Like the proverbial falling tree in the forest,you wouldn’t know that there had been ayacht race in San Francisco if it wasn’t forthe coverage. What was special this timewas that it was better than ever – moreaction, more cameras, more sound, moregraphics and all delivered on moreplatforms. Other than us having a starringrole in the race, another reason to be proudof being a New Zealander was that a greatproportion of the coverage was provided byNew Zealanders – not only through TVNZ,but also as part of ACTV, America’s CupTelevision, the host broadcaster.

Sadly, my resources did not stretch to mybeing there but I was very ably substitutedby TVNZ senior cameraman, RaymondMoore. As well as his obvious cameraproficiency, Raymond shows promise in thejournalistic art although he has a long wayto go to reach the “take no prisoners”attitude of this seasoned hack – and he’sprobably the better for it! So, apart fromremoving references to numerous cups ofcoffee and cream cakes, the following ismainly all Raymond. Forward together wego.

Raymond: I’m talking with Wayne Leonard,the TV live director for America’s CupTelevision.

Wayne: I direct the world feed whicheveryone sees. Previously, this job wouldonly have involved doing the race coverageitself but here we are producing a completed output withfeature stories which runs for about two hours.Broadcasters have “join points” to our schedule; we allowbreak opportunities as well – it’s obviously a commercialworld, but if you wanted to take the product and play it,it would be two hours continuous, no problem.

NOVEMBER 2013 Vol 197

Behind The Cup coverage

Raymond: Tell me about the sources you’re able to

play with?

Wayne: We’ll start with the boats.

On each boat you’ve got seven cameras; six of themare what we call “agile” they can be zoomed, panned,

Raymond Moore and Martin Tasker.

tilted, colour balanced, controlled from onshore and oneis a fixed camera which is underneath and it’s there toshow foiling. The camera configuration is so that wehave two cameras that can cover the skipper or crew atall times, these are around the base of the wing; there’sa camera which we call camera 1 which is our safe shotat the end of the bowsprit; there’s cameras 4, 5 and 6which go across the back of the boat. They are gettingcrew shots mostly, and also “boat to boat” type shots.Clearly, they’ve been a lot closer than peopleanticipated they would get, so at timesthe shots are quite exciting.

Then on the water, we have two chaseboats, which can do 40 knots. Theyshould be faster than the racing boats,but they’re not, so hence the reason forhaving two, and they work in a “pushme, pull you” type setup where they dohalf the course each. Then we havethree helicopters – two of them have liveline possibilities that we can put graphicson so, from a director’s point of view, it’spretty good, he’s spoilt for choice. Thethird helicopter operates as a tighthelicopter – it gives you the shots overthe boats, gives you the more “arty”type shots, and as we progress throughthe coverage, we’ve formulated ourpattern for cutting. The two live linehelicopters again work in tandem withthe chase boats and the tight helicopterdoes the entire course.

There’s lots of restrictions round here –there’s “no fly” zones which is anotherreason why we’ve had to employ two livelines, especially around Alcatraz and

anywhere near the shore, there’s marineareas that we aren’t allowed to fly in …too much noise for the seals andwhatever else, the birdlife, etc. There’sa lot of administration involved aroundcovering races above San Francisco Bay.And then of course the other reason whywe have two chase boats is that fog is aproblem here and if the fog gets too lowthen we can’t fly the helicopters.

So far, touch wood, it hasn’t affected anyraces, although there’s been occasionswhen the helicopters had to fly acrossthe top of land and of course whenthey’re across the top of land, they haveto fly much higher, so the shots tend tobe wide shots and no detail.

Raymond: It’s all been going well? Imean it just looks fantastic on television.

Wayne: I think it’s set a fairly highbar for sailing coverage. I think it’s fairto say it’s probably the most excitingAmerica’s Cup I’ve worked on, and I’veworked on five – three as a director. Ithink it’s because of the boatsthemselves … I know there was a lot of

anti over the AC72’s, they’re very expensive and 132people to put one in the water and all that sort ofcarryon, but they just look beautiful on the water andthe foiling and the speed.

It’s exhilarating – I don’t know how you would go backto monohulls after this.

Raymond: Have you had any new toys to play with?

Wayne: Well there’s the LiveLine which wasdeveloped specifically for this event by the guys that didthe first-down line for the NFL – Stan Honey and his

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Page 3

Operations were all in containers.

Vincent (front), Wayne Leonard (middle) and Leon Sefton (back).

team are all very clever, guys from the top universitiesin the States. So that’s been pretty good. That’sprobably the only new technology, although camerasare better and it’s hard not to put out good coveragewhen you’re working with people who are the best inthe world in their craft areas. It’s just amazing.

Raymond: There’s a lot of Kiwis or certainly ex-TVNZers around here?

Wayne: Yes there are a lot of New Zealanders. Ithink that’s because we’ve got a history of coveringsailing, so it’s easier to fast-track people. Certainly thisproduction has gone through some adaptations – we alltrained up as a group doing the AC45 World Series,which was meant to be a stepping stone into theAmerica’s Cup. It didn’t quite work out that way sadly,but what it did do was create the facility which travelsaround the world in containers, which is the televisionbase which goes on a ship. One month, we were inCascais and then we’re in Plymouth and Venice, Naples– all over the world, but all of that time we were fine-tuning the nuances … I mean, this is the first racing Iknow of in the America’s Cup where we’ve had aboundary, a field of play, so the original intention wasthat this was going to be motor racing on the water andbe a wee bit like a football match that had a field,whereas in the past, sailing hasn’t had that.

Raymond: What about the cameras on the boats –obviously there was buy-in from the syndicates fromday one, or was that a big negotiation process?

Wayne: No, it’s written into the rules of the Cup.The boat’s built to a specification and the television

coverage is the same. “You will have this number ofcameras on it …” There was a bit of argy-bargy –obviously they had to go along to the differentsyndicates and work out where we were going to fit thecameras on those boats and of course the camerascaused windage and everyone wanted them to be thesame, but clearly in this new class, all the boats exceptfor Luna Rosa and Team New Zealand which both camefrom the same design team, were totally different. But,in the end, seven cameras on each boat, that’s what itis. On each boat, there are two Pelican boxes – one

Page 4

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controls four cameras, the other three, and they goback into something like a vision mixer which iscontrolled on shore. So each boat has two cameraoperators, you know one doing four cameras, one doingthree.

Raymond: Very busy guys back here?

Wayne: Yeah, they are quite busy. Mind you, youget set moves and you learn how different crews tackand jibe and when people will change positions and whothe people are. But certainly audio is probably thesingle most important thing I believe, it’s not thecameras, it’s what are they saying and what does itmean? I think that’s probably what’s made the Cup.

Now I’m with Kenneth Sands, ex TVNZ and now afreelance cameraman. Kenneth is one of the cameraguys controlling the onboard cameras.

Raymond: Kenneth, how’s it all done?

Kenneth: It’s all done remotely; we have incredible“modern man” technology, so there are no cameracables at all between the boats and the land! We’ve gotseven cameras – effectively one of them is fixed andthe other six are operated between myself and anotheroperator. We’ve got full tilt, zoom, focus, colourcorrection on a 10 to 1 Sony block. Some of them havegot a wide-angle adapter on them; other ones don’t –mainly the personality cameras that are on the frontcross beam. We almost can catch all the action as it

happens – if we’re staying awake of course. There area few things that we can’t see, such as when NewZealand nearly capsized, we couldn’t see rightunderneath the boat. We’ve got four operators, two perAC72. The control panel allows us to switch betweenour inputs and each of these panels outputs two videosignals into the mixer matrix. Here we’ve got a quadsplit, so we can see all the camera outputs at the sametime, then we can control them. We can do iris … bring

up camera 2 – it’s instantaneous, there’sno delay between inputting a signal intothe control quad, to what actuallyhappens on board the yachts.

