the BROADer issue

BSkyB publishes Sky 3D-enabled pub finder

It's the day before BSkyB's 3D broadcast of the Manchester United v Chelsea game, and you're possibly wondering where you can find a pub to watch it. Sky's marketing people are way ahead of you. They've published a handy Pub Finder. 

It looks like Sky already has pretty comprehensive coverage. I typed in my present location on Merseyside, and found three pubs showing the game in 3D within a 5 mile radius. I typed in my home postcode in Hertfordshire ... and also found three 3-D equipped pubs where I could watch it within a 5 mile radius there too. I'm quite impressed. Surprisingly perhaps, type in a random London W1 postcode and it only returns 3 results; the Slug & Lettuce in Lisle Street, off Leicester Square, the Thornbury Castle in Enford Street, and The Abbey in Orchard Street, SW1. Probbaly best to avoid them. They'll be packed.

I hope the game lives up to all the hype and the 3D experience is a good one. Me? I'll be listening to it on BBC Radio FiveLive as I head south on the motorway, hoping they both lose!

BSkyB rejects 2D to Stereo3D conversions for Sky3D

As reported on the TVB Europe website this morning, BSkyB has announced in its Stereo3D spec document, that it will not accept programme content on its Sky3D channel that was originated in 2D. Prodycers are allowed to submit content that contains up to 10% shot in 2D HD, but entire conversions are banned.

The document reads:

"The enable the 3D programmes to retain the highest quality throughout, a minimum of 90% must be native 3D footage. Where non-HD footage is utilised, it should sit within the editorial context of the programme. The 2D originated footage must be HD, be of segments not exceeding one minute, converted in a suitable manner to fit the 3D content and be of shots where there is minimal benefit from a true dual camera acquisition."

And, if that's not clear enough, the spec document goes on to state that converted content is 

"not acceptable and may only be proposed by prior agreement, with understanding of the editorial techniques and conversion process involved."

NetApp & Aspera ease 'Avatar' file storage & transfer

In this article on The Register website, Chris Mellor sets the record straight on the colossal media storage system that Weta Digital used during the production of the stunning CG & visual effects in 'Avatar'. 

While rival manufacturer Isilon claims to have provided the necessary infrastructure, Weta Digital is actually a NetApp customer. NetApp's own Val Bercovici has also written about Weta's use of NetApp storage on his Exposed Blog.

Chris Mellor's article also explains how FASP-based technology from Aspera (which is faster than FTP, HTTP & CIFS, with their inherent bottlenecks) eased the process of transferring enormous 3D files between James Cameron's production company Lightstorm Entertainment in Venice, California & Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand.

'Avatar' visual effects explored and discussed on TV

James Cameron's new blockbuster movie, 'Avatar' is the talk of the town this week, especially as it had its world premiere in London.

The biggest Stereo3D production so far, with a rumoured $300m budget, is around two-and-a-half hours long and 60% computer generated. Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand, ILM, and Soho's Framestore were between them responsible for creating the planet Pandora, its fantastic and quite scary creatures, an array of space vehicles and high-tech weapons, and the 3m tall, blue skinned Na'vi, the planet's indigenous species.

As well as the reviews of 'Avatar' in the mainstream press, we've been given a number of glimpses behind the scenes to see how the visual effects were created.

Earlier this week, the BBC News site carried this item, which takes us inside Framestore to meet Senior Producer Tripp Hudson & Visual Effects Supervisor Jonathan Fawkner, two of the 150 Framestore staff who spent 7 months working on 3 sequences in 'Avatar'. 

BBC's 'Click' site carries this item, which also features Framestore's Jonathan Fawkner and Bill Collis of The Foundry, whose Nuke & Ocula software were used extensively on the film.

Wired gets in on the act with its own take on how the visual effects were created, and the Film Fetish blog has published the interview Robert Legato, 'Avatar' Visual Effects Director, did on 60 Minutes with actor Kevin Pollack.

And then I found lots of references to behind-the-scenes work on 'Avatar' on Ian Falles's vfxblog, 

Talking 3DTV on BBC Radio 4's 'Front Row'

I made my radio debut on Mark Lawson's 'Front Row' programme yesterday evening. I joined Mark and Heat magazine's reviews editor Boyd Hilton (@boydhilton) for a debate about the merits of 3DTV as Channel 4 prepared to begin a week of 3D programmes with the screening of 'The Queen In 3D'. 

The film was shot at the Queen's coronation in 1953 by Bob Angell and Arthur Wooster. Arthur's son David is MD of 3D production company Can Communicate. A while ago, David was about to go on a 3D shoot, and asked his father if he'd ever shot any 3D, hoping he'd have one over on his old man for a change.

Thwarted! 

Arthur had almost forgotten the cans of film languishing somewhere in the BFI archives, and so began the long process of finding, restoring and releasing the cleaned up version of the film.

