GHENT, Belgium—Limecraft has released Limecraft 2026.3 featuring improvements to make production and post-production workflows more structured and reliable as well as easier to automate at scale.

Limecraft, an AI-powered production platform, enables content creators to store, manage and share projects from initial rushes to thousands of masters. Limecraft workspaces can be customized for specific formats, such as scripted TV, documentaries and non-scripted entertainment, and can manage massive volumes due to finetuned AI services at its core.

The third platform update in its 2026 release cycle, Limecraft 2026.3 focuses on three key areas: file verification with ASC Media Hash List (MHL) support, extended AAF export configuration and faster transcription with broader language coverage.

Ingest workflows now support ASC Media Hash List files using Limecraft Edge. MHL files are created upon card offloads, establishing a persistent, interoperable record of file integrity. As part of this enhancement, users can choose the checksum algorithm employed for file verification. In addition to legacy MD5, Limecraft now supports xxHash64 and xxHash3 64-bit algorithms.

To improve interaction with the editorial workflow, Limecraft 2026.3 extends AAF export templates introduced in the previous release. Users can now define more precisely which material lands on which track in the resulting edit sequence.

Advanced track mapping automatically composes the intended sequence track by track, including master clips or auto-generated group clips, camera and audio device selection, auto-select camera angles, custom labels and per-subtrack labels for multi-channel audio. This is particularly relevant for multicamera, multitrack and high-volume productions where manual timeline preparation is repetitive and prone to errors.

Additionally, Limecraft 2026.3 introduces improvements to automatic transcription. Processing performance has been significantly improved, now accurately transcribing one hour of audio to text in less than a minute. This helps journalists, researchers, editors and subtitle operators use timecoded transcripts more quickly.

The release also broadens transcription language and locale support. Limecraft 2026.3 adds 35 newly supported languages and locales, including Latin American Spanish, Pashto, Somali, Maori, Luxembourgish, Belarusian and Kyrgyz, as well as a broad set of African languages, including Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Wolof, Lingala, Shona, Sepedi, Nyanja, Ganda, Oromo, Kamba and Luo.

Limecraft 2026.3 also offers a range of smaller improvements across the platform. These include workspace-level metadata, improved performance for bulk uploads via shared links, the addition of metadata changes in the Workflow & Activity pane, refinements to configurable AAF export templates and fixes relating to custom status display, table sorting, comments in shares, clip detail URLs, DNxHR transcoding and card offload job visibility in Limecraft Edge.

Limecraft 2026.3 is available now. Limecraft will host a live webinar on May 7 demonstrating the new features and their impact on production and post-production workflows. RSVP at https://us02web.zoom.us/.

See Limecraft at the Media Production & Technology Show, May 13-14, at Olympia London in stand F70.

More information is available on the company’s website.

BURLINGTON, Mass. and SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Avid and Google Cloud have announced a multi-year strategic partnership to integrate generative and agentic AI into creative tools from Avid.

By embedding Google’s Gemini models and Vertex AI directly into Avid’s solutions, the two companies reported that they aim to transform video editing from a mostly manual process into an intelligent, AI-assisted experience, significantly reducing the time required for media discovery and production.

The integration will be on display during the 2026 NAB Show between April 18 and 22.

“Customers are asking for intelligent tools that plug into existing workflows and scale with their creativity,” said Wellford Dillard, chief executive officer, Avid. “This partnership with Google Cloud strengthens our ability to deliver secure, AI-driven innovation–while keeping Avid interoperable and adaptable across the broader production landscape. Through our collaboration with Google Cloud, Avid is redefining what’s possible in modern media production by expanding intelligent capabilities across our products.”

"By embedding agentic AI directly into the tools video editors live in, we’re moving beyond simple automation," added Anil Jain, global managing director, Strategic Industries, Google Cloud. "With Avid Media Composer and Google Cloud, an editor can now collaborate with an intelligent agent to create assets on the fly and handle the heavy lifting of matching styles and filling timelines, enabling them to focus on storytelling instead of infrastructure."

In announcing the integration, the two companies noted that as global demand for content increases, production teams face growing pressure to manage massive volumes of high-resolution media, while overcoming the limitations of legacy on-premises hardware.

To address these challenges, Avid is integrating Google Cloud’s AI and data analytics capabilities into two key areas of its technology stack: Media Composer, the industry-standard nonlinear editing system for professional film and TV; and Avid Content Core, a new cloud-native SaaS platform that serves as a unified, intelligent data layer for global media assets.

By leveraging Gemini and Vertex AI, these platforms can now analyze and understand media context automatically, allowing production teams to query content using natural language. It also enables agentic AI workflows – digital assistants capable of autonomously managing complex tasks, such as matching visual styles, identifying emotional cues in raw footage, and streamlining metadata logging.

Other key highlights include:

• Avid Content Core general availability: Now commercially available, this cloud-native platform acts as a unified data layer for global media. By leveraging Google Cloud’s BigQuery, Vision Warehouse, and Vertex AI Search, it transforms passive storage into an active library, allowing global creative teams to access and manage video files from anywhere.
• Gemini integration in Media Composer: Avid’s industry-standard editing system now features a multimodal extension powered by Gemini. This integration allows editors to streamline post-production – from intelligent metadata enhancement and automated logging to generating B-Roll –reducing the manual burden on creative teams.
• Agentic search and discovery: With Vertex AI and multimodal Gemini models on both platforms, the systems can understand the context of every file. Searching becomes a natural conversation where users describe what they need – based on visual actions, dialogue, or emotional cues – turning weeks of manual archive discovery into seconds of automated insight.

Avid and Google Cloud will demonstrate these new workflows at the NAB Show in Las Vegas (April 18-22, 2026). Visit the Google Cloud Booth (West Hall, #W2731) and the Avid Booth (North Hall #N2226) to see advanced media search and metadata management in action.

LAS VEGAS—Studio Technologies is expanding its StudioComm line of products with the addition of the StudioComm Model 794 Central Controller and Model 795 Control Console.

The new system is intended for general audio monitoring applications including use in post-production, ingest, and on-air facilities, and will be shown for the first time during the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas at booth C6808.

“The StudioComm system, built around the Model 794 and companion control consoles, delivers a fully integrated 5.1 and stereo monitoring platform that unifies Dante, analog, and AES3 audio sources for professional broadcast, production, and post-production environments,” says Gordon Kapes, president of Studio Technologies. “We look forward to highlighting this expanded line of StudioComm product offerings at NAB 2026.”

The Model 794 is available in four distinct versions (794-01, 794-02, 794-03 and 794-04) that differ only with their input resources.

The Model 794-01 features Dante audio-over-Ethernet as well as analog inputs and outputs. The Model 794-02 adds balanced AES3 digital audio inputs while the Model 794-03 adds unbalanced AES3 digital audio inputs. The Model 794-04 adds two additional analog inputs. All four 1U rack-mounted Model 794 units work with the Model 795 Control Console, a desktop user control surface that includes multiple pushbutton switches, a rotary encoder, LED indicators, and a digital display. An integral web-based menu system allows numerous system operating features to be configured. Audio performance is excellent, with all processing performed in the digital domain using 32-bit programmable logic.

All configurations also feature two 5.1 (6-channel) Dante digital audio inputs, two stereo (2-channel) Dante digital audio inputs, one 5.1 (6-channel) analog audio input, and two stereo (2-channel) analog line inputs. The Model 794-02 adds one 5.1 and one stereo balanced AES3 digital audio input. The Model 794-03 adds one 5.1 and one stereo unbalanced AES3 digital audio input. And finally, the Model 794-04 adds a second analog 5.1 input and a third stereo input.

Output resources for all systems include two 5.1 (6-channel) Dante digital audio outputs, two stereo (2-channel) Dante digital audio outputs, one 5.1 (6-channel) analog audio output, and one stereo (2-channel) analog audio output. Configurable features include bass management, downmix, and cue mix capability. Each Model 794 version includes three configurable Gigabit Ethernet network interfaces of which two can be used for transporting audio (Redundant Dante) and the third used for accessing the management menu system.

Each system includes a shielded multi-conductor cable with a 9-pin male D-sub plug on each end for linking a Model 794 with a Model 795. The Model 791 Control Console can also be supported. The Model 791 provides a minimum amount of control capability, perfect for locations where control of the monitoring level is the primary focus. The StudioComm system is powered by 100-240 V, 50/60 Hz or an external source of 12 Vdc. Both can be connected for redundant powering.

More information is available at studio-tech.com.

BURBANK, Calif.—Key Code Education, a provider of instructor-led postproduction training, is growing its curriculum with new programs for beginner and intermediate training for Ross Video Carbonite and XPression, Vizrt TriCaster, EditShare EFS and SNS EVO.

The coursework offers in-person, online and on-site training that goes beyond the basics of self-paced eLearning. The courses are designed to give students the real-world knowledge needed to operate systems efficiently with confidence, Key Code said.

“For many companies, onboarding new staff or adopting new tools is a steep climb,” Key Code Media President Mike Cavanagh said. “Our instructor-led classes help teams quickly get up to speed, accelerating workflow transitions and improving performance.” 

Key Code Education has long offered advanced training in Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve and engineering certifications like Avid ACSR. The new courses are designed for production professionals and those switching careers to receive a strong foundation with widely used tools, Key Code said.

California-based media organizations that qualify for the state’s Employment Training Panel (ETP) program can receive discounts on the training for their staff.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Sony Pictures Post Production Services has announced that the final phase of a multi-year effort to expand and modernize its motion picture and television sound facilities has been completed. 

As part of an effort to establish an inviting, state-of-the-art space for filmmakers and creative sound artists, the studio said it has integrated the latest immersive sound technology across 14 mix stages on its lot in Culver City. It has also made extensive aesthetic improvements. Its historic Cary Grant, William Holden, Kim Novak, Burt Lancaster and Anthony Quinn mix stages have been restored to sparkling condition, with new acoustics, cinema screens, creature comforts and creative support.

“We want filmmakers and sound talent to feel inspired when they walk onto our lot,” says Kimberly Jimenez, senior vice president, Post Production Services. “We offer sound facilities that are at the highest level of technology in an environment that is warm and welcoming. There’s nothing like it in our industry.”

The project began in 2019 with the renovation of the studio’s 325-seat Cary Grant Mix Stage, one of the industry’s largest. To support immersive sound formats including IMAX and Dolby Atmos, the studio was equipped with new sound tech, including a dual 2 x 24 fader Avid S6 console, four Avid Pro Tools HDX-3 workstations, a 192-channel HDX-3 Pro Tools recorder and a stunning JBL speaker array. A 50’ x 20’ cinema screen and 4K projector complete the true theatrical experience. 

“It’s a haven for audio and visual perfectionists,” observes Lane Burch, executive director, Post Production Sound Engineering. “We offer the perfect blend of cutting-edge technology, comfort, and creativity.”

From there, the work proceeded systematically to the Kim Novak, Burt Lancaster and Anthony Quinn and, most recently, William Holden mix stages, with each furnished with near identical mixing, editing, reproduction and projection systems. The studio’s other stages were also upgraded, establishing a uniform workflow studio-wide. “Standardization was a principal focus,” says Burch. “Each room uses the same technology, and they have similar acoustical environments. Projects can move between our stages without modification or disruption.”

Additionally, the stages went through a transformative physical restoration with an eye toward optimizing acoustics, aesthetics and comfort, while preserving their historic ambience, unique décor and stunning architectural features, the studio reported.

For example, the Anthony Quinn Mix Stage’s Japanese-themed fountain, artwork and domed ceiling were restored while incorporating the latest acoustical panel and other sound absorbing features. (The mix stage is pictured above.)

