A New Face at Video Labs Multimedia

We have a several new team members here at Video Labs, and over the next few months, we’ll introduce them to you.

Enrique Huaiquil (Ha-why-keel) has been with our Multimedia team for about 8 months now.

Originally from Santiago, Chile, with roots to the proud Mapuche culture, Enrique moved to the US with his family when his father took a diplomatic post in Washington, DC.

After developing a passion for photography and videography at a young age, Enrique went on to earn a BA in Film/Video and Media Productions from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

He expresses a unique sensibility in his visual art, which is evident at his personal website.

Enrique’s other passion is soccer. He plays for two teams and recently traveled to LA one weekend to watch the Chilean national team play the US. (How diplomatic . . . the game was a tie.)

While also being a versatile video editor, Enrique has developed into our leading in-house aficionado with our high-end DVD authoring platform, Sonic Scenarist.

And we have been calling upon his advanced videography skills on several projects of late.

While Enrique is bilingual with English and Spanish, you can also be sure he will speak your language when it comes to delivering high quality multimedia projects.

Bienvenido, Enrique!

We are on the H.264 bandwagon!

Video Labs is on the H.264 Bandwagon. Are you?

While the list of media deliverables from our clients becomes ever more diverse, it is apparent that an H.264 file is becoming as common of a request as is a dBeta or HDCAM dub.

First, understand that H.264 is a codec. A codec is short for “compression/decompression.” The main purpose of a codec is to reduce the size of a media file to make it manageable while at the same time maintaining as much quality of the original file as possible.

As an analogy, think of how a .pdf of a Word doc maintains the quality (and other advantages) while doing so at a much smaller file size.

An H.264 is acknowledged as one of the best codecs at doing that for video.

The name H.264 is actually a combination of identification protocol structures from two international technical organizations. One uses letters and another using numbers, hence H.264 If you want to drill down further into that, click here.

As a side note, H.264 can also be referred to as AVC or “Advanced Video Codec.” You might also see it referred to as a mpeg4 file. The mpeg4 part of this can get confusing, but suffice it to say that you’ll run across H.264 files that have either .mov or .mp4 in the extension.

The properties of the format allow for versatile use, from mobile phone video . . . to being “the first advanced codec to be accepted into the Blu-ray format.” (from the book, “Blu-ray Disc Demystified”)

And its that versatility that has made H.264 so popular.

But all is not perfect.

While H.264 is a great delivery codec, Final Cut Pro and AVID both have to decompress such files and convert them into a file format acceptable to them. For example, for Final Cut, a popular conversion is to Apple ProRes files. Such conversion adds a step, which means time, and time means $$.

That’s why if you are just sending us a sequence from your Final Cut project to import into ours, we may ask you to export it as a ProRes file on to a hard drive rather than give us an H.264 file.

But our research indicates that newer versions of the editing programs coming to market will be able to accept H.264 as a native codec.

Regardless, our present experience here at Video Labs shows that our clients feel that the advantages of H.264 as a delivery format far outweigh any possible disadvantages.

And to that we say, "Keep ‘em coming!"

The Japanese Disaster & the Effects on Media Supplies

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami that wreaked death and destruction in Japan, and created a grave nuclear threat situation that is still in flux, has also had a huge effect on the world economy.

And the Communications field has been no exception.

When life and death and environmental catastrophe are threatening, it seems a bit trivial to discuss such things as media supply, but we at Video Labs are in the business of media replication, and we feel it our responsibility to keep our clients informed on any impact the disaster in Japan may have on their businesses.

The Sony manufacturing facility in Sendai, which is about 80 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter, suffered severe damage and ceased operations.

(click photo to view footage)

As a result, the following tape formats have been particularly challenging to obtain: HDCAM (both rstandard and SR), XDCAM, IMX and DVcam. Also affected is Blu-ray disc stock.

And there’s been a domino effect as well. When producers can’t obtain a particular format, they then move toward trying to find either “used" (aka "evaluated” stock) of that format or start considering alternative formats. The result is that the demand for both has soared as well.

This whole paradigm gets further roiled by the trend of media replicators like Video Labs enacting “just in time” inventory policies as way to be more efficient in the current recession.

And as with the oil economy, when scarcity, demand and panic are all in play at the same time, prices go up. So, given the rapidly changing nature of the situation, we ask that you understand that there may need to be some price flexibility between once a job is quoted and once it is started.

Be assured, we are being diligent in our efforts to help our clients meet their media needs. To assist us, we ask that you give us as much notice as possible regarding any media replication orders you have in the pipeline.

The latest we have heard is that the Sendai plant will start production of Blu-ray discs in late May and tape stock in July.

We appreciate your understanding of the situation and encourage you to stay in contact with your Video Labs account manager.

Video Labs Adds Digital Media Capacity with Purchase of another Final Cut HD Suite

Video Labs, the 33-year old Rockville, MD based media services firm has added another Final Cut Pro HD editing suite to its significant media manipulation and distribution capabilities. While the company is supporting its customers with disc authoring (including Blu-ray), caption encoding, duplication/ replication, HD conversions, digital file transcoding and media packaging, Video Labs continues to be at the forefront of creative firms that support virtually every media format in the world. Now, Video Labs has increased its capacity to provide enhanced creative services and support digital media sources (be it archiving or file creation).

Major editorial houses choose Final Cut as their editing tool and Video Labs is part of that group. Final Cut Pro delivers high-performance HD/digital non-linear editing, native support for virtually any video format and facility class interoperability. The workflow extends to other Final Cut studio applications. Working as an individual or within a team environment, Final Cut provides for multiple creative options and technical control.

Of main interest to the Video Labs team is Final Cuts ability to enable a quick and efficient work environment. These characteristics ultimately lead to project deadlines being met with consistency and of significant importance, cost effective editorial solutions for high quality programs. With the Final Cut Studio 3 and AJA’s Kona capture card, Video Labs is able to ingest/output video to/from virtually any source.

Media formats/sources now being used at Video Labs to support its clients authoring/editing, duplication and mastering needs includes Blu-ray, DVD, CD, HDCAM, DVCPRO, DVCPRO HD EX, HDV, PROHD, Digital Betacam, Betacam SP, Beta SX, IMX, DVCAM, mini DV, DLT, et al.

With the addition of another Final Cut editing solution, Video Labs continues their commitment to invest in technology and media content and distribution capability. With its increase in capacity, Video Labs enhanced solutions now offers its clientele the widest range of Videotape/Broadcast duplication, High Definition conversions, International standards conversion, DVD/Blu-ray/CD duplication/replication, authoring, SpoTTrac encoding, non-linear editing, media packaging, distribution and digital media delivery. Video Labs continues to offer its clientele the best in customer service and project management.
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For more information, please contact Video Labs at 301-217-0000 or reach Video Labs on the web at http://www.videolabs.net/ or via email - mailto:sales@videolabs.net/mweiss@videolabs.net .