Learn To Earn: Mixed Gems At BVE 2016

Tools, apps and production gurus to the fore: George Jarrett looks forward to some of the best attractions offered by BVE.

Sitting so close to NAB, BVE is not going to be used by the principal vendors for major product launches. What it has done brilliantly is to develop into something important for the industry freelancers, production level employees, the post community, and the film students who represent our next generations. Few of these got to IBC in recent years, and less so to NAB.

To make the travel card so much more attractive than the flight and hotel investments required for Amsterdam and Las Vegas, the organisers have put a gigantic effort into giving visitors a chance to sit down and learn something to earn from, and making sure that a good number of exhibitors field some 'First time in the UK' technology.

So many conference gems
The learn something useful aspect gives four sessions to audio professionals – sound for live events, dialogue clarity, audio networking, and an interview with Academy Award winner Glenn Freemantle.

Other things that catch the eye are getting the most out of LEDs, lighting on the run, the latest insights in grading technology, leveraging the OTT revolution, cloud editing master class, virtualised broadcast playout, the art of self shooting, and raising the bar in new generation drama. One session that will cover many key issues will be the DPP Guide to 2016.

On the educational/art gallery side, the live projection-mapping project Circuit will be a key attraction. It will be fronted by Hannah Kemp, digital producer with Circuit, and the Tate's AV services manager Dan Crompton.

The free seminar program during BVE will offer 75 hours of learning opportunities, and the producers' theatre will offer the location managers James Grant (Skyfall) and Harriet Lawrence (Suffragette) talking about their various skills.

Returning after a hot introduction last year is Live! Ammunition – a session at which screenwriting hopefuls can pitch ideas to a group fronted by Elliott Grove, founder Raindance Film Festival, and British Independent Film Awards. YouTube star Tom Ridgewell (AKA TomSka) will talk about monetising beyond YouTube. And a commissioning editors session will feature big players from the BBC, Sky, C4 and C5 listening to pitches.

The 4K Theatre will offer keynotes from Jon Page, head of operations at BBC R&D, and by the film director Mike Newell. Perhaps the most important technology session will be The Internet Protocol Revolution, fronted by Larry Jordan. This could be nicely matched to the one on adventures in IP production fronted by Adam Downey, head of postproduction at Sky.

Other attractive sessions cover harnessing the power of metadata for live sporting events, the fine lines between subjective and objective documentaries, featuring Jamie Berry, series producer for Walking The Nile, and improving the supply chain for localising content.

Exhibition news – cameras
Panasonic will be showcasing the versatile AG-DVX200 in a variety of situational purposes. This camera is the world's first 4/3" large format 4K-camcorder and it has an integrated zoom lens. Armed with top-end features, it is aimed at independent filmmakers, documentary production and event coverage.

The second focus at BVE will be Panasonic's remote camera line-up; look for the AW-UE70, its first 4K remote camera. This and the AW-HE130 and AW-HE40 cameras will be displayed together with Panasonic's auto-tracking software. This is aimed at education and conference applications.

The big attraction might be the AK-UC3000, Panasonic's first 4K-studio camera. This displays images at F11 sensitivity at 50P, with both B4-mount HD and 4K lenses.

The famous VariCam brand is continued by the VariCam 35, which was used to film the popular Doctor Foster series for the BBC. The 14+ stops of dynamic range are a good reason to take a good look at Varicam 35.

For its first showing at BVE, Canon (L30) will lead with its (EF mount) ME20F low light camera, which has an extended ISO of four million. The main demo will show it producing full colour images in extremely low light. Other key exhibits will include the recently announced UHD DIGISUPER 86 (UJ86xX9.3B) and UHD DIGISUPER 90 (UJ90X9B) studio/field lenses, plus the CJ12ex4.3B and CJ20ex7.8B 4K broadcast lenses. The 4K cameras on show will be the EOS C300 Mark II and XC10. The first is aimed at film, documentary or TV production workflows, while the XC10 is perfect for handheld/portable UHD production. To back up the picture outputs via its lenses and cameras, Canon will also have its 4K DP-V2410 and DP-V3010 reference displays.