“Our stages were built with style,” noted Jimenez. “They are beautiful structures. What better place to work on a soundtrack than at a functioning movie studio. This is a special place.”

Two-time Emmy Award-nominated supervising sound editor Mandell Winter has followed the expansion of Sony Pictures’ sound department closely and is elated with the results. “The engineering team was methodical in the way they upgraded the rooms and made each one the best it can be,” he says. “I have clients who only want to mix at Sony because of the vibe of those stages. They know it’s going to make a difference.” Winter’s work at Sony Pictures includes all three films in The Equalizer franchise.

Academy Award-nominated and two-time Emmy Award-winning re-recording mixer Tony Lamberti added he prefers to mix film and television projects at Sony Pictures because the consistency and reliability of the mix stages are unmatched “I’ve done many movies at Sony, and I’m thrilled every time I hear one in the field,” he says. “Whether it’s at the Motion Picture Academy or a commercial movie theater, the sound translates perfectly. I know that the hard work I put into the soundtrack is going to translate to the audience, and that’s the most important thing to me.” Lamberti’s mixing credits at Sony Pictures include Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse and The Woman King.

The lot has been producing soundtracks for more than 100 years, including some of the most beloved movies and television shows. Through Sony Pictures Entertainment’s commitment to remaining ahead of the curve of technology and responding to the industry's creative needs, it continues to be a magnet for visionary filmmakers and award-winning sound mixers, editors and designers.

“We are continuously growing, expanding and looking toward what comes next,” said Jimenez in explaining the studio’s success. “We work as a team, and we are always looking for ways to improve and do things better.”

At the 2024 NAB Show, Riedel Communications has unveiled its expanded RiCapture ingest solutions line with the addition of RiCapture i8, i44, and i84. Complementing the RiCapture i4 platform, these additions provide increased channel density and/or UHD resolution, 8- and 10-bit support, and expanded internal SSD storage.

According to Riedel, the new RiCapture SSE interface for scheduling, streaming, and exporting offers a powerful and compact solution for multichannel HD/UHD ingest recording and integration to postproduction. The SSE control application lets users select between high-resolution DNxHD/R, H.264, or a combination of the two, and also includes audio-mapping and down-mix audio-listening capabilities. 

This allows RiCapture to record media locally, on removable storage, on network-attached storage, or to live-streaming destinations. The system can be expanded to a network of multiple servers for higher-density recording and unlimited destinations with control from a single SSE interface, the company reported. 

RiCapture’s i4 and i8 provide four or eight HD HDR input channels respectively, while the i44 and i84 each support four UHD channels with HDR capability in addition to their HD HDR channel capacities. On the audio side, all RiCapture products are capable of 16 channels of embedded audio per channel, as well as 64 Dante or AES67 channels.

In all configurations, RiCapture offers high-quality recording in DNxHD or DNxHR along with H.264 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 encoding to local storage. The local recording storage platform offers continuous loop recording for the captured content, with options to stream it manually or with a scheduler, or to clip and export files as needed from the available local storage to numerous streaming destinations, the company said. 

There are three software add-ons available in the RiCapture product line. The first is the VDR panel, a web-based UI with expanded multichannel control for clip playback, program delays, monitor wall playback and other scenarios. The second is the RiView application, which is a multiviewer UI that includes audio down-mix monitoring for synchronized review of record feeds for review, clipping, and export to multiple destinations. And the third is the XDCAM add-on, which provides the tapeless XDCAM format for HD video acquisition and storage.

"As a complete suite for multichannel ingest recording capture and transfer to postproduction, RiCapture caters to a wide range of markets — from sports, concerts, and theaters to motion picture applications," said Bernard Stas, Riedel Communication’s product manager for live video production. "Accommodating UHD resolutions and a variety of formats, such as 23.98 fps and 29.97 fps, the newly expanded RiCapture family sets the bar for high-quality ingest solutions at an exceptionally competitive price."

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Federal Trade Commission has announced that its staff will be hosting a virtual roundtable discussion on October 4, 2023 to better understand the impact of the use of generative artificial intelligence on music, filmmaking, and other creative fields.

The announcement comes at a time when tech companies such as Adobe are adding generative AI tools to their production and editing software and creators have been voicing concerns about the impact AI tools might have on copyrights and their jobs. 

Artificial intelligence was one of the important sticking points that led to strikes this summer by actors and writers. In July, the FCC held a seminar on how AI might impact the communications industry and how it might be used to more efficiently manage spectrum. 

The FTC said that its staff are seeking to better understand how the development and deployment of AI tools that can generate text, images, and audio—often referred to as generative artificial intelligence—may impact open and fair competition or enable unlawful business practices across markets, including in creative industries. The listening session will focus on different issues posed by generative AI, including concerns raised by musicians, actors, and other content creators about the use of AI to create entertainment and other content.

FTC Chair Lina M. Khan will provide opening remarks to kick off the event and will then hear from representatives from a variety of creative fields, the FTC said. 

Speakers will explore the ways emerging AI tools are reshaping each of the participants’ respective industries and how they are responding to these changes. The listening session, which is being led by the FTC’s Office of Technology, is part of the agency’s efforts to keep up with the latest developments in emerging technologies such as AI.

The event will begin at 3 p.m. ET and be webcast on the FTC’s website at FTC.gov. Additional information, including a list of panelists will be posted in the coming days to the event page.

The lead staffer on this matter is Madeleine Varner from the FTC’s Office of Technology, the FTC said. 

LEICESTER, U.K.—Cooke Optics has partnered with EZtrack to develop a seamlessly integrated system that will blur the line between production and post-production by allowing film makers to merge images from on-set cameras with high-quality computer generated (CG) elements in Near Real Time (NRT). 

An integral aspect of the project is Cooke’s /i Technology maps, which allow precise and accurate manipulation of the digital image. This means lens distortion can be corrected quickly, CG elements added to the undistorted image, and then the image can be re-distorted, so the CG element is matched to how the lens sees it, the companies reported. 

This technology is coupled with the EZtrack system’s ability to deliver precise camera movement tracking, together with lens and camera data, plus the movement of many other on-set elements such as mechanical cranes. This allows the VFX and camera teams to accurately know the position and movement of the camera at all times, while also providing access to all the Cooke /i Metadata.

The combination means that a director can sit on-set watching the feed from the live cameras with a real time version of a basic CG render for the sake of positioning. Even more importantly, the collaboration between Cooke and EZtrack means that all the data collected can be used by the on-set VFX team to produce an updated rendering of the required CG that, while not big-screen-ready, is more than good enough to allow the editor to see their vision come to life in Near Real Time.

This allows filmmakers to have confidence in the shot, but also provides them with the freedom to re-think a shot if necessary before they reach the post-production phase, when laborious re-shoots are prohibitively costly. 

This innovation in the cinematography process debuted on the Italian film “Comandante.”

The project used Cooke’s 1.8x Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus lenses as well as /i Technology, which enabled Cooke and EZtrack to provide spatially accurate, frame accurate distortion maps, that track focus pulls across time for spherical and anamorphic lenses.

Cooke and EZtrack co-developed key technical workflow aspects which fed into The Foundry’s NUKE, whose VFX compositing software delivered the Near Real Time (NRT) workflow utilized in the film. Cooke worked closely with EZtrack, The Foundry, Kevin Todd Haug and David Stump, ASC, in realizing this creative and technical achievement. Other visual effects vendors involved in the project included Wow Tapes and Bottleship, and it was produced by Indigo Films and O’Groove Productions. 

Daniela Kesselem, chief product officer at Cooke, said: “This revolutionary innovation from Cooke Optics and EZtrack may have started on `Comandante’, but the flexibility and creative control it offers filmmakers means it will feature in many more productions in the years to come”.

Timothée de Goussencourt, EZtrack CTO added that “Participating in this project was really a challenge, I think that together with Cooke we pushed the limits of what is possible. The result we got with the anamorphic lenses is incredible”.

Visit Cooke stand 48 at CineGear Los Angeles on June 2-3 2023 to see a live demonstration of the Near Real Time technology in action, in partnership with EZtrack.

DENVER—Deducers, which offers a professional training program for producers working in the specialized intersection of motion design and post-production, has unveiled its second in-depth course featuring a blended curriculum this June.

The 10-week course titled Spark, is designed for those new to the industry or early in their careers as coordinators and production assistants. 

Kicking off June 21, Spark contains everything participants need to learn about the role producers play within creative studios and the responsibilities coordinators will be expected to perform as a part of the production team. Participants in Spark will gain fluency in the language of motion and post-production while accruing the skills they need to navigate the production process effectively.

Established by production industry veteran Rebecca Olson and Curriculum Director Dr. Kacey Warren, the Deducers curriculum uses scientifically established methods of teaching in order to promote strong learning and retention of the five core competencies essential to effective and efficient production: scheduling, budgeting, resourcing, managing scope and guiding others.

“I’m very excited about this new curriculum for Spark,” said Warren. It’s going to provide a very sturdy backbone for anyone coming into the industry and will definitely give them a leg up in a tough market.”

In addition to Spark, Deducers is bringing back its Flame course for junior and associate producers. Beginning June 20, Flame will provide participants with expert tips on how to create scope proposals and leverage scope agreements to manage jobs effectively. Participants will also learn how to identify resources, negotiate rates and guide teams efficiently through productive communications.

“My favorite thing last term wasn't just teaching—although our students were fabulous—it was witnessing their growth and hearing how they were putting the material to use to do their jobs,” said Olson. “Our curriculum provides foundational and practical skills, and to see our students execute them was extremely rewarding.” 

“The Flame course came along at the perfect time in my animation production career,” said Poolbar owner/producer Ali Ferrari, who took the course in February. “I've been kind of winging it up until now, and Flame has provided some much-needed systems and advice that I've already been implementing in my work.”

Deducers’ most advanced course, Blaze (customized for mid- and senior-level producers), will kick off in October. Joining Deducers as an instructor for Blaze is Darren Jaffe, a seasoned executive producer with over 20 years of experience working on groundbreaking content for some of today’s most recognizable global brands.

LONDON—ELMNTL has opened London’s newest cloud-enabled post-production studio with technical support from Big Pic Media.

The new Shoreditch facility is built around a host of cloud-based creative tools that allow the artists to collaborate in the studio or remotely. This cloud-enabled approach provides the ability to scale processor-intensive tools in the cloud without being limited by physical footprint or on-prem hardware, the companies said. 

The studio hosts both open-plan collaborative project areas and suites, covering color grading, VFX and CG/motion graphics, with multiple support stations for production planning, ingest, QC and delivery. 

Big Pic Media supplied and installed all local hardware required for monitoring, control and networking. This included DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panels, Sony BVM HX-310 and PVM-X3200 monitors across color grading, online and QC monitoring, as well as Sony A95k QD-OLED displays in client areas, calibrated to match the reference HX-310.

Big Pic Media worked alongside Konsistent Consulting, an AWS-approved independent consultant company, to specify, install and commission the on-prem hardware, networking and cloud-based infrastructure required to support the studio’s technical infrastructure. This ensures that ELMNTL can utilize all required resources on-demand, simply and efficiently. 

“ELMNTL has built a facility that is extremely friendly and welcoming,” says Adam Welsh, Big Pic Media director. “It has the infrastructure to allow creatives and clients to work in a flexible environment and make sure the work produced is of the highest standard, on time and on budget.”

“Adam and the Big Pic Media guys were great to work with, flexible and accommodating to our changing needs and expectations during the build,” adds Danny Whybrow, ELMNTL founding partner. “Our operations were up and running on schedule. We are now flat out on new projects with everything working perfectly. We look forward to bringing Adam and his team back to expand our studio facilities in the near future.”

