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September 2006

Long-Distance Relationship (Millimeter article about HBO)

The August/September 2006 issue of Millimeter features an extensive case study about the network-based remote production workflow that HBO has set up between Italy and Los Angeles for the episodic series Rome, including discussion of their use of Copper and StreamZ.

The basic editing pipeline for season two of Rome, therefore, involves processing and telecining film in Rome, but using Digital Rapids Streamz digital encoding servers and Copper software to both encode (MPEG-2 and Windows Media) and encrypt Avid OMFI files for transmission over Sohonet's fiber network to Los Angeles, where Avid editors can immediately get to work on them. HBO in Los Angeles thus receives dailies the same business day they are telecined in Rome, permitting better management of an enormous, multi-site project.

"A Streamz device, running Copper, receives OMFI from an Avid Media Composer or Unity over a Gigabit LAN in Italy, and it then encrypts that data at 192-bit AES [Advanced Encryption Standard]," Wilson explains. "Rome's Streamz system then contacts its counterpart in Los Angeles, and launches an authentication mechanism, which requires an encrypted key to authenticate every file transfer. If successful, the encrypted transfer is then initiated. For the editor or assistant in Rome, we want the process to be transparent and automated. They need only drag and drop the day's dailies or revised cut into a watch folder on their Avid desktop to transfer it to the Digital Rapids system. The Streamz and Copper will take it from there. Editorial in Hollywood should find, at the start of their day, that dailies are waiting for them, logged and digitized."

Read the full article.