In Broadcast - November 2013 - 54

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

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 25 - NOVEMBER 2013

N E W S

InGEAR

Zoic Paves A Path To 4K With AJA KONA 3G
W

54

ith locations in Culver City
and Vancouver, Zoic Studios
is responsible for award-winning
effects in ﬁlm, advertising, games
and television.
In addition to a steady stream
of feature, games and commercial
projects, Zoic is currently handling
VFX for television shows 'Falling
Skies', 'Once Upon a Time' and
'Wonderland', all shot using
virtual sets.
The company is also venturing
into 4K post-production within their
commercial division for the Intel
and Toshiba webisode series, 'The
Power Within'.
For reliable and efficient
collaboration across remote
facilities, Zoic relies on AJA's
KONA 3G cards to help facilitate
live synchronised sessions using
Tweak's RV-SDI playback and
review software.
"KONA 3G is the backbone of
high quality image communication
between Zoic Vancouver and Zoic
Culver City," said Mike Romey, Zoic
Studios Head of Pipeline.
"Using the RV-SDI integration, we
queue up media in the projection
rooms at each location for synced
up dailies sessions where teams
of artists can review and annotate
shots in real-time with supervisors
at full resolution."
Since up to 50 artists and
supervisors across both locations
might be contributing to a project,
Zoic's KONA 3G-powered workﬂow
allows producers to compare
and contrast different versions

Zoic Studios is handling VFX shots for 'Falling Skies'

of any given shot to ensure
appropriate edits and design
choices are implemented during
session reviews.
While a majority of Zoic's
deliverables are in HD, the studio's
commercial division is currently
working on webisode content in 4K
for Intel and Toshiba. Implementing
a 4K pipeline proved to be a fairly
straightforward task because of
Zoic's existing infrastructure.
The studio uses the KONA 3G
cards with The Foundry's HIERO
collaborative shot management

solution for plate prep, Autodesk
Flame editorial and colour
grading software for ﬁnal conform
and finishing, along with RVHDSDI for review.
Considering the volume and
scheduling demands of episodic
work, Zoic is currently deploying
editorial improvements to ensure
utmost quality on delivered shots.
An early adopter of HIERO, Zoic
deploys 25 licenses of the software,
with most workstations running
KONA 3G on display monitors
to do live I/O from the conform.

Connecting via HDMI and with help
from HIERO, the KONA 3G card has
even enabled stereo 3D dailies for
a recent feature film project.
Looking to the future, Zoic is
developing a custom software
pipeline designed to work with
game engines to enable the output
of live CG renders through NVIDIA
Quadro GPUs for direct-to-video
via the KONA 3G card, resulting
in ultra-low latency I/O that will
be ideal for game trailers, live
event production, broadcast and
similar projects.

Atomos To Ship Spyder Colour Calibration
A

t IBC Atomos showed a prerelease version of the new
Atomos Spyder, a brand new tool
which gives Samurai Blade one
touch advanced colour calibration
normally only found on high end
monitors.
The Spyder has been developed
in partnership with Datacolor
and is hailed as the world's ﬁrst
ﬁeld monitor and recorder colour
calibration tool making available
one click colour calibration anytime,
anywhere while recording.
"We believe colour accuracy and
calibration is the most important
issue facing today's professional
productions. Being able to trust
the colours on a monitor while
setting up the shot with RGB,
Luma Parade and Vectorscope
tools means perfect results every
time and professionals spending
far less time colour correcting in
post," said Jeromy Young, CEO and
Founder of Atomos. "We've teamed

up with Datacolor to develop a
calibration solution that users can
trust and saves editors substantial
time in post."
With Spyder, the Samurai Blade
gains the ability to accurately
calibrate to the SMPTE
Rec 709 colour space
with a D65 white point
with 100% gamut.
The Spyder also features
extreme precision seven
sensor calibration and
USB to LANC serial
control unit included for
automatic calibration
and also the ability
to calibrate to
6500K
ITURec709 white
point with
delta-E
better
than two
down to
20% grey.

There are user adjustments of lift,
gain and gamma per channel after
initial calibration and the unit can
be used as a standard calibration
unit for any monitor or computer
(provided Datacolor software
is purchased from their
website).
Atomos say implementation
on other Atomos recorders
will be available soon.
The Samurai Blade
includes the world
leading 5" SuperAtom
IPS, 1280 x 720 IPS
325PPI touchscreen.
Like its Ninja-2
and
Samurai
p re d e c e s s o r s ,
Samurai Blade
allows the

Atomos
Spyder Colour
Calibration

recording of pristine, 10-bit images
straight from the camera sensor
directly to inexpensive HDD or SSD
drives, captured using the Apple
ProRes or Avid DNxHD codec.

Audio Meters
Atomos recently released AtomOS
Version 5.03 on Samurai Blade
which includes new features to the
audio level meters.
All 14 audio channels now have
large meters on the audio page and
peak and average levels with digital
clipping indicator, and VU ballistics
is available.
The new audio meter is accurate
from -30 to 0 dB (dBFS) and shown
with -18dB and -20dB alignment
levels marked and 2 or 14 channels
are viewable on the monitor page
(option found in Menu/Display).
There is also a frame accurate
audio delay option which adjusts to
any digital or analogue Audio delays
(option found in Audio page).

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