn in the fast lane,

Stuart. Remember that.

Chris from DVT.

Stuart from DVT.

At the Matrox booth we are with Chris Barr.

Ed: Chris you’ve been let loose to tell us the latest

from Matrox?

Chris: Yes Matrox have got two major products

that they’ve announced. One is the 4K Mojito which is a

…

Ed: I thought a Mojito was a drink?

Chris: Well definitely a drink too, but Matrox have

also called their product Mojito. You’re able to do 4K

editing from this particular product. It’s a four 3G port

video I/O card.

On top of that, they’ve also released a new streaming

product called the Monarch HD. Now this is a portable

solution and very turnkey. It’s just a matter of plugging

your source in via HDMI and then selecting your bitrate

and then also putting in your streaming server URL.

It’s a very small compact solution and there’s plenty of

opportunities in the New Zealand market to put that in.

Ed: Sort of a TV streaming station in a box?

Chris: Great for the guys that are doing small

corporate events, but you could go as far as broadcast

if you wanted to. There are obviously other solutions

for the higher end, but if you’re looking for a cost

effective solution for streaming, then the Matrox

Monarch HD is the solution.

Ed: Easy to programme?

Chris: Easy to use … yes, it’s got a very simpleinterface – I can quickly show you. So with the actualuser interface you have a chance to choose yourresolution, whether you’re going to be using SD or HDand as you can see here, you can also enter in your IPaddresses to where you want to stream to. That’s sortof pretty much it, so basically connect your camera up,choose your resolution, and you can also do remoterecording as well. So along with streaming you can doan ISO record and they’ve got a very easy to useinterface on screen, but you can also use the buttons onthe front of the unit to stream, just do an ISO record ordo both at the same time.

Ed: Does it tell you whether the bandwidth of theTelco is capable of taking what you’re trying to send toit?

Chris: You just use an IP bandwidth tester, they’reonline, and so you can test what your bandwidth is foryour location. I’ve got it on my iPhone – “there’s anapp for that”. NZVN

NZVN

Matthews for PLSNow one of the highlights of any NAB or IBC is to visitMatthews – stands, cranes, clamps, grip equipment –everything you need but it’s not that that brings mehere, it’s Linda Swope.

Ed: Hello Linda.

Linda: Welcome Grant, so good to see you asalways. You want to take a walk around and I can saya couple of words about some of our new stuff?

Ed: Love to.

Linda: Alright, let’s go over here to the Intel-A-JibLite. We introduced the jib last year and what we’veadded this year is a new under sling mount. What thisdoes is it allows you to mount the camera underneaththe jib so you get a 360 shot without the jib in the way.You could still mount it on the top, but this was highlysought after. So it’s the new Under Sling Mount for theIntel-A-Jib Lite.

Ed: Wow. And the good thing is that you can mounta remote head on it of course?

Linda: Yes you can definitely mount a remotehead on it.

Ed: But it’s not as easy as it looks?

Linda: No, to be a jib operator is not an easything, because you’re controlling the jib and you’recontrolling the camera and you’re controlling the focus.

Ed: Yes, I’ve decided I’m not a jib controller.

Linda: Neither am I.

Ed: But Linda there’s a lot of jibs at this show aren’tthere. Every man and his dog’s got a jib, so why areyour ones so good?

Linda: Ours are so good because they’re extrudedout of this x-box section. It’s so strong that, whenyou’re doing your camera moves, when you stop, theinertia of the camera does not keep going, because thisis so stable. There are some – there’s actually a coupleout there that kind of look like this with the holes in thebeam. Not the same, not the same. There’s some thatare better, but they’re much more expensive. They doa lot more fancy things.

Ed: That’s it, it’s all about that coming to a stop and Iknow the weak part can be either the jib or the tripod?

Linda: Exactly.

Ed: So you’ve really got to match the two?

Linda: Yes and it’s not for the lightweight version,it’s only the 100mm bowl tripod.

Ed: There’s a nice little trolley here?

Linda: The Matthews Slider is what it’s called.

Ed: But I thought that big one was a slider?

Linda: Totally different. We have the DC Slider;this is a whole different animal. This is a very basicslider. One carriage will hold 175 pounds. It comes inthree different stick sizes – 29, 35 and 45 inch, but wecan make custom sizes in increments of 5 inches, up to12 feet. You could put more than one carriage on oneslider for A and B camera shots.

Ed: So you can actually fit two cameras on this for Aand B shots?

Linda: Yes, you can fit two carriages on one sliderto get A and B camera shots. You can mount it on anyMitchell tripod – it’s got a Mitchell plate, but the coolthing about it is, you can use a lot of different Matthewsaccessories to mount it on a baby stand or on turtlebases on the ground, or runway stands on the ground.

Linda with her preferred mode of transport.

The under sling mount on the Intel-A-Jib.

Ed: So this is really a heavy duty item,

it’s not for your average wedding

videographer?

Linda: No and this is all it does, it

slides back and forth. This one does the

vertical …

Ed: The DC Slider, that does every-

thing?

Linda: The DC Slider does every-

thing.

Ed: And in fact it’s now doing more?

Linda: The DC Slider will not hold

as much weight as this. Our heavy duty

DC Slider will hold about a 70 pound

camera package. This is 175 per

carriage, so you can get two carriages on

this. It’s pretty awesome.

Ed: But you’ve also improved the DC

Slider?

Linda: Oh yes – the DC Slider. Wehave the standard version and now wehave the heavy duty version, so it justdepends ... if you’re doing DSLRmovements, you’re going to go with the lightweightbecause you don’t need the heavier one. If you’regoing to fully load it, then you’ve got to go with the HDversion.

Ed: And it’s not only that, now you’ve got some

controllability?

Linda: Yes, with the HD Slider you can do

horizontal moves, you can do vertical moves, you can

do jib moves, you can take it off of the sticks and do a

table top move. There are four different options with

both the heavy duty slider and the regular DC slider.

Ed: But it’s now motion controlled as well?

Linda: Motion control is an option for both of

them, yes.

Ed: I guess that’s only motion control along the

slider, it’s not for the tilt?

Linda: No, in every configuration, like the one

behind you.

Ed: Now I guess, where the big difference comes in

with the jib and a slider, is that, with the jib, you’re at a

fixed distance, you can rotate and you can tilt, but you

can’t get that slide.

With the slider, you can move backwards and forwards

but you keep it locked off on a particular angle and you

don’t rotate it. I guess that’s the big difference.

So your controllability is the movement along the slider

and you can speed that up, slow it down and it’s all

programmable?

Linda: Exactly.

Ed: So you can repeat a move again and again and

it’s all controlled from a laptop?

Linda: Uh-huh.

Ed: So on the rail on the slider …?

Linda: Yes we have the Matthews Makalu head …

Ed: That sounds very Hawaiian?

Linda: The inventor named it after a mountain in

Indonesia I think. It’s very, very new, it’s a remote

head that’s run strictly on your iPad or your iPhone,

which is very cool.

There’s not another one out there that runs on those

instruments.

Ed: Wow.

Linda: It’s a wireless system …

Ed: Okay, so that gives you tilt … right, so rather thanjust having a fixed position for your camera on theslider, you can now remotely control both themovements along the slider, but also the pan and tilt onthe camera?

Linda: Yes and it’s all programmable. Thesoftware comes with the package.

We’re not quite sure about the price of the package yet,because it is that new; we’re doing 10 test units for aselect test market to people who understand thetechnology and are able to work with it to get feedback… maybe you should do this, maybe you should do thatimprovement and kind of dial it in that way.

That head will hold about 12 pounds, so it’s not a bigheavy camera, but it’s pretty cool software.

Ed: Ideal for the Canon 500s that you’ve got onthere?

Linda: Yes, and as we go forward, there’ll be moreon this. Right now it’s in its infancy, but we’re prettyexcited about it.

Ed: So Linda over the years, I’ve seen Matthewschange from just a collection of poles, very industrialdesign poles, to now offering really high techequipment?

Linda: You know, we still do our bread and buttergrip equipment. I always will do grip equipment.

But we’ve just kind of moved into newer technology andgetting a little closer to the camera with some of ourstuff.

Believe me, we’re not going to go crazy and be the nextI don’t know who – but just to diversify our line a littlebit, get into different markets.

We keep changing and adding and that’s how we keepgrowing.

Ed: Getting cleverer?

Linda: Yes. NZVN

The HD Slider in action.

Also on the Matthews stand we have Alex Amyot.

Ed: Alex, you’ve just won an award?

Alex: Well it’s me for Matthews. So it’s mydesign, a swivelling camera platform and positioningplatform.

Ed: And you called it the Lazy Suzy?

Alex: Yes, after the Lazy Susan table accessory.

This product has been out for about a year now and it’s

the first time it’s actually shown at a show … and we

won an award for best design.

Ed: Run me through why someone would need

something like this?

Alex: Well this actually enables youto work in really confined areas, like inside acar for example. It’s very difficult toprecisely position the camera on a dolly.With this device, instead of moving yourdolly tracks and your dolly and yourcamera, this enables you to just move thecamera but keep the support in the samespot.

Ed: Okay, so you can set up a dolly trackand then you look through the viewfinderand you say it’s not quite where I want it,and rather than reposition everything …?

Alex: Three inches over and you do itin seconds instead of like in 15 minutes.

Ed: And this is really heavy duty?

Alex: Yes it will support a camerapackage up to 75 pounds and it is virtuallymaintenance free, because it’s made out ofaluminium, stainless steel and plastic. Nolubrication whatsoever.

Ed: Is this made within the Matthewsfactory?

Alex: It’s actually built in Canada forMatthews. NZVNAlex and Linda.

Cineo Lightsfor PLS

We are now at Cineo for PLS

and we have Nick Shapley.

Ed: Nick, you’ve met

Chris, you’re impressed and

now you’re supplying him

with product, or have you

been doing that for a while?

Nick: We have been

supplying PLS for a while

but under different brand

names. Cineo is a new

company, it’s been going for

about two months and

originally True Colour HS

was part of PRG; it’s now

been brought away from

PRG, so there are two

products in the range.

There’s the True Colour HS

line and then there’s the LS

product, which is the baby

version which is being

launched here for the first

time. The HS is about a 400 Watt draw, it has the

output of 2 kiloWatt of tungsten light and you simply

change the phosphor panels in the front to give you the

different colour temperature. So you can go anywhere

from 27, 32, 43, 56 and 65.

Ed: Is this a major cost saving?

Nick: It’s a major cost saving but the wonderfulthing about it is that you’ve got incredibly accuratecolour temperature.

The actual phosphors are being excited by ultra-blueLEDs that are being driven at 460 nanometres andyou’re getting up to 98 CRI on the output of theproducts.

Ed: So even though, at this show, there are LEDlights for Africa, you’ve pretty well put yourself in theRolls Royce end of the market?

Nick: Oh totally, yes. There’s no colour shift

when you dim down, that’s one of the great things

about the product as well. You’ve got a 160 degree

beam angle going from top to bottom and a 160 beam

angle going from left to right. So this one’s running at

about 40% power at the moment. The units are

DMXable and you can daisy chain the power supplies

together, so if you want to run up to eight power

supplies from one local socket in someone’s office or

something like that, you can do that without any

problems at all.

And now there’s the baby version which is the LS. This

one’s drawing about 150 Watts and has the output of

approximately a 1 kiloWatt tungsten unit.

Ed: So it’s the true colour that you get out of the

Cineo product which really differentiates it from the

competition?

Nick: Completely, yes. The whole remote

phosphor idea is very new technology and the joy

of it is that the LEDs are exciting the phosphor,

but they are about an inch and a half away from

the actual LEDs themselves, so the great thing is

that these panels at the front here don’t get hot,

and so you have no change in colour temperature

over the life of the product. LEDs, over many

years, will begin to reduce in terms of output, but

the colour temperature will remain static forever –

that’s one of the great benefits of the product.

The other option, by the way, on this product is

there’s also a chroma and digital green panel … so

for people who are lighting green screens, there’s

a green panel as well which you can put in the

front, which then gives you a very, very bright

green light source for those chroma and digital

green moments.

Ed: And these are standard square panels?

Nick: They’re standard square panels, yes.

NZVN

Nick is very happy with his Cineo lights.

Some of the remote phosphor range.

IDX for PanavisionFor Panavision, we are at the IDX standand we have Cathy Fercano.

Ed: Cathy, WEVI is obviously one ofthe big products for IDX and has beenfor a number of years. It’s been verypopular and you continue to improve it.What have you got for us at this NAB?

Cathy: Well we have two differentversions. We have an upgrade to theCW5 and we now have a really cool littlesystem called the CW1. I’ll show you theCW7 first – CW7, not 5. The CW7 profilelooks like the CW5, however the receiveron the CW7 now also has a channelselector, which means that you can doyour own multitask groupings usingmaybe four transmitters and howevermany receivers to each transmitter.Instead of having to send it in for afirmware update that you used to haveto do to make this grouping work, youcan now do it yourself by the turn of adial.

This system also operates on what’s called DynamicFrequency Selection. IDX has the FCC approval to usethis Dynamic Frequency Selection and what that is, isthat this system runs on the 5.2-5.7 Gigahertzfrequency range. Within that frequency range, thereare five channels that are dynamic frequency. They are

much less used channels, so they are less congested.As far as I am aware, there are no other videotransmission systems that have FCC approval to run onthese channels, so it makes for a really nice connection.The transmission distance of the CW7 is about 340 feet.So that’s the main upgrades to this, plus a couple ofmounting options on the bottom.

Cathy from IDX.

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Ed: Are you still saying these are only for monitoring

purposes, or are you now admitting that in fact you can

use this for recording quality footage?

Cathy: Well you can, it has worked its way into

many different genres of the industry. You know,

initially made for reference monitoring, it’s just kind of

grown from there, yes.

Ed: And now for the smaller person?

Cathy: Yes, so we have the CW1. It’s an HDMI

type system; the transmitter is just a little larger than a

USB stick; the receiver is smaller than a deck of cards –

very, very light, I mean just ounces is the weight of this

system. Again, it’s an HDMI type, you can use a

converter to go HD-SDI or SD-SDI; zero compression,

zero latency even if you convert it; the distance, 330

feet. This is an unbelievable little system. It also

operates on the Dynamic Frequency Selection, so you’re

not going to have all this interference with the channels

that it picks.

Another great thing is there are no buttons to push.

Once you provide power, this system is on. So it’s even

more user-friendly than the CW7 or the 5 were, and

those were pretty darn easy. Different types of power

options for this … if you happen to have a camera that

has USB that provides power, as many of the Sony’s do,

then it’s great, you’re just going to connect directly into

the camera and pull the power from there.

If not, there are a couple of other options. You can

either use a backup cell phone battery or we make

adapters. This adapter allows you to mount the

transmitter, then there’s an angled adapter that you’d

make the connections to. This comes with a shoe

mount adapter. Right now, we’re using the batteries

that we make for JVC which are going to run the

transmitter for about 9-10 hours. Same thing for the

receiver. The receiver does come with an AC adapter,

so if it’s going to go into a switcher or a monitor that’s

not going to be mobile, then you could just use the AC

adapter that it comes with. You can use up to four of

these systems within the same area.

