People Story

Our second home is Hollywood: Great cinema thanks to developer power

Our team in Hanover is an important partner for Hollywood and many video streaming services, because the mastering workstation they developed is considered the ultimate must-have in the industry.

Meet the team and learn about some of their development ideas. Watching films and series can be magical. As viewers, we completely immerse ourselves in them and totally forget what is happening around us. What is it exactly that draws us in so completely? First, you have to have the right script, actors and staging. Editing and sound are also important factors. And postproduction takes care of the finishing touches.

Saved in the nick of time

The premiere cannot simply be postponed if shooting or editing takes longer than expected. Then post production has to come to the rescue. In the bonus material for The Hobbit, you can see that Peter Jackson and his crew were still working on the sound just a few hours before the world premiere. The fact that the sound was actually ready for the premiere is partly thanks to the R&S®CLIPSTER mastering workstation. As Mike Coenen, one of the developers in Hannover, points out: "If R&S®CLIPSTER support for Dolby Atmos™ hadn't been ready, or if the rendering speed had been too low or the workstation generally unreliable, the world premiere of The Hobbit would have been forced to use an earlier sound mix."

Broadcast & Media postproduction

The fact that the sound of The Hobbit was actually ready for the premiere is partly thanks to the R&S®CLIPSTER mastering workstation.

Broadcast & Media versioning and mastering

Digitalization has completely transformed the film industry. Our R&S®CLIPSTER developers have helped bring about this change.

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Broadcast & Media versioning and mastering

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Shaping the future of films and series

Digitalization has completely transformed the industry. Digital formats have replaced analog films, image and audio can be edited much more flexibly, film reels and distribution copies are a thing of the past, and it only takes seconds to send data around the world. The R&S®CLIPSTER team has helped bring about this change. According to developer Jeremi Horst, "We took advantage of the technology transformation to use R&S®CLIPSTER to adapt the post production workflow to the needs of our customers." UHD and 3D audio, multilingual versions and minimal load times are what matter now. The R&S®CLIPSTER workstation developed by Jeremi Horst and his colleagues provides superior support for versioning and mastering, which is why it is used in the production of most Hollywood films and series.

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Video streaming increasingly important

The video streaming industry is becoming more and more important. Like the internationally known studios, video streaming services use a different format for mastering and versioning films and series: the Interoperable Master Format (IMF). The developers from Hannover also collaborated on this project, and their R&S®CLIPSTER is a popular solution for generating IMF packages.

Solutions from Hannover go global

Netflix was one of the first to consistently use IMF. R&S®CLIPSTER is certified by Netflix and recommended to the streaming service's content providers as the preferred mastering workstation. Since many other international streaming services with animations, cartoons and prize-winning series in their portfolio also rely on IMF, the results of a development project in Hannover reach hundreds of millions of subscribers.

One standard instead of many formats

One of the side effects of digitalization is a confusing multitude of audio, video and data formats, resolutions and color systems. To create a standard for digital cinema, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) defined the Digital Cinema Package (DCP), a package format that contains all media and version components of films. The team led by Jeremi Horst and Mike Coenen collaborated with the SMPTE, and the workstation they developed has become the standard for DCP packages.

Broadcast & Media standard format

The video streaming industry is becoming more and more important.

Broadcast & Media pioneers

True to its pioneering spirit, our development team remains on a future-oriented course.

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Pioneers right from the start

4K ultra high image resolution, which first became popular in 2010, was already a reality in 2005 thanks to R&S®CLIPSTER. True to this pioneering spirit, the development team remains on a future-oriented course and focusing on selected fields. Product Manager Erik Dobberkau explains, "We test our technology thoroughly, both manually and automatically, to perfectly understand the perspective of our customers. We make beta versions of the software available to customers so they can try out new features in advance." Customers have always opted for pioneering methods. Mike Coenen adds, "Managing products and projects in parallel places high demands on how we work. That's why agile software development was essential right from the start".

Our experts

Erik Dobberkau, Product Manager

I'm the product manager for R&S®CLIPSTER. Our years of working on this solution have been a technological balancing act between extremely fast-paced innovation and the requirement for quality. Users in R&D want a flexible product that allows them to freely experiment, while users in production want to be able to totally rely on the product. We try to master this balancing act, and most of the time we succeed.

Thomas Sicken, Senior Software Engineer

My job title is Senior Software Engineer. One of the biggest challenges in developing R&S®CLIPSTER was the dynamic environment in which the workstation is used. In many cases the work processes are not clearly defined, but they are fairly rigid and habitual. Although new technologies like high frame rates and HDR are supposed to be used, the associated processes can basically only be turned into productive workflows with R&S®CLIPSTER.

Mike Coenen, Development Engineer

For me, being part of the international film industry as a developer is a childhood dream come true. In the production of a major blockbuster, the producer wanted to have automatic color correction in R&S®CLIPSTER for stereoscopic sequences. That job landed on my desk with the comment: 'You have ten days for this.' I replied that I was colorblind.

The response and the trust in me remained the same: 'You have ten days for this.' Thanks to my experience in digital film production and some knowledge of stochastics, I was able to solve the problem. So some of the processed sequences of this movie are based on the work of a colorblind person.

Jeremi Horst, Director R&D File Based Media Solutions

As Director R&D File Based Media Solutions, I especially appreciate the friendly collaboration in Hanover. We have a highly motivated team that is fully committed to the products. The focus is always on direct customer benefits. A good example is The Hobbit. It was the first high frame rate film to hit the cinemas. We were able to fulfill the customer's compression quality requirements while complying with the data rate requirements of the DCI specification.