Sony has launched a new set of high-grade picture monitors from its TRIMASTER range at this year’s BSC Expo in London. 

The PVM-X2400 (24’’) and the PVM-X1800 (18.4’’) monitors provide high picture quality and accurate colour reproduction thanks to specified and dedicated panels from Sony, which offer ultra-high definition with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels and an impressive brightness of all-white luminance of 1000 cd/m2.

CVP, one of the UK’s leading production solutions providers, will be providing hands-on experience with some of the latest kit to reach the UK market at this year’s BSC Expo 2020 (Friday 31st January to Saturday 1st February, Battersea Evolution, London).

Featuring a set inspired as a homage to the BSC’s 70th anniversary, the showcase at BSC Expo will allow customers to compare like-for-like options and to get hands-on with the equipment they are interested in — along with all the necessary accessories — to find out how their creative desires can be best fulfilled.

Following the appointment of Matthieu Straub as the company’s technical and operational consultant to France and the Benelux countries in the summer of 2019, FilmLight is delighted to announce that it has now established a permanent presence in Paris. By sharing premises with ARRI France, FilmLight is developing a strong hub for creative and technical knowledge and events.

The hub will host the first of FilmLight’s Colour Day workshops in 2020, on 28 January. One of the advantages of sharing the centre with ARRI is that it underlines the seamless workflows from camera to finish, using the BLG format for render-free viewing and creativity. The BLG grading metadata is stored in the ARRIRAW and QuickTime headers, ensuring the content and its look are permanently linked.

The Paris Colour Day on 28 January, aimed at creatives and technicians in production and post production, will see FilmLight’s workflow specialists, Straub and Thomas Eberschveiler unveil new FilmLight tools. Attendees will also hear from guest colourist Stéphane Azouze about his collaboration with directors Anastasia Mikova and Yann Arthus-Bertrand on the recent award-winning documentary ‘Woman’. Finally, colour scientist Florine Bel will share her image expertise and discuss her work developing film aesthetics, colour spaces and conversions.

The shared space has already hosted successful events, including a workshop day for DITs. Led by Straub, with guest speakers from Netflix and from post house Mikros, the group discussed the latest developments in colour space management and workflows. ARRI’s presence allowed the discussion to include ARRI Looks and how they can be incorporated into FilmLight BLG post production. In the demonstration area, they featured an ARRI ALEXA camera feeding Prelight and Daylight software, allowing the delegates to experiment with look development and make comparisons between standard and high dynamic range colour spaces.

Explaining the importance of bringing together creative artists and technicians, FilmLight’s Matthieu Straub said “My background is as a digital image technician, and I know how directors and cinematographers are increasingly relying on DITs to find technical solutions to their demanding creative requirements. “Our intention is to use our demonstration and meeting space here on the Rue René Boulanger to be a place where we can encourage the sharing of knowledge and experiences, to help the French cinema industry achieve ever greater things.”

mediaClass reports a sustained acceleration in demand for subscription based services offering video content directly to connected viewers. Bypassing traditional broadcast and satellite platforms, OTT services are typically streamed over the top – meaning over any internet connection rather than a proprietary network.

"Given the rapid changes in product offerings and market trends, the choice of OTT and streaming technology is absolutely key," says mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "The established OTT middleware products on the market are incremental improvements and add-ons to older IPTV-based systems. This leaves them with a heavy footprint requiring massive servers which are inefficient and inflexible."

"Using our detailed knowledge and long experience of TV services to develop a modern, agile architecture and approach, we invested heavily to develop a full product range from scratch. The key parameters for our customer-centric view were to speed up deployment and enable a low-cost legacy IPTV path for service providers and telcos who want to move to a world-class offer which is disruptively affordable. We have developed our own software modules for functions including a content management system, digital rights management and AI recommendation engines as well as CDN and mobile clients."

Sony has announced that the Sony BRC Series PTZ remote cameras have been chosen to capture unique close-up footage of the heart-warming story of beautiful lynx cats in the high-end TV wildlife series, Snow Cats & Me.

Produced by Oak Island Films and Hello Halo TV, the two-part series pushes creative and technical boundaries to present an intimate portrait of animals in the wild. With the producer Ted Oakes, Managing Director of Oak Island Films commenting: “This was a tricky challenge: the Sony BRC cameras helped us capture amazing footage that expresses the unique character of these beautiful animals in their natural environment.”

Sony has announced that its Simple Live Streaming service, a new proposition for users to streamline the process of acquiring live content, is now available (as of 12th December 2019). The additional workflow flexibility for its palm-sized 4K HDR professional camcorders, the HXR-NX80 and PXW-Z90, can be accessed via a free firmware upgrade to enable content creators to shoot wherever and however they want. 

With Wi-Fi connectivity, Simple Live Streaming enables high quality live streaming to major video sharing websites and social media platforms such as Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook with a single camcorder. Offering simple operation, it further enhances the remote delivery of content quickly without compromising on image quality. 

