SEATTLE—News crews are always in a hurry, trying to be the first with a liveshot from the latest breaking story. Two critical pieces of gear that facilitate speed of deployment are tripods and battery packs and manufacturers are making pods and power supplies that offer new, innovative tools for news shooters.

“We really had news crews in mind when we designed our Flowtech tripods,” said Tobias Keuthen, global brand market director for Vitec Production Solutions Division. “Those are the ones who are really run-and-gun shooters. Our number one goal was ‘how can we minimize the time you need to set up your camera with tripod and the fluid head?’”

BEST PLACEMENT

The ideal tripod would have one central locking mechanism somewhere on the top of the tripod, to set up all legs at the same time, Keuthen said. ”That’s what we did with Flowtech; we have three levers at the top of the tripod that operate the three legs with three stages. And it’s very convenient because you reduce the amount of time you need to set up the tripod by multiple seconds, 10-20, down to a second or two.”

Development engineers from Vitec brands Sachtler and Vinten worked in concert on Flowtech. “They mixed their brain power and their ideas and developed this together,” Keuthen said. “We had to develop a whole carbon fiber factory because of the profile needed to house the wire system of this mechanical design.”

OConnor, which makes tripods and fluid heads known for more heavy payloads and accuracy than for speedy setup was not thought of as appropriate for Flowtech, even though it is part of Vitec.

“But in the months after launch of Flowtech, we saw in social media that customers of OConnor’s lighter weight 1030 fluid head started to buy the 100mm version of Flowtech,” Keuthen said. “So we produced an OConnor version of the Flowtech, and used that opportunity to refresh the 1030 fluid head itself, the OConnor 1040 system.”

SINGLE MOVEMENT DEPLOYMENT

Design and reliability make a tripod fast to use, according to Elisabetta Cartoni, owner and CEO at Cartoni SpA. “The tripod needs to be easy to deploy in a single movement,” she said. “The Cartoni SDS tripod is an excellent example of how design meets reliability.”

The SDS tripod legs can be released with a single lever, located on the middle of each leg. “We prefer having the lever located on the middle stage so that the upper stage is never out of reach, even in high mode,” Cartoni said. “Placing the release lever on the middle stage also distributes the locking force on the three sets of tubes better.

“Adjusting the spreader and folding the tripod also has to be fast,” Cartoni added. “On the SDS, the spreader will deploy the two telescopic stages with a single button, making very low shots possible. The tripod can be folded by pulling a single ring, which will also automatically retract the spreader so you can quickly move onto the next shot.”

Cartoni added that competitors who have tried to imitate Cartoni’s design often compromise the strength of the tripod.

“For example, tripod legs will and should always be stronger than the fluid head,” she said. “That’s due to the stress and payload the tripod must carry. Our SDS tripod is tested to support 132 pounds and thus, it easily supports our Focus 22 head at full load [49 + 13 pounds]. When you compromise the shape of the tripod, you compromise the strength of those legs and eventually, you will see them begin to slide and put your camera at risk.”

QUICK RELEASE

At the 2019 IBC Show last fall, Shotoku introduced the SX200 and heavier duty SX260 fluid head and tripod system. For rapid deployment, they have a very quick release mechanism on a two stage carbon fiber tripod, according to Graham Ramsey, sales director for manual and VR products, EMEA, the Americas, Shotoku.

“You turn the tripod 90 degrees and the legs deploy instantly,” he said. “And then you can lock them with a 90 degree turn the opposite direction, and then you open the legs and you’re set.”

In terms of the drag system and counterbalance system, those settings often need not be readjusted shot by shot if the payload doesn’t change, Ramsey said. But the new heads employ Shotoku’s Truebalance counterbalance system that will work from plus 90 to minus 90 degrees. It balances the camera perfectly, so the user can operate it anywhere in the tilt range.

”The drag system is a continuous drag setting mechanism called ‘Viscam,’ which we’ve been using for a long time on all our high-end, OB systems, EFP systems,” Ramsey said. “Now we’re putting it into our ENG system as well. It’s basically a multiplate design that works on the basis of increasing the cross sectional overlap area of the plate.”

Shotoku has manufactured the SX series from magnesium die cast rather than aluminum, cutting down on weight, according to Ramsey.

POWER SUPPLIES

Portable power makers have provided a smorgasbord of solutions for news shooters moving fast.

Anton/Bauer’s Product Marketing Manager Rich Mattina detailed a typical news assignment. “They’re waiting for events to happen, let’s say it’s a press announcement, waiting for a politician or somebody to come out and do a press briefing. Sometimes it’s an hour, two hours, three hours. So we’ve put USB ports on our Titon battery packs so that tablets and cell phones can be charged, and the 150W Titon can keep supplying power to the camera during the wait.”

