FSR, a leading manufacturer of a wide variety of infrastructure solution products for the audio/video, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), education, corporate, hospitality, and government markets, is proud to announce that Building Information Modeling (BIM) objects from its popular Smart-Way Floor Raceway System are now available on ARCAT, the online source for installer, architects and integrators to find, select, detail and spec building products. ARCAT has incorporated fifteen FSR Smart-Way On-Floor Raceway System BIM objects into its directory.

Since its establishment over twenty-five years, ARCAT has evolved into a comprehensive library for industry professionals seeking an image/model of a product to spec into a project.The directory is one of the most utilized for building product information and product content such as specs, CAD and BIM.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest television broadcast companies in America, is deploying Marquis Broadcast’s Analysis Parking software with a new enterprise monitoring dashboard for its many facilities across the United States. During its expansion, Sinclair Broadcast Group has always focused on optimising best practices for its news technology and operations. Part of this focus was to streamline and simplify the management and monitoring of multiple Avid NEXIS^® systems, helping users manage Avid projects and valuable storage space more efficiently.

Sinclair Broadcast initially deployed Marquis Broadcast’s Analysis Parking in three major sites. The software understands the relationships between Avid projects, folders, bins and media, and runs automated Avid NEXIS analytics and visualization processes, enabling each station to maximise the use of space on their Avid NEXIS storage systems.

Paul Spinelli, director of engineering at Sinclair Broadcast Group, explains: “As a group, we’re continually evaluating new technologies that can realise further operational benefits and efficiencies. Our goal is to standardise technologies and workflows across all our Avid news operations, which now total over 60 sites. The new systems enable the recovery of large amounts of blocked-out – but usable – space and offers detailed enterprise-wide analytics on our Avid storage.”

Blackmagic Design today announced that ViSo Video Solutions has upgraded its virtual reality studios, relying on Ultimatte 12 compositing processors and URSA Broadcast cameras, to produce national television commercials and shows, for clients such as Sky Italia, Mediaset, ESL and Netco Sports.

Founded in 2010, the company not only offers clients its VR services, it also creates all computer generated (CG) and 3D assets needed in house, and provides all post production which includes editing and grading in DaVinci Resolve Studio.

“Augmented and virtual studio environments bring so many benefits to productions,” begins Luigi Nino, general manager at ViSo. “We chose to develop our VR system in house so that we could control every aspect, and customize materials, lighting, animations and effects for each clients’ specific needs.”

The studio’s VR set is 130 square meters and uses three tripod mounted URSA Broadcasts as well as a dolly mounted 4.5m jib on a six meter track. An ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K, with ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel, is used for live vision mixing.

Blackmagic Design today announced that DaVinci Resolve Studio was used to edit, grade and finish Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese's fiction feature debut, “This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection.”

The film, which has its international premiere at Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic competition. Global sales rights have now been picked up by Memento Film's cinema arthouse label, Artscope.

"This project was very personal to me, as it drew on real events from my grandmother’s life in southern Africa for inspiration," explains Lemohang, who directed, edited and delivered the feature in just six months.

Normally based in Berlin, he traveled to his birth country of Lesotho to complete production, before finalizing the edit at Uhuru Productions in Cape Town. The grade was then delivered by colorist Nic Apostoli, at nearby Comfort and Fame Studios.

“Using Lesotho as a location was wonderful, but it did bring its own set of challenges. Largely made up of locals, most of the cast had never been in front of a camera, and there was no electricity or other infrastructure to speak of," said Lemohang.

To get around this, Lemohang and his assistant acquired a generator for power and set up a temporary edit suite on location using quad core Mac Pros. It was here that they transcoded all of the rushes, and assembled a rough cut.

“With no electricity or working infrastructure to speak of, we really put DaVinci Resolve through its paces. It's testament to the software's overall stability that we didn't experience any performance related issues while on set. I also like how modern and fresh the UI is; it actually makes the process of editing fun.

"Going into post production, I had so many ideas, and Resolve made the job of pulling together the cut, so much simpler. I was then able to shape the story once back in Cape Town, using the NLE and retiming tools in Resolve to finesse the story’s narrative, building in tension subtly.

"A few years ago, I'd actually stopped editing altogether," Lemohang concludes. "My previous NLE had become too difficult to use, and very prone to crashing. When I tried DaVinci Resolve for the first time, I rediscovered my passion and enthusiasm for editing. It's a whole other world! Being able to complete post production using a single piece of software makes so much more sense to me creatively. I haven't looked back since."