The digital video solutions specialist Garland Partners (LO6) will front its exhibit with LiveU's LU200, an ultra-small camera transmission unit. Aimed at 'on the fly' broadcast work, this gives users a live streaming device weighing just over 500 grams. Transmission can be over bonded cellular or satellite/fixed link, or a hybrid of both. The LU200 has options for LAN-only as an adaptive bit rate encoder (LU200e) or LAN plus two high-gain antenna-integrated cellular modems (LU200). Two additional external cellular USB modems can also be attached.

Garland will also have LiveU's flagship LU500, a cellular uplink tool. This is powered by LiveU's new multi-processor video encoding engine and fourth-generation patented bonding algorithms, and offers up to 13 network connections.

Other exhibits will be LiveU MultiPoint and Live U Xtender. The first is for internal and cross-organisational professional video distribution, whilst the second is an integrated antenna solution, bringing cellular connectivity to OB trucks.

Exhibition news – smart moves
Avid (L45) has put in big development efforts to improve the interoperability between Media Composer (now at version 8.4.5) and Artist/DNx10 its hi-res video IO system. Users can capture DNxHR-encoded media into the editing system directly from devices connected to the IO hardware. It is also possible to capture and output closed captioning and extra ancillary data via devices connected to Artist; and users get sync via linear time code via the hardware timecode ports.

On the audio side, work has focused on technology to better the collaboration between musicians and sound professionals. The enablers are the music notation tool Sibelius 8.1 and Pro Tools S6 2.1 plus master joystick and master post modules; plus Avid Cloud collaboration via Pro Tools 12.5.

UK users will see Avid Pro Tools Dock, a new EUCON control surface that works with iPad and Avid's free iOS app, Pro Tools Control for the first time. See HHB for the pairing of Pro Tools Dock with the 16-fader Pro Tools S3 control surface to offer more powerful mixing workflows.
Based on the Master Touch Module of the Pro Tools S6 control surface, Pro Tools Dock boosts the touch-screen capabilities of the iPad. Users get a single fader, assignable knobs, switches, jog shuttle wheel, a full transport section, automation mode switches, and programmable soft keys.

PlayBox Technology (M10) will introduce its CloudAir universal playout and streaming platform, which offers a gateway through which new channels can be established without the usual preliminary investment in playout infrastructure.

It can be purchased from PlayBox via a standard software-licensing model or via partner companies offering software-as-a-service. In addition to starting a new channel in minutes, the advantages are: extended transmission hours, adding new content streams, or planning ahead for advanced transmission standards such as UHDTV.

CloudAir is a unified workflow environment based on a powerful set of software-centric modules. It can be set to provide the exact functions users require, including ingest, source transcoding, quality control, media asset management, production, post-production, subtitling, scheduling, playout and transmission. The software can be operated in fully automated mode with the option of making schedule alterations or live inserts at any time in response to late-breaking news.

Reseller and systems integrator root6 (J15) will give both engineers and creative people a range of technologies that address evolving industry trends. High Dynamic Range will be featured in an Avid HDR workflow with Baselight colour correction for the most accurate brightness and contrast.

ContentAgent, a popular file-based workflow management and automation platform, hits version 3.5 with a set of major software upgrades. Those new features include a number of Avid interoperability tools, including AAF merger and sequence creation, and an Edit While Transcode function. Secure, accelerated file delivery is facilitated through integration with Aspera and FileCatalyst, and support for NexGuard now enables forensic watermarking.

The workflow Designer tool has been enhanced to allow improved handling of zooming around the largest and most complex workflows, and a new Watchfolder interface simplifies configuration and monitoring.

In the areas of storage management and archive, root6 will demonstrate MatrixStore from Object Matrix and Strawberry from FlavourSys. The first is an object-based, plug and play, storage appliance. The second is cute software that sits on top of existing storage for project sharing.

Vidcheck (B10), which specialises in applications for checking/correcting file based video/audio, has upgrades for its Vidchecker, Vidchecker-post and Vidfixer software.