NEVADA CITY, Calif.—Telestream will unveil Telestream Content Manager, a management system that leverages both on-prem and cloud storage, and PRISM MPP, a multi-format rasterizer purpose-built for post-production, at the 2023 NAB Show, April 15-19, in Las Vegas.

The company also will introduce a software-only version of its Lightspeed Live Capture solution and showcase Qualify, a cloud-native QC service as well as demonstrate its iQ architecture for cloud-native video quality monitoring, it said.

“Digital transformation is driving exciting innovation across media and entertainment workflows, and we want to ensure our customers can take full advantage,” said Jon Wilson, president and COO of Telestream. "We’re focusing the vast capabilities of our company on delivering software-centric and cloud-native solutions to give content owners, broadcasters and video service providers the flexibility and tools they need to automate, optimize and scale their operations.”

The Telestream Content Manager offers a single point of access to content across an organization’s entire storage ecosystem, including the cloud and on-prem, and is built on DIVA Core technology. It is integrated with Telestream’s workflow orchestration tools and all major MAM, PAM and automation systems, the company said.

With an intuitive web-based user interface to search, preview and repurpose content, the new offering includes an auto-discovery feature that enables indexing of files directly from cloud storage without incurring egress charges, it said. 

Telestream Content Manager, which has a summer release target, enables supply chain workflows that incorporate content movement, lifecycle management and media processing, it said.

The Telestream PRISM family now includes three new models to address the needs of post-production workflows focused on high-end video formats like SDI- and IP-based 12-bit RGB for 4K/UHD applications. The solutions offer measurement tools for colorists with HDR requirements, a complete set of QC tools for objective evaluation of video and audio content and a remotely accessible user interface, Telestream said.

Supporting local, remote and post-production applications up to 8K, the MPP models enable color grading, surround sound audio production up to 7.1.4, SDI monitoring and IP analysis. The company expects to release the tools in the summer.

Telestream’s new software-only version of Lightspeed Live Capture can be run from a Telestream server, the user’s own server or in the cloud. It is due out in the spring.

See Telestream at 2023 NAB Show booth W1501.

More information is available on the company’s website.

BOSTON, Mass.—EditShare has implemented a comprehensive storage and media management platform for Last Cut Media, based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The system was implemented in conjunction with Advanced Media Trading, EditShare’s distribution partner in the region.

As it faced growing workflow limitations in its ad hoc storage systems, Last Cut Media decided to upgrade to a coherent and powerful single-point solution and ultimately selected the EditShare solution.

The initial architecture for the system features a 160TB EFS shared storage node with the full functionality of the EditShare FLOW media management platform. This works in conjunction with a 240TB nearline store for disaster recovery as well as rapid access to content as projects require it. Long-term storage is on LTO-8 tapes, using EditShare ARK archiving software and hardware, the companies said. 

“We provide state-of-the-art services to users across the Gulf region from our base in Abu Dhabi,” said Saad Duaibes, founder & creative director at Last Cut Media. “The new workflow and storage system from EditShare allows us to be much more flexible and productive, delivering the performance and quality that our clients expect. We also appreciate the way that EditShare is designed for remote access and multiple locations: we have bold plans for growth including a facility in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the near future.”

Among the workflow improvements opened up by the EditShare system is the capability of remote editing, allowing productions to access their files from wherever they are shooting and wherever the editor is working. EditShare FLOW ensures that, as content is ingested, so proxy files are automatically generated allowing remote editing from any location, the company said. 

FLOW also provides for rigorous content and metadata management, and automated secure archiving according to business rules set up for each project. Last Cut Media covers the whole range of post from commercials to movies, drama serials and documentaries, so needs to be able to set workflows and functionality by project, with complete security between clients.

“Working with Advanced Media Trading, we displayed to Last Cut Media that we could provide solutions from a secure and orderly transfer of existing content to long-term archiving strategies, to comprehensive training,” explained Said Bacho, chief revenue officer at EditShare. “Having a strong presence in the Middle East also gave Last Cut the confidence that our solution is well supported as well as technically the best for their needs.”

For further information on all EditShare solutions, visit www.editshare.com 

MADISON, Wisc.—Vegas Creative Software today announced a free update for its Vegas Pro 20 that adds the ONNX Runtime AI engine to make better use of GPU power from a wider selection graphics cards.

The update, available today for free to existing users and incorporated into the release for new users, enables faster processing of AI functions in the Vegas Pro workflow, the company said.

The release also offers new features, such as additional advanced color curves enabling editors to dial in with more precise control their color workflows. The release includes other new workflow features and enhancements to improve efficiency and collaboration directly on the timeline, it said.

New color workflow enhancements include: 

• Hue vs. Luminance, a curve that enables users to define a hue or the average of a range of hues in their video and then to adjust luminance of a specific color.
• Saturation vs. Luminance, a curve that lets users define saturation levels and then adjust the luminance level of that range.
• Luminance vs. Saturation, which enables users to define a range of luminance levels in the video and then adjust the saturation level of the range.

Besides the new ONNX Runtime AI engine support, the update also offers:

• A new welcome screen that helps users make decisions about the setup of their project as well as working configuration.
• A Smart Mask (beta) plug-in that analyzes a video frame and users AI to identify objects in the frame for which the solution can generate a mask.
• New Bezier mask point animation control that enables users to create masks that morph over time as the shapes of objects change;
• Enhanced workflow features, including: Hover Scrub Bypass; UX Improvements for file drop workflows; effects-related flexibility; and auto-ripple mode UX enhancement.
• Improved speech-to-text.

Vegas Pro 20 is available as three options: Vegas Edit, Vegas Pro; and Vegas Post.

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON—Broadcast post production house Radiant Post is expanding its operations with the announcement that it will open a new facility, Radiant North, based in Manchester. 

The facility is currently under construction with full opening planned at the end of 2022.

Radiant North will offer the region’s vibrant independent production and network TV sector dedicated picture post, finishing and audio creative services, the company said. 

The new 8000 sq ft facility is hosted in a property that is being developed as part of Allied London’s Enterprise City – a media, tech and creative cluster in the heart of Manchester City. 

Radiant North will provide full post production services including onsite and remote offline, online and grading using Media Composer Symphony and DaVinci Resolve along with Atmos Dubbing Theatres and V/O facilities. It will also be offering production space for long and short-term hire, the company said. 

The move builds upon a pop-up facility Radiant Post opened in 2021 in Deansgate to provide the post production on BBC One shows “Fraud Squad” series 4 and “Moment of Proof” series 2, for longstanding client, Brown Bob Productions. 

With the successful completion of those series and with repeat and new commissions for Brown Bob among other clients, Radiant decided to cement its presence in the city.

“I couldn’t be more excited about welcoming everyone to Radiant North,” said Ben Plumb, Director and Owner, Radiant Post. “With the continuing push for programming in the Nations and Regions, more and more of our clients either already have a regional office or are looking to set-up outside of London. It is a move that we have been planning for some time and was initiated by requests from clients wanting to be served with the same quality, team approach and friendliness of Radiant Post but closer to home.” 

Radiant Post has worked closely with suppliers ERA on the IT Infrastructure connecting the facility to its data center and London facilities.

Radiant North is the sister company to both Radiant Post Production and Rapid Pictures, two long-established brands in U.K. post based in Shepherds Bush.

SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Arsenal FX Color has opened a satellite location in Albuquerque, New Mexico that offers dailies, color grading, and finishing to television and film productions shooting in the state.

In its first project, the Albuquerque facility provided dailies, color and finishing services for “Unbroken”, a pilot produced by Universal Television and starring Scott Bakula.

Having successfully operated a satellite facility in Atlanta for years, Arsenal FX Color chose New Mexico for further expansion due to its recent emergence as a center for film and television production. The state operates a competitive tax incentive program that offers a credit of up to 35 percent to productions. Arsenal FX Color is among the first and only full-service post house in the state.

“We saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor in a state that is quickly becoming a hotspot for production,” said Larry Field, the company’s co-founder. “The state’s tax incentive program, combined with its natural beauty, make it a very attractive place to shoot, but it could benefit from more post-production infrastructure, particularly for dailies processing and finishing. We look to fill that need.”

The Albuquerque facility is located within Oso Grande, a massive data center and tech hub with a campus-like environment. The site features virtual workstations connected remotely to post-production resources and storage at Arsenal FX Color’s main facility in Santa Monica. The virtual workstations can be configured to perform a range of dailies and post-production tasks.

“We can do virtually anything in New Mexico that we can in Santa Monica,” says CTO Josh Baca, who designed and oversaw construction for the facility. “Our location puts virtually unlimited internet resources at our fingertips. We have also implemented biometric authentication and other state-of-the-security measures.” The company is in the process of hiring local artists and support staff.

Arsenal FX Color worked closely with the New Mexico Film Office and the Albuquerque Film Office in launching its new operation, the company said. New Mexico has recently hosted series productions for Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+ and AMC.

Arsenal FX Color VP/Director of Business Development Cortney Haile says that the Albuquerque location is part of the company’s broader plan to establish its presence in underserved production markets. 

“We want to be wherever people are shooting,” she says. “After learning about the big push that New Mexico is making to bring productions to the state, we chose to establish a permanent brick and mortar presence to accommodate that new work. It’s exciting to see how much the state is investing in the industry. We believe production and post-production is going to continue to thrive and grow.”

Haile adds that Netflix recently committed to building another 10 stages, doubling their footprint in Albuquerque and that other studios have plans to expand activity in the state. The state and local film offices are also backing programs to educate and train local talent. “It’s a very welcoming place,” Haile notes. “The people in the community are very enthusiastic about what we are trying to accomplish.”

Founded in 2010, Arsenal FX Color provides post services for television and film with recent projects including "Rap Sh*T" for HBO Max, "Joe Pickett" for Paramount +, "Grey’s Anatomy" for ABC and "With Love" for Amazon Prime. The company is currently building a new facility in Santa Monica.

BURBANK, Calif.—Remote Picture Labs (RPL) has launched RPL Platform, a modular offering of cloud-based post-production solutions that bring flexibility, uncompromising performance, and unparalleled efficiency to workflows from pre-production through delivery.

The RPL Platform is designed to shift decentralized post-production teams to more agile remote workflows, enabling them to use the same tools and software products on existing media and projects.

"The benefits of the hybrid and remote post-production workflows are stunning when compared to traditional work models," said Keith Gore, COO at Remote Picture Labs. "Across cost, efficiency, productivity, agility, and team satisfaction, there really is no comparison — and the RPL Platform delivers all those benefits, as well as the reliability and proven performance that are so essential in post-production."

The central offering within the RPL Platform is RPL Edit. It leverages RPL's fault-tolerant private cloud and high-performance workstations — running Avid or Adobe applications — to provide a hybrid on-prem/remote editing solution that enables full collaboration between team members, no matter where they're located., the company said.

RPL can receive content from any worldwide secure source and make it available to creatives working anywhere. Thanks to ultra-fast 10Gb connectivity and secure transport using PCoIP technology, editors and producers can enjoy picture, audio, and system response identical to that of a traditional editing bay.

Other modules currently available within the RPL Platform include RPL Dailies, RPL Finish, and RPL Archive, which facilitates archiving of projects in any format and rapid restores of archived projects as needed. 

Any of these RPL Platform modules can be implemented as a stand-alone solution or with other modules as part of a larger post-production workflow, the company reported. 

More information about RPL and how the company's solutions enable facility-grade, collaborative post-production workflows anywhere is available here.

HILVERSUM, The Netherlands—NEP Worldwide Netherlands has equipped its new production facility at its studio headquarters here in Media Park with 10 Module-R technical control desks from Custom Consoles—three desks for the new suites and seven dedicated to editing in post-production. 