Blackmagic Design today announced that the latest series of Germany’s legendary stand up show, Quatsch Comedy Club, has been edited and graded on DaVinci Resolve Studio.

The Sky Deutschland show is filmed in front of a live comedy club audience with three live acts and one host taking to the Quatsch Comedy Club Theatre inside Friedrichstadtpalast in Berlin. Post production supervisor, Marius Fischer, has graded the show with DaVinci Resolve since 2015 and this year opted to expand its use on the series to encompass the edit as well.

Marius explains that all of the shows, including the revue style, as well as standalone solo episodes, are filmed, then all of the rushes are passed through to post, which normally takes around 60 days to deliver an entire season. “I was keen to put the editing side of Resolve through its paces on a major project, as I could see that there were efficiencies to be gained in our series workflow.”

A minimum of seven cameras capture every comedy set, meaning Marius has to manage a huge amount of footage for each of the shows. “I’ve found features such as Sync Bin essential, as it allows smooth playback, but without the massive file size of a multicam clip. Once all of that heavy lifting is taken away from your process, you have so much more time to focus on the actual editing and making the very best production that will keep audiences entertained.”

Marius has also cut this season working with the DaVinci Resolve Editor Keyboard, which he believes has added yet another layer of efficiency to his post workflow. “You can work freely with both hands and there’s very little need to use a mouse. I wanted to measure the time savings, so I carried out a little experiment. I tried to make nine cuts within a one minute long multicam clip from the series. Working with the keyboard took two minutes less.”

“I love how simple and reliable the whole approach is. Productions rarely follow a linear delivery path once in post and the ability to do everything in one application makes so much more sense,” he reveals. “The idea of jumping in and out of pages to make small changes when needed is far more intuitive and saves a huge amount of time. You can continue to finesse and refine the edit at any stage during post production, without ever needing to render out a new timeline.”

“Quatsch Comedy Club is such an institution in Germany. In fact, I grew up watching it with my family. It can feel quite surreal that I’m not only working on it, but that I’ve also been able to bring the very latest developments in post production, thanks to DaVinci Resolve, to keep the show fresh and funny for the next generation watching at home.”

VITEC, a worldwide leader in advanced video encoding and streaming solutions, today announced the strategic acquisition of IPtec Inc., a developer and manufacturer of industry-leading solutions for low-latency transfer of telemetry and video-over-IP networks. This acquisition is the third the company has made within this vertical in the last 18 months, continuing VITEC's growth in broadcast contribution and remote production.

"IPtec is highly respected in the military and broadcast verticals," said Kevin Ancelin, VP Worldwide Broadcast Sales, VITEC. "IPtec introduces the benefits of J2K, MPEG-2, and legacy H.264 4:2:2 10-bit codec support, as well as a full duplex encoder/decoder and a telemetry-to-IP gateway that complement VITEC's portfolio of high-quality, low-latency HEVC codecs. Together, our solutions will provide customers with a purpose-built technology platform capable of delivering broadcast-quality media streams even under the most extreme conditions."

What's New:

Sonnet Technologies today announced the Fusion™ Dual 2.5-inch SSD RAID PCIe® 3.0 card, the latest product in the company's line of high-performance storage cards that enable the installation of SSDs into a computer's or Thunderbolt expansion system's PCIe card slot. The Fusion card includes a hardware RAID controller for drive configuration, plus an external USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C port with 15 watts of power.

What It Does:

The Fusion Dual 2.5-inch SSD RAID card enables users to install two 2.5-inch SATA SSDs (sold separately) into a full-length PCIe card slot. The attached SSDs are managed by the card's onboard RAID controller, which supports RAID 0, RAID 1, Span, and JBOD configurations and provides users a powerful tool for configuring the SSDs for best performance or data safety without impacting their system's performance. For added convenience, a USB-C port capable of supporting high-performance, bus-powered drives and other USB peripherals is included. The USB-C port also supports the USB 3.0 charging specification that enables simultaneous charging and syncing of an iOS® or iPadOS® device.

Mediaproxy, the leading provider of software-based IP broadcast solutions, has appointed Bright Installation Oy as its representative in Finland. The distribution and integration company will initially focus on the Australian manufacturer's compliance and monitoring systems, including the LogServer IP logger, monitor and analyzer.

Bright Installation is a standalone company within Bright Group, a rental, installation and distribution company serving the live performance, entertainment and event markets. Bright has its headquarters in Vantaa, a city in the greater metropolitan area surrounding the Finnish capital of Helsinki, and offices in the regional cities of Tampere and Turku. It also runs subsidiaries in Sweden and Norway.