To tell us about the audio setup we haveHaresh Bhana, audio designer and mixerex TVNZ, now in a freelance role.

Raymond: Haresh, how did you getinvolved with ACTV guys?

Haresh: Well ACTV forms up everytime there’s an America’s Cup, so whenwe had the two regattas in New Zealand,with Denis Harvey as one of theproducers for ACTV on this occasion( and we’ve been keeping in touch overthe years ) I was at the top of his list forthe audio.

Raymond: You’ve got great audiocoming off the boats … firstly, what haveyou got on them and then what weresome of the challenges?

Haresh: On each boat, we have gotthe capability to take 16 channels of

Page 6

Kenneth Sands (front) at on-board camera remote.

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audio all discreetly back to the International BroadcastCentre here; so on board the boats, we’ve got five ofthe crew with wireless microphones and then we’ve gota number of effects mics around the boat; we’ve got acustom-built surround sound microphone at the back ofthe boat. Unfortunately, we’re not mixing in surroundsound at the moment because of budget constraints,but we still have the whole capability there and we’vealso got a couple of mics buried within the hulls of eachof the boats as well. We also grab the onboardcommunication from the team as another feed, anothersource back to us just in case we have any issues withour own gear, then we can use their own onboard comsfeed.

Raymond: Wind must be a major factor with the speedthey are going – how do you keep your audio clean?

Haresh: Yes wind was one of our major concernsand, with the 72’s, it’s been quite difficult. Obviously,we never got a chance to really test any of the gear;the 72’s were supposed to be used during the worldseries a year ago, but they never were. They only usedthe 45’s which obviously go a little bit slower, so SISLIVE, who are supplying all the onboard audio and thecameras, went to Rycote and had a huge consultationwith them. Rycote have developed some specialwindsocks and windgags for us and built themespecially for us.

Raymond: Amazing, that’s really cool. What otheraudio challenges have you had?

Haresh: In previous America’s Cups, all we’ve hadto do is put an audio mixer on the boat with remotecontrol and therefore, anything like equalisation,compression and even fault checking a microphone, isvery hard when you have to sub-mix it all on board theboat and send it back as a mixed feed. So some of thechallenges for this race were having to build up asystem which would encode all the audio on the yacht.So you get 16 channels of audio on the yacht, encode itinto a usable datastream that we could transmit overthe microwave path back to IBC, and for us to thendecode the audio signal again and still keep all thosesignals in time sync with each other as well.

Lastly for ACTV, I’m talking with the live producer, LeonSefton.

Raymond: The images that you guys put out to theworld, and especially the TVNZ feed that we get, arejust stunning. You must have an understanding ofyachting to be able to know what’s going on. What’syour background, how did it come about?

Leon: I was lucky enough to grow up followingmy father around. He was a sailing journalist with hisown sailing magazine.

Much of my childhood was spent following him out onthe Hauraki Gulf when he was reporting on yacht races– everything from the One Ton Cup days through to theAdmiral’s Cup kind of competitions and I was mixing inthe company of Peter Montgomery and Larry Keatingwhen they were doing their radio reports, back in thedays when PJ had to carry a big radio backpack aroundto broadcast before the advent of cell phones – that’show far back it goes.

My father, Alan, was pretty involved with the squadron– ( Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron ), managingthose teams and helping take those teams overseas andalso reporting on their progress over there.

In a way I kind of grew up with it, so when I startedwork in television, it was a natural step and an interestto keep an eye on it, and eventually I developed a bit ofa niche and was able to tour overseas and work oncircuits myself, like the Audi MedCup circuit, workingwith Dennis Harvey on the Louis Vuitton Cups and alsodirecting the America’s Cup for a few of the editions.

So yes, it’s been quite a ride going from the Hauraki

Gulf as a young boy driving the rig for the old man, to

producing the America’s Cup here in San Francisco.

Raymond: What are the new technologies that have

now progressed that you’re able to take advantage of?

Leon: One of the great things about the America’sCup is that the event is always moving forward

Page 8

More on-board electronics.

Haresh Bhana on the audio console.

technologically on the water with the race teams andthe yachts themselves and I think, over the years,there’s always a similar ambition in the way we cover itto try and develop and keep pushing ourselves andmake the sport more understandable.

It’s not an easy sport for viewers to pick up if they’renot used to it; it’s an easy sport to lose people. We canconfuse them visually, they can get discombobulated interms of which direction the boats are going and why –and so for us the breakthrough this edition has been theLiveLine technology. That’s been an ambition andsomething that’s been on our radar for a long time interms of not having to cut away from the live pictures inorder to add the graphic information to keep peoplefully informed and to give them bearings.

So this time round, we created boundaries to theracetrack – essentially a field of play, so that peopleunderstand where the end zones are and where the side

lines are; and also we’ve added the ladder graphics solike in American Football you can see at all times howfar up or down the racecourse the boats are at a giventime. To have that graphic information on the picturesis a huge leap forward. That was no mean feat; it wasa pretty robust kind of a process of technologicaldevelopment over the years to do it. Stan Honey andhis guys developed LiveLine … the big breakthrough wasto take the data that was coming out of the Cineflexcameras, the gyro stabilised cameras flown on thehelicopters, and to be able to take that data, interpret itvisually and turn it into graphic data. The interestingpart of that story is that that’s something that’s beendone in the past with stationary cameras; to do that ina camera which is moving three dimensionally all thetime, and panning and tilting, that was a huge evolutionand a big step forward. That’s the first time it’s beendone and hats off to the guys who managed to achieveit, because it’s a brilliant breakthrough for us.

Raymond: Are these specialised cameras …?

Leon: The cameras themselves are specialised.They are leading edge gyro stabilised cameras – there’sthe FLIR and the Cineflex brands. They’re not brandnew to use in sailing or indeed sport and television ingeneral – they’ve been around for a number of years,but it’s the first time we’ve really managed to tap intothe data coming out of the back of them and co-ordinate it to create a combined package whichbecomes a really powerful interpretative tool.

Raymond: And you use that in combination with theGPS and all that sort of stuff as well?

Leon: Yes, Animation Research Limited, IanTaylor’s company who have been heavily involved insailing and the America’s Cup for a number of years andhave been at the forefront with a lot ofthe technology breakthroughs, havebeen with us for every step of thatjourney.

They probably could have achieved thesame breakthroughs themselves if they’dbeen given the budget to do so, but theirtechnology is still being used in step withus as a backup and also in kind of aparallel to the LiveLine technology, sothat we have another way of looking atwhat’s happened on the water. That’sparticularly strong in a replay sense sothat we can really examine in detailwhat’s been going on, the play by playmoves out there. So, yes, we’ve made abig breakthrough in that we don’t have

to leave the live pictures, but when we need to we canget back to the animations and really examine things upclose.

Now for the TVNZ side of the story, I’m talking to JohnWest, Manager of Sports Events.

John: My role has basically been onsite producer

for TVNZ, co-ordinating activities on the ground in San

Francisco, taking the coverage provided by the host

broadcaster and then adding the specialist elementsthat deliver it specifically to a New Zealand audience –

so our own commentary using Martin Tasker and Peter

Lester, and then organising specific video tracks around

a highlights programme and co-ordinating the coverage

that we’re using for News.

Raymond: Audience-wise, back in New Zealand, thiswould probably be one of the most successful thingswe’ve done in quite a while?

