Blog

When Australia’s longest running professional recording studio, Studios 301 decided to upgrade their Pro Tools systems as part of planning it’s new multi-million dollar facility they brought Videocraft in to advise them on the best way forward, what equipment to use and critically what budget they would need to work within. Videocraft post production and pro audio sales manager Ian Parish explained, “Studios 301 brought us in at the early stages of this project because of Videocraft’s history in delivering Pro Tools HD systems and our extensive experience working with AVID solutions. There aren’t a lot of studios of this size that are being built from the ground up these days, and to be a part of that is unique in itself.” From that initial consultation the discussion expanded to include an AVID Pro Tools S6 modular control surface in a multi-purpose surround mix room and as Videocraft had already installed multiple S6 consoles around Australia, the team at Studios 301 sought their advice on how best to make this a reality. Parish continued, “This was a very large project as they were building an entirely new facility from the ground up with five control rooms, three mastering rooms, digitising facilities and vinyl pressing capabilities. It was clear, due to our experience in this field, that Videocraft’s role would be to supply and support all of the AVID hardware and software and the associated peripherals to make those systems work.” As the project plan developed the brief included 64 channels of analogue IO for the client’s Neve console in Studio One, 48 channels of IO for their SSL console in Studio Two and 32 Channels of IO plus an AVID S6-M40 for Studio Three. In keeping with the tech riders of their top tier international music clientele master clocking was to be provided by an Antelope unit and Apogee Symphony’s would provide AD/DA conversion. Parish continued, “This particular job didn’t require too much translation from brief to system design and quote as the stakeholders involved are all heavily experienced in the industry in particular on the technical side so we all worked incredibly well and efficiently together. Drawing on my experience upgrading Pro Tools HD systems to 64-Bit for SAE Australia, Box Hill Institute and also delivering new systems at Abbey Road Institute, I designed the most logical system that would meet Studios 301’s requirements. Another bonus for them was the fact that we could offer local support so that any issues could be dealt with promptly.” [caption id="attachment_3271" align="aligncenter" width="1440"]

Image courtesy of Studios 301[/caption] As a result of Videocraft’s system consultancy and design, Studios 301 took receipt of and had installed a new, state of the art AVID S6 M40 32 Channel console. The console was in a fully populated 5ft frame and has the addition of the master joystick module for surround panning. Parish explained, “This means that there is one more module than the console can accommodate, however the logic here was that, due to the multi-purpose nature of the room, the console could now either be configured as a classic 32-channel mix console or for post or surround music work with a spill zone and locked master faders and stem metering. The changeover time from one layout to the other is only 15 minutes, so it can easily be done in between sessions.” Whilst the AVID S6 M40 console might be viewed as the headline act just as exciting are the Pro Tools rigs. Parish added, “The backbone of each studio is HDX2 cards in a Sonnet Echo Express chassis, with Apogee Symphony Mk II interfaces handling the AD/DA conversion. AVID SYNC HDs act as loop sync masters and communicate with the automation computers of the analogue consoles whilst being fed word clock from Antelope Pure 2 Master Clocks. The exciting part about all this is the scale of these systems, the track counts and processing resources available. There’s also the fact that we have been able to selectively choose products from different manufacturers that are the best at their chosen role, as opposed to being locked to a single hardware set, so we have the very best results that fit the 301’s very specific needs.” Ian Parish had the privilege of being in Studio One for the first playing of audio, an experience he found quite special. He concluded, “The room was amazingly flat even before acoustician’s Tom Misner and Jochen Veith had applied any tweaks to the monitoring, which really is a phenomenal feet and the Studios 301 team has done a great job to plan and build such amazing rooms. As any musician, producer or engineer knows what is just as important as the technology in a studio is the rooms themselves. If they sound good and are comfortable to work in then you will want to go back and work there.”

While everyone has their own take on the show depending on what interests them, here is what our very own James Taylor (@VideocraftJames) took from NAB this year. 4K is everywhere now. This was absolutely the case, with pretty much every company having 4K logos on their gear. Obviously 4K has been around for a while now in digital cinema production, but is now a real option to now produce 4K for live television. I may be jaded and cynical, but walking between all of the stands I felt that 4K on big TV’s did not feel as ‘special’ as maybe I would have hoped. But with an exception: the new hope is not more pixels, but High Dynamic Range (HDR), also defined as a new standard, BT.2020.

We have had image sensors for quite a while now with fantastic ability to handle dark areas and highlights in a RAW mode for later grading, but very simply it is about choosing what you want to throw away in post. The idea of HDR is that the performance of the imager can be more faithfully produced, and coupled with a wider colour gamut I had found this so much more impressive. The colour reproduction was so much better, and having the ability to see in to dark areas without the bright areas blowing out was a revelation to see on a domestic style screen. I would personally choose HDR images over ultimate resolution, but I suppose we get both. If we all have to go through the upheaval of changing everything to 4K, I feel that the extra pixels really did not add anything to experience if we are still constrained by the current 709 colour space used in HD systems. So, look out for HDR!   Using IP infrastructure to replace traditional video cabling. I think that NAB 2015 could be defined as the year where IP infrastructure could be defined as a real thing, and all of the big companies had large amounts of new toys on their stands all vying to be the ‘new standard’, within the SMPTE ratified standards, if that makes sense! Right now, it is very much a product line for the top end of town, and I think that there will be a fair bit of pain and suffering over the next few years as everyone tries to establish their place on the market. I found it interesting that while I always thought that the idea was to be able to use standard (although high end) IT infrastructure, at this time I don’t think that that really is the case. When I look at what has happened in professional audio over the years, many standards have come and gone, and only now are we really starting to see some possibility of audio over IP systems talking together with the AES67 standard. It is absolutely the way of the future, and I am excited about it, but right now I do have total interoperability with my copper (or fibre) HD SDI cable which will go between any brand of equipment, but right now I don’t think I would be able to as easily achieve that on IP. We only have to look at the myriad of file types in post-production workflows now to imagine what our future could look like!   The 8K Sideshow. The Japanese, driven by NHK are driving 8K demands, and while it is amazing at the data rates we are seeing, it does feel a very long way off when you live in a country with the bulk of free to air TV is being delivered in heavily compressed SD. It was such a pleasure to watch good-looking HD broadcasts over in the US, and I continued to marvel at what HD should look like, and lament what could have been for HD in Australia. It all feels like something that is being pushed on us so the TV manufacturers can make us buy new TV’s… I think also exactly the same reason why we need 4K! Amazing technology though that when you think in DSLR speak, these cameras are taking a 33 mega pixel still 60 times a second…   Sony Optical Disc Archive. I wasn’t really intending to focus on a particular brand, but I suppose it is my opinion and I really liked it for a lot of things we do! We have been using (and will continue to use) LTO tape as our long term archive solution. I won’t go in to the whole reason why we go to tape, but suffice to say that if your archive is on a single hard drive, then it is not an archive! The Sony Optical Disk archive system has matured, and it has had some major new clients over the past year apparently. What we like about it is that we have an archive grade media system with random access, and that is a huge advantage. In conjunction with an archive system, such as Storage DNA, it really makes it possible to use an archive media as a nearline storage system without having to have another pile of hard drives just to park your media away from your really expensive online storage. Extra capacity is as easy as buying more cartridges, and you have media that is more stable than tape. I could go on about it for hours, but I really do see this as the ideal archive system for the needs of the Digital Cinema and TV industry. We will be pursuing this further once we get back to Australia, so stay tuned! They were the main things that I took from NAB this year, and I know that there were lots of other things out there that I didn’t even get time to look at! Enjoy!