MAY 2013 Vol 191

It’s not often that I can state an overall theme to the annual NAB show, but this year it was obvious. In 2011 and 2012, itwas stereo ( 3D ) video for everything, but we all knew that this was never going to fly. In 2013 it was 4K and, even better,4K high frame rate. Cameras, editing, monitors, glue - every manufacturer had something that was “4K now” or “comingsoon” or wished that they did! However, just like with 3D, don’t rush in just yet unless you have an immediate use. Myadvice is that this is a technology that our industry will embrace, so keep 4K in your plans. Broadcasters still have standard

def in many of theirworkflows and mostpublic releases are stillSD, but HD is the newstandard. 4K may be afuture standard but,shot currently, givesanyone using it thatmuch more latitude forreframing, cameramoves in post, effectmanipulation andmore.

There were manyother cool tech-nologies not related to4K and you will findthem in these pagesand in our June issue.Do your research, goto local demos andvisit your dealers tosee and touch foryourselves - you’ll bebetter off if you do.

Now, on with thestories!

Ed.

NAB 2013 - “Where content comes to life” - Part One

Sony at NAB2013We are at the Sony stand with Nick Buchner.

Ed: Nick, 4K – this is what NAB2013 has been allabout. In the last couple of years, there was a lot of 3Dstereo but, having looked around I think I’ve seen one3D rig in the whole show; it’s now 4K and anybodywho’s not in 4K is going to miss the boat. Well Sony’sup at the bow, catching the wave?

Nick: Certainly 4K is a key theme for Sony at this show.Our overall NAB2013 theme is “Beyond Definition”which has a lot of different connotations, but 4K iscertainly a major component of that. In the DigitalCinematography area we’re showcasing our flagship F654K camera with its very latest software V3.0, due out inJuly, which continues to add more requested userfeatures and more flexibility to the camera. We’re alsoshowing our PMW-F55 and PMW-F5 which we launchedat the end of last year and started shipping just 6-8weeks ago. We’re very pleased to have just heard thatsomewhere close to 2,000 of these cameras will havebeen delivered worldwide by the end of April which isnot bad in such a short period. We also heard thatPanavision here in the United States has bought fiftyF55 cameras already, with a view to quite a largernumber than that. That’s interesting becausePanavision haven’t actually purchased many camerasfrom anyone in a while, and that shows a greatcommitment I believe and well-placed faith in this greatnew camera.

Ed: Looking around, I would say that the F55 is sortof in that “sweet spot” for many people. They’d love anF65, but it’s just not quite that it has the workflow thatthe F55 has and there are other cheaper options,simpler options, but in terms of what they can shoottoday, what they can do with that 4K signal, and that’snot using it as 4K, that doing the crop and the pan andscan or whatever, making good use of that 4K sensor,is where they want to go.

Nick: Well I think a couple of key points here – forstarters, if you’re looking at F55 versus F65, I mean theF55 is a very versatile camera and what we’re hearingis that it appeals at all levels, from episodic televisiondrama production or lower budget motion pictureproduction, right through to documentary production,even television current affairs. So the camera can beconfigured in many ways – from shoulder-mountedstyle such as we’re showing here with radio microphonereceivers attached etc, that would allow current affairsprogrammes for example, who are talking to us veryseriously about this camera, to shoot with the look theywant, but of course the camera can be built up into afull studio type configuration, with all the accessoriesneeded for drama production etc. The F65 of course isreally primarily there as a motion picture and televisiondrama tool, also for high-end commercials. The otherreally interesting thing about the F65 is that the first bigHollywood blockbusters to have been shot on thecamera are being released right now. Last weekendhere in the United States, Evil Dead was released.

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That’s the film that was shot in New Zealand last yearon two F65s rented from Imagezone in Auckland. I’mtold it topped the weekend box office takings … Ihaven’t seen the picture but I’ve seen some clips and itlooks amazing. Oblivion which is the next blockbustermovie starring Tom Cruise opens in New Zealand veryshortly – probably by the time you’re reading this. Thiswas also shot on the F65, by Claudio Miranda ASC whowas the Best Cinematography Oscar winner this year forLife of Pi. He spoke at Sony’s NAB press conferencewhere he said some very sensible things, probably themost important of which is that he’s not beholden toany camera – he picks the best camera for the job. Lifeof Pi was shot on the ALEXA and he was very happy –he should be, he won an Oscar for it! But afterextensive evaluation of a lot of camera systems, he andthe director chose F65 for Oblivion. Some of that filmwas shot in Iceland and talking with him here on thestand yesterday, he mentioned about the textures andthe colours in the lava and in the landscape and thegrey sky, where he was very impressed by the F65’sability to capture those nuances, with its extremelywide colour gamut and excellent dynamic range.

So even though Oblivion is actually being released inthe cinemas in 2K rather than 4K – the producers made

NAB 2013 -We were there,

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Nick and docile friend. Note the camera on Fido’s back.

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this decision due to cost and time taken to output in 4K,partly due to the heavy VFX workload – regardlessClaudio was very pleased that the camera deliveredexactly what he needed to create some stunningvisuals. He was telling me that his next major picturewhich is for Disney, he’s certainly very seriously lookingat the F65 as well. The third major picture shot on theF65 that’s shortly for release is After Earth – the WillSmith film directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It will bereleased in 4K and I think it’s due to hit New Zealandcinemas in June or July – I’ve seen some clips andtrailers and again, it will be a great showcase for thecamera. So this is a longwinded way of saying that Ithink from an F65 point of view …

Ed: It’s nailed the cinema market?

Nick: I wouldn’t be quite so brash as to say that….

Ed: Well I’m happy to say that because that’s whatI’ve heard from the real journalists here.

Nick: It’s undoubtedly the highest performance digitalcamera out there, delivering fantastic images for avariety of major projects. In Australia, we’ve got amajor television drama series called A Place to CallHome that was shot on the F65, that’s just about tostart airing. I think there will be a knock-on effect heretoo – these major releases will get people takinganother look at the F65 as well as looking at the F55.The F65 remains our flagship model with several uniqueadvantages but the F55 shares its very wide colourgamut. I think overall it’s a really exciting time.

Ed: It’s obvious that the exposure range is just really,really up there and that’s what the filmmakers are afterand I remember Claudio saying about the lava inIceland that he could actually see little bits of colour inthat lava that he’s never seen before, and it was real, itwasn’t artificial colour produced by anything?

Nick: He was capturing reality; he was reproducingwhat he could see. Given the F65 is the highestresolution digital cinematography camera out there withan unmatched sensor, you would expect it to!

Ed: But I would say that, in a good pair of hands, theF55 is going to very closely approach anything that theF65 could do?

Nick: The F65 remains our leading-edge technology formotion pictures but it will be up to the market to

determine how the F55 compares to it.There are some examples being screenedin this theatre here of material shot onan F55. It’s only early days, but itcertainly has masses of promise and isalready being used in the US to shootseveral television series in production atSony Studios and elsewhere. Variousprojects have also already commencedon the F55 in Australia. So it’s very earlydays, but the acceptance initially hasbeen great and I think it can only growfrom here.

Ed: With 4K being the buzz here, a keypart of that is 4K RAW. When you’relooking at that top end of recording,people want to know about RAW and Iguess the question comes that in manycameras you’ve got to have an off-boardrecorder. There is no camera that hasslots or has its own internal recordingsystem to record this really high level ofuncompressed material. How does Sonymanage this?

Nick: Well for starters, shooting RAWgives the postproduction team the most

possible information to work with. You mentioneduncompressed; RAW is not always uncompressed. Inthe case of our F series models, RAW is lightlycompressed at about 3.6 to 1. With the F65, the SR-R4recorder docks on the back of the camera and to allintents and purposes should stay there.

So technically it’s an external recorder but it’s dockedand it’s very much part of the camera, so that allowsyou to record 16-bit RAW in two different flavours –RAW and RAW Lite. It also allows you to record in HD,using our SStP ( or HDCAM-SR ) codec.

As I said, RAW is desirable to a lot of people because itgives that absolute highest image quality and flexibilityin post. Now if we move to talking about the F55 andthe F5, neither of these will ostensibly record RAW onboard; you require the dockable AXS-R5 RAW recorder.But if you’ve seen the recorder, it’s a very small neatunit that integrates straight onto the back of thecamera without any cables or additional power suppliesor anything. It’s about the size of a battery, so it fitsonto the camera and then you fit the battery on the

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back of the RAW recorder. So that unit will enable boththe F5 and the F55 to record 2K and 4K RAW.

Ed: Why wouldn’t you use the same one as you’vegot on the F65?

Nick: Well, a couple of reasons, (a) the SR-R4 is largerphysically and (b) with the F65 in RAW, consider theamount of information that is coming out of that 20megapixel 8K sensor, it’s massive! The camera canshoot at 120 frames per second in full RGB 4K. As aresult, there’s a very large amount of data and so theinterface between the camera and the docked recorderis in fact an optical link, to handle the volume of data tobe transferred.

Ed: It sounds like a money question here Nick?

Nick: Basically yes. In the case of the F5 and F55, youdon’t need such a high level recorder, not such aphysically large recorder, so they are different.

Ed: Now what I’ve also seen is that high frame rate isso important. When youhave material shot at 24p or25p and it’s not handledright, you get problems.But there is a roadmap forthe F5 and F55 for that – forhigh frame rates?

Nick: There absolutely is.The F65 shoots at up to 120frames per second now, butin the case of the F55 andF5 there is a clear plan … atthis stage we will beintroducing fixed high framerates in September this yearin V1.3, with the addition ofslow and quick control overthose in V1.4 in December,meaning adjustable framerates. Not ramping in shot,but the ability to select178fps or 115fps orwhatever precise frame rateis needed. I know there’s alot of people out there thatwould like it to be earlierthan that; we have spokenvery robustly with thedevelopment team, in factI’ve just come from ameeting with them, andthere will certainly will be some efforts made to see ifthe schedule can be brought forward even incrementallypossibly for certain frame rates. The unfortunate realityis, whilst customers would probably like the cameras todo everything straight away, they simply don’t. This isnot just a Sony thing, our competitors in this area alsoadd features step by step. I totally appreciate thatpeople may be a little disappointed that certain featuresaren’t there right now, but they will be there later in theyear. The development team have to prioritise whatthey’re doing and it comes down to weight of numbers.A feature that is really in demand for episodic televisiondrama production is the HDCAM-SR ( or SStP ) codec,which can record at 220 or 440 megabits per second.There is a huge push from Hollywood to implementSStP on these cameras and it’s scheduled for V1.2 inJuly at the moment. Consequently, that has been givena priority over some other things. I know everycustomer has their own priorities, but we’ve hadmeetings between our customers and the developmentteam here at NAB and they’ve listened and taken onboard that feedback, as they do with customers from all

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F55 in studio configuration. If I charged for this paper, I might afford one, hmmm!

over the world. They’ll have to then juggle thepriorities to try to suit the majority.

Ed: And that’s really the good thing about this level ofcamera these days – it’s not just a fixed package thatyou buy, and if something changes you’ve got to updatethe camera. This is a firmware update in manysituations?

Nick: Most of the time it’s firmware. Occasionallyhardware updates are necessary which then require avisit to the workshop, but yes, these are firmwareupdates we’re talking about and they’re free. Whilst itmay be disappointing that they’re coming a little later inthe year, they are not going to cost owners anything,they will come free and they should be downloadable bythe user and easily applied to the camera. Justbacktracking on a point … when we were talking aboutRAW, I should also point out that RAW recording ofcourse is not the only way to work in 4K on the F55,because the F55 ( and this is one of the things that

differentiates it from the F5 ) is also capable of on-board recording to the SxS card in 4K – not RAW – butusing the new XAVC codec. So for those interested inworking in 4K, not necessarily in RAW for whateverreason, there is the option to go 4K XAVC. Now just onRAW – here at NAB we’re showcasing our vendorpartners with onset daily management, nonlinearediting and colour grading systems and how theyhandle RAW. You can see there’s a robust level ofsupport not only for XAVC but also our RAW file.

One of the points that Claudio Miranda and his DIT AlexCarr made at the Sony press conference is that whensomething is new, people are naturally maybe a littleafraid of it. They don’t understand it, they haven’t usedit, they’ve been using a particular workflow and all of asudden along comes something new, but their point was“it was really easy to work with” so I think my messageis don’t be afraid of something new.

There is a lot of data coming out of these cameras;these RAW files can be quite large, the F65 produces alot of data but if you want to shoot at 120 frames per

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second at that kind of resolution, you’ve got toexpect that. Plan for it and it’s manageable.

Ed: But the thing is – and I like to get thisacross – that at the moment, people don’t needthat in most cases. They don’t need 4K files atthe end of it; they can work with compressedfiles because it’s in post that these things canbe manipulated to produce a better picture inthe current climate?

Nick: I think the key point I like to push is “4Kin is not always about 4K out”. Take the F65for example, which is being used solidly inAustralia for shooting TV drama. Generallythey’re not shooting RAW and they’re notshooting 4K; they’re shooting HD using SStPand yet the camera still delivers wonderfulpictures. They may choose to use 4K RAW forcertain shots where there needs to be someeffects work done or some stabilisation orpotential reframing but of course the finalproduct will be HD. The same with the F55 andthe F5 as things develop. I was talking to acommercial director from LA here yesterday, heshoots in 4K but of course his ads are finishedin HD. Why does he do that? Because it giveshim the ability to stabilise the picture if there’sany unstable shots, a wobble or whatever, and also toreframe. A 4K canvas gives you the ability toessentially zoom into a quarter of that frame and stillpull out usable HD content. So the ability to reframe,whether it’s because an actor didn’t do the right thingor a boom dropped into shot or they caught a light orwhatever – that’s important to him as a commercialdirector, but he’s certainly not producing 4K. So there’sother reasons to work with 4K cameras and takeadvantage of the extra resolution available.

Ed: It’s what people have been able to do with stillphotography for quite a while and now it’s reallyavailable in the television area?

Nick: Well yes, the principle of cropping a print in adarkroom is not a whole lot different to cropping a 4Kimage down to HD or 2K.

Ed: Okay, just showing the commitment to the F55,we’ve already got Panavision making whole lots of railsand bits and pieces and putting their lenses on it, butthere’s already an underwater housing?

Nick: Already Gates have got an underwater housingthat fits the F5 and F55. Aside from Panavision’sefforts, other companies have already come up withadaption kits for the cameras – people like SolidCamera, MovCam and others, so it’s just a greatdemonstration of the expectation for these cameras.

Ed: And of course all the other accessory makers justwith rails and the handholding things, they’re all here.And what’s this Prime Awards Finalist – Sony NEX-FS700?

Nick: Yes, the FS700 is a finalist in the Studio DailyPrime Awards here at NAB.

Ed: What about other applications for the F55?

Nick: Of course digital cinematography’s one thing, butwe’re at the dawn of a need for 4K solutions for livebroadcasting. So whilst we’re a little way off livebroadcasting in 4K in Australia and New Zealand yet,we are showing a system camera adapter kit for theF55 that allows the camera to be connected by SMPTEfibre back to a van with full control, return video, tally,intercom facilities etc.

There is a 4K OB van currently being built by us inLondon for Telegenic which will be used to provide 4Kcoverage of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil next year.This is a great example of how we can take thatfantastic camera as a base, provide a live 4K outputand, through this adapter kit, basically turn it into asystem camera, because I think it will be a little timebefore we see dedicated 4K system cameras, given thatwe are at the start of that journey.

Nick continues the Sony story in June.

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Underwater housing for F5 or F55.

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Steadicam for A2ZSteadicam is distributed by Tiffen

through A2Z and here is Brett

Smith with the latest.

Ed: They seem to be getting

smaller and smaller Brett?

Brett: The application for

Steadicam has moved, not just

with the size of cameras, but with

the types of markets where

Steadicam’s used. It started as

feature film, 35mm, it was high

end, it was expensive, it was the

only kid in town. Things change …

it’s not just that we have

competition, but we have GoPro

right up to 3D. You still need the

full featured $65,000 rigs, but

you’ve also got a lot of guys doing

street work with GoPro, but still

looking for a professional image

and there’s still no way you can

get a stabilised shot without

compromise unless you use a

stabiliser.

We’d like to think Steadicam does the best of thestabilisers compared to electronic and any other wayyou do it, it still offers you the best … like doing in-camera filters. You can edit whatever later, as long asyou get the shot the right way.

Ed: It’s basic physics. Your Steadicam is operating on

putting the centre of balance of the camera actually

below the camera itself, which means that your camera

stays in one position above it?

Brett: Correct. There’s lots of Newtonian laws

that are in a place like mass acceleration, force, action /

reaction – all of those.

Ed: Not to forget inertia?

Brett: Inertia of course. Inertia, momentum and

mass. The two areas of stabilisation are handheld and

vest and arm.

Now there’s quite a difference in what that means.

Both of them operate with a gimbal, as in a rotational

gimbal where there is a single point where you are

contacting, and the gimbal and the camera plate are

independent. In a handheld item that grip – the grip

goes straight to the gimbal; in an arm and vest system,

you use what we call an iso-elastic spring arm which

separates any movement in your body from the

Steadicam stabiliser sled. There’s an application for

both – small cameras, small loads, tend to just use a

handheld system. The latest system, the Curve that

we’ve brought out, is not much bigger than a GoPro on

a mount, and the idea of it is it has a gimbal but it also

has a lock-off so that it can be used as a hand mount,

because a lot of people just want something to hold

onto the GoPro body. It doesn’t actually have a natural

grip like a DSLR camera. So it’s either a firm grip or

you quickly release and in a split second it becomes a

gimbal stabilised handheld Steadicam. Beautiful

smooth shots. That, at the moment, is designed just

for the GoPro, and that’s called the Curve. The

Smoothie and the Merlin are two handheld devices that

have been around for quite a while for iPhone, GoPro,

Drift, iPod – all those small camera-phone, smartphone,

multi-application, all get more adjustment on our

stabilisers and more precision control of the

counterweight than any other type of simple system.

So Newton’s principles, Steadicam’s quality and thinking

and patents applied to a compact system.

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Brett and man in full Steadicam kit.

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Ed: So on the Smoothie, you seem to have got two

red knobs here – are they the drag?

Brett: No. That’s actually forward and aft

balance. 90% of your balance is based in the mount, so

for a GoPro Hero, we have a mount that fits it, so when

you put it on it’s plug and play, except for about 5%

adjustment. That just makes sure once you’ve gone

fore and aft, side by side with those two red knobs, that

you have the perfect centre of gravity between your

camera and your counterweight at the base. So it’s a

fine control, fine tune.

Ed: So if you don’t tune it properly, everything’s on

an angle?

Brett: You just can’t compensate. The body can’t

kind of do a 45 degree …

Ed: And the big ones – there’s obviously a lot of

attention with the upcoming seminars for Steadicam

operators in New Zealand and Asia-Pacific?

Brett: Yes, but it’s not just camera operators who

aren’t quite familiar with new techniques in the features

of new Steadicam stabilisers, it’s also producers and

directors who aren’t quite sure what beyond staircases

and running a Steadicam shot’s used for. And you

know, like I do, that education is something you can’t

ram down someone’s throat. Some people are

employed because everyone assumes they know it, so

we’re trying to subtly influence camera operators,

producers and directors into realising that there’s a little

more to Steadicam, where it’s used, how it’s used and

when it’s used than people imagined 20 years ago. It’s

like an upgrade in terms of thinking, and we’ve been

successful in the workshops in Malaysia and Australia

and now we’re bringing a high end workshop – so it is

for television, feature film, commercial operators, as

well as the wedding guys. The application, the

techniques, the setups are all the same; the skills are

now based a little less on feature film training, because

a lot of these guys won’t work on feature films. Most of

them will work still maybe single camera for television

commercials, but now multi camera reality television

Dancing with the Stars, sport sideline … they’re all multi

camera headset. Our training in New Zealand with

Rebecca Wilson-Jennings is going to now focus on

making this much more suitable for the real world of

where Steadicam is used, and that’s in television, it’s in

wedding, it’s in corporate, it’s in where a flexible mount

is required, or a versatile mount.

Ed: Can I get some teasers by going on the websiteand seeing a little bit more about the content of theseworkshops?

Brett: Yes you can, at <flysteadicam.com> or

<steadicamworkshops.com> there’s plenty of

information about what’s in the workshop and we’ve got

some good video clips and You Tube clips around and

some Facebook groups at the workshops in Australia

and Malaysia, which have shown what the guys got out

of it and what they’re doing since. And this is what

we’re trying to do – it’s this circle of connecting training

directly back to employability.

Ed: Because it’s a very sophisticated tool isn’t it? It’snot just something you can clip on your body and put acamera on it and off you go, there’s a lot of setting upand I guess a lot of skill in operating one correctly, notonly to get the good shot, but also to avoid ending up ina brace in a hospital bed somewhere?

Brett: They are the two aspects that training

addresses … one of them is anyone can do a 90% shot

on the Steadicam and that is put on a vest, plumb it up,

get someone to set it up for you and go running. And

you are going to pull off a shot that’s better than a

shaky handheld. But no director will ever use it

because the horizon will drift. The training brings you

into just those aspects of technique and posture to

operate at that professional level; of course you can’t

beat experience, but it sets you on the path as to what

techniques with your feet, twist turning and how you’re

doing switches and things round corners and through

doorways that we teach that you take with you to pull

off professional shots – and also to help your back last

for a lifetime, because a lot of our operators in their

40s, 50s and 60s, once they learn posture ( which we

teach on day one of the course ) they realise it’s not the

weight of the rig they’re holding, it’s really their posture

that is the biggest limiting factor.

Often some of the younger or the smaller guys when

they start the workshop, they grab the 10 kilogram

capacity zephyr; by day three, you can’t get the 25

kilogram Ultra2 out of their hands. Now this thing is

three times the size … it’s sometimes bigger than the

guys who operate it. Day one they don’t think they’ve

got the strength to operate it; day three they realise it’s

posture, balance and position of your rig. And so those

Page 10

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glean. You can be told, but at our workshop inWellington, you get the three instructors we’ve got thathave all done gold workshops with Garett to grab you,twist your body round, tell you what you’re doing wrongand right and drum it into you over three days, you’regoing to come back knowing whether it’s for you orwhat it’s about.

And so that’s how important the training has becomefor us. It’s getting people to realise it isn’t as complex

as it looks once you understand what it’s there to do

and how your body helps you rather than fights against

it. We watch guys fight with Steadicam all the time and

it’s painful to see. You watch a guy that’s natural, and

it becomes one with him.

That sounds a bit Zen, but that’s how it looks.

Ed: Well that’s how you are Brett.

Brett: A Zen kind of guy. NZVN

Page 11

SWIT for A2ZWe are with David Epstein at SWIT.

Ed: David, SWIT batteries and more?

