At the first major international trade show since Belden, the parent company of both
Miranda and Grass Valley, decided to merge the brands after its acquisition of the
latter earlier in 2014, the newly formed company presented its new and updated
product range. This included former Miranda products which, while adorned in the
familiar purple, now bear Grass Valley branding.
No product offering at IBC 2014 would have been complete without a number of
new options for 4K/ UHD workflows. In this regard Grass Valley marketed what it
called the most comprehensive end-to-end production workflow for 4K. This
included the LDX 4K/UHD system camera and a new fibre-based transmission
solution intended to maintain the quality of live content in the transit from capture
to broadcast. The LDX is the first 4K camera developed specifically with sport and
other live productions in mind. It is also the first 4K camera to come standard with
a B4 lens mount. Other 4K-ready solutions included K2 Dyno Replay with 4K
pan/zoom directly controlled from the K2 Dyno touchscreen application; Kayenne
and Karrera Video Production Center switchers, NVISION 8500 series routers to
deliver frame-accurate 4K routing – future-proofed to allow for the additional
bandwidth that 4K production will require.
The latest update to the EDIUS 7.4 multiformat nonlinear editing software, which
was marketed with numerous selling points, is also capable of handling 4K. Among
the other additions made to the software are: the capacity for more new formats
(Sony XAVC long-GOP support, XAVC I-frame only export with smart rendering and
VariCam 4K), timeline output from AJA’s KONA 3G hardware platform, QuickTime
HQ/HQX exporter supporting timecode and multi-channel audio, FCP XML project
import into Red Giant’s PluralEyes and support for genarts’ Sapphire lens flare.
As important as 4K in the various product offerings at IBC was IP. Grass Valley
demonstrated a new, software defined networks (SDN) solution for managing IP
networks. One of the cornerstones of the system is the fact that it is non-
proprietary, which, according to Grass Valley’s VP for monitoring and control,
Boromy Ung, is essential for future-proofing a technology that is still very much at
entry level in the broadcast industry. “If you go for a proprietary system, you may
find that you are boxed in. The system is not scalable, it’s not future proof. We took
a completely different approach: we thought, instead of developing our own
switcher for IP, why don’t we just leverage off products that are already in the
market?’ Ung explains. The result is the Pegasus SDN system, which was only at
proof-of-concept stage during IBC. The system is intended to adapt existing Cisco
and Arista IP switches to a broadcast environment.
In the local industry, there was much speculation, in the wake of the Miranda
merger, as to who would be Grass Valley’s reseller in sub-Saharan Africa. It was
recently confirmed that Protea Electronics had secured the contract. The
Johannesburg-based company can be contacted on 011 719 5700, or visit
www.protea.co.za.
