Gear Makers Risk Financial Ruin

[dr sound]

An interesting Read:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/beh...nancial-695958

[TOM@METRO]

What a depressing thought.

[Chief Technician]

Some deals are... clearly designed to give the purchasing company a solid base in IT and IP video processing and transport.

I just had a thought while reading that. Right now you can capture either baseband audio and video or encoded audio and video. Baseband is either analog or digital. Encoded, while oversimplified to present my point, is either Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD. Playout reverses this process (encoded-->baseband) at the device closest to where the user pressed play (workstation).

What if the conversion of encoded to baseband happened closer to or at the display? Maybe that's where things are going. Maybe that is where some companies can partner up and fuel explosive growth to their profit margins.

[Bob Olhsson]

This has been the context of Avid's financial problems for a long time. They are doing better relatively than most pro media production suppliers. The cause has been the consolidation of their biggest customers combined with their smallest customers' lack of budgets. It's not pretty at all.

[Craig F]

Also the major transition from SD to HD has happened, sales are going to be down post conversion plus a slow economy

I know that some smaller market TV news is still done in SD but I think there going to stay that way until they have to replace their equipment

[Chief Technician]

Originally Posted by Craig F

Also the major transition from SD to HD has happened, sales are going to be down post conversion plus a slow economy

The collective tried to restart this process with 3D. As a tech, I am thankful that they failed. Twice the storage? Twice the bandwidth? Twice the headaches? No thank you.

Now the collective is trying to restart the process again with 4k. They are gaining traction in this regard. 4k actually requires four times the storage and four times the bandwidth. Will it be four times the headaches? I don't know. The facility I work at has most of its revenue come from network promos, so until networks starting producing their programming in 4k and start broadcasting in 4k, I can wait to see how things play out (no pun intended).

Originally Posted by Craig F

I know that some smaller market TV news is still done in SD but I think there going to stay that way until they have to replace their equipment

Are those lower power stations that still broadcast in SD? If not, are they upconverting to HD or just broadcasting an SD signal in an HD channel?

[Bob Olhsson]

The consumer electronics industry is endlessly attempting planned obsolescence. They got away with it by calling compressed digital TV "HD."

An elephant in the room is the fact that Hollywood stopped shooting 65mm film because nobody could afford the quality of lighting, sets, props, makeup and wardrobe required to make a picture believable. Now you can dumb resolution down with CGI but hello? Combine that with the horrendous losses in cable and satellite TV and it's clearly a solution in search of a problem. My friend at Viacom tells me the suits are hoping 4k can reduce the number of cameras employed by creating all close-up and medium shots in post. Again, picture quality?

[Chief Technician]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

My friend at Viacom tells me the suits are hoping 4k can reduce the number of cameras employed by creating all close-up and medium shots in post. Again, picture quality?

Just because you could doesn't mean you should.

[Bob Olhsson]

A race to the bottom...

[Carl Kolchak]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

My friend at Viacom tells me the suits are hoping 4k can reduce the number of cameras employed by creating all close-up and medium shots in post. Again, picture quality?

That wouldn't be as noticeable as the old days of using an optical printer for dissolves, or blow-ups.

In fact it's pretty common to shoot at 5K, and do a 4K, or even 2K extraction for image stabilisation, or reframing purposes.

However, for T.V. whilst it might sound like a good idea, in terms of looking at costs saved on equipment purchases on a budget sheet - in practical terms it's going to be way quicker, more decisive, and cheaper to have the close up filmed discretely, from the correct angle, than to have it fudged, either in post, or on the live video mixer.


How many people are actually going to want to go out and buy a (bare minimum of) 55" TV in order to be able to appreciate the increased resolution of a 4K image, is a different matter.

You'll still find that an awful lot of theatres are actually projecting a true 2K image, that is upscaled to 4K.

I don't know about you, but my lounge isn't big enough to accommodate a 60 foot screen, so I'm not too worried about 4K in a domestic setting.