NOVEMBER 2014 Vol 208

Mike: That’s right, I’m the lighting productmanager for ARRI and we have a bunch of things to talkabout today.

Ed: Excellent. Now we don’t want to start with LED,we want to start with something big but actually aproduct that ARRI’s not making itself, but you liked it so

ARRI Lighting for PLSTo complete our IBC 2014 coverage, the first place wevisit is the ARRI lighting stand where we find MikeWagner.

Ed: That’s a German name, but you’re actually fromBurbank, California?

much, you decided to have an alliance with the company,and that’s a motorised control unit?

Mike: That’s right, yes. It’s a product called theBigBee and it’s a universal motorised yoke meaning thatit can handle anything from our M18 sized fixture, whichis a relatively small fixture, all the way up to theARRIMAX fixture, which is a very large fixture – so 1800Watt to 18,000 Watt and everything in between. Itmeans that a rental house could buy just a few of theseand use them for all of the fixtures that they have,instead of as before, you might have just been able touse it for one or two fixtures. So it has full control overthe pan and tilt of the fixture and you can even controlthe focus of the fixture all remotely – either through DMXor through a Licht-Technik box. Licht-Technik is themanufacturer and we’re partnering with them on thisproduct and ARRI is going to be selling it exclusivelythrough our sales channels.

Ed: So you don’t have to mount this in a studio, youcan actually mount this outdoors as well?

Mike: Absolutely, in fact a lot of our customers willget lifts of some kind, cranes, and they’ll mount two ofthese on the crane and the great thing about that is theycan bring the crane up to height and no longer do theyhave to have a man in the box in case they need toadjust something. So you would typically lose somemanpower by someone having to sit up in the crane, andif you need to add diffusion or move the light a little bitleft or right or focus it slightly differently, that’s what hewould be up there to do. Now you can have all of thelabour on the ground, which is much more useful, andcontrol everything remotely when it’s a few metres ortens of metres up in the air. So again, trying to makepeople’s lives on set easier and faster to do things.

Ed: But I imagine, in a large studio, it would be ideal,because once you’ve stuck it up there, you don’t have torevisit it?

Mike: Precisely, yes. On one movie, The Life of Pi– they shot a lot indoors, in a big pool and they used Ibelieve, six ARRIMAXs all on these motorised yokes andthey were able to control them and aim them howeverthey wanted and basically recreate the sun inside withsix of these very, very powerful lights, and hadeverything remote control automated. That’s the otherthing that you could do with it if you’re doing motioncontrol or a shot that’s very special effects heavy, youcan have very precise control over how the light ispositioned all remotely, or through a computer if you liketo do it that way as well.

Ed: I was going to ask if you can you track?

Mike: Yes absolutely. They have motors in therethat, if I remember correctly, have 0.3 degree accuracy,which is pretty good and you could make a cue and makea programme, hit the “go” button and it does its thing.

Ed: Fantastic. Right, now down to the ARRI lightsthemselves and these M series have been around forquite some time. There’s the new M8 which wasreleased as you say about a year ago, it’s still verypopular, people are still interested in HMI lights?

Mike: They are extremely popular; in fact ourbusiness is growing in the HMIs. We started back in2006 with open face, reflector-based HMIs ( withoutFresnel lens ), which are very efficient. The first one wasthe ARRIMAX, the big gun, and since then we’ve releasedthe M18, the M40, the M90 was the second newest one,and now the brand new one which was released about ayear ago is the M8 and that’s been very successful aswell. So people are still using the big lights, they’re stillusing HMIs because they need the output. You know,when you are competing with the sun, you really still do

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need the big guns and that’s where the M series comesinto play. They’re extremely efficient, extremelypowerful lights, very easy to set up, very easy to use onset. You don’t have to lug around the big heavy box oflenses any more like you did with Pars.

Ed: Because it’s got that really clever ARRI reflector?

Mike: Right, so the MAX technology reflector iswhat we call it. That’s really the magic behind it. Ittakes all of the light and pushes it forward so you getmaximum efficiency out of the bulb and again you’reable to focus it, so you go from spot to flood just byturning a knob where again, as before, you had to dothat with lenses.

Ed: Okay, so there still is a place for lots of light, butmore and more the requirement is for a better qualityof light. In the smaller lights, you don’t necessarilywant lots, you just want to have lighting in the rightposition and a lighting balance with natural lighting. Inthat area, you’ve had advancements in the LEDfixtures?

Mike: Yes that’s correct. The exciting thing isthat there’s so much production nowadays, whether itbe big productions or small productions and so the toolbag has grown. Now people can pick the tools that areappropriate for what they’re doing. That’s where theLEDs come into play I think, where you’re able toincrease that versatility of the fixture that you’re using.Really, all ARRI LED technology is based off oftenability; that we can tune the colour temperature,tune the green-magenta point, adjust the vivid colour ifyou have a four colour model, so you’re able to dothese things very, very quickly just by turning a knob.We started off with our L7 which is an LED Fresnel. Thegoal was to try to mimic tungsten Fresnels as closely aspossible, to get the colour rendition that people areused to, to get the beam field that people are used to,to be able to spot in front of the light, to be able tohave one crisp shadow like you do with a regularFresnel. That’s what we tried to focus on and we thinkwe’ve done a very good job. It’s been a very successfulproduct for us. TV studios love them. We’re starting tosee them be accepted into the motion picture industryas well, but that ability to tune the colour temperatureor change it very quickly allows our customers to kindof have more creative freedom in a much shorter periodof time. At NAB, we released a new version of the Lseries called the L5, so it’s a smaller model. It still hasall the same great features – you’re able to tune thelight, change the colour temperature in a much smallerpackage. It’s actually half the size and weight of theL7. We’ve even added a couple of additional featuresincluding an onboard battery input so that you can useindustry standard batteries, and now you have anextremely mobile solution with amazing quality light.It’s not like other LED lights maybe, where you have tosacrifice the quality of light in order to have thatportability; with the L5 you still get a true Fresnelquality, beautiful beam, beautiful colour rendition andit’s portable – you don’t have to worry about AC powerif you don’t want to.

Ed: Is there a place for an L3?

Mike: You know, we’ll definitely look into it.We’re actually working on a larger version at themoment, so we’re going to go the other way first. It alldepends on what our customers ask us for to be honest.We listen very closely to our customers, we try to stayvery close to them, so if they’re asking for smaller unitswe could certainly deliver it, but to be honest, most ofour customers are asking for brighter and so we’reworking on a larger version and hopefully we’ll bereleasing that very soon.

Ed: But in the smaller area there is a little soft box Inotice?

Page 4

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Mike: That’s true. It’s called the Caster – wehave two products actually, the LoCaster and theBroadCaster. The LoCaster has controls on the unitwhile the BroadCaster is mainly made for using in

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remote situations through DMX – it’s got power DMXonboard. So the Caster is a very small compact softlight; it’s really great for doing some extra fill or someaccent lighting or if you’re in a small interview setup,you could use a couple of them and light the wholescene with them. They have a very even soft beam oflight and that is again keeping on that theme oftunability, we’re able to tune the colour temperature ofthat fixture as well. So you’re able to adjust the colourtemperature from 2800 to 6500 Kelvin, green-magentapoint and of course all of these are fully dimmable fromzero to 100%.

Ed: And they are LED based?

Mike: They’re all LED based that’s right. Differentcolour LEDs gives us the ability to really fine tune thecolour and that one has actually just gone through anupgrade, so we’re calling it the Caster 2 Plus series. It’s35% brighter than the previous model which is verysignificant. It gives our customers that little bit of extrabrightness for the more strenuous applications whenmaybe they have to put the light a little bit furtheraway when they’re not able to shoot wide open on theirlens – they might have to close down the lens for focusreasons or something like that. Again, it just givesthem that little bit of extra boost.

