In Broadcast - April 2013 - 58


I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 18 - APRIL 2013

N E W S

InMEDIA

DVS Improves On Studio Efﬁciency
A

58

t NAB, Rohde & Schwarz DVS
will be presenting its studio
broadcast and post-production
solutions packed with numerous
new features. The focus will be on
unparalleled efﬁciency and user
friendliness.
The VENICE Media Production
Hub product line has been extended
with the new budget-oriented entrylevel solution VENICE Element.
Moreover, VENICE and SpycerBox
have a new GUI while CLIPSTER
offers innovative features supporting
the ground-breaking standards
IMF and AS-02.
The manufacturer of hardware and
software solutions will continue to
focus on workﬂow efﬁciency, userfriendliness and product ﬂexibility.
With VENICE Element, the VENICE
product portfolio offers an entrylevel solution that is tailored
speciﬁcally to meet the needs of
live studio operation and playout.
Both the VENICE Media
Production Hub and the ﬂexible
storage solution SpycerBox
feature new GUIs. Besides this, key
enhancements for the CLIPSTER DI
workstation include support for the
standards AS-02 and IMF.
The VENICE Media Production Hub
unites video server functionalities
with future-proof features for
ﬁle-based studio production. For

VENICE with new GUI at NAB 2013 (Photo: DVS)

NAB, VENICE boasts a new GUI
which has been adapted to meet
the needs of live studio operation
even more closely. With support
for AS-11, VENICE now offers an
additional standardised delivery
format so broadcasters can
exchange content more easily
and signiﬁcantly accelerate their
production processes. Users are
also able to manage assorted
recording tasks in a simple and
straightforward way with the
innovative Record Scheduler.
The latest version of CLIPSTER
includes a huge array of product

Managing Colour With Filmlight
By Mark Burton
Marketing Director
FilmLight

T

he original purpose of colour
grading was largely to fix
problems. Film processing varied
from day to day, so to achieve
consistency in a movie you had to
subtly alter the colour balance from
shot to shot. This was ﬁrst done with
light valves in the ﬁlm printer, and
later electronically in the telecine.
With today’s high-resolution
digital cameras consistency is not
the issue, but directors and DoPs
still see colour grading as a critical
part of their creative toolkit. The
use of colour, light and shade has
become another element in storytelling, providing the viewer with
extra hints to the mood of the scene.
The process starts on set. In theory
a digital cinematography camera
can deliver one massive beneﬁt over
ﬁlm: you can see what you have just
shot immediately, without waiting for

the ﬁlm to be processed. In practice,
the output of a high-resolution
camera looks ﬂat and lacking in
contrast on a conventional monitor
without processing.
Some directors live with this and
learn to interpret the ﬂat pictures.
Others prefer to have an idea of
what the finished shot will look
like. And so they have a simple
colour grading system on set, like
Baselight TRANSFER or an on-set
box such as FLIP, which allows the
DIT (Digital Intermediate Technician),
or even one of the colourist team
on a big production, to create a
viewing version.
That look will inevitably be
influenced by the ideas of the
director and the DoP, so can be
regarded as the ﬁrst step toward
the ﬁnished look. And so it makes
sense to capture the metadata and
transfer it to the ﬁnal colour suite, so
that the lead colourist is not starting
blind but with a good guide to the
director’s intentions.
The other transformation in colour
workﬂows is that, in the colour suite,
the content sits on a central server,
which creates the opportunity

features for considerably easier
everyday DCI and mezzanine
format mastering. DVS will
also be showcasing further key
developments in the two standards
AS-02 and IMF.
In addition, with the HFR
enhancements for DCP generation,
it is now possible to master cinema
ﬁlms at up to 96 fps (HFR 3D at 48
fps) in high image quality. The idea
behind the established DCI wizard
has also been implemented for IMF:
the new IMF wizard guides the user
through each required step and
generates the ﬁnal IMF-compliant

IMP (Interoperable Master Package).
Bernhard Reitz, Head of Product
Management at DVS, said: “Once
again, DVS will be showcasing
one of a kind, future-oriented
broadcast and post production
solutions. For NAB 2013, we’ve
also further enhanced our strategy
of user-friendliness and integrated
this into our products enabling our
users to benefit from increased
workﬂow efficiency.”
For NAB, DVS has equipped
a version of its flexible storage
solution SpycerBox with SSD
technology which is tailored
perfectly to the needs of TV studio
and post-production workflows
thanks to its low latency and high
performance. It delivers impressive
internal data transfer speeds of up
to 12 GByte/s as well as extremely
quick access times and maximum
fail-safe operation. Furthermore,
users can conﬁgure and monitor
data more easily with the new SAN
Remo management GUI.
The central SpycerBox storage
solution, which is available in
multiple versions, integrates into
any storage environment thanks to
its numerous optional interfaces.
Customers with critical workﬂows
will beneﬁt from the high-availability
feature set in SpycerBox.

to develop
collaborative
workflows
b e t w e e n
the colourist
and
other
departments. In
an effects shot,
for instance,
the colourist
can grade the
background
plate
and
prepare any live
action elements
before handing
them over to the
VFX team. The FLIP allows the colourist team to create a viewing version
colour suite can
also offer trial conforms and grades
and different manufacturers have
while the shot is still being worked
subtle differences in colour gamut.
on in the edit suite.
To ensure consistency, you need to
With random access to the content
be able to calibrate each display you
it is easy to match the look of related
are working with to your reference.
scenes, and to compare the effects
The FilmLight Truelight system is
of different colour treatments to
designed to provide that calibration
ensure that the director’s intention
across devices. It ensures that
is being realised.
all displays start from the same
The final element in the new
colour response.
workflow is the need to ensure
Wherever you are in the workﬂow,
that you are always working with
you are sure you are seeing the
the same basic colour response.
right colour response and so
Digital projectors have different
can conﬁdently contribute to the
colour curves to LCD monitors,
creative process.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/?first=Phillip&last=Izzard&search=Go https://twitter.com/inbroadcast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpzEatLsHdE&feature=youtube_gdata_player https://www.facebook.com/InBroadcast http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/inbroadcast/id468652679?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.branded.inbroadcast&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5icmFuZGVkLmluYnJvYWRjYXN0Il0 http://WWW.INBROADCAST.COM http://www.dvs.de/products/broadcast/venice.html http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/flip/overview_fl.php
In Broadcast - April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - April 2013