Codec development and video and audio analysis expertise has seen versions 6.3, 6.4 and 6.5 add 23 additional tests and refinements over the past year. The expanded toolset now boasts tests specific to the DPP common technical delivery specification for commercials and sponsorship. Vidchecker as an application supports sub-SD, SD, HD, UHD, 4K, 8K and mixed workflows. It tests and corrects four files at a time, providing a highly efficient alternative to checking conformance by eye and hand. It automatically and intelligently corrects video and audio levels. Vidcheck OnDemand is now being rolled out globally to enterprise level users.

Vidchecker-post is designed for low-volume QC requirements in postproduction houses, content distributors, and smaller broadcasters. It intelligently corrects video luma, chroma and RGB component, and conforms audio peak and audio loudness levels to ATSC/CALM and EBU requirements.

Vidfixer has all the quality control and correction facilities of Vidchecker plus additional correction and transcoding. It can take mezzanine file formats (IMX, XDCAM, AVC-I, DVCPro, ProRes, DNxHD, JPEG2000), perform automatic QC and automatically correct video, audio and format errors. It can then output corrected files re-encoded to match the original format or transcoded to different user formats (MPEG-2, H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, ProRes, MP4, DV).

Exhibition news – sound sense
Cinegy (G10) will co-exhibit with the SI and reseller Trams. The star Cinegy product will be JET, a single license giving users play out, CG and branding, ingest and encoding, monitoring, live production and mixing, and transcoding.

Trams will announce a new division called QsmartStorage, which will design, specify, deliver and support best of breed storage and workflow solutions. It also has Quantum Xcellis, which simplifies storage architecture and streamlines operations. Look at the production workflow optimisation created by the integration of Cinegy's software integrated with the Trams Quantum Stornext Pro.

Pixit Media (K11) will demonstrate its software-defined storage as a central repository to provide 4K uncompressed playback for a number of leading applications used in the broadcast and postproduction industries. A strong feature of this exhibit will be software partners, with Google, NetApp, Mellanox, Digital Vision, The Foundry and Adobe all demonstrating their latest technologies through the PixStor central NAS storage system.

The big attraction here will be the 4K workflows. Additionally, PixStor has the ability to seamlessly extend into Google cloud and store content using Google Nearline storage. PixStor is able to seamlessly transfer and store data whilst maintaining file system intelligence into the Google Cloud platform. By utilising the resources of Google Cloud storage in conjunction with the PixCache Cloud Gateway Appliance, Pixit media will show visitors its ability to submit render jobs to cloud based render farms and return these as completed jobs. Also look for the General Atomics Nirvana data management software suite. A metadata centric storage management tool, it enables users to make secure commercial decisions on where to store data. Advanced analytics help to make decisions on where to keep data and for how long.

Aspen Media, a broadcast audio distributor, will present products from seven vendors. Tac System's VMC-102 is a multi-stem and 32 monitor-bus monitoring system for consoles and workstations mixing for Dolby Atmos or MPEG-H. From the MADI specialist DirectOut it will have the handheld MADI.MONI MADI line checker engineering tool with onboard headphone jack allowing any mono or stereo pair of the 64 MADI channels to be monitored. AXOS Panner from The JLCooper AXOS Panner is a surround panner for Pro Tools and Apple Logic Pro X.

Also expect the SloMo Mini, which controls up to four video players using RS-422 9-pin protocol. From DELEC Aspen will show NIO 0204, a recording and monitoring interface for a DAW that can sit in a Dante network and provide analogue, digital or headphone monitoring plus inputs and outputs to other local devices. From Jünger Audio it will have a range of audio processors fronted by the D*AP4 VAP EDITION for commentary and voice over. This incorporates Jünger's proprietary Spectral Signature dynamic EQ.

Quicklink (P20) will have updates for its TX Skype call transceiver, which was designed in partnership with Microsoft to be a video call management system. It enables the reception and transmission of Skype video calls through an analog, SDI and HDMI interface for easy workflow integration, and the new 4K-ready transceiver now includes video colour correction and transmission recording capability.

MSA Foams (G16) will showcase its expertise in protective packaging solutions, material that would be ideal for a lot of key film equipment, with a booth composed entirely of foam. It comes in various densities and colours.

This article is also available to read at BFV online here.

(JP)