Ed: And ARRI’s not ready to go plasma yet – youhave some reservations?

Mike: Well, we’ve looked into it. You know, theHMI technology is so available and there are manybulbs, there are many manufacturers, there are acouple of limitations with plasma that we found. Fromthe research that we’ve done so far, and we will neverdiscount a technology, we always look at how itadvances, but from what we have seen, there aren’tenough advantages for the plasma lights over HMI. Thebulbs certainly last a lot longer, but there’s somewhatof a limitation on how bright they can get; you can’treally have as big a range and power classes as we’reable to do with HMI. So we will never discount thattechnology, in fact like I said, the tool bag is growing asa place for that technology and there are companiesthat are doing very good work with the plasmatechnology …

Ed: So you’ll keep it in your gun sights will you?

Mike: We certainly will and if there’s abreakthrough in that technology that really gives ourcustomers that added advantage, that’s what we lookfor. Why do it if it doesn’t actually give our customerssomething different than we’re already doing?

Ed: Now speaking of tool bags – lighting kits. I seethere’s a number of lighting kits over there and I knowthey’re very popular in New Zealand, so what have yougot in that range?

Mike: Actually we started doing lighting kits in theUS – that’s when it first started and they’re extremelypopular in the US. We sell many, many lighting kitsevery year and there’s a very wide variety so of coursewe have our traditional tungsten kits – we havetungsten kits ranging from Fresnels and we have somewith open face and then we have some with chimerasinside of them, so we have a very wide range. We’reactually just releasing some new kits that are LEDbased, so now that we have the L5 which is a muchsmaller, more compact LED fixture, we’re actuallyputting that inside of a kit and including it with ourLoCaster product. So we have a soft light in there, wehave a few different versions of these kits, but we haveone that’s perhaps two L5s and one LoCaster so youcan really do a full lighting setup all with LEDs and thebeautiful thing is that you could run all of these off ofone circuit. You don’t need to worry about plugging itinto a bunch of different circuits and blowing a breaker;

you can plug them all into one power outlet and noteven worry about it. The other advantage is that, ofcourse, because they’re LED, they’re very cool running,so they’re not putting a lot of forward heat out of thelamp. If you’re doing an interview setup with someonewho’s not used to doing interviews, it’s a lot lessintimidating because it’s not like a police interrogation.

Ed: Been on one of those have you?

Mike: No, no – not yet anyway. It really doesgive it a great advantage in the mobility of it and thenyou can also run all of those lights off a battery if youso choose. So if you’re in a location that doesn’t haveAC power, you could do that as well. We’re hoping thatthey’re going to be as successful as our other kits havebeen and we think that they will.

Ed: So you’re selling these in the US – have theEuropeans not really taken …?

Mike: We actually have migrated them over intothe European market in the last couple of years andwe’re starting to see them pick up a little bit. It’sinteresting to see the different regions, and youmentioned New Zealand … in my opinion, the kits are agreat thing, you get a lot of value, everything is in onekit, you get the stands, you get all the accessories, youdon’t have to worry about it. They’re made to go onairplanes, so you don’t have to worry about themgetting damaged, so I think it might just be a matter oftime. There are a growing number of owner / operatorsin Europe who are starting to buy equipmentthemselves instead of renting it, and that’s where thekits really come into play and where they become areally powerful solution over just buying onesie-twosies.

So go and see Chris and see what he’s got in the way ofARRI kits to improve your lighting. NZVN

Page 6

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MOGTechnologiesfor Atomise

For Atomise, we are at MOGTechnologies from Portugaland we have José Paixᾰo.

Ed: José, does the MOGstand for something?

José: Yes it stands forMedia Objects and Gadgets.Normally we don’t advertisethat because it is very long.

It belongs to the initial nameof the company, but wealways used the initials,being easier to share and toadvertise as MOG. Thecompany in fact, startedbeing MOG Solutionsproviding SDKs to broadcastequipment manufacturers tohandle MXF files. Initiallywe were only doing SDKs to manufacturers like Avid,Adobe and others. Then MOG Technologies was createdin 2007 when we started to have our own box to sellinto the market, to the broadcasters, to thepostproduction houses. We still have the SDK’sbusiness, it’s still open, but our biggest profit nowadaysbelongs to MOG Technologies and the product line thatwe have, mxfSPEEDRAIL.

Ed: So why the change … obviously it’s enabled youto grow your company successfully having relationshipswith Avid and others, so why did you need to go out onyour own?

José: We were involved in a lot of projects doingbridges between the media, between the Avid world andarchive from other parties; between Sony Media orPanasonic Media into the Avid world and others. So ourtechnology was used as an enabler of a lot of productsto handle different formats. At the end, we thoughtthat it could be useful for the market to have a productthat easily will be able to do that bridge between thosedifferent formats, in a centralised and easiermanagement.

Ed: So you don’t have to be a user of Avid orsomething else; you can in fact have your own systemwith MOG?

José: Yes, the idea was to have a product thateasily will be able to do those routes without anydeveloping or any customisation on the differenttechnology. So if you have Sony Media, like an XDCAMdisc, and if you want to bring it into an Avid world, youhave to do transcoding, you have to change thewrapper, to change the container of the file for a nativeAvid format. With our systems, you just need to set upthe input where the media will be read and the outputwhere the files will be sent; the folders where the mediacomes in and where the media will go out!mxfSPEEDRAIL will ingest, transcode, create the lowresolution file of media, bring all metadata and send allof it into each final destination. So a news departmentor a post production house, doesn’t need to develop asoftware to handle their workflows, they just need acentralised tool to handle all of them. Of course if theyhave strong reasons to have their own solution, oursystem can also be integrated in other products forsome specific workflows. All features can be controlledvia webservices with a full API available, so easily any

application can communicate and control mxf-SPEEDRAIL.

Ed: So is this something that’s only for thebroadcasters, or do you have a product that would fitinto a small production environment?

José: The majority of our customers arebroadcasters and big post production houses becausewe began initially working with the most commonformats from Panasonic and Sony, so we startedapproaching the News departments of the broadcasters.Then also, because postproduction started to use thoseformats, we started to approach that market, smallerproductions, as well. Recently, we have includedsupport for GoPros, ProRes, JVC, Canon formats like the5D and the C300, so when we included those formats,we were as well increasing our approach to smallerpostproduction houses. We also changed the way todeliver our products. We used to deliver our solutionsin rack unit servers, that are big servers with highperformance. Some of the small postproduction housesdon’t really need that performance, but they still need acentralised ingest solution. For those we created theXpress system. We designed a small box where we canhave a mix and match of all of our services ( base bandrecorder and player, and file base ingest ) in a singlerack unit of 24 centimetres depth.

Ed: But with the Xpress, is this something that acustomer could buy off the shelf and then just plug itinto their studio and it’s going to work, or at that level,do you still need a systems integrator to make sure itworks?

José: The solution that we have in the Xpress boxis the same that we have on the other servers, with thehighest performers; software is literally the same. Theonly difference will be in the performance and in thecapability of the system to deliver faster the final mediadepending on the workflows. So it’s more connected tothe performance and the capability to mix everything inthe same box and not that much in the way to improvethe ability of the user to deal with our product.mxfSPEEDRAIL it is quite simple to configure, but wealways supply through our partners to support us ininstallation and supporting our customers.

Ed: So it is important to have an integrator such asAtomise to install it for you to make sure it works inyour system?

Page 8

José with my personal favourite product from Portugal.

