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vancouver: The race into the realm of digital component technology is heating up in Vancouver’s hotly contested post-production sector.

Earlier this month, Post Haste, one of the city’s largest post facilities, announced the expenditure of $1.7 million on digital component equipment and facility upgrades. Telepost Film and Video followed suit with the announcement that it had purchased Ampex’s dct equipment, at a cost of about $750,000. Last spring, Gastown Post and Transfer took a major plunge into the digital component sea.

‘The writing is on the wall, the technological innovations are there and are getting to a point where they are workable products, so you have to move with the technology just to stay in the game,’ says Doug Jeffrey, vice-president of operations with Telepost.

Included in Poste Haste’s new equipment purchases are a BTS FDL 90 Telecine, a system that transfers 35mm and 16mm motion picture films to video using hdtv-developed ccd technology; a Renaissance color correction system; a digital upgrade of its two Rank Cintel scanners and Sony Digital Betacam recording equipment.

Gary Shaw, vice-president of marketing and sales for Pacific Video Canada (parent company of Post Haste), says they had planned to move into digital in stages, but as a result of Gastown’s move into dct last spring, they escalated their plans so that they could offer a complete digital package. The entire system, he says, will be fully operational by the beginning of the new year.

Jeffrey says Telepost’s investment in a complete dct system will put the company into a whole new league in Vancouver’s post-production market and allow it to move more in the direction of posting television series.

‘We’ve always been falling behind and staying in a race with the other two (Gastown and Post Haste),’ he says. ‘This purchase will give us that leap ahead that we need.’

New digital component equipment in three of Vancouver’s largest post houses will give producers a lot more options, says Jeffrey, and may also encourage more competition in pricing for digital equipment and services.