System Enables Instant Review of Footage, Collaboration

To Light Iron Digital CEO Michael Cioni, that iPad you're carrying around is more than a tablet computer. Cioni sees the iPad and devices like it becoming almost absurdly high-quality devices for screening and sharing footage as it's shot.
The LiVE PLAY Server, free software that runs on essentially any Mac or MacBook, serves footage as H.264 streams that can be picked up by an iPad running the $20 LiVE PLAY app. Up to 30 users can review a shot on 30 different LiVE PLAY-enabled iPads simultaneously as soon as the footage has been captured.

To help start streaming footage as quickly as possible, the Teradek Cube can wirelessly transmit scenes directly from a camera to the LiVE PLAY Server. Once dailies are captured, a system like the QTAKE HD will also push files to the Server. And as soon as those files are available, the LiVE PLAY app can access them. The system has been used in beta form on commercial productions, and on Monday morning at NAB Cioni said he hoped it would be approved for purchase through the App Store later this week.

iPad-powered review of same-day dailies is a pretty powerful application, but Cioni really has metadata on his mind, and LiVE PLAY is built to gather all of the metadata associated with a piece of footage, from lens data to the characteristics and settings of a stereo camera rig. Users can’t add to or supplement that data with the basic LiVE PLAY app, but licenses for LiVE PLAY Collaborate, which allows users to make and share notes on footage, will be available by the month, week, or day as in-app purchases. A director could use LiVE PLAY Collaborate to mark up a list of shots that should be discarded. The DIT on the project could then use that list to move through the project and delete those shots. (The LiVE PLAY Server administrator will have the ability to specify who, if anyone, should have “delete” privileges.)

For the time being, Cioni expects the basic $20 app will suit about 90 percent of his users. But in three to five years, he hopes the majority of users will be making smart use of notes and other metadata during the review process, and will find the collaborative version of the software attractive. Cioni also brings up the subject of the iPad’s screen, which most users expect will be upgraded in the not-distant future to mimic the super-high-resolution “retina” display of the iPhone 4. “Can you imagine 2K in the palm of your hand?” he asks.

LiVE PLAY is streaming only, but Cioni is also developing an application with the working title of toDAILIES. It will enable secure downloads of dailies to the iPad so that a director can leave the stage with them and take them home for review. Security is an issue, but Cioni noted that a lost or stolen iPad can easily be tracked remotely and have its data wiped remotely. Dailies are also watermarked with the name of the person who has signed them out. “It’s thousands of times more secure than DVDs,” he said, flipping through dailies from the currently shooting Spider-Man movie on the NAB show floor. “This is your SR deck. This is your VTR.”