Definition November 2021 - Newsletter

ADVERT I SEMENT FE ATURE . NVIDIA AND SCAN COMPUTERS

The power of speedy mobile computing

Nvidia’s Studio laptops have the post solution for filmmakers that need to be on the move

Ultimately, McGregor discovered that the range of Nvidia Studio laptops available from Scan Computers – an Nvidia Studio certified partner – answered all these questions. He selected the AERO Creator 17-inch OLED model, with Nvidia’s RTX 3070 GPU and a powerful i7 11th generation processor – with 32GB of DDR4 Ram memory and 1TB of NVMe SSD storage. With Nvidia’s RTX 3070 GPU on- board, he is able to breeze through video processing and 4K playback while still on-set. The GeForce RTX 30 Studio laptops are now also using AI to simplify workflows, and NVENC (Nvidia’s encoder) to reduce transcoding times by 75%. With AI on-board, some essential creative apps use it to elicit more features (Nvidia Studio drivers are extensively tested against the latest creative app releases for compatibility). For instance, Adobe Photoshop recently introduced Neural Filters, which use AI to quickly make complex edits to photographs. Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 17 has implemented a new Magic Mask feature that uses AI to speed up mask creation and tracking. With the Nvidia Studio laptop now part of McGregor’s workflow, he can handle any problems while on a shoot. He comments about the new AERO: “There’s no more fixing in post, now I have a DIT station in the back of my car, which is a game changer.”

PORTABLE POWERHOUSE Using an Nvidia-equipped AERO Creator 17-inch OLED laptop on-set is a huge benefit when it comes to checking footage on the go in high quality

EVER SINCE DIGITAL cameras started churning out data, there have been people to wrangle it. That process can mean anything, from simple data verification, to a colour tweak from a dailies colourist. Most solo filmmakers, like Lewis McGregor, can’t compete with dedicated digital image technicians or DITs, and have to compromise, which usually means time lost. For example, his camera is the Canon EOS C300 Mark III. It records beautiful images, but only at a data rate of 1GB/s. McGregor makes films around the three-minute mark, but of course he shoots much more than that to get the edit coverage. Once a camera card is full, you have to transfer the footage somewhere, while you put another card into the camera. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a fast SSD transfer drive to put your files on. If

unlucky, you’ll use a spinning disk drive with a pitifully slow transfer rate. It was while McGregor was wondering how he could bypass this time-consuming transfer problem, when he had a light-bulb moment. What if he invested in a super-efficient laptop? One that could offer the power that a DIT would have on-set. He started speccing what type he would need. He had recently missed a reflection of himself in a film, due to only having a small camera monitor, so a 4K 17-inch laptop monitor would help, with 100% support for Adobe’s RGB colour gamut. He needed a quick transfer station, so a laptop with a fast NVMe SSD would be perfect. But further to that, once you have the footage on the drive of the laptop, what’s to stop you being creative while still on the shoot with small edits, grades and graphics?

See the full range of Nvidia Studio laptops at scan.co.uk/shop/computer- hardware/rtx-studio-creator-laptops/all

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