John: Absolutely. I think the first race of theAmerica’s Cup rated higher than the All Blacks matchand rated higher than the coverage from Valencia in2007 … okay, Valencia was in the middle of the night,but certainly it is attracting a very high audience. Onedifference from 2007 is the advent of the On Demandstreaming site, so not only are we delivering traditionaltelevision, we’re also delivering to iPhones, iPads anddesktop computers. As the races are progressing,those numbers are exponentially increasing as well.

Raymond: Are the servers holding out back in NewZealand?

John: It’s proving an interesting exercise. As thedemand increases, then obviously they’re having to dosome more work shaping and reshaping the bandwidthto accommodate that, but it’s been a very good learning

Page 10

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exercise in terms of, if you like, the shift fromtraditional television into delivery over a variety ofdifferent platforms.

Raymond: So from your perspective, how has it been

– the whole event?

John: I think it’s gone pretty well you know;we’ve tried to do this with a lot less resource than we

had in 2007, so we were set some pretty significant

challenges in terms of the way we put this together and

made it work. We tried to make use of some of the

newer streaming technologies – it’s the first event

we’ve done that for a path back to New Zealand.

Raymond: So you’re saying that most of it’s coming

back via the Internet – more than it used to?

John: It’s the first time we’ve used the Internet

as a delivery path for unilateral content. Traditionally

we’ve taken satellite capacity or fibre capacity at

significant cost, but with the advances in encoding

technology and compression, the opportunity arose for

us to trial some Internet technology, which by and large

has worked reasonably well.

Raymond: The future – do you think we’ll be involved?

John: That’s not for me to say. I’d like to think

so. TVNZ has had a history of being involved with the

America’s Cup really from its inception … or the

inception of New Zealand’s involvement in the America’s

Cup, so there’s a long history there and I’d like to hope

that it will continue.

Time to talk with Rodney Haugh, the TVNZ ProjectEngineer for Events.

Raymond: Now Rodney, what does TVNZ get fromACTV?

Rodney: It’s quite simple, we take the host picturesand we substitute our audio. We also get a number ofthe host’s isolated feeds so that our commentators canget a “heads up” as to where the boats are on thecourse, where they’re headed and where the boundariesare – while everybody else isn’t seeing the boundaries.We then use those pictures and overlay our own audio.The commentators are in a little cabin on the Pier 23and they sit with headsets on and do a commentarywhich we mix with the effects audio, which comes fromACTV. We send that all back to ACTV and they put it ontracks 7 and 8 going to the satellite.

Raymond: Is the satellite the only transmissionsystem that TVNZ is using?

Rodney: No, it’s not the only way. The satellite thatwe receive in New Zealand is AsiaSat 5 but there’s adouble hop to get in – that means it goes from onesatellite over Europe and then to another satellite overAsia which we pick up. Alongside that, we also have a

separate encoder, MPEG4 of course, andthat encoder would normally have beenon a fibre but we had major problemsgetting that, so we’re actually using thatencoder to stream over the Internet. Weget very good quality pictures, occasionalhits on it, so we keep our fingers crossedand at live cross times we hope for thebest, and so far it’s worked well, no hits.I suppose it’s quite leading edgetechnology, particularly as the codercompany loaned us the encoder and letus try their Beta software, so it could bethe thing of the future.

Didn’t he do well! Now, at last, it’s myturn to interview Raymond as to what hewas doing there.

Ed: Raymond, as well as your beautifulcamera shots, I for one was impressedby the quality of your interview lighting –how did you achieve that over the rangeof bright sun, sunsets and night shots?

Raymond: During the day, I used 2 xArri 1200 Watt hired HMI lights with my

Page 12

John West (back) with Rodney Haugh (front).

warm up gels to helpcombat the hideouscontrasty sun they have inCalifornia. I used Soft Frosttogether with a slight warmup gel (1/4 SUN) as HMI’stend to be a bit cold. Iprogrammed a colour bal-ance that I kept for all of mylinks or lives when usingthese lights.

As for my live crosses atnight, I always used thesame lights – 2 x LED frontlights and 1 x LED backlight.At night, it's all LED's,backed off and camera on6db gain and wide open tobring up the background.The lights are set to justhave the zebra flickering onthe face. I check the colourbalance of the backgroundand tweak front light for mydesired balance. The post

Martin to sling across his shoulder as he cycled. I alsoused this across at the Mixed Zone for 1 on 1 post raceinterviews. Lives and Links were always shot with the500. By the time we reached the AC Finals the mixedzone changed into one big presser with the broadcastcameras pushed to the back of the room. I revertedback to the PMW-500 as I needed the pulling power ofmy Canon 17x lens.

For any complex story, I would revert to the 500 as theEX1 is a bit of a struggle – the viewfinder for one….very difficult to see an image in the bright sunshinewhen using the flip-out LCD screen and trying to focusvia the rear viewfinder was not much fun! Audio wasthe other reason for switching to the PMW-500 as Icould record 4 separate audio feeds. This meant I couldemploy 2 radio mics for interviews as well as still havingaccess to my camera mic for effects when editing.

Ed: I believe that you did a bit more than just takingpics though?

Raymond: Martin and I were the main reporter/camera team right up until the last month when theactual AC race between Oracle and ETNZ began, at

Page 14

race press conference was another colour balance I keptbecause of the mix of lighting.

As the Sony PMW-500 has 8 programmable memorycolour balances available, I ensured these three settingswere maintained using the remaining memory for allother colour balance requirements.

Ed: Your PMW-500 was your main camera?

Raymond: My superb Sony PMW-500! This was asituation where it came into full play. As well as greatpicture recording features, I was able to record HD-SDIstraight from our router rather than having to dub hugefiles from our Blackmagic SSD recorder – we assistedETNZ by giving them a copy of their races, so the muchsmaller file size generated on the SxS Card size by thePMW 500 was easier to transfer quickly to their USBDrive compared to the massive 250GB file from theBlackmagic SSD device.

While in San Francisco I used two cameras – a SonyEX1 and the Sony PMW-500 – both recording in the MP4format – Full HD 1920 x 1080, 50i @35 Mbps.

The EX1 could be packed into my back pack for ease ofuse when Martin and I had to cycle down to EmiratesTeam New Zealand for various interviews. Itsaccompanying Miller tripod was also light enough for

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which stage extra crew were added. This was a verybusy period and, as Martin has reflected, “I don’t thinkI’ve ever generated that much video content in such asmall space of time.” Martin, of course was expected toblog and tweet in addition to this as well. Some of thedays were extremely long and it was rather hectic Imust admit. My workflow progressed a bit over the 3months in San Francisco. Initially I worked to anetworked NAS central storage device so Martin could

log material I had shot. I would set up anew project every day. Our MacBook Proshave SxS Card readers so the shot materialwas quickly ingested and Martin could readthat project on his MacBook Pro to logmaterial as required. Editing was with FCP7. A huge bonus was the Sony full HD LEDmonitor Rodney, our engineer, broughtalong for me to use, which connected to myMacBook Pro via a Matrox device thusallowing me to view all my visual material instunning HD!

As other commitments eventuated, the loadon the network increased and viewingbecame difficult. I was loaned a 6TB LaCiedrive from Sundance Productions who areproducing the “34th Americas Cup” movie toease the load so just backed up material tothe NAS, not working constantly to it – Ihad Martin log directly off my SxS cards inhis MacBook Pro using Sony ContentBrowser. I recorded everything with time-code set to “Time of Day” which meant anytime Martin could glance at his watch, note

the time and that grab could easily be located.

I did all of the onsite editing for Martin’s tracks, the

Links and Interviews for Highlights Package and the

Team Toyota section up until the finals, when TVNZ HQ

took on a fair bit of the edit load.

