With an evolving industry, the broadcast and post-production facilities are seeking more affordable and integrated creative tools that can help them stand out in the crowd.

The art of post-production seems to respond to the proliferating chaos of global culture in the information age, which is characterized by an increase in the supply of works and the art world's invasion of forms ignored until now. With an evolving industry, the broadcast and post-production facilities are seeking more affordable and integrated creative tools that can help them stand out in the crowd. In India, this highly developed industry includes digital intermediate (DI), high definition (HD), and 3D animation. Today's state-of-the-art technology has brought the important and highly specialized field of restoration into the digital age, enabling rapid and cost-effective delivery of both old and new content that measure up to the high-quality standards of HDTV and Blu-ray. Broadcasters can now monetize and generate new revenues from assets that are currently languishing in costly storage.

Since the number of TV channels in the country has grown by leaps and bounds, the content providers catering to these channels are increasingly looking up to post-production technologies to improve the packaging and finishing of their programs, to give them an edge over the competition. The film production process is constantly evolving, as most of the production houses are modernizing and are going digital in a big way, as they allow the scanning of an entire movie at high resolution, thus changing the way movies are color graded. They also enable creativity with real-time, interactive environments and breakthrough workflows.

The use of the latest 3D software, gaming, and motion capture technology is helping to explore, define, plan, and communicate creative ideas in new and more intuitive visual ways, thus reducing risk, eliminating confusion, and addressing production unknowns much earlier in the film-making process.

Forward-thinking broadcasters made the leap into some form of HD broadcasting in the early years of the 21st century. Today, broadcasters need to invest in order to maintain or increase their audience and revenue, as well as take advantage of the new opportunities that HD creates. Usually, existing SD services, archive material, and legacy devices all need to be included in the design of new HD systems.

When moving to HD infrastructures, broadcasters are often looking to reduce operational overheads and automate many stages of the production environment. Automation is no longer the preserve of transmission playout systems, but is equally applicable to HD studios. Recent studio projects have included automatic assignment of facilities at the push of a button, with examples such as production control room changeover and management of the allocation of broadcast resources in the newsroom. Technical facilities available in any overall system can be automatically allocated, configured, and set up by an automation system, with the benefit of increasing operational flexibility.

A crucial aspect of any HD system is the design of the LAN and IT networking infrastructure. The increase in HD data rates in a file-based system has encouraged integrators to invest strongly in in-house IT networking expertise.

The Indian post-production market is estimated at Rs. 118 crore for the year 2010. The market may be segmented into four main segments - digital video editing, digital video effects, graphics and titling, and film and video restoration. The market for digital video editing is estimated to be Rs. 37 crore; Rs. 26 crore for digital video effects; Rs. 25 crore for graphics and titling; and Rs. 30 crore for film, and video restoration.

Major Players

Kit digital represents Apple FCP, Adobe, Matrox, and VizRT. The segment-wise sales in 2010 include 100 units of digital video editing (valued at Rs. 3.5 crore), 20 units of graphics and titling from VizRT (valued at Rs. 6.25 crore), and 50 units of film and video restoration (valued at Rs. 6.16 crore).

Kit digital and Prime Focus Limited had signed a license contract for 350 seats of HS-Arts' Diamant for their digital film restoration facilities. This is probably, the single biggest contract for digital restoration and Prime Focus will now be able to offer high-quality restoration services for large volumes, in a short response time, on a worldwide level.

Rahul Commerce represents Apple, Adobe, Autodesk, Toon Boom, Avid, Eyeon, RenderMan, and Corel in India. The total sales recorded by the company in 2010 were Rs. 12.25 crore. The segment-wise sales include 239 units of digital video editing software for Rs. 6.25 crore, 350 units of digital video effects software for Rs. 5 crore and 150 units of graphics and titling software at Rs. 1 crore.

The digital video editing software sales was 125 units of Toon Boom at Rs. 2.5 crore; 50 units from Apple for Rs. 2 crore, 10 units from Adobe at Rs. 0.5 crore, 4 units from Autodesk for Rs. 0.5 crore and 50 units from RenderMan at Rs. 0.75 crore. FCP, Avid Media Composer, After Effects, and Karkatoa were the brands sold to Reliance Media Works valued at Rs. 1 crore. Harmony and Storyboard Pro from Toon Boom, Premiere from Adobe, Smoke on Mac from Autodesk, and FCS from Apple were the popular software.

