NAB 2012: Less is more

Broadcast

This year’s NAB will have fewer product launches and more focus on streamlining workflows and reducing costs. But there will still be plenty to get tech buyers excited.

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If there’s a single clear trend among all the manufacturers attending NAB, it is a response to the profound changes driven by rapidly shifting consumption habits.

“Today’s technology needs to do more than allow for technology migrations, such as the transition to HD or from manual to automated workflows,” says Snell chief executive Simon Derry.

“Manufacturers need to allow broadcasters to do more with smaller budgets, and yet give them the ability to create, manage and deliver content across multiple platforms, and to monetise their media assets.”

Translating that widely accepted assessment into product is tricky, with several firms saying they want closer dialogue with clients, and many seeking tighter integration between software and applications to overcome traditional silos.

Expect fewer individual product releases and more talk of ways to streamline workflows and costs.

Management and systems

In what is expected to be a significant NAB for Snell, Derry claims the company’s new products are not just different to anything currently around but are “truly game-changing”.

Integrated Content Engine (ICE) is an integrated playout platform that is said to be the only one that can scale from a single channel to 100+ channels while maintaining the same user interface.

“Unique to ICE is a content validation feature that analyses source material as soon as it is available to prevent invalid formats or impaired content from getting on air,” says Derry.

“This feature is critical for broadcast operations looking to avoid incompatibilities as their file-based workflows continue to change.”

Another show launch is Momentum, Snell’s media management and workflow system, and Vega, a new routing switcher that allows any combination of inputs and outputs in a mixed coax/fibre environment - something Derry believes “redefines its product category”.

Harmonic vice-president, product management, Tom Lattie says the industry is in the middle of moving from the traditional “island” approach of system design and management to a more holistic, IP-based infrastructure.

“We will showcase cost-effective, high-performance workflows that bridge the gap from traditional broadcast to next-generation multi-screen services,” he says, highlighting the debut of ChannelPort, an integrated channel playout device for its Spectrum servers.

At Harris, the theme is ‘deliver the moment’. Mathias Eckert, vice-president, sales and services, explains: “The evolving nature of how consumers digest media has transformed the way broadcasters operate, requiring solutions that automate workflows, simplify content management and support multiplatform delivery.

Harris is helping broadcasters transform signals into ‘media moments’ that inform and entertain their audiences.” Harris will introduce QuiC, a range of quality control tools for analysing video files, and HView SX Pro, a multi-display management system designed as a compact signal processing and monitoring option for control rooms.

“Live production has become increasingly complex as the number of signal sources rises, increasing the need to simplify monitoring processes across facilities,” says Eckert.

Miranda Technologies is presenting new systems to more effectively address loudness compliance and offer smarter signal management, while reducing operating costs for broadcasters and playout providers.

It will also introduce systems that automate VoD mastering, better integrate playout and simplify social media graphics, says senior vice-president Marco Lopez.

Acquisition and production

Unmissable in this category is Canon’s recently released EOS C300, which offers digital 35mm imaging in tandem with the Canon EF lens range loved by cinematographers.

Although the resolution is HD, the image starts life at almost 4K because of its 8.3 megapixel sensor. Given the way Canon derives colour information, there is little aliasing or chromatic distortion when it comes to the final image.

The latest (Mark III) version of its bestselling 5D DSLR will also be on show, and could offer high enough bitrate (50Mbps) to support HD delivery.

Canon has also promised to deliver by the end of the year a DSLR featuring a 35mm full frame CMOS sensor that supports 4K video, and it may be previewed at the show.

There is stiff competition from Nikon, whose D800 has begun shipping, and a number of relatively inexpensive largesensor cameras including Sony’s F3 and FS10, Panasonic’s AF101 and the Arri Alexa.

According to Arri business development manager Milan Krsljanin, the manufacturer will unveil “interesting developments and products that will strengthen Arri’s market leadership”.

Sony is likely to row back on 3D amid reports that it is to scale down its LA-based training facility, the 3D Technology Centre, and concentrate on developments in 4K.

