Archive for August 15th, 2012

Talented Expert Deepens Company Focus On UltraViolet, User Experience, and Future Technologies

(Burbank, CA) Testronic Labs has announced that industry veteran Albert Koval has joined the company in the newly created role of Vice President, UltraViolet Services and Software Testing, US. Testronic, recognized as the global leader in quality assurance services for film and television, games, websites, hardware, and software, is leading the industry in services for UltraViolet and a host of emerging technologies that are impacting the consumer experience.

Koval has spent much of his career in complex testing environments involving high performance computing and high-availability enterprise storage platforms, test automation, artificial intelligence, and firmware, middleware, and software development. He has also led strategic planning and management teams, and customer experience initiatives throughout his career, translating cutting-edge technologies into end-user implementations. Seth Hallen, CEO of Testronic, commented, “Albert brings a remarkable depth of experience to Testronic. He has a well-respected track record and combines a unique breadth of technical knowledge with extensive customer interface and customer service experience. His multifaceted skill set and expertise is directly aligned with our strategic focus for the company.”

Most recently, Koval served as Director of UltraViolet Services at Solekai Systems in San Diego, CA. where he was responsible for managing the overall UltraViolet-related business, including the development of the DECE Compliance Verification Program (CVP) and DECE CFF Verifier, and served as the primary interface to DECE, the industry consortium developing the UltraViolet specifications. Prior to Solekai, Koval served as Director of Advanced Technical Operations at Verari Systems, Inc. where he was responsible for Systems Test, Sustaining Engineering and Engineering Support for storage and compute bladeserver products, and designed the company’s NB1010 10Gb BladeSwitch networking product. From 2000 to 2005, Koval was Director of Worldwide Technical Training and Certification at Legato Systems, which was acquired by storage powerhouse EMC. Prior to Legato/EMC, Koval worked for Amdahl Corporation/Fujitsu as Director of Worldwide Education and GM for the North American division of Fujitsu’s KnowledgePool worldwide technical training operations. From 1987 to 1992, Koval worked at Cray Research and Cray Computer Corporation in various technical roles involving testing, AI and expert systems, ending as Manager of Intelligent Systems for the Cray-3 project, where he worked for and with supercomputing legend Seymour Cray, who is widely regarded as the father of high performance computing.

Koval commented, “I’ve had the extremely good fortune of working for and with a number of interesting companies and industry luminaries during my career, and Testronic is similarly engaged in some of the most interesting and influential work going on in the entertainment and software industries today. There are important initiatives underway throughout the digital content ecosystem that will engage consumers in very new and meaningful ways, and Testronic is poised to support those initiatives in many ways, including test automation and intelligent test systems for software applications and user experience testing. These are areas that I truly love working in, and I’m excited to be part of the Testronic team and the interesting work ahead.”

Hallen concluded, “I am very happy to announce that Albert has joined our team. We have worked closely with him in the past and have always found him to be an extremely knowledgeable, personable, and inventive person. As we deepen our role in UltraViolet and expand our Software Services into the US, Albert will be an invaluable asset to our team. Testronic is clearly focused on new technologies that will continue to define the consumer experience, and we look forward to working with him on this exciting next phase of growth.”

About Testronic Labs
Testronic Labs’ high standards have been protecting clients and safeguarding the consumer experience since 1998. As the leading global provider of quality assurance, compliance, and localization services for a notable array of industries; including media, entertainment, games, education, e-commerce and consumer electronics, Testronic Labs ensures efficient and secure delivery of the highest quality consumer deliverables. Based in Burbank, CA, Pinewood Studios and central London UK, Diepenbeek, Belgium and Warsaw, Poland, Testronic Labs offers an unparalleled history of next-generation innovation and service excellence across the entire digital media industry.

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Media Contact:
Chris Purse, 818.303.8088
ignite strategic communications
chris@ignite.bz or mimi@ignite.bz

Fremont, CA – August 15, 2012 – Blackmagic Design today announced DaVinci Resolve 9 was used by New York City based colorist and online editor Juan Salvo for finishing and color correcting the wildly popular Cookie Monster music video spoof of the Carly Rae Jepsen song “Call Me Maybe.”

Directed by Josh and Jason Diamond of the Diamond Brothers and produced by Jim Muscarella for New York based production company The Hidden Fortress, the spoof was created to support an already popular tweet from Sesame Street and quickly became one of the most popular viral videos in the United States. In order to capitalize on the popularity of the tweet and the viral nature of social media, the project needed to be completed within only a couple of days, and Resolve 9’s speed, efficiency and acceleration of the overall color correction workflow were essential to meeting the incredibly tight deadline.

Working out of GRS Systems, a rental, production and post house in New York City, Juan used Resolve 9’s new features, including streamlined project selection, scrubbable media thumbnails to speed up source clip review and shot selection and production metadata fields for shot notes, naming of nodes and resizable gallery stills. And with all the grading controls on new, larger palettes, Juan had faster access to the tools he needed.

“With Resolve 9’s new streamlined project workflow, I was able to conform the locked cut of Cookie Monster’s ‘Share It Maybe’ in seconds. And great new organizational features like node labeling, markers and pins allowed me to keep track of exactly what I was doing and what I needed to do to realize my clients’ vision,” said Juan.

In homage to Carly Rae Jepsen, one scene shows the original music video playing on a computer monitor. During production, the music video was played on an LCD screen, but the images were not clear in the resulting footage. Juan used Resolve 9’s sophisticated tracker to track the computer screen as it moved in the shot. Additionally, he was able to qualify and exclude the performers in the foreground. By combining the two techniques using Resolve’s node based workflow, Juan was able to make drastic adjustments to correct the issues in the shot and save the cost and time of a VFX pass that would have required tracking, rotoscoping and compositing.