Ed: I guess each one comes with its own frequency?

Cathy: No, it has five frequencies that it’s going topick from with the Dynamic Selection. Each one willlock in. If you had an absolute perfect environment,you could use five systems, but we say it’s always niceto leave one channel open.

Ed: So if you’ve got such a powerful package in such

a small amount, why would you go for the 7?

Cathy: Well because the 7 gives you other options.

You can use one transmitter to multiple receivers or

multiple transmitters with multiple receivers all within

the same environment. It really depends what you’re

doing. We see the multicast grouping like with the 7,

those are more for like films, large scale productions …

Ed: Is there any difference in the picture quality?

Cathy: No. The CW1 is unbelievable.

Ed: So whatever resolution you put inat the HDMI connection, you get out atthe other end?

Cathy: Exactly. What you put in isexactly what comes out. And the basicsystem itself, transmitter, receiver, ACadapter and some cables is going to runyou just under US$1200. You cannotbeat it; people are raving about it. A twoyear warranty, there’s no repairs; ifthere’s a manufacturer’s defect for anyreason, you just contact us, send backboth pieces and we send you a brandnew unit.

Ed: You can’t get better than that?

Cathy: No you can’t, you reallycan’t. We have lots of differentaccessories – we have a travel case thatwill hold the entire kit; you can geteverything, the power, the adapters, thetravel case, the wireless receiver andtransmitter for US$2200.

The WEVI CW7 plus IDX battery.

The WEVI CW1 combo.

Ed: It sounds like a bargain?

Cathy: It is.

Ed: And not to be left behind in the

IDX range, batteries which we see on the

backs of many broadcast cameras in

crowd shots, obviously popular

worldwide … you’ve got a new DUO

battery?

Cathy: Yes sir, we have two new

Endura DUOs. We have a DUO-150

which is a 146 Watt hour battery. We’ve

integrated two D-Taps and a USB port,

which makes it really handy for powering

other equipment, charging your iPad,

your cell phone, whatever may come.

We have also now put an angle to our

LED readout, so instead of having to go

to the side of the camera to see it, you

can see it from the front of the camera

which makes it a bit more convenient.

The DUO-95 is a 91 Watt battery; again

two D-Taps, a USB port, both batteries

are safe for carry on, so there’s no issues

there and we think these are going to be a really big hit

with the industry.Ed: And a good addition to the DUO range?

Cathy: Yes, absolutely. NZVN

Sachtler for PanavisionFor Sachtler, we’ve got Greg Hamlin to tell us

about the Sachtler Ace L.

Ed: This looks like a very elegant little tripod?

Greg: Absolutely. It’s our new Ace L, the

payload is up to 13.2 pounds; designed for ease

of use, lightweight and ergonomic; delivers best

in class performance with a drag system and the

Sachtler engineering delivers balance, accuracy

and control.

Ed: And it’s an advance on an earlier model?

Greg: It is, yes. We’re looking at a price

point of about US$1100 and it kinda steps up

from the Manfrotto and gives us “way to” for the

DSLR folks.

Ed: You’ve got a DSLR on at the moment, but

with that sort of payload, you could actually take

a small video camera?

Greg: You could, it will take up to 13.2

pounds, so even an EX1 or something like that

you could go with.

Ed: Okay, and this comes with a base spreader

and a nice carry bag?

Greg: That is correct, yes, all is included.

Ed: What are the features that make it

different from any competition out there?

Greg: You’ve got the drag here for

accuracy and then the centre fluid control … it’s

Sachtler so you know it’s good, it’s going to last.

Ed: It’s got that name on it hasn’t it? That’s

something that’s probably worth a dollar or two?

Greg: That’s correct, absolutely, and for

field use it’s going to be good.

Ed: And a small thing, but one that looks very nice,

there’s a nice rubber grip on the pan handle?Greg: Yes, for control, for easiness in use of

panning. NZVN

The IDX battery range

Greg from Sachtler.

Tiffen Filtersfor Panavision

For Panavision we are atTiffen Filters with CareyDuffy from London Filter Co.

Ed: Carey, we’re justwatching a demo on thescreen here of a Pro-Mistfilter. Tell the readers whatthey should be seeing?

Carey: This demo justshows in a test environ-ment, the basic principles ofdiffusion filters, which areoptical softness, contrast orcontrast reduction … theoptical softness will showhow much fine detail isremoved; anything from thematerial in the top to skintone and hair. And then wehave a practical lighting shotwhich then shows thehalation that the filter mayintroduce to a light source.Our artist in the film bringsa hard specular light to show how a moving light or adirect light may be affected, as opposed to the softerlight which is constant and fixed position.

Ed: So is this reducing the clarity of a high definitionpicture?

Carey: All diffusion filters reduce to some extentthe clarity. “Clarity” is a global word, yes. There aredifferent portions of clarity we relate to in diffusion –(1) is resolution, (2) is contrast. Contrast can bechanged. We actually design specific contrast filters, orthrough diffusion filters through the scattering of lightinto shadow area; and then halation which is more of anaesthetical clarity within the image where a lightflumes.

Ed: So the purpose of this is obviously not to makethe picture look sharper, but to make it look better?

Carey: Yes, aesthetically better. Which diffusionany DP would want to choose is his aesthetical choiceand we’re increasing our manufacture and design ofdiffusion filters, because cinematographers have hadone of their great tools reduced in their choice toproduce their image.

By that I mean film stock. So today, you pick up adigital camera and if it’s the same digital camera, ormanufactured by the same manufacturer and you pick itup in London, Hong Kong, Sydney or LA, it’s the same.The glass, especially for Panavision, is a big differenceand obviously anamorphics make a difference, but someof that difference in just straight transmission throughglass can be dulled out in post. Diffusion on the otherhand, yes you can add sharpness back into images,integrate it; it’s very difficult to change a halation or aflume on light that’s been spread in post … so diffusershave really – not come into their own, but are reallydefining how cinematographers produce their look inthe camera, a lot more than just saying oh I use a Pro-Mist or I use a black Pro-Mist and I don’t need to knowabout other diffusers. Well you do, because they’re oneof the few tools you’ve got left.

Ed: So if I summarise that, it’s to say if you wereusing film stock, you had a whole variety of film stock

to give different looks. Nowadays you can’t get thatlook so much with a camera, but you can by addingdiffusion filters?

Carey: Yes, in different ways, shapes, forms ormanner. Ektachrome in hard contrasty slow ASAs,bright vibrant colours … well we can do it with filters,but a lot of that gets done in post now. You know thatterminology “fix it in post”? When you fix it in post, youshot it broken – post is more to do with advancing theimage, not redefining the image. You know what youwant the image to be defined before you get there. Andif you do ( which you should do really as part of thejob ) diffusers and obviously filters and NDs andpolarisers you use, because they are physics andcontrolling the eye through the physics … this is justanother way of putting a stamp onto your image andgetting your look across. A lot of the times nowproduction chooses the camera. You may want to shootALEXA, but you’re told to shoot on a RED or a Sony,because they got a better deal on that and even on theglass with the lenses. You know it’s hard for a DP toown every type of lens; it’s easier, although it’sexpensive, to own filters and a lot of them, they giveyou that power.

Ed: So that’s Filter Philosophy 101 – now, newproduct?

Carey: We’ve been working on few. A few yearsago, we didn’t have a black Glimmerglass. We did havea regular Glimmerglass but I thought it wouldn’t workon its own, so I asked them to combine it with a digitalDiffusion/FX, which is an optical softener, so it’s a sortof dirty diffuser and optical softener.

Some people have been looking at in the Statesrecently and really like it and so I said if they really likeit, like we used to have Black Pro-Mist and White Pro-Mist ( the same filter family but different ) let’s do aGlimmerglass diffusion effect, and a lot of DPs havebeen saying it gives them a very nice filmic look on HD.That’s one, so we’ve got a family of filters within thatrange … a Black Glimmerglass Diffusion/FX and aGlimmerglass Diffusion/FX and then we’ve been working

Carey for Tiffen filters.

Ed: And I guess for camera ops who are using yourfilters, that it’s a case of regularly visiting the website tosee the chat and see what’s going on, see what newproducts are coming out and what solutions are beingoffered?

Carey: Yes of course, and they can do that throughTiffen or else by going through London Filter. In factwe’ve got our Vimeo channel on London Filter at<thelondonfiltercompany.com>

Again, we’ve got this thing about 4K. Some people areusing 4K because they’ve got double the screen spaceto reframe the image. Well that’s interesting, becauseit’s a different way of using 4K. Then we’ve got at theshow now, a lot of anamorphics coming out, andanamorphic’s a great glass, it’s a really organic way ofwatching stuff and the filters will work slightlydifferently with anamorphic, the densities and choice,for some DOPs than they will for aspherical. So we’retalking to manufacturers if there are opportunities likewith the ALEXA, where you now can put your filters atthe back instead of in the front; we’re designing tripleand quadruple stacked single filters so that you haveless glass in the front, so less internal reflection, sotaking IRND in a diffuser or IRND diffuser and apolariser. So we’re trying to really home in on whatmore individual customers want, because one look, iePro-Mist doesn’t fit everything. You’ve got to have lotsof different looks.

Ed: That’s it, and that’s how a DOP sells himself, isthe look that he or she creates?

Carey: Exactly. NZVN

with 4K sensors and the resolution with that, because4K … well, it’s quite interesting the way 4K is used. Ifyou use 4K, you’ve got a lot of information and you’vegot a lot of clarity and that clarity isn’t always beautiful.Some of that clarity is amazing and it gives fantasticimages, clean crisp, sharp, vibrant. But there’s “ALister” talent out there who wants bright, crisp, vibrantwhether they turn up in the morning or in the afternoonor the evening or whenever they turn up, so they’ve gotto be looked after. So we’ve been designing a filterwith Steve Poster, the president of the Local 600 herein the US, and president of ICG and it’s a combinationof a couple of our diffusers to give a really glamorousrich expensive look.

Ed: It’s like putting lipstick on a pig?

Carey: Yes … there’s a lovely story that a DP toldme that he used to use a double fog on a lot of hisfootage he shot on film. The production company didn’tuse him once and then they called him back in … theysaid we called you back because you make it look soexpensive – and he just used a double fog. It’s a lovelystory about how a filter can evoke the way that aproduct or something should look and feel; a reallysimple thing to use rather than hours in post. So we’vebeen designing this filter with Steve Poster and we’reshowing it here and a few people have shot tests andreally like it, and again we’ll do a black version, becausewe’ll have to do a dirty version, or a dirtier diffusedversion. That’s because it keeps things sharp upfront,but gives this lovely glow, different to other stuff thatwe’ve produced. And that’s what it is, like you said, nofilm stock, you’ve got sensors now. Lenses withinreason can be dulled out with their colour specs, and soit’s about being able to craft your image, and all of thecrafting of images is now just down to the glass –lenses and the filters. And so we’ve just got to make awider range for more people to be able to play with.

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Sony at NAB2013PART 2 – with Nick Buchner

Ed: And in the smaller camera area?

Nick: We’re showing a new wireless adapter for

our XDCAM camcorders – that covers our PMW-200 and

PMW-150 handheld models as well as shoulder-mount

XDCAM camcorders. The CBK-WA100 is a wireless

adapter that fits the side of the camera and allows a 3G

or 4G modem / dongle from whichever network

provider you choose, to be inserted. This then allows

store and forward capabilities where full resolution

content can be taken from the camera’s memory and

transmitted back to a base through the 3G or 4G phone

network. It’s not designed for live pictures.

Alternatively, it allows a nearby production assistant or

producer to view live proxy vision coming out of the

camera with timecode, so they can make notes,

annotations, record which are the good takes, etc. The

wireless adapter has its own storage via a removable

Micro SD card, which will also store proxy resolution

content that can then be sent via 3G/4G, for situations

where only offline material needs to be sent back to the

base.

Ed: And this camera?

Nick: The latest member of the XDCAM family

that we’ve released at this year’s NAB is the PMW-400.

This is a camcorder that replaces the PMW-350 2/3”

three CMOS camera. It has a lot in common with the

350, with a very similar front end, although it’s been

updated so the sensor block and digital signal

processing are latest technology. Its capabilities are

also similar to the 350, with the significant addition of

50Mbps recording. While the 350 offered just the

XDCAM EX 35Mbps HD codec, the PMW-400 adds

XDCAM HD422 50Mbps capability and a future option to

use the new XAVC codec. This camera has also been

designed with the wireless adapter that we just spoke

about in mind, so there’s a nice neat space and

mounting point on the side of the camera. Just as the

350 has been a very well regarded camera, very keenly

priced, this will be very similarly priced, available

without a lens or with a Fujinon 16x zoom.

Ed: And it’s XDCAM and uses SxS cards?

Nick: That’s right. We used to separate XDCAMEX and XDCAM – we’ve broken down that division now,with cameras like the PMW-100, 150 and 200 alloffering the 35Mbps codec that we knew as XDCAM EX,as well as now supporting XDCAM HD422 50Mbps.Recording this codec to SxS cards was first introducedwith the PMW-500 shoulder-mount camera, whichjoined the PMW-700 and PMW-F800, which record toProfessional Disc.

Ed: Is there likely to be any further development indisc recording?

Nick: The most recent disc-based camera thatwe’ve released is the PDW-680, which essentiallymarries a 2/3” three chip CMOS front end like the 350,to an optical disc recorder. Optical disc is extremelywell entrenched globally, and particularly in Australia

and New Zealand.

Ed: I was talking to somebody from alarge facility in Sydney and he said thatover the years they’ve used thousands ofXDCAM discs and they’ve had onefailure?

Nick: Optical disc is very reliable,it’s robust – the discs themselves can bedropped, get wet, get full of mud, crudand crap or whatever … and be cleanedout and continue to be used. Robustnessis just one of the advantages of theformat, but it’s also compact andrelatively inexpensive, allowingproductions to easily store their originalcamera material. Camera operators canalso just hand over their discs ratherthan anyone having to spend timetransferring from cards.

Ed: Obviously some workflows are bestsuited to disc, while others are bestcovered by card-based recording. Ipersonally like tape! Anyway, goodcomparison, but now we’re looking at

Nick with an XDCAM disc.“The next best thing to tape” Ed says.

monitors and the Rio Carnival is here ona fantastic 56” OLED prototype?

Nick: Yes, we’re showing aprototype that has certainly created a lotof “oooohs” and “aaaahs”. This is a 56”4K OLED monitor showing some 4Kcontent taken at the Rio Carnival, whichjust proves that the Brazilians must lockall their ugly people away! Beside the56”, we also have a 30” 4K OLEDmonitor. Whilst we’re already selling thePVM-X300, which is a 30” 4K LCDmonitor, this prototype shows thepossibilities of 4K OLED. I think you’llagree on either score they’re quitestunning. The 30” OLED is showing Digwhich we screened in Auckland in March.Not quite the Rio Carnival, but still agreat demonstration of true blacks,dynamic range and resolution.

