Pandora's Revolutiuon Express Powers The Pipeline At VHQ

VHQ, one of Southeast Asia's leading postproduction companies, recently selected Pandora's Revolution Express to anchor the company's colour correction workflow, from ingest to deliverables.
Along with YoYo software, included with the Revolution Express package, VHQ now has an efficient data workflow for all file formats, crucial for the volume of work required of a modern commercials facility.
Billy Fong, Producer and Technical Manager at VHQ, said: "We chose the system because we knew we were going to be getting more and more digital formats like RED and Phantom. We wanted a simple, streamlined way to process those file formats for postproduction and grading on our Pandora system."
Founded in 1984, VHQ is one of the region's leading media and postproduction companies, and now has facilities across Asia in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Shanghai. The company has won numerous awards for groundbreaking work in film, broadcast and commercials.
In 2008, VHQ invested in a new Pandora Revolution colour corrector. Since then, the facility has seen a sharp increase in file-based projects, especially with the rise of the RED camera, so the need for data management for a wide range of file formats was clear.
In 2010, VHQ decided to ramp up their data pipeline with the Revolution Express kit. This upgrade includes the YoYo file management software and Pandora's proprietary PCI card. The PCI card is installed in the Mac Pro running YoYo and formats data for the colour corrector in real time. With the Revolution Express configuration. VHQ can now plug in a firewire drive containing RED footage, for example, and stream the material directly through the Pandora Revolution, applying colour grading straight off the disk to DPX and any number of other file formats.
Adam Welsh, Sales Manager for Pandora/YoYotta, said: "This saves VHQ an incredible amount of time that would otherwise be required to prep the material. The system has no ingest requirement and conforms and converts from R3D to DPX with colour in real time. On top of that, it can handle multi-format mixed timelines, including Phantom, Arri, ProRes and others. With the Revolution Express, you just get straight to work.
Fong added: "We looked at a number of other options, but found they did not offer the efficiency and flexibility of the Revolution Express with integrated YoYo combination. We're in the process of consolidating all of our storage on a central server, and we find the Mac platform easier for mounting different drives of media. Plus, YoYo's working directory is on the same server, so we don't have to keep copying content from one drive to another, which makes it more efficient.
"The Revolution Express has become our turnaround system. You could do many of these functions using various other tools and plug-ins, but it's so much more streamlined if you can do it all in one sweep. We're already using YoYo on almost every project to prepare files, add timecodes and export media."
Welsh said: "VHQ is one of the industry leaders in Southeast Asia. We're delighted they chose to join the growing number of facilities around the globe who are rediscovering Pandora for managing their data workflows."
The Revolution Express comprises a multi-layer, real time file-based colour correction system linked via a high speed bi-directional optical data interface to the YoYo data management and workflow software which conforms and converts content from virtually any source and outputs multi-format file and video deliverables. The Revolution Express is available through Pandora or through its worldwide distributor Big Pic Media.
(KMcA)