Andrew, We're hoping that SGI makes some big installations of this new system.....Here is Prisa's site........
prisa.com
Of note is Prisa's release in Feb. that they will supply Panasonic with FC cards for digital news center....no switches mentioned in this one yet.
prisa.com
If you should go to any shows like NAB please check out the FC tech. give us a report. Nice to know they are getting some press. Do you see a big need soon?
Slightly off topic. Read what Lucas has done on his new Star Wars movie. Check out those file sizes....FC do your stuff.....
The Empire Strikes Binary
Is an all-digital Star Wars in our
future?
Neil McAllister, Special to SF Gate
You've gotta hand it to George Lucas. Ever since
production began on the original "Star Wars" film in
1975, he's been pushing the limits of cutting-edge
technology to bring his visions to the silver screen.
And, with the pending release of the first of his new
"Star Wars" trilogy in May, Lucas is set to sound the
starting bell on another new chapter in movie history.
No, I'm not talking about the biography of Darth
Vader here. While the story of young Anakin
Skywalker is what will keep audiences glued to "The
Phantom Menace," equally exciting for many
filmmakers is Lucas' own quest to change the way
that motion pictures are created. In a twist that will
sound familiar to MP3 addicts around the 'Net,
Lucas' latest vision is a digital one.
Digital special effects are nothing new to
moviegoers at this point. Computer-generated
images first captivated audiences for Disney's Tron
back in 1982. But Lucas sees effects like these as
only the beginning. If the plans he's announced come
fully to fruition, we might expect to see an Episode
Two of the "Star Wars" saga that's 100% digital --
no film involved.
Here's how such a production might work. Start by
shooting the scenes using state-of-the-art digital
cameras, such as the ones Lucasfilm has teamed up
with Sony to develop. Then transmit the day's worth
of material back to the editing facility via high-speed
digital satellite uplink, direct from the shooting
location.
Once there, the scenes can be pieced together with
digital editing equipment, like the Avid computer
workstations that have already become a standard in
film and television production. As this phase is
completed, the same material can be uploaded to the
effects house, where CGI elements can be added in.
Digital audio can be mixed and edited throughout the
process.
When the picture is finished, it can be transferred to
35mm film using Sony's Electron Beam Recorder
technology. But why bother? The complete feature
could be sent over satellite to theaters nationwide,
stored on servers there, and projected digitally. Not a
single frame of celluloid need be printed.
Sound farfetched? It's isn't. While an all-digital "Star
Wars" may yet be a tough goal to reach, Lucas has
already employed many of these techniques in his
films. Digital audio is commonplace in modern
theaters, provided by several vendors including Sony,
Dolby Labs, and Lucas' own THX group. Certain
scenes of "Star Wars Episode One" were filmed
entirely with digital cameras.
The recent Special Edition versions of the first "Star
Wars" trilogy were printed to film from all-digital
sources. And in June, Lucasfilm has announced
special screenings of "Episode One" in four theaters
equipped with filmless digital projection devices,
using competing technologies from Texas
Instruments and Hughes-JVC.
Though Lucas is one of the few in the industry today
who could command the kind of budgets needed to
realize a plan this ambitious, he's not the only
filmmaker looking to use computer technology to
enhance his productions. In fact, for the new breed
of independent filmmakers who embrace digital
techniques, a large part of their motivation is to keep
the budgets of their films as low as possible.
Craig McGillivray was one of the early pioneers of
small-scale independent digital filmmaking. With
partner Sara Archambault, he founded Claymore
Studios in 1994 to explore how the new technology
could make feasible what previously could only have
been possible given the budgets of larger studios.
The result was "Sucker!," the world's first online
episodic serial, edited and packaged on desktop
computer workstations and delivered over the
Internet.
"We chose the digital medium 'cause it was cheap
and there were no rules," says McGillivray. "It gave
us the freedom to experiment like crazy, with visuals,
with sound, with narrative structure."
In the end, it wasn't McGillivray's vision that proved
to be the limiting factor in the production of
"Sucker!" Rather, it was that by 1994, technology
just hadn't caught up to what he knew was possible.
"The bandwidth issue," the filmmaker laments.
"There just were not that many people who could
download the thing at that time. We had to keep the
episodes short: 51 episodes, at around 15 seconds
per episode. We figured we had to keep the size per
QuickTime file around 1 MB, or nobody was gonna
be able to download it. We were compressing so
much story information into such little hunks, we had
to figure out just how much we could leave out and
still have an audience understand what was going
on."
If there's one thing you can count on in the computer
industry, though, it's progress. Today, McGillivray
works on digital films of another kind -- as a member
of Steve Jobs' Pixar Animation Studios in Richmond,
Ca.
Compared to "Sucker!'s" limit of 1 MB per 15
seconds, a single second of Pixar's recent feature
film "A Bug's Life" occupies about 18 MB of
computer storage. The full length of the computer
animated feature film approaches a terabyte -- or a
thousand gigabytes -- of digital information, in its
final form. Almost two full terabytes of storage were
needed during the production of the film.
Still, while all that digital storage and the network
bandwidth to move the data from place to place are
expensive, the total long-term costs are nothing
compared to the cost of the use of traditional
cameras, film, and materials. Film costs money.
Developing and printing the film costs money.
But both these steps are eliminated in an all-digital
production system. Distribution can be done over
network wires instead of using trucks, further
reducing costs. Even multimillionaire Jobs must have
seen the value of these kinds of savings, when he
first bought Pixar from Lucas back in 1986.
As more small independent filmmakers begin to
realize these advantages, and as more low-cost tools
for film production become available, the number of
digitally created productions is sure to increase. If
the growing roster of short films shown at
digitally-oriented festivals such as D.Film is any
indication, it's already happening.
And if Lucas is successful in delivering a "Star Wars
Episode Two" that's 100% digital from camera all
the way to the theater, the sky may well prove to be
the only limit.
Unless, of course, other self-imposed limits arise.
The recording industry is still waging an ongoing
battle against the MP3 audio format, which they
perceive as a threat to both the intellectual property
rights of artists and, more importantly, to their own
profits. If the Hollywood movie industry begins to
see digital filmmaking tools as a similar threat to their
own market share, who knows what measures they
might take to crush or control the digital film
movement.
The old publishing and distribution systems that
controlled how artists could create and market their
works are beginning to crumble left and right -- but
they're not going to go without a fight.
Still, for digital filmmakers it's hard to imagine a
better ally to have on their side than Lucas. And if
Hollywood isn't yet sold on this new medium, it
probably won't take much more than one look at the
receipts for the new "Star Wars" trilogy to make
them believers, too.
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