Ed: I think OLED is really now

accepted as being another gold standard,

that everything else should be measured

to?

Nick: We’d like to hope so – ourPVM and BVM series OLED monitors have been out for ayear or two and been really well accepted in broadcastand post-production. Here at NAB we are showing thenew A series, which is an upgraded version. So now it’sthe BVM-E, BVM-F and PVM A series – a majordifference is the use of new panels with improvedviewing angle, which I think is demonstrated quite wellhere with an old and new monitor mounted together ona revolving stand.

Ed: Wow, yes. I can see this at about 170 degrees.So you can actually upgrade your monitor …?

Nick: Existing monitors can’t be upgraded; this isa new series of the BVME, BVM-F and PVM series, so forexample a PVM-2541A. As well as new panels withwider viewing angles, there are some updated featuressuch as onscreen vectorscope and focus assist, plusimproved waveform and audio metering. We’lltransition to these over the next few months.

Ed: In the Sony pro audio section?

Nick: We’re not showing a lot of brand newproduct here, but we’ve got a number of great products

that haven’t been sold in Australia and New Zealandpreviously. Now with the change in frequency blocksfor wireless users in both countries, we hope to beselling from around June …

Ed: Oh, you know which ones they are then do you?

Nick: The products I’m referring to fall within thenewly proposed blocks and outside any prohibitedareas.

Ed: So they’ve actually had the 4G auction inAustralia have they?

Nick: We know what frequency range will bepermissible under the new licence provisions and thatwill be very, very similar in New Zealand, give or take afew MHz. So the very popular UWP wireless mic kitsthat we’ve been selling for some time will be phased outin the current 800 MHz version and we will have newversions within the 520-694MHz range. That will allowus to offer some kits we’ve never sold before, forexample the UWP-V6 kit which consists not only of areceiver and a body pack transmitter with lapel mic, butalso a plug-on transmitter, which can be connected to adynamic microphone or a shotgun or whatever. Thathasn’t been available in Australia or New Zealand upuntil now.

As well as these being sold in price-effective kits, we

will also now sell the body pack, handheld mic and plug-

on transmitters as separate items. There’s been quite a

lot of demand for that from people who want a second

mic, a spare mic, or they’ve bought a body pack kit and

want a hand mic as well, or just a plug-on. Away from

the UWP series, our high-end DWX digital wireless mic

systems which have been on sale in Europe and

America for some time now, again due to regulatory

issues haven’t been sold in New Zealand and Australia,

and we’re working very hard to see those introduced in

the next few months. The imperative in New Zealand is

not quite as tight as it is in Australia where we have to

theoretically switch off at the end of this year, with

another year’s grace period. In New Zealand, I

understand your general user licence runs for several

more years, but we’re hoping we’ll be able to offer the

DWX models very shortly. The beauty of these, apart

from them being digital and hence fantastic audio

4K workflows from the editors.

quality, is the versatility – with XDCAM, they go straight

into the slot on the back of the camera, two channels,

no extra cables needed, full control of the receiver and

transmitter through the XDCAM camcorder’s menu. You

can even monitor things like battery state on the

transmitter and control the gain setting on the

transmitter remotely from the camera.

Of course as a former sound recordist, I think giving a

cameraman control of anything audio is probably a bit

dangerous, but that’s the way of the world with single

operator crews these days! The DWX series also has

body packs, hand mics and plug-on transmitters, plus

the slot-in receiver for XDCAM camcorders.

But we also have an adapter that will attach it to any

other camera plus a really neat little adapter designed

for sound recordists, which allows that slot-in receiver

to be used in a sound bag alongside whatever recorder

or mixer they might be using, with both analogue and

digital outputs. This way, the one receiver can be used

in a number of different ways.

Ed: That’s very sensible and all running off a standardSony battery?

Nick: The sound recordist’s adapter – DWA-F01 –runs off an L series rechargeable Sony battery.

Ed: Okay, moving on to Ultra HD home theatre?

Nick: Unusual for NAB is that we’re showing

some consumer product. As part of the whole 4K story,

we’ve talked a lot about capturing in 4K, but here we’re

showing two new consumer television sets that will be

on sale from around July in New Zealand. 65” and 55”

4K consumer sets with stunning picture quality, as

Grant is seeing here. Price was announced here as

US$4,999 and US$6,999, which is a really great step

forward for 4K. We do already have a flagship 84” 4K

television, but that’s around US$25,000. To drive the

consumer strategy, we’re also showing a 4K server that

will be offered here in the US at around US$700. It’ll

Nick: Our Optical Disc Archive system continues

to evolve. Just to recap, this is a new system that we

launched last year which uses cartridges of optical discs

– essentially XDCAM discs. The cartridges are available

in varying sizes; I’m holding a 600GB one here, but we

have up to 1.5TB. Very robust, with much faster access

time than a competing LTO tape system.

Ed: So in terms of a cost-effective solution?

Nick: One of the key things to remember if you’recomparing this to LTO is, with every second generationof LTO you need to migrate because there’s nobackward compatibility beyond the previous twogenerations. So you really need to factor in your futurecosts, both in time and in tape, plus the fact that thedrives need to be maintained, etc.

With Optical Disc Archive, what you’ve got on disc staysthere and as we’ve seen with CD, DVD and Blu-ray,optical disc formats’ backward compatibility has neverbeen a problem.

Ed: I’m sure for a smaller facility, this is an idealarchive. Not only can you use it as a deep archive, butyou can use it as an online, very quick access archive?

Nick: We start with a relatively small desktop

drive that is exactly perfectly usable for a relatively

small facility, but you can scale that right up to

something like a PetaSite which is our deep archive

solution.

Up until now we’ve offered PetaSite as an LTO solution,but moving ahead this will become an Optical DiscArchive solution. Here we’re showing an examplewhere we have a certain number of bins and a certainnumber of drives within a PetaSite frame and this canbe expanded with further bins, up to massive storagecapacity. NZVN

come loaded with ten remastered 4K classic movies and

there will be a download service opening up later in the

year that allows download of further content.

These are all examples, alongside our 4K home cinema

projector, of ways that we can deliver 4K at home,

certainly during the period when it’s not yet available

through terrestrial, cable or satellite broadcast.

Ed: And my favourite little corner – I love optical disc

storage and Nick, it’s got even better since last year?

Archive on optical disc for security.

The player is in the Perspex box.

Teradek forA2Z

Now we are at Teradek withNicol Verheem and Davidand Alain from A2Z.

Ed: Nicol, we’re talkingabout the Bond and otherdevices for transmission oflive video feeds. You havequite a range here?

Nicol: Yes, we’ve got apretty big family of devices.Everything is typicallycamera mount devices. Iguess the cornerstone of ourproduct line is the Cubefamily of H264 encoders.That’s sort of where it allstarted and that’s still a keyingredient of all of oursystems. We also now havecamera back encoders –that’s called the Brik familyand then we have cellularbonding solutions and that’scalled the Bond family. Sofor NAB 2013, we added several new family members toboth of those families. On the Bond side, we have Bond2 and Bond Pro which is camera backed. Both of thesewere updated to add a sixth modem so now you canuse six different modems in a 3G network, but if you’rein a 4G network you can probably get by with as littleas two. Generally, you actually have enough bandwidthfrom a single good 4G connection, but you don’t havereliability, because the modem might drop out and thenyou’re going to be off air for 30 seconds or a minute.So the more modems you have, the better chance youhave of staying “on air” because they don’t tend to failtogether. You can do full HD broadcast quality videovery easily, very, very compact – it’s the size of a deckof cards, two of them stacked on top of each other. Weupdated the mechanical design as well to better securethe modems that attach to the Bond, so that thesebrackets can accommodate any size of the USB dongleswhich you can easily slide in and out; you just loosenone screw, you adjust the bracket and then you tightenit again. Quite a novel little design. We also added abattery into the Bond unit itself. The Cube has alwayshad a built-in battery, but the Bond didn’t. Now weadded a built-in battery into Bond 2 as well, which willallow you to do camera shots and go to air without anybattery, without losing that connection.

Ed: Can you also have a tap from the camera’sbattery?

Nicol: Absolutely. So you can take externalpower in 6 to 28 Volts, it’s quite a nice range so you canuse an Anton Bauer battery, you can use a little 5Dbattery to power it. The little 5D will look like a raisin ifyou use five modems, it will just suck it dry, but itshould work. The software was also updated across therange. We added a lot of features requested by ourbroadcast customers, for example IFB now allow us tosend audio back to the field from the headphone outputthat’s on the bonding unit. We also have remoteencoder control; we have fleet management – we havea new product called Core which manages a fleet ofencoders. It doesn’t have to be bonding encoders, it

could be just a normal Cube or a Cube and a Bondsystem; and we also have a new family of rack mountencoders and rack mount bonding solutions.

So Core makes it very simple. Core is running in theCloud which means the encoder can contact it, thedecoder can contact it, both of those now beingoutbound connections, which allow you to leave yourencoder on a private network like that, that’s what youget from a cellular connection, but also your decoder.You don’t have to open up any Firewall ports oranything like that on the decoder side, or put yourdecoder on the public IP address because, from thatprivate IP address, the decoder can actually reach theCloud based service and then tunnel through from theencoder.

Ed: Is this what you’re showing here on the live demoat the show?

Nicol: Yes. We’re showing the power of theInternet and why the second screen is so important. Togive you an idea of the reach, NAB has about 80,000attendees every year right?

So let’s assume 100% of them go to Sony’s booth,which I think is the biggest booth here. Sony, over fourdays, will get 80,000 visitors. In one day we had106,000 unique visitors to our website for this liveshow. Our booth is probably 5% of the size of Sony’s,but it just shows you, if you use the Internet you reachmore people. Live is extremely important, thatimmediacy of live content is extremely important, butusing the Internet and not just broadcast just blows thesize of the number of people you can reach out of thewater.

Ed: And David this is a very elegant solution fordistribution of live video?

David: From a portability perspective, in the fieldwhich is where our applications have been for camera tofield monitor for production, the Cube product has beensuperb because you can get two products for the Cube.You can either have HDMI if you’ve got a small DSLR rigor a smaller camera with HDMI output or indeed HD-

David and Alain with Nicol from Teradek.

SDI and get a wireless feed through to your monitor soyou can have directors monitoring what’s going onwithout having to breathe down the camera operatorsneck.

Alain: The Cube system also allows you to

transmit your images to an iPad which is an inexpensive

monitor and most people have them these days. The

picture quality looks okay, it’s not for pulling focus, it

will be slightly delayed because of the processing power

in the iPad, but the images are still enough for the

director or the staff on-set to see what’s going on.

Ed: But with these new developments you should be

able to transmit live video for recording, not just

monitoring?

Alain: Yes, that’s using the Bolt product which we

are going to go over with Nicol here.

Nicol: The Bond cellular system that I just

described, that’s typically used in broadcast applications

so you go to air with the feed over the multiple cellular

links; the Bolt is commonly used in cinema where you

can have the recorder now removed from the camera,

but you will still record an incredibly high fidelity video.

It’s just as good as running HD-SDI cable.

The recorder actually thinks it’s on the camera because

we send all the metadata, the record flags, the

timecode, the file name, the clip name, all of these

things – we send that over that wireless SDI link as

well. It’s also very popular in a live production

environment where you have a video switcher with

multiple wired cameras and wireless cameras, and now

you need those cameras to be very accurately sync’d.

The Bolt system is a zero delay system; it’s not

compressed video, so you can switch from the wireless

feed to the wired feed and everything is still going to be

in sync.

Ed: So this has been used already in New Zealand?

David: We’ve recently used the Cube product for

Next Top Model where the directors needed to see

pictures. We didn’t actually record those feeds,

because the Bolt wasn’t out then, but certainly on the

Cubes, brilliant monitoring feed.

Ed: I guess that the real value in New Zealand is

going to be when we’ve got two 4G networks?

Alain: Yes. Currently Vodafone is the only carrier

that has a 4G LTE network available and they haven’t

covered a lot of the country yet, but we’re hoping to see

that improve by the end of the year. I think with two

Vodem Sticks with LTE SIM cards, you should be able to

connect with the Cube and Bond system.

Ed: So in fact you don’t need two providers, you just

need one provider but two sticks?

Alain: Yes, I mean it’s best to have 2 or 3 or 4

providers – Sky have a system that uses up 9 or 10 SIM

cards at the same time, so that you can cover a larger

range of the coverage in New Zealand, which means if

one carrier drops signal, it will auto-switch to another

carrier. But if you have two Vodafone or two Telecom

or even three of each in your system, then that should

give you the best reliability.

Ed: So this, I guess, for a roving News person, is the

ideal system within New Zealand, that you just can be a

one man person and fire stuff back to head office from

anywhere you happen to be?

Alain: Yes, in theory it should stop the need for an

ENG truck and an ENG link between the field and the

base station which costs thousands of dollars to use per

minute.

We’re hoping a broadcaster is going to pick up on this

product, but for freelance cameramen who are wanting

to get pictures quickly back to the station, I think the

Teradek Brik in particular, being a V-mount system,

bolts on the back of the shoulder camera with a battery

on the back of it – I think that’s going to be a great

solution.

Ed: So hopefully no more Skype interviews?

Alain: Definitely not.

Nicol: Our product line is designed to fit in

between the low end that would use a Skype transmit

and the high end that would use a satellite transmitter

right.

So it’s addressing a market – and it’s quite a big market

and it’s been fairly poorly served so far …

Ed: Well I guess it’s an emerging market that people

don’t know too much about and until they try it, they’re

not going to find out all the ways they can use it?

Nicol: Exactly, so if you think in terms of … let’s

use cinema as an analogy. You know, film cameras are

kind of dead, the digital cameras and the high end like

the ALEXAs or the F65s or the EPICs – great cameras,

but there’s so much great content coming from 5Ds

now, 5D Mark III’s right or C300s or even GoPro’s.

So all of these guys need wireless links right? The

same thing is true for News. There are thousands of

cameras out there that don’t have live connectivity. If

you cannot cover the News from anywhere all the time,

you’re not really covering News and no-one can afford

to have a satellite truck everywhere all the time. So

we’re addressing those cameras that are not connected.

NZVN

Canon Camerasfor A2Z

We are at Canon with DavidEpstein and Alain Bach from A2Z.

Ed: Now David, what Canonthings do you want to talk aboutfor A2Z?

David: We have someexciting new developments on theCanon front, including many newlenses which we will discussshortly, and a new camera whichcomes in two variants called theXA20 and XA25. Canon havemade leaps and bounds in theircamera line-up and recentlyreleased the EOS 1DC camerawhich has got the industry all of aflurry. We’re going to start withtheir Cinema lens line-up.

