At the beginning of the 21st Century the Audio-Visual Industry found itself at the crossroads, deciding whether to continue on the safe analogical road or to experiment in the new and unknown digital dimension. It might seem an easy dilemma, but it was not so at that time.
Founded in 1993, SGO is a Spanish high-end technology company that explored the digital revolution in its own way and has since acquired decades of experience in developing and integrating professional post-production solutions. Their award-winning Mistika Technology has achieved market notoriety for developing customised post tools and workflows for many industry leaders.
At the start of the millennium, the established practice in post-production workflow was to apply different tools for every particular task. This meant time-consuming migration between various applications and facilities, and therefore highly elevated costs.
At that time, SGO had the ingenuity and foresight to realise the potential of the resolution revolution. Coupled with the industry’s digitalisation, SGO developed an integrated solution, Mistika Ultima, the first complete post solution for conforming, colour grading, visual effects and finishing, providing tremendous speed and offering real-time performance in one system.
SGO has evolved following customer demands ever since. Dual stream, Optical Flow, GPU Acceleration, Stereo 3D Alignment, new Colour Grading Tools, High Frame Rate capabilities, HDR, EDR, 4K and 8K lists the different chapters on the product’s evolutionary path.
SGO’s credible and proven technology has been a true game-changer, leading the way in line with the market’s needs, while at the same time Mistika Technology keeps pushing the industry boundaries to provide solutions not just for today but also for the future.
Likewise, image resolution is constantly evolving. The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 will be captured and broadcast in 8K and the pursuit of a higher resolution is never going to stop. 16K resolution is already being discussed as a future standard, which is why software development is constantly evolving to meet this demand.
Another in the line-up of recent technology evolutions which have emerged from market demand is High Dynamic Range (HDR), where both the broadcast and movie sectors have defined the future delivery standards.
VFX: NECESSITY FOR REVISION DURING ONLINE PROCESS
With ever increasing demands the audio-visual industry is craving for more efficient, flexible and powerful solutions, which is why SGO has started to slice parts of its hero-suite Mistika Ultima, to address specific industry needs and develop advanced workflow applications.
VFX is an integral and interactive part of any production workflow. Their development happens as a parallel activity to the actual shooting, which makes revision an essential task to be carried out during the online process. This provided solid ground for the development of SGO’s new product Mistika Review, a communication tool providing reliable real-time playback and review of VFX shots or clips, supporting many native file types, resolutions, frame rates and colour spaces. This facilitates efficient and optimised post-production workflows of even the most demanding UHD, 8K, HDR, HFR and VR/360º projects.
Users can change the speed, frame rate, zoom in and out during playback and share notes and suggestions utilising coloured markers with annotations as part of the creative review process, as well as signing off their work with remote sessions.
XR AS A NEW EVERYDAY REALITY
Extended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term encapsulating Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR) and everything in between. Although drawing the line between AR and VR experiences can be challenging, it is clear that many of the same underlying technologies will power revolutionary XR experiences. XR is already transforming everyday consumer experiences and many market verticals from industrial manufacturing and healthcare to education, retail and even the arts.
Capturing and crafting immersive content requires specialist tools. Mistika VR is an affordable Virtual Reality focused solution for optical flow stitching that achieves speeds quicker than real-time for 4K VR media encoding. One-click stabilisation, Keyframe Animation and Stereo 3D are just some of the many exciting features of Mistika VR.
Technology and innovation must be supported by great engineering expertise and continuous development. Without it you cannot be at the forefront of the evolution of the audio-visual sector.
Zimele Broadcasting Services (Pty) Ltd is the official distributor for SGO in South Africa.
