Audio Video News

Last week LaserPacific Media (LP) announced what it terms a "significant" technology milestone that it says will accelerate the efficiency and cost effectiveness of high-definition post-production services. The company reports that its new High Definition SuperComputer Assembly system creates 24P High Definition programs as pure digital data and not digital video as do other current systems.

LP's Leon Silverman explains that "there has been a great concern that high definition, in its complexity and expense, has been out of the reach of many producers and projects. We can now offer extremely cost-effective alternatives to time-consuming and expensive high-definition environments. Until now, the high definition option was available to only those few who could afford it."

In addition, the company says that as Hollywood continues its experiment with the digital acquisition of images utilizing the new 24P High Definition digital cameras, the High Definition SuperComputer Assembly process will prove invaluable in creating the digital data that will be output to both film and the emerging Digital Cinema.

According to LP, the new approach is an outgrowth of the company's SuperComputer Assembly technology. LP says that the system is designed to input four simultaneous streams of 24P High Definition content in its native data state, whether the data are acquired digitally or on film. Based on the creative choices made in an edit decision list, the system then assembles all the cuts as a data file onto a large-scale disc array.

LP says that once all the data for a program have been input into the system and onto the disc array, the system outputs the cut program as a data stream in faster than real time. "The process takes considerably less time than other methods and has qualitative advantages because the images and sound stay in data form throughout the assembly process," claims the company.

LP's Randy Blim notes that there were significant design and engineering challenges that had to be overcome: "General purpose computers, even super computers such as the ones we employ, are not made to deal with the size of multiple streams of high definition or their unique file format. We had to apply significant technical creativity to achieve the results we did." The company's Jay Sherbon adds that "for this new system, we took an entirely different approach. Standard definition video is widely known and understood, and many computer systems accommodate it well. With high definition, and especially with 24P, we had to invent both software and unique processes to fill in the gaps that exist because of how early it is in this technology."

LP says that the new service has already been used on pilots for the 2001-2002 television season and the company hopes that the system will also play a significant role for motion pictures.