Alain: Canon's Cinema high-end zooms, compact zooms andprimes expand the reach offilmmakers into 4K and 3Dproductions. In the new Canon Cinema prime line-up,there is going to be a total of six lenses – one hasn’tbeen officially released yet, but Canon has confirmedthat it is on its way. In the series so far is a 14mmT3.1, a 24mm T1.5, soon to be a 35mm, a 50mm T1.3,an 85mm T1.3 and then the 135mm T2.2. These primelenses offer consistent form factors and markingoptimised for motion picture production. You willappreciate the compact and consistent lens design.Your audience will love the results from the 11-bladeaperture diaphragms, fast t-stops and proven Canonlens elements. Each lens will be available to purchaseon its own or in a discounted package including all sixwith a hard case. The Canon Cinema prime lenses offerbrilliant 4K image quality in a lightweight and compactdesign.

Ed: And what sort of mount are these?

Alain: Currently the prime lenses will only bemanufactured with a Canon EF mount. This also meansthat they can be used on the CanonDSLR range.

Ed: And there are of course zoomlenses available in the cinema rangefrom Canon?

Alain: Yes, Canon New Zealandhave a demo model of the high-endzoom lenses, CN-E14.5-60mm T2.6L( currently at A2Z ) for wide anglecapability and the CN-E30-300mm T2.95-3.7L for world-class zoom and telephotofocal length. These lenses are availablein both Canon EF mount and the industrystandard PL mount. And finally we havethe Cinema Compact Zooms. Theselightweight lenses offer Canon’slegendary, proprietary optics in formfactors that enable more flexible, lessintrusive shooting. The CN-E15.5-47mmT2.8 L delivers a wide to medium rangeof focal lengths. The CN-E30-105mmT2.8 L covers wide to modest telephotoshots. Again both are available in CanonEF mount and the industry standard PLmount.

David: And added to the range are two newcameras called the XA-20 and XA-25. This is a fantasticlittle camera because it not only shoots 1920x1080 fullHD, but it also has XLR audio inputs and it has a veryclever dual codec. What that means for people is thatthey can record in two different codecs on SDHC cardsand so it’s almost like recording a proxy on one cardand full bandwidth on the other. Coupled with that, it’sgot an HD-SDI output which is tremendous if you wantto send a really good broadcast feed to an externalrecorder or to a monitor or to a switcher and it alsorecords at 35 megabit a second, not 25 megabit asecond which all its competitors do. Last but not leaston this camera, it also has a 20 times Canon opticallens, which is a marvellous lens on such a smallcamera, so quite an exciting new product from Canon.

Alain: Currently at the Canon stand, on the dollynext to us here is a Canon C500 in 4K studio productionconfiguration.

Alain would love to sell you this Canon combo.

The Canon XA-25.

Ed: And I can also see a gorgeous blonde in a verytight red dress.

Alain: Yes, she’s doing a great job at being “thetalent.” So on the back of the C500 here we haveCanon’s endorsed recorder if you like. It’s currently theonly off-board recorder that can support the entirearray of frame rates this camera can offer. It’s calledOnboard S Recorder and is manufactured by thecompany Codex Digital. It takes the 4K outputs of theC500 and produces what is called Canon RAW. CanonRAW can be used in two different modes – as a full 4K,which is 4096 pixels by 2160 pixels, full RAW mode at amaximum frame rate of 60 frames per second. It canalso record 4K HALF RAW which is 4096 pixels by 1080pixels ( reducing the vertical resolution by half ) toreach a maximum frame rate of 120 frames per second.No other camera is capable of this in this price range.The recorder uses Codex made 512 gigabyte ( 2 x 256gigabyte SSD in RAID 0 ) cartridges.

Ed: I understand that this is pretty much the RollsRoyce of the recorders?

Alain: It is one of the top brands, yes. It’s beenaround for quite a long time now. They’ve put all thefeatures in and they’ve made it considerably smallerthan the older models. It’s produced in England.

Ed: But it is at a high price point?

Alain: Correct, around US$15,000.

Ed: Is that value for money?

Alain: If you want to get the maximum you canout of your new C500, which cost you NZ$36,000-odd,this currently is the only recorder that can give youeverything the camera is capable of – and it’s a provenrecorder.

Ed: Now I know at the recent show in Auckland, therewas a mention of Canon moving into digital display, andto do that they have to have some pretty high specmonitors. There’s been a bit more development in thatDavid?

David: There has, they have a prototype here atthe show. The 4K monitor from Canon is here, so we’llgo and see that now.

Ed: Oh can’t you talk about it here, because there’snow a lovely brunette with a blue dress on – also verytight?

David: Behave yourself Grant.

Ed: Work, work, work! So Canon has got a 4Kreference display here Alain?

Alain: Yes, this is their prototype model. Theyhave it on display here being fed by a C500. It’s a 30inch display using LCD technology which produces true4K images – that’s 4096 x 2160 pixels. They havegiven no indication of release price or functionality, butthey have told us it’s on its way and from what we cansee here, the image looks good.

Ed: And they deliberately have a very dimly lit sceneto show off both the exposure range of the camera andthe clarity of the reference monitor?

Alain: Correct, you can see here that the blacksand highlights look wonderful.

Ed: Back into the cameras, the EOS 1DC?

Alain: The EOS 1DC is Canon’s latest DSLR. It isin fact a 1DX with 4K video capable recording on board.This means that it is capable of producing an image likethe Canon C500 Cinema Camera, obviously withreduced functionality and limitations, but we think that

it’s going to be a great productionproduct in the New Zealand market andthe lenses we mentioned before aremore than happy on the front of thatsensor.

The 1DC can capture three different

types of video – one being full 4K 4096 x

2160. I can also crop the sensor down

to Super 35 and this is very important

for Canon’s new Cinema zoom lenses,because they will not fit over the sensor

of a full frame camera like the 5D and

1DX. Why you’d use the Super 35 mode

is so that you can match the camera with

a C100, 300 or 500 if you’re using an A

and a B camera on a shoot.

David: And one of the most exciting

features of all the Canon range is thatCanon have just topped 80 million lenses

for manufacture and so there’s a vast

range of choice for anyone with one of

these cameras. NZVN

Codex Digital for A2ZWe are at Codex Digital Limited with Sarah Priestnalland Alain from A2Z.

Ed: Codex Digital – high end on-board, off-boardrecorders?

Sarah: Yes, we do a variety of things. We do anon-board recorder that works with various cameras likethe ARRI ALEXA, the Canon C500 and we also haveinbuilt ARRIRAW recording inside the ALEXA now aswell. But with the Canon, it’s an external recorder, it

records 4K Canon RAW at up to 120 frames per second,so with one recorder, one capture drive; and we alsohave our workflow products that enable you then totake the files into our vault or our transfer stations,archive them to tape, copy them to hard drives, makedeliverables, so we can make Avid files, ProRes files,DPX files. So it’s really a whole workflow from camerathrough to post.

Ed: There’s quite a few off-board recorders out there,what makes this one better than the others?

Sarah: Our recorders have been used on hundredsof feature films now. We take great pride in makingsure that the discs we use do not fail; we never loseany frames …

Ed: So these are hard discs?

Sarah: They are solid state discs. For the type ofprojects that we work on, especially the really high-endfeatures, we can’t afford to have any lost frames, so weuse close to military spec drives, really high end highperformance stuff, so our equipment doesn’t fail.

Ed: And inputs – you’re taking in HD-SDI?

Sarah: With ARRIRAW it’s T-Link which is ARRI’sproprietary format that comes in over 3 gig HD-SDI;Canon RAW same thing, 3 gig HD-SDI or we can recordHD as well over the HD-SDI.

Ed: So each recorder has all of those connections ordo you buy a recorder for …?

Sarah: No each recorder has all of those, becauseit all comes over the HD-SDI whether it’s Canon RAW,ARRIRAW or HD.

Ed: And it has its own battery power?

Sarah: It can be powered from the camera orseparately.

Ed: There’s a lovely big knob on the side there with ablue ring around it. What does that do?

Sarah: That will tell you when you’re in record; itgoes red when you’re in record and orange when you’reready and then blue obviously for standby.

Ed: But does the knob turn?

Sarah: Yes the knob does turn. It’s also how youinput all your settings into the recorder, so you can setyour role name, your clip name …

Ed: It activates the menu?

Sarah: Yes exactly. It’s a multipurpose knob infact.

Ed: That’s very handy.

Sarah: It is very handy yes.

Ed: And everything else is touch?

Sarah: Yes.

Ed: It looks quite robust?

Sarah: Yes it has to be robust. They go out insome pretty extreme conditions and get treated quiteroughly sometimes.

Ed: But it’s not waterproof?

Sarah: It’s not waterproof, no, although one ofthese was used in a base jumping sequence for a moviecalled After Earth – they literally jumped off the top of amountain with it, with a C500 strapped to a helmet andthe Codex recorder in a backpack. Base jumped off amountain in the Swiss Alps, filming all the way down.

Ed: But he didn’t land in the water?

Sarah: He didn’t land in the water fortunately, no.He almost hit a rock, but didn’t land in the water.

Ed: Good product?

Alain: I believe it’s one of the best in the industry,yes.

Ed: One of the best?

Alain: Yes Grant, one of the best.

Ed: Sarah this maybe might look anexpensive product, but in fact?

Sarah: Well with other products … we’rethe only recorder where you only need onerecorder and one drive to capture all theformats and go up to 4K at 120 frames persecond. There’s another recorder that’sslightly cheaper, but you end up needing two ofthem to record 60 frames per second andabove. So you need two recorders, two drivesand therefore it’s no longer cheaper.

Ed: Because high frame rate is the cream onthe 4K cake?

Sarah: Yes – I mean a lot of people areusing this for high frame rate recording and itlooks really good at 120 frames per second 4K,so it’s being used a lot.

Ed: Do you like that analogy?

Sarah: The cream on the cake – yes, it’sfantastic. NZVN

Sarah with the Codex in a shoulder rig.

The knob on the right is ringed with a blue light.

Canon LensesWe have Larry Thorpe from Canonand we’re talking about cinemalenses.

Ed: Larry, there’s really nothingnew in the barrel lenses, but in thecinema lenses, Canon has beenworking overtime?

Larry: Right, we have two whatwe call “top end” zoom lenses. One isa wide, a 14.5mm to 60; and then wehave another one that’s a 30 to 300.These have been designed to bebeyond 4K performance – beyond 4K– so extremely high performance. Wemake them available in either PLmount which is the internationalstandard for cinematography, or theCanon EF mount for folks who havegot lots of our EF lenses, and maywant to mingle them with these. Weoffer them both. We have kits thatallow you to change the mount; it hasto be done at a Canon service centre,but the mount could be changed fromPL to EF. Rental houses will probablywant to do that. So this is the 14.5.

Ed: Okay, a slightly shorter one?

Larry: These are two what we call compactzooms. They are what we call “full 4K performance”.This is a 15 to 47. These have been designed tosupport steadicam and handheld use, so we’ve madethem compact and lightweight.

Ed: They’re a lot shorter, a lot less glass in them?

Larry: Exactly, but still very high performance.

Ed: Now tell me – I guess the big problem with these,and this one goes down to 15 by the look of it …

Larry: 15.5 to 47, yes.

Ed: That’s the hard part isn’t it, it’s that low end, that15?

Larry: The wide angle is where you’ve got towatch … when you’re in 4K, you’ve got to watch yourchromatic aberrations and you’ve got to watch yourgeometric distortion at wide angle. That’s where we puta lot of effort in to control those parameters.

Ed: Because your focal distance at that point is really,really critical?

Larry: Exactly and you’ve got very shallow depthof field; you’ve got to be awfully careful. Now here’sthe one I told you about, the 30 to 300. That’s againbeyond 4K performance. This is just a magnificent lens.The beauty about this is we were able to make this lensquite lightweight. If you’re familiar with the Angénieux24 to 290, a very famous lens in cinematography –that’s twice the weight of this. This is a beautiful,absolutely gorgeous lens.

Ed: Now just give us a brief overview as to why acinema lens is different from a traditional barrel lens?

Larry: Cinematographers love to focus and zoomwith their hands and they want the focus to have aswide a rotation as possible. So these have 300 degreesrotation for focus.

Ed: Whereas a videographer would go nuts?

Larry: Exactly. And that’s to allow them to dorack focusing, beautiful subtle rack focusing from onesubject to the other. It’s very, very important to them.The zooms have about 160 degrees rotation. Theaperture blades in here we make 11 blades and we try

to get a lovely circular theme because thecinematographers talk about “bouquet” – in other wordsa light in the distance that’s defocused, they want thatto be soft and round, and you only get that if you’ve gotmultiple apertures. And those multiple apertures alsocontrol stray light, the way light bounces around, that’spart of the art of controlling stray light.

Ed: And I guess that’s an expense thing?

Larry: It is an expense thing, yes.

Ed: So a barrel lens would have how many leaves?

Larry: Usually eight – 6 to 8.

Ed: And is the mount different?

Larry: These are Super 35mm PL mount which isthe accepted global standard for cinematography filmcameras or digital cameras.

Ed: And it’s important to have those different mountsso that people don’t get the idea they can swap themaround?

Larry: Well yes, but it is more the fact that thatmount was developed many years ago and isconsidered an extremely rugged stable mount andthat’s where it’s all about. There’s another of ourprimes, the 14mm, that’s the widest one we make,14mm. And again that has that total rotation of 300degrees on the focus.

Ed: But one would think that a prime lens was easy tomake because you don’t need any moving parts … butyou do actually need moving parts don’t you?

Larry: You do need moving parts, oh yeah, there’selements moving in there when you’re focusing. Butagain the prime is where people have the highestexpectations. They want the best possible performancefrom the primes and, as you go wider angle, you’restruggling with all those aberrations and geometricdistortions and the trick is to try and control those andkeep them to a minimum while you get the highest MTFthrough the lens and get that high resolution.

Ed: With today’s cinema cameras, any littleaberration, any little mistake is spotted immediatelyand there goes your reputation?

Larry: Exactly, that’s why we have to make thesespecs very, very tight indeed. NZVN

Larry from Canon.

Avid Pro Tools for ProtelWe are at Avid and we are looking at ProTools version 11 with Robert Miller andGlenn from Protel.

Ed: Now Robert, to me this was theexciting part of the Avid press conference –Pro Tools?

Robert: Well I wasn’t at the press

conference, but I can tell you here on the

show floor that everyone’s been very, very

excited about the Pro Tools 11 application

now being a 64 bit application, giving it

much improved performance, multi-

processor support is now fully threaded,

being able to take advantage of all of the

RAM which is loaded into your computer,

which enables us to have larger sessions,

more virtual instruments … previously

anybody who is using compositional virtual

instruments, Pro Tools could choke prior to

this because of the 4 gigabyte file limit in

terms of how much RAM we were able to

address. So along with those features, and now being

able to do a faster than real time bounce from Pro Tools

11 …

Ed: Can you just explain “bounce” to a video person?

