CVP, one of the UK’s leading production solutions providers, will be providing hands-on experience with some of the latest kit to reach the UK market at this year’s BSC Expo 2020 (Friday 31st January to Saturday 1st February, Battersea Evolution, London).

Featuring a set inspired as a homage to the BSC’s 70th anniversary, the showcase at BSC Expo will allow customers to compare like-for-like options and to get hands-on with the equipment they are interested in — along with all the necessary accessories — to find out how their creative desires can be best fulfilled.

Following the appointment of Matthieu Straub as the company’s technical and operational consultant to France and the Benelux countries in the summer of 2019, FilmLight is delighted to announce that it has now established a permanent presence in Paris. By sharing premises with ARRI France, FilmLight is developing a strong hub for creative and technical knowledge and events.

The hub will host the first of FilmLight’s Colour Day workshops in 2020, on 28 January. One of the advantages of sharing the centre with ARRI is that it underlines the seamless workflows from camera to finish, using the BLG format for render-free viewing and creativity. The BLG grading metadata is stored in the ARRIRAW and QuickTime headers, ensuring the content and its look are permanently linked.

The Paris Colour Day on 28 January, aimed at creatives and technicians in production and post production, will see FilmLight’s workflow specialists, Straub and Thomas Eberschveiler unveil new FilmLight tools. Attendees will also hear from guest colourist Stéphane Azouze about his collaboration with directors Anastasia Mikova and Yann Arthus-Bertrand on the recent award-winning documentary ‘Woman’. Finally, colour scientist Florine Bel will share her image expertise and discuss her work developing film aesthetics, colour spaces and conversions.

The shared space has already hosted successful events, including a workshop day for DITs. Led by Straub, with guest speakers from Netflix and from post house Mikros, the group discussed the latest developments in colour space management and workflows. ARRI’s presence allowed the discussion to include ARRI Looks and how they can be incorporated into FilmLight BLG post production. In the demonstration area, they featured an ARRI ALEXA camera feeding Prelight and Daylight software, allowing the delegates to experiment with look development and make comparisons between standard and high dynamic range colour spaces.

Explaining the importance of bringing together creative artists and technicians, FilmLight’s Matthieu Straub said “My background is as a digital image technician, and I know how directors and cinematographers are increasingly relying on DITs to find technical solutions to their demanding creative requirements. “Our intention is to use our demonstration and meeting space here on the Rue René Boulanger to be a place where we can encourage the sharing of knowledge and experiences, to help the French cinema industry achieve ever greater things.”

NUGEN Audio is pleased to announce the latest software release for its SEQ-S linear phase ‘spline match and morph’ EQ solution at the 2020 NAMM Show (Booth 14101). Now with a resizeable direct-draw interface and EQ matching presets, SEQ-S features a surround capability of up to 7.1, making it easy to fine-tune audio. Ideal for both corrective mix work and gentle mastering polish, SEQ-S is perfect for movie, television and music productions. 

“We are very excited to showcase the latest updates to NUGEN’s SEQ-S for the first time ever at the 2020 NAMM Show,” says Paul Tapper, CEO, NUGEN Audio. “Our engineering team has worked diligently over the past year to provide significant product updates and developments, and we’re sure that current and future customers will love the latest additions. SEQ-S delivers creative EQ power in a way that no other solution provides. It allows you to massage and correct any audio with incredible resolution that you just can’t get with a traditional parametric interface – allowing imaginations to run free.”

SEQ-S’ intuitive visual interface adapts to suit the task at hand, whether simple or sophisticated. Using this solution, producers can fine-tune their tracks with flexible, detailed envelopes that are difficult to achieve with traditional EQ. The new preset system for EQ matching enables producers to expedite their workflow by streamlining the match EQ process, this feature allows them to push their sound toward reference material or take a deeper creative approach with filter morphing and tempo locked effects. Additionally, the system’s newly implemented, resizeable interface offers further flexibility for users to set up SEQ-S for their precise workflow needs, allowing for more detailed curve sculpting, among other things.

Sony has announced that the Sony BRC Series PTZ remote cameras have been chosen to capture unique close-up footage of the heart-warming story of beautiful lynx cats in the high-end TV wildlife series, Snow Cats & Me.

Produced by Oak Island Films and Hello Halo TV, the two-part series pushes creative and technical boundaries to present an intimate portrait of animals in the wild. With the producer Ted Oakes, Managing Director of Oak Island Films commenting: “This was a tricky challenge: the Sony BRC cameras helped us capture amazing footage that expresses the unique character of these beautiful animals in their natural environment.”

Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced IronClad Partner Advantage (IPA), an all-new program for Cobalt Iron channel partners. IPA offers the data protection industry's most innovative partner program, creating a complete business ecosystem to help value-added resellers (VARs), value-added distributors (VADs), global systems integrators (GSIs), and managed service providers (MSPs) build pipeline and maintain market share.

"With IPA, we're empowering our partners to compete in the multicloud, next-generation data protection world by offering support through their customers' entire journey," said Rodney Foreman, chief revenue officer, Cobalt Iron. "That means everything from providing sales leads to backing our partners with marketing experience and providing training with advanced, proven sales techniques. IPA is the most lucrative and rewarding partner program in the industry, and it's backed by a proven sales team with laser-light focus on supporting VARs, VADs, GSIs, and MSPs."