Like 3D, Sony has a business that encompasses not just the front end of 4K production but also the consumer side, where it hopes to promote 4K cinema systems, 4K-capable TVs and home cinema projection.

Backing higher resolutions requires filmmakers to acquire content in the format, and central to these plans is Sony’s F65 4K camera, shipping since January with roughly 400 pre-orders worldwide.

In May, Sony will also launch a new camcorder aimed at high-end videography. The PMW-100 will cost around £3,322, sports a new sensor design, has a single 1/3-inch chip and records in the XDCAM format at 50Mbps HD422.

3D and high resolution is core to the direction ofMeduza, which will announce at NAB that the Titan camera for HD 3D TV is ready to buy. However, plans to deliver its bigger brother, the MK1, which was announced a year ago, are on hold pending development of a 4K sensor.

JVC will debut a range of newsgathering cameras that are said to be smaller and lighter than current models, and deliver better sensitivity in low-light environments. Key is the ability to instantly transfer files back to a TV station without a microwave link.

According to Gustav Emrich, JVC Europe product manager, the new technology should be particularly appealing for one-person ENG operations that need to get footage on air immediately. “The technology to instantly move files to the newsroom directly from the camera will fundamentally transform the way news is gathered,” he predicts.

Post, distribution and delivery

Grass Valley says its customers are shifting from a focus on a particular technology towards a more strategic view of how tech investment can affect their business models.

“This is a very important time in the evolution of our industry and customers want to talk about the problems they are facing and the business opportunities they want to go after,” says Grass Valley executive vice-president of marketing Jeff Rosica. “We want to be much more of a partner.”

For Grass Valley, fundamental to addressing this is Stratus, a software platform integrated across the company’s product line and intended to make collaborative working easier. Released at NAB 2011, it is now operable with the firm’s K2 Dyno Replay System, which means metadata created with the Dyno will be immediately available to other operators working on the same network.

Avid director of solutions development Kevin Usher says he believes customers “increasingly need a trusted, more consultative partner to help them handle ever-growing content demands”.

The company will focus on news, where Avid has a set of integrated, web-based software tools, and sports, where it is seeing increased demand for quality content to be pushed out to fans during a game.

“Scoreboard highlights, promotions and classic clips can now be delivered in-stadium to enhance fans’ experience,” says Usher.

“To make this happen, stadiums are investing in high-quality, collaborative, media production tools.”

For Dolby, the main challenge is understanding the impact of delivering content to a wide number of consumer playback devices.

“Content creators want to ensure their content reaches the consumer in the best quality possible, even when the content creator doesn’t know what all the end devices will be,” says Dolby marketing manager Venkat Venkateshwaran.

Part of the solution might be Dolby Digital Plus, which is capable of delivering high-fidelity audio from iPods to home cinemas in up to 13.1 channels of discrete surround sound. HBO Go, Vudu and Netflix have all licensed the technology to deliver their OTT services.

KEYNOTE: NETFLIX

Disrupting distribution patterns on both sides of the Atlantic, Netflix has become a major player as a conduit for streamed premium film and TV content on connected devices.

It even has a fund for original content, so it will be interesting to hear what chief content officer Ted Sarandos has to say at a Q&A session on Tuesday 17 April.

European broadcast veteran Gerhard Zeiler is also on the bill. The chief executive of RTL Group is on the verge of joining Turner Broadcasting System as president of its international division, and will doubtless have something to say about the strength of channel brands in an era of OTT video and apps.

The SMPTE-sponsored conference on digital cinema that opens the trade show could throw up some interesting points.

It will have fresh perspectives on 4K and will take stock of advances in high frame rates, a technology touted by director James Cameron, who will deliver a session titled ‘The Secrets of Making 3D Profitable’.

This article is taken from the March/April issue of Broadcast TECH.

Studios: meeting demand for space

Broadcast 

With several new studios opening and established ones being expanded, Adrian Pennington asks: is there over-capacity in the market, or will rising demand keep everyone busy?

