As Home Depot Television moved toward a tapeless workflow in mid-2010, it pulled the trigger on a Harmonic Omneon system that included a four-channel MediaDeck server, 12 TB of MediaGrid storage, the Media Application Server (MAS), and the ProXplore clip-and-metadata management system. The final piece of that puzzle has just fallen into place thanks to a front end from XenData that integrates the Omneon system with an 80-tape Qualstar robotic library. We talked to Dave White, manager of HDTV, and Bruce Covey, manager of business TV engineering for HDTV, about the installation.... »
GoPro today announced a new version of its CineForm Studio lineup that it hopes will help build a bridge between professionals and enthusiasts who use its rugged $300 HD cameras.... »
As a consultant far too often I get called in to “fix” problems that could have been avoided with a little planning and understanding. The really big budget productions rarely have these issues because they can afford to deal with things on set and/or in post. But for low- and mid-budget productions, most of the catastrophic problems I see in production and post could be overcome by following these five important guidelines.... »
NVIDIA has just released Maximus, a new speed-improvement technology aimed at removing the bottlenecks that result from editing and compositing higher resolution files and increasingly complex effects shots in effects- and animation-intensive workflows.... »
What's the next frontier in stereo-3D shooting? Freedom and flexibility. Research is going into stereo acquisition techniques that may, with careful attention to their set-up and configuration, allow production crews to work as quickly and seamlessly as they do in 2D.... »
Though moviegoers have had plenty of chances to catch stereo-3D fare at the multiplex, it's only recently that 3D has started to take hold in the arthouse, as well. First there was Werner Herzog's well-hyped Cave of Forgotten Dreams. And now there's Pina.... »
Founded in 2003, Small Tree Communications focuses on the Mac platform, offering a variety of storage solutions with an emphasis on cost-efficiency. The goal is to work with users to ensure that they have the bandwidth they need, but that they're not paying for performance that they don't need. StudioBytes once again approached Small Tree's CTO, Steve Modica, to ask him what content creators need to understand about storage protocols. In an opinionated Q&A, he told us that clustered file systems are obsolete, bandwidth is overrated, and "scalability" is a dead end.... »
The new availability of inexpensive but high-end color grading options is also having an effect on set, where savvy productions are using portable versions of the Resolve to set new looks during production without relying on the use of LUTs farther down the pipeline.... »
Throughout his long and varied career, Tim McGovern has been a radio engineer, a pioneering sound engineer at Skywalker Sound during its digital transition, and a designer of network facilities for the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He has also learned more than a few valuable lessons in flexibility working as chief engineer, alternately, for George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. When we talked to McGovern he was just two weeks into his new job as director of professional services at Advanced Systems Group, an installer and integrator of production, post and shared storage software and hardware in the Bay Area and Southern California.... »
Earlier this month, systems integrator and workflow solutions provider ALT Systems appointed Bruno Munger director of technical sales. StudioDaily rang him up to ask him about the future of post, what he took away from last week's HPA Tech Retreat, and what he sees on tap at NAB in April.... »
Avid is once again grabbing for a bigger share of the open-workflow editing pie. Today, the company released significant point-version upgrades of Media Composer, Symphony and NewsCutter just ten months after the release of its major Media Composer 5 overhaul last April.... »
Justified returns tonight for a second season on FX, and cinematographer Francis Kenny, ASC, says the show looks better than ever. Why is that? The show upgraded from the F35 to Sony’s newer SRW-9000PL in the hiatus, but the important thing is that Justified upgraded its image processing. Tonight, Justified becomes the first show to be broadcast using a new color-encoding workflow for television and digital cinema.... »
Stereo 3D production specialist Paradise FX is on location with Dolphin Tale, a 2011 release starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd. To facilitate essentially real-time viewing of stereoscopic dailies, Paradise FX is relying on Iridas SpeedGrade DI, which supports the RED Rocket card.... »
Kansas City's T2+Back Alley Films, a nationally recognized digital media agency that creates content for all media platforms, was trying to figure out how to move files onto and off of its Fibre Channel editorial network to six graphics workstations without wiring the entire facility for Fibre.... »