Robert: So to “bounce” a disc is basically renderingsomething and when Pro Tools would do this, it woulddo it in real time. So if you had a 20 minute film reel, itwould take 20 minutes for it to record this. We’ve got acouple of examples here we’re showing on the mainstage – a very large session with like four 7.1 stemsand it’s happening at six times real time. This is goingto be a tremendous time saver. We’ve done a lot ofwork to make sure that they’re sonically the same,whether you do this in real time or whether you’redoing it in faster than real time. The other thing is thatwe’ve taken the video engine from Media Composer andput it into Pro Tools. So essentially now, any type ofmedia that a Media Composer can play in terms ofmultiple codecs, multiple frame rates, multiple tracks –we can open it up as an AAF, it’s exported as an AAFwith both the audio and the video and, if we’re on

shared storage, this really improves our workflowimmensely. Some of the things that we can’t do … wecan’t ingest into this video engine if we wanted torecord video, we can’t do that; and any type of thirdparty plug in, say a Boris or Sapphire type of effectwould have to be rendered like a smart render, so onceit’s put into the media we can then open it up and wehave really very near sample accurate synchronisationbetween audio and video in Pro Tools.

Some other really good enhancements are the ability of

doing some quick key short cuts and the advancedmetering. We’ve built into Pro Tools HD about 12

different international standards for metering – RMS,

VU, DIN, BBC, Nordic, along with true PPM which is

really our System 5. Not “true” PPM, peaked PPM; and

then there’s the sample peak which is the default for

Pro Tools 11. Also gain reduction metering is

happening alongside of the fader as well on Pro Tools

HD. So a lot of really cool stuff, but I think the biggest

thing that people are going to see is the tremendousincrease in performance … processors have been 64 bit

and operating systems have been 64 bit for

some time, Pro Tools is finally there.

Ed: And there’s been an improvement inthe appearance on screen.

Robert: On the Mac we’re now

supporting full graphics capabilities, which

means, when you zoom in and you really

want to blow something, you’re going to

have a much better graphical user interface.

So the whole look of it has gotten better.

Ed: Now Glenn, you must be excited

about this too?

Glenn: I’m actually really excited,

particularly with the Media Composer engine

being there in the background. There’s still

uses for using Video Satellite, but obviously

this feature set and being able to open

those video codecs inside Pro Tools 11 is

going to be really, really beneficial for many

of our customers. The roundtrip workflow

from Media Composer 7 ( video post ) to Pro

Tools 11 ( audio post ) has never been

better. NZVN

Robert from Avid.

AUCKLAND

3 City Road Tel +64 9 379 8288PO Box 6049 Fax +64 9 379 0290Auckland 1010 Freephone 0800 PROTELNew Zealand

WELLINGTON

15 Walter Street Tel +64 4 801 9494PO Box 6049 (Auckland) Fax +64 4 384 2112Wellington 6011 Freephone 0800 PROTELNew Zealand

Professional Audio & Video Solutions | www.protel.co.nz

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Datavideo for ProtelWe are at Datavideo with Glenn Miers fromProtel, and Jack Lin from Datavideo, whotells us the latest.

Ed: Jack, this stand seems to be gettingbigger and better every year, and I’m veryimpressed by this little truck you’ve gothere. Is it all Datavideo product insidethat truck?

Jack: Most of it is, yes. Thecomputers and cameras aren’t, but all ofthe switchers, monitors and converters areDatavideo products. This is the sametruck from last years’ NAB but withimprovements inside to the installationand layout.

Ed: It’s really just showing that theDatavideo products cover a wide range ofuses?

Jack: Correct. We have a broad

range of vision switching solutions for all

levels of live production; however our

focus in this market is to provide products for small to

medium studios and production environments.

Ed: Because I mean live production – there’s a lotgoing on and I guess more and more of it?

Jack: Exactly, and especially web TV is nowgrowing more and more popular. The budgets availablefor this type of delivery are not huge, so it’s the right fitfor Datavideo products. In some cases the customeralso needs an OB van to get to locations and do theirbroadcasts, so we offer products ideally suited to smallOB situations.

Ed: Now in terms of specific products – anythingparticularly new?

Jack: Yes, actually. This year we have a productwe are calling the MCU, which stands Multi-CameraControl Unit. Typically a CCU ( camera control unit )will control only one camera, so what sets theDatavideo MCU apart from others is that it can controlfour cameras from the one unit. There is the desktopMCU-100 and the rack-mount version MC-200.

Ed: Is this all Ethernet controlled?

Jack: Yes, it uses Ethernet cabling for run lengthsup to 100 metres. Currently the systemworks with Panasonic cameras including theAG-HPX255, AG-HPX370, AG-HPX500 andAG-HPX600. We are expecting to announcecompatibility with a selection of Sonycameras at IBC in September. The systemwill require a different camera adapter toconvert from the Ethernet connection to thecamera remote port that Sony uses. One ofthe usual requirements for these cameracontrol systems is a waveform andvectorscope so you can match yourcameras in the studio or OB truck. This canbe expensive to set up. With our MCUsystems and our VSM products you canmatch your cameras easily at a fraction ofthe cost of traditional systems. It meanseven small productions can now get thebest possible image quality from thecamera.

Ed: And if you combine all of that with acart and add … well a few other things, youget a mobile production unit?

Jack: This new portable production studio waslaunched at BVE in January. It is the HS-2800 MobileStudio. It is a compact, lightweight system basedaround the SE-2800 switcher. It includes an integrated17″ monitor and the ITC-100 Intercom/Tally System. The ITC-100 comes with 4 belt packs, headsets, andtally lights, so enough equipment for up to 4 cameraoperators. You can also upgrade the HS-2800 and addan additional four SDI ports, to a total of 12 inputs, plusadd an additional four users to the intercom system. Ofcourse the system supports both HD and SD signals.

Ed: I remember a few years ago that this was arather large box and now it’s a suitcase and it’sobviously upgraded immensely?

Jack: This is very true. We still have the rackcase mobile studios called the MS series, for installationinto an OB truck for example, but the portable solutionssuch as the HS-2800 provide the full range of featuresfrom a small box weighing around 9 kilograms. Theproduction switcher that is included in these systemscan be purchased as a stand-alone switcher also. Thisallows the customer to integrate it into their ownenvironment.

Jack in the OB van.

Ed: So here we have, back in the little box category …oh it looks like my DAC10. It’s still working, but you’vechanged the colour, you’ve gone to grey?

Jack: Well, we did change the colours on anumber of products to make it easier to read the texton the connector points, but this is actually a new livestreaming server called the Datavideo NVS-20. It is abroadcast-quality H.264 HD video streaming server thatprovides live programme production and broadcastencoding for the internet. All you need to do is providevideo to one of the inputs and the NVS-20 will outputcompressed video to your network through the Ethernetport. It accepts HD/SD-SDI, HDMI, and compositeinputs, plus analogue audio input also.

Ed: Are there adjustments that you can make to thestream – and they’re just on a touch panel on the front?

Jack: The front panel control is just to select theinput source. All streaming settings are done using thenetwork interface.

Ed: So basically it comes up on your computer andyou can make those adjustments to the software?

Jack: Exactly. It comes with software so you cando the adjustments and settings. The bitrate of theH.264 stream can go up to 6Mbps, so it is capable of1920x1080 at 30 frames per second. The other productthat works with the NVS-20 is the new Wi-Fi bridgingunit, the NVW-100. This allows you to connect the NVS-20 to it using an Ethernet cable, and then use 5.8GHzWi-Fi to transmit to the NVW-100 receiver which can beup to 300 meters away. The receiver can then connectto your computer for streaming to the web, or to anH.264 decoder for output to a monitor, for example.This will be great for when your camera or video sourceis not near a network port. If you connect externalantennas you can get even greater distances, akilometre is achievable with standard external ones.

Ed: A kilometre?

Jack: The 5.8GHz band allows for greatertransmission range, sure, but you do need a largerantenna than the standard ones to go over the 300metre range. Also new is the NVW-200, which is thebig brother to the NVW-100. It allows for distances upto 500 metres with the standard aerials, but withexternal directional antennas it can transmit up to 10kilometres! Additionally, the NVW-200 can share the

encoded video over Wi-Fi as a local accesspoint, as well as transmitting to the receiveras a bridge.

Ed: It certainly seems quite versatile.Glenn, are these shipping now?

Glenn: They are coming soon, Grant.Customers would be best to give us a call todiscuss their requirements and we canensure they get the right unit for theirneeds.

Jack: Now, the next product I want toshow you is the Datavideo DAC-60.

The DAC-60 is an SD and HD 3G-SDI to

VGA Scaler and Converter. It converts

video signals into VGA signals for display on

devices such as projectors and monitors. It

features a loop-through input that passes

the SDI input signal downstream withoutchanging it. This allows you to feed the

same video signals to both VGA and SDI

based equipment.

The unit auto detects the input format and

scales it to the user selected VGA output

format, which is indicated by the six LEDs on the front.

With the included software you can set the built-in

processing amp to adjust Contrast, Hue and Saturation

of the VGA signal. The SDI loop-through signal isunaffected by the proc amp settings.

Ed: A very versatile box?

Jack: We also have a new rack-mount kit coming

later this year called the RMK-2. It allows you to install

up to eight converters in the single 2U rack unit. It also

comes with a power distribution bus, so you can power

all the converters from the one power outlet. It makes

installation into an OB or studio situation a lot easier.

Ed: Wow. Okay, I’ve still got a DAC-10, but we’re

now up to the DAC-90?

Jack: The DAC-10 was a video format converter.

The DAC-90 is an audio de-embedder. It has dual SDI

inputs which allows you to split out four channels of

audio from each of the inputs.

Or you can set it to de-embed eight channels from one

of the inputs. You can switch between either input

using the front push button.

Ed: So it becomes a very versatile distribution device

for audio?

Jack: Exactly.

Ed: And of course more information on the entire

Datavideo range is available from the friendly folk at

Protel. NZVN

Inside the OB van - lots of Datavideo product.

Kata NewsI started my first interview on Day One

in Vegas with Bellina Israel from

Manfrotto. It’s Bellina’s birthday today,

so we’re going to be exceptionally nice to

her, as always.

Ed: Bellina, I guess the big news

started at the Sony Press Event – there

they unveiled a Kata bag. What was that

all about?

Bellina: Well I think the American

distributors chose our backpack to carry

their new flyaway kit. They chose the

new Pro-V video backpack which allows

you to store your camera with matte

box, many, many accessories, in a tiny

little compact carry solution, with a

comfortable ergonomic harness, quick

front access, very modular access to

your accessories from the outside

through the four access points that are

also the pocket that nicely snuggles

around your camera and will fit

according to the size of your camera. So

if you’ve got a big camera it will fit less

accessories and if you’ve got a smaller

camera you can stuff in quite a lot of

other stuff with you.

Ed: Like elastic underpants?

Bellina: Yes, exactly … but not Y-

fronts.

Ed: The exciting thing Sony made out

was that this is a travelling backpack for

a single News reporter. They can fit the

camera, the audio gear, his linking

system – everything into that, and he’s

off on the road, even probably on a

motorcycle. When he’s there, he can set

up and transmit back to the station all

from one 610 backpack.

Bellina: Yes – and the nice thing about it really, asyou said, it takes everything you need in a very smallpackage relatively, even your laptop, and we have afantastic picnic mat, or we call it “the work in the fieldmat” which rolls up to a very small ball, but when youtake it out, open it up in the field, you can spread outall your gear and set up a working station, no matterwhere you are, without compromising the gear.

Ed: And it’s obvious that it’s a Kata, because it’syellow inside?

Bellina: Yes and not to forget it is the latest mostprotective backpack out there, so two more extra addedbenefits for the outgoing single man band.

Ed: And it’s those wonderful little parachute harnesstags on the zips that I wish I’d had on my backpack,because I just broke another one of my tabs on mycarrybag for NAB, but my mistake, it’s not a Kata.

Bellina: The main thing about the parachute zipperpullers is that, even if you’re not falling out of a planeand need to pull them to release the parachute, theygive you very fast access to the main compartment.Even if your hands are a bit cold or you’re wearinggloves, it’s very easy to manoeuvre the zippers and getinto your gear very, very fast so that you don’t missthat shot.

Ed: And what might seem to be a simple thing is that

they’re coloured and there are different ones for

different pockets?

Bellina: Yes that’s colour coding so you remember if

you’ve put your filter in the one with the white zipper

puller, or the red zipper puller. You don’t have to open

all four to find out exactly where your stuff is … you do

have to have a good memory though and remember to

match the colour to your accessory.

Ed: Now the 610 is not the only one you’ve got;

there’s a smaller brother to that?

Bellina: Yes, we have the 410, which is actually two

-thirds of the 610 …

Ed: Is that more for the photographic people?

Bellina: No, no these days all our camera rangesyou start very small and you go up to medium andlarge. So we like to cover everything in 2-3 models,giving you the Russian Doll effect. You can always goone bigger if you need more accessories, or if you’vekitted up your small camcorder with all the new-fangledbits and pieces.

Ed: Now I must say, you have a much smaller standthis year – there’s much less product on it. Is thisbecause you’re making less product, or what’s the storythere?

Bellina, not looking a day older, resting on the Pro-V backpack.

Bellina: Well with Kata we’ve

streamlined our video line into a very

select offering of SKUs, giving the

shoulder case option, the backpack

option, the rain cover option and the

shoulder strap option, which is the basic.

We cover more or less 80% with a very

slim line.

It enables our dealers to have all of our

products on display in their shops, where

before we had about three times the

amount of SKUs.

Ed: And you also cover the

photographic market?

Bellina: Yes. There we have a very

big range going from small little point

and shoot cameras all the way up to

obviously DSLRs in their normal

photographic setup or video setup with

rigs etc.

Ed: Where can you go to from here? I

mean what are the possible

improvements that people have asked

for that you’re still working on?

Bellina: Well I think Kata’s next two

steps are to really specialise for niche

users – if it’s the outdoors

photographers, videographers, and

create very, very specific working

solutions for them in the environment

that they’re working in.

Ed: What, custom made?

Bellina: Not custom made, but small

collections of dedicated professional …

Ed: Like the Bellina collection?

Bellina: Exactly … I’m very small,

very compact and very professional. NZVN

AmberFinfor Quinto

AmberFin is a high qualitysoftware based solution fordigitising/ingesting, trans-coding, quality control,standards conversion andreplay of file base video.

Four-time Emmy-award win-ning technology, AmberFiniCR, plays a key role inturning the content thatowners have into thecontent their customerswant. As an open stand-ards, future proof platformthat digitises and transformsnew and archived content,AmberFin iCR delivers thebest quality pictures atsmaller file sizes acrossmultiple delivery platforms,including the Internet, VoD,TV, mobile and other smallscreen devices.

We are at AmberFin withAdrian Smith from AmberFin and Pete Fullerton forQuinto.

Ed: Adrian, just give us a background as to the nameof the company, where it came from?

Adrian: AmberFin is a software company that spunout of Snell & Wilcox about 4-5 years ago. We’ve beenindependent ever since. When we came out as aseparate company we were essentially the softwaredivision of Snell; came out as a separate company withyears of heritage and algorithms and patent technology.We turned that technology into a file based product fordoing standards conversion and transcoding and ingest.Since then it’s developed, the customer base has grownand we’ve introduced our unified QC. Now essentially,we’re an ingest, QC and transcode software company.Our main focus is in the higher end of content ownersand broadcasters and media companies – so the toptier, the people who own content or want to distributecontent primarily. So what this means for the NewZealand market which, to be fair, has been slightlybehind in file based technology – they haven’t adoptedthe filed based world as quickly as say the US has.