One of the most awaited drama series of 2019, His Dark Materials, produced by Bad Wolf for BBC and HBO, was finished at Technicolor in London. With a story set in a parallel universe that seems like the Britain of a century ago, and with fantastic elements such as giant armoured polar bears and ever-present “daemons” – animal representations of the human soul – the production is a tour de force of visual effects, and therefore somewhat demanding of the colourist, Jean-Clément Soret.

“Over the eight episodes of series one there were four directors and DoPs,” Soret explained. “Justin Brown was DoP for the first two episodes, and I had worked with him a lot in the past on commercials so we had a strong understanding of where we wanted to go. I was really happy to be able to collaborate with him again.

“Justin shot some tests – with the real locations, actors and costumes – in both 35mm and digital,” he continued. “It always surprises me how different film looks! What the tests did was allow us to create a core feel. The decision was also made to add a bit of subtle film grain throughout the episodes. The Technicolor colour science team in LA then created a LUT for Baselight, which gave us that same film feel with the digital footage.”

One of the challenges of the story – based on a trilogy of novels from Philip Pullman – is that each human character has a daemon, and humans are rarely seen on screen without their daemons around them. That meant a large number of VFX shots to insert the CGI daemons. “I found that when it came to the integration of the VFX, contrast and colour was key. The film LUT, together with the control of sharpness and softness from Baselight, was a great help.”

The first series – based on Northern Lights, the opening novel of the trilogy – moves from an Oxford college bathed in warm sunshine to “The North”, Pullman’s name for the Arctic, where the first battles take place. “We may have set the feel in the first episode, but the story develops through different worlds and different eras, so the grade naturally develops,” Soret said.

“With different directors and DoPs across the series, the colourist has to provide the backbone of the look, to create consistency while respecting each cinematographer,” he added. “Baselight allowed me to set the key looks then develop them naturally, freeing me from a constrained palette and allowing us to create a convincing visualisation of this rich and complex story.”

As well as remarkable creative control, the Baselight grading facilities at Technicolor also provided critical support in the workflow, by giving free access to all the raw footage from the series as well as the VFX shots as they developed. The practicalities of creating eight hours of premium drama in a television timescale meant that grading on specific episodes took place when directors and DoPs were available for supervision. That meant that Jean-Clément Soret could be working on three or four episodes at any one time.

The result is an engaging, enthralling drama that looks ravishing and chilling in turn. This first series is broadcast on BBC1 and HBO in November and December, while the second series is already in production.

FSR, a leading manufacturer of a wide variety of infrastructure solution products for the audio/video, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), education, corporate, hospitality, and government markets, has announced that its recently released Smart-Way Raceway system is the recipient of an Award of Excellence from Tech & Learning Magazine. The awards program evaluates and salutes outstanding products that are improving the way educators work and students learn. Smart-Way Raceway was honored in the “Best re-invention of a classic” category.

“For 40 years, Tech & Learning has reported on how edtech products are improving teaching and learning,” says Tech & Learning Group Publisher Christine Weiser. “In keeping with this mission, our 2019 Awards of Excellence contest focused on stand-out products that are both unique in the K-12 market, as well as those that are helping schools solve specific problems.”

The Smart-Way Raceway System provides a cost-effective way for schools to get the power and data connections to the exact locations they need for reliable, safe connectivity, making it ideal for classrooms and collaborative work environments. Today’s classrooms are breaking from traditional settings with more flexible furniture and seating arrangements creating a real challenge to transport power and data efficiently. Smart-Way eliminates obstacles by allowing schools to position connections anywhere in the room, delivering the power necessary for students to benefit from the technology that comes with today’s advanced devices and connected workspaces.

ADTH reports a successful 2019, its 25th anniversary year, including the opening during May of a new research and development facility in Taiwan's capital city, Taipei. 2019 also saw a major expansion of the ADTH Tolka range of broadcast, OTT and IPTV content protection products.

"Television technology is advancing faster than ever as the industry gears for the transition from HD to HD-HDR, 4K-UHD and upward to 8K," says ADTH CEO Michael Day. "Viewers have the option of larger display screens than ever. At the same time we are seeing an increased public desire to watch programmes via mobile phones and tablets. These diverging influences have the potential to coalesce into extremely high resolution wearable displays if computer users and TV audiences are significantly attracted by that mode of viewing. We see our role as offering the greatest possible choice in what, when and where TV viewers choose to watch and delivering the technology to make that possible."