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The demise of Twickenham Film Studios, which is in administration pending sale, coupled with the opening of several new studios in the UK in recent months, might suggest an over-capacity in the market. Yet it seems the demand for well-resourced and increasingly large studio space is at an all-time high.

Post-production consultant Peter Joly is lobbying to save the Twickenham site. He has drummed up a petition arguing that, having recently blocked further development at Pinewood, the government “would be ill-advised to allow another key part of what remains a relatively fragile industry to disappear to unnecessary development”.

Joly claims a groundswell of opposition to the potential destruction of the site within the creative community, and can point to signatures from David Cronenberg, Stephen Daldry and Steven Spielberg, who shot part of War Horse there. With names like that on board, hopes for a symbolic success for this campaign are high.

But the market won’t settle until, as looks likely, TV Centre is sold to property developers. It can only spell good news for the capital’s other established facilities, which will look to accommodate BBC productions. For now, studios are not sitting still.

3 MILLS STUDIOS

• Location London
• Space 14 x up to 13,500 sq ft stages
• Production The Million Pound Drop Live

The past year has been the best ever in terms of occupation and income at 3 Mills Studios, claims

executive Derek Watts. Some 40% of its business is from features such as Danny Boyle’s Trance, and 30% from TV, including Channel 4’s The Million Pound Drop Live. The remainder comes from West End theatre rehear-sals and music videos.

It has also been the boosted by the occupation of Locog, which is rehearsing on site for the London 2012 opening and closing ceremonies.

THE BOTTLE YARD

• Location Bristol
• Space 8,000-32,000 sq ft spaces
• Productions Stella, Dirk Gently, Inside Men, Five Daughters

The Bottle Yard is co-managed by Creative England and Bristol City Council. Its production spaces are sited with fellow tenants TR Scaffolding (media riggers), Visual Impact’s 24/7 Drama, and Bells & Two Tones (in-vision fire vehicles and crews). Bookings for 2012 include series two of Sky 1 comedy Trollied and feature Mariah Mundi And The Midas Box.

MEDIACITYUK

• Location Salford
• Space Seven HD studios, up to 12,500 sq ft
• Productions Blue Peter, A Question Of Sport, Sports Personality Of The Year, Coronation Street

Open for a year, MediaCityUK studios has now counted 600 productions through its doors and can look forward to welcoming Coronation Street, the set for which is being built on part of the site overlooked by the BBC canteen.

“Growth is good,” says commercial director Ian Munford.

“We’ve seen strong demand for high-quality HD studios, but demand is also changing in that we are seeing interest for the range of facilities and spaces we have to offer, such as the piazza.”

Munford wants to promote MediaCityUK as a campus-wide facility for end-to-end digitaltapeless production and has enticed a couple of unnamed cloud-based facilities to the site

ELSTREE STUDIOS

• Location Elstree, London
• Space Six stages, various sizes
• Productions Big Brother, Let’s Dance For Sport Relief, Dancing On Ice, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

What’s a studio’s USP? “It’s not just space – it’s the right sort of space,” says Elstree Studios managing director Roger Morris. “There are plenty of empty warehouses, converted paint factories and the like, but there are not enough of the right kind of studios, in the right location, to satisfy the TV market – or films.”

Cherry Portbury, studios manager at Media House, says it’s up to facilities to respond to any overcapacity.

“Much depends on how versatile they are and how they market their appeal to other areas such as film, channel hosting, events and the corporate sector.

“Reinvestment to adapt to new markets or improve existing facilities is an expensive risk and may force studios to close if it is not considered worthwhile,” she says, noting that IMG-owned Media House now benefits from complete HD upgrades with stereoscopic capability.

Elstree was home to the most recent run of Big Brother, with live evictions attracting around 1,000 people. Its two George Lucas stages have held Let’s Dance For Sport Relief and Dancing On Ice, plus a live Celebrity Millionaire.

