Montreal: During three months of shooting on location in Montreal this summer, dailies from the syndicated Rysher Entertainment action-adventure series SOF: Special Ops Forces were piped nightly via the broadband Jazz Media Network to Encore Video in Santa Monica, California.

Staff at AstralTech worked late into the night and early morning processing and transmitting as much as 3,000 feet of digitized 16mm film so production executives in Los Angeles could have the previous day’s rushes on their decks by 9 a.m. The daily transmissions constituted about 50 to 60 minutes of viewing time.

SOF’s coproducer Bernie Laramie, an experienced post-production supervisor, says regional restrictions and the international border ruled out using the advanced video broadcast transmission services of Pacific Bell and AT&T.

‘The challenge,’ says Laramie, ‘was to deliver this huge file – a couple of megagigs per day – it’s not something you want to send over a 28.8 modem. That’s why Jazz was important, they had a nice pipe between Montreal and L.A.’

Laramie says the big investment in talent (newly ‘married’ Chicago Bulls guard Dennis Rodman is one of the stars) meant production executives in Hollywood wanted to screen results right away.

‘Basically, every executive in this business wants to have dailies on his or her desk as they get to work the following morning, period,’ says Laramie. ‘All the facilities here in the Hollywood area have intense night-time operations in the telecine area. It’s like the morning news.’

SOF is originated on 16mm film. The footage was processed at the Astral lab and then transferred (‘best-light’) on a Rank URSA to a Digital Betacam master. The master was then digitized onto an AVID hard disc at an AVR-4 compression ratio.

Ready-to-edit files

‘Just prior to digitizing we also synched all the [location] sound to the Digital Betacam,’ says Paul Bellerose, AstralTech’s director of sales, marketing and service. ‘Everything shipped to L.A. via the Jazz Network was both sound and picture.

‘What we have digitized in the AVID system is ready-to-edit files, meaning they are all locked in with sound and pictures, and everything was synched. Transmission via Jazz is as simple as sending an e-mail,’ says Bellerose.

Jazz can deliver any digital file with a range of connnectivity levels all the way up to realtime uncompressed D1 video.

In addition to the sound and image components on SOF, Bellerose says Astral also used Jazz to deliver a late Friday night casting session and a locally produced ADR sound file.

Jazz has emerged as an integral part of AstralTech’s marketing, for both its animation 2D ink-and-paint studio and considerable 3D rendering service (60 SGI workstations, Origin 2000 and Challenge L Processors.) ‘If we did work with some U.S. companies we’d be able to online it through Jazz,’ says Bellerose.

The impact and savings potential are considerable.

Traditionally, precise color calibration requires on-site verification by the client, but Bellerose says this can be handled from a distance using Jazz. ‘The [client’s] assessment would be quite true because it is an non-compressed video file. I’m pitching Jazz for every production that’s coming in from the States,’ he says.

Soon on Mac-OS

The Jazz installation at Astral consists of an intuitive Jazz desktop application and Jazzbox, essentially a server holding all the fiber-optic and computer connections. The Jazzbox is cross-platform and can be operated on Windows NT, SGI (UNIX) and, within two or three weeks, on Mac-OS computers with Java-based Graphical User Interface.

Jazz offers a range of high-speed network connectivity options that support various live media interactive capabilities including master quality CCIR601 (D1), approved quality MPEG2, and review quality MPEG1. Lower bandwidth connectivity is also being introduced.

‘I think the Jazz Network is going to be primarily successful because they have a terrific ability to move video in realtime within the post-production/client community,’ Laramie says. ‘There are a lot of opportunities between facilities and that is one important part of our business.’

A former post supervisor with Lorimar Television, Laramie (Max Headroom) says Jazz is really about two breakthrough business developments – the broadband transmission of video streams, and the interactive delivery and manipulation of large, digitized visual effects files.

‘In my view, that [visual effects] data is probably at least as big a business if not ultimately a bigger business than the `I need to see realtime video in my office,’ ‘ says Laramie.

‘This is very exciting stuff because the globe now becomes our studio. It really doesn’t matter to me anymore where my first unit is shooting.’

Jazz president and CEO Richard Cormier says Jazz has plans to integrate a number of third-party softwares within the Jazz application. Jazz currently has a beta version (release) of an integrated Softimage 3D viewer. Jazz also set up a realtime Discreet Logic Smoke demonstration test out of Culver City and monitored from Post Perfect in New York.

NYC hub this winter

Jazz members are connected to a regional Jazz Operating Center (JOC), two of which are operational, in Montreal and L.A.

‘One [JOC] is being put together in New York with a January or February time frame. Seven shops have signed up in New York as of today,’ says Cormier.

Toronto does not have a Jazz hub as yet but two companies have signed on – DAVE and Cossette Communication-Marketing.

Montreal members include Voodoo Studio, Supersuite Postproduction, Cossette, Studio Marko, Vision Globale, Big Bang Animation and Tube Images.