Two production control rooms are each outfitted with a 23-foot wide inline Module-R with a 3U-high sloping-front equipment pod along the rear of each of its 13 bays. They include a custom section to house a Grass Valley production switcher. Behind each is another 23-foot wide, 14-bay desk, similar in design and positioned in parallel to the Module-R consoles in the front of the rooms, the company said..

Three 12-foot-wide, seven-bay inline desks provide supporting control facilities. Two audio suites are equipped with a U-shaped Module-R desk, each configured to accept a Lawo audio production control panel, it said.

A 12-foot wide inline video switching control desk, with seven bays, each offering 3U-high equipment pods, has been installed in a production control room. The desk’s design also supports two groups of camera control panels.

All 10 Module-R desks have matching graphite Marmoleum worktops, gray side panels and silver-anodized extruded aluminum legs with black-painted floor skids, it said.

"NEP has proved a very loyal customer over the years, and we are very pleased to have been chosen to help equip them for this project," said Custom Consoles sales manager Gary Fuller. 

More information is available on the Custom Consoles website.

SYDNEY—In a notable deal within the Australian production, post-production and AV industries,  Videocraft has acquired Digistor and Adimex.

Digistor provides solutions for the creation, management, storage, and distribution of digital assets for post-facilities, broadcast operations, studios and collaborative, networked environments.

In announcing the deal, Videocraft director, James Taylor, explained the main reasons for the acquisition: “Firstly, with the combined resources and great synergies our businesses enjoy and will continue to enjoy including significant opportunities for scale, there will be excellent added value for the clients of all companies. We will also offer greater solutions and better workflows as a much stronger and combined industry player with a solid point of difference, who is independent and Australian-owned. We will work together on every possible opportunity that enables us to complement each other’s offering in the production and media lifecycle where clearly Videocraft is strong in acquisition, we have a crossover in editing solutions and Digistor is strong in media management and distribution. From today, together, we present and offer solutions as a single supplier with formidable and incredibly experienced in-house engineering and support resources.”

Andrew Mooney will stay on as Digistor CEO and Digistor and Adimex will continue to operate as they are today, under Mooney’s day-to-day management.

“This is an exciting opportunity for Digistor staff and customers alike,” Mooney said. “The combined resources and close collaboration of both entities will deliver an enhanced solution offering and a higher level of service and support for our customers. Digistor will continue to operate as an independent business and I look forward to delivering increased value to our clients as a result of this acquisition. The only changes will be positive ones where we can all join forces to give customers better, more efficient solutions and ongoing support.”

ATLANTA—When I started my company, I knew there were some core technologies needed to make our new post-production house, Blackwater Digital Services, successful.

Based in Atlanta, Blackwater specializes in quality control, mastering, conversion and transcoding, deliverables, asset management, and worldwide digital delivery. Basically, we help with anything needed to properly exploit a film domestically and internationally, following post-production. We like to say we’re ready to help with that “last mile” of a film’s journey, bridging the gap between post-production and distribution.

As with most of the media and entertainment industry, file movement is critical to our business. We are under considerable pressure to deliver more content, to more destinations, in a shorter amount of time—and those file sizes can be very large.

Because of this, Signiant Media Shuttle was one of the first things I spent money on. I had prior experience with Media Shuttle using it with various companies and knew it was fast, reliable, and user friendly. Regardless, we still did our due diligence before acquiring a subscription for Blackwater Digital Services, considering many alternative high-end solutions. Media Shuttle met all our requirements for speed, storage flexibility, security, and reliability.

FTP WAS NOT AN OPTION

First, standard FTP was not an option. FTP-based solutions can be impractically slow and unreliable when moving anything more than about 500 MB. FTP is prone to data loss and corruption, not to mention well-known security holes; that’s why many larger companies have effectively banned FTP. We receive and deliver many very large feature-length 4K ProRes files, which can be 800 GB each. Media Shuttle not only allows us to deliver over the internet, but it is also incredibly fast, especially for assets that large.

Blackwater relies on Media Shuttle’s multicloud, hybrid cloud flexibility to move content from various storage locations and types used in today’s modern production environment. Signiant Media Shuttle supports on-premises file and object storage, public cloud storage including AWS S3, Microsoft Azure, Backblaze B2, and Google Cloud Storage, and hybrid storage architectures where both on-premises and cloud storage are in play. We aren’t limited by our tools when changing storage types and adapting to situations.

Because of our broad, global client base, we regularly work with clients who have notoriously slow and unstable internet connections. It is not uncommon to be hindered by high latency, interrupted connections, and very little bandwidth.

ACCELERATION TECH

Signiant’s acceleration technology and Checkpoint Restart address those exact issues for us. I can’t tell you how many times a connection has dropped around 80% for a client overseas uploading a huge file to us. The ability to restart where that file transfer dropped has saved the day on multiple occasions. We don’t need to babysit the transfer, a feature our teams appreciate with late-night deliveries. On top of that, Signiant improves on standard internet transmission speeds up to 200-fold and is increasingly impactful with longer distanced clients or congested networks.

Post-production is a long process, with lots of files moving all the time, like a well-oiled machine. All those files, along with ancillary data, need to move quickly and reliably, or the entire machine breaks down. Media Shuttle meets our production and business demands admirably, better positioning us to take advantage of new opportunities and business. With Media Shuttle’s unique SaaS architecture, we get the best of both worlds: fast, reliable file acceleration, along with complete control over storage type and location. Additionally, Signiant’s tech support, on the rare occasion we need it, is fast, friendly, and knowledgeable.

More information on Media Shuttle can be found at www.signiant.com. 

NEW YORK CITY—Goldcrest Post has appointed Phil Poli director of engineering. In the new role, the 20-year industry veteran, will be responsible for overseeing, maintaining and developing technology and infrastructure for the facility as well as technology strategy.

Formerly with Light Iron, Poli has also held engineering posts with Deluxe and Company 3 in New York. He is an expert in workflows for dailies, editorial, color grading, deliverables and other post services, as well as color science and media formats.

“Phil is a multi-talented engineer with a thorough understanding of post-production technology and its impact on artists and clients,” says Goldcrest Post managing director Domenic Rom. “He will play a key role in keeping our technology pipeline strong to empower our artists and fuel productivity.”

Poli got his start in the industry as a tape librarian with FX Networks. He later joined Avid as a certified integrator and installer. His background also includes engineering posts with Imaginary Forces, Digital Arts and Rockstar Games.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past few months, it’s that the cloud is a great tool for teams working in post-production. Teams need to make creative decisions and need a central location for media where everyone can see updates and time-stamped feedback of creative work. Cloud computing allows teams to stay connected remotely in virtual rooms where they see and hear the same media content at the same time and can discuss creative changes and then reconnect when new changes are made. 

The discussion part of this process is where things in the cloud can get dicey. Cloud-based solutions may not be enough for all the decisions you’re trying to make that require immediate feedback. You’ll likely find a hybrid approach—one that combines cloud-based applications and streaming media—keeps the creative conversation moving and boosts productivity. Build your content castle in the clouds, by all means, but use streaming to keep the creative flow moving along as you get instant changes.

First, let’s glance at the clouds to better understand why hybrid approaches work so well. There are many solutions that have some sort of cloud-based system for media. Two that stand out are frame.io and Avid's ProTools Cloud Collaboration. Both function a little differently, in that Pro Tools Cloud Collaboration is software where people can open the same session and make changes. The files then get updated for all parties. 

 Frame.io is a web-based approval and review process and offers plugins that directly link to your editing software, which allows for fast media transfers. Both give access to media files that are updated on a server and show changes to all invited parties. The process is very slick, takes no bandwidth once the files have been uploaded and makes for a really smooth collaborative process, especially when internet speeds and work environments can’t be standardized.  

Recently, more involved post-production cloud services have come on the market. They feature self-contained tools where people can do picture edits in real time and have the changes updated on the actual files, without having to upload or download. Services such as Avid’s Media Central are highly efficient and allow real-time viewing and editing while linking to all of the assets that are available for that project. Their recent partnership with Microsoft Azure will bring on a dedicated team for entertainment media, along with added security and other high-level services. Adobe also ups their cloud services by automatically converting hi-res archived assets to low-res copies, or proxies, which are readily available for editing at all times, eliminating time caused by processing and copying large files. The smaller proxy files are directly streamed onto their editing platforms and link directly to the cloud for near real-time edits and previews. 

However, fully cloud-based approaches have their problems. One drawback is the time it takes between creating the content and sharing that content. Often, the software used to create may not be the same software used to share content. Post-production audio teams have to wait for users to create a recording, then wait for them to upload that file before we can see it or comment on it. In many collaboration scenarios, and especially in audio, you need live feedback or direction.

That’s because audio sessions have always worked differently than other production tasks. They require performances or feedback that you can only give and get on instinct, in pursuit of a particular vibe. The cloud can make this cumbersome. Remote sessions need real-time streaming because you need to witness the live changes to see if it met your immediate creative thoughts. This feedback keeps talent creative and engaged, helping them find new approaches when what’s happening isn’t working. 

The speed of this feedback matters. Muscle memory demands we make and break habits swiftly. Any lag or latency, even just a few moments, changes the dynamic completely. The collaborative energy gets lost, and the session can feel like a “solo” project. 

Mixing requires a similarly lively back and forth. Many times, directors will want something different but don’t know exactly what that is until they are in the room with an audio engineer who has the tools to adjust and change things at their fingertips. Going back and forth on creative concepts can be a nightmare in the cloud and it usually ends with compromises no one feels completely happy with.

When you can combine a central location for your files and also provide real-time feedback using the same tools used for creation, then you have the ultimate package for flexibility.

Cloud-based approaches have another potential weakness: security. Security has become an issue with major studios. Many people in the industry feel hesitant to upload content because of:

• Content that’s left to an unknown or unseen management entity; 
• Incidents of theft and leaks from an actor or professional who has access to the content; 
• Weakness in sharing protocols of the content between users; 
• Lack of control of general accessibility of data; 
• Lack of monitoring the raw data transfers to and from apps; 
• Attacks on cloud application providers; and 
• Data loss 

Because of this, many people want to use their own servers that are well protected and fully controllable and secure. Another option is streaming the content as raw data, so it doesn’t live on a server, or streaming from personal servers and having security measures tied to that. Once again, combining clouds and streams may be the right answer for your project.

Before the cloud took off, we only had very big and expensive ways to collaborate remotely on post-production projects, with price tags running in the six digits. Cloud computing completely revolutionized this. Cost has become less of any issue, even when multiple software environments are involved. Streaming solutions are also reasonable in price, making a hybrid approach easily accessible for many professional studios. For example, Sohonet’s Clearview Flex requires a dedicated hardware box and one-time installation fee ($500), as well as an annual platform fee ($1,200) and $1,430/month subscription. Evercast does not require hardware, and runs $1,000 a month. One of the most affordable streaming options, Streambox, costs $2,000 for the hardware and $500/month for the software service. For users on the audio side, Soundwhale may be a good fit ($29.99/mo subscription) as it streams uncompressed audio from any source and offers video sync as well.

Cost-effective solutions that are easily accessible by everyone are what will stick not only for the pandemic but also long after it’s over. Whether it’s cloud based editing, live streaming or remote desktop control, we are going to need solutions that don’t put a wrench in our creative workflows as we try to work around distance and the limitations of technology. That may mean creating our own hybrids of these software approaches to keep our serenity and creativity.

Ameen Abdullah is founder and CEO of remote audio collaboration app Soundwhale.

