DVS - New Media and Technologies

Something is Happening...

Something is Happening at DSI for Christmas. Do you know what it is?

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DVS Creative division featured in Mlive article

Check out the press that Mlive gave our very own Mike Kren and the DVS Creative division, in response to our recent press release to the local media.  Mlive article

He cleans up nice, huh?

 

  

Below is the DVS Creative press release, for your reading pleasure:       

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Grand Rapids Based, DVS, Launches Production Company, Adds Jobs
DVS Creative founded to meet client demand

Grand Rapids, Mich. – November 4, 2009 – DVS, a local media duplication and asset management company, launches new production company, DVS Creative, to meet customer demand.

“Production management services have been an offering of DVS for many years, however, with the paramount growth we recently experienced the only solution was to launch a separate division with staff to focus on video production, editing, DVD & CD authoring, and video encoding/compression,” says Mike Kren, DVS Creative manager.

With the creation of DVS Creative, the division currently employs 5 full-time employees, with two new hires this month. “Our production clientele has grown over 25% within the past year, and in the next five years we project strong double digit employee growth,” says Kren.

“What sets DVS Creative apart is their technical knowledge, ability to always meet the deadline, and consistent follow-up once a project is completed,” says Holly del Rosario, Global Brand Communications, Amway Corporation.

DVS Creative specializes in finding or creating solutions for difficult technical projects while stimulating the audience visually to effectively communicate a client’s message.

“What is perhaps the most interesting about our growth is that DVS Creative was launched to meet client demand versus forming and pursuing new business. We had the existing business and needed to grow to meet demand,” says Kren.

About DVS Creative:

DVS Creative blends the creative art of production with the technical science of visually rich media to effectively communicate a client’s message. We focus on knowing our craft, adapting to client needs all the while illustrating your strengths and capabilities.

DVS Creative is a division of Digital Services, Inc. and a sister company to Pelco Solutions and DVS. For more information go to www.dvscreative.com.

About Mike Kren:

The fact that Mike Kren is a movie buff comes in handy working in the creative industry. Kren got his feet wet in management at National Amusement, a chain of movie theaters, where he learned the ins and outs of business while taking in the occasional flick.

When Kren was ready to move on, he was hired in at the DVS division of Digital Services, Inc. as a Technician. Kren soon took on new challenges as a Project Manager, and then Production Manager. Over the years, DVS expanded into media and video production in response to customer demand. In 2008 a new division was created, DVS Creative. With the formation of DVS Creative, Kren was promoted to the position of Creative Services Manager and charged with growing this new division.

Mike Kren graduated from Grand Valley State University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Film and Video Production.

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Disney Planning a Way to Ditch the DVD?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Walt Disney Co. is close to unveiling technology that it says will enable entertainment companies to adapt their business models to a new reality in which consumers increasingly rely on computers and cell phones in place of DVD players and TVs.

The technology, code-named Keychest, could contribute to a shift in what it means for a consumer to own a movie or a TV show, by redefining ownership as access rights, not physical possession.

The technology would allow consumers to pay a single price for permanent access to a movie or TV show across multiple digital platforms and devices—from the Web, to mobile gadgets like iPhones and cable services that allow on-demand viewing. It could also facilitate other services such as online movie subscriptions.

Follow this link to read the rest of the story:  WSJ Disney DVD Story

Italy's RAI carries out 35mm-quality 4K HDTV broadcast transmission

As reported in a DVD Intelligence trade I follow: In a world premier, Italian public broadcaster RAI has transmitted an experimental television programme using the so-called 4K technology that offers a picture four times sharper than the current high-definition standard. RAI says it achieves for the first time the quality of 35mm film.

The 4K technology for TV was officially demonstrated last week at the Prix Italia 2009 in Turin – the annual International Radio, TV and Web festival – with the film ‘Torino 4K’ directed by Ariella Beddini. The format proponents say watching such picture transmissions in the home has the same perception as on the big screen. The extent of the effect depends on the size of the TV set.

The new technology was developed by RAI’s Centre for Strategic Technologies in Turin and is being supported by the City of Turin and RAI’s Yes Italia channel. Production and post-production technology provider AVID collaborated with the experiment.

TDK Unveils 320GB 10 layer Super-Multiplayer BD-R optical disc at CEATEC

As reported by CDrInfo: TDK developed a new optical disc with a capacity of 320GB, using 10 recording layers. 

TDK's latest prototype disc features 10 layers, each capable of holding 32GB of data. The disc can be burned using a 405nm blue-violet semiconductor laser and an objective lens with a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.85 - a configuration currently met in Blu-ray players/recorders. Of course, this does not mean that the disc would be compatible with the available Blu-ray recorders, since the laser power needed to burn data in 10 layers varies from 13 ~ 28mW, according to the layer.

On the other hand, the disc could be readable with BD equipment. TDK claims that the transmittance of the outermost layer of the disc, which requires the highest transmittance, is more than 90%, while the symbol error rate of the stored data is less than 10-4. This means that the data could be retrieved with adequate reliability.

TDK has succeded in the development of the multi-layer disc using layers made of different materials. An inorganic Si-Cu alloy layer was used for the L0 layer. On the L1 to L9 layers, recording marks are maintained by using an inorganic material composed of bismuth peroxide and germanium dioxide. By adjusting the composition of the used materials, TDK managed to maintain adequate transmitance characteristics for each recording layer.

This is TDK's third multi-layer, high capacity disc since 2006. TDK was the first to develop a 100GB prototype recordable Blu-ray Disc in 2005. One year later, TDK a write-once recording medium having six layers, each of which has a capacity of 33.3 Gbytes (200 Gbytes in total). The transmittance of the outermost layer of the disc, which requires the highest transmittance, was 80 to 90%.

The company plans to exhibit the disc at CEATEC JAPAN 2009, which will run from Oct 6 to 10, 2009, at Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture, Japan.

AV Asset Management - Part II: Physical Container Content

Part II of my AV Asset Management series compares the evolutionary shift in type of content elements on audio-visual containers that came with the digital evolution.

I once again contend that professional audio-visual asset management was simpler - in the old days of the analog age.

In the analog age, the CONTENT format was the same as the CONTAINER format. Simply put, a BetacamSP videotape has audio-visual content in the BetacamSP video format. Because of this you can put a BetacamSP videotape into a BetacamSP video player and know it will playback successfully.

Conversely, in the digital age the CONTENT format is frequently NOT the same as the CONTAINER format.  Take hard drives for instance.  When holding a physical hard drive (container) in your hand, do you intrinsically know what is on it? Simply put, no. Not knowing what is on it is just part of the battle though. Even when you know the content, accessing it is complex as well.

The solution to accessing content on a hard drive may seem simple... just connect it to a computer. No so.  Hard drives may hold audio, video, correspondence, financial, or any number of other content types.  To muddy the waters even further, each of those content types may be in a dozen different file formats.  For example, a digital video file could be in Flash, Quicktime, WMV, MPEG, or other formats.  Going even deeper, a Quicktime video file may use the animation codec, which is one of more than a dozen different codecs (compressor/decompressor algorithms) used with the Quicktime format.  And if that were not enough, each of those codecs has dozens of settings.  To recap, our digital video example has at least four layers (Type=video >> Format=Quicktime >> Codec=animation >> Settings=too many to list) of complexity. 

It is the above level of complexity that makes professional audio-visual asset management far more challenging in the digital age. 

In my next post I will address another challenge introduced by the dawn of the digital age... the sheer quantity of content elements that can be put on a single physical container.