ADTH reports a successful 2019, its 25th anniversary year, including the opening during May of a new research and development facility in Taiwan's capital city, Taipei. 2019 also saw a major expansion of the ADTH Tolka range of broadcast, OTT and IPTV content protection products.

"Television technology is advancing faster than ever as the industry gears for the transition from HD to HD-HDR, 4K-UHD and upward to 8K," says ADTH CEO Michael Day. "Viewers have the option of larger display screens than ever. At the same time we are seeing an increased public desire to watch programmes via mobile phones and tablets. These diverging influences have the potential to coalesce into extremely high resolution wearable displays if computer users and TV audiences are significantly attracted by that mode of viewing. We see our role as offering the greatest possible choice in what, when and where TV viewers choose to watch and delivering the technology to make that possible."

The April 2019 NAB Show was ADTH's busiest ever exhibition in terms of product introductions, including the DV3358, a competitively priced new satellite IRD providing full support for conditional access. DVB-S/S2 input compatible, it outputs TS over IP, ASI and 3G-SD

Sony has announced that its Simple Live Streaming service, a new proposition for users to streamline the process of acquiring live content, is now available (as of 12th December 2019). The additional workflow flexibility for its palm-sized 4K HDR professional camcorders, the HXR-NX80 and PXW-Z90, can be accessed via a free firmware upgrade to enable content creators to shoot wherever and however they want. 

With Wi-Fi connectivity, Simple Live Streaming enables high quality live streaming to major video sharing websites and social media platforms such as Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook with a single camcorder. Offering simple operation, it further enhances the remote delivery of content quickly without compromising on image quality. 

Norbert Paquet, Head of Product Management for Sony Professional Solutions comments: “The introduction of Simple Live Streaming for the HXR-NX80 and PXW-Z90 streamlines the overall workflow, from shooting to live distribution. Equipped with Simple Live Streaming, the camcorders will have online sharing features, further empowering content creators to concentrate on what they do best – storytelling on the go.” 

New action comedy, School Fight, uses the Shogun 7 HDR monitor/recorder to give the Sony FS7 a new lease of life

How do you make a full-length feature film, with flawless, cinematic values when your camera budget only stretches to the Sony FS7 cinema cameras already owned by the crew? It’s a conundrum the production team behind new action comedy, School Fight, solved by adding cutting edge recording technology from Atomos and Apple to their arsenal.

School Fight is a low budget, independent feature film, but you’d be forgiven for assuming the investment in the on-screen image was far more high-end. This comes from the crew’s unwavering commitment to achieving the highest possible production values by squeezing everything they could out of the camera equipment they had available and a minimal budget.

The concept for the film was the brainchild of seasoned stunt professional Damien Walters, so it’s no surprise that action sequences, fight scenes and all manner of carefully choreographed carnage is all featured heavily. He joined forces with producer Joby Stephens to bring this vision to life in full cinematic glory.

Atlanta DTH, Inc. (ADTH) announces that it has joined the SRT Alliance, a broadcast media industry collaboration created to develop an open-source protocol allowing low-latency video streaming over the internet. ADTH will provide full support for the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol.

Developed and pioneered by Haivision, the SRT protocol optimizes streaming performance across unpredictable networks with secure streams and easy firewall traversal. It accounts for packet loss, jitter, and fluctuating bandwidth, maintaining the integrity and quality of a video stream.

"With its 25 years of experience in the broadcast and telecommunication sectors, ADTH is a very welcome addition to our membership," comments Haivision CCO & EVP Strategic Alliances Peter Maag. "With increasing support from across the entire industry, SRT is rapidly becoming the globally preferred standard for low-latency video streaming."

"Efficient and effective standards are essential to the advancement of any industry, not least in the OTT streaming sector where signal delivery needs to overcome many technical variables," adds ADTH founder and Managing Director Michael Day. "The SRT Alliance's aims and objectives are in full accord with our own strategy of promoting the highest possible video quality-of-experience securely, efficiently and at the lowest possible latency. We are SRT-ready."

Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc., Sony Mobile Communications Inc. and Verizon joined forces with NBC Sports to test how 5G can change the way live sports broadcasts are captured and produced. During the Houston Texans vs New England Patriots football game at NRG Stadium on December 1st, 2019, a camera person from NBC Sports captured video of the game on the field using Sony’s PXW-Z450 shoulder camcorder. The video was streamed through Sony’s prototype transmitter box and Xperia 5G mmWave device, via Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network to a production room in the stadium.

The test proved that 5G-connected cameras can be a reliable and beneficial option for future live sports broadcasts. Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband’s low latency and high bandwidth combined with Sony’s mobile device, video, and encoding expertise enabled low-latency high-quality video to be transmitted in near real time to producers. The test showed the potential for remote production teams to be located anywhere, regardless of where the game’s taking place. Furthermore, 5G’s essentially instant wireless connectivity means that cameras can be untethered, allowing for more creative camera positions and angles throughout the game and reducing set-up time and costs required for camera system integration.