Titon also comes in a 90W model that can be carried aboard a plane, and a 240W model when the pack has to operate for a long time, with accessories such as a portable light plugged in as well. The Titons are all available in Gold Mount and V-mount, and not only have the USB port but also P-Tap for lights and other accessories. With 10Amp draw at 14V, they’re designed for the typical news camcorder.

With the on-board LCD or through the viewfinder, the cameraman can monitor exactly how much runtime remains, down to the minute. Titon smart technology considers and calculates everything being powered, even devices powered by the high-speed USB and P-Tap, leaving the user free to focus on bringing back the story.

What differentiates PAG from other battery pack makers is the ability to link batteries, combining them for longer run life, according to Bob Carr, sales director at PAG America.

“Unlinked PAG power packs can be legally carried aboard airliners, then quickly relinked to provide the advantages of a single larger battery pack,” he said. “Up to eight PAG batteries can be linked at a time. Similarly, up to eight can be charged at the same time on a single charger.” The ability to stack PAG battery packs is built into the packs, requiring no adapter.

PAG battery packs are available in both Gold Mount and V-mount, and can be charged on other companies’ chargers. A new feature on PAG’s MPL50G battery packs is a built-in D-Tap output (12V), and a USB output unit (5V 2A), which can be swapped for other unit types: Hirose, Lemo and D-Tap.

Future PAG batteries will have the ability to be serviced and re-celled by major customers and regional offices, Carr said, which should cut down the amount of time a battery pack is out of service while being repaired. Major customers can keep track of their own repair cycles, and will be given the key, tools and testing equipment, and replacement cells.

Kevin Crawford, vice president of engineering for Frezzi, says many of his customers think bigger is better for power packs.

“Our FLB-240 can run a camera for two days,” Crawford said. “A lot of our local news crews use that because then they don’t have to carry multiples of smaller batteries, which speeds up the shoot. So you combine that, the lightweight draw for the lighting coupled with the high energy density batteries, you have a nice kit where somebody can go out and shoot for two days without having to do a recharge.”

Frezzi power packs are available in both Gold Mount and V-mount, and a fuel gauge. A smaller, FLB-100 is legal for airline transport. Thermal, over-discharge, overload, over-current protection is built in.

Basingstoke, UK — December 6, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent shared storage and media management solutions, today announced that The Liverpool Screen School has upgraded the existing media infrastructure to the latest EditShare XStream EFS storage platform as well as added EditShare Flow media asset management (MAM), AirFlow for remote access, and QScan automated quality assurance to support its Journalism, Media Production and Film Studies programs. Noted for their “theory and hands-on practice” approach to education, the school enjoys an internationally recognized reputation for their work as well as the strong links they have forged with companies across the creative and digital sector including the BBC, ITV, and Lime Pictures. “Our student experience spans a broad range of technical expertise,” states Darcy O’Bree, Technical Resource Manager, Liverpool Screen School. “The diversity of our courses requires us to teach a range of different technical methods for realizing the student's creative vision. The students do conventional film production. They do television production, including live and thematic style TV. They’re even getting into things like projection mapping, event visuals, color management, and content quality control (QC).” O’Bree adds, “With increasing student numbers, we were about to hit a wall with capacity in the existing system. Also, the way the system was originally set up five years ago, it wasn’t integrated with the university’s main network, which limited access.”

Putting out an industry-wide call for information, the Liverpool Screen School reviewed submissions for a range of media storage and management solutions on the market. Ensuring students had full accessibility to the creative tools was the number one priority for the new upgrade. O’Bree explains, “With this upgrade, we want to increase accessibility to our post-production tools in general. The students use a variety of different editing applications. We’ve got Avid Media Composer, Apple’s Final Cut Pro, and the full Adobe Creative Cloud suite, with different courses using different combinations of applications. And this year, we are introducing students to advanced colour grading via Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve. This is why we opted for EditShare.” Darcy goes on, “Any student or staff doing any form of post-production can store their projects on EditShare. And not only on campus, but off campus as well. These buildings are not open around the clock, but students are working all sorts of hours and complete access was paramount.”

QScan Expands Student Skill Set

Providing Liverpool Screen School student interns a real-world experience is Lime Pictures, the British production house for blockbusters such as Hollyoaks, The Only Way is Essex, Geordie Shore, and Free Rein. Lime Pictures’ Alistair McMath, who oversees the infrastructure for Lime Pictures post-production and is connected with the student interns, elaborates on the evolution of technology-based learning and the importance of understanding quality assurance workflows coming out of university. “When I was at university, it was all theory-based learning. It wasn’t massively technical and I very quickly realized when I started working in the industry that the technology that I had learned was obsolete. Today it is different. Institutions like Liverpool Screen School give students access to the same editing and storage systems you find in world-class facilities like Lime Pictures. And it's great to see that they are further expanding the exposure to include QC. With the various delivery standards, it’s a real asset to have this knowledge, even if it's minimal.” Alistair explains, “In recent years, QC has moved from being a task performed just before broadcast to a task that can be done at almost any point across production and post-production. Whilst it’s not the most glamorous side of TV, it is incredibly important for students coming out of school to have a framework of what QC is. They need to understand that there is QC for photosensitive epilepsy as well as all of the technical standards. They need to know what levels are legal and be familiar with QC terminologies such as audio true peaking and audio loudness. I realize that this can be technically challenging to master, but the fact that the Liverpool Screen students will have been exposed to QC systems and processes gives them a step up when entering the real world.”