David: SWIT have released somenew products. The first is a 9 inchmonitor with a great resolution and itlooks wonderful. We’ve got a 1280 x800 resolution screen with inputs ofHDMI and HD-SDI with waveformmonitor, vectorscope and frankly thewarmest pictures we’ve seen. The nextnew product, the S-4901/4902 Wirelesstransmission system, is for transmittingHD images from ENG cameras to fieldmonitors. Presently getting signals fromA to B has always been tricky. Onemethod is the good traditional cable.SWIT this year have developed awireless HD transmission system. This isa V-Lock system which simply plugs ontothe back of the V-lock plate of thecamera and sends a signal across theairwaves to a receiver which can just beplugged onto the back of a monitor. It’san uncompressed 3G HD-SDI signal that gets sent andit has less than one millisecond latency. It’s very quick,lightweight, and compact and has a very lower powerdraw.

Ed: We’re actually seeing it at the moment, becauseAlain is acting up in front of the camera and waving hishands around and I don’t notice any delay?

David: Yes the proof of the pudding is in thetesting and this certainlylooks good …

Ed: Are you calling Alain apudding?

David: No sir, I’m not.Another couple of newproducts that have comeinto the marketplace are anew line of splittablebatteries. Airline regulationsare getting stricter andstricter and so SWIT hasdecided to add to theirrange. They have added anadditional two splittablebatteries. One is called theS-8132 and the other is theS-8192. Both these aregood for airline regulationand they are 184 Watts and126 Watts, so that’s new tothe range.

Another new battery that’sin the range is a ratherclever battery for the verypopular Sony EX1 and EX3and the newer PMW-100 and200 cameras.

David interviews himself. “I get less abuse this way” he says.

Alain waving to the camera - in sync!

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This particular battery not only gives you 12 Volts out,it also gives you USB signal out, which means you cancharge your iPhone or GO-PRO, etc through your USBport. This means while you’re on shoot, if you’rerunning a bit low on power on your USB chargeableproducts, you can power any USB device with thatbattery.

Another feature on those batteries is the fact that it hasthe Anton Bauer PowerTap, so you’ve got a battery that

will power the camera without a cable ( because theoriginal SWIT batteries used to have a Powerpole plugthat you had to plug into the DC input of the EX1 andEX3. and that is no longer the case.) This new batterysimply plugs onto the camera, it powers the camera, itgives you DC of 12 Volt out as well as USB out.

Ed: So you can power that SWIT light on the front?

David: Absolutely. And it also displays theremaining power in the viewfinder.

Another product we’d like to announce is a new EFPSystem which is a cost effective solution to build up afield studio with ENG cameras, transmission cables andcamera controllers. We can turn say any Panasonic orSony camera into a studio camera chain.

We take the SDI or HDMI signal out of the camera and

we can run it through fibre or coaxial cable from the

camera to the base station, so SWIT have developed a

base station with remote control panels.

You can get up to 16 channels, so you can have 16

cameras as well as intercom audio, so really a full

studio upgrade in both portable and rack mounted

systems. Another feature of this system is that the

monitor on top of the camera will display a picture in

picture. With this system we can return video back

from the base station from your mixing desk and send a

signal back to the monitor on the camera for a picture

in picture display, so you can see what’s on air. In

summary, it’s a universally compatible camera control-

ler triple broadcast EFP system for ENG cameras. NZVN

Page 12

Miller for A2ZWe are at Miller with Paul Maroni and David Epstein

from A2Z.

Ed: Paul, you’re a familiar face, but a different badge

and now you know all about Miller, you’re Australian, so

no holds barred. Watcha got?

Paul: Nice to see you too. What we have here is

the Miller SOLO Tripod System – SOLO tripod, threelegs, no spreader and an automatic leg locking system

here with three positions.

Ed: But this has been around for a long time Paul?

Paul: Correct it has, and that’s why I was

describing it, because you know all about it and they’re

extremely popular.

Ed: I know, I know.

Paul: We currently have a rotary locking system

where, with about half a turn, it unlocks and then theleg drops, okay. Now with this new Rapid Lock system,

we’re using a multithread technology, which means that

with a quarter of a turn it will actually do the same

travel as if you were doing half a turn. So it’s twice as

quick. So with a single hand I could just move 30%

and totally extend the tripod leg. Now that’s really

important.

Ed: That’s a simple little thing, but very sensible.

Paul: Quarter, quarter, quarter, it is locked. Soless wrist action, speedier deployment and speed of

packing up, altogether, single hand, quarter turn, pack

it up, take it home ready for the next shot.

Ed: I know these have been very popular with people

as a second tripod, because they want to go travelling.

They can use these legs and their head, put them in a

flight bag and they’re on the plane?

Paul: Yes, that means they’re minus aboveground spreader and so a lightweight portable rigperfect for travel.

Paul says “Wow, the SOLO cansupport a payload of one David.”

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Ed: And it’s very tall?

Paul: Very tall, also it gets down low, like a Hi-Hat so you can actually shoot right on the ground withthe SOLO tripods, without having to have an additionalHi-Hat in your travel case. Just one lightweight carbonfibre rig, which you can mount on your back if requiredand away you go.

Ed: But I’m sure you’ve got backpacks that these willclip onto?

Paul: We do.

Ed: Now I would have thought that this would besomething that you would buy in addition to yourstandard tripod and I’m sure that happens, but Davidyou’re telling me that people buy this as their onlytripod?

David: It’s a mixture of the two really. A lot ofguys find that the ease of use and the lightweightcharacteristics of the tripod make it wonderful just touse in an everyday environment.

Ed: And it’s perfectly stable, even with a mediumsized camera?

David: I’ve swung underneath these, it willactually hold my full body weight if I hang underneaththis, so it’s a very, very strong locking system.

Ed: Now Paul, Miller’s also famous for heads andthere is a particularly large head – 150mm whichobviously wouldn’t fit on a SOLO so you need a decentsort of set of legs on it, but what’s this one?

Paul: This a Skyline 70, recently released and Ithink first started shipping last September, payloadfrom 4½ kilos, right up to 38.5 kg’s …

Ed: What’s 38 kilos these days?

Paul: It’s more than what you need for mostcameras.

Ed: I think so, but anyway …?

Paul: So it can handle pretty heavy loads, as wellas having the ability to go down to 4½ kilos which is abest in class for this head ( or even as a system ),especially for the price. At the back, we’ve got all rearmounted controls, illuminated, rotary selectable buttonsfor counterbalance 8 positions, pan tilt drag 8 positionsof each, locking knob at the front here.

Ed: It’s good that they’re all at the back – I know thatthis is an issue with heads that you’re not quite surewhich knob turns what and they’re all in different placesand you’ve got to remember where they are. But theseare all here at the back facing you and it’s even got alabel?

Paul: This is something that we learnt from ourArrow system, where all of our customers loved the factthat all of the controls were at the rear of the head.Similar to a camera – you look at all your controls on acamera, all the buttons that you need to access withintercom, etc are on the back. A similar sort of thingwith your head. You can interchange anything on therun, it’s there and it’s illuminated.

With the Skyline system, one thing that was recognisedwith a payload of 38 kilos, was that some people maywant to put this onto a flat base tripod, like the oldheavy duty Ronford-Baker Mitchell Mount type tripods.So what we’ve done is we’ve developed this flat baseadapter. It directly adapts to the base of the Skyline70; three screws retain it in place, extremely solid.What you see here is a standard Mitchell flat base andthe head itself adapts directly to it.

Ed: But it’s a Mitchell in name only, it’s actually madeby Miller?

Paul: Well we’re making the adapter, the baseitself was developed by Mitchell and it’s been used bymany other manufacturers. It’s just like an industrystandard for the film industry for the tripods – O’Connorheads and things like that attached through a Mitchellsystem.

Ed: Okay, so the actual base, the legs and thespreader and all that bit down the bottom, is Ronford-Baker and you do this because that’s what the filmindustry wants?

Paul: The film industry loves their Ronford-Bakersticks with rotary knobs to lock them off.

Ed: And the redesigned plate?

Paul: Well here is a bit of a sneak preview of ourprototype design of the direct attachment of the ARRIBridge Plate.

On most heads, you have to use a wedge or an adapterplate, to adapt the ARRI Bridge Plate to your tripodhead, so we’ve developed a side loading system, with adual click design; single click you can actually drop theplate directly in and slide it to position and balance itand second click locks it off very securely – and self-adjusting.

So this is the basis for our new cine style head. It’sbeing previewed here at NAB, getting some goodcustomer feedback.

Ed: So this sort of plate is an industry standard, it’snot just for an ARRI camera?

Paul: Correct. The ARRI Bridge Plate would thenmount to rails and to everything else ARRI so you couldactually put a Sony F65 on top, an F55, your ARRIALEXA, etc, etc on top of this. Other manufacturersmanufacture the same plate – Element Technica andChrosziel actually have one as well, so we’re making ahead that will adapt to this industry standard plate. NZVN

Page 14

The quick release plate in action.

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Panasonic for A2ZFor A2Z, David, Alain and Ivisited the Panasonic stand.

Ed: David, we’re at thePanasonic stand for A2Zbecause you’re big sellers ofPanasonic, along with otherbrands?

David: Absolutely andwe’ve got two new camerasand some new technologiesin the P2 card world. Thefirst is Panasonic’s new 4Kcamera that is currentlyhoused in a Perspex Box andis the size of a small handheld camera. Panasonic areshowing that their 4Kcamera is in developmentand we will be watching itsprogress with interest.

The second new camera indevelopment is very similarin size to the popularHPX250 camera. There isno model number for thisyet, however Panasonic are developing an AVC UltraHandheld Camcorder. It will be the first of thehandhelds with two Micro P2 slots as well as two fullsized P2 card slots …

Ed: Simultaneous recording?

David: You can do simultaneous recording on onelot or the other, so you can do Micro P2 by 2 or P2 by 2– you can’t do one of each unfortunately. That wouldbe really cool, but we can’t, we can do one or the other.So we’ve got simultaneous recording on this one now aswe have on the larger cameras – it will be the firsthandheld that will feature proxies on it. We’ve neverhad proxies on a handheld camera before, so this willbe the first and it will have the wireless networkingfeature and the wireless proxy upgrades and updatesand all that sort of thing that the larger ones have also.

Ed: That seems to be something that’s become moreand more important, having that WiFi capability,especially now with 4G, there’s a lot of 4G in Australiatoo?

David: It’s a feature that we’ve had for a few yearsnow, but it’s still very much underutilised. The peoplewho use it absolutely love it, they wouldn’t live without

it. Many people still think it’s a bit of a gimmick, but itcan be a very practical powerful tool.

Ed: And up until now, it’s been that you have to have

a third party machine connected to your camera to

enable you to distribute via the WiFi?

David: Correct. I mean the idea with this is the

WiFi needs something easy to connect up to – the iPad,

iPod, almost anything. If it’s not easy, it’s not going to

be used.

Ed: On the recording streams, if you’ve got two micro

P2 cards, are you able to record two different codecs, in

other words AVC-ULTRA on one and on the other one a

lower res proxy?

David: Yes the whole purpose of proxies is that

they are recorded simultaneously with the Hi-Res

image. I know on the larger cameras, like the 5000

and the 600 yes you can record two different codecs on

a card. I would assume you can on the handheld, but

really that’s all the details we’ve got released at the

moment. As far as I’m aware, we’re probably targeting

that for early next year, so the details should come out

in the following months.

Page 15

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Ed: It’s an early release and that’s whyanyone interested can come in and talkto you at A2Z isn’t it David?

David: That’s the one. Now, there’salso a new card technology which weneed to discuss and Alain is going to talkabout that now.

Alain: Okay, the new Micro P2cards are simply an SD sized P2 card.So in terms of the stream compatibilityand I guess the data integrity, they’reexactly the same as a full sized P2 card,except they’re faster. They’re enabledfor the AVC-Intra 200 codec, so they’re200 megabits recording versus the fullsized cards at 100 megabit. They’ve alsogot a faster offload at 2 gigabits a second versus 1.2 onthe larger ones. So they will cope with the higher bitrate stream and they’re also 1.7 times faster to offload.

Ed: Now I guess having two large P2 slots in acamera, especially a small size camera, is somethingyou would want to move away from, especially knowingthat the Micro will take the place?

Alain: Being that P2’s been going for nine oddyears now, there’s obviously a well established userbase. There is a network client in Australia with over2,000 cards, so if we were to pitch to them an ENGcamcorder without that full sized card, Panasonic wouldbe in a lot of trouble. The Micro card does in the futuregive us the capability to produce a very small truehandheld camera, a P2 camera with P2 format that justtakes the Micro card, but really our intention goingforward is not to drop the full sized card. The otherreason we won’t do that is because with ENG customersthere’s a lot of card exchange from journos to soundies– the cards are going back and forth. The little Microcards are very, very small; if they go in a jeans pocket,

they can easily be lost. That’s the only downside thatsome of our clients have cited with the Micro cards.

Ed: But it’s a moving target I guess?

Alain: Oh absolutely. I mean there’s a lot ofpluses there – they’re cheap, they’re faster, they’ve got

the little QR code on them for identification … there’s so

many good things about them, but like everything there

are always some downsides for some users.

Ed: Now Alain, there’s a new Panasonic codec that’s

out?

Alain: Yes there’s actually quite a few new

Panasonic codecs that are out, but one that’s quiteimportant to us is called AVC-LongG 25. What this

means is that you can record 10 bit 4:2:2 material at a

much lower data rate of 25 megabits per second and

maintain quality. This will then allow you to in fact

quadruple the space you get on a 32 and 64 gig card,

and on the 64 gig micro P2 card you’re going to get

approximately 340 minutes of broadcast quality

material. Nice. NZVN

Page 16

Alain checking out the Panasonic 4K camera.

One of my highlights of this year’s show was a pressbriefing by Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak. He is now a

Steve Wozniak presents for Fusion-io

chief scientist at Fusion-io who make a very neatapplication acceleration card.

The card has beenintegrated with the HP Zworkstations to allow sus-tained performance inmultithreaded applications.

The Fusion-ioFX cardenables artists to work on 2,4 and 5K content inter-actively, in full resolution.

As part of the press goodie-bag ( yes, there are perks!)I got a copy of Steve’s book“iWoz – computer geek tocult icon ISBN 978-0-393-33043-4.

It is an easy read – thoughin a very egotisticalstyle – of a fascinatingstory.

My “book of the month.”

Ed

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Atomos for ProtelWe are at Atomos with Steve Wise, for

Protel with Glenn Miers.

Ed: Steve, this is a company that has

been producing off-board recorders for

quite some years now and every sixmonths or so we get a new iteration,

some new improvement. Obviously, you

are meeting the market and this NAB is

no exception, there’s been a big

improvement to the Samurai I

understand?

Steve: Yes – well it’s actually a new

product altogether. We have two new

products and a product modification for aspecific reason which I’ll explain. The

first one is the Samurai Blade

introduction. Samurai Blade is a new

Samurai with a new screen and full sized

BNC connectors. Feedback from our

Samurai users was that they loved the

product, but they didn’t like the mini

BNCs and they wanted a better screen.

Ed: So does that mean the box is now

a bigger physical size?

Steve: It’s slightly deeper and it’s

slightly longer, yes. So the form factor is

to fit a Super IPS 1280x720 screen.

Because we have a better screen, we can

do more with it. So, for example, with

this we’ll have waveform monitor and we’ll have

vectorscope and luma RGB parade. Also, I think nowyou can adjust the contrast in the gamma. So these

are all features that were requested from existing users.

Alongside that, we’ve kind of reorganised the pricing.

Originally, ( this is US dollars now ), prior to the show,

Samurai in its existing version was US$1595 and Ninja-

2 was US$995. What we’ve done, we’ve introduced

Samurai Blade at US$1295 and then we’ve reduced the

price of Samurai to US$995 and reduced the price of

the Ninja to US$695. I’ll explain a little bit more about

the Ninja in a second … so that’s really realigning the

field recorders. We’ve also got the Ronin, introduced at

IBC in Europe last year, which is kind of a rack

mountable Samurai for studio and live production and

that’s US$1995, so that’s really catering for a different

more broadcast/studio oriented market, so that’s fullsized BNCs and balanced XLR.

Ed: I guess you have to be pricesensitive because, not only do youhave competition from othermanufacturers of off-boardrecorders, but also now thecamera manufacturers are comingout with better on-board recordingcapabilities?

Steve: Yes, true … not neces-sarily with the manufacturers wework with. One of the keyelements I think with Atomos isthat we work very closely with theJapanese camera manufacturerswho are impressed with ourknowledge and not so interested inputting recorders in their cameras.I don’t know whether you knowour CEO Jeremy, he’s fluent inJapanese and part of his remit isthat every quarter, he goes toJapan and visits Panasonic, Sony,JVC, Canon and Nikon, rattlingcages. We also have competitionfrom the more traditional fieldrecorders, so people likeConvergent Design introducing

Page 18

Steve, my preference, Glenn.

How many can you fit on one camera?

Page

new things, so we have to be on the ball. I think alsowith the new pricing, it does now go on to anotherproduct introduction that we have, which is another twoConnect products. So we have essentially two productlines – one is field recorders or portable recorders; theother one is converter products. So at the back end oflast year we started shipping Connect. Connect is abattery powered HDMI to HD-SDI converter, or viceversa – there’s two products so there’s Connect H2Sand Connect S2H.

Ed: Why can’t you have one product that goes bothways?

Steve: That’s a good question ...

Glenn: I would imagine it’s a factor of pricing.Providing conversion in both directions would make fora more expensive product perhaps?

Ed: Quite possibly why there are really no smallconverters that go both ways.

Steve: Part of the response to the introduction ofthe Connect battery units was “yes,great, really like it.” It’s kind of aninnovative product because you cancarry it around. It’s not just a converter,we have a test pattern generator, anaudio tester and 3:2 pull down built in,so it’s more than a converter. But thefeedback as well from that is well this isgreat but a lot of these converters getput in a facility and we want to rackmount it. So we introduced a productcalled Connect-AC and that is exactly thesame in terms of functionality, so youstill get the test pattern generator andthe audio test tone, etc but this is a formfactor with AC built-in. Just plug in afigure-8 power cord and you’re good togo. We also produce a rack mount kitwhere you can put four of these units init. So now we have four Connectproducts, two Connect and two Connect-AC and we’ve also modified the pricingon those – all are now US$295.

So going back to the harmonising of theproduct, I think it makes a lot moresense when you started a Ninja with US$695, aSamurai with US$995 and a Samurai Blade withUS$1295 and it’s now much clearer how the modularityworks; if you want to change a Ninja to give it SDIinput or output, you can put a Connect on the back ofit, and that’s US$295. What we were finding beforewas people were thinking well hang on a minute, if Ibought that and then I bought … they were trying tofigure out kind of what the best deal was.

Ed: Well, people are inclined to do that.

Steve: Which was fine, I mean it wasn’t reallysomething we kind of thought about to be honest, but Ithink now it’s very transparent; you know it’s going inincrements of roughly just under US$300 and it’s nothiding anything. I’ll give you an example of a customerwho came onto the booth yesterday and he had a SonyF3. He said “well, what do I buy?” Our answer wasthat he bought a Ninja with HDMI, so he can take his 24megabit camcorder, uprate it to 50 megabit 422 using aNinja. And then he said he was thinking of buying aCanon 5D Mark III when that came out. So his F3 is anSDI camera and the Canon is an HDMI camera, sowhich does he buy. So he buys the Ninja at US$695which he can use with his Canon 5D Mark III and thenhe adds a Connect to take SDI input which he can use

Page 19

with his F3. So rather than buying a Samurai, he’s nowgot something for the same price that does both jobs,and he can resurrect his F3 and turn it into a 50megabit broadcast compliant recorder.

Ed: Okay, now in terms of – especially for the Canon– there’s some new product for the Canon 5D is it?

Steve: Yes, for the Canon 5D Mark III. It’s notreally a new product; we’re repackaging the Ninja-2 forthat market. Generally, companies like Sony andPanasonic who will do the gamut - they’ll do videocamcorders as well as cameras and DSLRs, they do awhole range … so particularly with people like Canon,they will service the whole camera range. Then you getpeople like Nikon who don’t have any video camerascoming out but have a whole raft of DSLRs that all haveclean output. Up until now Canon 5D’s and their otherDSLRs never have clean output. What you see on theviewfinder is what comes out the HDMI. It means that’swhat you record is not what people want. So wealready have to say to people, no you can’t use a Canon

5D. I think that with the introduction of Nikonproducing so many DSLRs with clean output, Canonnow have deigned to introduce a firmware update forthe Canon 5D Mark III which gives a clean output( available now at time of writing.)

What we’ve done is we’ve modified the package of theNinja-2. It’s the same recording unit, there’s no carrycase in this, you can have this as an option; it will becoming as more of a retail box. We will be putting in asingle charger instead of a dual charger and puttingbattery shims in for Canon and Nikon as well. So it’sreally more tailored for the DSLR market andparticularly for the Canon – and a new price point, soit’s US$695, that’s very squarely targeted at the Canon5D Mark III. And there are certain benefits you getfrom Canon; Nikon are not so used to working in avideo world, so they don’t have timecode and start/stoptrigger over HDMI, but Canon do. So on the 5D MarkIII with the update and with a Ninja-2, you’ll get cleanvideo output and you’ll get timecode start/stop triggerand timecode.

Ed: That really is great news for all those DSLR usersout there. And of course the entire Atomos range isavailable from Protel at their Auckland and Wellingtonoffices. NZVN

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HPRC Cases for ProtelWe are at HPRC with Davide Bertossi and Glenn from

Protel.

Ed: Davide, you sound Italian?

Davide: I am Italian and the brand is Italian.

Ed: Then it must be good, it’s certainly stylish.

Davide: Well more than stylish, we believe that we

do great quality products. We started making

aluminium cases. We then decided to convert to resin

cases. We first developed a compound which is 15-

20% lighter than every other brand for hard cases, and

from that compound, we then decided to create a linebased on the best selling size of competitors and at the

same time introducing new unique sizes and

dimensions. We didn’t want to be followers, or do what

the other guys do, so we try to be unique. Trying to be

unique means of course our designs and with innovative

features. We have very smooth latches, recessed into

the case, because this is the part where, in case of

impact, there’s more likelihood of damage.

Ed: I see they’re covered, so your latches are actuallyprotected by ridges either side of it?

Davide: Correct, all the parts which are protecting

the latches are high enough for any, let’s say, misuse of

the case …

Ed: In other words airline baggage handlers?

Davide: Yes, I guess it is a worldwide problem! So

they are safe, they meet the IATA certification, so it

means that you can ship with every forwarder or everycarrier without any problem. We’ve been the first to

use rubber on the handle for comfort, and for the

wheeled cases right here we use aluminium instead of

plastic because …

Ed: This is for the handle?

Davide: Yes … and it also means they are lighter

and more resilient than plastic and they perform better

at extreme conditions. Plastic handles have

performance changes at very high or low temperatures,so may be damaged more easily.

Ed: I guess on the handle you’re putting a lot more

stress than you are on the case itself?

Davide: Yes, correct. So all the trolleys we make

are made with aluminium handles. Also, each case has

large convenient wheels for good rolling.

Glenn: They are proper nylon bush bearing wheels

… a lot of the other designs tend to have a plasticised

wheel inside them.

Ed: ( I wheel it across the show carpet ) I must say,

yes I agree, those are very good trolley wheels.