As well as being broadcast in the analogue ColorCode format on Channel 4, 'The Queen In 3D' was recently shown at the NFT using the Xpand 3D system, which employs the active LCD shutter glasses.

To hear what Mark, Boyd and I discussed visit the 'Front Row' Listen Again page on the BBC website. Click on Listen Now to launch BBC iPlayer, and shuttle along to 16m 05s. 

All feedback welcomed!

IBC 2009 caps a smeltingly good year for The Foundry

 A short interview recorded at the start of IBC 2009 Day 1 with Bill Collis (CEO, left) & Richard Shackleton (Nuke Product Manager.

We cover the recnent MBO, Nuke's status as "the new Shake", other Foundry products on show &

Download TBI Foundry 110909

Why are you going to IBC this year?

I have to confess, I've not seen or heard much to get my juices flowing yet, but an update on the official IBC 2009 Twitter feed suggests that there are at least 100 embargoed IBC stories waiting to be told, so you have to expect those to contain something significant. I heard a rumour that Avid will announce something to turn the heads of FCP and Premiere users, but that's about it, really.

All a bit quiet and unspectacular, at least so far.

The issues surrounding the management of media assets and published content are never far from the top of media companies' agendas these days. Though it's the workflow, the business strategy, the process management and how DAM fits into an organisation's culture (without disrupting it or distorting it) that are more important than the tech. 

It's OK to have a great suite of products that are like snugly fitting puzzle pieces and a crack team of 'professional services' commandos on standby to help deploy a customer's (shudder) solution. Today's skil - and this is a role where independent consultants can excel - is helping a management team sell a new system, a new way of working, and the inevitable knock-on effects, to the staff. 

I'm guessing there'll be quite a few of us at IBC singing from that hymn sheet.

Stereo3D will inevitably be the talk of the show. If anything, given the small amount of content that's available and the limited amount of exposure it gets on screens large and small, there'll be too much talking, not enough viewing. 

I'm sure we'll be introduced to a ton of new rigs and stereoscopic 3D production hardware, as well as Stereo3D enhancements to new & existing content creation systems, but it's the display technology I'm looking forward to seeing. I'm curious to know how soon it will be before real, proper, stable 3D that doesn't make your stomach churn hits living rooms and public spaces.

And finally, for this update. Is the DI market becoming dominated by a few big players who can offer productions complete grading, finishing and 'film out' services and so freeze out smaller service providers, as suggested in this well-written piece by Broadcast's Will Strauss? If it's the case, you have to wonder what traffic around Hall 7's DI technology vendors will be like.

Stereoscopic 3-D production session at IBC 2009

John Graham of the EDCF, who minutes the thrice yearly Digital Cinema Group meetings I attend so impeccably, has drawn my attention to a session on the Monday of this year's IBC conference in Amsterdam.

For the whole of the Monday morning (09,00 to 12.45), Phil Streather of Principal Large Format (pictured, right), will guide delegates through the finer points of pre-visualising, shooting and editing digital stereo3D content.

He will be joined by Joshua Greer of RealD, stereographer Bernard Mendiburu (pictured, left), David Newman of Cineform, Ken Shafer, President of Innoventive Software and 3ality Digital Systems' Steve Schklair.

Phil will start the morning with a beginners' guide, which will be followed by three more in-depth tutorials.

for more information on this and other IBC conference sessions, visit the IBC 2009 website.

Edinburgh film festival hosts cinematography events

The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) is this year reinforcing its image as an event for filmmakers and industry professionals with a series of events showing advances in production technology and processes. The initiative is part of a long-term plan to "broaden EIFF’s remit further into digital practices for production, post-production, exhibition and distribution".

Highlights of the technology-focussed event programme, taking place within the festival, from 25 - 27 June, include:

Haris Zambarloukos BSC Masterclass
Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos ('Sleuth' [pictured], 'Mamma Mia!', 'Venus', 'The Other Man') screens excerpts from his films explaining the artistic, technical and practical choices of cameras and formats. Sponsored by Kodak.

Red Digital Cinema
Ted Schilowitz, RED Digital Cinema, will give a visual overview of RED's 4k RED ONE Digital Cinema Camera, its upcoming Scarlet and Epic DSMC cameras, and screen footage from features, TV shows, commercials and music videos shot using RED cameras.

Lowry Digital presentation on restoration
Acclaimed LA specialists Lowry Digital, responsible for restoring films including 'The Robe' and 'From Russia With Love', will outline its offerings for the early adopters of digital capture technology and the imaging issues that burden post-production today, with an impressive array of before-and-after images including 3D and large format.

BSC/Image Forum Debate
A special discussion of the British Society of Cinematographers’ Film and Digital Image Evaluations 2009, which tested 19 different film and digital cameras, followed by a debate about image quality and the choice of cameras and production formats in today’s world.