Ed: I think we’re a bit more wary of the Cloud if yourproduct is highly Cloud based?

Adrian: No, we’re not interested. To be honest, theCloud is just another term; for us it’s just storage andPCs, that’s all it means to us. So if a customer says wewant to work perhaps transcoding in the Cloud, that’sfine. They’ll swap all the work on their transcode …

Ed: Or if they have their own servers?

Adrian: For us, if you think about what is a Cloud,it’s more of a buzz word, it’s remote storage. That’s allit is. But in the TV industry we’ve been working foryears and years on remote storage and differentnetwork locations. That’s all it means to us. Sotranscoding the Cloud, I think the Cloud really camemore from the consumer or space or trying to bepushed by big IT and storage companies, but for thevideo world we’ve done that for the last 10-15 yearsanyway. But we’re not going to focus on the word“Cloud”; we’re very focused on taking the files that you

have and turning them into the files that you need andbeing able to implement the processes such as QC,inserting captions, extracting certain metadata intofiles. What that actually means in the real world, forpeople say in New Zealand, is people like TVNZ are nowdoing file delivery. They’re taking commercials on file;they’re receiving programmes on file. So people haveto generate those files. For instance, if you take one ofthe post houses like Images in Auckland; before theywould deliver everything on a Sony tape or XDCAM orsomething like that and they would deliver those aroundthe facilities. They might be able to create files, but thepersons might not be able to receive the files. Now it’sopened up and bandwidth has become cheaper andmore accessible and there’s mechanisms to do it, sopeople are actually saying “let’s do file creation, let’s dofile delivery.” Commercials are easier because thesmaller the file size the quicker it is to deliver. Someprogramming material is still too big to transfer overpipes; you might as well send a disc from one side oftown to the other. The market has changed; it’s got tothat point where you can’t ignore file transfer anymoreand you have to use something to do it.

Pete: This is a tool that allows you to ingest, it’sa tool that allows you to transcode, it’s a tool thatallows you to check quality control (QC), play back andreview your file based video footage. A small boutiquepost house might have a single version of AmberFinrunning on a single PC. A TV station might havemultiple versions of AmberFin running on multiplemachines across several servers.

Ed: If we look at the specific example of a post housein New Zealand that creates content, that needs todeliver it perhaps within New Zealand, perhapsoverseas and perhaps in a format that is not whatthey’ve created, that’s the sort of solution that you canprovide?

Adrian: We have a tool that will help with that, sofor instance if you’ve done your production and you’vedone your edit in Final Cut, you’ve worked in ProRes allthrough that, then you might not be able to deliverProRes to your customer. So our software will then do

Adrian and Pete.

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the transcoding between ProRes for instance, you mighthave to go to IMX or XDCAM. You may also have tochange the frame rate depending on where you’redelivering to. Now our technology is from the best filebased tool for doing standards conversion within thefile. Before that was previously done via SDI usingmore expensive hardware, but we’re able to do that inthe file domain through frame rate conversion. That’ssome of the technology that came from Snell in the olddays, all of the patent algorithms we have for doingthat. So that’s something else that other people don’tdo and that’s something that post houses definitely do,is change frame rates and create different file formats.

Ed: I know from experience when transcoding washardware based. It could cost a small amount or a lotdepending on the equipment and you really noticed thedifference between the two. I guess it’s the same withthe software, that within many editing programmes,there’s transcode ability but you’re not getting a lot for

it. In this case, when you’re dealing with the top endmaterial, you’ve got to keep it as pristine as you can?

Adrian: That’s right and there’s three toolsavailable. You can download from <sourceforge.net>some free transcoding tools and free standardsconversion tools, but the truth is they’re crap. So ifyou’ve got crappy picture quality, you don’t pay anymoney for it; but if you want good picture quality andyou want to remap your audio and maintain the qualityof that content, then you need to pay for those tools.That’s simply where we are.

Pete: If you’re delivering to a broadcaster, either

locally or internationally, then you want to deliver the

best quality that you can. You’ve worked hard on this

project, you’ve gone into the edit, you’ve used the besttools that you can there; why let it down at the end.

Poor transcoding could actually cause problems in the

broadcast chain. Of course AmberFin is not just for

transcoding, there’s also play back and QC. If you are

getting file based deliverables and you want to be able

to play them back – you can use AmberFin to see what

you actually have. With tape or disc based delivery you

know what the pictures should look like – with cheap or

free file base players you can never be sure they arenot masking issues with your footage.

Ed: But unlike tape decks, it’s scalable, so you canstart off with one particular feature and add features asthe need arises or budgets permit?

Adrian: Yes you can scale the product, you can addon extra modules, they’re just software modules ornodes, and grow it as your business grows.

Ed: Now in terms of ease of application within afacility, this is just one PC that you can dedicate or takespace in to operate this programme, but is it friendly,does it talk to other programmes?

Adrian: Yes, we’ve got several methods of control.We have an API so that any other software tools cancontrol us. Because we’re a video engine doingtranscoding etc, it needs a MAM to talk to us and tosend us commands. So a MAM system which controlsall the assets could send transcode jobs to us etc.We’ve got that level of integration. We also havesomething called a Metadata Layout Editor; so withevery file that we create, we can store an XML file withit. Now that XML file can contain custom metadata thatcould then be put back into any other in-house systemand read. That means that, as a file transfers or comesinto your facility, you can automatically put that datainto your current business system – whether it’sProduction Asset Management, or a transmissionsystem, or a traffic system, or just a Media Asset

Management system. On that metadata side, there’salso something that’s relevant for the post industry inNew Zealand. The UK is now standardised on a formatcalled DPP ( Digital Production Partnership.) What thatis, is a set codec which is AV Central an MXF file whichalso has a set metadata scheme run. So 32 or suchfields of metadata being shared between all the facilitiesin the UK, all the production houses and broadcasters.As New Zealand probably follows the UK in somepractices with files, something that may be adopted inNew Zealand in the post side, is the DPP standard offormats, which is the interoperable file sharing formatfor files in postproduction and transmission.

Pete: And QC as well. AmberFin integrates withall the major software QC tools and provides a simplegraphical user interface (GUI) which makes it easy tofollow and annotate automated QC error reports againstactual content on a frame-by-frame basis. Typically QCwas traditionally an engineering function, but now wecan bring it into an operational role and make it simple.

Now Veronique is going to tell us a little bit aboutsomething special that AmberFin is doing for thecommunity

Veronique: Something we have been doing forthe last couple of years is to help educate the industryabout some of the major difficulties that broadcastersand postproduction professionals may encounter.Things like what is MXF or what do I do with metadata,and this is a free resource that’s available online and itcombines a variety of things. It combines free trainingvideos, 2 minute shorts that discuss a particularindustry topic. It includes white papers, there is a blog

and it’s completely non-vendor specific. So you willnever hear our product names uttered in any of theinformation that we’re putting together. It truly isinformational and educational.

http://blog.amberfin.com/blog is the site for theAmberFin Academy.

For more information please contact

Pete Fullerton

Quinto Communications (NZ) Ltd

Phone +64 9 486 1204

Email [email protected]. NZVN

New Owners at GencomThe news is that Gencom will continue asGencom but with a new owner, BroadcastONE and CEO Darren Kirsop-Frearson. Theprevious owner, or one of them, the principalwe all know and love, Ray Sanders, is goingto hang around a bit more but with a newrole.

Ray: Yes, I’m going to be here working withthe team and providing whatever input I canalong the way. So you haven’t seen the lastof me yet.

Ed: So does that mean it’s pretty much“business as usual” for the people who havebeen customers of Gencom in the past?

Ray: Absolutely. Obviously, Darren is thenew CEO, so that’s not my position anymore.Instead, I’ll be working in the businessdevelopment field and some other areas.But all of our key people – sales people,engineers and so on, are in place, and it’s business asusual. We will be keeping the brand and all the otherattributes that people know and trust Gencom for.

Ed: So Darren, if Gencom is going to continue prettymuch as it is, why would you buy it?

Darren: It’s a natural expansion for our BroadcastONE business. Broadcast ONE has been around forabout 3½ years as Broadcast ONE, but about eightyears prior to that as the Bridge Networks Australia.We’re very much an RF systems integration company,so it was a natural expansion for us to acquire Gencom.

Ed: So for those of us not in the transmission area,what do you mean by “RF”?

Darren: We build transmission systems – so webuild towers, antennas, combine them as transmitters,microwave links, satellite dishes, that sort of stuff.

Ed: So you’re in competition to Harris?

Darren: No, we represent Harris, we are Harris’biggest agent in Southeast Asia.

Ed: No guided missile systems?

Darren: No, remember that Harris is now no longerassociated with that “Harris” – that was HarrisBroadcast, HB as they call it now, so they’re nothing todo with Harris Defence anymore – that all split awaylast year.

Ed: But as systems integrators, you’re not just goingto sell people Harris, you’re providing solutions that fitthe customer?

Darren: Correct. We were looking at how to expandour business. Broadcast ONE is in Australia, and wehave offices in Manila in the Philippines, so it was anatural expansion for our business to look at where elsewe could grow. Using our existing customer base andthe knowledge of the industry that we’re already wellestablished in, it made sense to look for somethingdifferent. That was the opportunity that came up withGencom.

Ed: But Gencom’s been in Southeast Asia for quite anumber of years, so have they been competition to youin the past?

Darren: No, because Gencom has beenconcentrating on systems integrations in the studio –that’s what Gencom’s known for, whereas we have beenconcentrating on building RF. So if you look at thePhilippines and Vietnam for instance, a couple ofexamples recently where Broadcast ONE has builttowers and transmitter systems …

Ed: So this really does expand your portfolio?

Darren: It does, exactly. So the two companies fittogether perfectly, but as you touched on before, they

still have their own brands and their own identity andwe’re not “merging” the companies, we’re just workingtogether as a group and compliment each other’sexpertise.

Ed: Is your move in response to some of the largerequipment manufacturers expanding their influence intaking on systems integration where they didn’t before?

Darren: I think the manufacturers are becomingmore reliant on what companies like Gencom andBroadcast ONE have to offer.

Ed: How does this new arrangement fit with thesupply of the traditional hardware products thatGencom has sold – such as Cartoni, Anton/Bauer, JVC,because they have the agency within New Zealand, butonly within New Zealand for some of them?

Ray: Actually all three of those we do in Australia aswell, and Cartoni we do in Asia too.

Ed: So is this an area of expansion, because …?

Darren: Again I don’t think it’s one of those thingsthat will change in the short term at least, because thebusiness units, Gencom New Zealand, Gencom Australiaand the Singapore business, all have their ownagencies. Some are shared and some are not and someof that’s historical, so we don’t plan to come in and tryand make a sweeping change to all that. That willremain the status quo.

Ed: So we’re not going to see a new logo, a newname change?

Darren: Not at all. It’s pretty much “business asusual”. We’ve felt it’s very important to keep Ray verymuch part of the business, to be the face of theGencom business. Ray is very much going to bearound, you’ll still see him at trade shows andinteracting with customers and manufacturers alike, soRay’s here to stay.

Ed: I guess this takes a bit of pressure off you Ray?

Ray: Look, it’s certainly a change that I’m trying to getmy head around. It takes time to assimilate it, but Ithink it’s good for everyone.

Darren’s got lots of great skills he can bring to thebusiness, and going forward, I think that will beimportant for an entrepreneurial approach to whereGencom goes in the future.

The transmission end of the business is an area thatGencom has never been in. We have traditionally doneeverything in broadcasting up to doing the compressionhead end and some of the linking and so on, and that’sthe point at which Broadcast ONE takes over. That’stheir core business, so the two together can provide atruly end to end solution.

Darren and Ray.

Ross openGearfor Gencom

We are at Ross for Gencom and talkingto Brad Plant about openGear.

Ed: Brad, you asked me if I’m familiarwith openGear and I am. You’ve gotsomething that’s related to that to tellme?

Brad: Yes. DashBoard is ourcontrol system for openGear. When welaunched openGear six years ago, thiswas our first platform that actually had acomputerised configuration system.Before openGear, a lot of terminalequipment had card-edge controls, soyou’d be down on the rack on your handsand knees toggling switches on the frontof a card. Along came DashBoard andnow you could configure all these cardsfrom your office desk, from a PC, whichmade things very easy to do.

Ed: Or even a tablet?

Brad: Some tablets, yes. It’s Javabased, it will run on a Mac, Linux, or aWindows machine, and here at the show, we’ve got itrunning on a Windows surface, Microsoft’s small tablet,so it’s very easy to use, very easy to configure … butthis year DashBoard has really jumped leaps andbounds in what we can do. What you’re looking at hereis a basic configuration of an openGear card. So I’vegot a TreeView on my left, I can see my frames; I canexpand, I can see my cards, I can bring up aconfiguration window. Great for engineering statusmonitoring, and basic configuration. DashBoard 6which we’re launching this year, has a new featurecalled “PanelBuilder.” What this allows me to do is takeelements from the different cards and build a customGUI. I can do graphical navigation; I can bring indrawings and drop elements across a map or a flowdiagram …

Ed: Each card must have its own proprietary softwarethat’s been designed to run it, so are you actuallysharing software amongst the cards?

Brad: Well openGear is an open hardwareplatform, so there’s over 50 manufacturers in theindustry that are openGear partners.They get the protocol and when theydevelop the card, they put the GUI insidethe card. It’s a pretty simple XMLformat. So when DashBoard reaches outand talks to the card, the card says giveme a tab called “Config” and give me adropdown called “Output” or “Format”with an array of options and report thevalue back to me.

Ed: But are you saying that somebodyelse’s card can use somebody else’s GUI?

Brad: That’s right. DashBoard andopenGear is common across these 50manufacturers, so with one openGearframe you can plug in a Ross VideoopenGear card, a Blackmagic card, aCobalt card, a Wohler, EEG – the listgoes on and on.

Ed: Okay I was just on a slightly wrongtrack there – we’re talking about buildingup a set of preferences for a particularcard and using the information that’s inthere?

Brad: So let’s pretend we’ve got a GUI open fromslot 6, the QSP-8229. Let’s pretend that’s a Ross card.Slot 18, this other card, UDA – let’s pretend that’s aBlackmagic card. They’ve each got differentparameters that show up, that come from within eachof the cards, into the control system. WhatPanelBuilder allows me to do is select certainpreferences from those cards and just put them on acustom GUI. So if I have a frame synchroniser fromRoss Video that has video processing controls and videotiming controls, I may want to make a custom GUI thatonly brings the video processing controls in for anoperator because I don’t want them touching thehorizontal and vertical timing adjustments. Now I cancreate a custom GUI that brings in those controls frommultiple cards. So here’s an example of our mastercontrol.

Ed: But you’re not allowing cross-control of GUIs fromone card to control another card?

