WELCOME | High Definition magazine

A Little Commitment Please, For A While At Least

Although a few of the main players have left IBC, the Amsterdam show is still one countdown clock that facility house or rental company managers watch like a ticking time bomb. It is a brave manager who commits to a new equipment strategy a month before IBC.

Even more so these days where an obvious choice for a new purchase is hard to find. There are more alluring new products than ever before but all have a greater risk of adoption than a decade ago.

The risk is going ‘off road’ with a new codec, new workflow or new company. Whilst something with a Sony badge has historically been a reasonably safe choice, competition is rife and combined with a greater choice of formats. The days of a paternalistic relationship between manufacturer and end user are over.

In a recent editorial we wrote how craft persons were struggling to maintain high, or shall we say, professional levels of competence and service. The rate of introduction of new work flows and technology leaves most groping for their keyboard for a Google explanation of one term or another.

The facility manager or, for that matter, producer has the same problem although they get to wear the result of any hasty decision for a painfully long time compared to the craft professional who moves onto the next job.

In recent months I’ve used a mind ‘boggingly’ diverse range of equipment utilising many different types of codecs. In most cases the production team were new to the technology too.

Not all equipment does the same job, the mantra of ‘choose the right piece of equipment for the job’ is fine if managers and the end user have a full and professional understanding of all the options so they can make that decision in an informed logical basis. The sheer number of diverse work flows requires a great deal of research to make an informed decision.

It hasn’t always been like this. The introduction of a wide range of new DV cameras in the nineties, introduced at a remarkable and unforeseen rate, had one saving grace in that all the cameras used the same codec and conformed to a similar workflow.

Not so with the current choice of cameras, each one demanding an understanding of different work flow where the devil is in the detail.

Niche players are the new industry experts but don’t expect anyone to know everything all of the time.

The smart money is not tying oneself down to technology beyond what can be paid for or utilised in the near term.

Michael Brennan