Digital Cinema Exhibition The Cinema Exhibitors’ Association and UK Film Council, supported by Screen Digest, will set out a shared analysis of the current digital cinema market, plus the opportunities and challenges that digital technology presents.

Painting With Light
A special screening of the documentary about the late great Jack Cardiff BSC, who shot such acclaimed films as: 'The Red Shoes', 'A Matter Of Life & Death' and 'The African Queen'.

Cinematography Surgery with DP Trevor Forrest
This rising star in cinematography will show examples from his recent films 'Someone Else', 'Tormented' and 'Una Noche' to reveal how the collaboration between the director, writer, producer and DP give rise to the cinematic techniques that bring the story to life on screen. Contact: info@trevorforrest.com to book an appointment.

TheCameraZone
A special two-day event for filmmakers to check out cameras and associated post-production systems.

And, as if that isn't enough, another event, Tales From The Digital Frontier, presented by Power To The Pixel over two afternoons on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 June, will investigate innovative cross-media filmmaking model. The sessions will include "candid discussions about new platforms and digital revenues, and examine how brands are becoming involved in the film business". For more information, visit the Industry page on the official EIFF website.

Revised NAB visitor figures

Perhaps I read it wrong first time, but I've just seen figures for 2009 on the TVB magazine site of just under 84,000, rather than the 90,000 I posted a day or so ago.

That's about 23% down on last year's 105,000.

However, on a positive note, one friend told me on the phone from the NAB show floor yesterday evening London time (as the doors opened for Day 3) that the people he'd been meeting and speaking to had a serious reason to be at the show this year. Tyre-kicking was at a premium and everybody seemed pretty upbeat.

NAB 2009 Day 3: It's hot ... but quieter than last year

The temperatures in Las Vegas have been soaring into the Nineties, but attendance has dipped from just over 105,000 in 2008 to just under 90,000 this year.

There's a bit of 'Spinal Tap'-like optimism in some of the tweets I've seen about the quality time with visitors and fewer time-wasters compensating for a lack of numbers, but the mood amongst NAB 2009 Twitterers is generally pretty upbeat.

Some more news from the show floor.

Actually, this first story happened well away from the show floor, at the AJA party to be precise, from where @Krazpr posted this fantastic pic of the vivacious Kiki Stockhammer, ahem, "rockin' the pole"! If, like me, you've not been at this year's NAB ... gawd, what have we been missing?!

Following up on the update from earlier today, could the iPhone ProPrompter be the fab teleprompter product referred to?

I really like this review of NAB 2009 by Bobby Owsinski - @2bobby - on his blog in which he talks of "an air of quiet evolution in the new products" at the show, a lack of "swag" to take home, precious few parties to attend, and almost no free magazines bins at the entrance - 6 or 8 where there used to be 50 or 60. On the product front, his favourite was "ioDrive by Fusion iO, a solid state drive that connects directly to your system buss, bypassing the bottleneck of the normal PCI I/O architecture. As a demonstration of how fast it was, 16 servers were accessing a single drive, which output 64 MPEG-2 files of DVDs to 16 screens all at the same time. That's 1024 DVD streams ALL AT ONCE! Wow!!".

There's a lot of mumbling and grumbling in the Twittersphere about Apple's no-show at the Supermeet and the absence of Final Cut Studio 3 from the show.

Lastly, for this update, one of the hot little items at this year's NAB is Syncsy, an inexpensive file transfer service to replace slow and sometime shaky FTP. Syncsy launched at the show and is described on the front page of the website as:

"the next step in file transfer services for businesses needing a higher degree of security, speed and manageability. Syncsy.com allows you to fully automate the process of sending large files and folders. It is a perfect replacement for FTP and Web Uploads/Downloads for situations that demand a higher degree of automation. For example, consider the following business file transfer scenarios:

Sending approvals with repeated updates to customers Enabling your clients to send you files for processing Distributing clips and dailies Connecting remote offices for regular updates

In each of the above scenarios, files are transferred on a frequent basis with numerous updates. Rather than having to perform manual transfers, Syncsy.com can seamlessly monitor for changes and syncs new content without any manual steps."

News from NAB 2009 Day 2: Hot weather & sore feet

Sifting through tweets from Day 2, I've read a couple that indicate attendance is down, with one pessimist saying he's been told it's by as much as 50%.

Looking at news from the show floor, Randi Altman from Post magazine seems to have found or been shown some interesting stuff. Here's a sample of Randi's tweets:"Snell's Kahuna HD switcher for 3D stereo targets live to cinema projects", "Matrox CompressHD uses MAX technology to accelerate creation of H.264 files for mobile, web and blu-ray", and "Sony shows new XDCAM camera ... PDW F 800. Native 24p,multiformat recording, variable frame rate for slomo, quick motion".