We live in an age of consistent, high-speed technological advancement, and many companies are hard-pressed to keep pace with the changes. This is especially true for Hollywood and its post-production sector, where few companies started to embrace the cloud as a viable alternative to legacy on-premise solutions. Media and entertainment companies are now starting to feel the impact of a data-driven society, and while not a new concept, cloud advancements are being tailored to the industry and we are seeing an increase in adoption of end-to-end native cloud-based workflows.

While all processes are able to be completed across various servers without using the cloud, there are a multitude of challenges that the industry faces within these on-premise workflows. Rigid workflows were designed and implemented based on finite capacity and technical support. Procuring capex for investment in additional infrastructure is time consuming and, coupled alongside the ongoing manual resources required for implementation and management, tack on costly expenses that hinder global reach, performance and innovation.

By utilizing the cloud’s flexibility to scale operations on-demand, nearly unlimited capacity, reduced costs and easier collaboration solutions, companies can reinvest additional resources gained from the technology into further research and development that is essential to staying ahead of consumer demand.

For example, there is a rising need to support the global release of content—whether it’s “day-and-date” releases or multiterritory D2C platform launches. Both suppliers and distributors require access to toolsets to enable efficient and transparent management of these complex deliverables, forcing operations teams and engineers to reimagine their workflows for true optimization. Other previous challenges included siloed efforts and functions when it came to localization, transcoding and packaging—these have gained a certain elasticity with the cloud, creating a nimble and global infrastructure.

REACHING OPTIMAL EFFICIENCY

The centralization of data is the most essential part of any cloud platform’s success. When managed correctly, a centralized repository of data can help content creators and distributors unlock greater insight into the performance of their video across the entire lifecycle. It can also deliver valuable market insights—from how much it will cost to localize content, to what is being bought and when, to which regions will reveal greater monetization opportunities.

We are now capable of collecting petabytes of data to inform both the creation and distribution of content, but the challenge becomes a matter of how to store it. Traditionally, storage within a tape archive hindered awareness and monetization opportunities available across the full catalogue. By leveraging a cloud-based archival solution, content owners and aggregators now have a cost-efficient way to view a virtualized inventory of workable assets and rapidly restore on demand for increased distribution.

Subsequently, as the adoption of IMF and other standard formats increase, the ability to cost-effectively traverse these components in their native state rapidly decreases the time to market and provides a viable solution to meet consumer demand and forecast new consumption trends.

Integration and adoption don’t simply stop at gathering data and achieving faster processing power. Without reengineering and integrating workflows from creation to archive in the cloud, we are missing a huge opportunity.

INTEGRATING THE OLD WITH THE NEW

Migrating to the cloud gives companies the perfect opportunity to review legacy architecture and update their workflows to create a more efficient infrastructure.

Once in the cloud, the data collected, such as capacity bottlenecks and saturation of instances, can be used to make strategic decisions about how to direct the design of new and more efficient workflows and governance logic. By centralizing and maintaining a clean content dataset, functions like transcoding, packaging and delivery of media can be driven by content- based rules enabling automation at a new scale.

These workflows will in turn become more elastic, removing unnecessary latency and file movements allowing processes to frictionlessly move throughout the entire supply chain both “upstream” and “downstream.”

Think about it this way: Previously, studios had to watch the content to know where to place animations, logos or promotional elements. Now they can leverage cloud-based AI solutions to automatically create those new versions based on data collected from the content. This end-to-end automation capability is already fundamentally changing how content creators and distributors do business.

While possible to lift and shift into the cloud without updating one’s legacy workflows, it would be remiss of companies not to take this opportunity to advance their systems in preparation for the next evolution. As an industry, we’re making significant progress, but there’s still a lot more work to do. At a time when content creators and distributors are under immense pressure to produce and distribute more content at a faster rate, companies need the cloud to stay competitive. Through the adoption of the cloud we can streamline post-production capabilities and achieve greater efficiency.

Hannah Barnhardt is VP of Product Strategy and Marketing for Deluxe.

Basingstoke, UK — October 25, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent shared storage and media management solutions, today announced that The University of the of West England (UWE Bristol) has upgraded the existing infrastructure of its new Arts, Creative Industries and Education media programs facility to a modern, end-to-end, file-based workflow powered by EditShare Flow media asset management (MAM); a 256TB scale-out, high availability no single point of failure XStream EFS 450 shared storage solution for the Film/Animation department, and a 128TB single node XStream EFS 300 shared storage solution and GEEVs ingest and playout server for the university’s Broadcast Journalism program. The advanced, high-performance infrastructure features extensive automation and provides seamless integration with the university’s third-party non-linear editing and graphics systems as well as multi-platform distribution of student-created programs.

Dick Allen, UWE Bristol Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries & Education Technical Resource Manager, Digital Media & Broadcast, selected EditShare to create an immersive infrastructure that connected systems, content, students, and staff. Dick states the importance of having a Media Asset Management workflow, “Managing several programs and hundreds of broadcast and film students requires a detailed level of asset tracking as well as automation capabilities to have an efficient operation. Implementing a media asset management layer is key to optimizing the infrastructure, enhancing collaboration between students and staff, and giving our students a real-world media experience using modern tools.”

At the heart of the new UWE Bristol facility is the EditShare XStream EFS 450 and 300 scale-out storage platforms and Flow media asset management facilitating content access and sharing across the university’s production studio, two large photography studios, animation stop-motion and CGI studios, sound recording and Foley studios, colour grading studios and editing suites which are all connected to the EditShare XStream EFS. The university’s news broadcast studio, which also leverages the EditShare XStream EFS and Flow solutions, is equipped with GEEVS for multi-channel playout to TV and Internet channels. The EditShare powered infrastructure offers an integrated workflow that is student-optimized, providing hands-on experience that mimics real-world workflows that are tightly integrated with the program’s expansive course content.

“EditShare creates an immersive learning environment by connecting systems, content, students and staff,” explains Tara Montford, Managing Director, EditShare. “Flow, XStream EFS and Geevs form the core solution that assists students, staff and research teams to find, reuse and store media assets. It enables collaboration of teams with seamless integration of media systems and embedded tools to retrieve and archive media from a central location. With metadata tracking and asset indexing, staff and students can easily locate and re-use content, increasing the value of asset use.”

UWE Bristol leverages real-world content creation applications including Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Avid Media Composer, ProTools and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve to give students an experience-based curriculum with an intelligent media management layer that brings efficiency to the university’s expansive program. Flow organizes the massive amount of content created and exchanged, acting as a control layer across the EditShare XStream EFS scale-out, high availability shared storage platforms, which are designed to support 4K, 8K, UHD and beyond with near infinite scalability on a no single point of failure architecture. Flow automates media ingest, transcoding, content searches, online to offline movement of media to ensure students are using the correct format and that their content is copied to the right media space.

In addition to providing the core infrastructure housing all UWE Bristol media program assets, the XStream EFS 450 and EFS 300 shared storage solutions provide advanced project sharing capabilities including Avid-style bin-locking, project-sharing and multi-user write access to media spaces for its Adobe Premiere Pro and Avid Media Composer editing systems. At UWE, student project collaboration is a must, making the EditShare XStream EFS project sharing feature a critical component. Student media and projects can be stored in the same Media Space, or in separate Spaces with files are owned by the members of the Media Space –including media files, media database files, project settings and bins –and any user with permission can modify or delete the files.

For more information on EditShare solutions, please visit www.editshare.com or to read the full case study on UWE Bristol, please visit www.editshare.com/case-studies/cs-uwe

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 Contacts

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

Basingstoke, UK — August 30, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, announced today that Cape Town, South Africa-based Magnatude Facilities, a division of Okuhle Media Group, has selected an XStream EFS 300 scale out storage platform, EFS 40NL nearline storage nodes and Flow media asset management to overhaul their media entire workflow.

Prior to implementing EditShare workflow solutions, the team worked off an aging RAID setup that wasn’t equipped to support media intensive workflows, often slowing down with as few as three editors working on a project. In addition, there was no way to search for or retrieve existing assets. As a result the team would lose valuable time and money as a consequence of having to reshoot material they already knew they had- they just couldn’t find it.

“Implementing Flow has completely changed the way we interact with and search for existing footage,” says Ryan Sheraton, live director and post production supervisor at Okuhle. “For example, we’ve shot Table Mountain for nearly every single show that we’ve delivered and broadcast because we didn’t know where our existing iconic shots were. (Table Mountain is a prominent landmark overlooking the city of Cape Town in South Africa). Now with Flow, we can basically just type in ‘Table Mountain’ and the raw footage appears. It’s been an incredible time saver and we don’t waste time and money going out there to get that shot again.”

Faced with a major new project, Showville, a reality television talent show in the vein of America’s Got Talent!but focused on the smaller areas of South Africa, the facility’s existing storage infrastructure needed a major upgrade. With a production crew of 20 deployed to each location, the team knew that they needed a way to optimize their workflow in order to truly collaborate on this project and manage the huge amounts of incoming media.

“It’s one of the bigger shows that we have brought on as a client. There’s no way we could have taken it on with our old setup- it would have been a collaboration nightmare!” Sheraton continues, “With the EditShare systems in place we’re able to have four editors working on the show simultaneously. It’s a great achievement in terms of managing data and managing at least five cameras and four editors working in tandem.”

The production team shoots on location then the footage is couriered over to Magnatude Facilities on hard drives where it is ingested to the 40NL. The editors work with the raw footage off of the 40NL directly, easily accessing project files at the same time and collaborating to yield a final cut which is migrated to the production centric EFS 300.

“When we were working off our legacy RAID system, there was no way for us to share and work collaboratively on projects. As a result we literally had editors running up and down the halls asking people to close files, it was completely inefficient.” Sheraton adds, “Working on ‘Showville’ in this way would be impossible, the bottlenecks it would have created would have been a major blow and would introduce risk to on-time delivery. With the EFS 300 production platform coupled with the nearline storage 40NL system, everyone can open any project when they need it without compromising system performance, it’s awesome.”

Sheraton concludes, “EditShare solutions have given us the confidence to approach larger and more complex projects, we know these systems can take the heat. Going from what we called ‘Frankenstein’ to a reliable and robust storage and media management ecosystem has completely revolutionized how we approach our work. In addition, EditShare’s technical support team is incredible, they’ve always been available to us as an invaluable resource for troubleshooting and workarounds.”

“Successful post facilities like Okuhle need platforms that they can grow their business on,” comments Tara Montford, general manager, EditShare. “EditShare EFS allows facilities to step into an enterprise workflow with a ‘right sized’ infrastructure that maps back to their production needs, with the flexibility to expand on the fly. It's the best of both worlds. They invest in only what they need today with the freedom to grow the platform alongside the business.”

About the EditShare Workflow at Magnatude Facilities

EditShare XStream EFS is a powerful distributed scale-out video storage platform developed for the most intensive media workflows. It's designed from the ground up to support resilient large-scale workgroups and high-bandwidth, high-volume media ingest, transcoding, online collaborative editing and multiplatform distribution of HD, 4K, 8K and beyond. Administrators can easily add one or more XStream EFS 40NL nodes of cost-optimized storage to an existing XStream EFS storage cluster to create a nearline storage workflow like Magnatude Facilities or configure the EFS 40NL as an independent storage cluster for disaster recovery or media backup purpose, with each 4U storage node providing 240TB of raw capacity. EditShare Flow seamlessly integrates with EFS, providing a control layer that manages assets and metadata from ingest to playout with tools to search, retrieve and storyboard media, facilitating a collaborative post production workflow for Okuhle.

For more information on EditShare XStream EFS 300, EFS 40NL, and Flow media asset management, please visit: www.editshare.com.

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 groundbreaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance EFS central shared storage, AQC, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first three-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

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EDITING

The tools that were found on the show floor at the NAB Show offered a glimpse of what’s possible in editing in 2018: streamlined toolsets for beginning editors, customizable solutions for professionals and options in between.