Rahul Commerce had sales of 350 units of digital video effects software from Autodesk for Rs. 5 crore. Prana procured 250 units of Autodesk Maya for Rs. 2.38 crore and 5 units of Autodesk Maya and Adobe were sold to Snipple Animation Studio for Rs. 0.20 crore in 2010. Popular were Maya and Max from Autodesk, After Effects from Adobe, Avide Media Composer from Avid and Fusion from Eyeon. Under graphics and titling software, the company sold Photoshop and Illustrator from Adobe and Corel Draw and Painter from Corel in 2010.

CDG Broadcast represents Grass Valley, NewTek, and Nexsan in India. The segment-wise sales of the company include Rs. 2 crore for digital video editing and Rs. 0.4 crore for graphic and titling.

Aditya Infotech represents Autodesk, Blackmagic Design, and Rohde & Schwarz (DVS Digital Video System AG) in India. Blackmagic and DVS are the major brands under film and video restoration.

Compuaid represents Compix Media USA. The company has sold four systems to BiTV in Bangladesh TV for Rs. 0.39 crore. Video post-production involves the worlds of motion pictures, television programs, music videos, photography and digital art, and Compix has broadcast quality solutions for every aspect of the post-production process. Shemaroo Entertainment, Mumbai, is the customer of the company in India.

Real Image represents Avid in India. The company sold 177 units of digital video editing software for Rs. 1.70 crore. The popular software includes Avid Nitris DX system, Avid DS Software, and Avid Media Composer software. The major customers in 2010 were Times Now, Jaya TV, Sun network, Raj Telugu, India TV, and Maa TV.

Comcon Industries represents Renegade Labs in India. Renegade Labs offers digital audio mixers.

Major Brands

Adobe in India is represented by Rahul Commerce and Kit digital. The company offers various products including After Effects CS5. This software delivers the outstanding performance and visual richness required to succeed in today's media culture. New native 64-bit helps to tap more of the computer's power to work efficiently with complex HD, 2K, and 4K projects. A broad range of innovative features from the revolutionary new Roto Brush to dozens of subtle but important changes that streamline the workflow enables to create amazing motion graphics and blockbuster visual effects while delivering the work to the widest possible variety of screens.

Apple in India is represented by Rahul Commerce and Kit digital. The wide range of products offered by Apple includes:

Final Cut Pro 7 is ideal for digital intermediate workflows for projects shot on film, as well as cutting-edge workflows for video from high-resolution cameras such as the RED ONE. Final Cut Pro 7 enables the user to work more and faster with new ProRes codec options, time-saving interface improvements, and easy collaboration tools.

Motion 4 makes it easy to add excitement to the motion graphics with dynamic 3D shadows, reflections, and depth-of-field effects, as well as new text animation. It comes with more than 120 GPU-accelerated filters and effects. It can instantly animate mesmerizing patterns with replicator, and rapidly create smoke, fog, or other dramatic effects with one of more than 200 particle presets

Soundtrack Pro 3 helps to repair common audio problems in a few clicks and work faster than ever using new, streamlined navigation tools. With expanded support for digital cinema workflows, Color 1.5 helps confidently create unique color grading looks and deliver at the highest quality.

Compressor 3.5 enables to work even more efficiently, with new batch templates, job actions, and enhanced droplets that are like miniature encoding applications. It makes encoding easy and efficient, whether outputting a single file or delivering multiple files in multiple formats. With enhanced droplets and new batch templates, Compressor offers even more ways to save time.

Autodesk in India is represented by Rahul Commerce and Aditya Infotech. The company is one of the leaders in 2D and 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software. The software empowers customers to digitally design, visualize, and simulate their ideas.

Autodesk Maya software offers artistes an end-to-end creative workflow with comprehensive tools for 3D animation, modeling, simulation, visual effects, rendering, matchmoving, and compositing on a highly extensible production platform. All these capabilities are combined into a single application offering CG artists an exceptional value. For the Mac OS X 64-bit operating system, Maya 2011 delivers a revitalized user interface, enhanced view port interaction, new 3D editorial capabilities, integrated color management, and improved character animation.