Brad: No, one card cannot control another …DashBoard controls everything. So if I look at our

Brad controls DashBoard which controls open Gear.

master control – and this is a quite intensive GUI, I’vegot lots of different options, lots of buttons, it’sdesigned to run mainly on a touchscreen and if I havefour of these cards, I would have to bring up fourdifferent GUIs and tab between them. WhatPanelBuilder allows me to do, is to create a custom GUIlike you see here, where I’ve brought certain elementsin from four different cards, and they’re all accessiblefrom one GUI now.

Now these are all Ross cards, but these could beparameters from a Ross card; these could beparameters from a Blackmagic card; and these could beparameters from a Cobalt card … and I’ve customised aGUI from my particular workflow, my application,instead of having to tab between all these differentcards. Not only does this work with 50 differentopenGear manufacturers, it works with all the otherproducts that work within DashBoard.

So Ross has integrated all of our products – XPressionGraphics – I’m able as a user to create a button and tieit into an XPression Graphics system. So not only can Icontrol a switcher right here ( which is an openGearcard ), I can also control our XPression Graphicssystem, which would normally be an entirely differentGUI, but now I can pull certain elements into a customGUI I’ve created. I can create a button to recall roboticcamera shots or control a cross point on a Carboniteswitcher.

Ed: You’d need a degree to run this surely?

Brad: You don’t need a PhD in computer science.

Ed: This is very much a Windows …?

Brad: It’s Java based – it will run on a Mac, Linuxor Windows machine. Now once I’ve got my twowindows side by side, I hit Control G to bring them intoEdit mode – and you’ll see the screen changes colour,Control G on the other side. Now I can pick and dragcomponents over. I can choose to include a parametername or not. So I’m going to bring in two audiocontrols – my left and right audio – let’s say I’m doing astereo broadcast. Now I can give them a label and callit “Channel One” to identify it. Now I might want tobring in a keyer button – maybe I’m making a quickpanel to bring in one keyer and to monitor audio and ifthe audio disappears, an operator can quickly bring akey on air.

Ed: Okay, so once you’ve built all this up, you justsave it as a template with a certain name and then canyou share this with other people?

Brad: You can. If there’s other people in thefacility that are using the same equipment, you canexport it and bring it into a new DashBoard client.DashBoard is a free software download from our, or anyopenGear partner’s website, so you can have as manyclient stations as you like. You can share these filesbetween them if you’re using the same equipment orcreate redundant control stations, at the cost of asimple PC.

Ed: Now just for an example, say somebody in theStates developed the perfect little … their own GUI forthis, is there any way of them sharing that with otherDashBoard communities around the world. Is thissomething that Ross encourages?

Brad: It is, and that’s what our community is,especially for graphics, graphic creation, and we plan toencourage that. The one thing is that each one ofthese, because they’re customised to the exactequipment that you have in workflow, you would reallyneed the exact same equipment that they’re using.Templates can be shared for sure and we launched thisas Beta right now. There’s still some refining going onto it, but the reason we wanted to launch it is to get

that feedback, because the limit is really that of yourimagination and we want to get feedback from ourusers and share this with each other, and how peopleintend to use it, because really each installation is goingto be slightly different and tailored to their exactproduction.

Ed: And that’s it, if you’ve got a rough template, youcan do those little fine tweaks yourself?

Brad: Exactly. Anybody within five minutes cansit down and they’re now running a production with avery advanced production and graphics system, butwith a learning curve of a couple of minutes. NZVN

Ross Robotics for GencomWith Ross Robotics we’ve got Miguel Declerck.

Ed: Miguel, you have a very cool looking roboticsystem here – tell us about it?

Miguel: Ross has two families of robotic systems.We have the classical robotic systems on a pedestal, afree rolling pedestal, which are the CamBot family andwe have the Furio family. The Furio family is a systemon a track, on rails. Now one of the advantages of asystem on a track is that you can do very smooth “onair” travellings, on air movements, which gives youmuch more dynamic News broadcasts for example. Theorigin of this system is more from entertainment andlet’s say 10 years ago, we built the Furio system mainlyfor music shows or entertainment, some talk shows andvery quickly people were interested to have these kindof systems in the Newsroom. One with the mostinteresting setup is the BBC W1 studios in London.

Ed: I’m sure that with a system on tracks, that itmust be cheaper for a start than a purely floor basedrobotic system, but also you don’t have to have such aperfectly flat clean smooth floor?

Miguel and Robot.

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Miguel: Exactly, that’s the point. It’s mainly thefact that you don’t need a perfectly flat floor … evenwith a perfectly flat floor a pedestal system will be ableto move off air to certain positions and then go on airand do some panning, tilting, zooming, but you will notuse a pedestal system to move on air around the floor.

That’s only really possible in a smooth way with a railsystem. And indeed with a rail system, your floor canbe anything as long as it’s rigid – you know like aconcrete floor.

Ed: So are you building the whole package, or areyou taking parts from other manufacturers here?

Miguel: We build everything in-house. Everythingfor both the Furio and the CamBots is built in-house;the software is developed in-house.

Ed: And the rails look particularly sturdy. They looklike extruded aluminium?

Miguel: That’s right. We buy extruded aluminiumand then cut it out in pieces so we can make any lengthor any radius or curvature that a customer wants.Typically in new studios, the set designer defines howthe track should look.

Ed: And are they small sections of track that you canclip together and change the direction, all that sort ofthing – like a model railway?

Miguel: Yes exactly – it’s like Lego or Meccano. It’slike you have typically 2 metre lengths of track, so evenif it’s straight or circle, it’s typically about 2 metres andyou connect them together with a special connection, soyou have a very smooth travelling.

Ed: And it’s all connected by cables?

Miguel: Yes, it’s all connected by cables. Now what

is very important to mention, is that everything is IP

based, it’s Internet based, so this means thatcontrolling the system, but also getting feedback for

virtual studios or augmented reality for tracking output

…

Ed: You can repeat those moves that worked

particularly well?

Miguel: Absolutely, you can repeat the moves over

time. You can programme a complex movement even

several minutes long; you can record that, you can

programme them with key frames that you drop on atimeline, a bit like a nonlinear video editor and then

execute those moves. That’s what it’s all about. NZVN

Ross Carbonite for GencomSpencer Preece tells us the developments with RossCarbonite.

Ed: Spencer, Carbonite – this has been around foryears and continues to develop?

Spencer: Yes that’s true, it was released at NAB2011 and we’ve shifted over 1200 units worldwide, soit’s been an absolutely fabulous success. Now we’vereleased a new Carbonite this year and the wholeconcept is very, very different. We’ve actually putCarbonite in a router, so if you can imagine you’ve got a144x144 router, we’ve actually combined that with theCarbonite frame and panel, so that gives you theflexibility to route in a number of sources into theCarbonite; but also you can imagine the situation wherea customer is looking for a separate router, a switcher,a glue – what we’re doing is combining all that into oneand giving you an amazing tight integration. So savingyou the time in wiring in your truck, it’s very, verypowerful. This has never been done before.

Ed: What if somebody’s just bought a Carbonitebefore this – are they able to upgrade it?

Spencer: Not currently, no. What we are introducingis a different concept. So a lot of our current customerswho have bought Carbonite have had an existing router,or bought a router …

Ed: So they bought the Carbonite for a reason to fit inwith their workflow. What you’re introducing now issomething that for a new customer it puts a whole lot ofproducts together in one?

Spencer: Correct.

Ed: So you’re not upsetting previous purchasers?

Spencer: I hope not.

Ed: Because that would be a bad thing?

Spencer: It would, that’s for sure. NZVN

Spencer from Ross with Carbonite.

Anton/Bauerfor Gencom

We have Sherry Fragomeni,

Brand Marketing Manager

from Anton/Bauer.

Ed: Sherry, Anton/Bauer

is obviously well known for

making batteries, but you’ve

branched out a little bit. As

part of the Vitec Group,

you’ve been able to share

some technology and you’ve

come up with something

new?

Sherry: We partnered

with our sister company,

Integrated Microwave

Technologies (IMT) and

developed the Gold

Spectrum™ Wireless Series,

an RF wireless kit that

utilises the 5.8 GHz

frequency band, without the

need for an FCC license. It

transmits a signal up to a

half a mile which is quite a

bit further than competitive products – they’re usually

about 250 feet. It’s also MPEG4 and MPEG2 auto

detectable; for a lot of systems, it’s either one or the

other, this does both. A lot of people are happy

because it will work with their current equipment.

Ed: Is this for recording video or just monitoring?

Sherry: Oh it’s for capturing live event coverage, so

it can be used in ENG applications, outdoor broadcast

scenarios and even in some production work.

Ed: So really the signal then has to be 100% all the

time otherwise you’re going to go back to cable. You

must be very confident that it’s going to work at the

distance you claim?

Sherry: We’re very confident. As a matter of fact,

we just had someone use it on a production, The

Incredible Mr. Goodwin, a TV show in England where a

magician was performing a stunt live. He was hanging

from the London Eye on a burning rope and the camera

crew was inside one of the cages. Obviously, they can’t

use tethered cables so they used our RF system and

successfully got the shots they were looking for. It was

the first time they used our system and they were very

pleased with the result.

Ed: And obviously it clips onto the Anton/Bauer plate?

Sherry: Yes. It securely mounts to the back of the

camera using the Anton/Bauer Gold Mount and each of

the components can be used with any of our batteries.

Ed: So it’s a complete system from Anton/Bauer?

Sherry: Absolutely, yes and it comes in a great

Pelican case with a Manfrotto arm to mount your

receiver.

Ed: Do you have your own monitor or are you using

someone else’s?

Sherry: We do have a monitor, the AB Direct VU.

It’s not part of the kit but you can buy it separately and

it’s a combination receiver and monitor. The screen is

in HD, high-resolution at 1200 NITs and it’s anti-glare,

so you can use it in the sun, perfect for ENG and

outdoor broadcast use. It’s also handheld and very

lightweight. It can receive up to 12 different cameras,

so directors in ENG or OB settings are completely

mobile with it and can walk around as needed.

Ed: And they can switch the camera view that they’re

getting from the front panel?

Sherry: Absolutely. Like I said, it’s great for sports

events. As a matter of fact, the New York Yankees are

using it for their pre-season, too.

Ed: So you could say that this receiver can be used to

connect to a monitor; you can connect the same

receiver to a recorder so you only need one, you can

record and view at the same time, or you could have

two receivers, one for viewing, one for recording?

Sherry: There is one HD SDI output from the receiver

so if you wanted to route this to a monitor and a

recorder you would need to loop the feed from one to

the other as if you were using a camera with an

external recorder.

The AB Direct VU would allow you to monitor the feed

and then send the output to an external recorder via

the HD SDI output on the unit.

Ed: So this is obviously not a videographer’s type kit,

this is something for a serious broadcaster?

Sherry: Yes, for now, that’s where we are, the

reason being that it’s long distance, half a mile, and the

fact that it auto detects MPEG4 and MPEG2. It’s not so

much because of the signal, it’s because of the

compression – that’s the newer technology.

It is going to be more expensive, but hopefully over

time, as technology advances, the pricing will come

down.

Ed: Well it’s Stage One?

Sherry: Absolutely. NZVN

Sherry is very happy to be photographed on the Anton/Bauer stand.

Dolby for SyntecFor Syntec we are at Dolby and we start withMontfort de Lattre.

Ed: Now we’re here today to talk about loudnessbecause this is something that is obviously verybig all around the world. In Australia-NewZealand, we don’t have a CALM Act like they do inthe States, but there’s general agreementamongst the broadcasters to stick to a standard ofloudness and Dolby has the technology to help inthis area?

Montfort: We have the knowhow, we have theexperience. We have been one of the firstcompanies who provided broadcast tools to enableloudness measurement, way in advance of theCALM Act. We made our first broadcast loudnessmeter nearly seven years ago, the LM100, andnow with the CALM Act happily we have been ableto propagate our technologies as we normally doin our partnered product, like Lyner, Krustige,Junger, Vola in regards monitoring. So you willfind now Dobly Loudness Technologies in most of thepartnered products as we have for encoder-decoderscurrently.

We’re going to start with two new products. The firstone is the DP600 which is used in the US and in Europefor loudness correction and estimation in file basedcontent. It’s a three rack unit that allow you to ingestyour content in most of the formats available in thebroadcast world – MXF, JXS, HDCAM and so on, toingest with the video, will demux the audio from the

video, take the audio and measure it. Depending onthe selection of what you’re trying to do, either we candirectly correct it to a certain level to ensure loudness ismaintained across a constant, or we can provide thespecific level. If it’s a “dog”, we can quarantine andgive you a way to be able to check your content orcorrect it.

One of the powerful things also about DP600 is that youcan automate your workflow. A lot of customers arecontent aggregators who receive promo content from a

Montfort from Dolby.

wide variety of partners. The problem is thatmost of them have different specs. They haveto provide all the content to a certain loudnessto their customer broadcaster.

Ed: I’m sure there are many aggregatorsaround who take in content from a widevariety of sources in both Australia and NewZealand and have to put that together into aplay-out arrangement. I guess also that theaudio levels as well as video levels, all sorts ofthings are all different and having the wholeprocess automated must be a big help to themrather than having to listen to everything thatcomes in?

Montfort: To give you an idea of how helpfulit is, one of our customers with three of ourunits, last year ran 200 million content promoads, short-term content let us be honest. Sowhen I say automated, you need to definewhat do you want to do. DP600 is a powerfultool, complex to use but powerful. Like I said, the mainfeature is loudness correction, but we also supporttranscoding, encoding and decoding from all Dolbyformats, Dolby E, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital …

Ed: One would expect that from a Dolby product?

Montfort: Yes, exactly as you mention, and we alsoprovide down mix and up mix technologies to allow youto get 5.1 content from your archives to your content.When you find your content, you fix it, ingest it, processit, output it to a shared folder. The only thing that youwill have to do is to load the new content in the sharedfolder; the rest is automated.

Ed: Now what happens to that original file – what sayyou don’t like the result of a particular file conversion, isthe original file still there so you can go back to it?

Montfort: Of course. You can delete, you canquarantine or you can have it stored. It’s your ownchoice. There is one interesting thing about loudnessthat in this tool is different. It is depending if you’reworking with Dolby content, with metadata, or ACcontent and MPEG 2 layer 2 audio. In the case of Dolbycontent, what we do is we decode theaudio, estimate the loudness and updatethe dial norm metadata value. But we don’tdecode and re-encode the same content. Ifyou go through AC and MPEG 2 layer 2,there will be no choice, it will have todecode the content and fix them, correctthe content and fix them, and then re-encode it. So the idea of using Dolby Digitalallows you to ensure that you don’t degradeyour audio quality for going throughencode, decode cycles.

Now to continue the story we have GaryEpstein from Dolby Laboratories.

Ed: Now Gary you’re the software manand you know all about Dolby MediaProducer?

Gary: I do.

Ed: I don’t know anything, so start fromscratch.

Gary: Okay, the Dolby Media Producersoftware applications are designed to workon a Mac and they take audio after they areproduced and mixed and meant for homeexhibition and process them into losslessaudio and into lossy audio which is to meetthe Blu-ray specification, for inclusion on aBlu-ray disc. It also does standard DVD,but the focus is more on higher quality discformats like Blu-ray.