To see the full “Share it Maybe” video, please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qTIGg3I5y8.

About DaVinci Resolve
Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is the world’s highest performance color correction solution for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux computers. DaVinci Resolve supports more real time color correction than any other system because it’s not limited by the performance of the computer it’s running on. DaVinci Resolve eliminates this performance barrier because it’s based on a cluster of high performance GPU cards, so all processing is always real time. DaVinci Resolve has the power of a true real time performance solution so handles complex color grades even when using dozens of primaries, secondaries, Power Windows™, multi point tracking, blurs, and more. DaVinci Resolve provides incredible performance in a low cost solution which can be easily upgrade by adding extra GPU’s for supercomputer power to handle 4K resolutions, stereoscopic 3D and real time grading direct from raw camera files such as Blackmagic Cinema Camera, ARRI raw, RED r3d and Sony F65 files which can be handled with ease.

Press Photography
Product photos of the new DaVinci Resolve 9, and all other Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

iStreamPlanet at IBC2012

At IBC2012, iStreamPlanet will showcase its portfolio of live and on demand streaming video services and solutions including:

Managed Broadcast Services
iStreamPlanet’s U.S. and London-based Broadcast Operations Centers provide global acquisition, encoding, transcoding, and publishing services that scale to support any size live event. Colocated with the world’s largest data centers, iStreamPlanet offers content owners a highly secure, highly redundant environment for acquiring, digitizing, securing, and delivering live video content to connected devices around the world.

Professional Solutions
For customers looking for custom applications and solutions, iStreamPlanet will highlight recent custom applications for connected devices including:
•Flash(R), HTML 5, and Silverlight(R) HD players with full DVR controls
•Data visualizations, overlays, and metadata for multiscreen viewing
•Captions and multilanguage support
•Custom applications for iPad(R), iPhone(R), Xbox LIVE(R), Sony PlayStation(R) and other platforms

Director 3.7 Online Video Platform
iStreamPlanet’s online video platform enables broadcasters to deliver live and on-demand video across multiple platforms. The cost-effective platform speeds up content ingest and transcoding, simplifies content management with intuitive “at your fingertips” dashboard controls and project workflows, and provides customizable, embeddable players for high-quality playback experiences on multiple devices. Whether it’s a single client or multiple divisions, Director 3.7′s project-based workflow allows content owners to create custom and unique projects that automatically transcode media into one or several output formats; process categories, tags, and other key metadata; and publish the transcoded content to selected individuals or multiple playlists.

Company Event
“Live Streaming of the 2012 Olympic Games to Connected Devices: Enabling Olympic Rights Holder Broadcasters to Expand their Digital Footprint”

As part of IBC’s Sports Day program, iStreamPlanet will host a panel on Sept. 8 starting at 4 p.m. in the Forum Meeting Room at the RAI. The discussion, led by experts from iStreamPlanet and Haivision is free to all exhibition and conference attendees.

Company Quote:

“iStreamPlanet offers innovative video streaming solutions that enable broadcasters and content providers to deliver live broadcasts successfully on any screen and to any device, thereby ensuring a high-quality, multiscreen viewer experience. At IBC2012, we will be highlighting our newest multiplatform, streaming video services and solutions that help reduce the cost and complexity of delivering live and on-demand video, regardless of scope or location.” — Mio Babic, Founder, President and CEO

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Company Overview:

iStreamPlanet is a multiplatform managed broadcast solutions provider committed to bringing high-quality video experiences to connected audiences around the world. With more than a decade of managed broadcast experience, iStreamPlanet has built a comprehensive offering of video workflow and content management products and services. iStreamPlanet’s innovative approach has been chosen by the world’s leading sports, entertainment, and technology brands including NBC, Turner Broadcasting, AMC Networks, the U.S. Olympics Committee, AT&T, Microsoft, and others. Founded in 2000, the privately held company is headquartered in Las Vegas with offices in Redmond, Wash., and London. More information can be found at www.istreamplanet.com.

In its second consecutive year broadcasting in HD on primetime television, the Miss Florida USA 2013 pageant again featured grandMA lighting consoles behind the scenes. This time lighting director Stefan DeWilde also selected a complement of Clay Paky Sharpys for the event boosting the impact of the lighting rig. A.C.T Lighting in the exclusive distributor of both grandMA and Clay Paky fixtures in North America.

Staged in Davie’s Bailey Concert Hall on the campus of Broward University, the pageant featured more contestants than ever before and was televised live to fans across the Sunshine State. Michelle Aguirre was crowned Miss Florida and moves on to the national Miss USA competition.

“We had twice as many moving fixtures as last year,” reports DeWilde. “I used Sharpys around the floor for aerial beam effects. They were a prominent part of the program – every scene was tightened by Sharpy. Although we only had six of them, they cut through 85 other automated fixtures.”

DeWilde also deployed an expanded grandMA system, which featured an NSP and eight universes. “It was very important to have the NSP,” he says. “It was essential to have everything networked on the show.”

The Orlando office of stage lighting rental and production company Christie Lites furnished the grandMA and Sharpy fixtures. “CEO Huntly Christie really came through to pull together this equipment,” says DeWilde. “The partnership between Christie and A.C.T is just great.”

“This pageant was the first time I’d used the Sharpys, and they were so phenomenal that I’m going to use them in the New World Center,” he says. DeWilde is director of lighting for the New World Symphony in Miami Beach. “The Sharpys are small and lightweight, and their output and speed is amazing.”

He also gives kudos to the grandMAs. “The consoles were fast with no lag in network communication. Shows like this always come down to flexibility, speed and consoles. We have a ton of equipment and very little time to put things together.”