Mobile TV is alive! - TVBEurope

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TVBEU RO PE NEWS & ANALYSIS NEWS IN BRIEF BHV incorporated Brick House Video, manufacturer of production and post production equipment, has announced the incorporation of BHV Broadcast, a sister company established initially to manage the sales and marketing of the company’s product range on an international basis. BHV Broadcast will sell Brick House Video’s product line featuring rack-mount and portable digital vision switchers, up/cross/ down-converters, standards/rate converters, and equipment designed to simplify operations, cut costs, and promote reliability for live productions. In addition, BHV Broadcast will be promoting its own range of camera-based products such as Video Ghost, a phantom power system and TallyHo!, the multi-camera wireless tally system. Manufacturing, warranty and technical support will remain the responsibility of Brick House Video, which has also recently contracted to provide OEM services to third-party companies and is actively seeking further projects in this market. www.brickhousevideo.com www.bhvbroadcast.com Calrec mixing desks for new BBC studios Calrec has sold four Artemis Beam mixing desks to the BBC (one 48-fader model and three with 40 faders). The consoles are for use in the TV news studios being built at Broadcasting House in London. One TV news studio is already operational, and features a Calrec Zeta audio console. In late 2010, Calrec Audio won the tender process for the audio consoles in the next four TV news studios to be built on the site. Three of these will receive identical 40-fader Calrec Artemis Beam consoles, and will be dedicated to 24-hour news channels. The fourth, a larger flexible rig studio, will receive a 48-fader console. The Artemis Beam consoles are not expected to go on air until 2012-3. www.calrec.com Why demand for the Alexa digital cinema camera is outstripping supply Alexa getting serious Camera Update Arri’s Alexa digital cinema camera has been used in a wide range of productions since its release last June, such as the BBC’s big Christmas drama, Upstairs Downstairs, and several highprofile 3D movies, including Martin Scorsese’s first 3D production, Hugo Cabret, The Three Musketeers, Spy Kids 4, and Vicky and Treasure of the Gods. “Due to the ergonomics and performance of Alexa, people in serious filmmaking love it,” claims Milan Krsljanin, director of business development, Arri. Although not giving any figures, demand for the Alexa is outstripping supply “by far.” The Alexa is being used for 3D because “it has that image quality that is outstanding and it is very easy to fit in most commonly used 3D rigs,” he adds. “It is relatively light. It is compact. People might prefer if it had been smaller, but in comparison with most high-quality cameras it is small.” The camera’s sensitivity is also important. A beam-splitter 3D rig reduces the amount of light available to the camera, “so you need the extra headroom to allow for these losses, which it does, at Highly sensitive: Milan Krsljanin with the 800ISO Alexa camera 800ISO.” It has also been independently tested to verify that it has 14 stops of exposure latitude. “If you produce movies in 3D, it has to work in 2D. So all the aesthetics you’d have normally in 2D have to be present in your shot. You can get reliable 3D with small sensor cameras, but for it to work in 2D and do justice to production requirements, you need a larger sensor.” The digital dailies tool developed with Colorfront is, he says, particularly useful for 3D because it streamlines the production process and helps to eliminate certain parallax issues. An upgrade to Alexa that was released at IBC added several features suitable for 3D, including Performance capture: The speed of the SxS card allows users to archive faster better synchronisation and full master/slave control (so you only have to set up one camera). The new €8,000 Alexa Plus upgrade, which adds a new side panel and other options to the Alexa, includes integrated lens control. Most existing Alexa owners have ordered the upgrade. “One thing that will be a big issue is metadata, and the lens data system with the big sensor cameras is in its infancy — but with file-based cameras people expect much more metadata.” This is why the Plus gives a full lens data download, including focus, iris, etc. “At the moment it is the domain of special effects, but others will find it useful too.” The metadata requirements of the film industry are different to broadcast, but for 3D metadata is particularly important. The Alexa is a relatively straightforward camera to use. “The single page menu structure is simpler than a [Sony] EX1. The camera was designed by people who spent all their lives designing film cameras, so the ergonomics are very good,” he claims. They even tested how easy it was to change BNC cables in a sub-zero chamber, wearing gloves, to get the distance between them right so it can be used in extreme conditions. Tapeless workflow “In philosophical terms, we are very far from being totally tapeless,” says Krsljanin. “Some producers have to keep all their rushes for legal reasons, so if you are shooting tapeless you have to put everything on LTO [digital tapes]. Hard drives fail — the question is just when — so you have to have a good archive strategy.” The reason Arri chose fast memory cards (SxS) and the PCI interface was to make it easier to transfer to