Cutting Edge Relies on Ensemble Designs Upconverters

Singapore – 11 December 2008

Cutting Edge Post in Singapore has been a part of many award winning productions including Caldecott Productions International’s award winning documentaries Voiceless Art and The Mud. Cutting Edge’s reputation for ultra high quality post production has won them several notable clients including Discovery. In order to keep demanding clients happy, Cutting Edge have standardized on Ensemble Designs HD up and down converters and sync pulse generators.

“We are completely relying on Ensemble products for our post facilities. We use the Ensemble 7900 as a downconverter for client preview copies and as an upconverter for ingest. It’s very, very good, we’re completely satisfied with the performance,” said Chua Beng Teck, owner of Cutting Edge. “We do long form programming and post production for TV, most of what we do is sold by our clients to international broadcasters. It’s very important we provide a maximum clean image.”

Cutting Edge’s new facility has five Avid suites including Nitrus for finishing. All finishing projects make use of the Ensemble 7900’s noise reducer. “In fact the noise reducer is pretty powerful,” said Mr. Chua. “This is where 7900 comes in and so we never have issues with QC. We’ve done quite a bit for Discovery and they have very high quality standards.”

The 7900 Avenue module from Ensemble Designs is an upconverter, downconverter and aspect ratio converter that handles audio and provides frame synchronization. The 7900 is one module in a family of products that makes up the Avenue product line. The 3RU Avenue chassis holds up to 10 modules. Other available modules include sync pulse generators, audio embedders, logo inserters and other terminal gear. Modules can be controlled via touch screen panel, PC software and SNMP.

Cutting Edge also uses the Ensemble Avenue 5400 sync pulse generator as a master reference in their facility. The 5400 has Tri-Level Sync, HD SDI, SD SDI and AES outputs. “We use the 5400 for colour barring tapes, sending tri-level to our HD equipment and black burst for SD machines,” said Mr. Chua. “We’ve been using the Ensemble for one year now and we plan to get more.”

Techtel, Ensemble’s Singapore agent, has provided training and configuration to Cutting Edge.

Based in Grass Valley, California, Ensemble Designs is a leading provider of signal processing and infrastructure products to the professional broadcast industry.