- Sony VENICE 4K Live: the bundle for live production
- Lawo: the new mc² audio production console
Sony VENICE 4K Live: the bundle for live production
Maria: MultiDyne’s SilverBack Fiber Optic Camera Adapter transforms the VENICE from a cinema camera into a live event camera. It allows crews to weave cinematic storytelling into their live productions, whether that is through the use of cinema lenses, shallow depth of field, or low-light environments. So Philip, tell me more about this.
Philip: It’s interesting to see that over the last 10 years, but specifically the last five years, we’ve seen a full merge into trying to change the way television looks. Television used to be like “trying to jokingly produce a soap opera” mainly because the technology wasn’t there for cinema cameras within that space and now, with the proliferation of the number of cinema cameras on the market, the SilverBack technology allows you- in this specific case the Venice, which is a fantastic cinema camera- to change the way you tell stories. Whether by changing something as bizarre as game shows to soap operas to others. The technology is very interesting, in that it provides the things that Live TV needs, the ability to shade cameras, have return audio, or tally. It allows you to have all the things you typically don’t have in a cinema production within a traditional broadcast production. And I’ll be even more excited to see when more cameras provide those capabilities either directly or through integrations like they are doing here with the SilverBack and specifically the Sony camera.
Maria: What kind of things do you see it being used for?
Philip: I think it’s probably going to be used for sitcoms, soap operas, live sports, and changing the traditional way that you see live television storytelling. Like any other technology, the first time it comes out of the gate it’s going to be overused. The shadow depth of field in sports is going to be pushed to the boundaries but we’ll finally figure out the sweet spot which is how it should be used in that type of environment to further tell the story. On the technology side, we tend to do things for technology’s sake without actually moving the story forward but now there is a new set of tools that directors, producers, and executive producers will have in helping to tell those stories. We started to see this in the last year or two so it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next three to five years.
Lawo: the new mc² audio production console
Maria: Moving on to Lawo. Lawo will exhibit more than 10 new products at NAB. It is officially launching the new version of its mc² and A__UHD Core platform, which delivers a new level of immersive audio mixing and multi-channel processing. The line-up of radio solutions will be expanded with a new processing core, an additional I/O card for the Power Core’s rear-panel bays, and an extension for the R3LAY radio software. Mary, break this down for me.
Mary: Well, they’ve got a lot of things going on and it was interesting what Philip was saying about the changes in TV production with new technology. I love that Lawo is really leaning into immersive mixing because there’s no reason we have to do everything in stereo and there’s no reason we’ve got more and more soundbars that support this. It is quite cool that they are pushing into the immersive audio for the radio side of it. What their power cord does is interesting, you can
have a regular user interface but you also have the option to be able to change some audio processing parameters such as EQ, Dynamics, De-essing, Limiting, and even Delay. What would be very cool and I hope to see in the future is somebody who starts to try immersive audio for radio clients. Maybe it’s not going to be for terrestrial radio but it could be for someone who is delivering radio via streaming. Because we have all of these immersive sound systems with soundbars in our homes so we could have much better audio and it’s thrilling to see that they are actually pushing for that. The other thing too is that Lawo supports AES 67. I’m still hoping to get that consortium of manufacturers together to say that “we’re going with the AES 67 standard period!” But Lawo has always been a leader in that and they continue to do so. I’m going to be excited to go over to their booth at NAB and see what’s what!
Maria: Philip, what do you think about these?
Philip: Yes. I have a question for Mary. Does the audio world tend to do like the video world where, when a new technology comes out, it gets overused? Are we going to be hearing radio shows with sirens going from left to right and airplanes flying over all the time just because they have the ability to use this new tool?
Mary: Traditionally, it’s been the other way. Many years ago we tried to get car manufacturers to introduce immersive audio to their systems and cars, but they said “No.” We couldn’t get any radio stations on board with it. They always said if it’s not broken don’t fix it; don’t make it better. It’ll be fun to see what we had in the 70s and 80s- overusing stuff-again.
Hosts Philip Grossman, Mary Ann Seidler, Maria Kholodova.
The live broadcast took place on March 20, 2023. Production — TKT1957 LLC, Georgia