Ed: TVNZ used satellite links for live races and

Breakfast crosses but other News items were streamed

in non real time?

Page 16

Martin and Peter Lester (back).

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Raymond: Yes and No. In theearly stages, we only used thestreaming circuit for any liverequirement, then towards the endof the finals everything was sentvia the Sat with Breakfast, Middayand 6pm crosses via the streamingCCT. Finally, due to interferenceon the Internet, extra Sat timewas purchased to meet Breakfast’srequirements before and after therace. As the streaming circuit wassubjected to the vagaries of theInternet, nearly all of our cutstories or clipped interviews/voiceovers were sent via FTP. Iencoded at a 6MB setting toachieve the maximum qualitypossible. For techo’s, that gen-erates a 72MB file for a 1min 38sec story. This normally tookabout 5 minutes to send, andabout another 5 to 10 minutes totranscode across to the NewsQuantel Server. There was noonsite compile team in SanFrancisco.

Ed: So are you ready to do it all again in 4 years’time?

Raymond: Pass me another cream cake and I’ll thinkabout it. NZVN

Photos by Raymond Moore, Hugh Scott andhelpful friends.

Page 18

Very bright daytime lighting balance with HMIs.

Datavideo at IBCThe IBC stories continue starting atDatavideo for Protel with Mark Ederveen.

Ed: Mark, you’re going to tell us what’snew since NAB. I guess first myimpression of Datavideo over the showsis that your stands just keep gettingbigger and better. It’s obvious you’redoing okay, and the overall impression Iget is “mobile”. It’s outside broadcastand it looks like it’s affordable outsidebroadcast. Is this where Datavideo ismaking a niche for itself?

Mark: Yes. We have been focusingfor a couple of years now on all kinds ofmobile video solutions, not just for smallOB vans, but also broadcasting forhouses of worship, all kinds ofcommunities, colleges, schools, etc. etc.Everywhere where you need anaffordable live production setup,Datavideo can offer a solution to you.

Ed: And this can be for broadcast Iguess, or web?

Mark: Web broadcast, live broadcast, on nationaltelevision or local TV stations, yes, it is all available atthe full professional level.

Ed: And it’s also, I’m assuming knowing theDatavideo story, very flexible – that you can connect upa range of cameras, you can have a whole range offeeds into here, and you don’t have to be any particularformat specific?

Mark: Well nowadays of course, everybody isfocusing on high definition SDI – HD-SDI – that’s thenew standard of course, but still we have quite a lot of

products which can support composite video so you canuse one of our converters to digitise your compositevideo into SDI and with some SD-SDI to HDI upscalers,you can integrate your old-fashioned composite videocameras. With Datavideo products you can still connecta very wide range of cameras and other live feeds toour vision switchers.

Ed: Now this isn’t a market that you have all toyourself – there are quite a few others in this ballpark.How do you see yourselves being differentiated in themarket?

Mark: Well we’ve been in this particular part ofthe market for many, many years and we were alonethere, but now you see more companies coming backinto this market. Sony is coming back strong,Panasonic, of course NewTek TriCaster is very toughcompetition, Blackmagic Design, but on the other handDatavideo still offer a very affordable and easy tooperate device. With the other brands, I think you needsome high skilled training on the products before youcan work with them.

We believe that when you put somebody with a little

knowledge of technique behind a Datavideo switcher,

within 10-15 minutes they will totally understand the

concept without the need of extra computers, without

the need of extra user interfaces. Just take a Datavideo

product out of the box, put it in front of you and youcan work with it within 5-10 minutes no problem.

Ed: And again it might be just an impression, but it

seems as though you have a broader range than many

of your competitors. They will provide a solution in a

particular area, but you’ve got it all?

Mark: Yes of course we have the vision switchers,

we have the chroma key application, we have the high

definition recorders, we have the monitors, vectorscope

solutions, we have talkback systems, we even have ourown cameras … so from camera to recording; we have

the webstreaming solution … from camera to broadcast,

everything is here.

Ed: You have your own cameras now?

Mark: We do have one model PTZ-100 which is aremote high definition camera. Next year we will havePTZ-150 – this model will phase out quite quickly now,

Page 19

Mark with fully equipped OB van.

but the new one will be introduced at NAB … it is PTZ,so pan tilt and zoom camera controls remotely, so evenfor your cameras, yes, you can come to us.

Ed: Right, but the DAC products – really that’ssomething that started Datavideo off many, many yearsago, and now you’re up to 70. So what does the DAC-70 do?

Mark: The DAC-70 is just one of the convertersthat we currently offer. The DAC-70 is a standarddefinition to high def upscaler or even downscaler aswell if you have a high def camera and you need toconnect it to a standard def switcher. Anything in,anything out, it has auto detection on the input, so youonly have to take care of what kind of signal you wantto have as an output, just make the dipswitch settingsand you can have PAL NTSC out, 1080i in 60 Hz, 1080iin 50 Hz, 720p in all kinds of formats … anything in, andwe can have it as an output as well. The DAC-70 is avery versatile converter.

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

Mark: A very small form factor; it’s very easy tomount to a tripod with some extra mounting plates, or

we can also have it in a rig mount so that you cancombine more converters in just one 19 inch rackmount. Here you can add all kinds of converters, likethe DAC-70 which is the upscaler, or the DAC-60 whichis an SDI to VGA converter, where you have your highdefinition switcher but only still have VGA projectors,we can convert HD-SDI to VGA, so you always canmake the right connection with the DAC-60. We haveDAC-8, we have DAC-9 – one is HDMI to SDI, the otheris SDI to HDMI, so we have many different solutions forall the different needs in the market.

Ed: Because these camera manufacturers keep

coming up with new connectors and outputs don’t they?

Mark: They’re changing every couple of years

because they want to bring something new to the

markets and we then we have to build new converters.We’re so happy to do this for them!

Ed: For the readers, Protel in New Zealand are the

exclusive distributers for Datavideo so if you are looking

at setting up a low cost OB truck or production facility

or just need a converter or assistance call Protel –

Auckland 09-3798288 or Wellington 04-8019494. NZVN

Page 20

Caldigit at IBCFor Protel we are here at CalDigit withKosta Panagos.

Ed: Now you’re saying Kosta, thatthere’s nothing new since NAB but I seehere a Thunderbolt station. Now this isnot something that has yet beenreleased, but soon?

Kosta: It will be shippingNovember, 2013. It is a Thunderboltexpansion dock; it adds extraconnectivity via a single Thunderboltport. It adds three USB3 ports, a HDMIport, audio in and out and a LAN port. Ithas dual Thunderbolt ports so you candaisy chain it as part of six devices. TheHDMI output supports resolutions of2056x1600 – so much higher than 1080pand much higher than other equivalentdevices on the market. The USB3 ports,unlike other devices on the market, willactually charge your phones and tablets.As I say, it will be available towards theend of the year and the price is $199USor including freight to New Zealand about($275NZ+GST).

Ed: Wow, that’s not a lot at all and certainly a lotcheaper than the Apple laptop that it’s connected tothat only has one Thunderbolt port in their wisdom?

Kosta: Well that’s the thing … as computers aregetting thinner and thinner, they’re losing a lot of theirports, so you need a device like this to be able to addthose things that you need to connect. And it’s alsogreat for people who have, say, a 2011 Mac that hasThunderbolt but doesn’t have USB3 and you want to beable to attach USB3 keyboards, mice, external storage.The USB3 ports will also bus power your devices –again, other devices on the market can’t draw enoughpower to be able to bus power devices – storage forexample.

Ed: Now this is it, because in fact we know and loveCalDigit because of the storage so are there anydevelopments in that area?

