Leader Electronics is pleased to announce a new addition to its team with the appointment of Neil Coles as European Regional Development Manager. Based in London, he will be working directly with customers and via the Leader network of distribution partners to extend the company's presence across the continent.

"Neil is a popular and highly respected member of the broadcast industry with a good knowledge of the creative and commercial aspects as well as the technology on which our customers depend," comments Leader Europe Managing Director Koichi Fukagawa. "His areas of responsibility will include promoting the wide range of test and measurement solutions to the existing Leader user base and helping increase our share of the broadcast, digital film and web-TV market."

"Accurate, repeatable and cost-efficient test and measurement are essential in the highly competitive sphere of content creation, postproduction, storage and distribution," Neil Coles adds. "I am delighted to be joining a company which is clearly living up to its name as a world-leading producer of innovative, intuitive and affordable instrumentation. Leader has already made significant advances in the OB market which we see as an area with considerable growth potential both into the 4K UHD domain and, longer term, into 8K Hi-Vision."

Since 2002, the Parliament of Catalonia has produced an institutional television feed as a free public service and educational resource for its citizens and media organizations. Overseen by a tight-knit team of in-house broadcast and engineering specialists, the Barcelona-based Parliament manages all aspects of production and delivers 150 hours of live video content on a monthly basis. Located within the historic Ciutadella Park, the Parliament’s production facilities include eight meeting rooms, seven television control rooms, two dedicated audio studios, a master control room and an editing suite, housing all video equipment required to distribute up to six program feeds to broadcasters, closed-circuit television and web streaming channels. Critical to broadcast operations are a range of AJA solutions for recording, frame synchronization and conversion, including the file-based Ki Pro Rack capture and playback device, the dual-channel FS2 framesync/converter and AJA’s versatile lineup of Mini-Converters.

SugarHill Recording Studios, one of America’s best-known music recording facilities, has upgraded its Neve Genesys Black console by installing the GenesysControl plugin.

Designed to future proof analogue workflows, the Neve GenesysControl plugin provides the final link to total integration between Genesys and Genesys Black consoles and Digital Audio Workstations. With the GenesysControl plugin on board, recording professionals can mix traditionally using the console, work in-the-box, or combine both approaches in a highly effective hybrid workflow.

Based in Houston, Texas, SugarHill has been helping internationally acclaimed artists create hit records since it first opened its doors in 1941. It has played host to artists such as Lightnin' Hopkins, the Big Bopper, Freddy Fender, Willie Nelson, Ray Price and Destiny's Child.

SugarHill’s Genesys Black console is used for recording and mixing projects. It was originally istalled in 2018 and has been used on many sessions for artists such as Chance the Rapper, George Thorogood, Kevin Gates, 21 Savage, Maxo Kream and North Mississippi Allstars. 

MediaKind, a global media technology leader, today announces that it is working with Microsoft, Evergent, Slalom and VisualOn to develop an interactive, Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) platform which will enable the Chattanooga Film Festival to take place in front of a digital audience, while carefully maintaining the event’s intimacy, culture, and intent.

The combined technology-solution partnership aims to support the festival’s community of independent content creators and sponsors who have been hard-hit by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

Leader LV5350 portable waveform monitors and LV7300 rasterizers have been chosen as reference test instruments for broadcast television coverage of a major football tournament scheduled to be held next year in Cameroon. The games are scheduled to take place in January and February at city venues for live transmission across Africa and around the world. The instruments are being provided by Leader Europe's Brussels-based distribution partner Studiotech SA.

"The LV5350 encapsulates in a compact and portable unit all the features OB and studio gallery colorists need for matching multiple camera channels," says Studiotech's General Manager Nicolas Tardieu. "Live stage and sports events send adrenaline levels very high for TV production teams as well as the contestants. Dependable and easy-to-navigate tools are essential. With its integral multi-view monitor screen, the LV5350 is exceptionally easy to configure and control. The LV5350 and LV7300 incorporate practically every reference tool OB technicians need for live signal evaluation plus the drill-down facilities required during initial system line-up and continuity checks."

CTV, one of Europe's longest established providers of mobile television production facilities, has chosen Leader LV7300 and LV7600 rasterizing waveform monitors as master reference instruments for its OB3 and OB12 outside broadcast vehicles.