archive. “There is nothing faster at the moment than these cards and our segment of the market is not as price-sensitive as EX1 or EX3 users. In film terms, the cards are cheaper than the equivalent length of film, but are re-usable. “At the moment, the price is too high to keep 10 days of shooting on cards. But, one day it will be, and only at the end of the shoot will we re-use them.” Even if he feels that tapeless is currently as achievable as the “If you are shooting tapeless you have to put everything on LTO [digital tapes]. Hard drives fail — the question is just when — so you have to have a good archive strategy” — Milan Krsljanin paperless office (some productions still use SR tape for legacy reasons), its key benefit is file-based editing, “because you can immediately go to the timeline and start editing.” Alexa users have two main recording options (both of which can be used at once): record to Apple’s ProRes codec, with the compression done in a 16-bit signal processor (which offers optimal performance as it is next to the sensor); or record Raw, uncompressed images, with very large file sizes, to an external recorder from the likes of Codex Digital or S.Two. “We have raw output, and that can be recorded easily.” But few productions are using raw, because not all the tools are in place, especially for easy manipulation in post. The raw implementation used in the Alexa is based on the D21, but the latest Version 3.0 software update includes an Alexa raw implementation, as well as incamera playback of recordings from the SxS cards and a new colour management system — which will allow easy creation of look up tables using online software. Shooting ProRes means there is no distinction needed between online and offline edits, except moving to a grading suite at the end, as it can record ProRes 4:4:4, although normal ProRes HQ 4:2:2 is good enough for TV, as it is, Ksljanin claims, “better than HDCAM or AVC-Intra.” It is also optimised for post production. www.arri.de 50 www.tvbeurope.com MARCH 2011
Blackmagic HD touch for Corrie Post Workflow The first HD version of Coronation Street, including the first new set of titles since the 1990s, was delivered on time to ITV thanks to Space Digital & Blackmagic By David Stewart As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, Coronation Street (Corrie) switched to HD. With that switch, the show’s owners, ITV Networks, required the first set of new titles in almost a decade. ITV chose Space Digital to meet those requirements. Space Digital built a complete HD workflow for many of the graphics, editing and testing needs for Coronation Street. Much of its workflow is tied together with Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink HD Extreme and Intensity Pro capture and playback cards. Media Express software and the UltraScope waveform monitoring technology, both from Blackmagic Design, are also essential to the post practice. For the titling sequence, Space Digital shot on Red cameras, using the Coronation Street set and locations around Manchester. Several shots were altered to modify geography. To do this, co-founder Simon Blackledge worked directly on the Red’s native R3D files to create multilayered composites, replacing background buildings, and adding one of Manchester’s updated Metrolink trams. Additional enhancements were then added using Adobe After Effects and the finished sequence was graded in Apple Color. Offline editing was done on Final Cut Pro, with in-house custom tools translating the project into NukeX for conform and VFX. Throughout this project, Space Digital used the Blackmagic cards, software and testing products to capture and view dailies and pass through final quality control, and integrated them with Adobe’s Production Premium package and Final Cut Pro for editing. Autodesk/Maya animation and 3D software and The Foundry’s NukeX compositing software were also used. “Corrie is an institution, and that opening scene, music and titles are almost sacred to people. It was a huge responsibility to get this done correctly, and Blackmagic Design really helped make this a flawless and perfectly executed process.” Space uses four Intensity Pro cards for playback and broadcast monitoring, and from Nuke compositing systems. Two HD Extreme cards are used for capture and playback to view daily reviews of VFX from both Adobe and Final Cut Pro systems, with Media Express software providing the ability to capture video from an HDMI source and then use the HDMI output to monitor video capturing. “I can afford to PHABRIX SxD ® Test and Measurement SD-SDI, HD-SDI, 3G-SDI Audio Monitoring 2U 19” Rack Scaleable architecture Modular options PHABRIX SxE 3G/HD/SD with Eye and Jitter Automated measurements Metering Framing Metadata PHABRIX SxA 3G/HD/SD with AES 16 Channel embedded audio PHABRIX SxD 3G/HD/SD/DUAL LINK level A and Level B WITH OVER 350 FORMATS SUPPORTED PHABRIX broadcast excellence TVBEU RO PE NEWS & ANALYSIS put Intensity cards in every one of my workstations, for what I would normally spend on a single card from a competing vendor,” said Blackledge. www.tvbeurope.com MARCH 2011 51 ® Only 15 cm depth Low weight Low power Ethernet Cost effective OB, Control Room, Studio ANC packet status ANC packet list Detailed ANC report Phabrix® Limited Winchester Road, Burghclere, Newbury, Berkshire RG20 9EQ UK tel/fax + 44 (0)1635 255 494 email: info@phabrix.com www.phabrix.com
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