Davide: Having larger wheels is also smoother

whether the ground is pavement or …

Ed: You could even go over a Belgian cobblestoneroad with those?

Davide: Yes, easily, you are right. So from this, we

are now introducing some more attractive colours,

because we have cases in red, yellow, blue; we even

have some in purple! Customers are asking to have the

cases match their luggage more closely.

Ed: They like matching luggage … it matches thecolour of my girlfriend’s eyes.

Davide: Sure. The different colour meanscustomers have something which is easy to keep an eyeon, because there is very heavy and expensive gearinside, so they know exactly if somebody is running offwith it! Moving on from this, we have made someshoulder cases, the HPRC 4050, 4100, and 2530. Theseare the only hard, waterproof rated shoulder casesavailable in the market. They are very comfortable,light, you can stand on them, so I mean to about200kg. Like other cases they can float in the water,you can submerge them in water, and the inside is stillprotected …

Ed: But it’s not designed as a life preserver?

Davide: Um, no. We have a pressure adjustmentvalve which automatically allows for changes inpressure from the inside to the outside. The valveallows air to pass through, but nothing like water, dust,

Page 20

Davide - Italian through and through.

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humidity, so everything inside is I would say “safe as InThe Safe.” So nothing can get inside. Moving on fromthe shoulder case, we have the hard backpack, theHPRC 3500, which is another great seller for us, whichhas helped to make for good HPRC brand awareness.The part that sits against your back has been made bya motorbike suit maker because we needed to makesomething that was protected enough for the user’sbackbone. So in case of falling, this part helps theimpact the hard case may have in the back. So it iscertified and it’s very well performing. And even thiscase can be immersed in water.

Ed: I’m just going to test how heavy this is … and no,that’s not particularly heavy. It’s certainly a bit heavierthan a soft backpack, but I would say only 20%heavier, so very good.

Davide: Basically it’s 15-20% heavier than atraditional backpack.

Ed: And it’s of a size that airlines willtake on board?

Davide: You can carry it on easily,sure. The largest case we make that youcan carry on in the cabin, which will fit inthe overhead compartment, is the HPRC2550W. It is one of our best sellers forthis reason. Again, it comes in red, blue,yellow and orange.

Ed: Well I must say that that’s aparticularly good idea for a camera,because one doesn’t want to put one’scamera in the hold and having it in a softbag in an overhead locker, one wouldworry about that. You really can’t hold itin your lap, so a solid case like this withtrolley wheels and extender handle,you’d put more than your camera in thatand it will fit in the overhead locker?

Davide: Yes correct. The weightitself is not much more than for thesame size soft bags.

Ed: A soft bag that’s got some sort ofprotection in it, as opposed to a real softbag?

Davide: So you don’t have to pay more for theextra luggage, yes.

Ed: And you’ve got some tripod cases there too?

Davide: We have three types of cases, sized from90cm to 125cm. The best seller is in between, theHPRC 6400W, it is 110cm internal length and this is oneof the other unique items we have. It’s a veryprotective case, long enough with wheels and handleson both sides. There’s a main central handle and it’sproperly positioned to allow you to move your hand forbalance.

Ed: Well you can’t see it, we’ll take a photo, it’s along handle, so you can shift where you hold it tocompensate for where the mass is inside. So you’reright at the centre of gravity of it.

Davide: Correct. Again, this is one of the bestselling products for us, especially in the broadcast andvideo markets.

Glenn: Has that got the foam core in it or thestraps?

Davide: You can have both. We can supply it with“pick and pluck” foam. You just mark down the shapeof the items you carry on, and just remove easily the

Page 22

cubes, so you have the foam which grabs all around theitems you carry on. But there’s the other optionspecifically designed for tripods and lighting stands forexample.

Ed: So if you had it empty, you could pack yourclothes around it?

Glenn: You could – you could just use yourunderpants Grant.

Ed: You’ll keep!

Davide: This has a specifically designed interior for

the 6400W. It has two padded parts at the head endand the feet end, and some straps to fix the tripod or

the lighting stand. So once this is closed, everything is

safe. You have four latches.

Ed: That’s good having four latches – it’s not going topop open at the wrong moment.

Glenn: Yes, exactly … we’ve sold several of thesealready and the customers are loving them, becausethere’s nothing else in our market that does this as wellas the HPRC cases.

Ed: And really you can’t go past the design, thecolour scheme, the red and black?

Glenn: It’s the Ferrari of cases.

Ed: Are you allowed to say that?

Davide: We call them the Ferrari of cases, becausewe are allowed to use that.

Ed: Because you’re Italian?

Davide: No, because we supply them and they’vebeen good enough to allow us.

Ed: And now the insides Glenn – very versatile?

Glenn: Yes, exactly Grant. You’ve got a number ofdifferent options with these cases. You can buy thecases empty. You can get them with the pick and pluckfoam that I think most people are familiar with, but theother thing as well is these divider systems that you canget for them, called Soft Deck. There is a soft framearound the edges, and then you have divider units thatcan be split up and cut to suit what you want to hold.So for example, carrying things like lenses, camera

They are a lovely red inside.

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bodies, accessories, whether it would be audio, video,and even if it’s out of our industry altogether. Thesesorts of cases go into government, police, medical andother industries as well. All types of customers aregoing to this sort of product line because they’re notjust carrying broadcast type technologies, they’recarrying all kinds of things. They are really thatversatile.

Ed: There’s a nice little pocket there that you couldslip a tablet or a laptop in?

Glenn: Yes, laptop, tablet, whatever you want inthe lid pocket.

Ed: All you need is your imagination?

Glenn: You do. In fact one of the other options Ishould mention is the cordura bags that fit inside some

of the cases. The idea is that the cordura soft bag holdsall your gear, and it goes inside the HPRC hard case.The case is then protected when travelling. When youget to your location, you take out the cordura bag andonly carry that around.

So you’ve got a soft bag to carry all your gear aroundin, rather than taking the entire case. And then whenyou’re ready to travel again, you put it back inside thehard case, close it all up and off you go again.

It is just another option that nobody else does as wellas HPRC.

Ed: And the entire range of HRPC is available atProtel, Glenn?

Glenn: Yes Grant, we have cases on hand in bothour Auckland and Wellington branches. NZVN

Page 23

AJA for ProtelWe are at AJA with Tony Cacciarelli,Product Marketing Manager, AJA andGlenn Miers from Protel.

Ed: Now Tony, the Ki Pro Quad SolidState Recorder has had some additionsto it to enable it to talk to the Sony F55?

Tony: Correct. When we initiallytalked about the Ki Pro Quad last year atNAB, it was in conjunction with theCanon C500 camera and being able totake the RAW data from that camera.But we had always designed into it theability to do baseband 4K video as well.So in addition to RAW inputs, we cantake any 4K video signal. The F55camera from Sony was the first camerato come out with that baseband videooutput – a full 4K signal coming out ofthe camera that we can run right into theKi Pro Quad and record as 4K ProResfiles. That’s a really efficient format forbeing able to work with 4K; we’re downto data rates and storage sizes that aremuch more manageable than anuncompressed file size. So really our benefit is gettinginto that ProRes format, and that’s what the Ki ProQuad is all about, really enabling a more manageable4K workflow.

Ed: And it’s not limited to that is it? You can still,with the Ki Pro Quad, have a range of formatsrecorded?

Tony: Absolutely, yes, I mean it works with HDjust as well, so you can use it as an HD recorder andthen as you progress into the 4K world, that samedevice will work with you and it can do any flavour ofProRes from proxy all the way up to 444. So weincreased the quality level; previous Ki Pro models had422 capabilities and this is the first one to reallyincorporate 444, so that extra level of quality on theProRes files.

Ed: Now are you able to record to the SxS cards inthe camera at the same time?

Tony: Yes, you can record to the SxS cards or anyon board storage system on any camera that wesupport. We’re basically just taking a video feed off ofthat and recording that separately as our compressed4K ProRes files. The nice thing is that we readmetadata that’s transmitted between the SDIconnections, so if you start recording on your camera,we can sense that start-stop trigger and automatically

start a recording on the Ki Pro Quad. You don’t havetwo devices that you have to manage all the time.

Ed: Now in “brick” product, which AJA is famous for,again some more developments? I guess it’s probablybest to start with a new app that anybody can downloadfrom the iTunes store I believe?

Tony: Yes, we have a new app. It’s an IOS basedapp called Mini-Matrix and what we’ve done is taken ourentire mini converter line, which is pretty broad now –we’ve been in business 20 years and we’ve beenbuilding a lot of converters over those 20 years …

Ed: Are you still building the first one?

Tony: I don’t believe we’re still building the firstone, we’ve actually moved on to a Mark 2 version ofthat one, but we’ve incorporated the functionality of thefirst ones into our existing products. We still have fullcoverage of everything we used to do; it’s just in newerproducts. But the Mini-Matrix app is really designed tohelp people navigate that large product line and findexactly the mini converter that does what they need,whether it’s analogue to digital, SD to HD – and it’s areally intuitive app, you can just search through, findexactly what you need, you can filter based on whatinputs and outputs you want.

It’s a real handy app that we wanted to get out therefor people to make it easier for them to find our

Glenn and Tony.

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products and figure out which one they needed andavoid any confusion.

Ed: And one of the new ones I find is ROI?

Tony: Yes ROI – it stands for Region Of Interest,not return on investment, although there will be someof that involved with it I think as well! Region ofInterest or ROI is one of our mini converters that we’vecome out with to solve a problem of getting computersignals into the video world. Typically that’s done withscan-line converters and they were fairly large boxes orkind of clunky interfaces; we wanted to come up withsomething that was a higher quality in a more elegantinterface. So the ROI has a DVI input, it will acceptHDMI or DVI – it’s just a minor converter to do that – ittakes that in and then passes it straight through. Soyou can still have your DVI monitor connected; one ofthe frustrating things with some devices is they’re adead end device. When you plug in that DVI, suddenlyyou can’t see what’s on that monitor any more. Sowe’ve done the pass through and it’s a clean passthrough, we don’t touch that information at all, so thatyour computer can still talk to a full DVI monitor andthen we can just extract out the information that weneed to make the SDI signal. So it’s a really nice DVIto SDI converter, very high quality, but the key featureon it is really the Region of Interest scaling capabilities.The whole device is controlled through an applicationthat runs either on your Mac or Windows system.

Typically you run it right on the system that you’reconverting the DVI for, but it can be run on a separatesystem if need be. What that application allows you todo is completely configure the device and you can selectany region of your screen and have that scaled andoutput as a full HD signal right out the SDI. So it’s areally high quality scaling algorithm that we use; youget a great looking picture if you need to extract out apiece of web video or for an interactive piece showingsomeone working on a computer, it’s really easy to getthat screen out and into the video world.

Ed: So if you’ve got a favourite You Tube cat video,you can record it?

Tony: Yes, some of the You Tube cat videos are thebiggest hits, you’d be able to extract out, but yes, weare gearing it towards some of those sorts of thingswhere people need to extract video off of a site or anyparticular portion of the screen.

Ed: And there is a new Hi5 mini-converter?

Tony: Yes another of our new miniconverters that we announced at theshow here, and it’s shipping today, is theHi5-4K. This is a mini converter that,after we went to CES this past year, wesaw an explosion of 4K monitors comingout in the consumer brands. They’reactually called Ultra HD resolution, whichis not the full 4K pixel resolution, they’reslightly smaller. It’s basically four HDsignals rather than the four 2K signalswhich make up a 4K. So we saw allthese monitors and the price on them isrelatively cheap and they’re comingdown already, so what we wanted to dois have a way of bridging the gapbetween the professional world andthese new consumer monitors. In atypical professional environment, we’reworking with four SDI signals, that’s howwe do our 4K picture, we move itaround. These new monitors have asingle HDMI connection, so we needed to

be able to get from these four SDI into this single HDMIand the Hi5-4K does exactly that. It basically is able totake those four SDI signals, convert them into the HDMI1.4a spec and feed it up to these new monitors. So it’sa way of being able to get a more affordable 4Kmonitoring solution, either on set or in an edit bay,without having to jump into the professional line ofmonitors which are considerably more expensive. So itwas just a way of being able to kind of connect thosetwo worlds up.

Ed: Now Glenn, at this point we should mention that

a very big part of Protel’s business is finding solutions

for your customers who might purchase some new

products but then find they need something else in their

workflow to make it work better for them?

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Glenn: Yes that’s right Grant. It’s very much acase of finding those glue products that actually stitchtogether customers’ camera products and their outputproducts, and actually making that work for them.

Ed: And you like the reliability of the AJA product?

Glenn: Oh for sure, yes definitely. AJA are verywell regarded as the leader in these kind of glueproducts and you know that they are just going to workand carry on working.

Ed: And partner support – AJA’s very proactive interms of talking with other vendors and providingsolutions for them?

Tony: Yes definitely. Our partner relationshipshave been fantastic this year. We’ve had long-termrelationships with companies like Adobe and Avid, whoare announcing our support for their next generation ofproducts. As they’re moving forward, we’re movingforward with them, adding functionality, addingsupport. On the Adobe side, we’re now supportedunder SpeedGrade, which is the colour grading softwarethat they have, so all the AJA hardware is fullysupported in the next versions of SpeedGrade. On theAvid side, we have Pro Tools 11 integration with ourhardware, so now people working on Pro Tools audioworkstations can use AJA hardware to monitor theirvideo and have a really nice clean video signal that’sgoing to time well with what they’re doing. There won’tbe any funny delays or anything in that system. That’ssomething that people have been asking for, for a longtime, and we were really glad to be able to work withAvid to make that happen. On some bigger newernews, we have a partnership with Quantel that we

announced here at the show. Quantel’s been alongstanding impressive company within the videoindustry. Their new Pablo Rio software is using our AJACorvid Ultra as the 4K I/O solution. Corvid Ultra is aunique product for us; it’s actually part of our OEM line,which is really designed to work with our developmentpartners. It’s not necessarily a consumer product …

Ed: So they won’t find it branded AJA?

Tony: They will see an AJA branded box and theyhave the option of purchasing the Corvid Ultra directlyfrom us or Quantel’s offering a bundled solution that’san HP computer system, their software and our CorvidUltra as the IO solution. So it’s a partnership, it’s not arebranding or anything like that. It’s not a pure OEMrelationship, in that they’re rebranding our product, butwe’ve worked with them to get that incorporated. Theyneeded a 4K IO solution, Corvid Ultra is a powerhouseof a box – it’s capable of quite a bit of processing andhandling huge amounts of data. They’re actuallyshowing some 8K workflows on the Quantel stand here…

Ed: They say they can go up to 9.4, if anyone wantsto build 9.4K?

Tony: If you’re interested in 9.4K, they’re thepeople to talk to. But it is an interesting relationship,it’s a great relationship for us, we’re really excited by itand it’s just another case of AJA hardware helping toreally bring products to market, and that’s what we’retrying to do.

Glenn: And remember, Grant, the entire AJAproduct line is available from Protel, including Acquire,Edit, and Convert products. NZVN

Page 25

A Very Cool HelicopterI couldn’t resist a story on helicopters ( just to get away

from 4K ) so I stopped at DJI Innovations and spoke

with Lon Breedlove.

Ed: Lon, this caught my eye because there are lots of

little white helicopters here and quite a tall cage which I

guess they fly in?

Lon: It’s a 25 foot tall flying tube. We’re really excited

to bring that to NAB because they wouldn’t let us just

fly out in the open of course for safety reasons. ( Later

they ignored the rules as the photo shows. )

Ed: We’ve seen helicopters before, but these look as

though they’re mass produced?

Lon: Uh-huh. These quad copters are called the DJI

Phantom and they’re one of our newest machines.

They’re really easy to use and easy to learn – very good

for a beginner. The cool thing is that you can carry a

GoPro. The new one’s very, very high resolution, so it’s

cool to get that kind of image from the sky which you

never could before – at least for this price.

Ed: So what is the price?

Lon: US$679.

Ed: Wow, so what does it run on?

Lon: It comes with a small Lithium battery that gives

you about a 10-15 minute flight time.

Ed: And it carries the weight of one GoPro?

Lon: Uh-huh, roughly the weight of one GoPro. As you

can see, sometimes it will carry the weight with the

GoPro and the plastic, waterproof housing.

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Ed: Just in case it drops in the water?

Lon: That’s correct.

Ed: That one down there looks different – it’s already

got a camera fitted?

Lon: This is our new prototype called the DJI Vision.

It’s our own integrated camera with a gimbal system.

It’s similar to a GoPro; this is a prototype so we’re not

fully finished with it, but it’s going to be stable and

you’re going to have control of the gimbal from your

remote.

Ed: So you can actually pan and tilt?

Lon: Absolutely. It’s going to be two axes pan and tilt,

and it’s very nice for First Person View where you wear

goggles and you can see your downlink through the

goggles and you can fly that way. It’s very exciting for

that.

Ed: And what is it US$699?

Lon: This one doesn’t have a price yet.

Ed: But the cameraless Phantom is US$679 and this

includes the controller as well?

Lon: Yes, the controller and the body and the GoPro

mount.

Ed: It looks as though it’s got an iPhone there as a

screen?

Lon: We have a prototype of our mobile app which is

great for the Phantom Vision, because it will give you a

downlink and that’s so you can see what your camera is

seeing. You’ll be able to start, stop, record and do

some other functions with that app.

Ed: But for the standard Phantom, you just have to

keep the whole thing in sight?

Lon: That’s true.

Ed: Does it have a range?

Lon: The range is about 1000 feet, so it’s pretty

impressive. You can get very high or pretty far away

from here. Obviously you don’t always want to fly far,

depending on the weather and your experience. It’s

based on a GPS system … it

communicates with up to 20

satellites at a time. It will position

itself based on those satellites.

If you just let go of the sticks with

the remote control it will hover and

if the wind is blowing it will fight

that, just to stay in that position

with the GPS.

Ed: So how do you control the

GPS functionality?

Lon: As you can see on the top

right of that remote control,

there’s a little metal switch that

will activate the GPS.

When you first plug the battery in

and turn on the Phantom, it will

send the signal out and it will take

a couple of minutes to get all the

positioning.

Ed: So it knows where it is in

space. Does it record that

metadata anywhere?

Lon: I can’t answer that. A cool feature with the GPS

is when you turn that on it sets a home position, it

marks that spot where you turn the Phantom on. So if

for some reason you lose reception, lose signal with

your controller, or your controller breaks or dies, the

Phantom will lift itself 60 feet and then return to that

home position and land itself, which is pretty impressive

technology for what seems to be a hobby quad copter.

We’ve taken a lot of the functionality and the

technology in our big system and included it with our

DJI Phantom.

Ed: So that’s it, this is pretty well the lower end ofthe market. You also have a quite sophisticated lookingmachine up there?

Lon: That is right, that’s called the S800. It’s ahexacopter – it has six rotors and we have gimbals formultiple DSLR cameras such as the Sony and the X5and 7 and the Panasonic GH2 and GH3. NZVN

Page 26

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Blackmagicfor DVT

I’m with Stuart Barnaby andChris Barr. It’s Thursday,the show closes very shortlyand I think everybody whois left here is on this onestand.

Ed: Where are we Stuart?

Stuart: Blackmagic ofcourse.

Ed: And your wingmanhas got a broken wing I see?

Stuart: Yes, he’srecovering well. He’s justbemused by all of theexperiences that he’s hadhere in Vegas.

Ed: So you’ve visited afew medical clinics, Chris?

Chris: Yeah, one in particular. They were quitenice …

Ed: So the last fall you self-medicated?

Chris: Yes, Nurofen.

Ed: Alright, with your available time, did you findanything interesting at the show?

Chris: Yes, Blackmagic’s offerings from the 4Kside opens up the ability for 4K production to be quitecost effective for Indie filmmakers. Their camerasobviously tie into their vision switching as well and theirback end HyperDeck studio recording and so forth. It’sgreat.

Ed: Stuart, you’ve brought me over to DaVinci ColourCorrection US$995?

Stuart: Yes, one of the big announcements at theshow is version 10 of DaVinci Resolve. It’s got a wholebunch of new features in it, but one of the key newfeatures added into version 10 is it’s got a much betterediting interface. So you still do your edit in eitherMedia Composer or Premiere and bring it into Resolve,but inside Resolve you’ve now got all the usual editingtools on the timeline like Slip and Slide tools, trimmingtools, that sort of stuff, so that you can more easilymanipulate the sequence once you’ve got it in Resolve.

Ed: Wow. Now this isn’t the same one that they’rebundling with their camera is it?

Stuart: Yes it is. So they have a free version ofResolve called Resolve Lite that is free, you can go anddownload it and use it. If you want to do more thingslike noise reduction or get multiple GPU accelerationand if you’re setting up a more fully blown Resolvesystem, then you need to buy the US$1,000 version,and if you want the full Resolve panel, then you need tobut the US$30,000 panel.

Ed: Why do they need to bundle the Lite version withthe camera?

Stuart: It’s just the way they package it up tomake the camera look that much more attractive. Alsothe fact that the camera shoots RAW, so you need topost process that afterwards so that you can edit it.This is a Blackmagic RAW file which you can then bringinto DaVinci Resolve and grade back to a REC 709 typelook, etc.

Chris ( note injured left wing ) and Stuart.

Ed: And right next to it – UltraStudio 4K which is?

Stuart: One of the big things that Blackmagic are

doing here at the show is releasing a wide range of 4K

products. The UltraStudio 4K is a Thunderbolt IO

solution; it will work on Windows or Mac and gives you

SD HD and now 4K video IO, all in a 1U 19 inch rack

mount box, with a little LCD screen on the front for

confidence, which is awesome – and all that for

US$1300, so very, very good.

Ed: We’ve had an UltraStudio before, but this is the

4K version?

Stuart: Correct, yes.

Ed: Any improvements in the HyperDeck Shuttle?

Stuart: Well the HyperDeck Shuttle and HyperDeck

Studio remain the same, but there’s our new HyperDeck

Studio Pro which again is 4K. So that allows you to

record and playback 4K images. It will also do SD HD

as well, but also 4K now in record and playback in a 1U

19 inch rack mount form factor.

Ed: It looks identical to the ordinary Studio?

Stuart: Yes it does, it’s just got 4K capability and

some extra features like some better audio IO and that

sort of thing.

Ed: And in the mini bricks which they’re very famous

for?

Stuart: Yes, the mini converters continuing the 4K

theme. They’ve got an SDI to HDMI 4K converter, so

you can come in 6 gig HD-SDI in one side of the unit

and you’ll get 6 gig HDMI output on the other side …

this is particularly important for having connectivity

from your edit suite or from a range of 4K cameras, into

the new consumer 4K TVs that are becoming available

now as well, such as the Sony 55 inch television that’s

US$5,000 or the 65 inch television that’s US$7,000. So

4K TVs have gone from NZ$35,000 before Christmas to

US$5,000 after Christmas – a dramatic change and I’m

sure that will just continue to trend moving forward as

well.

Ed: But this shows something about Blackmagic –that they’re right up there; as other people releaseproduct, they’ve got the glue to make it work?