“Our large stages are bigger than anything the BBC or ITV has, so it’s not a difficult sell; it’s just a case of fitting everyone in the time slot they want,” says Morris. “A new post operation, offering Avid editing, Pro Tools 10 with Euphonics series 5 sound mixing, Foley and ADR, will be part of our bundle with the studios. And we have 40 related trades on-site from special effects to drapes, scenery and lighting.”

THE PAINT HALL

• Location Belfast
• Space 2 x 20,000 sq ft stages (in addition to established studio)
• Productions Game Of Thrones

There are also two 20,000 sq ft new stages nearing completion in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter adjacent to The Paint Hall, whose anchor project remains Emmy Award-winning Game Of Thrones. HBO is likely to film a third series there, having created hundreds of ancillary jobs for electricians, carpenters and set builders. Unlike the Paint Hall, this space is purpose-built.

Moyra Lock, head of marketing at Northern Ireland Screen, says: “We don’t believe we are over-supplied in Northern Ireland. We didn’t have anything to offer large productions before 2007. We continue to market aggressively – selling our facilities, funding programmes and studio space.”

PINEWOOD STUDIOS

• Location Iver Heath, Bucks
• Space Numerous, across three sites; new, planned 30,000 sq ft stage
• Productions Would I Lie To You?, Piers Morgan’s Life Stories

Pinewood – like Media-CityUK, part of the Peel Group  – has also spotted potential in digital. It will invest in digital workflow kit, improved cameras and HD infrastructure, and promote a new 30,000 sq ft stage in the hope of attracting event TV with large live audience demands.

WIMBLEDON STUDIOS

• Location Wimbledon, London
• Space 3 x 8,000 sq ft studios, including one for HD
• Productions Starlings, The Iron Lady, World Series Of Dating, The Angel

“The sale of TV Centre is exactly why we decided to invest in new studios,” says Wimbledon Film & Television Studios managing director Piers Read of a newly opened 8,000 sq ft HD studio aimed at light-entertainment productions and capable of seating an audience of 425.

The studio cost £200,000 in partnership with Roll to Record, which has provided technical infrastructure including Calrec sound desk, EVS hard disc recording and a Grass Valley vision mixer (though the studio is not yet ready for live production).

The site also includes two 8,000 sq ft stages and more than 50 standing sets left over from The Bill, plus two further 2,500 sq ft studios, set to open shortly.

Read says Wimbledon has been “exceptionally busy for a start-up in a recession”. In its first year, Baby Cow’s Sky comedy Starlings and Film 4-backed feature The Iron Lady filmed there.

“We have back-to-back bookings throughout the year but we can’t compete for larger format shows,” says Read, who is on the hunt to acquire a rival studio. “They need 10,000 sq ft and there aren’t enough of those spaces.”

Read says demand comes from the need for quality studio space “that has all thecreature comforts associated with a sound-proof and professional environment”.

He adds: “For a long time, productions have gone for underpriced spaces without quality facilities. That can seem like a good deal up front but peripherals, from dressing rooms to recording facilities, drive up costs.”

WOODFORD FILM STUDIO

• Location Woodford, Manchester
• Space Potentially 118,000 sq ft
• Productions TBC

Avro Heritage is considering converting a 500-acre site at Woodford, a former aerodrome where three hangars provide 118,000 sq ft of potential space.

Piers Tempest, a consultant driving the project, says the future of the

site has yet to be determined. “In the short term, we are inviting productions to come in for location filming,” he says. “It’s ideally suited for very large productions that need build space with a secure perimeter, and those who want to film either because part of the location is in the North, or on cost grounds.

“The next year is about getting productions in, assessing the market and giving feedback to the owners.”

WARNER BROS

• Location Leavesden, Hertfordshire
• Space Nine sound stages
• Productions TBC; currently home to a Harry Potter tour

The UK tax credit, where foreign productions can gain a cash rebate of up to 25% of qualifying UK spend, continues to boost the domestic film economy, with Warner Bros Studios set to become the country’s next major go-to production facility alongside Pinewood, Shepperton and Elstree.

