Rohde & Schwarz DVS will be supporting the Berlin International Film Festival for the third consecutive year – and for the first time as Third Partner – by providing technical equipment. It will be playing a major role in delivering digital cinema at the festival. The 65th Berlin International Film Festival will be held February 5-15.
The Hanover-based company will be supporting the Berlinale with three R&S Clipster mastering stations, a four-channel R&S Venice ingest and production server, as well as robust R&S SpycerBox storage solutions.
Rohde & Schwarz systems – located in the Data Center of Colt Technology Services (also Digital Cinema Partner of Berlinale) – will form the centerpiece of digital workflows at the Berlinale. The R&S Clipster mastering station will create and review Digital Cinema Packages prior to the transfer into screening venues.
R&S SpycerBox storage systems, which boast a storage capacity of up to 1 petabyte, will ensure that the film entries are backed-up and ready to play.
The majority of the 1,200 films that will be shown at the Berlinale are not supplied as DCPs but in other file formats and even on tape. This is where the R&S Venice ingest and production server steps in. It digitizes the content and makes it available for further processing. R&S Clipster will be responsible for processing the enormous quantity of data involved – a task it performs quickly and efficiently. As R&S Clipster supports a wide range of video formats, films that have already been submitted digitally can be converted and processed quickly. Furthermore, the mastering station enables high-quality DCPs to be generated faster than in real-time – thus allowing for last-minute adjustments, such as changes to the subtitles.
The Berlinale is a great cultural event and one of the most important dates for the international film industry. With ticket sales approaching 325,000 and almost 20,000 industry professionals from 124 countries attending, including some 4000 journalists, the Berlinale is an appealing mixture between art, glamor, celebrations and business. The Berlin International Film Festival's public program shows around 400 films each year, most of them world and international premieres. Films of all genres, lengths and formats are presented in the various sections of the festival. The EFM is the business epicentre of the Berlinale and is one of the world's most important major film markets. Running parallel to the festival, it provides a platform for over 480 companies and welcomes over 8,000 participants. Among them, producers, buyers, distributors, cinema operators and film financiers. They all use the EFM to build and foster networks, strengthen their position in the industry or negotiate film rights. In addition to the films screened as part of the Berlinale program, up to 800 additional films will be screened at the EFM.
Ove Sander, technical manager – digital cinema, Berlin International Film Festival said, "Once again, we look forward to counting on Rohde & Schwarz DVS GmbH systems. With its incredible speed, the Clipster mastering station lets us generate all DCPs in good time prior to the start of the festival. Since the DCPs are also backed up by the reliable SpycerBox solutions we can depend on everything to run smoothly even when things get hectic during the festival."
Andreas Loges, CEO of Rohde & Schwarz DVS said, "We're delighted to support the Berlinale as Third Partner this year. Our involvement and activities in Berlin are a sign of our strong ties to Berlin as well as Germany as a film location."
Rohde & Schwarz www.dvs.de