Kosta: Yes, we have a new device – the CalDigitT3. It’s a unique 3-bay RAID with dual Thunderboltports, so again you can daisy chain it as part of sixdevices. It has three hot swappable drive modules andagain, uniquely, it will accept either 2½ inch SSDs or3½ inch hard drives, so storage capacities up to 12terabytes with the 3½ inch drives; if you daisy chainsix, that’s 72 terabytes. With SSDs it’s 1.4 terabytes,but it gets incredible speeds, so 850 megabytes asecond read, 800 megabytes a second write, and to putthat into context, you can buy 4-bay RAIDs that canonly get 500 megabytes a second; you can get 6-bayRAIDs that only get 800 megabytes a second. This willdo 850.

The unique function of this drive is that you can actuallymix and match SSDs and hard drives in the same unit,so you could have, say, two hard drives in a RAID 1configuration and then have one SSD at the bottom,

say as your scratch disc that you can workon. You can also mix and match RAID andJBOD, so you don’t have to RAID all threedrives, you can actually just RAID twodrives and then have a spare JBOD drive.

Ed: Wow. And it’s a very nice lookinglittle unit?

Kosta: Yes, it’s aluminium closure,robust, solid and it’s great for airflow. It’sgot a fan at the back, so your hard driveswon’t heat up.

Ed: The question I ask every time is thatobviously, you can go into a local PC supplyshop, buy a box and stick some drives inand RAID them, but this is a bit likechoosing between a Lada or a Porsche isn’tit?

Kosta: Yes, exactly. I mean we’re asingle vendor company, unlike othermanufacturers, so we make everythingthat’s in the unit apart from the hard drive.So, if you ever have a support related issue,we can always get to the heart of thematter much quicker. It’s always better to buy from acompany that’s a single vendor company – a companythat OEMs a product and then stamps their name on thetop of the box and allows you to put their own drivesinto it, which is great if you just need something quickthat you want to back-up your data on, but if you’re aprofessional and you need fast drives, dependabledrives, then you really need to buy an all in one solutionthat is backed by the company you buy it from.

Ed: If it’s mission critical and, in the scheme ofthings, it’s still a very inexpensive part of any systemthat you want to set up?

Kosta: Exactly, I mean if you’re spendingthousands and thousands of Euros or Dollars on aproduction and you’ve got all your data backed up ontoa drive that isn’t, say, a RAID 1 where you have threeautomatic backups, you’re risking the chance that youcould lose all that data.

Ed: Anything else – any other new device?

Kosta: I could talk you through this one.

Ed: Now a product that has been around a wee while,but we’ll just give it a bit more of a plug here, becausein these days of data wrangling, where you have a harddrive given to you from a job, you need to put that datainto some other form of storage, so you need aremovable case – and CalDigit has the answer?

Kosta: Yes, this is the CalDigit AV Pro. It’s asingle drive solution, but what’s unique about it is that

you can actually remove the hard drive inside and it canaccept either 3½ inch hard drives up to a capacity of 4terabytes or 2½ inch SSDs for much fasterperformance, up to 480 gigabytes.

And again, we have the removable drive, which is

unique to this product – other single drive solutions

tend to have an enclosed hard drive and you can’t

upgrade it, it can’t expand. So you can actually remove

the hard drive – and we sell extra drive modules as we

call them, between 1 and 4 terabytes, or 240 gig SSD

or 480 gigabyte SSD.

It’s hot pluggable and you can actually remove the

drive, put in a brand new drive and it’s great if you’re

using it – you need to move data from one location to

another, maybe you have multiple edit suites and you

want to be able to just remove a drive and put it into

another one in another location.

Also, if you’re using an SSD, you can actually be bus

powered, so you don’t need any external power.

Ed: Okay, for this to work you also need to have the

CalDigit drive with the various connectors on it, but it

does come in a very nice cushioned orange durable

case?

Kosta: Yes, we call that the CalDigit Archive Box

which is great if you need to move the drives from

location to location and you want to make sure if your

drive accidentally gets a knock, that it’s

going to be protected. And also these drive

modules work with our other products.

So like the product I talked to you about

earlier, the CalDigit T3 Thunderbolt RAID, if

you’re using it in a RAID 1 or a JBOD mode,

you can actually take the drive out and put

it into our other products such as the AV

Pro.

So it’s very flexible if you needed to move

from location to location and you need to

take data out and use it in a different edit

suite.

Ed: So if anyone would like to purchase

CalDigit products contact Protel –

in Auckland (09-3798288)

or Wellington (04-8019494. NZVN

Page 22

Professional Audio and Video Solutions

www.protel.co.nz

AUCKLAND3 City Road Tel +64 9 379 8288PO Box 6049 Fax +64 9 379 0290Auckland 1010 Freephone 0800 PROTEL

WELLINGTON15 Walter Street Tel +64 4 801 9494PO Box 6049 (Auckland) Fax +64 4 384 2112Wellington 6011 Freephone 0800 PROTEL

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CalDigit Thunderbolt™ Station | Shipping NOW Desktop Flexibility for All Ethernet Notebook computers have become increasingly powerful, delivering performance that rivals traditional desktop workstations. But they are disadvantaged by their lack of connectivity, often sacrificed for portability. The incredible versatility of CalDigit Thunderbolt™ technology, users can add multiple interfaces to a current computer with a single Thunderbolt™ connection.

Housed in a high strength aluminum body, the CalDigit Thunderbolt™ Station’s rugged construction and portable form factor make it an excellent solution for professionals on the road.

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CalDigit VR Mini 2 COMING SOON

The CalDigit VR mini 2 expands on the popular original VR mini. Now offering the added benefit of USB 3.0 connectivity, the VR mini 2 is a versatile storage solution for professional use.

CalDigit AV Drive

A single drive system that features the first dual interface with USB 3.0 and FireWire 800 connectivity.

The CalDigit AV Drive is the first USB 3.0 drive for the Mac, all in a sleek and compact design, and the CalDigit AV Drive can reach speeds up to 200MB/s.

CalDigit AV ProThe AV Pro can store a huge amount of data for such a small device. With a regular 3.5” HDD installed the AV Pro can store up to 4TB of data, and with an SSD installed it will be available in capacities up to 480GB. The CalDigit AV Pro can reach extreme speeds up to 430MB/s.

CalDigit T3 RAID COMING SOON

The T3 by CalDigit is a triple drive RAID array that offers performance and versatility unrivaled by anything in its class. The extra drive in the T3 adds additional performance with a minimal footprint increase.

For applications that require high performance drives, the T3 configured in RAID 0 can deliver up to 500 MB/s when configured with HDDs or 850 MB/s with SSDs.

Sony at IBCWe are here at Sony and we have Chris Grey fromSony’s Professional Solutions office in Hong Kong –that’s the nearest to New Zealand that we could find ata moment’s notice. He’s the man to tell us the latestthings from Sony since NAB starting with wireless.

Chris: Okay Grant, let me explain to you the CBK-WA100 wireless adapter. This is a little unit that goeson to the side of our camcorders. The issue forshooters has been how to get material back to thestation in a reasonably cost effective way withoutbringing microwave or satellite trucks behind them, andof course, we’ve had GSM networks and now we’ve got3G and 4G with much higher bandwidth capabilities. Sothis little unit goes on the side of the camera, it takesthe SDI out of the camera, and then it makes a proxyfile of the material that’s been recorded and it can storethat, but it can also forward that through the WiFinetwork back to the station and you can have somededicated server for that. After you’ve done therecording, you can also do some rough cut editing anddecide for that rough cut to send the high resolutionback to the station as well. So it has low res and highres capability.

Ed: So we’re doing a rough cut in the camera onlocation, not back in the studio?