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Stuart: Absolutely, and they’re also the first peoplehere at the show with a full 4K switcher. So we’ve gota vision mixer solution here called the ATM ProductionStudio 4K, which gives you six 4K inputs and allows youto do full live mixing in 4K. So you know, add acombination of the HyperDeck Studio Pros to that; adda combination of the new Blackmagic 4K camera, youknow, the Sony 4K cameras, all that sort of stuff, youcan now literally do a 4K live switch and record it all onHyperDeck Studio, no problem.

Ed: Now, an important part of colour grading?

Stuart: … is having a good range of scopes to beable to use, whether it’s a vectorscope or a waveformmonitor, or histogram so that you can technically makesure that what you’re grading in the image isn’tcrushing the blacks or clipping the whites, all thosesorts of aspects, and here at the show Blackmagic haveintroduced the SmartScope Duo where they’ve basicallytaken their UltraScope product and built it into two 7inch displays in a rack mount unit and you can call upindividually on either of those two monitors whateverscope you want. So you could have the live input feedif you want to, so you can use it as a video display, oryou can call up the waveform monitor vectorscopedisplays on it as well. So really, really cool andeverything all built into a US$1,000 package. It’s great.

Ed: Now I see there, on the converter shelf, thatBlackmagic are now offering openGear versions of theirconverters?

Stuart: Yes, we’ve been doing that for the lastcouple of years.

Ed: Oh, well I’ve never noticed and you’ve never toldme before Stuart?

Stuart: I’m sorry Grant I will try and keep youmore fully informed in future.

Ed: I just find openGear to be a particularly greatconcept. It’s a good sort of friendly sharing type way ofdoing things?

Stuart: It’s certainly the broadcast end of themarket for Blackmagic, so if you were setting up an OBtruck or you were in a TV studio where you needed todo basically what the mini converters do, but ratherthan have a whole bunch of cigarette packet sizedgadgets with your own power supplies, you can setthem up in a 19 inch rack mount chassis. So for certainapplications they’re good. As well as the scopes,they’ve also got the new 1U rack mount audio monitor,which is a nice LCD viewfinder or meter showing youaudio levels, so again, a really good addition to haveinto the edit suite. It’s got some really high qualityspeakers in it as well, and again great for OB trucks ifyou want confidence monitoring, if you want to makesure your audio levels are going and to be able to turnthe volume up and actually hear what you’ve got – it’s agreat little unit.

Ed: Now in the camera unit Stuart, last year we neverwould have thought Blackmagic would be doing

cameras, but they have and they’re shipping andthey’ve even done something more?

Stuart: Absolutely. So last year they took theshow by storm when they announced they were doing aBlackmagic cinema camera, and that’s been extremelysuccessful for them. It took them a wee while to shipit, but when they finally got there it was great. And ofcourse now at the show they’ve announced theproduction 4K camera as well to go with that, so that’sa pretty exciting addition. Again, you get the packagewith DaVinci Resolve with the camera as well, so youget an end to end solution for shooting 4K RAW on thecamera and then being able to get that through intoDaVinci Resolve to do a grade. Then also at this showthey’ve introduced a pocket cinema camera forUS$1,000. That‘s a very small form factor camera,allowing you to take really good quality video imagerywith you on the go, so it’s fantastic.

Ed: So is this a serious competitor to the GoPro?

Stuart: Potentially … I mean it’s a very small formfactor; it’s not quite the same thing, but I certainly

think it will find its application. NZVN

Page 28

Autodesk for DVTAt the new improved Autodesk booth, we talk with

Stuart from DVT and Rob O’Neill from Autodesk.

Stuart: Obviously, we’re doing a lot of work since

the release of Smoke in December last year and

currently we’re doing a lot of work with customers in

New Zealand who are looking at multi-Smoke

workflows. Traditionally, these workflows have been

high end finishing systems that have typically worked

alone, where somebody gets the final edit and they’ll

bring it into Smoke and then they’ll do the grading,

they’ll do the visual effects, the motion graphics, 3D

capability and all that sort of stuff in one product; but

now of course we’ve got many customers looking at

multiple Smokes, systems working concurrently at the

same time on the same projects with the same media,

so it’s been really fascinating to see how much the

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Page

community, particularly in New

Zealand, has embraced that

workflow with Smoke.

Ed: Have they made any nice

additions here at NAB?

Stuart: No, this version was

obviously launched in December,

so it’s still the current version.

They haven’t announced any

updates to it yet, which would be a

little bit too soon, but Rob O’Neill

from Autodesk has been helping us

out a lot with training and

presentations and certainly with

multiple Smoke workflows as well.

Ed: Rob, I understand from the

press presentation that Autodesk

is wanting to continue this

democratisation of its product –

opening up Smoke especially to a

wider audience, a wider user

group?

Rob: That’s right Grant. We’ve

got a world domination plan, like

everyone else! We want more

bums on seats basically and Smoke is the answer for

that. Flame’s certainly established; that won’t change,

it’s still going to be regarded as an elitist product, so

Smoke is the opportunity for us to get more people

trained up on the Smoke platform. A very high

percentage of the tools that are in Smoke are also in

Flame so that’s our training ground for a new

generation of Flame artists as well. So we are thinking

about the future; it’s not just about getting more people

in there; it’s about keeping our products firmly where

they are in the marketplace and probably in a much

stronger position in the future.

Ed: And what about in the Maya and 3ds Max?

Rob: Well Autodesk have the Entertainment Creation

Suite which is a combination of a range of products like

Maya, MotionBuilder, 3ds Max, Softimage, Mudbox – so

those products have obviously got great integration

with what is typically more an NAB type focus here with

Smoke and Flame. So you can basically create 3D

models in those products and bring them across into

Smoke or Flame; or you can render out of those

products multiple passes for different layers, alpha

channels and things like that and bring that across into

Smoke and Flame as well. So you’ve got great

integration with that.

Ed: Okay, so in the process of democratising ( and I

like using that American word ) this product, a big move

into online training, not just for the Maya type product,

but also for the Smoke?

Rob: Yes, we’ve had a Smoke learning channel on You

Tube for a couple of years now and

it’s all been recently updated to show

all the features in the latest version.

Just to make it more accessible to

people who don’t have high speed

Internet access, we’ve made it

available as a Podcast on iTunes that

can be downloaded. In fact, that’s

my preference, so I just keep it on

my laptop and if something just

evaporates out of my head ( which

happens often these days ) I can just

jump into iTunes and refresh the

memory and there we go. So it’s not

just online, but it’s downloadable and

you can have it on your iPod if you

want to.

Ed: But not on DVD?

Rob: No. I think DVDs are passé

these days aren’t they?

Stuart: Yes, very much so – just

like audio tape!

Ed: We stop the interview right

there. NZVN

Page 30

Rob at new Autodesk stand.

Page

Marshall Electronicsfor Quinto

We are at Marshall Electronics withRobert Foster and Peter Fullerton fromQuinto Communications.

Ed: Robert, you’ve been busy sinceIBC?

Robert: Yes, we are a very busycompany, and yes we’ve been workingon a number of new products for theNAB show, the first one being ourwireless camera top monitors in a 7” and9” size. Our customers now havechoices between two differenttransmitters. We have a stick trans-mitter that plugs into the HDMI output ofthe camera, or we have a portable onethat you can put on top of your camerain the hot shoe mount. As far asreceivers are concerned, we built theminto the battery mount that you can puton the back of the monitor. So you havea choice between V-mount or Anton Bauer, or you canuse a portable receiver that you can put on like a beltclip to do the receiving. The wireless system will go100 feet, it does not need to be line of sight, it will beavailable third quarter of this year and price pointsshould be announced right after NAB.

Ed: And there should be no degradation of the signal?

Robert: No degradation whatsoever.

Ed: Now is it possible to take a record feed off themonitor, so you could actually record what is beingtransmitted?

Robert: The monitor still houses its outputs andyes, you can output the signal out.

Ed: Is it HDMI through?

Robert: HDMI or HD-SDI.

Ed: Wow. So the particular value in this?

Robert: Well if you’re on production and you have aproducer who wants to look at his camera feed, instead

of using a wired system, wireless is a lot moreconvenient, especially when you’re out in the field.

Ed: And I guess for the cinecam operator?

Robert: Yes, even more.

Ed: Okay and also in the monitor field?

Robert: We have our IMD line of monitors thatwe’ve upgraded to all except up to a 3G SDI signal.That would include our dual 10.4, 666.5, 17 inch, 18.5and 20 inch. We also added some feature sets in thereas well. You can now see your audio channels onscreen; you can view up to 16 channels if you like, andwe have also added close captioning as well.

Ed: Is this an upgrade for current models too?

Robert: Well basically, it is a firmware upgrade –the customer can do an upgrade to his monitor.

Ed: Oh okay, so the inputs are staying the same?

Robert: Yes.

Ed: Tell me the value in having a 3Gsignal?

Robert: With 3G, the monitor willaccept up to a 1080p 60 signal which iswhere a lot of production is goingnowadays.

Peter: Before the highest qualityyou could do was 1080i. Now you cango up to 1080p. The value of having a3G capable monitor is future proofing, sothat in the future when you have to dealwith a 1080p signal, you will be able todo that easily.

Ed: And a new monitor in the series,2K/4K 10 bits monitor. Now what’s this“slash” business?

Robert: Well first of all, this is a 27inch monitor, the resolution of the panelis 2560x1440, it’s a 10 bit panel and itcan accept a 2K signal all the way up toa 4K signal. You’ve got dual 3G SDIinputs on the back of the monitor and itallows you in a production environmentto view your 4K signal on production, so

Page 31

It’s a very small transmitter.

Robert with a very nice monitor.

Page

you can make sure all your quadrant’s lined up andyou’ve got the correct picture.

Ed: You’re not getting that full 4K resolution?

Robert: No.

Ed: But obviously at a price point?

Robert: Yes, you will see a 4K resolution monitor inpostproduction, but on site when you’re doing yourfilming, you just want to make sure that your picture iscorrect, everything is lined up and the resolution is stillhigh enough that you get a good quality signal, but youknow at the list price of US$8300 it’s very affordable.

Ed: There’s no true 4K monitors around for thatprice?

Robert: No, not at all, a lot higher.

Ed: Robert, just tell us again a little bit about MarshallMonitors and why one would get a Marshall as opposedto Brand X?

Robert: Well this division of Marshall Electronics hasbeen around for 15 years. We’ve got the largestassortment of rack mountable LCD monitors and

standard LCD monitors in the industry. We’ve built upour brand name over the years to be a good qualityname; we’re known in every major state in the US;we’ve got distribution set up everywhere in the worldand we’ve become a name that’s been trustedthroughout the industry.

Ed: And it’s something … I mean I look at thismonitor here and I can look at it from pretty much anyangle and it’s still clear?

Robert: Yes, it’s got at least 170 degree viewingangles, so you could almost stand parallel with thismonitor and still see the same picture as if you werestanding right in front of it.

Peter: Yes and even in a bright environment likethis it is still very easy to look at.

This is not the most ideal environment for looking atmonitors, there’s all sorts of lighting going on. It’s agreat looking monitor.

Ed: As is the rest of the range?

Peter: Yes, yes they are. NZVN

Page 32

PAG Batteries for QuintoIt is with immense pleasure that I am back at PAG withNigel Gardiner.

Ed: Nigel, PAG continues. It looks a beautiful productline-up as ever, and what really impresses me is therange of cameras that you’ve got here, from your RED,your Canon, you’ve even got a Blackmagic cameraalong with the Sony and everything. The picture istelling me that this is a battery system that can workfor pretty well any camera and you have the plates toprove it?

Nigel: Yes I think we’re moving from the big ENGcameras to, as you say, the DSLRs and the Canons andBlackmagic and this type of thing. The biggest problemis, to fully rate these cameras working the way that thecameramen want them to work, you’ve got to haveaccessories …

Ed: You can’t have a DSLRwithout accessories Nigel,really it’s like pavlovawithout cream?

Nigel: I know, I know… the problems with thesecameras are that you needlights, you need viewfinders,you need monitors and youend up with the camerabattery, your monitorbattery, the viewfinder …and you end up with a wholestring of batteries all goingto run out at different times.What we can offer is onebattery which will fit all.

Ed: In other words apower centre?

Nigel: A power centre– that’s fantastic, I’ll have to…

Ed: Or centre of power?

Nigel: Or centre ofpower, yes …

Ed: No, power centre Ithink.

Nigel: Power centre … and the power centre has apower hub which will give you four D-Tap connectionsplus a USB. I think we’ve talked about this, but it’s nowfully in production and available, and these power taps,then can power the other products that you need tomake your DSLR or your other camera into a fullyfunctioning video camera.

Ed: That’s coming off the PAG mount, it’s not actuallyconnected to the battery, it’s connected to the clipwhich goes on the back?

Nigel: That’s right, the clip is the power hub. TheV-mount bracket attaches to the rails which alsodoubles up as the matte box holder and then comes outof the back of the camera and from there you’ve gotyour power for all your accessories to your DSLR oryour Blackmagic or C300 – whatever you want.

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Page

Ed: And this little system of plates, battery, powerhub acts as a counterbalance on your rails?

Nigel: Yes, you know by the time you put adecent sized lens on the front of the camera you need abit of back power, back weight just, as you say, tobalance it and then you get a nice compact unit fordoing all your video or your filming, whatever you wantto do.

Ed: And of course it would fit perfectly well on astandard shoulder mount camera with the power hubjust clipping onto the back of the battery?

Nigel: Yes and again because even on a standardshoulder mount camera you may now want a biggermonitor, you may want a bigger light, you’ve got thesepower taps which will give you the power for theseaccessories, together with the ability to have a USB soyou can charge and add another accessory. Again itseems to be a lot of the video accessories are usingUSBs to power, to charge the internal batteries of theseaccessories.

Ed: Now we’re looking at a particular size batteryhere on these smaller cameras. What’s this one?

Nigel: These are the L96, the two versions of thelinking battery. The time one, 96T and the just fivelight LED indicator which is the 96E.

Ed: So this is pretty well your base level battery, yourevery man’s battery?

Nigel: Yes. We don’t see that we’re going todevelop any more batteries. We will be developingaccessories and the ability to join batteries together andget variations of outputs through combinations of thesetwo batteries.

Ed: So you’re sort of taking battery technology to themodular level – make one battery then just like youconnect cells in a torch, you’re connecting yourbatteries?

Nigel: Yes. The problem is transportation.Everybody wants a bigger battery, but because of therestrictions of lithium ion battery and transportation,one has to keep them down to under 100 Watt hours.And yet, if we look at the bigger cameras like the F65 orthe ARRIs, a single battery is not suitable to run the

camera. So we have to devise ways ofmaking a single battery into a modularform so that you can actually add themtogether and give you a much biggerbattery.

Ed: You’ve developed this rather smartlooking little box?

Nigel: Yes, the little box is what wecall the Power Tower … I’m not surewhether it’s the Power Tower or Tower ofPower, as we said earlier. But this willtake up to four batteries, giving youvirtually a 400 Watt hour battery, whichwould run an F65 for probably somethinglike three hours. It has two outputs, soyou can actually run two devices from it,plus it has a built-in charger andtherefore you can charge it withouthaving to take the batteries out of situ.Obviously for transportation you do haveto take the batteries out, but then that’sfine, because each battery is under the100 Watt hour.

Ed: And I guess what’s important isthat, by stacking these batteries this

way, you’re not making a series like you do in a torch,you’re actually connecting these in parallel?

Nigel: Yes, these are fully independently

connected if you like, because the principle of the PAG

linking system is that the batteries hang on a positive

and negative rail and they communicate with each other

with the two communication contacts. So that what

we’re doing is keeping the batteries independent, but

they are talking to each other so that they are

controlled from the master battery, which is the first

battery in the line.

Page 34

PAG Power Tower for those heavy duty applications.

PAG Power Centre at left.

Page

Ed: So unlike cheaper systems where, if you connectbatteries in parallel, you’re going to get some of thebatteries driving the weaker one, this doesn’t happen?

Nigel: We make the batteries totally independentbecause when you’re charging together, maybe inusage it’s not so much of a problem, but when you’recharging and you’ve got an empty battery and a fullbattery, you cannot have any transfer of currentbetween the two batteries. It must be totally isolatedand that is done because of the extra two contactswhich is the communication which keeps them totallyseparate.

Ed: And all of this is really under the PAG mantra ofhigh technology?

Nigel: Yes it’s high technology and paramountsafety. You can read about the laptop problems, youcan discuss the 787 problems – all of this is saying thatlithium ion is a dangerous product. It’s not if you dothe right things. But unfortunately the right things arevery expensive – the testing, the isolation, as we’vetalked about before, each battery is totally isolated,inside the circuitry is totally protected. These arevirtually 100% safe. We get very frustrated becausewe know that we’re into competition with other

batteries which are not, and that makes us a little bitsad because it makes us expensive where we’recompeting with product which is not made to the samespecification.

Ed: You haven’t had a phone call from Boeing yet?

Nigel: The frustration is … the strange thing is

that we could solve the situation. We believe we have

the technology to do this, but obviously we’re a little

minnow. We would love them to call us because we

have the answer.

Their answer is to put it in a box and seal it and hope

that the problem goes away.

Ed: So what have Airbus done?

Nigel: Well Airbus traditionally has used nicad but

the new A350 was going to have lithium ion. However,

under the circumstances, they’ve changed back to

nicads because in their opinion it’s a safer product. I

think we would possibly disagree because you could still

use lithium ion as long as you had the controls in the

battery, which seem to be not present at the time.

Ed: For Boeing?

Nigel: For Boeing but not for PAG customers. NZVN

Page 35

Sennheiser for SyntecWe are now at Sennheiser – first of all though talkingabout Neumann and, to tell us about what’s new atNeumann, we have Jeff Touzeau, president.

Ed: Not the president though?

Jeff: President of Hummingbird Media, the PR firm thatrepresents Sennheiser in the US.

Ed: I’d love to get a badge that said “President”.

Jeff: You can thank my secretary for that. It’s nothingthat I did.

Ed: Right, so Neumann?

Jeff: This year Neumann is announcing a new studiomonitor called the KH 310. The KH 310 is a three waystudio monitor. It’s loosely based on the Klein &Hummel three way monitor, but the entire loudspeakerhas been redesigned with brand new drivers and lotsmore that’s new too.

Specifically, the dispersion now is 2.5 times greaterthan the Klein & Hummel model, so that sweet spotwhen you’re listening in a monitoring environment ismuch, much larger, so you don’t have to sort of pokeyour head around looking for that sweet spot. That’s alot better and that’s really due to the design of theloudspeaker. The drivers themselves are also muchmore powerful and they give seven decibels greateroutput which is a significant amount. And then also thebass extends all the way down to 34 Hertz, so you don’treally need a subwoofer … a subwoofer can always help,but when it goes down that low, you know you’re prettymuch set. So for a three way monitor, it’s really greatand the suggested retail price for a pair is NZD$7,600,including GST which is great value for a Neumannquality product.

Ed: Well that’s it, you look around this show and yousee other areas of audio, especially the collection of theaudio, the processing of the audio – everything isimproving to match the vision improvements with 4K,so your sound recording is getting better, so you needto listen to what you record?

Jeff: You do and Neumann’s actually in a uniqueposition because if you think about all the studios andpostproduction environments around the world, a lot ofthem have Neumann microphones, so Neumann is nowhandling the input stage as well as the output stage andwith their knowledge of diaphragms and transducersand all that, they’ve really got the technology to make

Jeff with Neumann audio monitor.

Simon with lots of Rycote product.

Page

Ed: Because that’s it, the Lyre really has become a

Rycote symbol. You could almost put it in your logo?

Simon: It’s one of the reasons that some people

have come towards us in the last year to be honest.

A lot of the reason that we’ve worked with these people

is so that we don’t stand still; so we go onto the next

thing, and that’s the bit that we can’t really talk about

at this stage …

Ed: Oh alright, but what you have got here are some

small developments.

Just tell us about this windscreen kit?

Simon: Well we’ve got a new kit which focuses

mainly on ORTF for using either the Sennheiser 8050 or

8040 or the Schoeps CCMs.

It’s a kit that allows you to get the ORTF spacing inside

a stereo windshield; it’s been very popular.

Ed: What’s an “ORTF spacing?”

Simon: ORTF spacing is a stereo mic technique, so

you’ve got two cardioid or hyper-cardioid capsules

spaced 170mm apart and at 110 degrees.

So it’s a very specific stereo setup.

Sennheiser at the moment don’t have a side fire figure

of 8 in the 8000 series, and without that you can’t do

MS, so it’s either XY or ORTF.

Ed: And I see another stereo microphone package up

there that has two microphones, but they’re one on top

of the other. How do you get stereo out of that?

Simon: That’s an MS ( mid – side ) pair.

That’s quite a recent thing for us, where we’ve started

using the Lyres instead of silicon bands. It was one of the last things to come across to Lyres,

but most Schoeps, Senn-

heiser – those sort of

companies – they are doing

figure of 8, so you can

actually do an MS setup with

their shotgun mic.

Ed: So it’s to do with the

microphone pattern, rather

than the actual positioning

of the microphone?

Simon: Yes.

You’ve got a shotgun

underneath providing the

middle signal and then

you’ve got the two side

signals coming in from the

figure of 8

Obviously if you were

looking at the patterns from

above, you’ll see the 8

shape going left and right

and the shotgun going

straight out in front for the

middle.

Ed: I’m sure people who

know what he’s talking

about will understand that.

For the rest of us, go and

see your Rycote dealer. NZVN

Page 38

A stereo pair well supported.

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Nagra for Sound TechniquesWe are now at Nagra with Stephen Buckland and JohnOwens from Nagra.

Ed: Stephen, people have known Nagra for many,many years and every time they visited SoundTechniques they would see a Nagra, but not necessarilyin action. Well no, actually it was in action?

Stephen: Yes we have an old Nagra which wasdestroyed by the Bomb Squad at Sydney Airport … weuse it as a doorstop. It’s interesting these days, you’regetting older Grant, because a lot of people come in andsay oh that’s nice and they wouldn’t have a clue what itwas, what it did, and where it fits into the history ofportable audio recording.

Ed: But now there’s been a raising from the dead andNagra is back in at Sound Techniques?

Stephen: Yes, we’ve been selling and promotingNagra I guess for about 4 or 5 years, but Nagra itself isactually a brand which operates under the auspices ofAudio Technology Switzerland. This is a business whichhas split off from the larger Nagra conglomerate tofocus entirely on audio recording, being the thing whichwe in New Zealand principally know Nagra for.

Ed: Perhaps we should speak to the horse himself andit’s John Owens, Sales Manager for … well we shouldcall you Audio Technology Switzerland, shouldn’t we.Or should we call you Nagra?

John: Whatever.

Ed: As long as we don’t call you Lucy?

John: Absolutely, yes … or Doris. But AudioTechnology Switzerland we set up about a year ago tobranch off from the Kudelski Group because the audiodivision was really quite separate in the way it works.Also, our customer base and the whole business modelof the audio group was nothing to do with themultinational corporate structure of the Kudelski Groupas a whole, which is a huge international corporation.So we spun off the company, setting up AudioTechnology Switzerland, however the brand remains thesame, the engineers remain the same and all the peoplewho are involved in Audio Technology Switzerland areall directly from the original Nagra people. So we’re allthe same – from the outside, it shouldn’t really makemuch difference. We’ve been trading now for comingon to a year and a half. It’s been an interesting startup, but we’re here and we’ve got some nice newproducts now as well, so we’re ready to really hit themarket.