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José: Definitely. We are a Portuguese company,we have our headquarters in Portugal. We have asupport line in working time GMT, so definitely it isimportant to have an integrator who will be able to helpthe customer and to help us doing the installations,setting up the configurations and to cover any problemthat may occur in the future, or any situation where theworkflow changes for some reason.

So definitely, and in the case of Atomise, the knowledgethat Atomise have regarding the Avid workflows issomething that we give importance on the way that wehave a big list of Avid customers. It’s very easy tounderstand our product when you understand the Avidworld.

Ed: Because that’s it – something of this level oftechnology, if somebody installed it themselves, verylikely they won’t do it correctly and therefore theyblame the product rather than their method ofinstallation?

José: I can share with you that I was dealing withAsia-Pacific market when I joined MOG four years agoand what I understood was that in some cases youreally need to be involved in installations.

Specifically in New Zealand, we start to work themarket now. Let’s say that I haven’t been there yet; Imet Richard a couple of months ago and we are veryhappy working together. The integration partnership issomething that is just bonding now, so the expectationsare high considering the knowledge that Atomise hasfor their market.

Ed: And I guess the big question is “Portuguese” …how come a Portuguese company has made inroads intoan American company like Avid. I have to say that thisis the first Portuguese product that I’ve ever covered inthe years that I’ve been doing this. How can you do it?

José: The story starts when the MXF format wascreated like 11-12 years ago. It was a SMPTEcommittee that did it, where three Portuguese belong toit. So when they got back to Portugal, they thought ofan idea to create a product to handle MXF formats andthen they create MOG Solutions that was developingthose SDKs I referred to before. Then the companygrew, and other elements with other experiences joinedthat team and administration realised that they couldapproach the broadcast market in a different way,directly to broadcasters, creating MOG Technologies andmxfSPEEDRAIL.

Ed: Another obvious question – if you’re going to putin a system which is basically an Avid system, whywouldn’t you go with a totally Avid solution, rather thana hybrid that would be Avid and MOG?

José: In fact our products are compatible withAvid workflows …

Ed: No, but you’re saying that Avid sells your productunder its own name, so why would you go with a MOGas opposed to a MOG under an Avid brand?

José: Because we integrate with more workflowsthan Avid. So in the same way that we interact withAvid, we can as well send media to an Adobe or FinalCut editing environment, encoding into ProRes or anyother format that customers will prefer to work with.Customers are able to open the files as they aregrowing in Final Cut or Adobe, just the same as they doin Avid Media Composer.

So initially, our partnership with Avid was very strongand it was the strongest one that we had at that time.So that’s the main reason why we are very close toAvid, but the truth is that we also cover other workflowssuch as Adobe and Final Cut. Our focus is definitely onthe editing job, so we want to accelerate the ingestbefore the editing, and the delivery file after the editingand we do that whatever the NLE is. The fact is that,Avid has a very important share of the market andhistorically, we were very close to them, and that’s themain reason why our products always integrate withAvid.

Ed: Okay, so to simplify it, if you buy an Avidsolution, you will get a MOG product in there, but it onlydeals with the Avid workflow; whereas if you want tohave the possibility of more than just an Avid workflowin your system, then you get the MOG product directly,so that gives you that greater flexibility?

José: Yes, so let’s say you have an environmentthat is 100% Avid and if you want to have a fast andeasy file ingest accelerator, we will have a solution forit. As well we have our SDI recorders that will bringyou the media from live feeds or VTRs into Avid, thesame way as we do with files. But if a studio or a postproduction house have some Adobes Premieres or FinalCuts with the same mxfSPEEDRAIL system, and at thesame time, we can transform media to both worlds atthe same time. So we can feed several environmentswith the same source at the same time. So, as anexample, in the project that we are having in TVNZ,they are only using Avid, so the MOG systems that theyhave are only doing Avid files. But if at some point,they may decide to upgrade with other editingsolutions, whatever they will be, they just need toupgrade our systems to create the same file structuresand then easily they will have same ingest solution forboth environments.

Ed: You obviously haven’t been into TVNZ if you saythey’re only using Avid?

José: I mean in this project definitely.

Ed: Oh, that’s one part of TVNZ, but I kid you not,there’s just about everything in at TVNZ.

Page 11

José: I haven’t been there yet. Soon that willhappen. But for this project, the information that I got,it was exclusively an Avid system.

Ed: You have something new that you’re nowsupporting XAVC?

José: Yes, XAVC is one of the news that we havefor IBC – the new SONY format. Today we are alreadyable to provide a file based system ingest that will bringthat XAVC into the Avid environment. Soon we willhave that input format available in all of the workflowsthat we can do in mxfSPEEDRAIL.

The other news that we have is this box here, where wecombine all of the mxfSPEEDRAIL services with differentXpress units. We have as well editors installed in thoseunits, so ideally in that small box, we will be able tohave the baseband ingest, file based ingest, NLE’s andstorage. The focus is to show to our partners andcustomers that, with our solutions, they will be able tohave everything in a really small box. Everything willbe there in a really small and light box, easy to carryand easy to transport.

More news is the fact that we are already doing qualitycheck in the input files, so when media comes in, weare already analysing some aspects of the video andaudio. Those are the first steps in the quality analysis.We are announcing as well our partnership with BlueFish. From now one, we are using Blue Fish capturecards in our SDI recorders.

Ed: Now where’s that bottle of Port?

José: Well, it’s only noon …

Ed: Hey, it’s Amsterdam. NZVN

Page 12

Sadly, I did not win the bottle, but I didenjoy the equivalent on the MOG stand.

Canon Camerasfor Protel

We are at Canon with Paul

Atkinson from Canon and

Tyrone from Protel.

Ed: Paul, it’s true to say

that there hasn’t been a lot

of movement in the C

series, the 100, 300, 500 –

just some little upgrades,

some little tweaks, but

something’s coming in the

reasonably near future

though?

Paul: Well obviously

we can’t talk about any

future plans, but what I can

tell you is that we continue

to upgrade and enhance our

range with firmware

upgrades that are free to

our customers. For instance, we’ve added some

autofocus features to the 100 and 300, which is a paid

for option, but also continuing to improve the feature

set. At the end of the day, these cameras are tools,

and let’s be honest, they’re quite expensive. The C300,

if you take that as an example in the European market,

is two years in a row the most rented camera in the UK

and Europe. We’re on course to be the most rented

camera again for the third year in a row. In a recent

industry survey, C300 was the camera of choice either

for current projects or for future projects for the vast

majority of content producers within the broadcast

industry. So the Cinema EOS range we said when we

launched it in 2011, was the start of a new range for

Canon and I think it would be fair and safe to say that

we will continue to enhance that range as the market

dictates, and bring products to the market that the

market can actually use.

Ed: So why is the series so popular?

Paul: The simple fact is image quality. We’ve

recently upgraded the maximum ISO to 80,000. This

gives a capability especially for things like documentary

and for wildlife, natural history type of projects, that

really gives you the chance to get full colour in almost

complete darkness. Obviously there has to be some

ambient light, but you’d be amazed at just how low that

ambient light level can be.

Ed: Just a few stars huh?

Paul: A little bit more than that perhaps, but

certainly not far off it … decent sort of quarter moon

light.

Ed: But in the meantime, the little handheld video

cameras from Canon – and I do stress that these are

video cameras, as opposed to the C series which are

cinema cameras. At NZVN, we do like to make a

difference, because some people, shall we say, misuse

the type of camera they’ve purchased, or expect the

cinema camera to do video work and vice versa. So in

the video camera range, some very nice little packages?