ADOBE put its suite of Adobe Creative Cloud desktop and mobile tools center stage at NAB. Solutions within the Premiere Pro NLE include new color workflows and color matching, new edit-ability with motion graphics templates, and new sound mix improvement features within the Essential Sound Panel. The company also demo-ed new motion graphics templates within Adobe Stock as well as new features within After Effects, Audition, Character Animator and Adobe Primetime.

ARVATO SYSTEMS launched an SaaS version of its EditMate collaborative editing and production asset management system.

AVID highlighted a newly refined user interface for Media Composer|First, a streamlined toolset for beginning editing artists, such as those publishing on social media. Avid has also added support for shared storage, and access to Media Composer|ScriptSync Option and Media Composer|PhraseFind Option to Media Composer|Ultimate.

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN introduced DaVinci Resolve 15, which features a new Fusion page for creating film-quality visual effects and motion graphics animation. The new Fusion page is a 3D workspace with more than 250 tools for compositing, vector paint, particles, keying, rotoscoping, 2D and 3D text animation, tracking, and stabilization. The system also includes an updated Fairlight audio feature including built-in cross platform FairlightFX plugins such as reverb, hum removal, vocal channel and deesser.

FILMLIGHT introduced Baselight 5, a colorist and creative grading tool that can work with different delivery formats including SDR and HDR. Features include local tone mapping and an algorithm that eliminates issues with noise in highlights.

GRASS VALLEY introduced v9.2 of its EDIUS video editing system, now with new video scope supporting HDR, color space list editing and the ability to add new color space, monitor control, Mync (media management software) HDR support, and support for Apple ProRes MXF and Sony VENICE RAW importing.

GRAPHICS

This year, attendees walking through the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center saw expansive new choices in 3D modeling, virtual and augmented sets, fly-through map creation tool sets and advanced options in painting, coloring, lighting and animation.

AVID showed the results of its partnership with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and the Avid Maestro virtual set for creating engaged storytelling through virtual set design. The company also showcased Maestro|News on-air graphics suite, Maestro|Designer 2D/3D animated graphics creation system, WorldMapper map creation toolset and Maestro|AR 3D graphical object creation system.

BORIS FX announced new versions of Continuum, Sapphire, Mocha Pro and Mocha VR as part of the new 2018 Boris FX App Manager. The company also relaunched Particle Illusion, the motion graphics and particle animation system with an updated user interface and new emitter libraries.

BRAINSTORM launched v3 of its Aston graphics creation tool, now integrated with its InfinitySet virtual set and 3D graphics solution in to improve overall graphics workflow. The solution combines the Unreal Engine from Epic Games with Brainstorm’s eStudio render engine to create hyper-realistic scenes and integrate elements such as charts and 3D data-driven motion graphics.

CHYRONHEGO showcased its LyricX 3.2 graphics creation and playout solution, which includes a new built-in HTML browser that streamlines integration with ChyronHego’s Live Assist Panels and CAMIO asset management system. New features include enhanced masking and built-in timer features. The newest version of the PRIME graphics platform was also on display—v3 includes the ability to deliver 10-bit hybrid log gamma (HLG) HDR output for productions. The company also introduced Paint 7.4, now with plug-ins for Publish-to-Social Media and Automatic Player Tracking and full 4K support and expanded support for leading replay servers.

MAXON showcased new tools and enhancements in Cinema 4D Release 19, a 3D animation, graphics, VFX, visualization and rendering software application that is being used for broadcast, film and video, games, visualization, interactive media and virtual reality. The update offers support for Apple’s API Metal 2, and improvements to the rendering functionality in the Radeon ProRender.

ROSS VIDEO introduced the XPression M7 hardware platform featuring a smaller 2RU footprint, with improved scalability to easily upgrade from single channel all the way up to Quad-Link UHD/4K. SMPTE IP standards are also supported using the same base hardware. Ross also introduced v8 of its XPression software, now with Tessera SE: a single engine edition of Ross Video’s multi-engine graphics control system.

RT SOFTWARE debuted its tOG-Sports telestrator and sports analysis graphics solution, which offers new features for creating sports analysis sequences.

VENTUZ TECHNOLOGY launched a new release of Ventuz X, a new generative motion graphics and data visualization toolkit that functions as an effect suite for high-end presentation of data sources and offers the ability to animate generative graphics. Features include improved handling of 2D and 3D assets and integration with augmented reality and on-air graphics workflows.

VIZRT introduced Viz Libero AR, an augmented reality sports analysis tool for live studio productions. The solution is designed to offer a new tool for storytelling during live sporting events by combining realistic 3D replays and virtual graphics.

WTVISION showcased the newest version of Elections CG, a real-time graphics production for election night broadcasts.

Fremont, CA - May 10, 2018 - Blackmagic Design today announced that the thriller “My Daughter Was Stolen” used a variety of its gear throughout production and post, including URSA Mini Pro, URSA Mini 4.6K and Pocket Cinema Camera digital film cameras, DaVinci Resolve 14 Studio for color grading, editing and sound design and Fusion 9 Studio for visual effects (VFX).

“We did the entire project in Blackmagic Design,” said Ari Golan, producer, camera/MoVI operator, drone pilot, post supervisor and colorist, as well as owner of Golan Studios and Atomic Imaging, the production and post houses behind the film. “Everything was shot on five Blackmagic Design cameras and completely edited, graded and finished in DaVinci Resolve Studio. Even the sound mix was done in DaVinci Resolve Studio, as well as green screen compositing. Fusion Studio was then used for VFX work.”

The film, which premiered internationally in select theaters March 1st and subsequently March 9th on the Lifetime Movie Network, takes place in current day Chicago and follows two actresses competing for the same role. When one doesn't get the role of her dreams, she kidnaps the other actress’ four-year-old daughter. 10 years later the girl escapes, but her captor pursues her and begins a murderous rampage culminating in a final chase sequence and showdown.

During filming, DP Don E. Fauntleroy, ASC, used URSA Mini 4.6K PLs as the A and B cameras, as well as an URSA Mini Pro for all gimbal and drone shots, including overhead tracking shots of cars, establishing shots of locations, and the film’s opening shot approaching the downtown Chicago skyline from over Lake Michigan. An URSA Mini 4.6K EF was also used for splinter units and pickup shots, as well as a Pocket Cinema Camera for select stunt drive overs.

“The only non-Blackmagic Design cameras on set were used for still photography,” Fauntleroy explained. “Going into this project, we had just completed ‘Jeepers Creepers III,’ which also used URSA Mini 4.6Ks. We were so pleased with the look and capabilities of the Blackmagic Design cameras that when we started this production, we didn't even have a conversation regarding which cameras we would use. It was a foregone conclusion that it would be the URSA Mini 4.6K and URSA Mini Pro.”

While Fauntleroy cites the cameras’ form factors, dynamic ranges and affordability as additional factors in why they were chosen, it was the image quality above all else. “Blackmagic Design cameras provide the best image per dollar you can get. Also, the RAW CinemaDNG workflow with DaVinci Resolve Studio is seamless, robust and versatile,” he said.

As Editor Roger Wolski noted, in post, the team was able to switch back and forth for editing and color grading in DaVinci Resolve Studio through the use of collaboration mode. “We used the collaboration mode during the edit because I started editing while the film was being shot. First thing in the morning, the previous day's footage was copied to the server via the clone tool. Then Assistant Editor Nick Scurto would edit the metadata and label the clips by scene and take, all while I was editing clips already finished. This not only allowed the assembly edit to be completed just a day or two after filming wrapped, but also allowed Ari to grade simultaneously,” he explained. “I also found DaVinci Resolve Studio’s trim tool pretty intuitive to use. It made trimming and fine adjustments very quick.”

During grading, Golan was tasked with creating a warm, happy feeling for the beginning of the film; however, as tragedy and drama unfold, the look moves to cooler tones. He relied heavily on several of DaVinci Resolve 14 Studio’s new features throughout his work, including the Match Move filter which allowed him to easily replace pictures and video, for example replacing images on television screens and cell phones.

“It saved us from having to use another program outside of DaVinci Resolve Studio, which on a greater scale, was true for the majority of the post workflow in general,” Golan said. “The only thing not done in DaVinci Resolve Studio was VFX in Fusion Studio, as well as some sound effects and foley editing, but that was brought into DaVinci Resolve Studio as stems.”

VFX Artist Adam Clark relied on Fusion 9 Studio’s planar tracker for a number of shots, including tracking fire to objects and bullet wounds to an actor. “In conjunction with the new powerful planar tracking options, I leveraged Fusion Studio’s superb roto tools to isolate tracking areas,” he said.

Dialogue Editor Terry Shaughnessy was in charge of adding in sound effects, music and creating the final mix. “While my audio editing was done in DaVinci Resolve Studio’s edit page, we used the Fairlight page for setting up sub groups, main outs, dynamic filtration and final delivery stems,” he added.

“With the addition of Fairlight audio to DaVinci Resolve 14, we can deliver projects the way we want without having to send out to other programs,” concluded Golan. “Not only do we have advanced color grading and editing in one program, but we also can set up subs and mains and route everything accordingly, output the master, and separate left, center and right surround channels all in one step.”

Press Photography

Product photos of URSA Mini Pro, URSA Mini 4.6K, Pocket Cinema Camera, DaVinci Resolve Studio, Fusion Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com

As part of its continued efforts to revolutionize the management and distribution of digital content for studios and rights holders, OWNZONES Media Network has integrated two of its most powerful tools into one formidable solution. The OTT EntTech company has unified its cloud-based OWNZONES Connect™ media logistics platform with its consumer video applications. This allows content creators to cut costs and manage content discovery by leveraging OWNZONES’ app framework no matter what technology they are currently using.

“By essentially re-architecting our backend and API, we are now leveraging the latest technologies for improved scalability and flexibility,” said Aaron Sloman, Chief Technology Officer at OWNZONES. “Unifying our OWNZONES Connect and consumer video applications allows for real-time changes to the content and content discovery experience that also helps engage and monetize audiences.”

Among the biggest highlights touted as part of OWNZONES’ newly unified services:

• A choice of ready-to-use design templates that can have an app quickly up and running based on the most effective layout for the client’s target audience.

• The ability to instantly localize an app to multiple regions by simply selecting them from the console, eliminating the need to develop different apps for each language. All major world cities included. Plus, geo-restriction options to prevent access by regions where content is not licensed or available.

• A cloud-based data warehouse and analytics integrations, which allow OWNZONES to create a better experience for users and gain insights around content performance and trends.

“From the beginning, we have found ways to transform the experience for those hoping to manage and distribute content in the OTT and mobile space,” said Dan Goman, CEO of OWNZONES. “In unifying our OWNZONES Connect and consumer video applications, we’re taking this to a whole new level – giving our clients access to features like instant localization, analytics integration and more.”

Today’s news follows the announcement of two new OWNZONES Connect features – Cloud ProRes Previewer & ProRes Based IMF Packaging. These tools allow customers with entire libraries of content mastered in ProRes format to leverage the power of IMF in record time and without incurring massive conversion costs.

As the post-production processing continues to migrate to the cloud, OWNZONES is taking a leadership position in introducing many cloud-based features with its proprietary platform, OWNZONES Connect. With years of research invested in the platform, OWNZONES Connect is designed to conform and distribute digital content in the most efficient and streamlined way possible to all devices. It also acts as a post house in the cloud with state-of-the-art features in editing, conversion and encoding, motion graphics, sound mixing and editing.