Ed: And that’s it, with such a powerful brand and thepeople behind it, you’re able to re-launch yourselves aspurely an audio company with a product that reallycrosses boundaries. It is something that could be usedin television, radio or just general audio work?

John: I assume you’re talking about the Nagra 7,which is our latest creation. It’s very difficult to buildany one recorder that’s going to satisfy all the differentmarkets, because …

Ed: Sound people are tricky to deal with?

John: Very much ( smiles.) The problem is thatthe different industries require different performancesfrom recorders and if you’re going to make a recorderthat actually suits all the different applications, it isgoing to cost the price of a space shuttle, because itends up with an awful lot of features that the majorityof people are never going to use. So you’re putting alot of development work into something that, in manysituations, is not actually to be used. What we’ve triedto do with the Nagra 7 was to go back to basics where

our goal initially was to have the highest possiblequality two channel recorder available, because nobodybuilds one nowadays.

Ed: They’re all multichannels and, as a video person,it has always puzzled me why you need multichannelsin every situation? You don’t.

John: Well exactly, in every situation you don’tbut it’s the reality TV thing, where they just stick radiomics on everybody and they want to record everybody24 hours a day and then let postproduction deal with it.That’s how it works and so everybody wants thesemultichannel recorders. But if you take a different partof the audio industry, like the music industry forexample, they’re quite happy with just two channels. Ifyou go to broadcast, radio journalism, or the sort ofinterview work we’re doing now, you’re quite happywith only one channel – I mean mono would be fine inmany applications. You’re not going to buy an 8-trackor 12-track recorder and then go into a radiobroadcaster and try and sell it as a journalist recorder,because it’s not designed for that application.

So coming back to the Nagra 7, our main goal was tofirst of all build an extremely high quality, reliable, twochannel recorder, which we’ve accomplished. Nowobviously with our last two channel recorder which wasthe LB, one of the criticisms that people would say to uswas well why doesn’t it have timecode? A lot of peoplesaid well it would be perfect to use as a little twochannel timecode recorder for sounds effects gathering,or for documentary work, that sort of thing. So wethought well what we’ll do is on the Nagra 7 we’ve gotthe basis of a high quality recorder, and then we’ll havean optional timecode board that we can put in. Sowe’ve actually put two slots in the machine where youcan internally insert boards to give you differentapplications. The basic board options that we offer, onewould be timecode obviously including iXML metadata

Page 39

John with the new Nagra 7.

and that sort of thing which would then adapt this twochannel machine to the film-TV industry. The secondboard we offer is a WiFi and 3G which means that onceyou’ve got the WiFi it will allow you to send audio overthe Internet through WiFi or 3G; of course, the filmindustry is not interested in 3G but, in otherapplications, it is. The other board we’re offering is abroadcast board if you like, which will incorporate MPEGcompression, an audio editor, so with that option onboard, you have the editor and the compression whichis what broadcasters want, plus the 3G or WiFi allowingthem to send the audio back from the field in a reportersituation, for example back to the studio. Now ofcourse, nobody in the film industry is going to wantthat; and then we’ve also got the ISDN option. ISDN isa dated technology, but unfortunately still very popularin certain countries around the world, typically in France– we’ve sold probably over 1,000 ISDN RSC machineswhich were very popular and still in use. Radio France

and all the other broadcasters are looking to replacethese machines and they want an ISDN machine,because there isn’t a reliable audio over IP system thatworks yet. Therefore, they are happy to continue withISDN and so this Nagra 7 has the option of either thetimecode board or the ISDN board. So with these twoslots you can make up a combination – you wouldn’t beable to have timecode and ISDN, but there again you’renever going to want timecode and ISDN in the samebox.

Ed: Does anybody ever ask you for user bits?

John: User bits will be used in the timecode, but Imean generally speaking that’s only used as date andnowadays with modern digital technology everyrecording is date and time stamped anyway, so it’s lessimportant user bits nowadays. That was in the earlydays of timecode in the 80s and stuff like that.

Ed: I was just mentioning another outdatedtechnology?

John: Well you say outdated technology, but youknow people still use it.

Ed: Yes, people still use tape?

John: Some people yes – not to mention who!

Ed: That sounds like a very versatile machineStephen?

Stephen: Yes, it’s interesting because Nagra, orAudio Technology Switzerland is paying greaterattention to what users are asking for and I think that’sprogressive as far as sound recording goes, whereas alot of manufacturers in the past designed somethingthat they think will work then users come along and say“well, actually, it would be really good if …” To me it’s asignificant advance introducing capability to answer

Page

“yes well it will do that if you want to buy the extraboard that goes with it.”

Ed: And I guess for some people just the basicpackage, two channel, simple recording without thetimecode would work?

Stephen: Indeed it would and the thing that’s alwaysimpressive about Nagra, I think anyone who comparesit with other devices and you know, I could be partisanhere, will say that their audio recording quality, there isa difference between it and other manufacturers andpeople who want that recording quality, whether it’s ina handheld version or in a more elaborate machine,they appreciate that the recording quality is higher.

Ed: So the particular uses?

Stephen: High quality sound effects recording, musicrecording, situations filming where you do only want torecord a stereo high quality sound in soundtrackdocumentaries …

Ed: So in terms of the cost, it’s very comparable to astandard small multichannel recorder from othermanufacturers?

Stephen: Yes comparable. You know, if you want toactually record sound at the highest possible quality,then you need to buy the recorder that specifically doesthat; if you want a sound mixer-recorder that does avariety of different things, then you’ve perhaps got tolook elsewhere.

Ed: John, one of the features of this is a quiteintuitive touchscreen?

John: Yes, the touchscreen’s an interestingapproach. It’s the first time we’ve ever done it on arecorder. Now obviously everybody nowadays is usedto iPhones and iPads … well most people with theexception of Grant are pretty familiar with thesetouchscreens now and I think people are not scared offby them as they would have been some years ago.

Ed: They leave fingerprints I find?

John: Well yes, but that’s the way it goes. Thefact that people are not scared off by it nowadays, ledus to take that direction, and the interesting part as faras the manufacturer is concerned, is that you can thendo away with lots of things on a recorder … previouslyyou had to have switches for monitoring and switchesfor this, that and the other, and switches today are thesole source of failure in a piece of equipment. They’rethe weakest link in the chain, so the more you can doaway with them, obviously you’re increasing thereliability of the recorder; and secondly, because this istouchscreen, it means everything is in software, whichagain makes the machine far more flexible because bysimply changing the software, you can change itsappearance, you can change what it does, the way itworks. When you’ve got hard switches ( as we’ve hadon all our previous recorders ) if you want to changesomething, it’s very difficult. You want to add a featureor add a switch, you can’t because the physical buttonis not there to do it. Whereas if you’ve got it insoftware, and you need to add a switch, well you justadd a switch and it’s on the screen. You can thendesign the screen in as many ways as you want it to be,even user configurable. So you could have, you know,various areas of the screen that are dedicated to, forexample, levels and then another part that’s dedicatedto menu selection – that sort of thing. And you canreally adapt the machine to suit the particular needswithout having to drill holes in it as you would do inprevious recorders. So it’s a great step forward for us.Nonetheless, we have of course maintained thetraditional Nagra rotary switch, which everybody laughs

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Not a production model - you don’t getto see the internals.

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about, but the great thing about that is you can tellexactly what the machine’s doing without looking at it.

You can have it hanging round your waist or off your

shoulder, you can put your hand down in pitch darkness

and put the machine into record or play back or

whatever you want to do without looking at it.

That’s something that practically no other recorder will

allow you to do.

It is a great advantage and you know, we’ve maintained

that because people look at it and go “oh, that’s a

Nagra.”

Ed: So I guess it’s worth people coming into Sound

Techniques to have a look at a Nagra on display and

talk to Stephen about the other Nagra products in the

range?

Stephen: That’s correct Grant. I think we just need

to wait for the Nagra 7 to come out of the blocks.

Ed: Well you’ll have pictures?

Stephen: We’ll have pictures – we’ve also got theprevious model so that will give people an idea of what

it’s like and yes, we will get one as soon as they

become available. NZVN

Page 41

Lectronics for Sound TechniquesWe are at Lectrosonics with Karl Winkler and Stephen

Buckland.

Ed: Well, are we starting with radio microphones,

because the topic of the year is spectrum?

Karl: Definitely, and wireless microphones are what

we’re best known for, particularly for film and television

production, but also for touring, installations, houses of

worship …

Ed: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s all about bandwidth

Karl?

Karl: It is all about bandwidth and all countries aregoing through this now. The idea that the spectrum isincreasingly more valuable and there’s a desire on thepart of a number of different parties to use thisspectrum. So in the United States particularly, we’reseeing groups like Google and Microsoft wanting accessto it for content distribution, but of course contentcreation requires it to make the product that’s going to

be distributed, so you have NFL and Disney and theBroadway Coalition all fighting to keep it.

Ed: All we’ve got in New Zealand is StephenBuckland.

Karl: Well that’s enough isn’t it?

Ed: Well, yes, it is.

Karl: Absolutely. So it remains to be seen exactly howit will balance out. It has not been finalised and itprobably won’t be for a while – years probably.

Ed: Stephen?

Stephen: It’s interesting to hear that Karl, becausepeople are always asking me “what’s the deal, has itsettled down?” Even at this show, I’ve had people fromother territories asking me “oh, but in New Zealand,what are you doing there?” I say, well, we don’t know,we’re following what everybody else is up to, and it’s abit like a dog chasing its tail.

Ed: So the burning question is, why would you buy awireless microphone now?

Stephen: Well because things have settled down to adegree and for the foreseeable future we know,particularly in New Zealand, what spectrum is going tobe available, but of course because we operate under ageneral user licence, we have to work around whatother people are doing and as soon as clear space isidentified in the UHF spectrum, other payingorganisations, such as Karl was just talking about –Google and such – may well buy the rights at licence touse that and radio mics won’t be able to be operated inthat area.

Ed: But that still doesn’t answer the question “whywould you buy a radio mic now?”

Stephen: You buy one because you need to use it,because you’re a content creator and it’s the best way… well if you want to operate wirelessly, it’s the onlyway you can do it.

Ed: But it might not be useable in a year’s time?

Stephen: It will still be useable in a year’s time – I’dbe saying maybe five years would be when you mighthave to rethink your plan, and there are a lot of peopleabout to be affected by the end of this year in NewZealand, but they’ve had ample warning, they’ve had 3-5 years’ warning that if they are operating in the 700 to800MHz band it is going to be untenable.

Ed: So are you bringing in a range of cordedmicrophones?

Stephen: Well we always have sold cordedmicrophones, yes.

Ed: Alright Karl, what have you got for us in the radiomic area from Lectrosonics?

Karl: Well the latest product’s our SRB dual channelslot mount receiver. It’s a modular system; it wasdesigned for slot mount ENG use, but it’s expanded toKarl with potato gun video behind.

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be used for field production, carts, bags, pretty muchanything that someone might want to do with awireless, because it’s small and it’s lightweight and it’stwo channels. It’s the second most popular productthat we make. The B version, the most recent version,is an upgrade, because we discovered that, what’shappening with these units is, people are using them forall these different things and so we increased thesensitivity by 7dB, we reduced the internal noise, so it’sa much superior radio to the original design. It wasreally intended for ENG use only, but because of its sizeand utility, it’s been adopted for all these other uses.

So that’s the SRB – better range, better resistance tointerference and we think it’s a real winner now.

Ed: And you can still drop it in the bath?

Karl: Well I don’t know about that. As long as it’ssealed up in your camera, it is splash proof – you knowif it’s mounted in your camera, it has a seal. In truewaterproof products we have the WM transmitter andthat’s a belt pack style transmitter …

Ed: That’s “W” for “water” is it?

Karl: That’s right, W for water, and that is truly sealed,it can be dunked and those are out there being used on

shows like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckerswhere they’re in the absolute harshestenvironments imaginable, and those keep theaudio going.

Ed: I always wondered watching the DeadliestCatch how they got on with microphones, andnow I know the answer.

Karl: They’re using Lectrosonics. In fact the guywas here yesterday in the booth.

Ed: Did he bring a crab with him?

Karl: He’s missing some of his toes I think!

Ed: Okay, now just to see the durability of aLectrosonics SMV – small transmitter … there’s alink that we’ll put in here and you can go andhave a look at a nice little video about atransmitter being projected from a big potatogun. Watch it here:

h t t p : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ?v=cLaqwPD8Q4I

Page 42

NZVN

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Canon CamerasWe’re with Chuck Westfallfrom Canon PR and we’regoing to first of all look atEOS lenses.

Chuck: On our stand,we’re showing a range ofcameras that use all of ourdifferent lenses. We havethe EOS-1D C which is anSLR type camera thatactually shoots 4K MotionJPEG direct into a CF card inthe camera, and on thiscamera right now we’reshowing one of our cinemaprimes. We actually havefive cinema primes out onthe market currently andwe’re developing a number 6prime coming. We also havefour EF cinema zooms.Where these lenses reallydiffer from the SLR lenses isprimarily in the fact thatthey are barrelled for cinemause, so they have a much larger physical size; they alsohave an 11 blade mechanical diaphragm, totallystepless, and on the focusing ring, it is also totallystepless. It has about a 300 degree pitch on it so, for afocus puller, it’s a much easier proposition to be able torepeat the focus setting and go slowly from one toanother as you might do for a cinema recording.

Ed: Is the construction of a cinema lens that much

different from an SLR or a traditional video lens which I

know Canon has been producing for a long time?

Chuck: Well from the optical formula standpoint

they are very similar, but from the mechanical

standpoint, they’re totally different. They’re far more

robust on the cinema lenses because they’re made to

hold an alignment permanently. A true cinema lens is

designed for the demands of the cinema business where

you are going to be putting these lenses on and off

cameras all day long and you really don’t want to have

a situation where the lens is too lightweight.

Ed: I guess even the slightest movement when you’re

dealing with a 4K size file, you’re going to see it?

Chuck: Yes that’s an issue. One of the other issues

that we’re always concerned about for cinema is a

feature called “breathing” – in other words, as you ramp

focus from far to near or vice versa, if you have a

disproportionate change in the size of the image, that

can happen with an SLR designed lens. But with the

cinema lenses we’ve actually been able to alter the

optical formula as far as how we focus the lens, just to

get rid of that issue.

Ed: Do you need any different formula in the glass or

in the coating?

Chuck: The coatings for sure and one of the things

that we did was that for all nine of our cinema lenses

that are currently available, we made sure that the

match on the coatings is as precise as possible, so that

anybody using those lenses as a set is going to be very

pleased with the fact that they’re so consistent.

Ed: There are other people out there making far moreexpensive cinema lenses, but from what I hear, if youtry the Canon lens you might find that in fact it does thejob?

Page 43

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

EOS C500 EF Mount Body only(also available with PL mount to order)

Designed for cinema industry professionals this camera is compatible with existing Canon EF and EF-S lenses. The C500 provides recording and output options for 4K and 2K image acquisition with the Super 35mm Canon CMOS Sensor and DIGIC DV III Image Processor.

trade Price$32,173+ GStLens NOT Included

Contact Protel now for our best Price. Canon finance is available covering the purchase of C100,C300, C500 and EOS-1D C 12 month’s interest free or 5.9% for 2 years. Offer is only valid for orders placed between 1st May and 31st May 2013. Canon Terms and conditions apply and finance is subject to approval.

EOS C300 EF Mount Body only(also available with PL mount to order)

Compatible with existing Canon EF and EF-S lenses, the C300s compatibility with third-party accessories meets virtually any production need. Super 35mm Canon CMOS Sensor and DIGIC DV III Image Processor.

trade Price$19,999+ GStCanon $2,000 rebate until 31st May

Lens NOT Included

EOS-1DC Cinema 4K CAMERA Body

A video powerhouse providing cinematographers 4K video capture in a single unit. No need for external power or recording devices, the control layout is intuitive for both still and video shooting. Compact and unobtrusive the EOS-1D is fully sealed for protection against dust and moisture.

trade Price$14,999+ GStLens NOT Included

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A compact and ergonomic design compatible with existing Canon EF and EF-S lenses. Meets a wide variety of application needs. Amazing low-light performance with a Super 35mm Canon CMOS Sensor and DIGIC DV III Image Processor.

trade Price$7,130+ GSt In Stock Now

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Available for pre-orderCall Protel for Pricing

Cinema LensesA wide range of Cinema Lens available from Canon in EF and PL mount versions.

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sensor. So with the two greens, what we’re able to dois to really increase the clarity of the image quite a lot.We get rid of aliasing and moire completely and as aresult the sharpness of the image is very close to athousand TV lines.

Ed: You mentioned debayering and that’s one of thewords I’ve heard more and more now with 4K, that anydebayering of the signal is actually not so good at thislevel?

Chuck: Well debayering basically is a techniquethat has come around because of the fact that you don’treally have a 3 chip system; you’re doing a single chipcapture and you need, in a regular digital camera, to beable to interpolate your different colour channels basedon incomplete information. Your detail is not the issue,it’s not that so much as it is the fact that the colourinformation is not 100%. So with the case of the C300,that is not an issue, we’re able to completely bypassthat by the way we derive the colour information offthat sensor.

Ed: Okay. We had a demo recently inNew Zealand with the 1D C and the C500and saw two movies both very, verygood; showed the value of the sizecertainly of the 1D C and it was justmind blowing. So I guess they’redifferent horses for different courses …how do you present these to thecustomer to say “hey, this is the one youmight need, or this one, or buy both”?

Chuck: Well in this case, it’s actuallyvery clear for us to do that because withthe EOS-1D C, if 4K is the issue that youhave, it’s kind of unique in the fact thatit is the only SLR camera out therecurrently that can actually do 4Krecorded directly into the camera. But itis limited in the respect that it isbasically an 8 bit 422 signal at the fixedframe rate of 24 frames per second.

Now we will have a firmware update inthe very near future that will give us 25frames per second, which will be nicer

for some of the other areas of the world, like theEuropean market …

Ed: And New Zealand.

Chuck: Okay, so then I’m sure you will appreciate

it … but still that’s a fixed frame rate and it’s

compressed, so all your colour is baked in.

Now we have another camera, the EOS C500 and with

that one, basically it is the same image sensor as the

C300 but instead of using it to create a full HD only,

what we’re doing is we’re actually allowing 4K and 2K,

plus Quad HD and full HD and in that case it’s RAW

video. So when it comes out it’s basically 10 bit 444

RAW and it can be very, very high quality colour and at

the same time the frame rates can go anywhere that

you want from one frame per second all the way up 120

depending on how you set the camera.

Ed: But you are relying on third parties to make the

recording system for that?

Chuck: Yes we are and we actually have workedvery tightly with about a half a dozen of them. Evennow, out on the market, there are several solutions that

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Chuck: Yes, that’s our heritage. We’re really verystrong in optics; we really pride ourselves on that andactually we even have a demo here at the show toclearly demonstrate ( pardon the pun ) how sharp theselenses are. We have a 14½ to 60 zoom lens on aprojector in one of our rooms to be able to actuallyshow the resolution from centre to corner, and itexceeds 80 lines of actual optical resolution at allpoints.

Ed: Do you think that’s one of the major reasonspeople are adopting the C300 and the C500 … to methey’re a funny looking camera, they don’t have theshape of a video camera or a cinema camera, butbecause they understand that the lenses are the majorpart of cinema production, hey there’s the lens solutionand that camera fits them?

Chuck: Well that’s definitely one of the contributingfactors, but in my opinion I think one of the otherfactors that a lot of people are looking at, is the ideathat our sensors are so good. The Super 35 sensor that

we put into the C300 and the way that we’re actuallyderiving full HD out of that sensor is unique in theindustry and it creates a very beautiful colour, a verysoft type of noise that doesn’t really offend when you’relooking at it visually, even when you’re at a high ISO –all the way up to ISO 20,000 these images are veryusable. So people like the lens, but they like the lowlight and then they demand a lot of the videocentricfeatures that a camera like the C300 has to offer –whether it’s the XLR inputs or whether it’s the zebras,the peaking, the waveform monitor, the vectorscopeand a lot of the other things that are kind of aids to avideographer to get their job done.

Ed: I understand there’s something special about theway you handle green?

Chuck: Yes. What we do is that, for every fourphoto sites on the image sensor, we’re outputting onlyone onto the file. So we’re going from an eightmegapixel CMOS down to a two megapixel HD output.What we do is we take two greens, one red and oneblue and we actually extract the colour individually fromall of them … we never do any debayering off of that

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customers can buy, specifically the Gemini 4:4:4 fromConvergent Design; also Codex has got a couple ofpieces that are very useful and they’re considered to bemore or less, I would say, the high end of that market.And then there’s also the AJA Ki Pro Quad on the way.

Ed: Do you give them stars – sort of Canon starratings – depending on how good you think they are foryour camera?

Chuck: Not really. Our issue with it is primarily theversatility that they offer, because each of thosedevices has its own strengths.

Ed: The on-board recording for the 1D C is, fromwhat I saw on the movie, an incredibly valuable tool touse in certain situations. If you’re not on-boardrecording, is there another option?

Chuck: Well unfortunately the only option thatyou’re going to have is to do HDMI out if you want to doexternal and at that point now you’re at full HD ratherthan 4K. The other thing I wanted to mention aboutthe 1D C is that it is a very capable full HD camera.Unlike virtually all the other SLRs that are out there,there is no time limit on the individual clip. You knowusually, there’s a 30 minute limit on an SLR. But notime limit on the 1D C except the capacity of thememory card. You get about 32 minutes of 4K video ona 128GB UDMA 7 CF card with the 1D C. You also have

ability to do either a full sensor width on your HD or aSuper 35 crop which is like a digital punch in and withthat digital punch in, we can put a wider range of lensesthat were designed for the Super 35 sensor, eventhough it’s a 24x36 image sensor on the camera. Soit’s a very versatile camera.

Also the HDMI recording; when the HDMI is connected,we can still see the LCD live on the back of the camera– that’s something that’s rare in SLRs. So the smallform factor, the ruggedness, how well it’s sealedagainst dust and moisture … these are the kind ofthings that make the 1D C an optimum choice for a lotof location work.

Ed: So you’re unlimited in your clip size when you’reusing the HDMI out, but obviously with the internalcard, you’ve got a limit on that, to the card size?

Chuck: Right, and as you’re recording 4K, you areconsuming a lot of data, so …

Ed: Yes, about four minutes I understand?

Chuck: So definitely you need to be looking at yourhigh capacity cards. Usually the people who are doingthis 4K in the camera are looking more at like the 128gigabyte cards as opposed to the 64s or even smaller.

Ed: And I believe it’s a very good still camera as well?

Chuck: Exactly, that’s another thing that’s veryvaluable about it is the fact that here, in one device,

you’ve got 18 megapixel still capabilityRAW or JPEG or both, up to 12 frames asecond with full continuous auto focus.