For more information on EditShare solutions, please visit www.editshare.com or to read the full case study on Liverpool Screen School, please visit editshare.com/case-studies/cs-liverpool.

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV, and film industries. Our ground-breaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance central shared storage, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first 3-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

©2018 EditShare LLC. All rights reserved. EditShare is a registered trademark of EditShare LLC. All other trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Press Contact

Alex Molina
Zazil Media Group
(e) alex@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

Basingstoke, UK – May 31, 2018 - EditShare® a technology leader in intelligent shared storage, AQC and media management solutions, invites the post production community to test the next generation of its Flow media asset management platform. For the first time, any broadcast or production facility can install Flow MAM on top of any storage pool. Now available for download, the first 100 eligible beta applicants will have the opportunity to try the all new storage independent version of Flow for 100 days free of charge and provide feedback. Approved applicants will have unrestricted access to all Flow modules, Flow technical support, and private Flow forums at no cost.

This latest iteration of Flow, has been completely re-engineered for non-EditShare storage environments such as Avid NEXIS, StorageDNA and Amazon S3. As a fully software defined MAM platform, Flow will maximize the value of customers’ existing storage infrastructure by adding an intelligent media management layer that can manage millions of assets across multiple storage tiers in different locations.

Join the beta program today: flow.editshare.com

For more information about Flow, please visit: editshare.com/products/flow

About Flow

With Flow, users can tag, organize, and manage media, improving efficiency and multiplying productivity. Tools like Flow Automation add the ability to automate complex and repetitive workflow tasks including archive, transcoding and automated quality control (AQC). With AirFlow and Flow Story, it is possible to remotely access, edit and package media on a shared storage system, increasing the opportunities for creative development outside the boundaries of a facility. The Flow platform includes server-based modules as well as Mac OS X, Windows, and web client applications to provide a complete palette of production tools.

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV, and film industries. Our ground-breaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance central shared storage, AQC, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first 3-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

©2018 EditShare LLC. All rights reserved. EditShare® is a registered trademark of EditShare.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

LAS VEGAS—At the 2018 NAB Show, The Vitec Group’s Vinten and Sachtler brands will debut the new flowtech 75 camera tripod technology, designed to transform the way camera operators work. It features two-stage carbon-fiber tripod legs, with an easy-to-remove midlevel spreader, rubber feet and a 44-pound payload.

It also features quick-release brakes at the top of the tripod that enable the legs to be deployed simultaneously and it adjusts automatically to the ground’s surface.

A unique hinge-lock mechanism lets users capture extremely low, ground level shots, without needing to bring a second set of “baby legs” to each shoot. With its torsional stiffness, the tripod will not twist during camera-panning movements, especially in motion picture productions.

Sachtler and Vinten will also feature a detachable carry handle and compact, lightweight dolly—two optional flowtech 75 accessories: The dolly features an integral carry handle and foot-operated brakes, while its foldable design allows it to collapse to a compact, easy-to-transport unit. Weighing just 10 pounds, the dolly supports an 88-pound payload and a build radius of 53 centimeters. With the carry handle, customers carry the flowtech tripod securely in one hand and attach it to one of three flowtech accessory docks.

The 2018 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 9-12. Vinten and Sachtler will be in booth C6025. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

Read up on all of TVT's NAB Show Sneak Peeks and other 2018 NAB Show news here.

LONDON—Vitec Group brands Sachtler and Vinten have teamed up to develop a new camera tripod system, the flowtech. The flowtech system features quick release brakes and adjustable levers for istant setup.

Sachtler and Vinten designed flowtech with a set of two-stage carbon-fiber tripod legs that come with a removable midlevel spreader, rubber feet and a payload capacity of 44 pounds. The tripod’s quick-release brakes are located at the top of the tripod to enable all the legs to be deployed simultaneously and adjust automatically to a surface.

The flowtech offers a height range of 10 inches to 60 inches without the detachable spreader, and between 25 inches and 62 inches with the spreader. A hinge-lock mechanism assists with extremely low shots. There is also torsional stiffness to help prevent twisting during camera panning. In addition, the flowtech 75 model tripod is compatible with all major 75mm fluid heads.

Sachtler and Vinten are offering the flowtech tripod system for $1,050. The companies will also showcase it at the upcoming IBC Show.