Jens Rumberg joins Codex as director of product strategy
LONDON–Codex has hired Jens Rumberg as its new director of product strategy. Rumberg brings over a decade of cutting-edge experience in motion picture image-science, digital camera and workflow development to Codex, and will focus on developing the company’s current and next-generation product ranges for motion picture and high-end TV production and postproduction.
Rumberg joins Codex following a 10-year stretch in senior technology roles at ARRI, Germany. He was most recently the technical supervisor of ARRI’s popular ALEXA XT digital cinema camera, which features pioneering in-camera recording and workflow capabilities that were developed in collaboration with Codex.
Rumberg studied solid-state physics at The Technical University, Berlin, and completed a PhD in experimental physics at Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand. He then worked in high-precision, optical measurement systems, and executive produced the sci-fi short Invasion Of The Planet Earth, before joining ARRI in 2004 as senior software architect on the ARRISCAN film scanner team.
In 2009, Rumberg headed ARRI’s software development team for the ALEXA digital cinema camera system, and became overall project leader after the product started shipping in 2010. In this role he was responsible for the on-going development of the ALEXA Studio and ALEXA Plus camera platforms, which included the introduction of high-quality recording at high frame-rates (HFR), and the implementation of DNxHD and ProRes codecs. Rumberg then went on to become ARRI’s primary contact for strategic technical partnerships, with companies such as Apple and Intel. In 2012 he was technical supervisor for the ALEXA XT project. Working closely with Codex to develop and bring the ALEXA XT successfully to market, this latest addition to the ALEXA family ushered in uncompressed ARRIRAW recording at up to 120fps, and has become one of ARRI’s best-sellers.
Codex recording and workflow technology has been used on hundreds of motion picture productions worldwide. Recent and forthcoming releases to rely on Codex products include: Prisoners, The Wolf Of Wall Street, All Is Lost, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, A Winter’s Tale, Gravity, Need For Speed and The Book Thief.
Chaos Group ships V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max
SOFIA, Bulgaria–The launch of Chaos Group’s V-Ray 3.0 for 3ds Max continues the company’s goals of making speed and simplicity accessible to all artists. With significant optimizations to the ray tracing core, Brute Force GI, Progressive Path Tracing, Reflections, Refractions and more are running up to 5x faster; while the new Progressive Production Renderer brings a new era of fast set-ups and quick iterations.
“When your customers come from a variety of industries like architecture, product design, games, and VFX, the feature requests can be fairly diverse,” said Vlado Koylazov, Lead Developer and Chaos Group co-founder. “But speed and simplicity benefit all artists, so they are at the core of 3.0’s development.”
Simplicity starts with V-Ray 3.0’s new interface. Designed with new and experienced users in mind, three UI modes (Basic, Advanced, and Expert) can be selected to match an artist’s preference. The new V-Ray toolbar includes Quick Settings with dropdowns for production-ready presets for common uses like Archviz Exterior, Archviz Interior, and VFX. Settings for Quality and Shading Rate can be fine-tuned with easy-to-use sliders, making the entire process highly intuitive.
According to beta testers, the speed at which V-Ray 3.0 can produce high-res stills and animations is generating a buzz in the design community. “V-Ray 3.0’s new Progressive Renderer was the talk of our recent 3ds Max London User Group,” said David Bullock, Partner at creative agency Hayes Davidson. “Iterating in real-time should really help speed up our workflow, and we’re definitely looking forward to putting it into production.”
VFX artists will find that V-Ray 3.0 offers improved Subsurface Scattering (SSS) including options for object-based and ray traced illumination, faster hair rendering speeds (up to 15x), view-dependent tessellation that automatically smoothes hair curves, and a dedicated Skin Shader with layered reflections. Now with UDIM and UVTILE support, it’s even easier to move MARI and Autodesk® Mudbox® assets into V-Ray.
“Our game cinematics are usually packed with epic action scenes, huge environments, multiple characters with hair and SSS, fire, explosions, debris, all with 3D motion blur and render passes. That’s a lot to work with, but V-Ray makes it easy to get the job done,” said Kevin Margo, VFX Supervisor at Blur Studios. “3.0 is something to be excited about.”
As an industry standard for large environments and complex scenes, V-Ray’s recent use on Industrial Light & Magic’s (ILM) “Star Trek Into Darkness,” “Pacific Rim” and “The Lone Ranger” has proven why it’s become such a dependable part of the pipeline for the digital environments and matte painting team. “When we started ‘The Lone Ranger,’ we changed some of the toolsets under the hood; we went strictly over to 3ds Max, using V-Ray as our renderer. That was the final piece of the puzzle. We were getting not only great render results, but great render throughput; it could handle everything we were throwing at it,” said Dan Wheaton, Digital Matte Supervisor at ILM.
V-Ray 3.0 offers a number of additional workflow shortcuts, technical advances and support for open sources technologies. These include:
–Render Mask – Users can define render regions using an object selection or image mask
–Reflection/ Refraction Trace Sets – Provides more direct control in choosing whether reflections and refractions are visible in objects
–Max Ray Intensity – Will easily fix artifacts from over-bright sources
–Probabilistic Lights – Increases the speed of scenes with a high number of lights
–V-Ray RT GPU – Improved with support for Render Elements
–V-Ray Frame Buffer – Improved with added color correction controls
TCS adds wide-angle zoom to roster of Fujinon Cabrio lenses
WAYNE, NJ–FUJIFILM North America Corporation, Optical Devices Division, has announced that Technological Cinevideo Services, Inc. (TCS) has added its 11th FUJINON Cabrio lens to its equipment roster. Early last year, TCS purchased seven FUJINON Premier PL19-90mm Cabrio (ZK4.7×19) PL mount zoom lenses, and later in the year the facility added three PL 85-300mm Cabrio (ZK3.5x85B) lenses. Their most recent addition is the Premier PL 14-35mm Cabrio wide-angle zoom (ZK2.5×14.) Established in 1978, the New York-based TCS rents digital and film camera equipment and lenses to customers shooting motion pictures, scripted television series, documentaries, reality shows, commercials, and other high-profile projects.