Paul: Again there are two distinct markets if you

like, the people who want the traditional camcorder in

our XF or our XA range depending on which sort of

format the guys want to capture in, and recently we’ve

released the XF200 and the 205 cameras. These draw

the best bits of XA20, the best bits of XF105 and the

best bits of XF305 in a small camera that still produces

the quality and the results that people want. And

what’s unique on this particular camera is, if we start

with the recording, it’s a tried and trusted MPEG2 long

GOP format in an MXF wrapper, up to 50 megabits per

second as a fixed bitrate and simultaneous recording.

There’s nothing new in that respect, but what we’ve

added to this camera is the ability to record MP4 files

simultaneously at up to 35 megabits per second. Now

this gives – especially if you look at the News gathering

industry, it gives them the chance to get higher

compression rate, lower file sizes, sent back to a

newsroom much quicker and in these days of 24 hour

rolling News, that means that they can get a breaking

story on air much quicker, albeit at the slightly lower

resolution, and then wait for the higher resolution

footage to arrive by other means.

Ed: Now I do notice that this little 205 is slightly

heavier than what I would expect for a camera this

small, but then, when you look up closer, you see it’s

actually a die-cast chassis?

Paul: It is – it’s built to be used in the field, it’s

definitely not a studio camera. Consequently, we put a

lot of thought into the way that it’s designed.

I can see that you’re opening up the BNC connectors –

all the connectors for this camera are on the righthand

side of it as you look through the viewfinder, and all the

controls are on the left. I know in some cameras there

will be a headphone socket on the lefthand of the

camera and BNCs on the right and it’s just cables

everywhere, but this gives you a chance of a good cable

management.

The 205 series, in common with all our numbering if

you like, has BNC connectors, the 200 doesn’t, and we

have 3G-SDI as well as HD-SDI which is selectable and

we put 3G-SDI on because in MP4 we can do 50p.

Ed: And there are lots of little sensible things added

here. I notice for example, there are two Canon mic

inputs, but there’s also a mini mic input?

Page 13

As a package, we’ve got a 20x optical zoom, you’ll

notice we’ve got three individual control rings because

this is designed so we can use it in fully manual – like if

the experienced operator wants to, but you can also

give it to the trainee or the junior camera assistant,

switch it to automatic, say “go and get me some B roll

or some background footage or beauty shots”, and

they’re going to get something that’s useable. And to

further enhance it, we have a five axis image

stabilisation system, very similar to the one we saw first

released on the XA20 last year. This can operate as

powered or dynamic and uses a combination of optical

and spare capacity on the sensor.

Ed: Can you see this as a big seller for you Tyrone?

Are they available now in New Zealand?

Tyrone: Yes, they’ve only just been released in New

Zealand. I think this is a really great camera for the

out of studio market that’s looking for something which

is portable and easy to use …

Ed: And robust?

Tyrone: And robust, yes. We’re quoting them at

the moment into places like universities and schools,

who can see the versatility of them.

Ed: And that’s it, because there are so many ins and

outs and features on this that, once you’d learned the

Paul: Yes, we have a mini jack, we have two XLR

inputs and built-in microphone and we can actually do 4

channel recording on this as well. So a scenario for this

would be, if you’re in an interview situation, the

interviewee will have one mic on one channel, the

reporter a mic on the other channel, and then the

onboard mic can be doing 3 and 4 for ambient.

Ed: There’s a little button down here next to the

start/stop which says “unlock” – what’s that for?

Paul: That is because we’ve got a rotating

handle, which means we can change the angle of the

handle to suit the shooting conditions, or even just if

somebody’s filming for a long time, just for a little bit of

comfort with a change of wrist position. It makes it

extremely versatile.

features of this camera, you could transfer that to

pretty well a full broadcast camera?

Tyrone: Yes.

Ed: And again, other simple little things, like a rubbermounted shock system for the shotgun. Now it’s a veryinteresting arrangement here with the lens hood – isthat some sort of protection flap or what?

Paul: The lens hood is detachable. You can havethe traditional lens cap or just a quick lens cover whichflicks up to protect the lens when it’s not in use. Theother thing that we’ve got on this is a very effectiveinfrared system for those times that you need to shootin no light situations at all.

Ed: You mean you can just switch this to infrared?

Paul: Yes it will switchto an infrared. It’s got abuilt-in infrared light systemas well, which like all suchsystems, is quite limited inrange, but it doubles theintensity of the one on theXA20. We’ll get somethingthat I can demonstrate –obviously for a recordedinterview it’s not very visual,but something just to showhow good it is.

Ed: I guess that’s reallyfor macro shots, you’relooking at …?

Paul: Well again, itcould be documentary,wildlife with absolutely nolight whatsoever, and evenwithout any infraredillumination, it’s still veryeffective.

Ed: And the differencebetween the 205 and the200?

Paul: It’s like all our range where they end in a 0

or a 5 – the 205, like its brothers and sisters, has BNC

connectors, the 200 doesn’t. Apart from that, they’re

identical in specification and even the 200 will have a

LAN connection. There’s a wireless connection as well,

so you can use a wireless browser through your iPad or

Smartphone as a remote control for the camera, and a

limited sort of file transfer protocol via wireless to get

back to newsrooms through Internet.

Ed: And it has a Canon battery although I imagine

that this is a standard 7.2 Volt?

Paul: Yes it’s the same battery as the 305 and

the Cinema EOS system. We see this as potentially

being used as a B camera to the C300, even though one

is a cinema and one isn’t. We have the wide dynamic

range setting on this camera which is very similar to the

one you’d find on the Cinema EOS range, the 100 and

the 300, and that gives you 12 stops of dynamic range

on those cameras 800%, on this one it’s at 600%. But

it does mean that you can match the footage very

closely and you don’t need to grade it. That’s a big

distinction that we always sought to make. This doesn’t

have the Canon Log that you’ll find on the cinema

range, but with the Canon Log, you have to grade that

footage. With the wide dynamic range, you get the

same latitude, but in a format that doesn’t need to be

Page 14

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graded. Obviously – although I keep saying this is

News – this is where we see this as being a major

market for this camera, but News, documentary, small

camera for TV production as well maybe, for beauty

shots. It’s a discreet package, but still with the quality

of the 20x optics.

Ed: And?

Paul: You may know that we’ve recently releaseda remote control unit for the majority of our cameras,it’s the RCV100.

This is more than a remote control unit – it will work onthe 200 and 205 and all the Cinema EOS cameras and itcould almost be considered a mini camera control unit.The things that you can actually control with it dodepend on the camera that you have, but you can dothings like in a colour programme setting you canchange master black, white balance, colour balance,you can adjust the knee and the sharpness, you canbring in the ND filters, adjust zoom and focus and that’squite useful sometimes in an OB situation or if you justwant to be able to not touch the camera on its setup, ifit’s static. It gives you a lot of control as well as thequite obvious of being able to start and stop recording,access the menus. The cameras can be veryindividually customised and the basic rule is that if oneof our function buttons has a number on it, it can bereprogrammed from a list of various parameters.Whatever you set on buttons 1 to 4 for any of thecameras, that will be accessible through this RCV100.

Ed: Tyrone this has got to be a cost-effective camerafor schools and training institutions hasn’t it?

Tyrone: Yes a great value and versatile camcorder

for events and documentaries. NZVN

Page 16

Ed: Ray, you’ve just excited me – well, sort of, aboutthis acquisition that you’ve made. It must be animportant acquisition for you?

Ray: Indeed, Plura’s acquisition of Alpermann+Velte,which follows the formation of Plura Europe GmbHearlier this month, increases our global visibility whileenhancing Plura's overall digital broadcast and videoproduction solutions. Plura will also retain theAlpermann+Velte brand, which is recognised worldwideand especially well known in Europe. Alpermann+Velteformed in 1972 as an electronics and industrialsolutions specialist, and quickly gained traction in thebroadcast and production industry with its timecodeproducts, which include reference-based generators andinserters.

