– Medallion gets new gigs, gear

Medallion-PFA, a division of Toronto’s Command Post and Transfer has announced major expansion plans for its audio facilities.

The expansion initiative grew out of a renewed committment from Nelvana, a new audio contract from Sullivan and a stronger push by Medallion to service feature-film business. The new Sullivan deal entails work on mows Ambrose and Happy Christmas Miss King, mini-series Anne of Green Gables and series Wind at My Back. The Nelvana slate includes Bob and Margaret, Sam and Max, Stickin’ Around, Rolie Polie Olie, Mythic Warriors and Flying Rhinos.

Expansion plans include the addition of two more sound-editing rooms and a third mixing theatre in September 1998. The new mixing theatre will be a match of existing Mix 7, featuring a custom 80/68 channel LaFont Panoramix 5.1 console for Surround and digital sound mixing, with capabilities for theatrical and current tv formats as well as future 16:9 broadcast requirements.

Medallion-PFA has also expanded its release print capabilites to include Dolby SRD Digital and is upgrading its screening theatre with Dolby Digital and Surround Sound.

– Logical moves

Discreet Logic has announced fortifications in its sales, products and operations teams. Paul Amlani joins the company as vp, Advanced Systems Sales. Amlani has over 20 years experience in it including stints with Xerox and AST Research and was previously vp, gm of Compugen Systems.

John Copher joins Discreet as vp, New Media Sales. Copher was recently vp International Sales at Media 100.

Mahmoud Al-Daccak has been appointed vp, Products, responsible for all company product development. Al-Daccak was recently Discreet Executive Director, New Media Products.

Discreet has also announced, together with Microsoft, that it will support the Advanced Authoring Format within Discreet products.

The AAF Specification was released to the industry at this year’s nab and Dicscreet will now be a member of the group of companies working further on the spec.

aaf will be backward-compatible with Open Media Framework Interchange. With the move, the company says the new media file format and metadata spec is expected to have a greater chance of success as the post data interchange and ‘super EDL’ standard.

– CJDS gets on TRAQ

Denver-based Columbine JDS, maker of electronic ad buying and selling systems has acquired the adtraq and adserve advertising agency management software products from Toronto’s kts. Ron Fehler, president of the KTS Advertising Systems division, has been named cjds vp Agency Solutions and will be responsible for all the company’s agency products.

– Creamware Pulsing

Germany’s CreamWare, developers of the scope audio product are also putting together pulsar, a new 24-bit/96kHz dsp board, a pv version of which will be available this September. The pulsar features four sharc-dsps by Analog Devices. The company describes the product as a fully-loaded 32-channel digital mixer with eight Aux and 16 recording busses as well as a full effects rack with dealy, flager, chorus a vocoder and other features. The product will be available for u.s.$1,298.

– Intl Monitor Awards

The International Teleproduction Society’s International Monitor Awards were presented July 11 in l.a. to 85 production and post professionals. The Special Achievement In Engineering Excellence went to Panasonic Broadcast and Digital Systems Company for the development of the D-5HD Recorder, the first full resolution, high-definition recording system using a new compression technology invented by Panasonic and Japan’s NHK Television.

Among the big winners was France’s Mikros Image, which won five monitors in editing, Short Subject for U-Man, electronic visual effects and best achivement for Music Videos for Aerosmith’s Pink; video paint design in National Commercials for VW Rex and video paint design in Opens, Closes and Titles. Other major winners included New York’s HBO Studio Productions, Washington’s Interface and l.a.’s Tony Kaye Films, each winning three monitors.

– HDTV prognosis

With the u.s. example of digital tv adoption unfolding for Canada’s enlightenment, some dtv statistics were recently released by u.s. equipment maker and dtv proponent, Harris Corporation. The survey said that consumers are hankering for high-definition tv and are willing to give up channels for it. Ninety-one percent of those surveyed felt cable providers should carry local stations’ hdtv programming and 56% said they would be willing to give up channels in order to get the quality boost promised by hdtv. The majority of respondents said they watched no more than half of the channels they already receive and two-thirds said they watched fewer than a third of those channels.

– Correction

In the listings of Promax and BDA award winners in the June 29 VI special report, Calgary’s A Channel was omitted from the list. A Channel won gold in the non promotional animation category.