Norbert Paquet, Head of Product Management for Sony Professional Solutions comments: “The introduction of Simple Live Streaming for the HXR-NX80 and PXW-Z90 streamlines the overall workflow, from shooting to live distribution. Equipped with Simple Live Streaming, the camcorders will have online sharing features, further empowering content creators to concentrate on what they do best – storytelling on the go.” 

Promethean, a digital solution to dynamically programme interactive video overlays, has announced its collaboration with True Digital Group, the South East Asian leader in content and digital platforms, to release the new version of the TrueID TV Box application across South East Asia.

TrueID TV Box is the new set top box from one of Southeast Asia’s leading Pay TV platform operators (part of the CP Group) that enables viewers to watch sports and entertainment on live, linear and on-demand basis without the hassle of installation. The latest box release is expected to roll out to thousands of homes across the Christmas period. It is the country's first Android TV Box that meets Google standards, which crucially now includes the certification of Promethean Interactive Overlays. This enables True Digital Group to create a conduit between content and commerce for their TrueID TV Box users.

Promethean is an online platform for dynamically programming interactive video overlays for live and video content on the web, mobile and OTT platforms. It licences a tool that allows broadcasters to place contextual and relevant overlays onto live streams and VOD, delivering engaging customer interactions that drive measurable ROI. Promethean's solution is player agnostic and as such supports a wide range of third party players available today out of the box.

"We've been using the Promethean technology across our websites and mobile apps since the summer, which has led to double-digit click through rates and some very compelling advertising campaigns with great regional brands,” commented Reed Anderson, CTO at True Digital Group. "As we were building our new TrueID TV Box, we wanted to demonstrate the convergence between the viewing experience and the opportunities afforded by connectivity - and that means allowing the audience to interact with the content, whether through man of the match polls or the ability to order food for delivery straight from your TV."

New action comedy, School Fight, uses the Shogun 7 HDR monitor/recorder to give the Sony FS7 a new lease of life

How do you make a full-length feature film, with flawless, cinematic values when your camera budget only stretches to the Sony FS7 cinema cameras already owned by the crew? It’s a conundrum the production team behind new action comedy, School Fight, solved by adding cutting edge recording technology from Atomos and Apple to their arsenal.

School Fight is a low budget, independent feature film, but you’d be forgiven for assuming the investment in the on-screen image was far more high-end. This comes from the crew’s unwavering commitment to achieving the highest possible production values by squeezing everything they could out of the camera equipment they had available and a minimal budget.

The concept for the film was the brainchild of seasoned stunt professional Damien Walters, so it’s no surprise that action sequences, fight scenes and all manner of carefully choreographed carnage is all featured heavily. He joined forces with producer Joby Stephens to bring this vision to life in full cinematic glory.

Argentine telecommunications facilities provider Servicios y Telecomunicaciones SA (SYT) has chosen a complete mediaClass OTT TV Everywhere solution as the core of a newly launched Rocstar TV Everywhere platform. The system is designed to allow carriers, cable operators and ISPs to offer own-brand TV Everywhere OTT products based on a strong channel line-up and premium content. All functions are provided through an operator-class version of mediaClass software, customised and integrated into servers at SYT's headquarters in Buenos Aires.

"We signed the agreement with SYT at the April 2019 NAB Show and have been very busy adding specific features for Rocstar TV local markets," says mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "This new service will allow easy white-labeling for carriers, ISPs and cable operators to offer full TV Everywhere OTT and IPTV with their own brand and their own app. The system includes all the advanced TV Everywhere features – content source processing and storage, digital rights management, subscriber management, viewer analytics and an AI-based recommendation engine. We have also built in true multi-tenancy which is often claimed but not delivered. The resultant service is very easy to use, includes automatic configuration, and is highly cost efficient."

Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc., Sony Mobile Communications Inc. and Verizon joined forces with NBC Sports to test how 5G can change the way live sports broadcasts are captured and produced. During the Houston Texans vs New England Patriots football game at NRG Stadium on December 1st, 2019, a camera person from NBC Sports captured video of the game on the field using Sony’s PXW-Z450 shoulder camcorder. The video was streamed through Sony’s prototype transmitter box and Xperia 5G mmWave device, via Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network to a production room in the stadium.

The test proved that 5G-connected cameras can be a reliable and beneficial option for future live sports broadcasts. Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband’s low latency and high bandwidth combined with Sony’s mobile device, video, and encoding expertise enabled low-latency high-quality video to be transmitted in near real time to producers. The test showed the potential for remote production teams to be located anywhere, regardless of where the game’s taking place. Furthermore, 5G’s essentially instant wireless connectivity means that cameras can be untethered, allowing for more creative camera positions and angles throughout the game and reducing set-up time and costs required for camera system integration.