Splice Enjoys Flexible Post Workflow

In the heart of London's Shoreditch is the award winning post-production house - Splice. Specialiing in broadcast, commercial and corporate post production, the boutique studio is home to forty full-time employees and a grand display of state-of-the art technology spanning three floors including: two Baselight grading theatres, Avid DS suites and multi channel audio recording and mixing rooms.
Splice is credited for its work on such venerable UK television shows as "Jamie Oliver’s 15 Minute Meals" and "The Midnight Beast," among other popular TV series and commercials.
Late this year, Splice Managing Director and Co-Founder Damian Dolniak and his team of editors began work on an 80-part series for Jamie Oliver’s new show – "Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals". The series was shot on ARRI Alexa cameras. Once footage was captured, his team relied heavily on a newly constructed floor in the facility housing nine Avid Media Composer suites equipped with KONA 3G capture cards – all connected to the studio’s Avid ISIS shared storage solution – for post production.
Dolniak said: "The series is fairly heavy in terms of effects and complex sequences, and involves a lot of cross-cutting. Our new KONA 3Gs tied in nicely with the new Avid suites and worked so well – especially with the AJA Kona cards and Media Composer 6.5 ability for audio punch in and up/down/cross-conversion capabilities. They give us the ability to tackle those challenging sequences in real-time without hindering our work. The cards have also been extremely consistent in terms of output levels."
Having been a longtime user of AJA products, KONA 3G was a natural choice for Splice. "AJA products have always worked very well and continue to do so. I like AJA’s approach to development and the quality of their products," shared Dolniak. "You can tell that they listen closely to the needs of the community to release products that help ease post production pains."
"The KONA 3G packages everything we need into a single solution. It integrates capture and playback, support for stereoscopic 3D and HDMI – plus all of the inputs and outputs we need," he added. "Opting for KONA 3G has also saved us on hardware costs. The fact that we can fit everything in a single workstation is great, because we don’t waste space with racks."
Since setting up the suites on the new floor, Dolniak has only received great feedback from editors and customers about the upgraded set up. "Our customers have been impressed with the new equipment and the growing range of footage that we can accommodate, while our editors like the fact that if someone is working in another room and they move, they’ll be able to see the same thing in the other room."
Splice has a number of upcoming stereoscopic 3D projects slated for the New Year – for which it plans to leverage the stereoscopic 3D capabilities of the KONA 3G. "KONA 3G gives us the flexibility to adapt to the needs of each project. Whether HD, 2K, 4K or stereo 3D, all of our bases are covered. One of the main reasons we chose KONA 3G, aside from its affordability, was for its stereoscopic capabilities," expressed Dolniak. "We know they’ll prove useful for a number of stereo 3D projects in the queue. They’ve already performed seamlessly in some basic tests we’ve completed."
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