Archive by Brad Dick

Photo from outside of the RAI IBC convention center. Goodbye until next year.

Even airports are getting in on the echo-friendly push. Mowing grass is out at San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Nashville, Phoenix, Indianapolis airports.

The solution? Goats.

According to Wednesday’s story in USA Today, airports are planting more native plants and installing fewer grassy lawns, which require power mowing. These airports then use goats and sheep to keep their lawns manicured. So, on your trip home, if you spot a goat next to the runway, don’t worry, just wave. He’s supposed to be there.

Miranda offered a new solution that simplifies the integration of multiple video formats around a facility. Instead of using multiple interfacing cards and dedicated devices, this card provides a single module solution for high quality video and audio processing. A one card solution minimizes costs, simplifies video and audio integration, and also substantially reduces cabling requirements.’ more

At IBC2008, Quantel announced support for several newer camera formats. Support for the Red camera includes;

• Previewing of r3d files before importing – enabling shot selection and speeding workflow
• Partial file import – operators can selective clip ingest by simply setting in and out points
• Import at 4K, 2K or 1K resolution (full, half and quarter res) with different quality options
• Full use of all RED options including exposure, colorspace and color temperature.

The best thing about conventions is being there. The worst thing about conventions is getting there.

After enduring 22hr, door-to-door travel getting home, I’m ready to endorse children-free airplanes. I was unfortunate enough to encounter several of the most ignorant, selfish parents with small children in all my years of flying.

In both legs of my return flight, there were multiple 3-yr-old-something’s who were allowed to totally disrupt the flights with their screeching, screaming behavior. I watched (and listened) as these acoustic terrorists held all of us passengers hostage, in one case for nine hours. No one, including the kids’ parents, worked to temper the behavior of these obnoxious brats.

I say ban kids who can’t behave themselves (and the parents who refuse to make them behave) to the airplane’s cargo hold. Heck, the kids will probably like it because they’ can play with the other animals there.

Thomson Grass Valley has expanded its line of Triton compact routing switchers with the debut of the new Thomson Grass Valley Triton Plus series. Triton Plus has a reduced frame size, but expanded scalability and support for the highest quality AES110 Ohm audio and 3 Gb/s video signals. The new small footprint router is ideal for demanding AV environments where small size, low weight and affordability are critical. more

Thomson Grass Valley released the K2 Dyno replay controller. The compact, cost-effective next-generation controller coupled with the new K2 Summit production client is designed to help sports producers and other professionals capture live events in crystal-clear HD resolutions and instantly play them out at variable speeds for critical analysis during fast-paced events. It is ideally suited for HD sports production trucks and shared storage production facilities. more

Thomson announced three new models to the LDK series of cameras. They include the Thomson Grass Valley LDK 4000 Elite, LDK 8000 Elite (in Standard and WorldCam versions), and the LDK 8000 SportElite.

Among the new enhancements, the LDK Elite and SportElite HD series significantly improve on the existing cameras’ internal DSPs with new DSP circuits. It’s a completely updated software platform that performs all camera image management functions — such as knee, gamma, contours, and variable matrix — with three channel 22-bit digital precision. The SportElite adds 2x Super Slow-Motion sampling functionality in both 720p and 1080i HD formats. more

Omneon’s ProCast CDN is a high-performance file transport engine supporting high-speed file transfers over WAN.

ProCast CDN can transfer files at very fast rates, orders of magnitude greater than FTP. And, transfer speed is not affected by distance. more

There are few companies who still provide tutorial, non-biased and corporate-mention-free publications. Quantel is the leader in this select group with the Fact Book.

Roger Thornton announced the company’s latest Fact Book, marking the publication’s 20th anniversary. Personally, I can’t believe its been 20 years since the book’s first edition. Certainly I wasn’t around to see it then.…or was I?

Edited by former Quantel person himself, Bob Pank, the book is a hotly sought after resource. While I don’t have issue #1, I’ve have managed to snag several versions as they came out over the years, mainly for its impartial teaching of technology. more