Chris: That’s right. You can have the choice ofsending the proxy back, because that’s a lower bit rate,but obviously for the high res, it’s going to be non-realtime because it’s much higher capacity. So that’s quitea useful tool in the field we feel, for getting materialback. The WiFi part has an app that runs on a mobilephone or a tablet, so you can have some of the camerasettings setup from your phone or your tablet, oradditionally the WiFi will stream what the camera isshooting onto the tablet. If there’s an assistant who

wants to do some logging, or somebody else wants tosee exactly what the camera is shooting, or the camerais up on top of a dolly somewhere, then you can get thevideo stream to your tablet and see what’s being shot.

Ed: Now it looks similar to some third party productthat I’ve seen around over the last year or so, but Iassume, in any situation, having the Sony badge on itmeans that you could actually trust it, that it’s going towork with a Sony camera?

Chris: Yes Grant, it works with Sony cameras.There’s two versions … for third parties we have to beable to accept a signal from anywhere, so typically theyhave an SDI output. But we’ve also made provision onour cameras like the PMW-400, so moving forwardthere will be a dedicated connector, you don’t need tohave that SDI, it will pick up the uncompressed signaldirectly without having to re-encode.

Ed: And that’s taking internal power is it?

Chris: Yes, it’s run off the internal power supplyso you don’t have to carry around a separate box, aseparate power supply, normally you have a belt packor something. The cameramen already have enough tocarry, so we think this will be a nice compact solutionfor them.

Ed: So any of the Sony cameras that have thatparticular connector will work with it, but if not, such asan older camera, what are the requirements?

Chris: There are two versions … there’s the oneversion that fits on the new connector, which is for newcameras such as the PMW-400, but there’s anotherversion which needs power and SDI and it gets thatfrom the camera.

Ed: Okay, so it just needs any camera that’s got anHD-SDI output and it will work?

Chris: Yes, DC power and SDI, that’s it.

Page 24

Chris with the WA100 and other Sony accessories.

Ed: And a neat little compact unit. Right, next … andnow we’re at the very popular section of the Sonystand, 4K and it’s not a big 4K. There are some big 4Kcameras and we know well the F65 and the F55 and F5,but this is a little one, with a rather complicatednumber?

upgrade, because it’s similar cost but it gives you ahigher level of picture?

Chris: Yes, a little bit more expensive, but much

higher picture quality.

Ed: Well, we’re talking Є6,500 – it’s only a little bit

more than the EX1 was when it first

came out?

Chris: Yes that’s right.

Ed: Have you heard from people as towhat they think of the camera?

Chris: Well they’re quite amazed tohave this level of technology in such acompact size, so I think people arethinking now how they can use it.

Ed: And certainly what we’re seeinghere on the monitor, the colours and thedefinition are quite incredible?

Chris: Yes, of course 4K has awider colour gamut than HD, so that’sreflected in the pictures we’re seeing.

Ed: And that’s it, not only do you getsharper images and that ability to zoomin, if you want to make it an HDproduction, you can reframe in post, butyou’re getting better colour rendition?

Chris: Yes that’s true. We’re stillsaying 4K might be better for HD thanHD native for that reason.

Ed: Well that follows also that HD is better than SD ifyou record HD and then down-sample to SD?

Page 25

Chris: Yes this is the PXW-Z100, a compact-form4K camcorder. It’s using a 1/2.3 inch sensor, so that’sbetween a third and a half inch size, and it’s a full 4Krecording using XAVC compression at 422 10 bit with anMXF wrapper, which is what we use for broadcastapplications. Its recording media is the new XQD cardbecause the data rate that the camera is producingneeds to have suitable memory to record that dataspeed. That’s it in a nutshell.

Ed: And it’s about the size of my Z5?

Chris: Yes it’s about the size of a PMW-200.

Ed: Where do you see this being used – obviously notin the next Lord of the Rings?

Chris: We’re trying to broaden the affordability of4K, so it could be corporate, education, medical,producing content for large screen displays, who knows.It could be all kinds of things, but we’re trying tobroaden the 4K application. As you know, there are alot of 4K displays coming onto the market already, sopeople are saying “where’s the content?” So withcontent these days, people can access anywhere, right?YouTube now has a 4K channel, so there may be somepeople who would be happy to buy this and use it foralmost anything.

Ed: And really the development with the CMOS sensorhas been such that it is now capable of handling thatsort of picture size?

Chris: All the F series cameras you mentionedhave a CMOS single sensor inside them, so thetechnology has now come down to be affordable at thislevel, so I think that’s good for the market.

Ed: But the sensor’s not the same size as the F65 isit?

Chris: No, no but the technology has progresseddown to be at this affordable level now.

Ed: And so again, something like this, if you wereshooting on an EX1, EX3, this would be an ideal

4K in a small but beautiful package.

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Chris: Yes that was the

similar story then. You knew then

you were going to have HD in the

future, so you might as well start

shooting 4K now so people can

make a decision; if they think they

need 4K for the future, then

they’ve got the opportunity to

shoot it now at an affordable level.

Ed: And if you follow that

reasoning then SD off 4K must be

absolutely fantastic?

Chris: Maybe, but I person-

ally haven’t seen it.

Ed: And now into the format

agnostic “AV over IP” interface and

routing.

Chris: What we’re showing

here is some prototype tech-

nology, some R&D that is about

moving from SDI to total IP

connectivity for things like

cameras, switchers, servers,

monitors, graphics and so on.

So of course, in our industry,

we’ve seen the move from SDI to IT in certain areas –

obviously servers are IT components, we have desktop

editing, we do lots of streaming, but in terms of live

production from cameras to switchers to recording on

servers and replay, it’s all in the SDI environment at

the moment.

Everyone’s comfortable with that, but we see a lot of

benefits with IT, especially from a cost performance

point of view.

Ed: Well you shouldn’t.

Chris: No, we shouldn’t, so we have to make surethat the level of quality is satisfactory for people’s dayto day operations. Anyway, the debate has started.

Ed: So this is a bit of a discussion board, that youwant your customers to come and have a look and thenfill in a little form on a clipboard there and if you getenough “yes” votes you might make it?

Chris: Well we could get a lot of

“yes” votes, but this needs to be an

industry initiative, because if everyone’s

got an Ethernet connector and a cable –

not just Sony, but all the other devices

that people use need to be compatible,

so eventually this will have to be

standardised by the likes of EBU, SMPTE

and so on.

Ed: That’s it, because on our list here,

at the centre is an IP switch and you can

feed into that a camera, server,

production switcher, the graphics

workstation, output to monitors, your

computers for your network manage-

ment – it’s all there, and if it’s all

connected by Ethernet then way to go?

Chris: Yes, so exciting timesahead, lots of retraining for all the

broadcast engineers.

Ed: Are they up to it do you think – there’s some

fairly old dogs out there?

Chris: Yeeees …

Ed: You can always be hopeful?

Chris: It seems the broadcast engineers are better

at learning IT than the IT engineers learning broadcast,

so that’s the general comment.

Ed: That sounds like a very sound comment and

makes a lot of sense.

Chris: So we’ll see.NZVN

Page 27

“There’s a record button somewhere.”

Ed: Cheaper cabling when you’ve got a large facility?

Chris: Cheaper cabling, more compact and energy

saving and size saving – especially important for OB

vans, this could be a real advantage.

So the idea we’re proposing is whether all these bits of

equipment could be IT equipped and connected through

an IP switch and then have a network manager

controlling things like bandwidth and so on.

But of course we’ve got signals such as audio, video,

control all needs to go down the cable, and also as an

industry we don’t accept latency at all.