Spanning 170 acres, the site will house nine sound stages, offices, workshops, a mill, a production rentals outfit and an extensive backlot. From this week, two stages are open to the public as the Warner Bros Studio Tour London – The Making Of Harry Potter, a permanent showcase of the sets and props used in the movie franchise, which was filmed at Leavesden for a decade.

This marks the first time a US studio has set up a permanent production base in the UK, but Warner Bros has no plans to operate Leavesden as a facility exclusively for its own productions. According to Screen International, had the land been abandoned or sold after Potter, the country could have lost 35% of its production capacity.

Outside Broadcasting: summer of sport

Broadcast

The quick succession of Euro 2012 and the Olympics threatens a shortage of skilled crew. Adrian Pennington finds out how the UK’s outside broadcasters will cope.

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The Olympics dominates the summer’s sporting agenda – and with good reason, as Dave Gordon, head of major events at BBC Sport, explains.

“It is the biggest thing the BBC has ever tackled because of the sheer scale of ambition in what we are doing,” says Gordon, who has been involved in nine previous summer Olympics. He says the amount of media on offer across multiple platforms is unprecedented and probably “more than from any other broadcaster”.

“We will have 2,500 hours of sport on our platforms including day through evening coverage on BBC1 and BBC3. Red button channels, alongside national and local radio coverage and video, will be the core of our web offering,” he says. “There is barely a bit of the BBC that isn’t touched by the Olympics.”

Having offloaded its outside broadcast resources a few years ago, the BBC has contracted SIS Live, the company that bought its OB assets, to supply the bulk of additional cameras, uplink trucks and crew (alongside its own news crews) to supplement the host broadcast provided by the IOC’s production subsidiary, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS).

“We’re not flooding the venues with extra cameras but selecting sports that will have the most impact for a British audience and augmenting the positions provided by OBS,” Gordon explains.

“As good as the OBS coverage is, it isn’t comprehensive for everything that we might want to feature. There are certain sports where we want isolated feature coverage, for example. For the athletics, we will position a camera high up, covering the stadium in 360 degrees so that it can hone in on the UK team’s lane during a relay race. We will also have some of our own cameras at ground level as an analysis tool for athletes’ movement.”

Manchester link

TV presentation will be produced from the International Broadcast Centre in the Olympic Park, where two presentation areas, for BBC1 and BBC3, are being built.

Pictures and sound will be fed by fibre up to Salford, where the web operation is based. BBC sports news output will also originate from there.

Arena Television is one of three UK OB contractors working for OBS (alongside French group Euromedia and Belgium’s Alfacam). It also has a couple of smaller presentation contracts with international broadcasters including NBC.

“Planning has been ongoing for about a year now and is very complex,” says Arena MD Richard Yeowart. “Luckily for us, there is no Glastonbury this year, allowing us to accommodate more summer work than normal.”

In addition to this and its ‘bread and butter’ contracts, Arena is one of two UK companies working for Uefa to provide host coverage of Euro 2012. The second, Telegenic, will drive two HD vans to the Ukraine, after performing a successful job for Uefa at Switzerland 2008. Its trucks will be parked at venues in Donetsk and Kharkiv “mainly because they don’t want to move trucks around Ukraine because of the quality of the roads”, says unit manager Eamonn Curtin.

Playing ball

Telegenic’s Olympics commitment involves host broadcast responsibility for volleyball and some of the football, both of which will be in 2D.

The firm has now added Speedway to its existing roster of events for Sky Sports – which include Heineken Cup Rugby, Aviva Premiership Rugby, Super League and regular Premier League 3D match coverage – as well as a trio of equestrian events: Hickstead Derby, the Royal International Horse Show and the Horse of the Year Show, which are all planned to be shot in 3D.

“We did the Horse of the Year Show successfully in 3D in 2011, which looked great because we can get the cameras so close to the action,” says Curtin, who admits that covering the larger-scale Derby racetrack will be more challenging.

