PANAVISION LONDON - Viewing Theatre Upgrade
Case Study
“Our sole supplier for the install of a 4k viewing theatre”
Panavision recently installed a comprehensive update to its viewing theatre. This facility hosts many of the world’s leading cinematographers who use it to make critical judgements on the qualities of camera and lens choices. The viewing theatre must
be capable of displaying top quality images for a discerning audience.
We use Blackmagic Resolve to play-out RAW footage with LUTs and image resizing applied on nodes. This footage is downloaded from a variety of proprietary camera media
cards via the appropriate card readers. These readers are connected via a number of interfaces.
Panavision had been using a “MAC Trashcan” system in conjunction with a Thunderbolt 2 Sonnet rack system and a G-Speed Thunderbolt 2 RAID for
some years but it had started to show it’s age particularly when playing out 8K RAW files. This meant that we had to reduce the image quality for some formats which wasn’t acceptable.
The only sensible upgrade path was to migrate to a
PC system and utilize the power of a high-e nd GPU alongside a suitably capable computer system. We also needed to update our G-Speed DAS to a larger, faster QNAP 10Gbe NAS system capable of delivering high bitrate video streams in real-time.
“We decided to use Scan Computers based on several factors”
Scan listened to our requirements and then gave us several package options of varying specs. We faced the dilemma of where to spend our budget – GPU, RAM, CPU, what will give us the most performance for our use case? Scan then offered us the
chance to demo the new system within our existing infrastructure which was invaluable.
It was during this time that we ironed out several issues that would not have been noticed without this demo time. A couple of vital peripherals
had compatibility problems and we also realized that some parts of the system such as the ASUS Thunderbolt add-on card were not necessary.
We were then able to tweak the spec to suit us perfectly.
“For Panavision, ultimate quality is what counts and this system has provided that for our clients”
During this demo period we encountered a strange intermittent hardware fault which after some great fault-finding work from Scan’s tech support department turned out to be a defective PSU. Once diagnosed, this was swapped out within 24 hours.
We now have a computer and shared storage system that is able to play-out 8K RAW files with the highest quality video settings applied. This is served by our QNAP 10Gbe 8 bay NAS and played out to a Christie 4K cinema projector.
For Panavision,
ultimate quality is what counts and this system has provided that for our clients.
Clients immediately remarked upon the fact that the footage being played out was crisper looking and no longer suffered from pauses and hang-ups. This is
due to the combination of fast storage serving the video streams, Quadro GPU enabling higher quality Resolve settings and 192Gb of ECC RAM. The system as a whole feels incredibly stable and never feels like it is struggling. This gives us great
piece of mind when using what is an essential piece of equipment for us.
System Specs for Panavision
• 2 x Intel 18Core XEON W-2295 Skylake
• ASUS WS C422 SAGE/10G motherboard
• 4 x 32GB 2933Mhz ECC Registered Memory
• 3XS NVIDIA Quadro RTX6000
• Samsung 1TB 970 EVO PLUS
• Samsung 870 QVO 8TB 2.5 SATA V
• 3XS
Custom Server
• 3XS System Build
• 3 Year Warranty
• 16GB Scan 3XS USB3 Flash drive
• 3XS Windows 10 GML H17-10001
• 3XS Corsair H100x CPU Cooler
• 3XS Corsair RM850X PSU
• W10 ProWS 4Core+ J6M-00001 DD
• AK-HDA-05 3.5 to 5.25 Mountbay
• 32” Dell U3219Q 4K Monitor
• 4U Standard Chassis SC-416A
• HPoint 8643-8639-50 cable
• Akasa USB 3 Mobo/USB 2 header
• BMD DeckLink Mini Monitor 4k
The Scan Partnership
The idea of a Colourist making adjustments to what is essentially the immersive light source - 'the wall' - in collaboration with the team on set, is quite the ride and the possibilities and workflows for the future very interesting indeed....and that's before we even start talking about the use of Unreal Engine and the world of colour in the virtual world!
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