DE LANE LEA GO HIGH-DEF WITH VCUBE HD
Renowned London-based post-production House De Lane Lea has embraced fully high-definition picture dubbing with the installation of a Merging Technologies VCube HD video playback system in its main dubbing theatre. The system was supplied by eMerging, the UK distribution and support company for Merging in the UK.
The change at De Lane Lea came in response to customer demand,
particularly from film companies. "The standard workflow on films is now
HD," explains Paul Jarvis, De Lane Lea's Technical Manager. "All of the
big pictures that we've worked on recently, like Hellboy 2, which we
finished in the Summer, are being provided as an HD picture source.
Prior to purchasing the VCube HD, we were having to re-capture the HD pictures we were sent at SD
resolution before proceeding with dubbing, which was rather
time-consuming, and clearly wasn't a long-term solution."
Although De Lane Lea has been a user of Merging's standard-definition
VCube for several years, the choice of VCube HD wasn't a foregone
conclusion. "We did look closely at the competition, but VCube seemed to
offer us the friendliest user interface. Some of the competing systems
were technically impressive, but couldn't offer jog/shuttle-type
control, forcing you to jump through a video file in increments rather
than rewinding or forwarding in the traditional manner. We're used to
systems that emulate tape machines — you can see what's happening with
the image better. And the VCube seems to accept the major file formats
and codecs without any trouble. Hellboy 2 was supplied AVID-encoded, and
although we had to download the codec from a web site, we just stuck it
in the VCube, and it worked straight away.
"VCube HD also has some very nice features. I particularly like being
able to advance or retard the image in the VCube to compensate for
delays in digital projectors, without having to change settings on the
synchroniser, and it has tri-level sync. We have another room upstairs
where I'd like to make HD available, and we'll be upgrading the VCube
there to the HD version when demand merits it."
