One of the many sales stories to emerge from IBC was that Hungary’s national commercial broadcaster, TV2, has ordered a raft of Autodesk visual effects and editing systems.
The systems were sold, and will be installed, by Autodesk’s systems reseller, BoneheadZ, and its partner in Hungary, Leonardo SNS. All in all, TV2 has ordered four Autodesk Smoke 2007 editing and finishing systems and an Autodesk Flint 2007 visual effects system. TV2 has been using Smoke and Flint systems since 2001 as the backbone of its promos and graphics department, creating idents, promos and titles for the channel and its programmes. After evaluating solutions offered by Autodesk, Avid and Quantel, they decided to update their infrastructure with the latest Autodesk systems.
“The most important factor in our decision is the workflow that Smoke and Flint offers,” said Zsol Szentesi, TV2’s technical director. “With Autodesk systems our artists can create a look based on many layers of motion graphics in one go. With competitive systems, they’d need several render passes to achieve the same thing which disrupts the workflow and makes it difficult to make last-minute changes. As the promos and graphics department is always working under huge time pressures, they can’t afford to waste time working around the system to make late changes.”
Zsol continued: “The new Autodesk systems will cause the least disruption to our operations as we can re-use old archives, source materials and metadata such as setups. There will be virtually no learning curve during the transition, which will ensure that the department can focus on continuing to provide top quality graphics. Cost was another consideration as all the software can be transferred to the new systems and we don’t need to invest in completely new licenses.”
TV2’s promos footage and channel idents are shot on 35mm film or HD to ensure they’re the same quality as high-end commercials. The systems, which will be delivered after IBC, are all capable of working with HD material. They will be connected through Autodesk Wire software and installed with 1.75 TB Stone arrays.
