Tapeless, Advance Media, Sony, Adobe, Apple, Media Cast, HP
Dubai-based distributor and systems integrator Advanced Media Trading hosted a free workshop last month to showcase the benefits of a tapeless workflow in conjunction with Sony Professional Solutions Middle East. Adobe and Apple also participated in the workshop along with HP and distributor MediaCast.
The main objective of the workshop was to educate and train end users on the tapeless workflow using the new Sony XDCAM EX series of cameras. Two separate workflows were created in post production to cater to both Mac and PC users. Final Cut Pro (FCP) was loaded onto the Mac while Adobe CS5 was deployed on a HP machine although the latter software app works on both Mac and PC platforms.
Several end-users from across the GCC including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE attended the two-day workshop.
“The uniqueness of the XDCAM EX is best realised when you show end-users the entire workflow. We showed them how they could use the footage shot on this camera on different software applications and operating systems,” says Kaveh Farnam, CEO of Advanced Media Trading.
“If you look at this camera as a separate entity, it is difficult to identify any special features but when you place it within the context of a tapeless workflow, end users are quickly able to see the benefits in terms of post production and archiving. Additionally, many individual end-users only use a small percentage of the features on their cameras. Such workshops help shed light on many features that individuals are sometimes not aware of and help maximise the potential of their cameras,” he says.
Many end users also expressed interest in the Adobe CS5 application.
“Adobe CS5 is a native 64-bit application and this suddenly places Adobe firmly in the professional space within the post production environment,” explains Farnam.
The workshop also provided the perfect platform for Advanced Media to announce that it would be selling HP and Adobe products to the local market, according to Farnam.
“This workshop is also part of our efforts to showcase our non-linear editing and digital archiving capabilities at Advanced Media. We have an IT department that takes care of these areas and this department has become a lot stronger within the company,” explains Farnam.
Besides the cameras and the editing systems, Advanced Media also introduced the newly released ProxSys MA-10 solution at the event to give end-users a taste of a personal archiving solution.
Speaking about the archiving solution, Edwin Hartounian, technical manager at Advanced Media says: “The MA-10 is a very cost-effective solution designed for individuals or small businesses that want a small archiving solution with about 2TB of internal storage. What we have shown end-users here is that you can have an entire workflow all the way from the cameras to the editing and archiving for as little as US $15,000. This gives more creative freedom and power to small-budget end-users,” he explains.
This is only one of several workshops hosted by Advanced Media at its partner production house Colonia Film in recent months.
As the company also distributes still photography solutions, it aims to do a photography workshop in the near future.
“We have plans to consider a workshop where you can shoot video with a DSLR camera. There’s a lot of demand for this,” Farnam adds.
Advanced Media is one of the few distributors in the region that has taken a two-pronged approach to selling. While it, no doubt, markets the brands that it represents in the region, it has also invested time and money to ensure that its training workshops don’t just become a marketing and advertising tool but genuinely inform and educate end users about upcoming technology trends. Its previous workshop on 3D was also hugely successful and received a lot of response from the marketplace.
As Alaa Rantisi, general manager of Advanced Media points out: “As a reseller and distributor, we feel that at least some of our time and effort must be spent in educating end-users in this market. We hope to do at least four workshops annually. Like Kaveh said, our next workshop will tie in the use of DSLRs and video production as there is a lot of interest in this now.”