The April 2019 NAB Show was ADTH's busiest ever exhibition in terms of product introductions, including the DV3358, a competitively priced new satellite IRD providing full support for conditional access. DVB-S/S2 input compatible, it outputs TS over IP, ASI and 3G-SD

Atlanta DTH, Inc. (ADTH) announces that it has joined the SRT Alliance, a broadcast media industry collaboration created to develop an open-source protocol allowing low-latency video streaming over the internet. ADTH will provide full support for the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol.

Developed and pioneered by Haivision, the SRT protocol optimizes streaming performance across unpredictable networks with secure streams and easy firewall traversal. It accounts for packet loss, jitter, and fluctuating bandwidth, maintaining the integrity and quality of a video stream.

"With its 25 years of experience in the broadcast and telecommunication sectors, ADTH is a very welcome addition to our membership," comments Haivision CCO & EVP Strategic Alliances Peter Maag. "With increasing support from across the entire industry, SRT is rapidly becoming the globally preferred standard for low-latency video streaming."

"Efficient and effective standards are essential to the advancement of any industry, not least in the OTT streaming sector where signal delivery needs to overcome many technical variables," adds ADTH founder and Managing Director Michael Day. "The SRT Alliance's aims and objectives are in full accord with our own strategy of promoting the highest possible video quality-of-experience securely, efficiently and at the lowest possible latency. We are SRT-ready."

Blackmagic Design today announced that Madrid based post house, Pigmento Color Grading, has switched to DaVinci Resolve Studio as part of a facility upgrade for HDR color correction and IMF format delivery.

Founded by Fernando Martinez and Pepe Abellàn, colorists with more than 20 years of audiovisual finishing experience, Pigmento has rapidly formed a reputation for delivering a boutique, tailored service to both broadcasters and OTT clients throughout Europe.

The team’s credits include episodic features such as The Pier, Locked Up and Emmy Award winning Money Heist, which has gone on to be a global success.

Spurred by increasing client demand for Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and IMF ready workflows, DaVinci Resolve Studio has now been installed as the primary online, grading and mastering solution within Pigmento’s two state of the art grading suites and two additional support workstations for conform, VFX pulls and deliveries.

Featuring Intel’s Dual Xeon SuperMicro processors paired with NVIDIA Tesla K80 and RTX2080ti graphics cards respectively, the grading suites feature Sony BVM-HX310 and Dolby PRM 4220 reference monitors and DaVinci Resolve Mini Panels for control. Underpinning the setup is 180TB of shared storage, with a 600TB NAS for backup.

Blackmagic Design today announced that Chimney relied on DaVinci Resolve Studio to collaborate in real time across its New York, NY, and Gothenburg, Sweden, locations while delivering visual effects (VFX) for the hit zombie movie “The Dead Don’t Die.” The international post production company also used Fusion Studio for select VFX work on the film.

“The Dead Don’t Die” follows the peaceful town of Centerville as it finds itself in a battle against the undead as zombies begin to rise from their graves. Directed by Jim Jarmusch, the zombie comedy stars Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Tilda Swinton and more.

The Chimney team produced more than 300 VFX shots for the film, with work happening simultaneously at its New York and Gothenburg locations. With Jarmusch and the film’s DP, Frederick Elmes, located in New York, Chimney needed to be able to collaborate in real time across locations so both teams could work closely with the filmmakers to discuss and implement changes during the VFX process.

“Since this film was Jim’s first VFX heavy project, we wanted to ensure that he felt comfortable and connected to the team throughout the entire process,” explained Chimney’s VFX Supervisor Sam O’Hare.

Chimney turned to DaVinci Resolve Studio’s collaboration capabilities for its ability to review EXR sequences in real time.

Blackmagic Design today announced that CHEAT has continued its expansion with DaVinci Resolve Studio, adding a new HDR ready grading suite as well as a research and development lab.

This adds to CHEAT’s three preexisting grading suites, which include Linux machines with dual Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 processors supported by four Nvidia GTX 1080Ti GPUs and the DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel.

The first project to be realized through the new workflow is The End of the F***ing World season 2. Returning following the critically acclaimed first season, which has been nominated for BAFTA and Primetime Emmy Awards, the grade on series two was led by CHEAT’s owner and colorist Toby Tomkins.

“Season two was a challenge because it introduced a new director, new DPs and a new production designer. It was also our first Dolby Vision grade as a facility,” says Toby. “There was a lot of pressure to ensure we delivered to the same high standards expected of us from our work on season one.”