The Audi FIS championship visited Moscow on November, 2009 and Polecam was in action again.
The HD Polecam with a Toshiba IKHD1 and Polecam MkIII RCP and extra Toshiba IKHD1 for Beauty Shots was provided by TPC Rental house at the start hut and gave the usual stunning shots that the Polecam has been used to giving on the Skiing and Ski Jumping tour.
Maxim Fartukov of Media Trust (Polecam distributor for Russia) commented,
'The Polecam has been very successful here in Russia, we have 34 Polecams in Russia to date, with 14 in one rental house alone and this is just the start. As the camera quality improves and our sales efforts increase Polecam is fast becoming an industry standard here in Russia.'
Steffan Hewitt, Polecam founder and Managing Director,
'Max has done an awesome job for us, we can't thank him enough. It only goes to confirm that we are doing something right. Now we must progress with this sales model success into other countries - that's our new goal. Max has already indicated that there could be another 10 sales by the New Year. Great news!'
The Audi FIS tour continues through the winter with Polecam making a regular appearance through Europe.
Inition triumphed recently with a ground-breaking production of the UK's first successful broadcast of a live event in 3D TV to a domestic 3D TV set, via Sky's satellite network and existing Sky+HD set-top boxes. The broadcast was part of a 3D music event co-produced by Inition, Sky, production company Nineteen Fifteen Productions and Island Records to coincide with Keanes live performance that saw a 3D webcast of the gig via Keanes website. Inition pitched the idea to the band back in December when they were using our 3D equipment to film the promo for Spiralling. Keane, a band that have a reputation for embracing the power of new technology and connecting online with their fans were quick to take up the idea.
Amos Clarke (www.tiki.tv) was invited by the Los Angeles Derby Dolls (the real life girls who are an inspiration to the new Drew Barrymore movie "Whip It") to use Polecam to capture the Bumps, Grinds and Speed of the Roller Derby action in a way that no other camera system can keep up or get within the thick of the action without compromising the players.
Photo of Nick Jonas courtesy of Mary Ellen Matthews and Bayer.
Amos Clarke, DP and Polecam owner operator, left the UK a few years ago to live and work in the US. Based in Los Angeles, he was recently contracted to make a commercial featuring US singer/celebrity Nick Jonas, in which Nick speaks passionately about managing diabetes.
Shot using his Polecam portable jib system with an Iconix HD camera on board, Amos also used the new Panasonic HPX3700. Amos said:
"The combination of the HPX3700 and the Polecam/Iconix rig gave an overall superb level of quality and sent the production values through the roof."
A powerful new addition to the Polecam range of portable video production equipment, nanoFlash is capable of operating in HD or SD direct to dual Compact Flash solid-state cards, it can be attached to a Polecam rig or mounted direct to a camera. It can also be connected to any HD-SDI source via BNC coax.
"The nanoFlash is the perfect solution for truly portable digital film, HD and SD video origination," comments Polecam founder and Managing Director Steffan Hewitt. "Both the recorder and its Compact Flash storage media are very competitive in comparison with traditional tape-based video recorders. Measuring only 107 x 94 x 36 mm and weighing just 400 g, it creates digital files for fast transfer to industry-standard editing software such as Final Cut Pro, Avid and Premiere. Besides its very small size and low weight, the nanoFlash consumes a tenth the power of a typical hard disk drive and has practically zero maintenance cost. The nanoFlash has the extra advantage of being ideal for use in extremes of vibration, temperature, and humidity: there is no scanner to get stuck, no tape to tangle and no disk mechanism to crash. And operation is absolutely silent."
"Up to two hours and 40 minutes of 50 megabit/s video can be accommodated on a pair of 32 gigabyte Compact Flash cards," adds Polecam Sales & Marketing Director Mel Noonan. "Coming soon will be the ability for operators to hot-swap Compact Flash cards seamlessly which will provide effectively limitless recording time. An LCD display on the front panel shows the remaining storage capacity on each card as well as the total available recording time. Two or more nanoFlash recorders can be genlocked for easy 3D or multicam recording. Additional features include the ability to start/stop multiple nanoFlash recorders or players from a single command."
The file format used in the nanoFlash conforms to the FAT32 standard used in PCs and Apple Macintosh platforms. Automatic file-coupling ensures compatibility with the 4 gigabyte FAT32 file-size limitation. Nine bit-rates are supported, ranging from 160 megabit/s I-frame-only 4:2:2 1920 x 1080/1280 x 720p master quality to 18 megabit/s Long-GOP 1440 x 1080/1280 x 720p HD as well as 50- megabit/s 720 x 576i and 720 x 480i SD. The nanoFlash can, as an option, also output 18 megabit/s MPEG 1 Layer 2 Long-GOP streamed ASI HD.
Two channels of audio can be captured direct to the nanoFlash with respective levels displayed on the front-panel LCD. Using an external embedder, up to eight channels of audio can be recorded direct to the SDI stream.
Available now, the nanoFlash ultra-compact solid state video recorder will be demonstrated on the Polecam stand (10.C49) at IBC 2009.
