By Dori Bashan, Chief Engineer, Opus Productions.
Cheshire, UK -- Opus Productions is Israel’s largest post production facility, comprising around 80 edit suites spread across five branches. We are very committed to adopting new technologies and developing innovative workflow processes, to meet the needs of the diverse productions that come through our doors. We currently handle a wide mix of documentary films, television reality productions, promotional films and feature films, among others.

Israel still largely works with standard definition and we offer our clients both SD and HD formats and undertake some 2k and 4k work – mostly from RED cameras using a Scratch system from Assimilate. On the editing side we have traditionally been an Avid-centric post production house, with suites that feature Avid’s Symphony Nitris, Media Composer Adrenaline, and Xpress systems.

However, we are now using Apple’s Final Cut Pro (FCP) and Adobe’s After Effects and Premiere Pro editing systems, as they are becoming increasingly common here in Israel. When we invested in both After Effects and Premiere Pro, we chose Blackmagic Design video capture cards to support this shift.

Our philosophy here at Opus is very much one of keeping pace with technological developments so that we can meet the needs of our diverse client base. Cost is also something we increasingly need to consider when making investments in new equipment. Blackmagic definitely helps us meet that requirement without compromising on quality.

We have been using Blackmagic Design’s Mini Converter SDI to HDMI and Mini Converter HDMI to SDI for several months, and when I started looking around at what video capture cards were available on the market, Blackmagic Design was one of the options I was considering. After receiving some very positive feedback from After Effects artists about Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink HD Extreme cards, we decided to go ahead and make the investment and placed orders via local resellers Idigital LTD and Aran Electronics LTD.

Editing setup
We currently have two FCP edit bays, which use Blackmagic Design cards for Input and Output. Compositing work is done on three Adobe After Effects systems, also utilizing Decklink HD Extreme cards. On the After Effects systems Adobe Premiere Pro is used for media capturing and outputting to tapes, again using the Blackmagic Design cards.
We are very pleased with the way the DeckLink HD Extreme cards perform, and I now have the ability to capture dual link HD-SDI and do realtime editing and effects all within a really low budget.  It’s a very reliable card, with no bugs, errors and so on, while the ease of installation is another major benefit for a busy facility like ours. Furthermore, having a card that supports both SD and HD footage with a realtime down-converter options makes for a very worthwhile investment.
The Blackmagic-based set up recently came into its own when we worked on a project called "Still Walking", a film by critically acclaimed, award-winning director Yaky Yosha. The narrative takes place in Tel-Aviv, at the dawn of the war in Lebanon. The protagonist Mickey, an ex Special Forces officer, and ex "Shabak" (Israeli Security Services) agent, is a character from Yosha’s earlier film Shalom.

The film was shot on location in Israel primarily using the Red ONE camera. The Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD Extreme cards were used in order to capture footage from DAT tapes along with some HDCAM footage, and of course, for monitoring.

Footage from the Red ONE was transcoded into an Apple ProRes 720p system before offline editing which was done using Final Cut Pro. Composting work was then undertaken on After Effects. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink HD Extreme video card was used during both these stages as well as for viewing the footage on our eCinema HD monitor. The final grading was then carried out using our Assimilate Scratch system.

Our Blackmagic Design Mini Converters were used to convert the HD-SDI signal to an HDMI signal, allowing the director and editor to monitor the offline editing  (720p) on both eCinema professional monitor and on a Toshiba 50" plasma.

Although we had made the investment in DeckLink HD Extreme prior to the Still Walking project, it proved to be a great solution for our needs.

The investment in Blackmagic Design equipment is also proving its worth in other areas of our business too. Another thing we do here at Opus is offer freelance editors and smaller facilities that don’t have the capacity for video capture, the option to come into our facility, capture to Final Cut Pro and then take the files away on an external hard drive for editing at their own premises. This is a growing area of our business.

Following the success we’ve had with the DeckLink HD Extreme, I am now looking at the Blackmagic Design UltraScope to support our monitoring needs. I saw this product at NAB 09 and it’s something we are now looking at closely.

About Blackmagic Design Inc.
Blackmagic Design manufactures the world’s highest quality video editing products, converters and routers for the post-production and television broadcast industries. The Multibridge, DeckLink and Intensity family of products have revolutionised the post production industry and made HDTV and film editing more affordable. Founded by the world’s leading editors and engineers from the post production industry, this knowledge is constantly fed back into our products. Blackmagic Design has operations in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please contact:

www.blackmagic-design.com