Ed: So is this something that you would haveincorporated with a tool like Audition from Adobe, or isthis a standalone product?

Gary: Well let me give you an idea. It’s astandalone but once, for instance, the workflow mightbe work in Pro Tools, do your mix, finish your mix,finish your theatrical mix, then finish your home theatremix which might be a little bit different, take that audio,feed it to our encoder, it encodes the audio, all thecodecs necessary and then it goes to authoring.Typically, the professional authoring solutions areSony’s Blu-print and Dolby’s Scenarist. Those are thetwo top notch ones that can do all the features for Blu-ray, “all the features” being all different languages, andall the down mix scenarios like going from 5.1 to twochannel, all of that. So every possible feature isavailable as far as audio is concerned out of oursoftware, and there’s a multitude of applications here.There’s two versions of an encoder – there’s an encoderthat’s a standalone that works on one computer; there’san encoder that works with a server, so you have a fileserver and a client, multiple clients can be a multitude

Gary from Dolby.

of clients, can be a dozen or more, there’s no real limiton that. Then there’s the professional decoder thatlistens to your work after you’re done with it, in syncwith picture. There is a tool set to allow you to modifyan encoded audio file if you want to make somechanges without re-encoding; there’s a data rateestimator for the project manager, to be able to takethe audio before you’ve done any encoding work with it,and get an accurate estimation of how much space itwill take up on the disc and what the peak and theaverage data rates are, so that you can plan on howmany languages you can put on there, whether there’sa director’s commentary, how much you have tocompress the picture, all of those additional features;could you put a game on there. So, with your variablebit rate audio, like Dolby True HD, what it will takeaccurately, you can plan accordingly and tell yourcustomer ( who you’re working for ), “yes”, I can takesix languages, “yes”, I can take that game, I can fit itall on here, because I know how much my audio data isgoing to take up and I know that I don’t have tocompress my video too much to accommodate all ofthose other things. So aside from all of that, then thereis the quality and conformance tool; traditionally, onceyou’ve done an encode, you use our decoder, you’lllisten to the highest quality one which will be thelossless audio. This will automatically compare thelossy, the Dolby Digital and the lossless and make sureone is an accurate representation of the other, so youdon’t have to sit down there for two hours and listen toboth versions. You can spend your two hours listeningto one version; the other one it will guarantee is thesame quality and an accurate representation of the

other. So that’s a very important tool. Then there’salso what we call a branch point movie player. Whatthat does is it allows you to … you know what“branching” is in Blu-ray?

Ed: No.

Gary: It’s a feature that allows you to jumparound segments and the easiest way to comprehend itis let’s say you’ve got a movie that’s got some risquéscenes or some language you don’t like, you can say inthe menu play the child’s version of this and it will jumpover certain sections or replace them with alternatelanguage and alternate picture. So that’s whatbranching is.

Ed: I think we see that on the airline version ofmovies?

Gary: You see an alternate edited version of that,yes. So this will allow you to emulate what thosebranch points sound like. What does it sound like whenI jump from place to place? Have I chosen the rightpoint, or am I cutting a word in half? Does it makesense? So we have that tool as well. All of this stuff isin the suite. What we’re showing here today is arelease that we’re going to be doing at the end of Juneand probably most of the features that we’re showingwill be included, but we’re not guaranteeing all thesefeatures; they’re in alpha or beta state right now.We’re showing them to our customers and we’ll seewhat we actually deliver, but more than likely most ofthe things will be there. We’re getting good feedbackfrom our customers, because we build these tools forour customers; we don’t build them for us. We want toknow what our customers find useful. NZVN

K-Tek for Sound TechniquesAt the K-Tek booth, we have Stephen Buckland andBrenda Parker.

Ed: And it comes in one colour?

Brenda: It does come in black – but we are going tohave different colours for the different tensions of coil.So the lighter tension coil will be in grey; the highertension ones will be in black. Also, the clip has rubberaround it and that really holds the microphone in, soyou’re not going to lose the microphone; and it alsodoes help with some of the isolation as well.

Ed: And this whole design came from customerfeedback?

Brenda: We listened to our customers. They gaveus a list of what they wanted in the ultimate shockmount and we checked everything off the list and Ithink the Nautilus Suspension Mount covers all of it.

Ed: Oh. Right, but K-Tek is not all about microphonesuspension mounts – poles is really where K-Tekstarted and they are the strengths. We’ve got a kithere?

Brenda: Well, we first introduced the new BoompoleKit Bag at the beginning of this year. It’s a triangularshaped zipper bag that has like a hard shell on it. It’sabsolutely gorgeous, you can fit a boompole, amicrophone shock mount, windscreen; you can fitheadphones. You can buy this bag by itself or you canbuy it as a kit. So you get our most popular boompolein either carbon fibre or aluminium, with one of ourbeautiful new Nautilus Suspension Mounts, awindscreen – all within the new BLT-35 case at onefixed price. So you just need to get the microphoneand you’re good to go.

Ed: Is that a good thing Stephen?

Stephen: How easy is that as an affordable solutionfor all your sound equipment?

Ed: Now Brenda, we’re going to start not with a pole,but with a little curly thing?

Brenda: Well this little curly thing happens to be theK-Tek Nautilus Suspension Microphone Mount. It isabsolutely gorgeous because not only is it attractive,but it isolates your microphone from any handling noisebecause we have these special coils that hold themicrophone on an incredibly tough base. It’s incrediblylightweight, you can drop it on the ground and it’s notgoing to break …

Ed: Can you stand on it?

Brenda: You can stand on it – do you want to see?

Ed: ( Brenda stands on it ) Wow.

Brenda: The coil is so great you can actually likestretch them from one end to the other … yes, I know,it looks horrible but it didn’t break did it?

Ed: No, and it didn’t deform. I guess there’s abalance here between having it too stiff and having itflexible enough so that it does absorb those vibrations?

Brenda: Absolutely, and also every microphone ishandled differently. We have more than one tensioncoil; you can get coils that are a little thicker, that willbe a tighter tension; ones that have a looser tension.Also, one of the most valuable things about this mountis that it’s adjustable based on your microphone length.So you just snap it on this T-bar and you can move thecoils together and you can use it for a short shotgunmicrophone, or you can separate them and use it for alonger microphone. That way you don’t have to havemultiple mounts if you have multiple microphones.

Brenda doing exercises with the Nautilis mic mount.

Stephen has a case of … boom poles.

Ed: S o f o rthose people whoalready have thepoles and the bitsand pieces, theycan just get thebag?

Stephen: Theycan just get thebag, that’s right.The only thingthey need toconsider is howlong the pole is ini ts co l lapsedform, so it will fitin the case.

Ed: And I guesswith the develop-ments in carbonfibre, etc, it mightbe time to get anew pole any-way?

Stephen: It is always a good time to look at gettinganother pole, because one pole doesn’t necessarily fitall situations. NZVN

Beachtek for Sound TechniquesWe are at Beachtek and it’s called “the QuietConnection.” To tell us what they have is HarryKaufmann.

Ed: Now as far as I am concerned, this is a newproduct for NZ Video News Readers through SoundTechniques, but Harry you’ve been in business for 16years I believe?

Harry: Yes, we startedmaking adapters for cam-corders to allow you to hookup professional microphonesto any consumer typecamera – you get a muchhigher quality sound.

Ed: In those days ofcourse – well camcorders,consumer ones generallyhad just a phono and/orminijack inputs and all yourp r o f e s s i o n a l a u d i oequipment was three pinXLR or Canon connectors, soI guess you also had thatconnector conversion, butalso in the processing?

Harry: That’s correct,so we allowed the user tobuy a consumer camcorderthat had the same kind offeatures as the pro camerasdo, except for the audiocapabilities, so the inex-pensive adapters would giveyou the same capabilities asa much more expensive procamera.

Ed: And now, of course,with the DSLR craze, you’vegot a new market?

Stephen and Harry.

Harry: Yes, most of our market now has shifted toDSLR cameras, which have the same kind of problemsthat the consumer camcorders had, whereas they onlyhave mini plug inputs and we make the interface withthe XLRs to allow you to use professional mics on aDSLR camera.

Ed: But you go beyond that – I see quite a rangehere. You offer a small one and up to some quitesophisticated looking boxes?

Harry: Yes, we have very simple passive adaptersthat are ideal for hooking up a wireless microphone or amixing board, to a fully featured DXA-SLR Pro whichhas low noise preamps, view meters, limiters and a

headphone monitoring feature all built-in. So that’s ourmost popular adapter.

Ed: How many inputs on that?

Harry: All the adapters we have are two inputdevices, because all the DSLR cameras can record twochannels at a time and so we have a wide variety ofadapters and very simple passive devices to fullyfeatured active models. We even have a specialadapter for the Blackmagic cinema camera as well.

Ed: So really as a new model comes out, you create aversion that will accept those inputs?

Harry: Yes, we have the basic DSLR pro adapterwhich actually does work on virtually any DSLR camerathat has a mic jack. What’s unique about theBlackmagic camera is that it has quarter inch balancedinputs and we made a unique adapter just for thatcamera.

Ed: And Stephen?

Stephen: Well what Beachtek has always done isallowed you to control the individual audio channellevels recording to a camera that only has an 1/8”minijack mic input.

Ed: Are there any other uses for it – for a soundie forexample?

Stephen: Well it makes it very helpful if you’reobliged to be on a shoot with, say, a Canon 5D or thattype of camera – it makes it much easier for you to plugyour gear in.

Ed: There are still going to be limitations aren’t there,with a DSLR?

The following is a resolution comparison chart.

Standard definition 720 x 576 pixels 1x

High definition 1920 x 1080 pixels 5x

4K 4096 x 2160 pixels 21x

8K 7680 x 4320 pixels 80x

I’ve written about 8K from IBC a couple of times and

now the Americans get a taste of an 8K demon-

stration.

In case you missed the earlier NAB stories, 4K was

the buzz at NAB this year. Now 4K is demonstrably

four times the resolution of high definition while 8K is

four times the resolution of 4K. Even though the

marketing people try to suggest you could use it for

home, business or educational purposes, obviously

the real value in this is going to be in training facilities

and movie theatres. Some of the footage they

showed here demonstrated the value in Art History

education where the video images of a piece of work

by Raphael were shown in incredible detail that you’d

have difficulty seeing on any other television system.

So there’s definitely value in that, possibly even in the

medical training field. But the one demonstration that

caused the most “oooos” and “aaaahs” was footage

from the 2011 final launch of the space shuttle. They

shot this from three different angles and not only were

the pictures stunning, but the sound also. The 22.2

surround sound made you really feel the rumble as

that magnificent machine soared into space. The

amount of detail was such that even from a wide shot

you could see the little cone of burning gas coming

out of the rockets of the space shuttle itself. Quite

incredible.

Stephen: Yes, the limitations are going to be thequality of recording that the DSLR allows you. Butsome of the things that Beachtek adapters have doneover time, is override the automatic gain control, whichhas since been abandoned in most cameras. It givesyou some metering – some of the versions give youmetering, so the camera operator or the sound operatorcan see what the levels of audio actually are. One ofthe issues of plugging into the mic input on a prosumercamera has been that, if it’s a mic input, it’s poweredand if the connector moves, you get a scratchinesswhich the Beachtek adapter overcomes, because of theelectronics inside it. It allows you to phantom powermicrophones, which gives you a lot more versatility asto what microphones you can use, so you don’t have tohave a battery powered mic or only a dynamic mic.That’s probably my short list I think of things it helpsdo. We’ve been selling Beachtek adapters since wewere in our original premises in New North Road, whichis 10 years or more.

Ed: Now it’s just become more important with thenumber of DSLRs out there?

Stephen: Well it has become important, but therehave always been people who would buy a cameraprobably for cost, and then wonder why the audioquality is not so good but, if they do some research, orthey come and see us, we will say “well, this is the bestway to improve the audio quality.” Even the basicmodel of Beachtek adapter, the MCC-2, which is a new

model, allows you to plug a wireless mic, it’s got aconnector for a wireless receiver on one side and youcan plug, say, a Sennheiser MKE 400 into the other sideand you’ve immediately got a rig with two microphonesinto your camera and that maximises the portability andease of use.

The audio quality is only going to be as good as theweakest link in the chain, but the weakest link in thechain will not be the connection between the mic andthe camera. NZVN

SUPER HI-VISION comes to NAB

The carnival piece was from this February in Rio and

compared to the footage I saw last year from the

Sony F65, there was even more resolution. The 4K

from the Sony was brilliant … this was super brilliant

in terms of its resolution, colour and sound coming

from the carnival. I don’t think we’re going to see it

broadcast anytime soon, although they do talk about

a hybrid 8K system which sends out a compressed 8K

signal. I just don’t think the delivery mechanism’s

there, but in terms of specialist uses, it’s got to come.

It’s just that good.

Ed NZVN

Spectrum news updateThe Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has released a discussion paper UHFRadiomicrophones: Opportunities for future use on the licensing of radio microphones once the‘700 MHz’ block of frequencies has been auctioned off and analogue television switched off at theend of 2013 throughout New Zealand.

Submissions are invited by 25 June 2013. The document can be found here http://www.rsm.govt.nz/cms/policy-and-planning/consultation/uhf-radiomicophones-opportunities-for-future-use

The General User Licence (GUL) for radio microphones operating between 703 MHz and 806 MHzexpires in March 2015 and is unlikely to be renewed in any form since it will be used for 4G mobileservices. Small areas of spectrum at either end of this block may remain usable for low powereddevices.

What’s left for use of the remaining spectrum between 518 MHz and 698 MHz remains uncertain.In Auckland for example there is 80 MHz of non-contiguous spectrum left vacant at the momenthowever if Sky Network Television takes up its full entitlement to digital spectrum there may be only16 MHz left free for radio microphones to use. Sky doesn’t have to declare its intentions untilNovember 2013.

Each radio microphone needs about 1 MHz of space to function.

To reduce the diminishing spectrum, a bill before Parliament grants Maori Television themanagement rights to 16 MHz of spectrum from 606 – 622 MHz and use of this block is supposedto cease as soon as the legislation passes.

Wireless Users NZ updates its frequency allocation table as time allows on the websitewww.wunz.co.nz and will make a submission to the discussion document.

However the onus is on you, the users, to read the discussion document, make your ownsubmission, and try to understand how the radio environment will work from the end of 2013. Talkto your supplier and attend forthcoming Q&A sessions such as at the Pro Audio Showcase,Ellerslie Racecourse, Weds July 31st Thurs Aug 1st, 2013.

Stephen BucklandChairWireless Users NZ

The Winning Post, Ellerslie Events Centre, July 30 - August 1 • Ellerslie Racecourse

Finally. Editing Meets Effects.

PRODUCTION | POST | VISUAL EFFECTS

Autodesk Smoke is now available from DVT. Download our free product guide at www.dvt.co.nz

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Digital Video Technologies (NZ) Ltd | Phone: 09 525 0788 | Email: [email protected] | 45 Fairfax Avenue, Penrose, Aucklandwww.dvt.co.nz

NZVNJune2013

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