The future of the International Broadcast Centre is of particular interest to The Crewing Company, which, with its partners Alias Hire and The Bridge, is part of the iCity consortium bidding to take over the site. The firm’s HQ is adjacent to the Olympic Park media gate.

“The fibre-optic links laid around the park to support the games will benefit media businesses, but also the cost of rent in Soho is fuelling a gradual move out east,” says joint MD Stuart Hatton. “We feel that Hackney Wick is going to be key to the development of the digital media industry in this country.”

The Crewing Company is supplying technical personnel such as transmissions and commentary control operators to OBS as well as Caribbean broadcaster SportsMax. “There is not enough talent in the UK to fulfil demand so we’re recruiting from all over Europe, South Africa and Australia,” says Hatton, who is looking to add another 200 to his pool of 650 domestic freelancers by the summer. Particularly sought-after are broadcast engineers with experience of high-profile live sports events, and camera crew. International broadcasters tend to bring key crew members over but will look to build up their teams locally.

“Many broadcasters have yet to make a final decision and some very good UK crews have not yet been snapped up, but I fully expect they will be and there will be a huge shortage of London-based camera crew to pick up non-Olympic stuff in that-six week period,” says Hatton.

Presteigne Charter chief executive Mike Ransome agrees that resources will be stretched, but says its engineers were contracted to Olympic duty six months ago.

It is preparing to build MCRs including signals processing and EVS/Avid-based tapeless server and edit systems for The Olympic Unit, a collaboration between Australian broadcasters Channel Nine and Foxtel, and for Canada’s CTV.

The company is also serving broadcasters covering French Open tennis, Wimbledon and Euro 2012.

With little understatement, Ransome concludes: “The logistics of getting crew and kit to places to set up in time during this period will be extremely important.”

OLYMPIC BROADCASTING SERVICES
TECHNICAL CHALLENGE

As the host broadcaster, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) is responsible for providing pictures from London 2012 to 147 rights-holding broadcasters.

Planning for the Games started soon after London was chosen as host city in 2005. OBS liaised with the London organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) in all areas affecting broadcasting, including the competition schedule, location and build of the 42,000 sq m International Broadcast Centre (IBC), plus logistics and technology.

It also worked with rights holders to confirm their specific requirements. For example, it was not until broadcasters such as NBC and the BBC requested 3D coverage that OBS decided to produce 230-plus hours in the format.

Production resources, excluding those for 3D, include 50 mobile units, 14 of them from UK suppliers, and more than 1,000 cameras (up from 900 in Beijing) including 40 super-slow-motion cameras.

This will produce more than 5,600 hours of footage, in HD and stored on EVS XStore-SAn technology. All material will be available throughout the Games – in Beijing, material had to be deleted every three days. Audio will be produced in 5.1 Surround Sound with all channels embedded in the HD stream.

The number of hours is disputed; one rights-holding broadcaster said that when less necessary feeds such as beauty shots are taken out of the equation, the broadcastable volume is nearer 2,500 hours.

Whatever the case, the Games is the world’s largest broadcast operation and will be transmitted to a 204 territories and an estimated global audience of 4.8 billion.

The OBS team will increase from 150 full-time staff to a workforce of around 5,600 by the time the Games starts. This includes 1,200 students trained and paid to work as audio and camera assistants, commentary system operators or liaison officers.

Production enhancements include the use of virtual graphics in sports including athletics, swimming and rowing. OBS will also provide detailed course animations for select sports, making use of GPS tracking to show precise routes, significant course aspects and passing places of interest.

In partnership with NHK and the BBC, OBS will also film part of the Games in the Super Hi-Vision format, which offers 16 times the quality of HD TV.

CASE STUDY

On the road with Sky’s F1

“We have a high bar to reach,” acknowledges Sky director of operations Darren Long. But he is up for the challenge of bettering the BBC’s presentation of Formula 1 races when Sky begins its first full season of live coverage from Melbourne on 18 March.

A dedicated channel, Sky Sports F1 HD, will be filled with everything fans of the sport want, says Long. “It’s not just about what the drivers do on the track but everything behind the scenes.”

