The television industry and video in Latin America shows symptoms of approaching the maturity. No to a maturity of those that are the first step towards the old age or towards decadence. But to a maturity that implies recognize the place it occupies in the world, and know how to identify itself with virtues and defects. And with a great perspective of growth based on this recognition.
In the last 10 years has increased the number of channels in almost all countries of Latin America. Not only subscription channels but also, although to a lesser extent, open television channels terrestrial. On the other hand, production has increased proportionally in some sectors in a proportion geometric-, and many countries today have a strong industry export of audiovisual content. The coverage of the Television in our region is almost absolute, and in all the There is an appreciable production infrastructure in the country.
The big screen too
is digital
On the cinema side, the situation is not much different. But in
this case, in a clearer way, the boom of cinema
Latin America is linked to the development of Latin American technologies
digital cinema that have enabled a significant reduction in
costs for film production. Another factor as well
Important that should be mentioned within this growth is the
support from Ibermedia, an initiative of the countries
Ibero-American for the support of local film projects.
The 80s and 90s marked the lowest point for the film industry in Latin America. Countries such as Mexico or Argentina, which managed to produce up to 100 feature films a year in the 50s went on to produce less than one ten annually in the 90s. However, both industries have strongly resurfaced (although they do not compare with the golden age of the last century) and also countries such as Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay, present interesting projects of digital cinema.
Digital cinema also requires the emergence of instances of post-production of cinema in digital intermediate. Here, the post-production houses, which have developed a know-how working mainly in commercials for television, they have a window of opportunity to revert a threatening trend within the industry.
The basic processes of TV post-production is becoming more and more integrated to production flows while post houses are focus on more advanced digital intermediate processes. Envelope the basic post infrastructure, the know-how becomes every more important and differentiating. Across the industry, it hasn't there has been a sector that has had to reinvent itself with greater frequency than post-production houses. Many of the Customers of post houses are now your biggest competitor.
Intermediate products Digital comes in a variety of scales and prices that depend on in the last of the market in which you are going to work and requires careful budget planning. Today they exist digital intermediate streams in 4K, 2K, HD 4:4:4 and HD 4:2:2.
The master's degree resulting from a digital intermediate process, when it is worked as HD-RGB 4:4:4, offers maximum visual information and can be used in multiple commercial formats. Thus, this type of products opens the doors for medium productions budget in our region can be finalized in high resolution and have commercial outlets either in local media or to external markets or special editions on DVD.
The new technological conditions require producers and post-producers to work together in the planning of productions as never before fact. Cinematographers should know the possibilities of available post technologies and take decisions early in the process to be able to take shots with post-production in mind. That of fix later in post is no longer valid but is accompanied for a how it will be fixed later in post. The joint planning work of producers and post-producers it must include the selection of the most appropriate formats of acquisition, scanning and digital intermediate.
Small markets,
big business
A factor that shows the unquestionable arrival at maturity of
The television industry, is the fact that many brands of
equipment suppliers now look to the region as a market
attractive. Obviously, this is not just a market factor.
but also a technological phenomenon: today there is equipment
basic for video production at much higher prices
affordable than 10 years ago. Hardware platforms thanks
partly to the development of information technologies-
are much more standard, there are greater economies of scale and
there are ways to update products electronically
(download a software update for a camera can
repower equipment in a much more economical way).
An example is grass valley, of Thomson, which has introduced equipment for small markets such as the Turbo iVTR, RevPro Media and Drives and the Indigo Switcher of production.
The technological influence of the Computer world has been noticed in almost all instances of the various TV workflows and the video. Cameras perhaps the most important device significant of this industry- they are now compact systems and Multifunctional. Nigel Stoddart, Sales Manager for South America of Grsss Valley states: While the Market for more compact systems is growing, the market of studio-type cameras also remains very firm. In cameras Purely portable, the trend is clear that the more Multi-functional be, better for users. For example our Infinity camera can record in different formats such as DV, MPEG or JPEG2000, in SD 525 or 625 lines 50/60Hz, HD 720p or 1080i lines 50/60 and record both in solid memories (Compact Removable flash) or media (RevPro) with network connection, plus it has the traditional BNC and XLRs connectors by inputs and outputs. The flexibility of choice is increasingly a requisition requested by customers.
The new ways to sell Video and television technology also has to do with the market maturity in Latin America; buyers have greater clarity as to what they want and need, and with the explosion of new production and transmission operations throughout the region (churches, thematic channels and news find space on subscription television). Most of these new operations are assembling technology SD, which is still in force.
Of course, it does reaffirm Stoddart. We have our SD line very up to date, with equipment that is purely SD, or in many cases SD models upgradeable to HD at the time when they choose to switch to HD. Technological and market developments indicate that today ENG operations can be mounted without shoulder cameras.
Television in a big way
On the other hand, for the big broadcasters in Latin America,
the era of HD has arrived. Most already produce or have the
ability to do it in HD either for the local market, to
export or to archive in the best quality.
Many operations require a update their SD platforms and when they go out to the market usually find a wide range of hybrid solutions SD/HD operating on the same hardware offering the functionality for which one wants to pay... and this applies both for cameras such as for production switchers, support, servers, monitoring systems... etc. The truth is than in many market spaces, SD-only equipment they are simply disappearing from the supply, and this has gone occurring without prices skyrocketing.
Where does this take us? tendency that comes from the imperative need that the manufacturers to optimize their production costs? Well whether we like it or not, we must begin to decide how our will be migration to HD, even if the big jump does not occupy a very close place in our agenda. In a few years it will to be very difficult to justify the technical decisions taken today and that in a short time can be revealed as errors garrafales.
HD formats have entered the region also through digital cinema. The resurgence of local film production inevitably goes through the new digital production formats, the workflows of digital intermediate and the arrival of the showrooms with digital projection.
In terms of transmission of On free-to-air television, the region continues to be debated among the ATSC, DVB-T and ISDB formats (in its Brazilian version). The regulatory bodies are beginning to manifest themselves. Today, each of the three has an adept country in the region: Mexico with ATSC, Brazil with its own version of ISDB and Uruguay, the first in adopting DVB-T.
A friend's funeral
Another important trend is to remove tapes from the whole
television operation. Tapeless workflows are no longer
a luxury but they are economically necessary because of the
high costs of ownership of tape-based systems. There's
a number of bottlenecks regarding archiving medium
the material. Holographic media appear on the horizon
as a viable alternative.
Making categorical statements is dangerous but we can say with some certainty that the The main factor that binds us to videotapes is the ballast of the past. The arithmetic of migration to Tapeless production is clear: Even in environments based on cassettes of 3 or 4 dollars per unit migration to cards of memory and hard drives make sense in the medium or long term despite the current prices of P2 cards and others similar solutions. And not to mention if it is production in HD with streaming quality. Has anyone checked lately the costs of HDCAM cassettes? Obviously it is difficult renounce tape as a mastering and distribution system, and perhaps archival. But the implementation of tapeless work of doors to inside is to on the verge of becoming an economic imperative. We hope that a few years later we can say the same about the long-term material storage...
Finally, questions open up on the implementation of mobile television and IPTV systems in the region. Who will own these systems? Everything seems to indicate that telecommunications companies, as in the rest of the world, they will dominate space. No however, the production capacity of mobile content and reporpusing will determine the possibility of old players in the field of television be animators also in the field of mobile television or IPTV.
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