Ed: And I’ve also heard it said that youcould actually use this in cinema modeand then just grab one of those framesand you’ve got a fantastic still image?

Chuck: Yes and that’s just one ofseveral different things that arehappening, but we actually have a demoarea here where we’re demonstratingthat specific thing that you mentionedand we’re finding that a lot of people arevery excited about it because, instead ofbeing locked into like the individualmoment that they were trying to capturein an individual exposure, now they canlook at 24 exposures in the course of asecond and pick the optimum one.

Ed: My last question regards theergonomics of the design. Coming froma video background myself, I look atthese cameras and I see there’sdefinitely a DSLR heritage there. Forsomebody who has come through that

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DSLR regime, great, but to somebody whois used to a shoulder mount camera or atraditional video camera, it’s a difficultarrangement shall we say. What was thereasoning behind the way you went,especially with the 300 and the 500?

Chuck: Well in the case of thosecameras, what we were really trying to dowas to make them as small as possible andyet as rugged as possible and as flexible interms of how you set them up. Werecognised that in the case of a lot ofHollywood productions, it’s really a rigbased operation, so having a kind of a smallcompact body is actually a benefit to them.But at the same time, the design is flexibleenough that you can actually put together ashoulder mount rig – you know the rightkind of a viewing setup that is comfortablefor the camera operator, then you canessentially have your shoulder mount withcontrols for your focus zoom and iris righton the handles that you’re holding in front.So effectively you can have like an ENGstyle approach – the only thing that ismissing is a servo zoom lens that isspecifically designed for that camera. Nowthe good news there is that, here at theshow, we’ve announced that we’re actuallyin development for that. So of course we’vebeen in that market for many, many yearson the two-thirds inch format for broadcasttelevision, but the news at NAB is that we’renow expanding into the Super 35 range with that designas well.

Ed: Okay – the very last question. I know for yearsCanon, with the XL1 and then into the high definitionside of it, looked after that prosumer end of the videomarket. Is there continued development at that end?

Chuck: Absolutely yes, in fact here at the NABshow we just announced two new camcorders that areexactly in that range – the XA-20 and XA-25, pricepoints in US dollars of US$2199 and US$2699respectively. The cameras are identical to each other,except that the XA-25 has the HD-SDI port. Now theseare cameras that have effectively approximately one-third inch chip size, so a very small and lightweightcamera can be built around that, but they have a 20xoptical zoom, they have electronic and optical imagestabilisation, they can record to AVCHD and MP4simultaneously and they have built-in WiFi now, so thatyou can transmit your clips to FTP or control the cameraremotely with your iPad.

The handle that you’re seeing on top here has the XLRinputs and it also has all the audio controls on the otherside and a lot of the camera controls on top. This is aremovable handle so that you can go even smaller andlighter than what you’re seeing here on the stand, byremoving that handle and just holding the grip of thecamera on the side. You also have your regular leverstyle zoom as well as a focusing and zooming ring onthe front. This camera can use the touchscreen tooperate most of your major controls, but there is also ajoystick. It is an OLED fold out screen with 1.23 milliondots, very bright and very sharp.

Image stabilisation on this camera is really a strongpoint. One of the things that we put in is a new featurethat we’re calling Dynamic IS. In the older generation

of this which was the XA-10, we had just a straight one-third inch chip that was 1920x1080.

Here we’ve gone slightly larger at one over 2.84 andthe reason why we did that is because, rather than torestrict yourself to just 1920x1080 and that’s it, nowyou have the ability electronically to derive your1920x1080 from more pixel area.

So in other words, you have electronic stabilisation ontop of the optical stabilisation that’s in the lens andespecially when you’re walking around with either ashoulder mount or you’re using the handle and you’rehand carrying it, these are the times when you’re goingto get a lot of movement from the camera operator.With the Dynamic IS, the electronic stabilisation is sopowerful as to basically minimise that effect that, on topof the optical stabilisation, it creates a very high qualitylook.

So we’re really happy to have that. Now you canchoose Dynamic IS and just set it if you want, or you

can have what’s called Intelligent IS where you let the

camera decide what IS to pick because there’s also

others; there’s Hybrid IS for when you’re working with

Macro; there is what we call Powered IS when you’re at

the long end of the telephoto range; and then we also

have various other different forms like for example if

the camera’s on a tripod. It knows that it’s on a tripodand it shuts everything down so that you’re not having

any artificial stabilisation that doesn’t need to be there.

That area has been very well thought out and very well

equipped.

There’s a total of six different individual modes that canbe selected including the Intelligent Mode that basicallyis the camera’s automatic decision as to which one ismost appropriate for the conditions.

Ed: Fantastic. NZVN

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The new XA-25 video camera.

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Manfrotto Tripodsfor Panavision

We are on the Manfrotto stand to talk toWayne Schulman about tripods andheads.

Ed: Wayne, the 500 has been proventhe most popular of the Manfrottorange?

Wayne: The 500 head is justintroduced today. It is the smallest ofthe Bridging Technology series. It has aweight capacity of 11 pounds, ascompared to the 502 which will handleup to 13; the 504 is 16.5; and the 509which will handle 25 pounds. It’s thecompletion of the series. It’s takenthree years to get all three heads out.We’re introducing it with a set of legsand a bag at a price point in the US of$350. The technology that’s in this headfor panning and tilting is actual fluidcartridges and ball bearings. So it’s the sameprofessional fluid movement that you’re going to getwith the more expensive heads, just less of the featureset.

Ed: I see you’ve got a DSLR on this one, but it willcertainly take a small video camera?

Wayne: Absolutely, anything up to the 11 poundweight is where it belongs. The way we position thetripods that we have on display at NAB, is we have aCanon DSLR on the 500; we’re running a C100 Cinemacamera on the 502; a C300 on the 504; and a C500 onthe 509. So representative of other camera weightsthat are out there, you can see how you could migrateup the range of the four heads as your weight loadchanges.

Ed: And I see on the 500 there’s no spreader – Iguess it’s not necessary?

Wayne: Actually we do make the 500 head withfour different tripod combinations. We make it with the755 series which has the top locks, both in aluminiumthat you’re looking at now and in a carbon fibre version.We also make it in a single leg carbon fibre versionwhich is the 535 tripod; and we have a set of stickswith a spreader, which would be the MVK500AM. So it’sfour different tripod kits with the one head.

Ed: And the big long pole down the middle?

Wayne: On the 755, this will allow you to use it forvideo with the fluid motions that are on the head, butalso it gives you the capability of balancing it with yourspirit level and using the centre column as you would aphoto tripod. So if you’re out in the field and you’reshooting video, this will work great for you; if you wantto move it to a photo application with the DSLR, youhave the centre column that you can go a little bithigher to snap your photo and get some differentangles.

Ed: Great. Now you talk about the top lock. Can youjust explain that a little bit more?

Wayne: On the tripods, the 755 series, rather thanhaving a spreader, we have the ability to lock your legat different angles depending upon how you position thetop lock on it. So you can angle it out at your standardposition; you can then angle it out at a second position;and then for a low mode you go into your third angle ofoperation. And the lock is taking place up at the neck

of the tripod, rather than through use of a spreader.Again, this is a more photo centric type of tripod.

If you want to go to a more standard video tripod withyour standard half fall, you go with the MVK500AM orthe MVK500C.

Ed: But if you want that really portable tripod forcarrying on a plane for example, or in a backpack, thisis very light, very compact – it comes down to a smallform factor, and it does everything as long as you’re a

little bit careful?

Wayne: Exactly.All the 500tripods are goingto compact downso that you canhave a light-weight head thatcan handle up to11 pounds, thatcan fit in abackpack or asuitcase.

Ed: Fantastic.Now SYMPLA – Iknow you’re notgoing to tell metoo much aboutit, but there aresome develop-ments comingalong with theSYMPLA?

Wayne: Yes,we’re hoping thatbefore Septemberwe will havesome additions tothe line. Themajor one ofthose is a smalleroffset bracket sothat the rails arecloser together.We’re also goingto have a new

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Top lock action - note theriser pole too.

Simpl

SYMPLA is a professional modular video rig system that extends and complements new cameras, allows for stable support and framing, supports essential accessories features, offering versatility and high performance as well as comfort, safety and much simpler and faster set up than existing rigs.

SYMPLA is built for flexibility and speed, so you can change anything and everything easily and quickly: hand grip positions, counterbalance, camera body, lens, accessories, filters, light-shielding angle; shoulder-supported, hand-held, or tripod/monopod-mounted… whatever you need to get the shot, the second you need it.

SalesServiceSupport

Tim (09) 3608766

tim.timlin@panavision.asia

318 Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn, Auckland

(The) System Moving Platform by Manfrotto

Simpler

SYMPLA

Page

plate, which will have your standard Quick Release sothat you can transfer your DSLR from the SYMPLA rigonto a photo tripod much easier, rather than the videotype of plate. We are also coming out with a pad forthe shoulder piece, so that you could add a little bitmore cushioning. We realise that, although ourshoulder brace is form fitted, it’s a little bit hard. We’recoming out with a new set of rails that will not scratchlike these do, so if you’re really into the aesthetics of

your rig, you can get the non-scratchingrails … and a few other options thatwe’re not sure when or if. But the mainintroductions are the shorter offsetbracket, the padding for the shoulderand the new Quick Release plate.

Ed: It sounds as though the SYMPLAline is a line that Manfrotto’s really goingto spend some time on and obviouslyyou’re getting user feedback and this isproviding you with ideas forimprovements?

Wayne: Exactly. What we’re findingout is people like the idea of being ableto take one rig out of one box andconfigure it for whatever type of cameraor shooting they’re using it for. So thatelement about it was very well received.

The things that weren’t so well receivedwere the fact that you can’t shorten thedistance between the rails, like you canwith the rig that’s not a one shot out ofthe box solution; and also that you can’tchange the shoulder pad so that you

could have a more comfortable padding. So those arethe two main elements that we’re addressing. Theother one is being able to go from our RC2 plate whichis the small square Quick Release, directly onto theplate that’s on the rails, rather than having an adapteron the current plate. So that’s the third majorimprovement that we will get to market sooner than theother ones that we’re contemplating.

Ed: Well, watch this space. NZVN

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Manfrotto Lights for PanavisionFor Panavision, we have Dave Beck from ManfrottoLighting.

Ed: Dave, LED lighting. I mean every man and hisdog’s doing LED lighting so what makes you think youcan do it better, or are you just repackaging somebodyelse’s light?

Dave: Well we do work closely with Litepanelswho are also in the Vitec group. We have nowintroduced the 1x1’s. Ours are potentially the smallestand lightest 1x1’s on an already flooded market. Thenice thing is that ours don’t look like a Chinese copy;that’s because they’re not. Intellectual technologycomes from Litepanels across our group. We usesimilar technology LEDs; we are using the sametolerances as they have with Litepanels. They aremanufactured at a different manufacturer for us; theyare a cut down version of the basic Litepanels product,so very similar to the Litepanels LS, there’s no DMX onthese units, it is a mechanical dimmer. We do threeversions – we do the spot which is 30 degree; the floodwhich is 50 degree; and we do a 30 degree bi-colour aswell which is the first time we’ve launched the bi-colourat the same time, strangely, as Litepanels are launchingtheir bi-colour at this show.

Ed: But there’s still the question, if Litepanels is partof your group, why are you putting them out underManfrotto?

Dave: These are a Manfrotto product, they’redesigned in a different market sector. We’re going forindependent filmmakers and photographers; we coverthe BNI market; my colleagues at Litepanels cover thebroadcast and cinema markets. There’s a huge amountof customers that Litepanels do not cover with their

current distributions. We will now fill that gap and startto fill that market.

Ed: So this is at a more affordable price point?

Dave: There are going to be some priceadvantages to the Manfrotto product.

Ed: But still has all the good features, all the featureswe need?

Dave with the 1x1.

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Dave: Yes. As I say we use the same tolerances,so consistency from unit to unit, doesn’t vary. We haveno shift on the green and magenta spike that you’ll findon the majority of the competition out there at themoment and of course we have that very high attentionto detail and great skin tones that you could only expectwith the Litepanels and Manfrotto product.

Ed: So the panel itself is all plastic, but the bracket ismetal?

Dave: Yes, we keep the metal yoke just for thesuspension. The unit also has the screw at the bottomso you could put it on a ball head if you wanted to andput it on an ordinary stand. Any ball head attachmentwould work; we can just undo the yoke and make itquite lightweight. It is a portable travel kit, we will belooking at kit options.

Ed: Mains or battery power?

Dave: These are all mains operation as you willbuy them, but also we do have battery adapters forboth V-Lock and for Anton Bauer, so we’ll cover theworld as far as battery powers are concerned.

Ed: And of course they nicely fit on Manfrotto lightstands?

Dave: Absolutely, on the opposite side of thegondola, we have the on-camera units and fourtraditional looking units. We have the 48 LED daylight;we’ve got a 96 LED daylight, AA batteries with optionalmains attachment; we’ve got a wide-angled 50 degree140 LED unit, giving us a similar sort of output to the96 but over a bigger angle, that will also take D-Tap;and we’ve got a bi-colour version as well, similar

specification to that one, with better engineeringtechnology. Very close to completion; sadly I’ve onlygot a machined front lens on this one – there’s a brandnew unit that we’ve specified using surface mountedtechnology. These 12 LEDs here giving out exactly thesame power as the 140. Each one of these, when it’sfully machined, will have Fresnels on each of those,giving me a beautiful 60 degree spread of light, no hotspots, a very clean beam angle, just from 12 LEDs.Very little power drawer, 12 LEDs giving me the sameas the 140 that we’ve got on there. Off and on switchon the side, dimmer dial as you’d expect, little featureson the back there … we’ve started to put in morespecial electronics in this one, so we’ve got a boostbutton on here which when you need that little bit morelight for a long shoot, will give me 50% light on top ofwhat the maximum power is. Now that will give that aslong as the batteries will allow me to, so if I’ve got freshcells in there, it will give me probably up to 30 minutesof high power. If you’re putting it on the mains, it willdo it (a) for the length of time it can do; or (b) whenthe heat gets too much it will cut out and drop backagain, because we do overrun the LEDs a little bit ifnecessary. The minimum you’ll get out of it is 30minutes, mainly because of that DSLR cut-off.

Ed: So has that got internal batteries?

Dave: It’s working on AAs on all of these – sixdouble As. We’ve come away from what the NL seriesoffered us – the NL series gave us either externalbatteries or AAA batteries. We’ve gone for theprofessional market, now the filmmakers will get easilyavailable AA batteries; or we can go optional mains ifwe want to.

Ed: Now I’m pleased to say that Davehas assured me that these lights will notsuffer from flickering when dimmed usinga CMOS camera, because …?

Dave: Because on this particularunit and all our series of units, what weuse to dim is an amperage based driver,not a voltage based driver.

Don’t forget a lot of the Chinese ones aremade for the same kind of price as aMcDonalds Happy Meal and they do cutout (a) on the price of the LEDs; and (b)on the driver that’s the enginemanagement system.

Now if I drop the voltage to change thebrightness, what’s going to happen isthat the actual flickering of the LED ( andthey obviously do flicker, but at a very,very high rate ) – that reduces. So asyou turn that voltage down, it flickers ata different rate and that’s when you’llpick up the beam angles from the shutterangles on the units.

On these we change the amperage; wepay a little more for the drivers, a “littlemore” being a considerable amountmore, about the same with the LEDs, andobviously that ramps up my price a bitmore, but it does mean that by changingthe amperage, that voltage is consistent,that flicker is always at a consistent rate.You won’t get that change.

Ed: That’s what one would expect fromManfrotto?

Dave: Well you know with a lot ofhelp from Litepanels, thank you verymuch.

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ShureMicrophones

for Now SoundWe are at the Shure desk forNow Sound and we haveChristopher Lyons.

Ed: Radio microphones,let’s start there becausethat’s the topic de jour, topicfor the year even. Shure domake some fantastic radiomicrophones and you have apolicy there in terms offrequency?

Christopher: Right.We make several differentfrequency ranges in all ofour products, both becauseinternational frequencyranges are often differenteven within one country;what works in one city candiffer from another city orregulations may change, sowe want to make sure wehave different products in different frequency ranges.And then as far as in the States, the high 600Megahertz range is probably going to be subject toauction sometime in the next one or two years. Wedon’t know exactly what that frequency range will be …

Ed: Join the club!

Christopher: Yes, exactly, so we’ll see what roadand what path that takes and on what timetable, butthat’s still in development.

Ed: Okay, so at the moment if one was to buy a littleUR5 which is a very nice little portable diversity receiverand I guess transmitter to go with it, if they bought itnow, what’s the future there?

Christopher: Well the good news is that all the URcomponents tune a pretty wide frequency range – Ithink it’s about 60 Megahertz, which in the States is 10TV channels. So even if there’s some change in the TVchannels that are available, you’ve still got the ability toretune a little lower, a little higher. If you find thatyou’re in a completely different frequency range thanyou need to be in, then that would be something thatwould have to be exchanged through your distributor orupgraded or retrofitted somehow.

Ed: Because it isn’t just a simple case ofreprogramming something inside the machine is it?

Christopher: No, the last I heard was somebodyestimated for one of our rack mounted receivers, it wasaround 900 parts have to be changed, which essentiallymeans the entire guts of it have to come out and bereplaced. From a cost standpoint, it’s just cheaper toreplace the whole thing at that point. When thathappened in the 700 Megahertz, Shure instituted arebate programme in the States, so that people whohad refreshed their products weren’t hit quite so hard,but we’ll see if the cards hold that same thing again.

Ed: Okay, so the UR5 itself?

Christopher: The UR5 itself – a portable diversitysystem, fits on the camera, all metal construction. I

think it’s available in 5 or 6 different frequency rangesfrom down in the 470 range all the way up to 698, soyou can adapt to lots of different local conditions.Works with all of the UR1 body packs, UR2 handheldsand so forth; there’s also a plug on transmitter for itnow ... if you want to do News style with an omni-directional handheld for a reporter, that’s an option aswell. And for people who are looking for something abit less expensive than the UR system, there’s a similartype of system called the FP wireless which is quite a bitless expensive, not quite as many features as the URsystem, not as wide of a tuning bandwidth, but stillgives you great audio quality in a very compact solutionfor a DSLR.

Ed: But not necessarily just a DSLR – you could use it…?

Christopher: Exactly, yes, it would work on astandalone video camera or any other type of camera orvideo solution too.

Ed: But this doesn’t have Canon inputs, it looks likeit’s just a phono input?

Christopher: The FP5 and the UR5 both come withtwo coiled cables. One goes to a 3.5 mm stereo jackwhich is what most of the DSLRs use; the other goes toa standard XLR, so you could run it into a bag mixer ifyou’re doing portable audio in a bigger production packlike that.

Ed: So you can use both?

Christopher: Oh yes, absolutely, and it comes withboth of those right out of the box.

Ed: And you’re showing this here with a cameramounted shotgun?

Christopher: Right, we’ve got a brand new productcalled the VP83 lenshopper camera mount microphonefor people who aren’t using a wireless system who wanta dedicated on-camera mic solution. This is a minishotgun mic with a coiled cable output that runs intothe camera. It gives you adjustable audio level and so

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forth; runs on an AA battery. Then there’s a separateversion called the VP83F that has a built-in Flashmemory audio recorder, so that you’re not only feedingaudio to the camera, you’re recording it as a Wave fileon the mic itself. You can then pull out that little microSD card and dump that audio file directly into yourediting software and you’ve got an even higher qualityaudio file than you can have on your camera. It’s fullyshock mounted, all metal construction, has a foamwindscreen for outdoor use, very compact, has a built-in headphone jack so you can monitor while you’reshooting …

Ed: Is it triggered by the DSLR?

Christopher: No it isn’t. There’s a “one buttonrecord”, you just push the button to start recording onthe mic and then you go ahead and start recording onyour camera; and usually you would start recording onthe mic first, then maybe have someonedo a clap or something like that, so thatyou’ll easily be able to synchronise.

Ed: And at the other end, once you’verecorded your sound, you need to listento it or you need to check thateverything’s okay?

Christopher: BRH are the newheadsets here. There’s two BRH’s andone BR and they vary slightly. The BRHare full coverage headphones, designedfor a camera operator, stage technician,producer, director and so forth; heavyduty comfortable headband, swivellingearpieces and also a clever gooseneckmic that’s on a swivel arrangement sothat you can wear it on both sides ifyou’re a left or rightie, but also when youraise up the boom, it mutes the micaudio automatically. So if you need totake a drink of coffee or go off mic for abit, just raise it up like that …

Ed: Or say something about the

director that you don’t want him to

hear?

Christopher: Exactly. Put the

mic up in the air and that way

you’ve killed your audio. It’s a

silent switch, there’s no clicking or

popping or anything.

So the BRH441 is a single

earpiece; the BRH440 is two

earpieces. Other than that they’re

exactly the same thing.

If you like more of a lightweight on

the ear type, that’s the BR31 –

same type of microphone, same

mute system, just a lighter weight

headband and a lighter weight

earphone for somebody who

doesn’t want quite the bulk.

Ed: And then a series of

standard headphones?

Christopher: Exactly. We’ve

been selling our SRH headphones

for a few years now for

monitoring, editing, studio

proofing, all sorts of things, as

well as recreational listening.

Two of them are open back headphones which we don’t

have at this show, that let in a little bit of the outside

sound, but more for production work you want the 440s

or the 840s or the 940s which are closed back

headphones and give you some isolation.

Ed: And really the value in having a set of

headphones like this is the frequency response that

you’re getting?

Christopher: Right, great frequency response,

sounds natural, sounds flat and not only that but also

comfort you know – light weight, doesn’t hurt your

ears.

A lot of the people who work with editing video and

audio are wearing these things for six hours at a time,

so you know light weight and comfort is really

important too. NZVN

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UR5 ( left ) and VP83 ( right ) on the DSLR.

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Avid for AtomiseAt Avid, we have RichardKelly from Atomise.

Ed: Richard, fromamongst your stable ofrelated products, we’regoing to concentrate on Avidbecause they’ve made somepretty big announcements?

Richard: Yes, it’s been amassive show for Avid andI’m not the only one whothinks that. If you’ve beenround the Avid stand, theonly stand that’s busy onthe upper floor here is theAvid stand and it’s beenpacked out the door, it’sbeen really good. Theannouncement of Avid MediaComposer 7.0, Interplay 3.0and Pro Tools 11 has reallycaught people’s attention.

Ed: Well I know one bigpositive for many people isthat the price of MediaComposer has come down?

Richard: Absolutely, at US$999 just why wouldn’tyou. We haven’t confirmed the New Zealand price yet,but you know there’s going to be a tiny bit of freight inthere …

Ed: Probably NZ$1,299 +GST by the time this comesto print?

Richard: It could very well be. Do you realise we’rein a 35 year record right now for the NZ / US dollarexchange rate?

Ed: Oh I’ve been shopping.

