jueves, 8 de marzo de 2012

Searle Street Post Upgrades Digital Dailies Workflow to FLEXXITY Dailies Software

March 2, 2012

Source: DFT - Digital Film Technologies
DFT Digital Film Technology, provider of high-end film and digital post production solutions that preserve, manage, and deliver your pictures, announces that Searle Street Post in Cape Town, South Africa has upgraded its digital dailies workflow from BONES Dailies to FLEXXITY Dailies.
By upgrading to FLEXXITY Dailies, Searle Street Post now has the advantage of working in a myriad of different file formats including all digital cinematography and raw camera files. There is absolutely zero transcoding required, which saves time and ensures simultaneously rendering of multiple output file formats at almost real-time speeds. This new workflow supports 4K and 2K functionality and processes virtually any file format from incoming camera files, or other media.
Dailies operator at Searle Street Post, Andrew Giddey comments that “FLEXXITY is stable, versatile, and a highly intelligent system that makes the dailies process enjoyable and successful day after day.”
The speed and functionality of FLEXXITY Dailies allows Searle Street Post to achieve a true real-time dailies processing environment. Searle’s previous workflow with R3D footage used to take 1.25x real-time to transcode and import to dpx files. FLEXXITY Dailies ingests files and starts syncing audio / video immediately. FLEXXITY guarantees that they deliver sound synced, graded, metadata logged dailies in a variety of file formats expertly, and with unparalleled speed.
Searle Street Post works with a lot of ProRes files coming from ARRI Alexa, ARRIRAW, RED and other acquisition formats, which FLEXXITY Dailies ingests and reads natively, without the need for transcoding. This ensures that high quality compressed content is supported throughout the entire process all the way to the finished product. FLEXXITY is among the first Linux based software solutions to offer native ProRes support.
The South African film market is a vibrant, growing industry, which offers diverse and unique film locations, affordable production costs, and a favorable exchange rate. As with other markets, the move toward digital filming, digital dailies, as well as on-set dailies is occurring quite rapidly.
“We are seeing a fast shift from film to digital in Africa,” states Heino Henning, creative director at Searle Street Post. “We are committed to taking the lead in technology trends and market movements, and our decision to upgrade our Bones system to a FLEXXITY Dailies will help us continue to meet the demands of our customers. FLEXXITY handles digital formats such as ARRIRAW and ProRes so seamlessly, so the decision to upgrade our dailies workflow was really already made for us.”
FLEXXITY Dailies can also be efficiently used as an on-set Dailies software application. The audio / video syncing, metadata logging and management, color grading, and quality-control measurements are ideal tools for on-set production dailies work.
FLEXXITY Dailies software offers real-time playback, quality control, color correction, scaling, sound synchronization and much more. It is resolution-independent, handles all kinds of source formats on the same timeline, and outputs a large variety of file formats and video streams in parallel.

FLEXXITY software applications are available as software only, as well as turnkey systems including workstation, interfaces, storage, and grading panels.
About Searle Street Post
Searle Street Post Production combines the latest technology; integrated, tapeless workflows; and experienced talent. Opened in April 2011, with Refinery as a shareholder, Searle Street's post production facilities were designed with stereoscopic and HD workflows in mind. We have the latest post production technology on the market, including Flame, Quantel iQ, Truelight-accredited Baselight, SCANITY 2K scanner, Bones, FLEXXITY and data lab.
Our focus is on the client: we want to ensure the best quality and fastest execution of your jobs. Our world-class facility is designed to accommodate all your technical requirements to give you a hassle-free experience.

lunes, 5 de marzo de 2012

Koyaanisqatsi en 5 minutos.

Hace 30 años el cine experimental vio llegar una obra de la que hoy día son deudores infinidad de vídeos que vemos a diario en Internet. Paisajes naturales y urbanos rodados con la técnica de time-lapse alternada con la cámara lenta que permite jugar con la fugaz linealidad temporal. El film “Koyaanisqatsi” de Godfrey Reggio y sus secuelas, acompañadas de la deliciosa música de Philip Glass, continúan siendo disfrutables pero como no siempre se dispone de 90 minutos para ello Wyatt Hodgson la ha comprimido un 1.552% para que dure tan solo 5:14, como verás en el vídeo que te ofrecemos a continuación.
Reggio compuso un peculiar discurso narrativo centrado en lo visual a través de la sucesión de paseos por el campo y la ciudad recurriendo a planos con cámara lenta y time lapse que aceleraban y ralentizaban lo que veíamos.

El título de la película corresponde a la palabra del dialecto de los indios Hopi que significa “La vide fuera de equilibrio” y pretendía transmitir, sin diálogo ni voz en off, una experiencia audiovisual al espectador. Posteriormente rodaría otras dos entregas, “Powaqqatsi” y “Naqoiqatsi”. Sus subyugantes imágenes, no obstante, necesitan de nuestra atención durante los 90 minutos que dura el film, pero ya se sabe que en estos tiempos acelerados en que vivimos (de hecho parte de estas películas incidía precisamente en este aspecto) nos hacen remisos a mantenernos durante tanto tiempo centrados en algo de manera que Hodgson ha comprimido el metraje en 5 minutos y 14 segundosque, a pesar e no contar con la BSO de Philip Glass pueden servir de acicate para que algunos se decidan a buscar la película (o la trilogía) al completo y disfrutar de ellas.

Grúa o Dirigible?????......

Los japoneses de la cadena NHK han desarrollado un nuevo tipo de cámara acoplada a un mini dirigible para poder usarse como alternativa a las grúas actuales. Está pensada para ser fija en el aire y dispone de un sofisticado sistema de estabilización y de un control remoto.

Resulta increíble la fluidez que tiene la cámara, incluso cuando alguien tira de un cable del dirigible.Esto es posible gracias a una suspensión cardán con 4 ejes y giróscopos que permiten que la dirección de la cámara se mantenga. El sistema completo con la cámara pesa unos 2 kilos y el dirigible puede llevar 4 kilos consigo.
Lo curioso es que el dirigible en sí no se controla, sólo tiene una conexión por cable con el suelo para situarlo, controlar la altura y evitar que se pierda por las alturas, aunque en el caso de que la conexión se corte tiene un sistema de seguridad para ir cayendo.
Está pensado para alcanzar hasta 300 m, con unas condiciones de viento máximo de 7 m/s. Con esto pretenden conseguir tomas más altas que con las grúas y con un coste muchísimo menor.