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June 2007 UK Facility Rushes Encodes with Digital Rapids StreamZ and StreamZHD
London post production and visual effects company Rushes, through Digital Rapids UK dealer ERA, has added a Digital Rapids StreamZHD encoder alongside their existing StreamZ system. Rushes has a world wide reputation for producing commercial and music-video/pop-promo projects and became part of Liberty Livewire (now known as Ascent Media Group) in 2000.
Renowned for pioneering innovative technology, Rushes was the first in the UK to adopt cutting edge telecine and visual effects equipment and since 2000 has become a fully HD capable facility. Their HD enterprise ranges from telecine through visual effects and 3D computer graphics and now, through Digital Rapids, to encoding.
The StreamZHD turnkey system is used in Rushes’ Media Transfer department, which services all the digital delivery requirements for clients of the facility. StreamZHD will be encoding from SD or HD video tape, or from image sequences, creating encoded files which are then used for DVD creation, approval delivery to clients, final delivery to stations, or in house project management.
Rushes had a requirement for extra encoding capacity as the SD StreamZ system was in constant use. They also required the ability to encode from HD format tapes, and down/cross convert.
"We were impressed with the StreamZHD system’s ability to standards convert to a very high level," says Rushes’ Director of Engineering Tim Wharton. "The system supports all the formats that we are required to deliver on a daily basis including QuickTime, H.264/MPEG-4, Microsoft Windows Media, MPEG-2, Flash and Image sequences (DPX, TGA etc). We also wanted to see a video output from the system, which StreamZHD provides.
"We had evaluated various products in this field and found that the Digital Rapids gave us the highest levels of functionality and reliability at a competitive price. We feel that StreamZHD is the most comprehensive encoding solution around. It is certainly the best solution for our workflows and our experience with the SD system made this an easy choice."
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