Matrox at IBCFor DVT we are at the Matrox booth with WayneAndrews from Matrox Systems.

Ed: Wayne, since NAB – I mean 4K, you’re there?

Wayne: We’re here thank you Grant. Yes, so theMojito 4K is now shipping.

Ed: Mojito – that’s a good name?

Wayne: Yes, it’s a single card with 4 HD-SDIconnectivity to bring it up to 4K P60 real timemonitoring with the Adobe Creative Cloud, our WCCPremiere. It’s priced at US$1995 and, like I mentionedearlier, it’s now available. We also have now reducedthe price of our Convert DVI Plus to US$995; that’s alsonew since NAB. The Monarch HD which you saw at NABis also now shipping next week, so it will be availableworldwide. It’s a standalone streaming and recordingappliance, so it doesn’t need to be tethered to anycomputer; it’s built on Linux so it’s a very robustoperating system. It can be discovered from anyinternet browser, so you just find the IP – if you knewthe IP of your box you could be here at IBC inAmsterdam and communicating to your box in NewZealand through an iPad for example or an internetconnection. It gives you up to 30 megabits bandwidthso you can apply for example 10 megabits to streamingand 20 megabits up to 1080p on your recording side,realistically it’s you know about 2 megabits on a streamand you can have 28 megabits on your recording, soyou get up to Blu-ray quality in H264 in an MP4 or anMOV wrapper.

Ed: Where does it do the recording, on board or …?

Wayne: Well it can be to an attached storage, suchas a USB drive or a USB key or even an SD card, a class10 SD card, or if you have on a local network acomputer, you can record to a network attachedstorage device. It has an HDMI input and then Ethernetand then HDMI loop through, so if you have a camerayou can connect a monitor and monitor what’s comingin, just like your embedded audio in the HDMI or youcan go with analogue audio through a mini one-eighthjack. You also have monitoring on it; and then on thefront you have just these touch buttons, so if you haveto pre-programme the box you show up on site, youjust push the box, it would start streaming, push therecord button and it would start recording through twoUSB ports or an SD card reader, or like I mentionedearlier to attached storage.

Ed: So just say again, what level of recording … soyou can record this from the HDMI output of yourcamera, but to what recording format, what level?

Wayne: So it’s an H264, up to 30 megabits asecond in recording and you decide on if you want it inan MP4 or an MOV wrapper.

Ed: But it’s not just a recording box, it’s livestreaming at the same time?

Wayne: Correct. You can set it up for it to be astandalone streaming box, a standalone recording boxor a streaming and recording appliance.

Ed: And where is it taking its power from?

Wayne: Through a 5 Volt power plug, just click it in.

Ed: But you can use battery power?

Wayne: I guess if you created something that wouldgive you 5 Volts at up to 3 amps.

Ed: Okay, so we’re not battery powered at themoment, but we’ve just had a word with the productmanager and they’re seriously thinking about makingthis a little bit more sort of “field friendly” shall we say.I think the Matrox Monarch system is something tokeep any eye on for the future. Now, continuing?

Wayne: And then the final product that we’redemonstrating here that’s been updated since NAB isour Matrox DS4. The DS4 works with Wirecast toprovide four inputs HD-SDI. We went with HD-SDI sowe can run long cable lengths. If we were HDMI you’relimited to like about 30 metres. With HD-SDI you cango 300 metres in standard def, 100 metres in high def.So what we’re showing here is Wirecast 5.0 which wasannounced also at IBC, and what you’re looking at rightnow is we’ve developed a standalone recordingapplication, called the VS4 recorder which allows you toprovide labels on file names and inputs. You candisplay them, you can have up to eight channels of VUmeters, you can select the high def codecs such asDVCPRO HD or Matrox MPEG2 I-frame. The standarddef codecs are DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, and youpredefine your settings – it’s got auto detection so youcan have 720 standard def, 1080 and 1080p allconnected at once, and with a single button you canrecord all four channels and we have a session time,and you can embed either the session time into the fileor embedded SDI timecode into the file. We also arecapturing all the metadata that’s stored in there andwe’re going to export it as an XMP file and import it inAdobe Premiere and you get all your labels, yourtimecodes and other metadata that you had in yourPremiere. And once you’ve finished recording, you canthen turn the app into a playback app and you can viewyour multicamera shoot or whatever postproductionthat you’re doing a live production …

Ed: And do a very quick replay with cuts in all theright places?

Wayne: Correct. You can have monitor to fullscreen or you go back into quadrant view. It’s scalableor resizable; if you notice the live windows are very,very clean so we have a very unique proprietary IP thatwe applied to our MXO family.

Ed: That’s very Matrox isn’t it?

Wayne: Yes. So we’ve actually been driving thisprogressive monitor in interlace right now, because it’san interlace field, so if you notice there’s no aliasing orartefacting …

Ed: I must say at this point that, for a quad displayon a monitor, each of the quad displays is very, verysharp and very good colour rendition?

Wayne: Yes, thank you. It’s like I was mentioning,it’s our MXO technology that we ported over here on theDS4 for exactly that reason, to provide the highestquality possible when viewing interlace material onprogressive monitors.

Ed: Well that’s a few good things since NAB and somemore things to look forward to Matrox for the next NAB– hopefully battery powered?

Wayne: Hopefully – I’m not the product manager ofthat.

Ed: No, no, we won’t put your name to that one.

Page 28

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Ensemble Designsat IBC

For Gencom we are at Ensemble Designs withCindy Zuelsdorf.

Ed: Ensemble, you’re doing lots of goodthings because we saw some product in actionat KTVU in Oakland and they were all veryhappy there.

Cindy: We love them, they’re amazingcustomers.

Ed: But you love all your customers don’tyou?

Cindy: I do – I love people and customersare fabulous.

Ed: And you’ve got something new for them?

Cindy: We’ve got new product here – atIBC we’re introducing a brand new video routerthat switches instantaneously between HDMIsignals.

Ed: Has this been thoroughly tested by focusgroups?

Cindy: Haha … well we’ve been holding our focusgroup, but we were waiting for you to arrive so that wecan kick that off properly.

Ed: So I’ve got to come up with a good number?

Cindy: A good number and a good name!

Ed: Aaaah you’re evolving into names now?

Cindy: Well like I said, we’re waiting to kick off ourlatest focus group, The Grant.

Ed: Ooooh I don’t know if that’ll excite many people –too much attitude. Okay, so you’ve got a router?

Cindy: We do, a new router and it switches HDMIsignals. It also can take SDI signals and fibre if youlike. What’s interesting about this is that you canintegrate all those signals and it will switch cleanlybetween all of them, no pops, no glitches on the output.We have built-in frame synchronisers that let you switchcleanly. I took a look at how some other companies aredealing with HDMI switching and they just have a

Page 32

Cindy will sing “Bright Eyes” on request.

different approach, they’ll sometimes go to black brieflybetween the switch, going from one signal to the other;or freeze on a frame of video and then do the switch.We actually take the HDMI in and frame synchronise itjust like you would with an SDI signal.

Ed: Because it is tricky isn’t it. I mean technically,switching an HDMI signal is not as easy as an HD-SDI?

Cindy: HDMI doesn’t have the timing per se in itlike an SDI signal would, that is true. It is a differentanimal, and people are wanting to use them together,so we want to be sure they have a good and properoutput that can be used in professional and broadcastand presentation, where it’s completely seamless.

Ed: Fantastic … and it’s just a little box is it?

Cindy: Yes, you can put it in the palm of your handand hold it there. On the front you can see all of yourdifferent signals. Just by pushing through the buttonshere you can see all the different HDMI or SDI inputsand look at them before you take … I really haven’tseen anything else out there like this that combines theHDMI and that great confidence monitor on the front ofthe unit.