Richard: So yes that’s the first thing, that’s thegrabber, but there’s a whole lot more under the skinthat is actually more important than the price of MediaComposer. There’s some feature sets here that theman standing in front of me is going to be quite keenon, because he’s made some negative comments aboutthat in the past!

Ed: Moi? What, about Avid being a little bit behindthe times. Have I said that; have I published that?

Richard: You have.

Ed: Well come on, prove me wrong Richard. Tell meall about the 4K workflow that Avid have in their MediaComposer?

Richard: Oh Grant’s already done his homework.Okay, so yes, we’ve got a high res workflow in MediaComposer 7 called FlexFrame …

Ed: High res?

Richard: Outside of the video raster. So yes, 4K ishere and it’s very accessible now, especially with SonyXAVC cameras, people are using it and they want towork with the large rasters. The way that it works inMedia Composer is all real time via the GPU and I domean real time; you can pan and scan that image andpull right in on the detail that you want for your HDdelivery. Let’s be honest, 99% of people who are usingthat 4K camera are going to deliver at HD, so you’reafter using that to tell the story, to get your message

across as best as well, and Avid’s got a really nice realtime methodology for doing it in. The high rescapability brings in some really great workflows andfollowing straight on from that is the AMA Media’sannouncement – AMA Media is now fully managed, sothat means you’ve got all the great things …

Ed: Sorry, what’s “AMA?”

Richard: Avid Media Access – it allows you todynamically ingest and play material without doing anyconversion whatsoever. So you get your 4K XAVCmedia, you point at it in the system and it plays straightaway using FlexFrame, no conversion; same with RED,same with AVCHD, same with pretty much everything.

Ed: So it’s not putting an MXF wrap around it?

Richard: Not putting an MXF wrap around it, it justplays. Now with AMA, the challenge for it was that itwas unmanaged. We didn’t have the nice abilities thatwe had with Avid DNxHD media which was all managed,doesn’t put any extra overhead for the actualmanagement side onto the computer. We’ve now gotthat advantage with AMA media in Media Composeritself.

Ed: Am I right in thinking that the MXF wrapper was

basically metadata around that image?

Richard: No, the metadata’s inside the wrapper.

MXF is an industry standard wrapper and then inside

that wrapper you can put anything. For example, we

can put QuickTime in there or Avid DNxHD.

Ed: So now you’ve taken that wrapper off, or you’re

…?

Richard: No, the MXF is still there, but what we’ve

done is we’ve broadened out the workflow to include

non-MXF media in the same way that Avid has always

excelled at managing large amounts of media – it’s the

leading product at managing large amounts of media …

Ed: Yes, good point, there’s nobody else doing it that

way.

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Yes, it’s my fault - I get him to grin like that.

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Richard: We’ve now brought that to all media thatgoes into Media Composer.

Ed: So is that a good thing … I mean surely, havingthat MXF wrapper helps stabilise the whole process?

Richard: Absolutely it is a good thing because itgives you massive flexibility, especially for Newsworkflows, TVCs, short form stuff. It gives you a lotmore management level and of course where thisdovetails in is there’s some other announcements thatwe’re going to get to shortly.

Ed: But if you didn’t want to have that MXF wrapper,now you have that option?

Richard: You do have that option. Personally, I’mstill going to be suggesting people do do a transcodeand run an Avid DNxHD because it works so much moresmoothly, you’ve got a lot more streams of real timeand we’ve got performance guarantees that we can putin place with it; whereas dealing with RED out of thereal time, you know it’s always going to be a challengefor your computer.

Ed: I didn’t say that.

Richard: So the other things we’ve got here is wenow have a Thunderbolt adapter for Mojo DX. That’sobviously a very key announcement for many Appleusers. Thunderbolt’s not just an Apple thing anymoreit’s everywhere and so now we can plug our hardwareinto Thunderbolt. The Mojo DX is extremely popular inthe marketplace, bang for the buck on them isincredibly good and every time you press that button, itworks. We’ve got some third party products out thereas well but, to my mind, for reliability, the Avidhardware is still the way to go.

The next thing we’ve got in there is some workflowautomation built right into Media Composer. In MediaComposer 7, we have watch folders that you can set aprofile on. So let’s say you’re putting in QuickTimemovies recorded on a Nanoflash and you want to bringthose into Media Composer. Now you can create awatch folder and what’s happened is thevideo engine in Media Composer hasbeen effectively broken out of MediaComposer and now works as abackground process. You can have awatch folder set up on a third partystorage, on a USB thumb drive, on yourlocal hard drive, anything you like, dropcontent into there, it performs whatevertask you want it to – let’s say it’s atranscode to DNX36 – and away it goes.

We can even go further in that MediaComposer now supports LUTs (Look UpTable for colour) so we can now drop insome media from your RED, the profile isset to apply a look up table that may bereal time, it may be baked in dependingon what you choose, and that flows rightthrough to your Avid media allautomated on your workstation whileyou continue working. So the otherthings – we’ve talked about backgroundvideo processing off watch folders, sothat background video processing isbroader than that. Now when you’reworking in the video editor, and for theinitial releases it’s only partially there,but what we can do is make any

transcodes, consolidate in the background. In filebased workflows, a lot of time can get chewed up withthose two things. Now, it all happens in thebackground, you keep working. It’s going to be a greattimesaver for everything.

The other thing we’ve got there concerns audio. Wenow have clip based audio gain straight out of Pro Toolsand we have a master audio loudness control in there.

Loudness control is a really key thing for anybroadcaster now. We’ve now got it built into MediaComposer 7, which is going to be quite important forpeople who are possibly doing a full audio process.

Ed: So that’s not on the clip, that’s on the masterchannel?

Richard: That’s on the master channel.

Ed: Now Richard, cached audio waveforms, tell memore?

Richard: One of the little bugbears that Avid editors

have had over the years …

Ed: What they’ve had one?

Richard: This is it, there’s nothing else …

Ed: There’s nothing else that’s ever caused them any

problems?

Richard: Audio waveform – so audio waveform is

really important for when you’re editing to the audio,

when you’re working with speech, with dialogue, seeing

where things are happening.

So in a large project that waveform was dynamic, so it

would redraw every time. That would take quite a bit of

time; let’s say you zoom in on the timeline, it redraws.

The bigger the timeline the longer it takes.

Ed: That’s the problem, now the solution?

Richard: What we have now is cached audiowaveforms, just like we have in Pro Tools. So when youopen the sequence for the first time, it caches thewaveform; whenever you open that sequence from then

Page 56

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on, it’s straightaway opened with the waveform inplace. It’s a massive timesaver.

Interplay 3 is the next big set of announcements.Interplay PAM is a Production Asset Managementsystem, a production database that is made up ofbuilding blocks of products that you can add in tomanage and automate your workflow. It allows you tocompletely control access, availability, user control andversioning of all of your production media assets. Solet’s say you only have rights to a piece of media for acertain period of time, it flags that; it allows you to fullyreport and manage what is actually being used where.It’s not just a big bucket you pour media into; itactually allows you to see how it’s being used, why it’sbeing used. For example, if you’re using stock footagethat you’re paying for, it shows you how much it’s goingto cost you to use it.

Ed: And this is a very powerful tool – I just have totell Richard at this point that, on my way to Las Vegas,I stopped off in Oakland and did an interview at KTVUwhere they showed me their Interplay at work. KTVU isthe No 1 local station in the Bay area of San Franciscoand you will read about that in a future issue.

Richard: I will enjoy reading that one.

Ed: So it’s out there Richard?

Richard: It is out there, it’s very, very popular andit’s going to be out there even more.

Ed: Is it popular in New Zealand?

Richard: We’ve got some really key people using it –TVNZ are using it, TV3 are using it, but with theannouncement at this show, we’re going to see it outthere in a lot more workplaces. One of the reallyimportant announcements is again pricing related. Wenow have some bundles from Avid that includeInterplay Sphere licensing, Interplay Central licensingand we’ll come back to what those are shortly; Isisstorage, 16 terabytes with three Media Composerlicences, some professional services time from Avidgetting your workflow all set up – for under US$50,000.So for what you used to spend on your storage alone,or actually going back, for what you used to spend onyour editing setup alone, you’ve now got a completeturnkey solution. The next step up is say you needsome more Media Composers. Bundle Interplay withSphere, with Central with 32 terabytes of storage with10 Media Composer licences for US$89,000. That’s agame changer.

Ed: But how many large facilities are there out therethat would need that number of machines that areusing anything else, that would sort of change enmasse?

Richard: From the comments I’ve had fromcustomers at this show, quite a few. This is somethingthat takes people from just looking at setting up arelatively basic or maybe a third party storage solution,to saying “well, we can get a completely performanceguaranteed single vendor totally supported solution forless than what we’ve been spending on stuffhistorically.”

Ed: So they might already have some MediaComposers, but not all the other bits and pieces that gowith it, and in fact the latest version of Media Composercomes with this, it’s still a much more cost effectiveoption?

Richard: That’s right. Where this works really wellfor existing facilities is, say you’re using Premiere, say

you’re using Final Cut, you’re getting a packagedsolution that supports both Premiere and Final Cut anda whole pile of other applications in terms of storageand with Interplay. And you’re getting Media Composeron top of it, all at a bundled price, with bundledresources, with bundled support, to bring it in and makeit work in the way you want.

Ed: So people can still use their Premiere suites andtheir Final Cut suites with this system?

Richard: Absolutely. You keep working just the waythat you keep working now. We’re just giving you somemore tools and some more flexibility with thoseproducts.

Ed: But you also have the Media Composers to learnon?

Richard: You also have the Media Composers … lookI’m not going to say that one tool is the only tool touse. That’s like saying the only thing you use is ahammer.

Ed: It’s like saying Grant’s wrong!

Richard: That just never happens, surely. This nowgives anybody in a small to medium sized facility anopportunity to go into the toolset that has beenhistorically only available to the very big facilities andthe very big broadcasters.

Ed: Great, that’s really playing friendly.

Richard: It is really playing friendly. While we’retalking about playing friendly, the other thing that is areally big announcement on the Media Composer side isSymphony. Symphony is now no longer a separateproduct; it is a plug in to Media Composer, so for youSymphony owners out there, when you upgrade toMedia Composer 7, what you’re going to get is a MediaComposer with Symphony option. Where that becomesbeautiful is, you may not need Symphony’s features onall your Media Composers. You might only have onelicence out of your three Media Composers that havethat feature set. You can move that licence based ondongle or on software activated licence around in yourown facility and it just starts working.

Ed: Well that is playing nicely.

Richard: It is playing nicely isn’t it? So it gives youbang for your buck, it’s a huge feature. It’s a US$500option, so it’s not expensive, but it brings you all thegoodness that Symphony has – universal conform,secondary colour correction – it’s a really nice bit of kitand it’s something that’s really being embraced in themarketplace.

Ed: Now one of the other announcements at the pressconference was about Sphere and I’m still a little bitunsure as to who would be interested in this, apart frommajor broadcasters?

Richard: We’ve got Sphere as part of the InterplayPAM product line, so it’s an “add on” product. Youpurchase your own HP DL380 server to the spec thatAvid give us and apply the software that comes inlicensed with Interplay and what it allows you to do isreal time stream and manage proxies going out toremote systems. Say you’re in film that’s got a VFXhouse or producer offshore or a producer offsite. Thenumber one that Sphere does is allows you to haveremote access back to base for all of your media and allof your metadata, just like your onsite in your facility.No limitations – straight into Media Composer. Whatthat means is, say you’re away doing a pickup shoot for

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a show, you want to see how that works in with yourmain show, you do your cut, everything that relatesback to what you’ve done previously streams down overas little as a 4G Internet connection in proxy down toyour workstation; it’s cached at your workstation so it’snot a continuous stream, it just caches as you go andallows you to edit with all the goodness you’ve got backat base; it allows you to introduce the new media thatyou’ve captured or shot, or the VFX that’s been turnedover and then you can decide to send back to base thenew media at high res or proxy or both in a managedqueue environment. So for ENG, it’s obviously anamazing thing, that’s where it came from, but for posthouses with remote working or remote installations ormaybe even just a director or an editor that’s away on abusiness trip and wants to keep working. You’ve got nodumbing down of the tools it just works like you’re inhouse.

Ed: So you don’t need a third party provider to sendfiles one way or the other, it’s all done within Interplay?

Richard: It’s all done within Interplay, it’s allmanaged securely, it’s all proper – you know, the wholePepsi, Coke scenario, one can’t see what the other one’sdoing, you’ve only got access to what you’ve got accessto – it’s a beautiful solution for working.

Ed: Now Richard, I sort of remember that we talkedabout Sphere before, so what’s new with it?

Richard: The big news is that Sphere is now shippingwith Interplay 3. While it is out there in installations itswhole implementation straight into Media Composer ismuch tighter. Along side Sphere we also have a newrelease for Interplay Central. Interplay Central is theunified Interplay client used through a web browser –depending on how you set it up and it’s HTML5, so it’svery dynamic in the way that the web interface works.It can be a lightweight editor through to a review andapproval tool, through to a logging tool, through to anaccess into the database to select shots. That’s all partof the production bundle we talked about.

So what it means now is let’s say we use the samescenario, you’ve got a VFX show happening on the otherside of the planet, you want to work in with them,you’re sitting there on your iPad, on your laptop, onyour iPhone, you’ve got access back to all of the mediain your house facility and all that is dynamicallystreamed to you.

Ed: It sounds as though you could never get awayfrom work Richard?

Richard: If you can never get away from work that isa real issue. But it does mean that, if you want to worksitting on the beach, you can work sitting on the beach.

Ed: Oh silly man to make that decision. Now on allthese announcements, it seems as though Avid’smoving towards having Media Composer as the hub ofwhat it does and a lot of that is being shared amongstAvid products as you talked about with Symphony andInterplay, but also it’s now within Pro Tools?

Richard: That’s right. Some of the really bigannouncements in Pro Tools 11 is the native support ofAvid DNxHD in Pro Tools itself. So no more handingover a low res QuickTime, no more handing over aproxy, if you’re on the Interplay and ISIS system, youcan directly play the sequence that your editorial teamhands over to you. No conversions. Video satellite isstill an available product – working on a large feature ora complex show, you may still wish to use videosatellite which has the same capabilities as a Media

Composer but it is slaved directly to Pro Tools to handlethe play out. That’s got a little bit more heavy lifting,because it’s not got Pro Tools on the same workstation.But what it means is for the traditional audio postwhere you’ve handed over a QuickTime, we can nowmove away from that. We can give you high res filesreally straightforward, so you can exactly feed andmake sure your lip sync is right.

Ed: Because on a simpler level, the Media Composervideo engine is now within Pro Tools?

Richard: That’s right. We’ve had a lot of the ProTools audio features come into Media Composer; we’reseeing it going back the other way. The other reallycool one, and I’m not a Pro Tools guy, but the otherfeature that really grabbed me was the faster than realtime bounce.

Say you’re working on your Pro Tools session up totoday, if that was a 2 hour session and you wererendering it to do a hand over, that would take you 2hours to do.

That was the reality of reverb and all those lovely audioeffects being applied in real time to your sequence.What we have now is faster than real time bounce. Notjust faster – up to 150 times faster. So that meansyour 2 hour hand over has gone from taking 2 hoursdown to as little as 48 seconds. That means you’ve justgot your workstation back.

Ed: Yes, it’s not that you could go and have a cup ofcoffee for 2 hours, it means that you can keep working?

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Want to store a lot of data?

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Richard: You can keep working. So again we’relooking at this whole round trip of really tightlyintegrated products that just bring the whole productionworkflow together easier in a more managedenvironment. What we’re seeing here are tools that, uptill now, have been available only to the very high endof the industry; they are now available to anybody thatwas just considering a shared storagesolution. That’s the price point of entryand it gives you so much more than justshared storage.

Ed: I would say, in summary, that Avidis now offering more of a combination oftools that a facility would look at Ratherthan buying a whole different number ofvendors and trying to get them to worktogether, Avid is becoming now more ofan overall solution?

Richard: That’s right, and Avid’salways been really good for that, butthere has been a price point to entry let’sbe honest. We’ve had those tools for along time; what we’re seeing now is anintegrated solution, one company tosupport it and we know they do supportreally well; one company to make sure itworks all together – we know that ProTools, Media Composer work really well,

we know that Interplay works really well, so now you’vegot a much broader range of people who can actuallyconsider having these tools. Once you’ve seen howmuch time and money bringing these tools to a facilitycan save you, I think it is the only solution that anybodywho is working with more than 2 or 3 suites is reallygoing to take seriously. NZVN

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Ensemble Designs for GencomWe are at Ensemble Designs with Cindy Zuelsdorf.

Ed: Cindy, Ensemble is famous for routers and one inparticular?

Cindy: Yes, we have two really fine and interestingproduct introductions here at NAB. One is our newBrightEye Compact Router, BrightEye NXT 430 is themodel number.

Ed: There are those model numbers again.

Cindy: I know, I just did that for you Grant,because I know you love those model numbers. Don’ttell me you’re going to ask me about the focus group?

Ed: No, no, we’re past focus groups, but what aboutflower names or something … you could have called itRosie?

Cindy: I’m going to call you next time and invite

you to the focus group.

Ed: Hey, I’ll be there, as long as there’s some of that

Ensemble cooking going on.

Cindy: Well there is. Last week we had 45 people

in for training and all of our staff did cooking, and took

shifts cooking and everybody loved it. Just check with

Nicki, Ray and all the other people from Gencom and

around the world who were there.

Ed: So every new router you get a free cookbook?

Cindy: We first did that cookbook as a fundraiser

for SMPTE and then it was so popular we kept printing

it. We’ve had two additional printings.

Ed: A very worthwhile addition to your router

purchase. Anyway, tell us about the router?

Cindy: The new BrightEye Compact Router isdifferent in a couple of fabulous ways. There is a veryhigh resolution screen on the front of the router thatshows you all the sources in the router and you get full

motion real time video on that screen so you can lookat your sources before you do a take. People arecoming here to the booth and saying, “Wow, that’s agame changer. I’ve not seen that before, that’samazing.”

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Ed: So they don’t have to have an extra monitorplugged in to view it?

Cindy: Correct, they can just throw it in a suitcase,go to the ball field switch a football game or some otherevent and they can see all the sources right there onthe front of the router.

Ed: So this is a router-switcher as opposed to aproduction switcher?

Cindy: That’s true.

Ed: What’s the difference?

Cindy: A production switcher is a vision mixer thatwould have effects such as wipes and other effects builtinto it, some keying right, whereas a routing switcherreally is just switching between different sources.

Ed: In other words cutting?

Cindy: Yes “cuts only.” However, we’ve hadpeople come in saying that they are going to use this asa production switcher and use it on a helicopter – justshoot between the different POV cameras and even adda little station branding coming in and another inputand sign it back that way.

Ed: That’s the BBC way of doing effects – when youwant an effect, you cut?

Cindy: Good to know, I’m going to have to sign upfor that BBC training. Do you think they’d take me?

Ed: Who wouldn’t? Okay, so you press a switch andit flicks between the inputs. Do you get a flash of blackat the time?

Cindy: Never a flash of black.

Ed: A flash of what Cindy?

Cindy: A flash of creative brilliance of course! Noflashes at all; we don’t have any flashes because thereare built-in clean switches in this routing switcher andso you can bring your wild feeds and asynchronoussources in. That’s what makes it so usable out in thefield. You can assign those clean switches to any of theoutputs and being that there are 15 ports on this routerand you get to decide how many inputs and outputs youwant, you can assign those clean switches to theoutputs you want.

Ed: Oh that’s clever. So you could have one inputand 14 outputs?

Cindy: There are two fixed inputs so you couldhave 13 inputs and two outputs and really anyconfiguration in between like that. There are two SFP

( Small Format Pluggable ) cages whichis a sort of technology I’m sure you’veseen.

Ed: No, Nicki hasn’t shown me anycages.

Cindy: You know it’s a really nicelittle cage that’s about the size of a stickof gum and you can plug this littlepackage into it and get, for example, twofibre optic LC connectors on it. We had acustomer this morning come in and say,“You mean, I can use this as a fibreclean switch?” We had him at that – allthe other capabilities …

Ed: His credit card came out?

Cindy: It did, he was in. We hadhim at “fibre clean switch.”

Ed: You just say the right words,Cindy. No wonder you’re so popular.

“Fibre clean switch”, eh? So really, we’ve seen apicture of it and this fits one of the two form factorsthat you have at Ensemble. You either have the littleBrightEye boxes all of the same size, or you have a 3rack unit and you slot your cards into that and that’sthat, so very neat for large facilities, small facilities andon the move?

Cindy: Correct, the BrightEye packages are super

handy for mobile applications and for production

facilities that just want to have these small packages

easy to take with them in a fly pack or you can install

them in a facility. And then the Avenue system that

you were talking about, the modular system, there’s a

3U frame that holds 10 cards or a 1U frame that holds 3cards, and those are great because you get to leverage

the control system and really use that for monitoring,

alarms and control across the board, for all the different

modules from logo inserters to keyers, sync pulse

generators and everything you need for signal

processing.

Ed: And this gives me a link to the story that I’ve

mentioned before about the tour of KTVU station, where

they showed me the Ensemble racks they had. From

the outside, it just looks like a purple box with a logo on

it, but what’s inside could be a whole range of things,

and also doing a whole range of jobs?

Cindy: That’s so true, Grant. We have customers

who have just a couple of those Avenue frames which

might mean they’ve got 20 different products or

modules in there and then we’ve got other customers

who have 100 frames and in each frame you’ve got 10different products doing all the signal processing

needed from up and down conversion to audio delay –

you know when you watch TV and the lips aren’t

matching up with the sound. So we take care of audio

delay and adjustment. Audio adjustments are made

with respect to video, audio embedding and

disembedding, and audio loudness control as well, your

logos, your branding, your routing – all of those things.

Ed: And this is something that you don’t just need as

a broadcaster, a larger production facility would also

have use for a product like this?

Cindy: Yes. There are so many other types of

customer – post houses, production facilities that also

need this signal processing and use it every day for

bringing their camera feeds in or doing whatever signal

processing they need in their production facility.

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Ed: Okay, just going back a little bit where I talkabout the two different sizes, Cindy something aboutweb browsing?

Cindy: Yes, the new BrightEye NXT compactrouter, it’s the first in our new generation of BrightEyeand we’ve built a web browser into the unit. Thatmeans that folks at production houses can just enterthe IP address of the BrightEye and they can controleverything remotely, and that puts a lot of power in thehands of folks in production houses and broadcastfacilities where they can sit at home at 3.00am andcheck out their signals and do a little QC or evenswitching right there.

Ed: Or they could just be in another part of thebuilding?

Cindy: They could be in another part of thebuilding, they could be the station engineer, or even theclient, as long as you give them access to it, they couldbe sitting at the back of the room and looking at theshots.

Ed: But that’s not all, wait there’s more?

