A NEW WORKFLOW REALITY FOR BIG BROTHER CANADA
Based in Toronto, FNTECH is a thriving, full-service production rental company, servicing major broadcast series that shoot and post in Canada. Multiple Cinedeck systems are incorporated at the heart of their customized tapeless workflows. FNTECH has deployed Cinedeck based systems on a range of popular TV programs: Big Brother Canada, several seasons of the comedy series The Ron James Show (Enter The Picture for CBC Television), cooking show Chopped Canada (Paperny Entertainment for Food Network), game show Canada’s Smartest Person (CBC) and international charity event We Day.
“We’ve built our business around Cinedeck recorders,” say’s Curt Fuglewicz, FNTech’s President. “We have worked closely with Cinedeck for many years now, and recognize that they have much better products than many other companies today. Either their rivals don’t do as much, or you might need to pay ten times the price to achieve the same functionality,” says Fuglewicz. “Ultimately, Cinedeck’s top-of-the-line products give producers the speed, efficiency and security they demand as they entrust their multi-million dollar productions to us.”
Now in it’s fifth year with FNTECH, Big Brother Canada is shot using over 100 cameras, running 24 hours, 7 days a week, for over 72 days. Media needs to be delivered to editorial quickly to get 3x 1 hour episodes out the door in time for each week’s airing. Cinedeck’s Master / Proxy record feature has been central to meeting Big Brother’s tight delivery schedule; while writing Avid Native files directly to ISIS means that Big Brother has a No-Transcode workflow. Additional Cinedeck features like Segment Record mean that clips are immediately accessible for post to start editing right away.
After experiencing frustration with off-the-shelf media management tools, FNTECH created FN Workflow Suite (FNWS), an in-house developed media management, logging and automated LTO toolset customized for each client’s unique workflow. “With tools like Live Logging, Automated Backup and Archive, and instant Proxy Search & Playback, FNWS and Cinedeck recorders deliver on the promise of a truly easy camera to post workflow for the most demanding multi-cam productions,” says Curt.
Big Brother Canada adopted FN Workflow Suite (FNWS) for their season 4 production and immediately saw the daily ‘camera to post’ tasks greatly improve. Curt explains, “They use our Live Logger with instant Proxy Search and Playback so that clips can be tagged, grouped and instantly accessible. Additionally, Big Brother Canada’s archive process is now completely automated so that a check-summed copy goes to nearline storage and another goes to LTO tape for offsite archival.”
Feeling that Big Brother’s workflow could benefit with even tighter integration, FNTECH pressed on to develop customized solutions tailored for Big Brother Canada’s needs. Because of their insight into Big Brother’s post workflow, FNTECH was able to create a custom system that takes the metadata of the clips recorded by Cinedecks and automatically generates synced and grouped clips with the use of AAFs. FNTECH is excited to show off the expanded use of automatic AAF creation at NAB this year. Also because social media was an important part of the show, we developed Live Stream status reports and real-time Twitter update notifications.”
“We’re really proud of FNWS and we’re happy to have partnered with Cinedeck. Their support and service have been a part of our success,” Curt says.
- ABOUT FNTECHBased in Toronto, FNTECH has been providing and customizing production services and software throughout Canada since 2010, providing workflow solutions for some of the most challenging multi-cam productions.