"Leader test instruments have proved highly reliable, efficient and operator friendly right back to our first purchase of LV7770 multi-SDI rasterizers six years ago," comments Paul Francis, CTV's Chief Technical Officer. "Some of the projects we work on are massive in scale, taking in feeds from well over 100 cameras. High-precision monitoring of HD and UHD signal flow is vital, both to achieve accurate matching of incoming feeds and to ensure that we are maintaining the full available dynamic range from source right through to output. This latest purchase comprises 12 LV7300 and two LV7600 instruments. Both models can be fully operated from the front panel which, combined with their compact size, makes them ideal for use in OB suites.  The LV7300 and LV7600 have a very similar control menu structure so operators can move freely between them. The resultant measurements are precise, repeatable and can be copied off to USB memory for easy logging or sharing."

Blackmagic Design today announced that RealmSmith.tv is using its products to live stream the hit tabletop gaming series “Into the Mist” on Twitch, and using DaVinci Resolve Studio’s cut page to quickly edit each show’s highlights for YouTube.

RealmSmith.tv is a Toronto, ON based live streaming and tabletop gaming company, and “Into the Mist” features improvised live play of Dungeons & Dragons’ “Curse of Strahd” campaign setting. Jason Azevedo, founder and president of RealmSmith.tv, acts as Dungeon Master alongside weekly players gathered around an immersive table setup, where players and viewers are made to feel they are part of the game experience. Joel Augé, co owner of RealmSmith.tv, manages all aspects of the stream’s production and workflow.

When RealmSmith.tv embarked on “Into the Mist,” they decided to produce the show as a multi camera live stream to keep viewers entertained throughout the episodes. They initially invested in an ATEM Television Studio HD live production switcher, two Blackmagic Micro Cinema Cameras and two Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4Ks to achieve a more cinematic feel. They later incorporated two additional Pocket Cinema Camera 4Ks so they could further enhance the experience by capturing more camera angles.

“While a lot of live streams are based on a single, frontal view where players call in from their own homes with webcams, we wanted ‘Into the Mist’ to show everyone in the same room with multiple camera angles and proper lighting,” said Azevedo. “We really separate ourselves by having such a professional, cinematic look to our live streams.”

Blackmagic Design today announced the new ProBalance PSA “Stay Home” was shot by Clio Award winning director Kiran Koshy using a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. Koshy shot the PSA in his own backyard using his family dog Nigel and young daughter as talent, and worked with nearby colorist Charles Gerstner using DaVinci Resolve to grade the final spot.

Based in Long Beach, CA. and former agency creative director, now commercial director, Koshy had worked with a number of Asian brands in the past. Malaysian pet food brand ProBalance approached Koshy through his production company in Kuala Lumpur, Directors Think Tank, in mid-March to shoot the PSA even though they knew he would be unable to shoot outside of his home.

Working with creative agency Imaginary Friends and Directors Think Tank, “Stay Home” focuses on a patient dog teaching the importance of staying at home and practicing social distancing. The spot shows the dog in a Western style standoff with his human companion, who he teaches to sit and stay safe.

Blackmagic Design today announced Focal Point Productions is using a Blackmagic Design live production workflow to produce educational content for GBMC HealthCare System. In addition to streaming weekly townhall meetings for hospital staff and frequent educational Facebook Live sessions for patients, Focal Point Productions is also using an ATEM Mini live production switcher to stream interviews with GBMC HealthCare System experts for local news segments.

GBMC HealthCare System is a 342 bed medical center that provides acute and sub acute care, handling more than 23,000 admissions and 52,000 emergency room visits annually. They teamed up with Maryland based video production and live streaming company Focal Point Productions to create ongoing content to keep its employees up to date on the latest COVID-19 developments. In addition to internal townhall meetings, GBMC HealthCare System and Focal Point Productions also began streaming frequent Facebook Live sessions featuring clinicians and hospital leadership discussing timely topics.

As part of its coverage of the current situation, local news affiliate WMAR-2 invited several GBMC HealthCare System experts to participate in a call in segment, for which Focal Points Production used an ATEM Mini to power the live stream.

Blackmagic Design today announced India based digital cinema designer and colorist G. Balaji used DaVinci Resolve Studio to grade the recent Indian hit film “AADAI” and the upcoming “Andhaghaaram.”

Working on dozens of Indian feature films and TV shows, Balaji started his career as a film editor before moving to DIT and colorist work. Since 2015 he has used DaVinci Resolve Studio on more than 30 films for both color correction in post production and on set dailies work.

“AADAI” is a hit thriller film that was released for theatrical distribution in India and across global streaming networks in 2019. The film follows a free spirited girl, Kamini, who had become famous creating Internet prank videos. One night, she gets the shock of her life when she finds herself alone and naked in an abandoned building after a late night party and is forced to face her past.