Ed: Now you’ll correct me obviously but, in my mind,timecode is something from the days of tape, to makesure that your tape signal was synchronised witheverything else. But in these days of files, thetimecode’s there but why do you need to worry aboutit?

Ray: In recent years, Alpermann+Velte has shifted its

focus to IP-based solutions, evolving with the migration

Plura Monitors for GencomThe very first interview of IBC 2014 is for Gencom at

Plura Broadcast and we have Ray Kalo.

toward network-based signal processing, distribution

and control within broadcast and production facilities.

Alpermann+Velte’s hybrid conversion solutions also

allow facilities to seamlessly

bridge legacy and IP

environments, rather than

forcing customers into “all at

once” digital workflow trans-

itions.

Ed: Now Ray, I wouldimagine that this is not justa product that you’re goingto purchase and thenrebadge and sell it as it is –you’re obviously going to dosomething with it; andsecondly it’s not going to besomething that’s incor-porated in your monitor line( which you’re famous for )– it’s going to be a sideproduct?

Ray: Right, it’s an add-onproduct. It will enhancesPlura's portfolio; Alper-mann+Velte has developeda new range of products to

address broadcast data needs in the workflow, frommetadata coding and insertion to overall organisation ofdigital video data streams — an emerging range ofsolutions that Plura will continue to develop.

Ed: So again, it’s something that’s going to grow.You’re going to put some expertise into it … now he’sgot a smile on his face, so he obviously knows whathe’s going to do, but he’s not going to tell us just yetare you?

Ray: It has to be like a drip-line, you know, you can’tget it all at once.

Ed: Oh I’ve heard that from my wife too. Alright, sowe’ll go back to monitors shall we, a safe area, and Iknow at NAB I was really impressed with your littlesuper bright monitor. Has that been a big success foryou?

Ray: Absolutely...

Ed: What’s the model number?

Ray: PHB (Plura High Brightness)-209, a 9 inch. It’sone of a kind, we’ve been very successful with it.

Ed: I mean there is competition out there, but it’sreally expensive?

Ray: Well Plura products are always affordable, reliable

and come with unmatched functionality – those are our

three main strongpoints.

Ed: And obviously the reliability is something that,

because Gencom backs it as a reseller of Plura

monitors, they’re not going to sell something that

they’re going to have to keep fixing?

Ray: We strive for the best and every day I come to

the office I remind my team with an important note “We

to need put ourselves on the other side of the fence.”

We have a responsibility beyond and over the price of

the product we sell. Our responsibility does not just

stop where the price is, no, it’s a long-term vision

where the customer has to be pleased with our products

because repeated customers are the main focus in our

business.

Page 18

Ed: And you’ve got to keep innovating haven’t you.

So since we’ve last spoken with you, are there any

major technology improvements or are you following

the Japanese kaizen way that you do business?

Ray: No, no we try to be unique. We don’t like to copy

anybody, and we dislike it when people copy us.

We actually have two unique features we added to our

monitors, the SFP-3G and the PRM-3G series. Now they

have comprehensive audio loudness LKFS built-in

including logging capability.

Ed: Hang on, let’s go back … you say you “have audio

loudness built-in” what do you mean by that,

monitoring?

Ray: Monitoring, yes.

Ed: Not conversion?

Ray: Audio loudness monitoring.

Ed: How does it show that – does it show you a big

red flashing light or something?

He’s going to demonstrate it to me, here we go. Right,

we’re looking at a screen …

Ray: The audio loudness measurement on the monitor

displays in real time, your levels per second and tells

you what is your current level, what is your target level

and what is your maximum peak value, and it changes

with time.

Now this is built-in within the monitor. We also have

added streaming and audio logging over IP to your PC.

Ed: Because this is it, isn’t it … loudness is not just an

instant thing, you can have a spike, but it’s an overall

thing, it’s taken over a period of time. So that’s why

you need that log?

Ray: You need that log. Let’s say you have a

programme, you want to check on something that

happened overnight, or at midnight and the staff

missed it during the shift at the station …

Ed: A customer complained you mean?

Ray: A customer complained maybe, or you had a

glitch in the programme and you want to go back and

see when it happened and on what programme. So

that log file – it’s there, and you can go and look at it,

see where the audio levels were at any given time or

date.

We also have added a scheduler where you can actually

schedule when you want to log and record, and you can

export that back into your system. So it’s very

dynamic. It adds features to the monitors that people

enjoy to use. The other feature we added is an

HDMI preview output. So whatever you see on

the SFP or PRM monitor, you actually can

output that image into any other Plura or third

party screen. And that is another feature

which you can use for master control for

example, or for production facilities, where

they have a good quality monitor and they

want to enlarge the LKFS into a large

consumer monitor

Ed: Something for the clients to look at

maybe?

Ray: Sure why not.

Ed: But in the basic technology of the

monitor itself, the device that shows you nice

clear pictures, no technology changes?

Ray: No, just more enhancements in our

calibration capabilities, in our colourimetry – we always

enhance and develop our technology. But in general,

it’s more software than hardware.

Ed: So there is a capability with the Plura range that

you can do software updates. If you bought a monitor

a year or two ago, something new comes out, you can

get the software update and suddenly your monitor has

a new lease of life. That’s the Plura way I understand?

Ray: Absolutely, absolutely. Any added features,

primarily they are software based and can be updated

over firmware upgrade, and off you go, no problem.

This is why a "Plura monitor is not just a video monitor

like others. It is truly a comprehensive Audio, Video,

other tools monitoring device."

Ed: Every year that I come to Plura, of course I keep

asking Ray the same question … “where’s your 4K

monitor Ray?”, but he hasn’t yet done one. I asked him

this at NAB and I got the same answer?

Ray: Yes – we have not done one because financially

and fiscally we don’t see the benefit of it, and I’m all

about numbers. I don’t think it would make sense to

spend the resources into developing when the

projection of sales is not going to meet the actual

demand at this point. I don’t see it happening yet. We

have the capability to do it, but I just don’t feel it’s

financially viable for us at this point.

Ed: I’ll keep asking. So the top monitors that you’re

putting out at the moment are satisfying your customer

needs; they’re not seeing that 4K is necessary for what

they do, so …?

Ray: Many people want to see it, and my answer to

them is “if I had it for you now for a certain value,

would you buy it?” and the answer is not yet.

Ed: So you want to be here tomorrow?

Ray: I want to be here forever.

Ed: Well you’re talking to the wrong guy!

Ray: I want to be here – if not us, whoever is going to

take over, to continue this venture, they have to be

fiscally responsible.

Ed: You’ve got teenage children have you – you have

the same discussion with them?

Ray: We can get into this forever if you want me to,

but our position has always been consistent.

Our company success is driven by customers’ requests

and providing solutions for our clients they need now

and in the near future. NZVN

Page 20

Rycote for Sound TechniquesWe are at Rycote for Sound Techniques and we haven’tgot Simon just yet, but we have Chris Woolf.

Ed: Chris, your claim to fame is that you’re actually adesigner for Rycote?

Chris: I am indeed the designer for Rycote andmost of this new Cyclone product are my ideas.

Ed: And to add credibility to your designs, you’veobviously spent time in audio production?

Chris: I’ve spent an enormous amount of time inaudio production. I’ve been in the industry for about 50years now and I’ve done just about every audio job youcould think of, including a lot of location work, locationmixing, boom operating and stuff like that as well.

Ed: You must have started as a child soundie then?

Chris: No, believe it or not, I started as acameraman, but I’ve been through most of thebroadcast jobs, including even designing studios,designing edit suites, installing studios and I’ve flickedbetween engineering and operation about every 5-10years throughout my working life, so I have a prettybroad knowledge of what’s going on.