Core to raceday production is a series of flypacks built by Gearhouse Broadcast. “Everything from Sky Sports F1 news to promos will be produced in HD and with 5.1 audio from the pods,” explains Long. “F1 is not just about the pictures but the equally amazing sound, such as the individual sounds of each car.”

P2 cameras will be deployed with comms links by Wisycom. Omneon MediaGrid shared-storage systems, housed at Sky Studios and in the pods, will be linked into Avid Isis for media management.

All seven feeds, which let viewers choose between, for example, the main race, onboard cameras or stats, will be sent back to Sky on a fibre-optic network jointly delivered by the EBU and AT&T.

“We don’t want to rely on satellite so we are sending and receiving feeds via fibre,” says Long. “AT&T is already on site delivering data for teams and it has an extensive worldwide network.”

Finding an alternative to tape

Broadcast

Adrian Pennington weighs up the options, from high-end media like SR and Redmag, to robust memory cards such as SxS and P2, and the latest prosumer options including XQD.

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As tapeless production becomes the norm, costly errors in hand ling the media are a concern. While security measures like backing up the day’s files are widely acknowledged, the introduction of new recording media into the market can confuse matters.

There is high-end media like Sony’s SR Memory Card and Red’s Redmag, both solid-state drives built into a cartridge form and capable of recording hi-res uncompressed footage at high frame rates.

Next come robust memory cards like SxS (Sony and SanDisk) and P2 (Panasonic), and then prosumer media like CF (Compact Flash), SD (Secure Digital), SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) or the new XQD cards, seen as a successor to CF.

“Despite being cheaper, XQD cards are still capable of capturing low-compression HD footage from a wide variety of recording devices,” says Simon Gannon, head of marketing at cloud video production platform Aframe.

As most solid-state media is fairly similar in terms of physical robustness, the main difference is in the read/write speeds. Because the speed at which a card can read or write determines the quality of the recording format that can be captured to it, producers are left with the standard production equation of quality versus cost.

“Cheaper cards bring higher risk of lost footage,” warns Don Grant, systems manager at broadcast hire firm Procam Tele vision. “Compact Flash, for example, is nowhere near as reliable as, say, SxS or P2. The latter is made by the same manufacturer as the camera it will be used in, so if you do have an issue, you can pretty much guarantee their support.”

Then there are portable file-based recorders that take the HD-SDI output of a camera to obtain a higher-quality signal. These are made by the likes of AJA, Atomos, Blackmagic, Codex, Cinedec and Convergent Design.

“By some distance, the most important step in deciding which recording device to use is to ask your post house,” says HotCam technical supervisor Daniel Farmer. “They will tell you whether the recording format and signal input is compatible and of high enough quality to make it smoothly through post without inadvertently costing you more time and money. It’s all well and good being able to take an HDMI signal and record it to a low-cost SD card, but there’s always a compromise when using consumer products.”

Perhaps the main advantage of using a recorder is to gain access to a higher-data-rate codec that enables the material to satisfy the broadcaster’s requirements, such as the 50Mbps rule that most UK broadcasters, including Sky and the BBC, use for HD acquisition.

Another advantage is the ability to gather the material in a codec that is directly usable in the edit system. “An Avid system would prefer a DNxHD codec, while an Apple FCP system would prefer the Pro Res HD codec,” says Procam head engineer Perry Mitchell. “Even then, there are often several versions of these, so it’s important to check that the version required, perhaps due to data size restraints, is available on a particular recorder model.”

The latest memory recorders are designed to create native Apple Pro Res, Avid DNxHD, RAW and HDCam SR files, which are much greater in size than the files many in the industry have been used to.

“It is a very competitive area and none of them tick all the boxes,” says Alain Lolliot, technical operations manager at Pro Motion Hire. “Some recorders offer very low compression, around 145Mbps, but do not offer 50Mbps, which is all producers need for HD broadcast [Convergent Design’s nanoFlash does offer 50Mbps but has no in-built confidence monitoring]. The knock-on cost in having to manage larger file sizes needs weighing up.”