Ed: So how many inputs?

Cindy: Great question … there’s 14 ports on it.Now some of them are defined specifically as an inputor an output, but some of them you get to decide if youwant more inputs or more outputs. You decide on aconnector by connector basis what you’d like.

Ed: Look it’s your own party?

Cindy: Yes! The Grant Party! We’ve hadcustomers coming in, for example, looking at ways toincrease the inputs for their production switcher orvision mixer.

Ed: Sell them too.

Cindy: They like these, they put them upstream infront of their vision mixer, for example, the NewTekTriCaster is one of them that we have got customersthat want to integrate with that and add more inputsand more different types of inputs.

Ed: So you’re fixing other people’s problems?

Cindy: Well we like to add equipment so that theEnsemble is greater than the individual pieces, youknow the whole is that much better.

Ed: Hey, you must be in marketing?

Cindy: Well my favourite part is demo’ing really.

Ed: I thought it was cooking?

Cindy: Yes, we love to cook at Café Ensemble andwe’d love to have you and all your readers come andvisit our café because in addition to the fabulous foodthere, we design and manufacture everything rightthere in Grass Valley, California, so I hope all yourreaders come, have a tour and have lunch.

Ed: Fantastic, so you can actually see Ensembleproduct being “ensembled”?

Cindy: You can see it all being ensembled andassembled there, yes.

Ed: Marvellous. And continuing the grand tradition ofEnsemble support, you’ve recently come out with aproduct, but you’ve already made some changes to it?

Cindy: Indeed. The Avenue Multiviewer is workinggreat for folks in broadcast and for sports applications.We had a customer come to us and they’ve got eightcamera views they want to have at a sporting event, allon one multiviewer output, and that’s all well and good,that’s what a multiviewer does of course. In addition,they wanted to have two channels of audio per cameraview embedded in that multiviewer output, and wecame up with this great audio mosaic super easy way tointegrate that audio, so that that broadcaster can takethe embedded multiviewer out with the 16 channels of

audio and then pick off the two channels for thedifferent camera views as they wish downstream.

Ed: And this is available as an upgrade to anyone whohas already bought a multiviewer?

Cindy: Yes. When the multiviewer starts to ship,this will come with it.

Ed: Aaaah, so it’s actually not in production yet?

Cindy: We do have a couple of customers using itand it’s really just starting to go out the door now.

Ed: Now in terms of confidence in Ensemble product,I know there are a number of manufacturers out therewho come to these shows and they announce thatthere’s a new product coming out and it’s going to solveeverybody’s problems, but unfortunately it makes allthe previous ones obsolescent. Ensemble doesn’t followthat mantra does it?

Cindy: We’ve got our own approach as to how wetake care of our customers. We’ll ship that product andit works right out of the box and when customers callup and have a change they’d like, an addition,something we think is fabulous, we do a softwareupgrade and that’s free to every customer out there.They don’t need to buy it, they just go to the website,get the software, and that makes the life of the productthat much longer for the customer. They’re going touse it for years and years with the latest and greatestfunctionality.

Ed: And they know that if they buy something thatthese upgrades are very likely to happen or it’s aproduct that doesn’t need any changes?

Cindy: That’s right, they get free software updatesforever and we’re always improving and honing andmaking it better for our customers.

NZVN

Page 33

ARRI Lenses at IBCWe are at ARRI and we have DavidGreen. David’s been nominated to talkabout lenses because one of the big, bigannouncements here today was the UWZ– Ultra Wide Zoom, 9.5-18.

Ed: David, this is to go on the ALEXAor …?

David: Any PL mount camera.

Ed: And certainly, from what we sawat the workshop yesterday, the imagesare stunning and I guess it is Germanengineering that was able to do it?

David: Absolutely, I mean this lenshas been specifically commissioned byARRI as the first wide angle zoom. It’s avery low distortion, at 9.5 we’re talkingabout less than 1% distortion and 18mmwe’re talking about less than 0.1%distortion, which for a wide angle lens ispretty unheard of.

Ed: That’s why people normally go toprimes isn’t it?

David: Absolutely. If you look at the image –we’re looking at the monitor now – we’re panning out toan edge and there is absolutely no distortion on thatedge at all, no bowing, it looks absolutely straight, soit’s a very high quality lens.

Ed: I was intrigued to know that it’s what’s called“future proof” because the circle is actually larger thanthe sensor circle in the ALEXA?

David: That’s correct. In fact this will cover a 5Ksensor as I understand. It’s a very wide lens and it willfit most cameras.

Ed: Now I thought cinema people didn’t like to usezoom lenses – they are purists and they like primelenses, so how are you going to convince the cinemaphotographers to use a zoom?

David: That’s a very good question. Basically, it isa prime quality lens and it gives you from 9.5-18; thereare no prime lenses currently available at that lowerrange.

Ed: You’d have to buy a lot of primes to cover thatwouldn’t you?

David: Absolutely, the cost of this lens – it’sЄ45,000, so it’s an expensive lens, very premium compared to the rest of our zoom range, but you arecovering a very wide angle from say 9.5-18mm.

Ed: And it’s a very valuable area of the visual spreadreally, to cover that wide angle?

David: I think it’s a great lens for VFX, again we’relooking wide, it’s great for tight shots and I think youreally need to see the lens and put it onto a camera toactually appreciate what we’re currently seeing here onthe monitor.

Ed: It’s certainly not something you could handholdon a DSLR?

David: No, it’s certainly a studio zoom. We nowhave five zooms in our range, this is obviously thewidest zoom, we have two lightweights, two studios,and this could be classified as a studio lens. It doesrequire a lens mount and certainly it’s not designed tobe a handheld lens.

Ed: But you haven’t given up on primes have you –there’s still prime development in the ultra primerange?

David: Absolutely, master primes and ultra primes

are our select core sets of lenses; we’re still selling

these consistently and again, any PL mount camera is

capable of accepting those lenses. The master prime

lenses are obviously our premium brand lenses and

they can be used on most large sensor cameras and will

cover the full sensor.

Ed: Now, what’s the difference between a sphericallens and the anamorphic lens?

David: Spherical lenses have traditionally been

used in the industry and they will fully fit a 16x9 sensor

giving optimum quality. So a 16x9 sensor is

traditionally for HD television. The anamorphic lenses

will give you the anamorphic look, and they’ve been

specifically designed to fully fill the new 4x3 sensor,

which is currently on the ALEXA XT and the ALEXA 4x3models.

Ed: So it is the anamorphic primes that are

undergoing a bit of a roadmap in terms of getting some

new lengths?

David: Correct. We’ve just started shipping the

first of the new anamorphic lenses – the T1.9s, very

fast anamorphics, again very low distortion, no mumps

effects on those lenses, so very, very high quality.

We’ve just shipped the first eight sets of lenses ( one ofthose has gone to Australia ) and basically the 35, the

50 and the 75 lenses are shipping now. We then have

the master anamorphic 100mm which ships in October,

followed by three further lenses – the 35, the 40 and

the 135 which are shipping in February-March of next

year, and that will complement a full set of seven

master anamorphic lenses.

Ed: That will be good to see.

David: Yes, they’re great lenses. Roger Deakins iscurrently shooting with them on his latest feature film,so he has the first three lenses with the ALEXA XTcamera, so basically the combination of the ALEXA 4x3with master anamorphics, it’s a perfect fit … you’re notcropping into the sensor, you’re filling the full sensor,and it’s a perfect squeeze for an anamorphic lens.

Ed: It’s what one would expect from ARRI.

David: Absolutely. NZVN

Page 34

David with a very large lens.

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