Ed: Alright, I believe you, you know what you’retalking about. So what’s this Cyclone?

Chris: This is Cyclone and it’s a new design ofwindshield, a radically new one. It doesn’t take any ofthe old parts of Rycote; it doesn’t try to be backwardscompatible; we’ve started afresh and decided to workon what we need to work on, how we need to design it.We love fur, fur is very efficient, but fur is veryunreliable. It’s unreliable in manufacture and it’s veryunreliable once it gets wet or dirty, so we’ve gone overto a brand new material which I’ve been trying to getan ideal version of for about 10 years. It’s called 3D-Tex and its great point is that it has two differentsurfaces. It’s got a smooth surface on the inside, wecan give it a pockmarked finish on the outside, the twodifferent surfaces are entirely independent of eachother, they can be engineered independently. It’s alsoa thick material and it has fibres between the twosurfaces, and each of these qualities we can alter inmanufacture independently.

Ed: Yes, but once you’ve built it then you’re stuckwith that particular combination, or can you change it?

Chris: We could ask the manufacturers to changeit if we wanted to. We have actually …

Ed: So you’re not making “bespoke” microphonesound suppressors?

Chris: We have a manufacturer in the UK andthey’re experts in this class of material and they’ve thenmanufactured a particular version for us that we’vetested out and which we’ve proved works really well.

Ed: Okay, so every Cyclone’s the same?

Chris: Every Cyclone is the same, yes. The

advantage of it is that it’s completely consistent.Because it’s engineered it does not change. It can get

wet, we can shake it dry, blow it – it dries out

completely within about 15 minutes and its performance

is identical to what it was before. With fur that was

never the case. When it got wet it stayed wet for a

long time and you had to give it a bit of a hairdressing

in order to get it to work again properly. So this is a

much more consistent product.

Ed: But does it have the same sound quality as fur?

Chris: It’s actually more transparent to audio. Furhad to have a latex backing in order to hold the strandson, and it was that latex backing which tended to make

it rather unreliable. It also tended to make it relativelyimpervious to particularly the high frequency sound. Soit was always difficult to get fur that held together, butwhich also passed high frequency sound well.

Ed: Because you never actually used the skin of thesquirrel did you?

Chris: No! The material works brilliantly … in thesize that we’ve got it, the diameter is critical. It’s aboutthe same size as the old-fashioned windshield was bythe time that it had had fur on top.

Without fur, this has the same or slightly better windnoise reduction than the old furry ones had. Sonormally you would never need to use this with fur atall; it’s a furless windshield. If you want to add fur, youcan go and record in a hurricane if you fancy it. I

Page 23

Chris Woolf with the Cyclone exposed.

haven’t actually been able to test how good it is in ahurricane, because I haven’t been able to find a windstrong enough to really prove what it does.

Ed: It looks as though it’s a lot more robust andeasier to clean than a furry thing?

Chris: You can wash it for a start – if it gets really

dusty and dirty, you can just stick it under a tap. I

won’t tell you that you could hold a hairdryer on it, but

you could and it will dry it off perfectly well and you can

use it again straightaway afterwards.

Ed: Could you paint a smiley face on the front then?

Chris: There’s no particular reason why you

shouldn’t, providing that you don’t block up the holes.

We can embroider a name on it quite happily and brand

it … you could paint anything you like on it if you fancy

it … as long as you don’t block up the holes, it will work

perfectly.

Ed: Is it any more expensive than a furry version?

Chris: Slightly in this design, because of course,there are so many other things that we’ve added ontoit. Because it’s a radical design, not only has it got adifferent material, it’s a different shape. We use thiselliptical shape mainly because it gets rid of a lot of“room turn” effects. If you have parallel sides, youhave standing waves and you reinforce particularfrequencies. If you have something which has noparallel sides, you tend to spread out the frequencies atwhich it tries to reinforce, and you get a much smootherresponse to it. When you actually fit this around, itdoesn’t alter the tone of the microphone anything like

as much as a conventional one would. So the shape isquite important. We also make sure that it’s largestwhere the microphone needs to be quietest; wind noisereduction is governed purely by the diameter of theshield and how far it is spaced away from the capsule.That’s a given of physics, you can’t alter that. So byputting the largest diameter in the area where themicrophone is most sensitive, we actually make themost benefit of the size.

Ed: And the assembly arrangement, the ease ofgetting it in and out, is that something new?

Chris: That’s brand new. Normally, allwindshields have either had to be slid in on a slotsystem, or clipped by multiple clips around the side.This one just clips together using magnets. We’vechristened it a “self-building” system, because it justbuilds itself – you can’t build it the wrong way round, itjust fits together and that’s it.

Ed: And of course it uses your famous Lyre system?

Chris: And it uses the Lyre system, in order togive it not only the microphone suspension, but also thebasket suspension. The basket is suspended so thathandling noise between the pole and the actual basketis massively reduced. Each of the two suspension units,the top and the bottom unit, are independentlysuspended and work in unison with the basket and keepa lot of the handling noise out of the basket. So theacoustic transmission from basket into mic is massivelyreduced.

Ed: Is it designed for any particular length ofshotgun?

Page 24

Chris: It’s designed for the majority of shortshotguns, the CMIT 5U, the 416 and any other similarlength of mic. There will be shorter versions for someof the smaller mics coming later on – that will be a littlewhile, while we get the tooling right and while we sortthis out. But this one is for the most popular one andequates to the WS4 which was by far the most popularwindshield in the modular series that we had.

Ed: Gosh – and are you going to rest on your laurelsnow or have you got something else you’re planning?

Chris: We never rest on our laurels. When I gettoo old and die, we’ll give up, but up until then we’llkeep going.

Now we have Simon Davies, Mr Rycote himself.

Ed: Simon, I have to ask you, are you happy with MrBuckland as your new distributor in New Zealand?

Simon: Yes, Stephen’s a good guy, he knows theproduct inside out. We’ve known each other for thebest part of a decade from all the times we’ve met andtalked about every product we’ve ever done at NAB, soit’s a very easy transition from our point of view, sowe’re very happy.

Ed: And you’re happy with your sales?

Simon: Yes – early days, so it can always …

Ed: Oh I thought you’d never be happy with yoursales, you can never sell enough?

Simon: Well it’s early days, and with our productwe’re talking about a fairly specialist bit of kit, youknow people need to use the kit outside, so it’s a caseof working together. We need to learn from what he

tells us about things going on down in his market andwe can then push things through to him as well. Soyes, very happy.

Ed: And obviously this Cyclone is going to do goodthings for you, but have you got anything else?

Simon: Cyclone has been a big transition for us andone that we want to keep our place at the top end ofthe market with. We’ve got other things coming downthe track which will involve the materials, the shapes …magnets is a big thing for us as well that we’re workingon and developing.

Ed: Magnets, what do you mean magnets?

Simon: What we’ve always had are fasteners thatyou unscrew or you twist and you snap off and we’relooking at it from the point of view of not justperformance, but actually application and ease of use …

Ed: Ergonomics?

Simon: Ergonomics … customer satisfaction. With

a lot of the mics now you have to get in there quickly,

whether you’re doing an internal to external shoot or

whether you need to get to the back end of the mic andpress a button, and so that’s a big feature of this where

we’ve stepped away for a very long time of doing a

sliding approach or something that you have to undo.

This is a series of magnets on there and it just makes

things simple, but at the same time consistent every

time, whoever puts the thing together, because that’s

very important.

Ed: What about in your Lyres, because you’re the onewho developed them. Have you made any changes,

Page 25

have you come up with some new materials, madethem thinner or whatever?