More specifically, OWNZONES Connect features an array of capabilities that work in conjunction with each other to create the ultimate post house in the cloud for IMF. This includes the Cloud IMF transcoder, the Native Cloud CPL Builder, Cloud-based CPL Source Previewer, Cloud-based IMF Playback, Supplemental Packager and Elastic Parallel Transcoding.

OWNZONES is a pioneering technological force that’s transforming the over-the-top (OTT) industry with groundbreaking innovations, from digital supply chain solutions to unique, customizable video apps. Their solutions help media companies and services deliver high-quality video content to their consumers globally, at scale and at a fraction of the standard cost. OWNZONES’ philosophy is to always go beyond the current market needs and prepare for tomorrow’s transformational technologies. With this mindset, their proprietary technology enables clients to transform, deliver and monetize their video content libraries like never before.

For more information please visit www.ownzones.com.

In yet another series of industry firsts, OWNZONES Media Network, the OTT EntTech company, is leading the charge to revolutionize cloud-based distribution of content by consistently introducing cost and time saving measures for its clients.

In the world of digital distribution, the biggest challenge for studios and rights holders is prepping content to comply with today’s digital format distribution standards. Until now, sending the content to such platforms as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu has been extremely inefficient and incredibly costly. Taking a disruptive stance, OWNZONES has now cracked the code by unveiling ProRes IMF support to its Post Production suite of features in the cloud for IMF (Interoperable Master Format).

“Today’s legacy industry platforms are offering antiquated processes that are too expensive and time consuming,” said Dan Goman, CEO of OWNZONES. “We are radically disrupting the marketplace by creating new ways to distribute content without it continuing to break the bank. After years of research with a talented tech team at OWNZONES, we are pleased to be far ahead of all other companies offering digital distribution. We continue to roll out new innovations on a consistent basis, offering our clients bleeding-edge, yet cost-efficient, solutions to the growing challenge of keeping up with rapidly expanding OTT industry global platform needs.”

With today’s announcement, two new features – Cloud ProRes Previewer & ProRes Based IMF Packaging – will become a first for the industry as they bring a post-production solution for ProRes video editing of IMF packages in the cloud. Now customers with entire libraries of content mastered in ProRes format can leverage the power of IMF without incurring massive conversion costs. Customers will continue to have the option to convert to J2K-based IMF packages, if needed.

By utilizing the OWNZONES Connect™ cloud solution, which incorporates OWNZONES’ proprietary parallel scaling technology, ProRes files are simply “wrapped” in IMF-specific packaging, ready for distribution. The process happens entirely in the cloud, in record time and at a fraction of potential competing solutions.

The new cloud-based ProRes features, the first introduction of its kind, will be part of the offering behind OWNZONES Connect™, a state-of-the-art digital supply chain in the cloud.

“We recognize that there’s a majority of the industry that uses ProRes as their mastering format, and converting it to a different format creates a lot of challenges,” said Aaron Sloman, Chief Technology Officer at OWNZONES. “By using our new features, companies that are ProRes based can move to IMF without the re-transcoding of their files, which can be very costly and time consuming, especially for large media libraries.”

Sloman added: “ProRes video storage and localized versioning long needed a component-based standard among the studios and media companies, and our new product launch accomplishes this as well. Using IMF as the standard, the industry becomes more efficient. We have already seen demand from our customers who realize the cost savings and are confident they won’t lose quality and time, especially for large media libraries.”

As the post-production processing continues to migrate to the cloud, OWNZONES is taking a leadership position in introducing many cloud-based features with its proprietary platform, OWNZONES Connect™. With years of research invested in the platform, OWNZONES Connect™ is designed to conform and distribute digital content in the most efficient and streamlined way possible to all devices. It also acts as a post house in the cloud with state-of-the-art features in editing, conversion and encoding, motion graphics, sound mixing and editing.

More specifically, OWNZONES Connect™ features an array of capabilities that work in conjunction with each other to create the ultimate post house in the cloud for IMF. This includes the Cloud IMF transcoder, the Native Cloud CPL Builder, Cloud-based CPL Source Previewer, Cloud-based IMF Playback, Supplemental Packager and Elastic Parallel Transcoding.

OWNZONES is a pioneering technological force that’s transforming the over-the-top (OTT) industry with groundbreaking innovations, from digital supply chain solutions to unique, customizable video apps. Their solutions help media companies and services deliver high-quality video content to their consumers globally, at scale and at a fraction of the standard cost. OWNZONES’ philosophy is to always go beyond the current market needs and prepare for tomorrow’s transformational technologies. With this mindset, their proprietary technology enables clients to transform, deliver and monetize their video content libraries like never before.

For more information please visit www.ownzones.com.

RIO DE JANIERO— During his more than eight years with NBC, Darryl Jefferson, vice president for Post Operations & Digital Workflow, NBC Sports & Olympics, has seen the rapid evolution of production advances for the network’s Olympics coverage. He’s directed the network’s Olympics production to an entirely file-based workflow, which has enabled NBC to enhance and accelerate its move to multiplatform distribution and enabled its Stamford, Conn. headquarters to serve as the hub for Olympics production. In a recent interview with TV Technology, Darryl discussed his role at the Rio Games and how NBC is ramping up its technical infrastructure to deliver more than 2,000 hours of Olympic linear programming across 11 networks.

TV TECHNOLOGY: What is the difference in your role now as opposed to what it was in London?

DARRYL JEFFERSON: I now oversee the post-production operations for the sports group, so all of our football, NASCAR, all the other things we do in the so-called “off-season” and the Olympics. I also oversee our digital workflow group that does asset management, file movement, file registration, graphics, post-audio, that type of thing. The team is larger and also does more than the Olympics.

TVT: In your transition to VP, was it a case of basically adapting a lot of the techniques that you learned in Olympics production to other sports production at NBC?

DJ: Yes, every workflow has to be slightly tailored, but yes. Some of the technology—such as the technology stack that we're using in the Olympics, we know it will scale to this many concurrent programs, so you're able to really test the waters at this kind of intense event and know that for 17 weeks of football, or for the length of the hockey season, or for some longer period of time, you know you have solid technology.

TVT: What is different in what you're doing in Rio than what you were doing in London, or Sochi for that matter?

DJ: There's a lot that’s different. In London, for example—because, at the time, we had what we thought was a lot of connectivity between New York and London—we replicated both high- and low-res footage. Things would be recorded in London and replicated to both high- and low-res back to our “mothership,” which at that point was Studio 8H at 30 Rock.

NBC Olympics has a team of approximately 1,000 managing its Olympics programming in its Stamford Conn. sports facility that opened in 2013.

Nowadays, we're moving and recording and there's so much file movement, it's much more efficient to just replicate the proxies, in both directions between the venue and our new home-base in Stamford, Connecticut. What that means is we now have 120 channels in two cities—one in Rio and one in Stamford—and the proxies are replicating from Stamford to Rio and from Rio to Stamford, so all users see all recordings. This is in lieu of just moving unnecessary content around. If someone goes to do something, for instance, cut a sequence and send something to a playoff device or send something for edit, it goes back to the place it was recorded, grabs that subset of the high-res, grabs just that and sends it to where it needs to be.

TVT: In other words, you're not duplicating the high-res proxy in Rio, only if needed?

DJ: Correct. It's much more efficient and yes, we have more connectivity, but it really helps us to be more efficient in terms of the bandwidth used for every record. It also lets us capture more things and it's seen by more people. In addition, in Rio, our five big venues in athletics, swimming, gymnastics, beach volleyball, and golf, also can peer into all of those records, clip off shots, send them to themselves, and also other cities in North America can reach into Stamford and do the same, including the Golf Channel in Orlando, our contact media center in Colorado, New York News, 30 Rock, and of course Stamford. All those people are using the two main hubs of Stamford and Rio to peer into this mass of content rolling into the facility.

TVT:What’s the workforce breakdown between Rio and Stamford in term of personnel numbers?

DJ: I have a whole team here in Rio. We also have about 1,000 people in our home-base in Stamford. There's a whole team there managing that effort. What used to be in 8H is now in the Stamford center.

TVT: What's new on the Highlight Factory side of things now?

DJ: The Highlight Factory has gotten bigger. We have more people working in Stamford, in the Highlight Factory, more people physically in the room and we're using a bunch of different tools. The entire [metadata] logging application is happening in Stamford. We have just over 70 loggers adding metadata that's immediately visible to everyone that's looking at media. Those are some new things.

TVT: Has the goal towards multiplatform distribution pretty much remained the same from the past two to four years?

DJ: It's the same production path but the world has changed a lot. We're pumping out to a lot more. We're pumping out to smart televisions, set-top boxes for a variety of cable providers; we're pumping out to more people with closed-captioning, more people with video descriptives. The outlets we're reaching out to is growing as well. We're streaming out to troops overseas in the Armed Forces Network, there's just more of the outlets. So, yes it's the same but the same is now twice as big.

TVT: I've got to ask this question. Is there any part of the production now that is not file based?

DJ: That's a fair question, but no. Occasionally, we make a dub for other broadcasters. We do multiformat to output tapes to others, but no, nothing. Our cameras are all card- or drive-based.

TVT: Did you find all the facilities in Rio are up to your standards, as far as being fiber-based and having the ability to just plug in and go?

DJ: Yeah, and to be fair, the IBC (International Broadcast Centre) is a hub for more than just NBC and their fiber infrastructure is here. We brought a whole lot of fiber—that was one of the new big things we had for these Games—and moving forward, we’re changing our background in the IBC to a fiber infrastructure, and then tying that into a POP (point of presence) and then getting diverse connections. We have 40 GB of connectivity between here and Stamford. That's partially procured by NBC-U and partially by OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services). We have partnerships with Level 3, AT&T and the OBS to get that connectivity.

TVT: How are you handling 4K/UHD coverage?

DJ: It's certainly it's own kind of beast. We have basically a linear channel, linear delivery for 4K. We have a 4K controller on cutting a linear program. We're covering the opening and closing ceremony in 4K and we're also mixing the opening ceremony in Atmos on a trial basis. We're also delivering assets via file delivery out to our meet-me point in Colorado for cable companies and others to pick up. It's a different path. It's not like we're taking everything and simply then converting it for a regular broadcast, it's a parallel process at this point. 

Anecdotally, it's just interesting to see it and it feels like globally we're all putting our toes in the water. I think broadcasters are seeing what they can do, people are excited to see it at home, but really we have to run through the paces and it'll be a process to find out where, how, where appropriate, and if and when people have the kind of appetite. We hope they do. 

TVT: Anything new on the audio side?

DJ: In addition to using Atmos for the Opening Ceremony, we're actually leaving our post-produced audio at home so there's a Pro Tools rig still in Stamford, a Pro Tools room for sweetening, so that will be done remotely through file exchange. That's absolutely new and we're mixing each of the venues in 5.1. There is a patchwork of 5.1 in stereo at each of the venues. 

TVT: How are you handling storage?

DJ: Harmonic is our central SAN, the place where we store all of the video files that are being recorded on the record wall. That’s all being recorded by Media Decks as the principle recording device and are writing to Media Grids in a central SAN. We have 988 TB of Media Grid in Rio and we have just under that in Stamford, so that's almost two petabytes of storage and we'll fill it in the 17 days. I have at least a handful of dollars riding on that, just internally some bets. "You'll never need that much storage" they say and I'll laugh and say "I'll bet you on which day we'll fill it." The Stamford facility runs on Media Grid, that's the central SAN, 24/7, and it only makes sense to have a sister grid in our host city and have the two grids replicate between the two.

TVT: You have redundancy in both in Rio and Stanford, basically?

