While some well heeled movie producers and directors may have a film projector, booth and projectionist in their home theater, many do not. So while their latest film might be finished, awaiting its theatrical release, they can't view it or show it in their own home theater.

Well now they can, relatively inexpensively. I've been using a Wafian HR-1 (http://www.wafian.com/HR-1.htm) HD-SDI recorder and player for a while now. We used Fotokem to make prints and the HD video master for our latest movie (Bottle Shock (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914797/), movie site here (http://www.bottleshockthemovie.com/), comes out in August). Since they also have a Wafian, they were able to make a lossless copy of the HD Video master onto a hard drive carrier that we plug into the HR-1. Voila, HD video master quality video for a home theater. You do need a projector that can accept HD-SDI video.

I mention this as a solution for producers/directors only, of course, since you must have access to the unprotected HD video master.

Works well, and the video at 10 bit color resolution is gorgeous!

I clicked on the link from here at work, but was blocked from viewing the web site.
DARN that WEBSENSE!!!:);)

OK, you got me there :)

hahahaha!

Phil this is very very similar to the XD cam HD unit from sony, except the sony uses a disc based system, ergonomically very similar.

We show it in the Helene Theater via hd sdi on the Barco.

The XD cam system uses a non-lossless compression. I'm sure it's very good, just not as good as the Wafian system (no loss). By disc based, you meant optical disc, I take it. The Wafian uses a hotplug removeable hard disk, which is what you need since the file sizes will be larger.

I forgot to mention, the HR-1 will soon have an option for HDMI output for audio. Extracting multichannel audio from an HD-SDI stream requires expensive de-embedders, so having the ability to output multichannel audio (5.1, 7.1) via multichannel LCPM on HDMI makes integration easier and cheaper.

I'm curious and have to ask... If you have access to the DI cineform files, what advantages does this box offer for viewing movies? I can see its appeal if you want a turn key shoot to quicktime solution and it looks like a handy alternative to many DV tape/sd-card/etc/etc/etc. formats, but for just home theater viewing I'm a bit perplexed.

A nice workstation with an HD-SDI interface and framecycler + truelight isn't that expensive these days. And portable 1 TB hard drives are so inexpensive, I sometimes wonder how long we're going to have optical media around :)

I don't believe you can take a stock HD-SDI card, a Windows PC, and the cineform codec and output the movie out of the HD-SDI output without doing some software coding.

of course you can phil. just a little DIY work and who needs all that "broadcast" crap. and you can hack an XBOX and an MCE PC to be just as good as a K.

If you fell like buying those other things, you obviously have a big ole cashpile sitting around.

SOrry, weak, i know. but i had to take a shot

Just checked out the trailer with the missus. Looks like a winner!

Thanks Michael. I think so too. While it is getting a fairly wide release for an independent film, I only saw Dallas and Houston area theaters for the initial release in Texas. With any luck, it'll do really well, and we'll be able to expand out into the smaller markets like Austin.

So for you folks in the major markets, please see if during opening weekend, so Michael can see it in Austin :)

BTW, it's opening Wednesday August 6 in LA, NY, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, Toronto and San Francisco.

It then expands out to San Diego and many more cities on Friday August 15.

Just checked out the trailer with the missus. Looks like a winner!

I have to say I agree, I'm very interested in watching this one.

Hey, Michael - I just got the latest theater bookings. Good news, it'll be at a few theaters August 15 in Austin.

lordcloud - it'll arrive in Salt Lake City on August 22nd.

Liked the trailer I'll take my GF to see it.

Great news. Hopefully one of those theaters is Alamo Drafthouse (http://www.originalalamo.com/Default.aspx?l=2)---a perfect place for a movie like this.

In Austin, currently planned are:

Alamo South Lamar
Gateway 16
Barton Creek 14

Is that good coverage?

The Wafian has been mentioned in the $20,000+ Section a few times.
Nice to see that one has been actually put to work.

Saw the demo at NAB. Doesn't the Wafian have a blend function/capability?

I would very much like to get in touch with the Dallas Community responsible what litlle film production is done in our parts.

