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Post in the Field

Aug 25, 2010 12:00 PM, By Michael Cioni, CEO of LightIRON Digital

A virtual on-set extension of a post house.

           

The LightIRON Outpost consists of a 32TB RAID storage system, an Apple Mac Pro tower running LightIRON custom software that facilitates dailies creation, and multiple RED Rocket cards that accelerate transcoding into ProRes or Avid files in realtime for editors.

What I set out to prove with LightIRON Digital was that you can take it with you, at least in terms of postproduction service. Though LightIRON is a Hollywood post company that focuses on end-to-end file-based workflows, we have developed a virtual on-set extension of ourselves housed in a wheeled cart no bigger than a mini bar fridge (beer not included). Dubbed "LightIRON Outpost," it is designed for file-based camera shoots, and can store, back up and turn around dailies in realtime right there on set. And those dailies can be sent wirelessly from our Outpost to mobile devices and viewed on iPhones, iPods, iPads, and the like.

Basically, Outpost is what LightIRON does on wheels. Using progressive technology of file-based cameras, we are able to deliver dailies, check files and back them up all on set—and it can be a remote location miles from civilization. Everyone still gets the footage the same day. One of the most important things we can offer a production is compression of time, especially for people working on TV shows, but also those working on location out of the country. No one wants to waste time waiting for the timed dailies to come back if they don’t have to.

No more shipping footage to the lab and waiting sometimes for days for dailies to arrive. That bodes particularly well for productions filming in remote locations, such as Icon Productions’ How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Starring Mel Gibson, the film recently shot in Mexico using the Red Digital Cinema Red One digital file-based camera and one of our LightIRON Outposts on set. In developing Outpost, we have been working with Steve Freebairn, one of the industry’s leading digital imaging technicians, and Freebairn served as the DIT on Summer Vacation. The Red One camera records without being tethered to hard drives and flash cards, and we just connect it to Outpost— a processing lab inside of a mobile box. We’re not tethered to the camera, and we can roll the Outpost cart to wherever they want us.

The portable Outpost consists of a 32TB RAID storage system, an Apple Mac Pro tower running LightIRON custom software that facilitates dailies creation, and multiple RED Rocket cards that accelerate transcoding into ProRes or Avid files in realtime for editors. Files can be viewed in full resolution, full de-Bayer format with an onboard 2K flatscreen monitor. The system can run off a little putt-putt generator and has battery backup for safety.

It’s important to note that the quality is far better than DVD dailies—not just to the iPad, but we can stream it to Pix or to Apple TV or something like that so they can watch dailies on a TV and judge things like critical focus, not just performance. We build our own secure wireless network on set that covers the location and streams to multiple wireless devices.

For LightIRON Outpost, we employ our own mobile application called Lightstream that does more than just playback. It includes chapter markers and can group clips by scene or other parameters, and directors of photography can create and make notes on still frames that then can be easily emailed.

With an Internet connection, we can push those main files out of Outpost to a server, whether it’s back to us in L.A. or somewhere else. We actually moved files to Australia for Summer Vacation. Icon Productions had the raw files backed up to the 32TB RAID as well as to LTO4. (Those were shuttled back to LightIRON HQ in Los Angeles for safekeeping.) Some productions like Icon end up purchasing the RAIDs, which we hold in our vault until time for the digital intermediate.