According to TCS president Erik Schietinger, who co-owns the company with his brother, TCS’ VP/COO Oliver Schietinger, “We believe in owning the full range of common focal lengths covered in a lens set, and we were very interested in the 85-300mm lenses because they cover the telephoto range very well while keeping the form factor small and portable. A wide-angle option is key to this line though, because it allows productions to ensure the consistency of their look within the Cabrio line without having to move to wide-angle primes or zooms from different manufacturers when they need a wide-angle.”
TCS has found a growing marketing for shooters looking for a digital cinema look but with the portability of ENG-style equipment. “Our clients who are producing reality television and live events are very excited about the arrival of a PL-mounted zoom that can easily be converted from ENG-style functionality to a cinema set-up with motor controllers as needed in a matter of minutes,” said Schietinger.
The wide angle on the 14-35mm Cabrio is ideal for a variety of shooting scenarios common to TCS clientele, including establishing shots, filming in tight spaces for reality and low budget location shoots, and handheld and Steadicam work when deep focus and image stabilization are important.
“While 19mm is considered fairly wide in the Super 35mm format,” continued Erik Schietinger, “there is a frequent desire to go slightly wider due to spacial limitations on location, and the focal range of the zoom makes it easy to ‘dial in’ the appropriate focal length needed for any given shot without being married to an exact focal length until the next lens change. And with certain cameras now using crop sensor sizes, such as the recent influx of S16-sized digital cameras, a wide-angle like the 14-35mm can easily serve as a more standard zoom on a 1.6-2x cropped sensor.”
TCS clients MTV and National Geographic have used Cabrio lenses on recent shoots, and they’ve been rented for use on the Youtube Music Awards and the documentary “Jay-Z: Made in America.”
Studio Technologies to debut Model 412 Fiber Transport SYSTEMs at NAB
SKOKIE, Ill.–Studio Technologies, Inc., the manufacturer of tailored high-performance audio, video and fiber-optic products for the professional audio, installation and broadcast markets, announces its debut of the Model 412 Fiber Transport System at the 2014 NAB Show. The Model 412 is a high-performance portable or rack-mounted solution for transporting multiple serial digital video, MADI digital audio, as well as gigabit Ethernet signals over single-mode optical fibers. The Model 412 comes in three versions offering a range of SDI/MADI input and output configurations.
“Working closely with our customer-partners we were alerted to the growing need for a solution that would simultaneously handle multiple SDI signals along with ‘GigE’ Ethernet,” said Gordon Kapes, president of Studio Technologies. “Using the latest technology, we were able to meet those requirements as well as add support for MADI multi-channel digital audio signals and include an integrated 4-port Ethernet switch. We also made the Model 412 series energy efficient and capable of battery powered operation to accommodate any remote, OB truck or in-studio installation. The units are lightweight, run cool, and have an integrated web server for remote access. The Model 412 can be a real problem solver for any fiber-based production situation.”
The Model 412 uses optical multiplexing to transport six SDI or MADI signals over two single-mode optical fibers. The SDI or MADI signals, at rates of up to 2.97 Gb/s, are transported over the fibers at wavelengths of 1310, 1490, and 1550 nm. In typical applications, the launch power and receive sensitivity are such that signals can be transported over a minimum distance of 10 kilometers. SDI input signals can be SD (270 Mb/s), HD (1.485 Gb/s), or 3G (2.97 Gb/s). The 3G signals can be in either Level A or Level B format. DVB-ASI (270 Mb/s) signals are also compatible.
To meet the needs of contemporary broadcast and production applications in which MADI-based audio infrastructures are currently on the rise, the Model 412 Fiber Transport system provides support for MADI digital audio transport. Typical SDI-over-fiber products are not compatible with MADI signals as they utilize a different rate and modulation scheme. Each of the Model 412’s SDI/MADI channels is independent, allowing any combination of type, rate and format to be transported.
The provided Ethernet resources include those of a gigabit media converter (copper-to-optical transport), along with a 4-port twisted pair Ethernet switch. Two fibers are used to support Ethernet transport. Each of the copper ports support 10, 100, or gigabit (1000) Ethernet signals and provide auto MDI/MDI-X capabilities. All applicable IEEE® standards are supported for fast and reliable use in a range of applications.
Model 412 comes in three flavors to meet the varied needs of mobile and fixed broadcast applications. The Model 412-6T/E offers six SDI/MADI inputs, the Model 412-6R/E provides six SDI/MADI outputs, while the Model 412-3T/3R/E offers three SDI/MADI inputs and three outputs. Each unit offers a front-panel display that allows support personnel to observe the status of the SDI/MADI input and output channels along with optical transmit and receive levels. This information is also viewable on a web-connected remote device. Ethernet-related functions such as link status and optical transmit and receive power are also provided.