Randi's also reported on Flare, Autodesk's new low-cost, software-only companion to Flame, and the new 64GB P2 cards (less than $1,000 for an hour of 1920 x 1080 HD). As I said, Randi's been very busy. Still, she did get to go to dinner with Oscar-winning 'Slumdog Millionaire' editor Chris Dickens yesterday evening, which should have been a cracking way to end a long NAB day. To read more from Randi, follow @post_magazine.

FreshDV has put together a nice set of video reports from the show floor, including quick visits to the Cinevate (who get lots of mentions elsewhere on Twitter) and Panasonic booths, and a look at the new JVC 4K prototype camera mentioned in yesterday's post.

@dekekincaid attended an "interesting adobe presentation essentially about using fcp to do base edit and then to premiere & ps & ae encore to conform/finish".

@Andrewlock found a portable teleprompter based on an iPhone. As he says, what a great idea? Which company is marketing that product?

I've seen mixed reports on the Stereo3D HDTV exhibits, with some raving about the display technology and others finding it so-so. Generally good feedback on the Stero3D production technology, though.

I'll leave it to @metjohn to sum up Day 2 at NAB @009 with a tweet on his day in the South Hall; "Whew... did the South Hall at the NAB today. Imagine 20 Target stores under one roof. Then make that two stories tall. 1.3 million sq ft!".

Indeed!

News from NAB 2009 Day 1: Las Vegas Twitters

I've been following a few dedicated NAB attendees via Twitter as they plot their way around the vast expanses of the Las Vegas Convention Centre. Here are some highlights so far.

Will Strauss (@willstrauss), Technology Editor at 'Broadcast' seems quite impressed with the Sony Location Porter, which allows users in the field to convert content from a camcorder or a live feed into an H.264 stream and broadcast it via 3G. Will points out that it's not exactly new, and there are alternatives out there, but it still looks very appealing. Another spot from Will is JVC's new 4K camera with a live signal output. As he puts it, "That's potentially one in the eye for Red. Not that they'll care too much".

Object Matrix (@om_nick) and Squarebox have announced a tie-up that sees the former's MatrixStore technology for tiering and clustering inexpensive storage hardware integrating closely with the latters CatDV DAM system. For the full story, click here.

The jury appears to be out on the new Avid corporate identity, which is a bit retro for some tastes, but which others feel shows the company getting back in touch with its NLE roots.

I spotted this on the CalDigit Twitter feed, if it's any use to somebody who's reading this while at NAB: "We're giving away 5 CalDigit VR minis at NAB. But you have to visit us at booth SL13610 to get your raffle ticket."

Engadget has this interesting post about the new 1,000 fps I-Movix SprintCam v3 HD camera on show at NAB for the first time. In fact, I've just read through a number of other Twitter updates, and lots of people seem to be raving about the SprintCam

Two people I follow posted this somewhat random tweet at exactly the same time: "Adobe Story is an app for creating, editing & optimizing scripts for films, broadcast & rich media, public beta in late 2009.".

Autodesk is streaming demos live from the NAB booth on its AREA website, according to @somenice.

@JasonRaneses points to this announcement from Western Digital of its new 2TB Enterprise-class HDD.

The Pro Video Coaltion (@provideo) were on their toes on Day 1. They've already posted this update, which includes a picture of the AVID booth, showing that logo. There's also a quick look at some very advanced 3D holographic technology.

I'll post some more stuff from Day 2 as I spot it...

Stereo3D feature 'The Dark Country' shows its face

The first stills taken from Thomas Jane's directorial debut, 'The Dark Country', have been published online. You can view them here.

'The Dark Country', Jane's big directing break, is a Stereo3D release.

The film's cinematographer, Geoff Boyle, was one of the people I interviewed for an article in the latest (March) issue of TVB Europe magazine about the prospects for Stereo3D production.

You can view the online edition here. My article appears on pages 24 & 25.

Sony 4K projectors for AMC cinemas in $315m deal

The rivalry between Sony and Texas Instruments in the cinema projector market is set to hot up. Sony has just announced a massive deal with US cinema chain AMC Entertainment, reports The New York Times.

TI has just under 5,500 digital projectors installed in the US. This new deal will see Sony's installed base leap to 5,000.

A senior AMC VP said of the decision to make the investment, “digital cinema gives us a huge opportunity to do 3-D, live broadcasts and playback of live events.”

4K image resolution is four times greater than 2K, and more than four times greater than HD. Sony says it is accelerating development of 4K production technology, and Sony Pictures says future cinema releases will now be in 4K.

The installation process at AMC will begin in the second quarter of 2009, and continue through until 2012. The process is part of the initiative led by the DCIP (Digital Cinema Implementation Partners) group, of which AMC is a founder member.