Lightworks 'goes Dutch' with Geevs

Lightworks has announced that a combined order for a Lightworks Touch editing system with a Geevs XT500 server has been provided to Netherlands-based production company The Van.
The Van is a small but remarkably successful company, producing live performance DVDs (which often include additional material) and television shows for nearly all the country's leading entertainers. The company's two owners had been searching for an ingest and editing system that could handle multi-cam inputs in a tapeless environment and approached Burst Video, as they had previously bought equipment from this Dutch integrator.
Burst Video's Frans Friedeman explains: "The Van were already shooting regularly for a particular television show which is recorded every Saturday and aired on Sunday evenings. I told them about the capabilities of Lightworks Touch and they were immediately interested, because they had been unable to find anything suitable from any of the major vendors. Even though their editor was familiar with Media 100 systems, he found he was easily able to adapt to Touch's intuitive interface. They were delighted with the considerable price differential between the Lightworks/Gee combination and other systems they had considered."
Just three weeks after the initial enquiry, the Lightworks and Gee equipment was delivered and Burst Video had it up and running in two days. This included training for the editor and configuring camera inputs to the server, with the system ready for filming that Saturday.
The system is temporarily installed in a van so that it can be taken to various venues. Once the proving period is over, the equipment will be fully installed into another, properly racked-out, vehicle.
Footage is captured direct to the onboard Geevs server from Philips LDK10 cameras with Triax extenders, via Lynx mini-ADCs. According to Friedeman, this on-the-road digitisation has eliminated the previously required hour of conversion for every hour of captured material, after the van returned to base, before editing could even begin. The pre-digitised footage is now available to the Lightworks Touch system from the studio network, via a single Ethernet connection, as soon as the van returns from filming. Lightworks' Sharknet media management software ensures that all clips are transparently available to the editor, whether on the 1.2 Terabyte Geevs or on the studio LAN.
Keith Gee said: "Our belief that we could achieve a close integration between Lightworks Touch and Geevs, while still retaining the openness of both products, was fundamental to our decision to acquire Lightworks earlier this year. This order for The Van is a vindication of that decision and we anticipate a rapid rise in interest from the industry as the benefits of our integrated approach become known."
(GB)