Panavision London Viewing Theatre Upgrade

Panavision is a world-class provider of end-to-end services and solutions that power the creative vision of filmmakers. Since the company’s founding, it has partnered with filmmakers to develop innovative solutions that push the industry forward. Across all divisions of the Panavision group, the goal is to provide content creators with access to the tools, technology, and support they need to realise their creative visions exactly as they intend.

Project Background

The Panavision viewing theatre hosts many of the world’s leading cinematographers who use the facility to make critical judgements on their qualities of camera and lens choices. The viewing theatre must be capable of displaying top quality images for a discerning audience, and to ensure this Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve is used to play RAW footage with lookup tables (LUTs - a predetermined array of numbers that provide a shortcut for a specific computation) and image resizing applied on nodes.

The footage is downloaded from a variety of proprietary camera media cards, with each card readers connected via a number of interfaces to an Apple Mac Pro “Trashcan” workstation, in conjunction with Thunderbolt 2 Sonnet rack system and G-Speed Thunderbolt 2 RAID storage systems. Recently, this solution has shown its limitations when playing 8K RAW files, meaning Panavision had to reduce image quality for some formats - a compromise it didn’t want to continue with.

Project Approach

Panavsion came to the conclusion that it needed to upgrade to a Windows-based system benefiting from the compute power of GPU-acceleration, combined with a faster storage solution. It faced a dilemma of where to spend the majority of budget - GPU, CPU or RAM - for best effect. To address this it was able to demonstrate a system within its existing infrastructure which proved invaluable, as some compatibility issues were addressed, specifications changed and intermittent hardware faults diagnosed. The final system specification included an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 GPU, an Intel Xeon-W W-2295 CPU, 192GB of ECC RAM, 9TB of internal SSD storage and a Blackmagic Design DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K card.

The workstation was easily able to play 8K RAW files with the highest quality video settings applied, and is connected via a QNAP 10GbE 8-bay NAS solution to a Christie 4K cinema projector.

Project Results

For Panavision, ultimate quality is what counts and this system has provided that for its clients, with many immediately remarking upon the fact that the footage being played was crisper looking and no longer suffered from pauses and hang-ups - due to the combination of fast storage serving the video streams, the Quadro GPU enabling higher quality DaVinci Resolve settings and 192GB of ECC RAM. The system also proved incredibly stable without ever showing signs of struggling - which offers the Panavision team great piece of mind.

The Scan Partnership

Panavision chose to approach Scan due to its long-standing experience and reputation in technology & media production sectors. Additionally, the offer of a proof-of-concept trial at Panavision’s premises supported by technical experts for advice and troubleshooting, proved critical in deciding on the system and storage specifications rapidly and based on real-world tests.

Project Wins

Stable 8K playback of RAW files at the highest quality settings within DaVinci Resolve

savings

Cost and time savings resulting from the on-premise proof-of-concept trial

Speak to an expert

You’ve seen how Scan has helped Panavision London upgrade its viewing theatre. Contact our to discuss your project requirements.

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Panavision London 4K Viewing Theatre Upgrade Case Study - Professional Video Production Solutions by Scan