IEBA Communications

We offer numerous services: from consulting with you on what solution may best meet your video needs, to staying with you through the entire process: Envisioning, Bidding, Integration and Finishing. We have even been brought in to offer on-site video training to certain select clients. As part of our work to be at the forefront of digital video technologies, you can see here how we developed many new things, or how we took a standard industry item and improved on it.

FLAVORS OF AMERICA ON-SITE STUDIO

This is on-site production room for the PBS television series Flavors of America. This series taped every summer in the Restaurant School of Walnut Hill College in center city Philadelphia. All the equipment is brought in and integrated on-site for this multi-camera, live-to-tape production.

Here we see three Sony DSR-570 cameras connected to a Sony DFS-700 digital switcher. The output of this is connected via SDI to the Sony DSR-2000 DVCAM deck for the master. An additional tape is rolled in the overhead camera to cover various editing possibilities. The DSR-2000 deck has been outfitted with the optional FireWire board and it both records the master program tape and converts this to FireWire on the fly. Then this DV signal is digitized right to hard drive using an iMac DV.

Today, studios are eliminating tape. This is what Anthony Burokas was winning awards for back in 2000.

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TEKTRONIX WFM-90 RE-DESIGN

Standard, it comes with a molded-in battery compartment that holds several “C” batteries, or a proprietary NiCd battery. The “C” batteries are too weak to run the scope for very long. The Tektronix battery is an unacceptable and costly alternative.

Given that an NP battery was an almost identical fit to the size of the Tectronix scope, Anthony ripped apart and cut down the plastic molding. He even re-arranged electronics components inside the unit to make room for a standard NP battery holder. Wiring this to the 12v input on the side of the scope; runtime was doubled. Battery costs were reduced to zero. Recharge times were under half an hour. Existing broadcast camera batteries and chargers could be used.

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THE FRANKLIN MILLS TV EDIT SUITE

In the beginning, circa 1989, Anthony Burokas and then Sales Manager Robert Young were photographed for a promotional brochure. The system featured consumer monitors throughout, a 1/4″ reel to reel deck for audio, and 3/4 SP video switched composite through a Sony switcher. This was a linear editing system.

Then, about 1996, the facility was upgraded with Betacam SP and a new Abekas video switcher with DVE. A computer was added to do graphics. Professional monitors were added to properly monitor the video. However, with both systems, you can see audio monitoring was not really considered- the Betacam suite only has one speaker.

In 2001 Anthony Burokas was put in charge of the upgrade to digital. With an $80,000 budget for both the edit suite and the broadcast system, he standardized the entire facility on DVCAM. He networked the entire facility to facilitate the movement of commercials and other electronic elements (like logos or voiceovers) from computer to computer.

He redesigned the facility so that every component was available to either edit bay or the linear edit controller. This way two editors could work at the same time, and either one could use Betacam, 3/4″ SP, DVCAM or even NTSC/PAL VHS at any time. Completely new scopes, audio monitoring systems, audio meters and main editing monitors were integrated at each location to ensure the highest quality production. Linear editing was maintained through the used of a Sony combination video switcher/edit controller. New AV routers, as well as serial and monitoring patch bays, made the system more flexible than was ever thought possible.

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THE BUROKAS V2V PLATE

Sony came out with a power tap on their camcorders to power an on-board light. Anton/Bauer had done something similarly with their battery plates some years before. However, not using any AB products, Anthony immediately jumped on this new addition to the Sony camcorders.

The problem was, it is limited to 30w. There were no 30w lamps, or LED lights, so the next lamp down is a 20w lamp. Sometimes too low power to make a difference. Also, Anthony uses an Arc light that only draws 18w when running. But when firing up, it pulls nearly 40w. He needed a way to tap off the battery directly – but nobody made a plate to go in between a Sony V-mount battery and V-mount plate on the camcorder.

Anthony wanted to buy the parts from IDX: the grey one is the plate that goes on their charger, the black plate is what they use on their dual NP battery box. He had to buy the entire battery box and discard half of it. Then beg an engineer to sell him the charging plate to get the pieces he needed. In so doing, he created the V2V mount (v-mount to v-mount) with dual D-taps for power.

Another freelancer saw what he had developed and demanded that Anthony make him one. He refused to run his DSR-500, now 570, with a 20w light. He preferred a 35w or 50w lamp. So Anthony made one for him, serial number 002.
 A year later, it became a common stock item from IDX. Anthony is glad they finally “saw the light.”

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ENDLESS MINI DV RECORDING

This was a system Anthony imagineered in 1999, and used successfully on many productions to record an event on MiniDV with absolutely no break in recording- no matter how long the event went. He used the Sony TRV-900 and the PC-7. By connecting a FireWire cable between them, he was able to stagger the recording between the two camcorders.

With 5 minutes of tape left on the first camcorder, he would start tape on the second camcorder. Then record for another hour. As the second tape neared the end, he would start a third tape on the first camcorder, etc. etc. Perfect audio throughout. Moreover, this entire system was carried on the shoulder using the Sony shoulder grip and some specialty Bogen camera mounts he integrated.
 This was long before camcorders could talk to, and start external decks (2003/2004). It was before DV camcorders that used full-size tapes were available.

It’s hard to remember that, for quite some time, there was NO way to record over an hour of tape in DV in the field. Panasonic and Sony first shunned DV. JVC introduced the first Pro DV camcorder, and it was Mini-DV tape only. For many years after the introduction of DV, there was simply no way to record a long program without breaks. Unless you invented a way that used two separate, battery-operated recorders that BOTH recorded the same video signal. This is why Anthony developed this dual camera method. That the entire system could be carried on one shoulder was just a bonus!

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FASTER THAN FIREWIRE!

This is a system Anthony developed when working on the award-winning PBS series Flavors of America. This system was developed at a time when FireWire chips were limited to 13 MB/s throughput. The ATA-66 drives themselves, however, were capable of 30+MB/s.

As the Technical Director for the Flavors cooking series, Anthony was managing more than 600 gigabytes of data on more than nine external hard drives. The slow external enclosures were a massive bottleneck in managing the incredible amounts of data so
 Anthony sought other solutions.

Purchasing hardware designed for other purposes, he designed this tower to hold removable hard drive enclosures- and then connected it directly to the PCI bus of a host computer using a rare PCI expansion card.

This provided a direct PCI connection to the host computer of all of the IDE drives which were in an outside box. Inexpensive IDE drives could be used at the fastest speed possible. This is what was used when the drives were brought in to the main editing facility. 
When the drives were sent offside to other editors to work on, the IDE drive sleds were removed from the tower and inserted into external Firewire enclosures. Still perfectly usable, but now limited to 13 MB/s by the controller chips that were available at the time.

This process gave the production the fastest speed possible at each location, while maintaining the complete portability of the drives. It took just a few seconds to move the drive sled from the tower to the external enclosure. Plus moving just the drive made it significantly lighter and smaller. Today, Granite Digital has turned this product into a stock system available for anyone to buy. The difference in their system and the system Anthony developed, is that Anthony’s system offered true PCI speeds to a desktop system. The Granite Digital system is FireWire on both the tower and the portable enclosure. However, with the introduction of FireWire 800, FireWire offers greatly increased speeds.