Simon: No, the biggest jump forward in Lyretechnology at the moment is in the Cyclone, becausewe’re actually using a form of the Lyre for the basketisolation. The actual windshield itself is now isolatedwith a series of Lyres inside the lower and upper pods.The next stage … it’s always continuous developmentand we’re changing some of the actual features on theLyres where we separate the material of the clip partthat actually holds the microphone to the actualsuspension arm of the Lyre. All of these areenhancements and developments and we tend to dothat as and when we establish a way that we canimprove something, or if there’s a problem, andbecause we do it very localised to us, you know ourmoulder who does all our injection moulded parts is inSwindon which is 40 kilometres away from where weare. We jump in a car, he’s got a similar sort of accentto us – whether we meet in his office or a pub it makesno difference, we can actually ask him about theproblems, we can work with him. The Cyclone, forinstance, is 17 tools and we could have gone to the FarEast and we could have looked at doing it in a muchmore mass volume sort of thing, but the control wasimportant to us. Even when you look at the very finedetails of it, it’s belt and braces stuff – it’s old-fashionedengineering, with glued joints but supported by nutsand bolts and things like that, but at the same timetrying to keep the weight as low as possible.

Ed: Do soundies have difficulty understanding thisnew material, because obviously you’ve had fur for along time?

Simon: In the same way as the Lyre was areplacement for an elastic or a rubber suspension, the3D-Tex is a material that you’ll see on a lot moreproducts coming out over the next couple of years.There are lots of parameters in there that we cancontrol that with the fur it’s very, very good – itvirtually increases the size of any windshield, it’s a veryrandom structure that gets rid of the wind noise as ithits the actual surface of the windshield. 3D-Tex in theright shape and the right form profile is brilliant interms of the performance.

Ed: Having said that, will it be a hard sell to soundiesbecause they’ve got so used to the sound of fur … this

is it isn’t it, people were used to film andto convert them to video was hard. Sofor a soundie, converting them awayfrom fur …?

Simon: I think from our side of life,what we would always like to do is getsomeone to let their ears make thedecision for them.

When we introduced fur in 1985, mymother Vivienne, on a number of dealervisits that she went out to, almost had touse advertising gimmicks, you know littletoy dogs with fur on to convince peoplethat this was a serious product.

With this, what we don’t want to do ispush anything down anyone’s throat; wewant to get them to listen to it, believe itthemselves. It is very different and weunderstand that it’s very different, but Ithink at the same time, listening to it,using it in real life, you know get outthere, whether it’s down at yourdistributor or it’s a rental house that’sgot one, listening to it and hearing ityourself is going to be the only proof.

We do a little bit of marketing with the websites andthings like that, but really we’re not trying to teachsomeone how to use the kit; we just present them withthe best wind protection or the acoustic transparencythat we can.

Ed: And apart from it obviously being easier to handleand easier to clean, you’ve really got to listen tosomething like this. It’s not something that you canjust say “oh yeah, that’s got to be better?”

Page 26

Simon also with Cyclone.

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Simon: Yes, totally, and there are so manydifferent things within this. I mean, we’ve been dyingto tell the world about this. In terms of a developmentprocess, it’s over three years. Magnets are notsomething that people are going to be used to with azeppelin-like blimp, and there are a lot of conventionalthings out there that people know when they pull it outof their Pelican case, it just works every time. So forus, this is about showing people that there are differentways of doing things and time will tell whether theconventional zeppelin is replaced by this in the longterm, or whether they run along parallel to themselves.

Ed: So the Cyclone is initially held together … it snapstogether with magnets, but then you have a lockingkey?

Simon: Originally we never even had the locking orthe safety catches, but the reason we put it on there isthat if someone’s using …

Ed: Soundies can be pretty rough.

Simon: Yes, and you stick something at the end ofa 4 metre pole and swing it around, bad things canhappen. The last thing you want to see is one of theseshells flying off onto the talent. The whole magneticfeature behind it allows it to be built in the way it is,where we don’t have solid spines or flat pieces of plasticin front or around the area of the microphone thatwould have a negative impact on the reflections andthings like that. So what you’ve got is a very, verysimple one handed operation to open and shut it andany sound guy that’s ever used one of ours that wantsto go in and do an interior and has to take off the

jammer, take off the endcap, unscrew two screws,jiggle it about, unslide it, go inside – will recognise howeasy this is.

Ed: And I guess you have to move away from fur withthe anti-badger campaign ramping up?

Simon: Yes, the cull has had an impact on us … butno, the weird thing about fur is that it has its place andwe’ve done it for such a long time and most of theladies who have known me since I was knee high to agrasshopper are still there and they’ve been taught howto make the 3D-Tex, because the 3D-Tex … believe it ornot, we’ve got machines in there that haven’t been usedin the UK for about 30 years. We’ve developed lots ofdifferent methods of putting this together that hopefullymean you’ll recognise the quality and the performancewhen you get it, but fur has its place and for certainthings at the moment. Once you’ve invented somethingor brought something out that does really well, it’s verydifficult to find a solution that replaces it and wecertainly wouldn’t bring something out that was inferiorto it. So it will stay for the time being on certainproducts, but we developed the Lyre to be at theforefront of shock mounting, and we also wanted to dothe same on the windshielding and this is the firststage. What comes next is quite exciting for us, but wewant to develop stuff … even as a small company for usit’s the next step that’s important, to have somethingdown the track.

Ed: It’s good that you’re giving the customers achoice still, but if they do really want fur, they don’thave to go elsewhere?

Page 28

Simon: Yes totally. I think this is the first product

we haven’t done backward compatibility, but if you ever

came to the factory in Stroud and saw what we retain

and what we do as support for previous generations and

the Lyre upgrades that can upgrade a 1982 suspension

and things like that – so we still honour that

commitment to the previous purchases that their

customers have bought, because the stuff’s worth a lotas well, it lasts for years. Looking after those

customers who have bought that kit, so that when they

want to upgrade they can still get something for their

kit they’ve got, is an important thing for us. The sales

guys don’t always see it quite the same way, but for me

it’s important in the engineering and the technical side;

to support what’s gone before is very important.

Ed: Well your name’s on the product isn’t it?

Simon: Yes, and heritage. You learn a lot from

what’s gone before.

Ed: Yes, Mr Rycote.

Page 29

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NZVN

PAG Batteriesfor Quinto

Here at IBC, on a little

corner of a little booth, it’s

Nigel Gardiner from PAG.

Ed: So Nigel, we’re here

to talk about batteries and

the Anton Bauer has been a

huge success – not your

Anton Bauer battery, but

your Anton Bauer plate

adapter or your connectors,

or what is it again?

Nigel: Perhaps your

readers will remember 3

years ago Grant came to

England and he saw the

prototypes of the V-linking

system we were developing.

What we’ve now developed

is an Anton Bauer linking

system on a unique productwhich is a replacement for the standard DIONIC 90 HC

battery – a direct replacement, but it also has the

added feature of allowing batteries to be linked

together.

Ed: Obviously, your own PAG V-link is preferable, but

in situations where you have some legacy Anton Bauer

equipment, or you’re a rental house and you have lots

of other equipment that might have that Anton Bauerplate on it, here’s an answer for you?

Nigel: Well we’ve actually taken a different

approach now, because, what we’re saying is, we can

do a linking battery for your camera, regardless of the

mount on the back. So if you’re happy with a V, then

we do a V-linking; if you want to stay with your Anton

Bauer, then we do an Anton Bauer linking. I remember

this time last year, knowing that this was in our design

schedule, looking at the Panasonic booth and seeingthat every single camera had an Anton Bauer bracket.