Blackmagic Design today announced that webcomic and gaming powerhouse Penny Arcade is using a variety of its products, including an ATEM Mini live production switcher, to power its live streaming workflow for several weekly online shows. The shows air live on Penny Arcade’s Twitch channel, “PennyArcade,” and are later uploaded to its YouTube channel, “pennyarcadeTV” (PATV), attracting tens of thousands of viewers.

What started as a thrice weekly comic strip has since become one of the most popular and longest running webcomics online, creating and distributing gaming content to millions of readers globally. Over the years, Penny Arcade has grown its business to include PAX, the largest gaming festivals in North America and which also use Blackmagic Design gear for live production, Child’s Play, the largest gaming charity in North America, PATV, home to its video and media content, merchandise, podcasts, and more.

In building out its video content, Penny Arcade wanted a more professional live streaming workflow and sleeker look for its productions. Producer Joshua Price and his team stepped in, transforming a meeting space into a production studio outfitted with a multitude of Blackmagic Design gear.

The leader in intelligent storage solutions, GB Labs, has announced a development partnership with ATTO Technology, Inc., a global leader of network, storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions, and has qualified ATTO 360™ Tuning, Monitoring, and Analytics Software with GB Labs CORE.4 operating system.

A network built with ATTO FastFrame™ Ethernet adapters and ThunderLink® Thunderbolt™ adapters can be optimised to perform far better than what’s commonly expected of Ethernet networks. ATTO 360 Tuning, Monitoring, and Analytics Software helps users easily and quickly tune networks to achieve maximum performance.

GB Labs CEO-CTO Dominic Harland said, “Any storage system can only be as good as the quality of the connection it has to creative workstations or processing platforms. This is especially true of our high-end Space and FastNAS platforms, which are so powerful and intuitive that they can actually be let down by a substandard link to the workstations they are there to drive.”

The Quicklink TX has been enlisted by oXyFire Media to assist in remotely producing FreeSports’ Rugby League Back Chat programme amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Skype TX technology has enabled the show to remotely introduce presenters and guests while the usual studio-based production is not able to take place.

Rugby League Back Chat is a 60-minute show produced by PHA Broadcast and broadcast on FreeSportsTV. The programme is in its 8th series and hosted by Matt Shaw and is the UK’s essential weekly Rugby League TV debate show.

“It’s not quite as bad as having a chat show with nothing to chat about; but having a sports chat show with no sport to chat about does have its challenges.” say’s Producer Paul Davies of PHA Broadcast. “As a 30-episode programmes, Rugby League Back Chat was only 3 programmes into its current series when the lockdown was announced meaning not only was there no sport to talk about, but no guests to talk about no sport.”

Due to the current COVID-19 outbreak and social distancing rules, the most obvious prospect was to cancel the series or at least put it on hold until it was safe to return to the outside world. PHA Broadcast required a method of continuing the Rugby League Back Chat show without requiring the presenter and guests to visit a studio and sit side-by-side.

OWNZONES Entertainment Technologies announces that OWNZONES Connect™ SaaS platform is a recipient of the 2020 Future Best of Show Award, presented by TVB Europe.

“We are very proud to receive this Best of Show Award,” said Dan Goman, CEO of OWNZONES. “Connect truly redefines the media supply chain through cloud workflows and AI toolkits. Receiving this award is meaningful because it further validates the importance of streamlining production, collaboration, and delivery workflows in the cloud in order to give audiences worldwide greater accessibility to content while helping content creators reach more users, more effectively.”

Future’s Best of Show Awards are evaluated by a panel of engineers and industry experts, and are selected based on innovation, feature set, cost efficiency and performance in serving the industry. A Special Edition of the award program was held this year in the absence of a physical NAB Show, with entries judged on their written nominations.

Riedel Communications today announced that Radio and Television of Montenegro (RTCG) has adopted the company's state-of-the-art networking and communications technologies for its studio upgrade. As broadcast rights holder and host broadcaster in Montenegro for a broad range of national and international sporting events, RTCG has installed a comprehensive signal routing and crew communications backbone based on the MediorNet real-time network, Artist digital matrix intercom, and Bolero wireless intercom.

RTCG is the public service broadcaster of Montenegro, with its headquarters in the capital city of Podgorica. Work on the project started in 2019 and entails a complete state-of-the-art infrastructure upgrade. The expansive studio upgrade has positioned RTCG to offer premier coverage of popular and high-profile sports events, including European handball, qualifying events for the 2021 Summer Games, European championship water polo, the division 1 league of Montenegro football, European women's football qualifiers, and qualifiers for the European basketball championship.