DJ: It's both redundant and it's also recording different content. Stamford is recording our cable day parts, as they’re based out of Stamford. They're recording all the local production that's happening in Stamford. They're also doing other sports that we're focused on. Here in Rio, we're recording all the live competition feeds and their different stages in some of the control rooms that are coming out of here, some of the NBC feeds from trucks that are at some of the venues, and so on. They're recording different things and replicating to each other. It is redundant equipment, but it's not recording the same thing and it's not simply a backup for the other.

LOS ANGELES – The Hollywood Post Alliance has announced that post production executive Leon Silverman will be presented with the organization’s HPA Lifetime Achievement Award. The HPA Board of Directors, with the help of a select committee, present the Lifetime Achievement Award to an individual who has brought significant changes to the field of post-production.

Leon Silverman

Silverman began his career in post-production in the late 1970s and worked for post-production companies like Compact Video, LaserPacific Media, served as vice president of entertainment imaging and director of strategic business development for Eastman Kodak, and for Walt Disney Studios as its general manager of Digital Studio.

In 2002, Silverman was part of a group of people that helped found the HPA and has served as its president since its inception. He has also served two terms as Governor of the Hollywood Region of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers; he currently serves as Governor at Large. In addition, he is an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers, an affiliate member of the American Cinema Editors and was recently invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

“I am humbled and honored to receive this recognition from the HPA, the organization that is so close to my heart, and from the community that has helped define my career,” said Silverman.

Silverman will receive his award at the HPA Awards gala, set to take place on Nov. 12 at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles.

Production facilities have many reasons to consider moving: more space, a better layout, cost savings. Coupled with record low interest rates and changes in the media industry landscape, it is no surprise that we see new facilities and consolidations announced almost every month.

I’ve reviewed my notes from overseeing dozens of moves to prepare a brief guide to help with your planning. Some of this might seem obvious, but each is drawn from an eyewitness account, and represents experience learned the hard way.

PLAN FIRST, THEN TALK
Companies don’t build new facilities all the time so they instinctively reach for the phone. External help from architects, systems integrators, and mechanical teams is often brought in early.

That impulse undervalues important information best gathered from within, free of outside bias. Start by defining the goals of the move: cost savings, new technology, expanding or new business? A move is the perfect opportunity to reinvent tired work practices, but it is hard. Ask first: How much change are we willing to accommodate? Are we willing to change people’s roles? What pushback are we likely to get? How will we measure the benefits of this change?

Those answers should guide every conversation and decision, including which consultants to consider. (Consultants should not help make the decision that will lead to their hire!) Clear project objectives protect the evaluation process and ensure that you hire the right firms.

WORKFLOW COMES BEFORE SPACE
People tend to think of workflow as something reserved for techies who handle editing systems, but it’s not. Workflow is all about how your organization works together.

You know that light switch in your house whose function you’ve never figured out? You can avoid that by designing high-level workflows first. That allows architectural plans to be optimized to suit the facility, rather than forcing critical workflows to fit. High-level workflow definitions will help develop adjacency plans that guide the architects. Ask yourself:

• What workgroups benefit from face-to-face communication?
• Where are sightlines important?
• Which rooms need to be live 24x7 versus only during the business week?

Answers to questions like these should drive your plans.

DEVELOP A THREE-DIMENSIONAL FINE-TOOTHED COMB
Architects and engineers will give you thousands of drawings to review. You need to visualize these in three dimensions. Go over every line, circle and symbol and, yes, ask questions:

• Is there sufficient support in the wall to support that bank of monitors?
• Are the power systems diverse enough to cover a breaker failure?
• Is that outlet for the monitor at 18 inches above the floor or 54?
• Is the air-conditioning sufficient and redundant to support a 24x7 room?
• Will the mechanical systems reduce the available headroom and destroy the sightlines we hoped for?
• And the hardest question of all… “Okay, what’s missing?”

Small errors in drawings lead to surprisingly expensive construction change orders and delays. They can be hard to catch, but it is worth the effort. Facility problems are easy to see, but difficult to repair. Errors on paper are hard to see, but easy to fix.

PURGE, PURGE, PURGE
If your business has been around for awhile then your workflows have likely accumulated extra steps, kludged work-arounds and inefficient communication. You might even have a redundant department or two.

Render workflows down to the bone. What steps really have value? Eliminate everything else. Don’t pass up the chance to start fresh. These opportunities are rare.

A WORD ABOUT RECYCLING
Don’t hinder new workflows or miss opportunities for the sake of an old video server. You’ll waste many times that device’s value paying labor costs while staffers wait for transcodes that could have been eliminated. If you have not gotten rid of tape, now is the time. (If you must, keep a machine in the dub room for archival stuff). Do remember to save your old software licenses, which are often transferable and upgradable.

FORWARDING THE MAIL
Transitions are never easy. Ask a lot of questions during the design phase to avoid dead-ends and catch limitations before they are too late to correct. Consider:

• Will you cut over all at once or stage the transition?
• Do facilities need to work in parallel for a period of time?
• How will your news-room operate during the transition?
• Will teams move by show or by function?
• How much double staffing is needed?
• How will that staff be hired and paid for?
• If you are moving equipment, how will it be staged?
• Can systems be cut in half to function in both places at the same time?

A GROWING FAMILY NEEDS SPACE
Your new facility is just the beginning of a 10-20 year commitment. That requires both a very long glance into your crystal ball, as well as preparation for changes that might come just 2-3 years after the doors open. Again, it comes down to questions. Here are some that I insist clients consider:

Business questions:
• What are likely business drivers over that time?
• How will those changes drive personnel and technological choices?

Space questions:
• Can we build with enough flexibility so that equipment can be easily changed?

Technical questions:
• What do we know about how technology is going to change the operation in the future?
• Can we plan to be HD today and UHDTV (or more) later? Do we need to implement UHDTV now?
• How much excess capacity do you need in the data centers and cable raceways to support a change to the next generation equipment 8-10 years from now?

Moving is a challenge that is only made more complicated by your need to get on with day-to-day work while the new facility is under development. It is very tempting to pick up the phone and start bringing in help. Make sure that first call is to someone who can help you ask, and answer, the right questions.

Now in my 30th year writing this column, this has been a great opportunity to report on the latest editing technology, shine a spotlight on some of the most talented practitioners of our craft, and indulge in the dissection of the greatest examples of the art and craft of editing.

Over the years, my attempt to understand the aesthetics of the editing craft has provided the most challenging quest for this column. We know editors have three great tools at their disposal: context, contrast and rhythm. But whether the final cuts in a sequence are determined by the editor, director, writer or producer, in addition to appreciating the “hows” of editing, post-production, pros can also advance the discussion when editors gather around the ol’ campfire of discarded floppy discs by comprehending the “whys” of editing.

RHYTHM OF THE AUDIO

Alan Ladd (L) as Shane and Van Heflin as Joe Starrett in the movie “Shane”
Most of the time, experienced editors know that you usually cut to the rhythm of the audio. That can be either cutting (or cutting around) dialog or action, and the reason for this leads us to ask, “Why are we able to perceive an edited sequence at all?”

Instead of a coherent stream of images, why don’t our brains simply receive a succession of disparate shots? After all, in music, the notes, percussions, harmonies and counterpoints enter the brain as a continuous flow. So why does our vision permit, in fact yearn for, a continuity imposed on visual sequences derived from the sum of their whole?

That’s because ears don’t blink.

Watch a person’s eyes and you will see them darting from one angle to another—up, down, left, right—constantly in motion. Yet our brains do not receive “image-black-image” or “image-swish-image.” It constructs a coherent appreciation of our perceived surroundings by discarding the visual information that falls below a threshold of comprehensibility during the instant of either a blink or an accelerated whip/pan. Sometimes this is called the “suppression of vision” to correlate with the “retention of vision” concept that creates moving images out of a sequence of stills presented in rapid succession.

As a result, thanks to the suppression of vision our brains are continually melding a smooth flow of impressions from the jumbled mess our visual acuity either blends together or rejects unnoticed.

Audio, on the other hand, washes over an audience continually, undaunted by whether they actually want to hear a specific sound or not. The result is that we are very comfortable cutting to audio. But what would happen if we cut to picture? What if the images alone determined the pacing? Can that work at all?

Acknowledging we are stepping into the realm of the subjective I’ll be using as examples some classic sequences that have historically entered our legacy from a wide enough spectrum of audiences to allow us to advocate the “work.” But cutting to picture, i.e. letting the content of the visuals determine the pacing, can be a tricky proposition.

ICONIC PUNCTUATION

These days, about the only time we see pure images dominate the construction of an edited sequence is during PG-rated lovemaking scenes where editors dissolve away just before revealing the good parts. But they are in a titillating class of themselves.

One of the earliest examples of intentionally cutting to picture in a film that had international impact comes in the first segment of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent classic “The Battleship Potemkin.” The opening chapter “People and Worms” depicts the flashpoint behind the maritime mutiny during the revolution of 1905.

Sailors are complaining their meat is rife with maggots. In the mess hall we see dining tables suspended on rope from the ceiling. Uniformed attendants pull them down into position, but Eisenstein is not satisfied in showing this with a single shot. Instead, the tables are yanked into position in a succession of four rapid, overlapping cuts. This editing technique, never seen before in silent cinema, must have left an unsettling impression on audiences of the day. But Eisenstein is only sowing the ground for a subsequent harvest.

He pays it off when later one of the galley boys picks up the dinner plate he is washing and reads the inscription, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Enraged, he raises the plate over his head and, in a quick series of seven or eight again over-lapping shots (I think one cut is caused by a broken negative), smashes it down on the table.

There is no soundtrack to cadence the rhythm, but this cutting to picture slams home the sailors’ disgust with the food they are forced to eat, and capped by a quick fade out, provides an iconic punctuation to end the first part of this archetypal paean to the art of editing.

UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF EDITING

Alan Ladd and Van Heflin in the scene chopping away at the stump.
Take as another example two contrapuntal scenes from the classic western, George Steven’s 1953 “Shane,” edited by William Hornbeck and Tom McAdoo.

After being offered a fine evening meal, the wandering gunslinger, Shane (Alan Ladd) notices a tree stump outside the window that the homesteader, Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) has been trying to clear from his land. In gratitude to the wife Marian’s (Jean Arthur) cooking, he takes up an axe and starts chopping away at the stump’s base.

Joe joins him and we are treated to a visual sequence of two men, whacking away side-by-side, helping to fulfill the dream of one while ennobling the other. Left/right, left/right, the axes tear into the wood in a succession of 20 or so edits, with the men pausing after the 16th shot to grin at each other in a moment we would now call male bonding.

This sequence is accompanied by Victor Young’s driving orchestral score, but watch it one time without audio and you will see that the juxtaposition of images compels the scene forward solely by the power of the alternating pictures, creating an impact that almost lets you feel the steel blades attack the obstinate wood. And once again seeds are being planted to be reaped in a subsequent scene.

Later, Shane is accosted by a scruff of range hands in Grafton’s Saloon being urged on by the grizzled cattle rancher Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer) who wants to steal Starrett’s land. Outnumbered, Shane is about to be beaten to a pulp when Joe Starrett, seeing the melee from the General Store, grabs a wooden bat and joins the fray. Again, fists fly left/right, left/right until Shane and Starrett find themselves back-to-back circled by the cowboys. They look at each other with triumph on their faces and the audience suddenly understands the symbolic significance of that lowly stump the two had previously conquered.

This time, Victor Young’s music only comes in toward the end and just as before, you can best appreciate the power of this pivotal scene with the sound turned completely off. The rhythm of the visuals demonstrates how effective cutting to picture can be in the hands of someone who truly understands the power of editing.

Jay Ankeney is a freelance editor and post-production consultant based in Los Angeles. Write him atJayAnkeney@mac.com.