Conversion and Optical Fiber: Better Living Beyond Copper at Barrandov Studios
By Felix Nevrela, Managing Director, Cinepost
Cinepost is based in Barrandov Studios in Prague, which is one of the largest studios in Europe. And when you are located on a huge campus where there is 1.4 kilometres between my post-production suites, building and maintaining a workflow that includes the ability to convert signals over long distances is something you have to deal with on a daily basis.
Here at Cinepost, we specialise in audio and video post-production for television and film. As well as providing visual effects, offline and online editing, we offer a full 2K and 4K digital intermediate and D-Cinema services. Basically, I have a multitude of rooms running a number of different processes that are used clients producing a very wide array of broadcast and film quality projects.
Cinepost has a number of new post production suites in five separate buildings randomly placed on the Barrandov campus. And to connect computers in all of these rooms we are using optical fiber. A lot of them. We have a fibre cable loop around the campus, that’s fine for comps but what’s about video?
Of course there were multiple solutions available on the market for couple of years, but Blackmagic Design’s Mini Converter Optical Fiber converters were the right solution for our needs.
Fiber allows us to easily connect across our campus (where SDI and coax max out at 300 feet, optical fiber can reach 147,000 feet). Until recently, the ability to convert signals over optical fiber has been cost prohibitive due to a lack of devices that could input, capture and playback optical fiber signals. Blackmagic changed that when they were one of the first to offer affordable optical fiber mini-converters, as well as capture card and monitoring technology through their Decklink line of optical fiber cards, that had embedded optical fiber connections.
The Blackmagic equipment is central to the workflow at Cinepost and interfaces with Sony 4K projection, Filmlight scanner and 4K capable color corection system, and multiple Apple Final Cut Pro instalations, providing a seamless connection between the film grading suite and the projection room. Also, the products are used to connect Cinepost’s VTR machine room via a two-way link with the grading suite using the Mini Converter Optical Fiber at an approximate distance of 1.4km.
From the grading suite, an HD-SDI signal flows through a Blackmagic Audio to SDI Mini Converter, where two to six channels of audio are inserted. The audio embedded HD-SDI video image is then passed to a Mini Converter Optical Fiber. The Optical Fiber SDI signal continues on a single mode optical fiber through several optical switchboards into another Mini Converter Optical Fiber, where it is converted back to HD-SDI. The signal is then transformed via the SDI to Analog Mini Converter into PAL format before being sent to a waveform monitor. Finally, the signal feeds a Blackmagic HDLink Pro, which outputs to HDMI and separates six channels of analog audio that are sent to a plasma TV and amplifier. All of this takes place over a distance that was unheard of until the past year and at speeds and low bandwidth requirements that only optical fiber can provide.
In the end, Blackmagic’s converters allowed us to put in a technically advanced as well as affordable workflow. We saved a substantial amount of money and benefited from the high level of efficiency that the Blackmagic Design products brought to us.
