BBC2 PRIMETIME


DRAGONS’ DEN


INVESTS IN THE FUTURE


Avid’s policy of opening up its source code for the DNxHD codec has enabled a series of advances in production and post


production workflows. One of the latest shows to benefit is Dragons’ Den


Avid’s open solutions have facilitated some important technical innovations in production and post production workflows. One show which has been quick to benefit is Dragons’ Den. The BBC2 series best known for its business innovations has been breaking new ground of its own with the Avid developed DNxHD codec and Ingex, the BBC R&D department’s new low-cost tapeless production technology. Produced by the


SYMPHONY NITRIS DX


For real-time editing, HD finishing and mastering you can rely on. For more infor- mation: www.avid.com/ US/products/symphony


BBC’s Manchester-based entertainment department Entertainment Production North and shot at Pinewood, the show is one of the first to be recorded in full HD using this studio- based multicamera ingest and transcoding system which logs high quality material at the point of capture, eliminating tape and the need to digitise footage. Edited at Manchester- based facility Sumners, the post house’s technical director Brian Hardman explains: “The beauty of the system is that it can record at multiple resolutions simultaneously – creating a standard definition Avid offline and Avid high resolution online at the same time. It’s also cost effective, with low cost storage based around high spec, commodity Dell PCs with DVS HD capture cards.” Dragons’ Den is shot on five Sony HDW-750s which record straight to hard drives, which are sent to Sumners every two days,


with the high resolution HD media stored on 40TB RAID storage at Pinewood.


“The big advantage is that it


really cuts down on time, effort and cost because rather than sending us all the tapes, which on a five camera shoot would be a lot of digitising, we get two days worth of material on one drive, which takes just 30 minutes to copy across to our Avid Unity ISIS storage. It’s a really quick way of getting stuff into the edit.” The high resolution DNxHD media on the RAID storage is shipped to Sumners at the end of shooting in June. “We just bolt it into our bay and when we get the final edits we re-link to that media for a file-based conform.” Offlined on Avid Media Composer, the series is on lined and graded closer to transmission on Avid Symphony Nitris DX. When the edit is in full swing the series can use up to six Media Composers on ISIS during the final stages, with finishing sometimes split across two Symphony Nitris DX suites.


COMPlEX EDIT


Filmed during five, week long shoots during a three month period from April to June, Hardman declares: “It’s a complicated edit – largely because until the last pitches have been made you don’t know how the final shows will look.” That’s because the Dragons have to hear around 100 pitches from would-be


entrepreneurs, all of which has to be sifted through by the editors. “The editing can’t really be finalised until all the material has been shot and viewed,” explains Hardman. Also there’s a mini-highlights section in the middle of each show to think about, composed of short clips from the pitches that fell by the wayside. A key part of the edit is deciding which pitches are going to be in the highlights section and which will be chosen for longer treatments in the series.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16