In Broadcast - December 2013 - 66

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

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 26 - DECEMBER 2013

N E W S

InGEAR

Day Relies On Sachtler's Cine 7+7 HD
I

t's a tradition - for over 64 years,
the ski season has begun in the
theatres every year with a new
action documentary by Warren
Miller Entertainment.
The promotional ﬁlms tour the
world, whetting the appetites of
ski and snowboarding fans alike
and encouraging them to partake
in winter sports. For some years
now, Cinematographer and Director
Tom Day has been responsible for
the creative realisation of the films.
While Day does not know where
the assignment will take him prior
to filming, he already has his
equipment ready to go beforehand;
during ﬁlming in the snow worldwide,
he always relies on the Sachtler Cine
7+7 HD and FSB 8 fluid heads.

Convincing Reasons

66

"There are three reasons for
working with Sachtler ﬂuid heads
- Sachtler's reputation in the ﬁlm
business, the long history of
the company, and the reliability
of the products," explains the
cinematographer.
"Years ago, I started with the FSB
8 because it even functions properly
at temperatures below freezing.
For my shoots, I need a ﬂuid head
which can even resist freezing
at -40°C (-40°F). Even in freezing

set-up - a great advantage for
operators like Day, who often wear
gloves in the cold.

The Right Solution

With his FSB 8 and Cine 7+7 HD ﬂuid heads, Cinematographer Tom Day
always has a ﬁrm stand and quickly ﬁnds the right setting © Markus Zimmermann

temperatures, in the middle of hiphigh snow, or during a snowstorm,
the FSB 8 guarantees smooth
panning and rotary movements. The
reliability and robustness of the head
during daily use made it easy for
Tom Day to decide to buy another
Sachtler head. He chose the Cine
7+7 HD, which has a particularly
ﬁrm stand despite being relatively
light for a 100-mm head - only 3.3
kg (7.2 lbs).

"While filming on steep
mountainsides, I needed a head
with a higher payload range and a
100-mm base. The Cine 7+7 HD is
the perfect solution for me," explains
Tom Day. In addition to the payload
range of up to 22 kg (49 lbs), the
100-mm head features practical
sideload mounting for the camera
plate. This allows for the Cine 7+7
HD to be quickly and easily laterally
mounted on the pre-assembled

Both ﬂuid heads provide Day with
a high level of versatility when he
works on the slopes: "If my set-up
is lighter than 10 kilograms (22 lbs),
I use the FSB 8. If the set-up is
heavier, then my Cine 7+7 HD will
be used. This way, I can cover the
entire range." He also appreciates
the exact counterbalance and
damping settings.
"Nowadays, I could no longer
do without the ten or 16-step
counterbalance. With the tried-andtested step-shifting system, I can
quickly change my camera set-up
or exactly reproduce a previous
setting," he explains. "After doing
this, I can easily do ﬁne-tuning via
the camera plate."
For this year's filming of the
Warren Miller ﬁlm 'Ticket to ride,'
the crew travelled to Switzerland,
Greenland and Norway. He ﬁlmed
with professional skiers such as
Ted Ligety, Mark Abma, Colby
West, Kaylin Richardson and
Michelle Parker.
The promo ﬁlm began touring on
November 2 and is scheduled to be
shown in many cinemas worldwide.

MADI Makes A Comeback - For The Moment
By
Martin Dyster
Head of Audio at
TSL Products

W

hile the broadcast and
production worlds assess
the viability of technologies such
as IEEE 802.1 Audio Video Bridging
(AVB), AES 67 or SMPTE 2022, the
venerable AES10 (also ANSI S4.431991), a.k.a. Multichannel Audio
Digital Interface (MADI), is showing
up across the industry as the go-to
technology for transporting up to
64 channels of digital audio over
a single coax or ﬁbre optic cable.
With its beginnings as a standard
in 1991, MADI made its first
introduction to the world during a
very different digital climate. At that

time, the mission was how to go
back and forth between an analogue
audio console and a Digital Audio
Stationary Head (DASH) or ProDigi
multi-track tape machine - a very
narrow application.
Twenty plus years later, the digital
landscape expanded with the need
for digital audio delivery and ﬁle
exchange in all levels of recording,
production, post-production and
broadcast. The question becomes,
in this age of advanced digital, why
is MADI gaining market share across
the industry, especially in the face
of an Ethernet solution?
MADI was formulated in 1988 by
Solid State Logic, AMS-Neve, Sony
(DASH) and Mitsubishi (ProDigi). The
key event for the format was the
adoption by the AES as an open
standard for audio exchange in
1991 with revisions in 2003 (AES102003) and 2008 (AES10-2008). The

original capabilities included the
transport of up to 56 channels of
digital audio between large format
audio consoles and digital multichannel tape machines via 75-Ohm
coaxial cables.

MADI Mandate

The AWS10-2003 spec further
reﬁned the connectors to include
BNC connectors with coaxial
cables (for a 50 meter/164 foot run)
and ST1 connectors for ﬁbre-optic
installations with a range of up to
two kilometres or 1.24 miles. Early
on, the format migrated over to the
broadcast side as a reliable and
easy-to-install method of routing
audio throughout a facility.
While MADI lost some favour
through the late 1990s to mid-2000s,
the standard became cutting-edge
again with a clear industry-wide
MADI mandate brought on by the

dramatic paradigm shift from tapebased to non-linear, computerbased audio production.
The fundamental shift in the
industry that replaced copper wire
snakes to coax and ﬁbre optics
demanded an efﬁcient way to route
audio to and from anywhere within a
facility. From a systems integration
point of view, having one facilitywide routing solution is easier to
install and maintain, and MADI was
an existing open standard that had
proven to be reliable.
While it seems counterintuitive
that a digital standard from 1991
could survive into the modern era,
MADI only became more relevant
with industry advancements
in workflow/digital-equipment.
While the IP/Ethernet universe
continuously searches for an
agreeable standard, MADI remains
at the forefront, because it works.

TSL Products' SAM1 MADI

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.sachtler.com/?id=1109/product_fluid-heads-film-|-hd_cine-7+7-hd.html http://www.tslproducts.com/audio-monitoring/sam1-madi/

In Broadcast - December 2013

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