With more than 20 years of hands-on post-production management experience, Gary Migdal is responsible for LA Digital Post’s technological and strategic vision, overseeing all aspects of the facility. The company rents, services and supports post production editorial equipment for digital on-line and off-line applications. This includes designing and installing temporary systems for feature film and HD projects for television.

Earlier this year, LA Digital Post opened a new 15,000-square-foot post-production boutique in West Los Angeles, featuring HD and SD editing via several Avid HD/Nitris, Adrenaline HD, Symphony and Media Composer editing suites. It also offers a Digidesign Pro Tools Suite for audio post services. The company now owns two facilities in Los Angeles and one in New York City, providing clients across the country with more than 80 in-house editing suites as well as an extensive on location post-production rental inventory.

Migdal said that as 2K and 4K acquisition becomes more practical, posting in HD will become the natural proxy for those resolutions.

Data management has been a big issue with facilities handling multiple HD projects. How does LA Digital approach this?
LA Digital utilizes our inventory of Avid Unity Media Networks as well as Avid VideoRAID towers to store projects. In this scenario, we are able to ensure that our clients have immediate access to their media assets whenever they are ready.

What's the difference between Avid's DNxHD and Apple's ProRes 422 codecs? What is each best at?
Our experience with Avid's DNxHD codecs has been extremely positive. In fact, we began one of our higher-end feature-film projects on DNxHD 36 while it was still in beta, and for the most part everything has gone very smoothly, even on the new Intel/Mac platform, which has been only recently supported.

We haven't done a true side-by-side comparison or a "shoot-out" of any kind comparing Avid's DNxHD to Apple's ProRes codec, and to date, I do not believe any of our clients have utilized ProRes. However, ProRes does not currently offer an ultra-low-bandwidth DNxHD 36 equivalent, and ProRes is a Mac-only solution, whereas DNxHD supports both Mac and PC clients. Also, DNxHD is licensed by many third-party manufacturers, creating more comprehensive workflow alternatives.

That being said, we do believe with the proper hardware configuration ProRes would probably be a great solution as well. Both solutions offer the same drive-space-saving economics on the editing platform of their choice. Storage consumption between the two is very comparable, and both look great visually, considering the small amount of data they actually consume.

Does your facility work mostly uncompressed? How much storage is necessary for an uncompressed HD project?
Typically, when clients are posting HD in one of our four in-house post facilities, they are working uncompressed. Obviously, storage consumption is greatly dependent on the run length of the project. However, while a typical feature film may consume as much as 8 to 10 TB compressed, we do run into projects where the storage consumption is double or triple that amount, uncompressed. On the other hand, a short form project, such as a commercial or promo, may use as little as a few gigs. In the field and particularly at live events, we've made extensive use of DNxHD resolutions, particularly DNxHD 145.

You rent portable systems for TV productions. How do you spec such a project? Is there a formula for anticipating what will be needed on site?
Most producers like to think they are experienced enough to determine their specific needs for any given project, and in many cases they are. However, with the creation of all the new codecs and media resolutions, it has become a bit more challenging as the formulas are constantly changing. From episodic television to reality television to live events, LA Digital Post provides a technical support and operations team to evaluate each project individually. Obviously, every project has its own unique characteristics and workflow, and LA Digital will make its recommendations. However, there is always the matter of budget-almost always-and we never let dollars compromise the integrity of any project or the caliber of our service.

What's the biggest misconception about HD post?
Our biggest personal pet peeve would be 24p vs. 23.976p, and the fact that manufacturers frequently use the distinctly different terms interchangeably.

The biggest misconception is that "procedurally" nothing has changed from standard definition to HD. Forethought and planning are imperative. Think about your post process before you shoot a single frame! Often, a simple choice of camera or even a setting within a camera can have a dramatic effect on options available later in the production or post-production process. Plan ahead! More and more, as producers move to HD, they are often not planning properly for HD in their offline, and certain minor alterations in workflow can make a world of difference in their HD online- particularly in regard to project edit-rates, up/downconverts, 3:2 cadence and mixed format elements. The new DNxHD 36 aids this by allowing projects to remain within their intended edit-rate without consuming online amounts of storage. But planning is still essential!

For more information, visit http://www.ladigital.com/.