Avid in India is marketed by Aditya Infotech Real Image and Rahul Commerce. The company's various products includes:

Media Composer 5. With this product, AMA (Avid Media Access) has been completely re-engineered and it is now possible to work natively with more file-based media formats. With the new and improved AMA, users can speed up RED workflows by directly accessing RED files (R3D) in media composer without having to prepare them through MetaFuze (all footage is scaled to HD frame size). The users also have access to its full metadata and color management data.

Media Composer Nitris DX. With this product, users can capture, edit, monitor, and output digital and analog material faster and easier than before. Media Composer software tightly integrates high-performance Nitris DX video hardware with the host computer's CPU and GPU, giving a single high-bandwidth effects engine that delivers without compromise irrespective of the formats and codecs used. And with onboard 10-bit Avid DNxHD encoding and decoding, users can edit HD projects with incredible beauty and speed.

Avid DS 10.5. This gives the flexibility to use the existing hardware in the editing suite or facility, providing a low-cost editing and finishing solution. The products help in quickly moving the projects from media composer to DS without any recreation - using advance conform. It creates high-end graphics and visuals using full paint and compositing tools and accelerates and fine-tunes the storytelling with the included Media Composer 5 software. It also speeds up RED workflows with R3D native conform and support for the RED rocket card.

Blackmagic Design in India is marketed by Aditya Infotech. The company in 2009 took over Da Vinci Systems. The products offered by the company include:

Intensity Shuttle is a new low-cost and extremely high quality HDMI and analog video capture and playback solution for USB 3.0 computers. It includes separate connections for HDMI 1.3, component, composite and s-video capture, and playback at full 10 bit video quality available to even more videographers for true professional work and supports Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, and Fusion. It lets customers connect to the latest AVCHD and HDV cameras for direct capture from the image sensor for incredible video quality, and HDMI and component video outputs provide fantastic quality monitoring with maximum possible real time effects.

Da Vinci Cineom Broadcast India is the distributor for DaVinci. DaVinci Resolve 7.0 includes a new user interface which provides quick, simple, and intuitive creative control without clutter that make other color grading systems difficult and slow to use. It has been developed with colorists and benefits from the decades of DaVinci color grading experience.

Compact Videohub. Compact Videohub features 3 Gb/s SDI, ASI, autoswitching SD, HD and 3 Gb/s SDI formats, full SDI reclocking, USB, redundant power inputs, Ethernet, and serial router control. It is perfect for customers who need an incredibly tiny router that also meets tough broadcast technical requirements for performance as well as reliability.

Compact Videohub includes more control interfaces such as easy to use USB, as well as direct ethernet and Rs. 422 serial interfaces. Direct ethernet router control allows direct connection to a computer network for control. Ethernet control is fully compatible with Blackmagic Design's wide and growing range of software control panels, the Videohub Smart Control hardware control panel, and the new Videohub Control for iPad.

DVS Digital Video Systems AG. Rohde & Schwarz took over DVS Digital Video Systems AG in December 2010. The products offered by the company include:

CLIPSTER workstation provides online editing of film data, conversion to various output formats, color correction and even film restoration. CLIPSTER can handle any level of resolution - SD, HD, 2K and 4K. Even demanding visual effects may be used without causing delays in the workflow.

DVS video server VENICE provides quick and convenient processing of various compressed and uncompressed formats. On top of being a solid server for ingest and content play-out, it also includes secure and quickly accessible RAID storage.

Grass Valley in India is represented by CDG Broadcast. The products offered by the company include:

EDIUS nonlinear editing software is designed for any broadcast and postproduction environment, especially those using newer, tapeless forms of video recording and storage.

EDIUS offers real-time, multi-track, mixed-format editing, compositing, chromakeying, titling, and timeline output capabilities. In addition to the standard formats supported by the EDIUS family of NLEs, EDIUS supports P2 DVCPRO, AVC-Intra, XDCAM, Ikegami GF, and Canon's XF format and EOS movie format. It also supports capturing from tape devices such as DV and HDV.

Matrox in India is represented and marketed by Kit digital. The range of products offered by the company includes:

Matrox Axio LE provides a complete post-production solution that allows the user get the best from the Adobe CS4 production premium software. It is designed to give the most comprehensive real-time feature set, the highest quality native codec technology, and complete file-based workflows totally integrated with the Adobe software. Matrox Axio LE goes far beyond the capabilities of systems that combine Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 with a simple I/O card.