Fortunately, facilities and hire houses can play a guiding role for the production manager, who usually takes ultimate responsibility for workflow and the assets produced.

“They need an understanding of the processes involved – what can go wrong and what to do if something does,” says Lolliot.

High on the PM’s list should be assigning the vital role of safeguarding the show’s rushes. Drama productions would probably use a higher-spec camera and have a staffed camera crew including a digital imaging technician (DIT) on set to deal with look management and data.

Ob docs with higher shooting ratios, smaller cameras, smaller crews and smaller budgets might only back up material to a cheap RAID array at the end of the day’s shoot, and the team typically view material on a laptop or portable device.

There may be enough in the budget to assign a data wrangler to supervise the data but, as Lolliot observes, “often the task of back-up and transfer falls to junior producers, runners or camera assistants”.

Problems are exacerbated as these tasks often need to be done at the end of a long day, so time in the schedule is as much of a prerequisite as training.

“I’ve seen people scrabbling around looking for footage due to a misplaced file or broken folder structure on too many occasions,” observes Farmer. “It can seem quite easy just to sit and transfer files, and the cost of a dedicated media manager is something a lot of producers want to avoid. That is a mistake. Without footage, the entire shoot is a write-off.”

While there are some real cost savings to be had in shooting on card instead of tape, production companies have had to come up with their own solutions to clear the cards so they can be reused. This means somebody copying the data onto hard drives, via a laptop.

“This is not always practical in the field, and hard drives are much more susceptible to failure or damage,” says Grant. “There has been little choice, other than to adapt. No new tape-based HD cameras are coming onto the market, and already technology is developing further still.”

With the recent arrival of the QXD format, a new wave of cameras and recording units can’t be far behind.

Ironically, it is tape system LTO that is considered a more attractive option for archive than alternatives such as optical disc.

“Each £50 optical disc holds 50Gb of data and takes up to an hour to write 90 minutes of rushes,” explains Lolliot. “So if you have 1.5Tb of data to back up, that would require 30 50Gb discs, and take 30 hours to write, at a cost of £1,500 for the media alone. A 1.5Tb LTO-5 tape would take about three hours to copy, at a cost of around £45 in total for the media, saving you 27 hours and £1,455 in media, let alone man hours and sanity.”

Preserving these much-cherished luxuries out in the field could be where tapeless truly comes into its own.

GOING TAPELESS
24 HOURS IN A&E

The second series of Channel 4 ob doc 24 Hours in A&E is being filmed in HD using more than 90 cameras and with an innovative workflow.

The Garden Productions will produce 14 hour-long episodes from its six-week round-the-clock shoot on location at London’s King’s College Hospital. “The first series was shot SD to SX tape, so going HD and tapeless for this series made a massive difference to our approach,” explains Garden managing director Scarlett Ewens, who devised the workflow with The Farm.

“The sheer volume of data – 160Tb – and the way the media is being put together is different to a conventional ob doc so it made more sense to manage the media at the front end of production. The Farm is responsible for storing and QCing media on location and transferring all the data to the edit so that the grey area between location and facility house, which can lead to problems, is bridged.”

The 91 fixed-camera feeds are cut by directors in two custom-built galleries, with the feeds recorded to Avid Airspeed. Media is immediately captured to Isis via Interplay’s transfer management at 50Mbps 4:2:2 and copied to LTO-5 tape with associated metadata written in Linear Tape File System (LTFS), and is then couriered to The Farm’s central London data-handling facility.

Once there, the tapes are ingested into Unity for editing on Avid. “The adoption of this procedure means we don’t have to archive once on site and again at the end of production,” says Ewens.

One alternative would be to record directly to XDCam HD disc and keep the discs as a more traditional archive, but this would have meant buying approximately 8,000 discs.

David Klafkowski, technical director at The Farm Group, concludes: “This represents a sea change in the way in which we can run a post operation on location.”