Editing room with digital technology

Producciones JES is a Colombian company dedicated for more than 30 years to the production and post-production of television. Its main feature has been the concern to incorporate the latest technological advances in the industry. Following this philosophy, at the beginning of this year the company created a subdivision exclusively for the production of commercials with the efficient D1 technology.

Alberto Sánchez Cristo, design director and creator of Jes Digital, analyzes what real advantages digital technology applied to the television industry offers and why the interest of scientists and professionals in the field to promote it.

"Today," says Alberto Sánchez, "television is part of the NTSC, PAL or SECAM formats, which each country has accepted according to its convenience. In the Colombian case, NTCS or analogous compound was chosen, qualified as such because all the elements of the color are sent through a single signal.

What the technology later discovered is that by breaking down the signal and handling it separately, the color elements do not suffer any kind of interference. Throughout the tour these are kept totally pure and when joined to form the image it is of much better quality. Something similar happened in the past with video cameras that went from one tube to three tubes – red, green and blue. This system was called analog components.

Currently the signal that is emitted is still composed because otherwise, it would involve changing all the televisions. This phenomenon has generated a certain technological delay, because systems compatible with the receiving devices or production methods have always been sought. When scientists realized that they could not do anything compatible without sacrificing quality, they decided to continue developing such systems so that each one would embrace the quality that best suited their needs.

Thus was born digital technology, which consists of transmitting numbers with absolute precision through binary combinations, that is, one and zero, where the one is a signal and the zero is absent of it. When passing the signal from one place to another it is always the same – there is no variation – and it does not depend on factors such as temperature or voltage generation."

"In this way," adds Alberto Sánchez Cristo, "by using the decomposed video or by components with a digital handling, the best possible quality was achieved by making the European and American associations come together to bring out a unique format that they called CCIR601, popularly known as D1."

Based on the uncompressed D1 component digital system, Jes Digital offers outstanding efficiency and versatility. As for the recording, the company has the only digital camera available on the market that, regardless of its quality, allows to complete the process in digital. This uses a more evolved CCD which is the FIT Hyper-Had with greater control of light and more definition. The editions start with Off line for which the AVID non-linear editing system is used. Almost always the commercials go through a stage of effects or graphics, for which the Wavefront, based on Silicon Graphics, is used. For the final production of the commercials, the company is equipped with a non-linear editing room in D1, in real time and without compression.

Such technologies open up an unlimited world of possibilities in creative work, streamlining work and increasing quality.

Source: Alberto Sánchez Cristo

Design Director: Jes Digital., Colombia