Cindy: The second introduction here at NAB is ourAvenue Multiviewer. We had customers come in andsay, “We love your Avenue system, you’ve goteverything I need for signal processing except where’sthe multiviewer?” So we got that focus group together,like Grant loves. and said hey, what can we do to makethis better or different, what needs do you have? Twothings came up – one was, hey can you make it easierto set up? Over and over again we heard about thesetup of multiviewers and the request to please make iteasier. So we did that – you can click and drag thesources into the screen, set it up super easily. I’vebeen having a great time demoing this at the show, Ireally just hand the mouse over to the user and they

set it up on the fly, put their clocks in, put the differentborders in, setup the tally themselves.

Ed: So they make their own template?

Cindy: They make their own template, one directorcould put his favourite setup on USB and bring it withhim to his next show while another director could havehis setups … you can setup the templates very easilyand they’re quite portable.

Ed: And what does it run on – what’s the screen thatyou use for that?

Cindy: The Avenue Multiviewer is a module thatfits in the Avenue system and then the output is SDIand 1080p and so you can take that directly to anymonitor that would take SDI in, or we’ll bundle it withan SDI to HDMI converter, so that you can use it withyour HDMI monitors.

Ed: Sounds simple.

Cindy: The second thing that came up over and

over again had to do with image quality and, depending

on the multiviewer, what we heard is that people really

want that scaling to look good. Because we already dothe Mitto scan converters, scalers and up and down

converters, we’re experts at scaling. We have amazing

algorithms to make sure that the pictures look great

and the filtering is perfect. No matter how many times

a source appears on the multiviewer screen, it looks

amazing. There’s never any latency between an

appearance of a source, whether it’s at the top or

bottom of the screen and that was super important topeople as well.

Ed: Now I was just about to take the photos when I

spotted this wonderful little router. It’s got coloured

buttons all over it Cindy. You didn’t mention that in the

interview?

Cindy: Thank you for that Grant. Of course oursources are red and our destinations are green, so youcan choose your source by pressing one of the sourcebuttons here – that blue take button – to take it to air.

Ed: Well that’s simple isn’t it? Even I could followthat! I could become switcher.

Cindy: You could become a production switcheroperator, awesome.

Ed: Just put a few coloured lights on me and away Igo.

Cindy: Check with Renate on that, yeah.

Ed: And there’s more. Above the nice little sharpscreen there is a little line with a caption telling youwhat your input is in red and, at the bottom, what youroutput is in green. And you can change the names on itto suit whatever you like. And the take button is blue.And on the righthand side there’s an “up, down andokay”, so I guess that’s programming something?

Cindy: Yes it is. With the “I” information buttonhere, you can get some information about your signal,so if you’re 1080i 50 it’s going to pop up on the screenand tell you 1080i 50; audio presence, it will show youall four groups, and the gear button here lets you timethe output with respect to the reference, back to thatclean switch ability there. If you don’t have areference, it can lock to its own internal TCXO so youstill get a clean switch no matter what.

Ed: Well I’m sure the people who know routers willknow what that means, but I was lost at the colouredbuttons! So I’d be able to switch it but I wouldn’t knowwhy. NZVN

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Brett with just some of the Lowel range.

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Lowel Lighting for PLSWe are at Tiffen with Brett Smith from Australia andwe’re going to talk about Lowel lights.

Ed: Brett, Lowel’s been around a long time, Tiffen’sbeen looking after Lowel for quite some time and nowPLS is looking after Lowel in New Zealand. Is this agood thing for you Brett?

Brett: Yes it is. In the past, PLS and the teamthere have had good success with our studio fluorescentlighting, our tungsten lighting kits, and as we’ve movedinto the LED world, we may not have been first, but wewanted to make sure that when it came to studio – andstudios like TVNZ in Auckland with our fluorescent lights– that there was a transition to LED that didn’tcompromise either the light quality or the lightmanagement. LED came ahead of its time in that it wasa light source before it became a manageable lightsource, or a light source that could nicely integrate in ahybrid studio of tungsten and LED. So our objective,when we came out with the prime series, was to ensurethat we could integrate with a hybrid tungsten studioand someone could leave fluorescents or tungsten inthere or HMI and we would have a light that couldbalance to the existing lighting.

Ed: That’s really important, because if you setyourself up in a big studio with traditional lighting, youthrow in some LEDs there, you want to make sure thateverything’s going to work together?

Brett: Yes, and a lot of people wanted to justswap out the very power hungry broad lights first, butkeep their Fresnels, so in other words there was atraditional phase to more economical power usage andthat started with the soft lights – rather than gothrough every light in the studio, focus, full, spots andsoft, they would start in one area. For example, theABC in Australia, they started with their soft lights andso we came in with the prime 200 and 400 and wereable to integrate into those studios and make it betterpower consumption-wise as well as cost-effectively.LED are not as expensive as people say. Thecomparisons now are close enough to get your returnon investment in a realisable time … not in the 11-12years that our competitors worked out. Well now itscloser to 2-3 and the price points are changing. Youalways have to be aware that the colour quality, the CRInumber is always above 91 so you’re getting somethingthat is akin to the spectrum response of a tungsten or adaylight.

Ed: You’ve got on the stand here the Lowel Rifa-lite

which was, I understand, the first light that Mr Lowel

produced. Now, that’s a soft light, you’ve got LED soft

lights, you’re selling both?

Brett: We are and the biggest challenge with the

LED compared to the Rifa is that the Rifa is a single

source, so you’ve never had a problem with multiple

shadows. The Rifa has just done a wonderful job of

doing a beautiful soft wrap, but still gives some

character on a face without multiple harsh shadows off

the nose.

Ed: Oh, that’s what you get with your LED panels is

it?

Brett: Well that’s what you actually used to get.We’ve got a diffusion panel on the primes where youwould struggle to find a multiple shadow. If you go to acheap LED and you stand there and put one hand infront of another and look at the shadow, you will get

multiple shadows. It’s like having a hundred sunscoming to the earth. You are going to see multipleshadows … so we had to overcome that as well asimprove the light quality. When I mention light quality,shadow is as much light quality as it is a high CRI orhaving a good spectral response. Everyone is worriedabout green like they used to in the early days offluorescent green spikes, which you find difficult to filterout without losing all your light output. LED had to getto a high CRI before people would accept it; and themultiple shadow was another one. If you barn door abad LED, you will barn door multiple shadows. All thesethings that people assumed were eliminated when LEDcame out, the problems just began … brilliant lightsource, lousy control.

Ed: So with the Lowel Rifa, that’s been around a longtime, it’s obviously worked, people like the look andwith lighting it’s all about look, so you give people thatchoice, you don’t take away something that works andreplace it with something that might work better forsome people, but you keep what’s tried and true?

Brett: Yes. But you tell someone we can give youa light source that is one-tenth or one-twentieth of thepower with the same light output, and of course thenext question is “oh yeah, but is it the same lightquality?” … and initially the answer was “how could itbe, you can’t get something for nothing.” But more andmore, when you modify the LEDs and how you drivethem, is how you control them, the types of grids anddiffusion you use, you can replicate the single lightsource at a tenth or a twentieth of the power – and

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that’s what’s happening now. It’s interesting, even instudios you would never think of daisy chaining powerfrom fixture to fixture. You can output 10 prime 400son a circuit that you put one soft light in the past.There are amazing economies of scale and powersavings, heat savings in the studio and, as I say, that’swhy we showed these first. We’re proud of the fact wecan then come in the studio and at least half of thelighting will be resolved with a tungsten balance withoutactually having to rip everything out and do it in onego.

Ed: Are you doing this across the range where you’reintroducing LED lights? I see there’s some small on-camera lights here?

Brett: Yes we are. We’ve got the Blender whichagain PLS has had good success with, and that’s theBlender that’s self-explanatory … it blends betweendaylight and tungsten. What it’s very popular for is, if

you’re working in mixedlighting when you’re doingvox pops, you’re doingreality, you’re doinganything where you can’tcontrol the lighting aroundyou, fluorescents above,maybe one soft light infront, the Blender can matchbetween colourtemperatures so when youdo do your white balance onyour camera, you’re actuallybalancing to the real lightsituation, without having tomake it all daylight, alltungsten. Or if you want awarm feature on one side ofthe face, you just give it atweak towards the tungstencolour temperature, youknow down to maybe the

3000’s and you can get a nice little soft, so it’s a verygood creative light. Comes with a bunch of diffusionpanels for a bit of effect and it sits in a kit, as you cansee, but the readers … well if we get a good photo, it’sabout …

Ed: They’re always good photos Brett.

Brett: Of course, that goes without saying doesn’t

it … so that’s about 45cm by 20, and that takes three

lights with stands, with power. That is a three light kit

that will do any 1, 2 or 3 person interview situation.

Okay, you put a Rifa in, you might get a better flood,

but this kit will cover most interview situations.

Ed: Sometimes it’s not about having the perfect

quality light, it’s about getting there, getting set up,

doing the shot without causing too much strife to the

talent and getting in the way of people. So you get in,

do your job, get out?

Brett: Yes, or the desire to leave it in the truckbecause it’s too heavy. So in other words you wing it,you use reflectors which we always recommend. Usingnatural light is great, but you don’t want to leave yoursupplementary light away, because it’s too heavy or itconsumes too much power or it’s too hot in a low ceilingroom, and that’s what the Blender kit offers. Forstudios, we’re integrating LED into the soft sources.We’ve now got the prime 800 and that will work offhigher grids. That’ll be a direct replacement for the oldStrand soft lights for cycs, for green screen, for generalinterview sets for a full light.

Ed: One thing I want to add to the Blender light kitdescription is that it looks as though you’ve got threedifferent lights in there, but in fact you’ve just got thesame lights but all with different front panels? So youcan interchange all the panels?

Brett: Yes. You’ve got a stipple insert; you’ve gota large square diffuser like a star diffuser; and a veryfine frost and you can go clear.

Ed: So you get three of each in each kit?

Brett: You do, yes. You can of course gel them todo your normal type of colour correction, but you getthree, so there’s nine slots in there to take all thedifferent diffusion plastics. And there’s quite adifference in the look of the light … you know, thestipple gives you that kind of “gappy” Hollywood lookwhere you do get a mottled effect; the frost is really

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Checkers Cable Protectors for PLSI’m with Steve Gottlieb from Checkers in the USA and

we’re here for PLS to talk about what these guys do.

Now Checkers is a new name to us, we haven’t seen

them before, but they have a very interesting booth

here. There’s no walls, everything’s laid out on the

floor, almost like a Lego racetrack.

Ed: What’s it all about Steve?

Steve: We are a manufacturer of urethane cable

protectors. We make a variety of cable protectors to

accommodate all numbers of cables as well as different

sized cables and/or hoses. We have the most

recognised cable protector system in the entertainment

market. What is most common is our Yellow Jacket,

five channel cable protector. It is made of a urethane

cast construction. The base is one unit, the lid is a

separate piece, attached together with a fibreglass rod.

We also are the manufacturer of the Checkers Guard

Dog product, which is a comparable five channel

product, a little less weight than the Yellow Jacket

products. We also make ADA compatible ramps that

allow wheelchairs to easily cross in the event of needing

to have some wheelchair access.

Ed: I guess you could also take food carts across

there too couldn’t you, which would be more common

on a set?

Steve: Yes, catering carts are very popular using

that wheelchair accessed system as well. Basically

what it does is rather than having the cable protector

act as a speed bump, it is a more gradual rise and fall

from the apex of the cable protector.

Ed: And a lot safer than putting a bit of tape over the

cable?

Steve: Absolutely. Also, we’ve seen our product

last for sometimes almost 20 years. So certainly the

urethane gives it high durability, it’s less susceptible to

tearing.

Ed: Have you had the urethane for 20 years?

Steve: We’ve been doing urethane since day one.

You’ll sometimes see rubber moulded products in the

marketplace, those products will not withstand the

loads that our product withstands, and they also tear

quite easily. We also have some lighter duty products

too ( we call them our Fastlane series ) that are used

where you don’t have vehicle traffic; it’s a simple drop

over type product, with an open bottom. Used real

common in place of gaffer tape.

Ed: It looks as though they would sort of withstand a

small vehicle, but not a truck?

Steve: Well they are not vehicle rated, but yes,

they could withstand a light vehicle.

Ed: And they come in a range of colours?

Steve: We make them in yellow, orange and black.

Most of our cable protectors are offered in those same

colours as well.

Ed: And a very simple but clever looking connector

system?

Steve: What is most common with our Yellow

Jackets, as well as the Guard Dogs, is we utilise what is

Page 66

Steve on guard for you.

just that – very softening for close-ups for skin tonesand face; and effects for products you can use the littlegrid filter. So it’s a typical Lowel, everything in a kit,your stands, your supplies, you just plug and play.That’s the whole idea.

Ed: And these are all mains powered or can youpower them with batteries?

Brett: Battery and mains, yes … 7 to 18 Volts soyou can run off any type of Gold Mount, D-Tap. We’vegot D-Tap adapters as well as XLR4, cigarette lighter,mains or a power sled, so it’s impossible not to find theright power for it.

Ed: And I’m sure they’re dimmable?

Brett: They are indeed dimmable. They’redimmable and blendable.

Ed: And what sort of system do you use for thedimming?

Brett: It’s LED electronics, which means it’s notDMX control, it’s pure rotary control on the back. We’vetested it for rolling and we’ve also tested it for flickeringin slow motion. I believe it’s flicker-free up to 1000frames per second.

It’s called a Pulse Width Modulation System, so there’sno rolling with a CMOS sensor. Basically, there’s abuffer in there that allows the light to maintain itsconstant output. NZVN

Page

called the Dog-

bone connector.

Basically each

male connector

looks like half of

a dog bone, and

that is the most

common con-

nector in the

entertainment

market.

Ed: So it looksas though there’sa number ofdifferent sizes fordifferent applica-tions – there’s adrop over typeone where Iguess you layyour cable andthen just placethe pieces overand link them alltogether, and theother one whereyou actually havea lid where youput the cablesinto a troughthat’s within thesystem itself?

Steve: Yes that’s correct – we refer to it as a lay-in

system, with the hinged lid and that is most common.

It’s also easier for the installers to lay the cable in, as

opposed to the drop over which requires the cable to be

in a straight line.

Ed: And over here on the bench it looks like some

very small simple extruded material?

Steve: That’s exactly right. Sometimes we find

that customers are looking for a less costly alternative,

and this is a rubber duct that we offer.

With the split bottom it allows you to run small cables

through, and just set down in office type environments

or for thresholds or behind podiums for speaking

engagements.

Ed: And they have a different clip or “pin and socket”

type connector?

Steve: Correct, in case you need to link them for

an extended link, it does utilise what’s almost like a

dowel that acts as a pin and sleeve.

Now this is one type of product – we’ve also got some

other low profile products that aren’t as beefy as the

standard Yellow Jacket or Guard Dog. It doesn’t rise up

quite as high or isn’t quite as physically heavy.

Ed: And therefore doesn’t carry such thick cables?

Steve: Absolutely. You’re limited in those

products, the low profile products, to three-quarters of

an inch in the outside diameter cable. NZVN

Page 67

Page

ARRI Lightsfor PLS

We are at ARRI and we have

Stefan Sedlmeier, managingdirector.

Ed: But Stefan I’m sure

it’s managing director

Australia?

Stefan: Correct. I have

been in Sydney now for 6½

years, last year we became

citizens. I came over with

my wife and two boys whoturned 10 and 12 years this

year.

Ed: Are they enjoying the

sun and the surf?

Stefan: They love it.

They both go to an

Australian school now and

I’ve just heard that we willstay at least 2 more years,

maybe 3 more years, so we

will keep going in Australia.

We look after Australia and

New Zealand, we are based in Sydney, we are a

relatively small team of five people, we look after sales

and service for all ARRI product, which is camera,

postproduction and also lighting. We do a spare parts,

warranty repair, consultancy in Sydney and we workwith local dealers, so we deal with Professional Lighting

Services in Auckland, New Zealand and we process all

the sales, we ship direct, they pick it up from the

factory, we help them with marketing, with information,

schematics, spare parts – whatever we can do.

Ed: And that’s it … the actual workflow for the NewZealander is that they deal with Chris McKenzie atProfessional Lighting Services and the rest of it theydon’t need to know about, because Chris looks aftereverything?

Stefan: Yes, we appointed PLS as a distributor forNew Zealand and they have the service guys. Plus it’sgood because we get a wider audience now, so abroader foundation for lighting sales in New Zealandwhich is important, and we processed some orders,deliveries with them.

Ed: And I guess it’s also important that you know theproduct is being sold into the right places, that whoeveris buying the ARRI product is being given the rightinformation to say this is going to work in the situation Iwant to put it in?

Stefan: This is correct, and you need the expertiseto really get the right advice to the end customer. Asthe lights get more complex now, the Casters, LEDlights, they’re even more sophisticated than in the past.Lights get more powerful and they need the right guysto handle that.

Ed: Because I guess you’ve got to follow the cameratechnology … the cameras are developing this hugedynamic range, this huge range of exposurepossibilities, so lighting becomes even more important.It’s not just about throwing a whole lot of light on it; it’sabout getting the right light, the right colour and theright distribution of it?

Stefan: Correct, and you mentioned an importantpoint – this is colour. We still manufacture tungstenlights, HMI, now also LED lights, powerful lights. In thetungsten range, we start with the 125 and it goes up to18,000 Watts. In HMI, we start with the 150 and thebiggest one I think is the 12K tungsten, the T12. LEDwe have the L7 now which is a complete series of LED,because now there’s the L7-C which is controllable withvariable colour fill-ins and it can do anything fromdaylight tungsten – you can choose filters by remote viaDMX to a tungsten base, a daylight base, dimmable,calibratable. Then we have the L7-T for tungsten, sothis is really a replacement for a traditional tungsten.Nowadays, one new model at NAB, this is the tuneabletungsten, which has a more narrow tuneable colourbalance, but the same light output like the L7-T. So it’sthe same power like the L7-T, but you can balance itbetween I think it’s 2800-3800, so a little bit around thetungsten SweetSpot of 3200. Then we have the smallerLED lights like the Caster series, low cast andbroadcast, any kind of accessories for them and therange is complete. The hottest light on the booth is thenew HMI, the M90 which is a 9 kiloWatt HMI so tobridge the gap between the M40 and ARRIMAX. TheARRIMAX is an 18K/12K, the M40 is a 4K/2.5K and wedidn’t have an open phase ARRIMAX reflector style lightin between. Now we have the M90/60 which is a 9K/6KHMI with a brand new globe, co-developed with Osram.It comes with a 9K/6K universal ballast which is alsoavailable flicker free, so this will be the most powerfullight which is also available in the flicker free version.So the M90/60 which is a 9K/6K HMI is the new globefrom Osram here in the booth and is also now startingto be available.

Ed: Now what I was very impressed by at IBC was

the reflector that you’d developed for this very large

HMI. That’s really showing high technology?

Stefan: Correct. It started with the ARRIMAX

technology – we have like an open face light that’s just

a safety glass in front, but no Fresnel lens. The lens is

Page 68

Stefan is spotted by the Hollywood scout!

Phone (09) 3024100 Email: info@kelpls.co.nz Website: www.kelpls.co.nz

ARRI’s latest offerings, the L7 LED Fresnel and the M90 9KW HMI, are available now at

Professional Lighting Services

Page

the reflector. Basically, you move the lamp or you

move the reflector. In our case, we move the lamp

when we change focus, and the same principle is

adopted for the M18 which is a 1.8K HMI. This is the

smallest one. The ARRIMAX was launched years ago

and we had the M40 and now we have the M90.

Ed: And I guess what’s important is that it’s a veryeven flood. You’re not going to have hot spots in there?

Stefan: Correct. The light distribution is perfectand you measure this on a plain white wall. It’s a verynice curve like the Glockenkurve – the Bell Curve I thinkyou call it – there is no drop off in the centre whichsome of the competitors have; it’s really an even lightdistribution. What I should also say in terms ofefficiency, the 9K HMI of the M90 is as bright like theformer 12K Fresnel HMI. Now what’s important is theform factor. If you look at the size of the ballast andthe housing of the light, it’s more like the form factor ofa 6K with the light output of a 12K, by using a 9K globewith the open phase reflector technology, with theARRIMAX design.

Ed: And you’re reducing a lot of weight and you’rereducing a bit of expense there in making a Fresnel?

Stefan: Correct, the bulbs are slightly cheaperbecause it’s a 9K globe compared to a 12K. It is lesspower consuming, less heat and less weight.

Ed: All in all, a better proposition?

Stefan: Yes, I think it’s a good light and it’s a lightof 2013, so current design, current technology, reliableelectronic ballasts.

Ed: But it’s still HMI, obviously there’s life in thetechnology yet?

Stefan: Yes. Don’t forget that HMI is very efficient,has a very good and constant colour temperature; it’svery reliable proven technology and it would be quitedifficult to manufacture the same efficiency and lightoutput with LEDs today, yes. There was an idea in thepast, that we manufacture an L7-D – D for daylight.This was in the past in the pipeline, but first it is quitedifficult; second there is no demand, because we havehigh output lights which are open face HMIs. The LEDtechnology is more used in studios, so there’s more a

replacement or an addition or acompletion to fluoros and tungsten, butnot necessarily in the daylight market.This might change in the future, but wedo high power HMIs up to 18 kiloWattswith the ARRIMAX. This is really adifferent beast compared to an L7, whichis comparable to a 1000 Watt tungsten.

Ed: Now Stefan, I’ve just seen a clip

from the movie Oblivion with Tom Cruise

where they lit the couple talking with a

single candle and shot with the F65 and

it looks beautiful. So I mean one candle

compared to this sort of 9 kiloWatt

monster … where would you actually use

such an amount of light?

Stefan: Usually you use HMI daylight

when you need constant lighting

conditions on sets, especially when

there’s lots of compositing in post

happening – like Yogi Bear which was

shot in New Zealand, or The Hobbit

where we had lots of ARRIMAX on

location, but such light is usually far

away from stage up on a cherry picker,

on a crane, with a remote head so you

can pan and tilt and zoom, wired MX with remote

control, so there’s no operator up there.

Ed: So it’s acting like a number of suns I guess?

Stefan: Exactly, but it’s not changing over thedaytime; it’s constant lighting conditions and they canfocus on the scene, they don’t always have to relight.They also learn this when they visit locations that arebasically blocked to sunlight, and have constantlighting, they have constant lighting conditions all day,with daylight HMI.

Ed: So it’s not for intimate scene lighting?

Stefan: Yes it can be … we have smaller ones,smaller HMI lighting sets, also LED lighting, but we alsohave battery powered HMIs. It depends what you wantto use, daylight or tungsten or LED. We have the fullrange in terms of technology, Wattage and colourtemperature and we are only listening to the marketdemand. We only build lights because there is ademand; the customers tell us we would use such light,or we need a light like the M90 to bridge the gapbetween an ARRIMAX and the M40; or we would needfor the US market especially, a small 1.8K HMI which isthe strongest light you can power off a 20 amp powerplug in the US. This is why it’s 1.8K, this was thereason behind it, because you can run it off a normalplug in the US, 115 Volts for 20 amps. This is why itbecame 1800 Watts. Of course it works in the US, andin Australia and New Zealand we have 240-250 there,we don’t have a problem with current limitation, but it’salso a beautiful light, the M18. So quite good lightingsets which are available.

Page 70

NZVN

CLASSIFIED

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