My system is HD-SDI capable & I would get a kick out of seeing "dailies" on it.

Good luck with the film!!

ptrubey

This is very interesting. Do you know if the content can be dumped to another external HD and if so could another player play back the media...does it record in what format it is fed or does it convert. Id love to record with this and dump the files to my server for playback using the MYHD card or the TVIX.

Thank you!

And is it uncool to hit up the producer for a bootleg Blu-Ray? :D

I kid, I kid.

Alan - the content can indeed be copied to an external HD. The HR-1 comes with a hot pluggable transportable hard drive. Or over a network, for that matter, except the file sizes are big enough that that usually takes too long.

When the HR-1 records, the resultant file is either an .AVI or .MOV (your choice) using the Cineform Intermediate codec. You can download a play only codec for free from the cineform web site and thus you can indeed play the files on a PC. Using standard video cards, I believe you'd only get an 8 bit video stream, of course, but if that's what you want, you can use it that way.

The HR-1 can record either from an HD-SDI input with embedded (2ch or up to 8ch) audio, or from analog component with LR audio.

If you output from the HR-1, then you get HD-SDI at 10 bits.

Michael - all kidding aside, that's one of the points here - the blu-ray won't be produced for a while, usually well after theatrical release. This is a way of getting access to the video master before a blu-ray is produced. Producing a blu-ray is a complicated time consuming (and expensive) process.

Dude, I'm just talking a raw H.264 encode, no special features :)

Seriously though, I do see your point, and it does make this device pretty sweet for those in the biz.

ptrubey

This is very interesting. Do you know if the content can be dumped to another external HD and if so could another player play back the media...does it record in what format it is fed or does it convert. Id love to record with this and dump the files to my server for playback using the MYHD card or the TVIX.

Thank you!

This box records everything (e.g. the HD-sdi or component video) you feed it as a .mov or .avi "container" file using the cineform codec. I'd be a bit surprised if TVIX or MyHD supported the cineform codec (kind of a different market you know), but I guess it's possible. For windows and mac it looks like the cineform playback codecs are readily available, so I suppose in theory one could build a sort of DVR like setup with this box (you'd use up a lot of disk space though :).. Really, it's main purpose is for when you are shooting DV footage and you want a transportable (and optionally mirrored) recording device that uses less compression than say DVCPRO.

This device is a nice recording solution. It's designed for moving the recorded cineform avi/mov footage onto your network so that you can bring into your pipeline for editing and timing and so on. Which was why I asked my question. If you have your DI already there I think are more convenient, way lower cost, and certainly lighter weight means of bringing that content into your home theater for playback. :)

ptrubey, Framecycler doesn't require you to do any coding. Now personally I wouldn't use windows in my home theater but I do know Framecycler on windows works just fine.

"If you have your DI already there I think are more convenient, way lower cost, and certainly lighter weight means of bringing that content into your home theater for playback."

In 10 bit color, uncompressed, with multichannel sound? If you know of another solution, please post.

Heck, even if the display specs were dumbed down, I'm not sure how you would do it in reality. Remember that a producer doesn't actually "have" the DI. It is the video mastering house - in this case Fotokem. They have the DI. They do not have the capability to do a quicky "blu-ray" encode and burn (which would look crappy anyways - blu-ray is highly compressed and to do it right takes judicious tweaking of the compression settings at different parts of the movie). Indeed, this Wafian is a relatively new part of their workflow capabilities. For the most part, they still use tape for handling the video master (it used to be a D5, now it's the newer format Sony, I believe). Places like Fotokem and Deluxe are still trying to figure out true hard disk based workflows. Anyways, the one commonality to all this is the broadcast high def video transport, which is 10 bit uncompressed HD-SDI with embedded multichannel audio...

How about a Mason IP?

"HD VIDEO PLAYBACK - MasonIP can playback almost any HD file, from a variety of compression formats. MPEG2, MPEG4, AVC, VC-1, WMV, DIVX, H.264. Using the MasonIP remote control, just navigate to the server where your files are stored and hit Play. MasonIP will playback the videos with NO hiccups and NO stuttering".

http://wiredinc.com/hd-playback-player-2008-05