London’s post production community has been in the news this past week, with a trio of manufacturers releasing stories about kit sales to various facilities in the capital as they try to drum up interest ahead of IBC, writes Andy Stout.
First up, mega-facility Envy Post Production has invested in an Eyeheight legaliseHPPi video legaliser. Installed in its machine room, the legaliseHPPi is available to automatically conform any HD or SD output from Envy’s router to standard broadcast signal levels.
“We are using the new legaliseHPPi in series with our existing Eyeheight legalEyes to ensure signals are legal in both the RGB and composite domains,” comments Envy Post Production’s chief engineer, Daniel Sassen. “The two units work extremely well. When we opened in March 2006, 25 % of our work was in HD and this is now approaching 70%. Legalising in HD is trickier than in SD because parameters such as colour space are different but the legaliseHPPi automates the whole process. We went to Eyeheight for this solution as we already have their multidef safe-area-generators in each of our eight online edit suites and we have a good working relationship with the Eyeheight sales and support team who are helpful and easy to deal with.”
Digital Rapids’ dealer ERA has completed an order from Ascent Media Group Ltd to install the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager distributed, high-volume media transcoding software at Ascent Media’s Wardour Street facility.
Transcode Manager will power Ascent’s transcoding of material from 1080/50i and 625/50i source formats into multiple MPEG-2 and Windows Media 9 video files in various bitrates and sizes. The system is going live this month.
According to Chris Watson, technical manager at Ascent Media, “Digital Rapids Transcode Manager is a cost-effective way to automate the generation of various file formats, and Digital Rapids provides us with a first-rate development and software support team. Transcode Manager provides all the functionality that we’ve become accustomed to with our Digital Rapids StreamZ hardware, and will provide our transcoding operations with flexibility, increased throughput and the ability to scale rapidly as our volumes increase.”
Finally, OmniTek has announced that Triangle Post has selected the OmniTek XR image analysis system through its UK dealer, InnoMedia Systems Ltd.
“To ensure the continued quality of our high-profile work we needed a comprehensive monitoring solution that was capable of analysing both SD and HD,” said Sinead Gaffrey, facilities manager at Triangle Post. “In addition, the XR can run 2k sequential loads, so the system not only matches our current needs but we now have a futureproof, monitoring solution for all our output.”
