News 2005
Post Magazine, December 2005
High Def Outlook:
Feel the Love for HD
Strengths
"HD's greatest strengths are its resolution and convenience. You're shooting very high resolution, particularly at 1080/24p. Mastering in HD results in an HD master that's compatible with HD broadcast formats and it's downward-compatible with all SD formats. It's high-res enough to allow filmmakers to record their HD masters out to film and then project it on a 50-inch plasma or 50-foot theater screen. The flexibility to create other HD, SD and film versions from a HD master results in great time and monetary savings."
Weaknesses
"The biggest weakness is that HD is often misunderstood. Folks who haven't worked with it before jump into it thinking it will be much like the SD video they've been shooting for years. But every HD format has its own subtle differences, such as the way data is recorded and which format certain HD decks are capable of playing back. If you are still on a learning curve, there are many 'gotchas' that can burn you and result in missed deadlines and additional expenses. Another weakness is the need for fast throughput. Our clients expect realtime color correction and effects, and today's hardware is just getting there."
Opportunities
"The greatest opportunity is the ability to work in a cinema-grade format very efficiently using electronic acquisition and post production, and then show your work projected on a large screen. Software such as Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects enable filmmakers to work at an affordable, high-quality HD level that just wasn't do-able a few years ago."
Threats
"This business is going HD. If people wait to adopt this format, they'll find themselves at a competitive disadvantage against those who are now mastering the learning curve and developing the skills necessary to produce HD professionally and cost effectively. Another threat is that clients have enjoyed falling rates, from about $500 per hour down to $150 per hour or less for SD work. It's a tough sell to get them back up to those higher hourly rates associated with HD work… particularly since customers are moving toward lower budgets and higher expectations."
Outlook for 2006
"As much as I'm bullish on HD, I'd have to say that HD is not progressing as quickly as everybody thought it would. This is largely owing to the slow adoption of HDTV sets by consumers. It will ultimately take off, but probably not in 2006."
Markee Magazine, February 2005
High Definition Portfolio
"Our edit suites are available with or without an editor," notes Panning. "Our uncompressed room supports HDCAM, D-5, DVCPro HD, Digital Betacam, DVCPro50, Beta SP, and DVCAM. A Sony digital HD-SDI monitor, 50-inch plasma screen, and Apple 23-inch cinema display with HD-Link round out monitoring needs. Our compressed room supports Panasonic's native compressed HD format via FireWire. Both rooms are loaded with standard graphics software."
Available on the premises are 2D and 3D graphics animation by freelance designer Brian Check. Check employs a render farm of five Mac G4 and G5s to handle complex animations quickly.
Chicago HD's work is "seen on broadcast and cable channels and in theaters near you," Panning says. "As a service bureau we do lots of in/out work for theatrical commercials and for cable. We were hired for the I/O and mastering of the show open for Rescue Me on the FX channel. The client shot on film and telecined to HDCAM and Digital Betacam. They provided us with an off-line EDL, we pulled selects from the HD sources and transferred the media to external drives. The editor came back with their HD image sequence and we recorded their HDCAM masters. The process was simple and effective for the client. Most clients don't have the resources to do their own HD conforming. They leave that job to us."
Chicago HD serves clients nationwide; its creative editorial customers include commercial and corporate producers and independent filmmakers. The company is currently off-lining a feature-length drama by Chicago-based Whateverfilms to be mastered in HD 24p this spring. Chicago HD just wrapped on-line editorial, graphics and DVD authoring for a series of poker videos featuring world champion poker players and host Vince Van Patten.
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