Matrox RT.X2 delivers powerful real-time HD and SD editing performance. Matrox RT.X2 platforms go far beyond the capabilities of software-only editing and systems that combine Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and a simple I/O card. The additional benefits the users can get with Matrox RT.X2 are more real-time layers of videos and graphics, more effects in real time including color correction, chroma/luma keying, speed changes, blur/glow/soft focus, and 3D DVE. Real-time native editing of Sony XDCAM EX .mp4 clips and Panasonic P2 MXF 720p and SD files are possible with Matrox RT.X2 and RT.X2 LE. Real-time capture from analog sources to compressed MPEG-2 4:2:2 I-frame and real-time playback of 32-bit MPEG-2 I-frame AVI files with alpha are also the few benefits of the product.

Pixel Power in India is marketed by Sun Broadcast Equipment Pvt. Ltd. The products offered by the company include:

The easy to use Clarity user interface is operator friendly for template creation and live operation in pressured environments. Clarity has a full range of models and options to match varied budgets, from a simple 1RU standard definition system right up to dual channel systems with multiple clip players and real-time 3D animation.

BrandMaster seamlessly integrates a complete master control switcher with broadcast graphics for channel branding. It injects sophisticated graphics capability for branding where it belongs directly at the point of transmission while simultaneously reducing the complexity of the signal path and streamlining the channel branding process.

Sony offers the following products:

Vegas Pro 9 offers an efficient and intuitive environment for professional video and broadcast production, as well as DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring. It provides native XDCAM HD422 and XDCAM EX support, a device explorer for AVCHD and XDCAM EX devices. It captures to Sony XDCAM MXF from SD/HD-SDI devices. It can enable Blu-ray disc burning directly from the timeline and edit with HDV generated M2T files.

PDJ-C1080 is a professional disc automated robotics system for near-line archive, auto ingest, and transmission. Enabling nonlinear access to stored content with exceptional reliability and operational flexibility it offers an optimum automated solution in today's multi-channel world.

VizRT is marketed in India by KIT digital. VizRT graphics and virtual set was the brand sold in 2010. Some of the products offered by the company include:

Viz Engine renders animated 2D and 3D scenes in real-time, producing high-end animations in SD and HD. Viz Engine allows users to integrate their own proprietary control software with ease. In addition, a powerful scripting language supports easy manipulation of graphics objects, as well as the creation of user-specific plug-ins. Vizrt offers several external command protocol products that are specific to the broadcast industry, including Viz Content Pilot and Viz Media Sequencer Engine. Third party developers can create their own specific applications within, and on top of Viz Engine.

Viz Trio is perfectly capable of working as a standalone application. It is often used as a combination of three products. First, the Viz Trio client allows one to control the video output and to make fast changes to the content, whenever needed. Then there is Viz Engine, which is the real-time 3D rendering software that delivers the animation in HD SDI video or as a DVI digital output. Finally, there is Viz Artist. While it is not a part of Viz Trio per se, most broadcasters choose Vizrt's design application to create the real-time 3D animations that Viz Trio will play out. Vizrt has devised a way to deliver multiple graphics looks using a single CG and one set of data.

Viz Video Hu is the media asset management (MAM) system for people who do not want to think about their storage. It is easy to set up, use, and expand and it is one of the most cost-effective ways to engage into file-based archiving. Viz Video Hub allows storing every type of media file namely video clips, pictures, graphics, and even audio files. Once the files are stored they can be searched and accessed from any standard PC using detailed metadata and powerful search functions. With Vizrt systems in place, Viz Video Hub becomes even more capable; by integrating with a Vizrt graphics system, it can be used as a standalone production unit.

Viz NLE (nonlinear editing) seamlessly connects the Vizrt real-time graphics pipeline with an existing post-production environment. Broadcasters can thus retain the same graphical elements in both surroundings. Viz NLE provides fast turnaround times in busy newsrooms, and reduced design and development overheads. Viz NLE's key advantage is the ability to preserve existing channel branding without additional effort. The same graphics can be used in different scenarios, from a station's video editing projects to live broadcasts.

This article is based on research conducted by Broadcast & Cablesat in February, 2011