Now years ago, I would have been totally depressed at

seeing that, but now it doesn’t matter to me because I

know that we have a battery system for any Panasonic

camera as well as any other camera that either has an

Anton Bauer or a V system.

Ed: And I can add to that Nigel, because I’ve justbeen at the ARRI stand and I notice their AMIRAs havea single Anton Bauer on the back of them; but whenyou get to the ALEXA, which is a bit more powerhungry, guess what they’ve got on their back … twoPAG V-Lock batteries.

Nigel: That’s right. We’ve been talking to ARRI inthe last four months. It’s sometimes difficult to gethold of the right people in companies, but we’ve nowshipped to ARRI a set of V linkers and a set of AntonBauer linkers and they’re lending cameras to peoplewho are interested in buying, and our batteries aregoing out with them. So not only are they testing andappraising the camera, they’re actually looking at ourbatteries. This has got to be good for us.

Ed: It is indeed. You’ve got to spread the word Nigel.Now, there’s another little device that Nigel says thathe’s shown me before, but I think he’s not quite theman he used to be, so Nigel, what’s this little devicethat I’m holding in my hands?

Nigel: Well I could … no, dear oh dear …

Ed: Device, Nigel, device.

Nigel: I’m sorry about this Louise, but this is whathe does to me. Unless my brain has gone … you seeI’m older than Grant, but I’m sure I’ve told him aboutthis. Once more then. What we have in my hand is aBattery Reader. Now what we can do is interrogate anySony battery or any of our V batteries, to give usinformation such as how much it’s charged, what’s thecapacity, what’s the age, when it was manufactured,the voltage, temperature and software versions. All wedo is plug this into the battery. We also do it for theAnton Bauer. This is a device for maybe the biggeruser, who has a lot of batteries, so he can check themout to make sure that they’re in good nick before hegoes out and does the job.

Page 30

more on page 33

Nigel and Alan.

Ed: And I’m sure your dealers have got samples of

this – if somebody was concerned about their batteries,

they could take them in and have them checked?

Nigel: Oh yes, it’s a very simple thing. Also we

can change or update the firmware of the battery with

this device. Sometimes we’ve had to change the

firmware because of camera issues and, with this

device, you can actually update the batteries to thelatest firmware.

Ed: Superb. One other little item here, where there’s

no moving parts, is a card and it states “Lithium Ion Air

Transport Advice”. What made you come up with that

little card Nigel?

Nigel: I think it was dealer frustration in the fact

that PAG, like one or two other battery manufacturers,

spend a lot of time and money making sure ourbatteries meet the IATA and United Nations

specifications, and to get this we have to submit 20 plus

batteries to an independent test house where they

destructively test them. After they’ve done the testing,

we then get a certificate, plus the test report, to say

that our batteries are safe for air travel. Now the

frustration is the fact that most battery manufacturers

do not go through this process. This process means

that we are more expensive. Some of the good thingsare that now airlines are picking up more and more on

this. You’re not allowed – and it’s a criminal offence –

to put a lithium ion battery in your checked baggage.

All lithium ion batteries have to be hand carried. Things

like this are now causing embarrassment

to a lot of people; there’s been fines and

other things and a number of

cameramen are getting to their

destination and their batteries aren’t

there.

Ed: Because they x-ray the bags and

take them out?

Nigel: That’s right, they x-ray the

bags and take them out. Some people

question it, but I know a few who have

said “where are my batteries” and the

airlines and the security say “well it’s up

to you sir – you can complain or we can

fine you about $50,000” and that’s the

fine for transporting lithium ion batteriesin the checked bag.

Ed: Because that has actually

happened in the UK I understand?

Nigel: That’s right, it’s happened a

number of times. So we would like the regulations to

be tighter, because we know that we meet them, but

we also know that probably 80-90% of all battery

manufacturers do not meet them.

As far as we’re concerned, we don’t want to stop them,

but we wish that they went through the same

procedures and that would give us a level playing field

on cost.

Ed: Right, to finish us off, one very good bit of news

for Australia-New Zealand is that Quinto has now taken

on JVC. Quinto is now the JVC agent in New Zealand

and Australia and they’re also the agency for PAG

batteries so there should be a very good synergy there.

Obviously, in the smaller JVC cameras, the 7.2 Volt,

there’s nothing there for PAG, but in the 12 Volt and

beyond, you’ve got the battery for them?

Nigel: Yes, it gives us an interesting introduction

to the batteries into Australia and New Zealand. It’s

been difficult for us in both countries, but I think this

aid of Quinto having JVC means that they can package

batteries together and I do see then a strong growth

potential in both Australia and New Zealand.

Ed: So Alan should get his chequebook out?

Nigel: There are some things in this world that are

possible Grant, and there are some things that are not

possible. This is now another speechless situation. I’m

not sure whether he’s got a chequebook; I think he just

stores it all under the bed.

Page 33

NZVN

A New Face for Face TVproduction costs and you can make aliving out of it as well.

Ed: Which is what you’ve been doing

with The Beat Goes On and other

programmes for quite some time now?

Gerard: Exactly, that’s the formula.

Ed: What’s your vision of howtelevision can service a community?

Gerard: There are a lot of people

who do wonderful charity work in New

Zealand which just never gets reported.

All the good news seems to miss out –

say the opening of a library in

Masterton, or a new cycleway some-

where. They’re all community projects;we’d love to feature those a lot more.

Less sensationalism and more of what’s

actually happening in our community.

Ed: So the plan for the rest of this year 2014, is“steady as she goes”?

Gerard: Steady as she goes. We’ve had the stationsince the 1st of September and any change can’t beimmediate; you will see incremental improvements as2015 progresses, moving into 2016.

If you or your community group have any interest increating or providing programmes for Face TV –contact Gerard Smith on 09 525 1512or Gerard@facetv.co.nz NZVN

Page 34

Ed: Gerard, you’ve taken a bold step forward?

Gerard: Well, we started off with The Beat Goes Onas a regular television show, that’s been going for overfive years – today we’re doing about five differenttelevision shows every week – and now we’ve gone astep higher. We now manage the station thatbroadcasts all our programmes – Face Television. Sowe have a new face, you’re dead right Grant.

Ed: So Face Television, for those who might not havetuned in to Channel 83 on Sky, has gone through anumber of iterations. It started off as a vehicle for JimBlackman and his friends as Triangle TV, then Stratos,now Face Television. Jim’s passed away, the stationhas been in a bit of a limbo, shall we say, and you haveseen an opportunity. From what I understand, youreally want to improve its image as a true New Zealandcommunity television station?

Gerard: That would be our ideal. It’s anopportunity for us to step in to represent New Zealandat a different level, not a commercial level.

Ed: At the moment, there’s a lot of programming onFace that is coming from overseas, content that culturalgroups are interested in, but you really want to putmore focus on local shows. How can our ownproduction community become involved?

Gerard: Look, we’d like to invite televisionproducers throughout New Zealand, if you’ve got anidea for a programme we’d love to hear from you, wereally would. We’re continually looking at new ideas. Ifyou’re a television producer, you might be able to editthe programme yourself, you might be able to shoot ityourself and just give us the finished product, or ifyou’re not sure of that particular process, we canhandle everything. We can record it, edit it andbroadcast it for you. So, we’re looking for creativeideas from people right throughout New Zealand, torepresent the New Zealand story.

Ed: Now it’s just a matter of cost because this issomething that is not paid for by the state or by generaladvertising; this is something that, if you want tobroadcast a programme, it’s going to cost you, but youhave the opportunity to sell advertising of your ownaround it?

Gerard: Yes exactly, you can get all your costsback. You could give us a half an hour programme, youpay to have that half hour programme played, but ifyou’ve sold advertising on it, that will cover your