Rohde & Schwarz is named official supplier for the 67th Berlinale

The international film industry and film enthusiasts will come together in Berlin for the 67th Berlinale from February 9 to 19, 2017. Behind the scenes at the festival, innovative solutions from Rohde & Schwarz will ensure flawless video quality and efficient workflows – for the fifth year in a row.

The Munich-based company supports the festival as an official supplier. This year, Rohde & Schwarz is providing three R&S CLIPSTER mastering stations, one four-channel R&S VENICE 2U ingest and playout platform and its reliable R&S SpycerBox Cell storage solution. The systems will be installed at the Colt Technology Services data processing center as part of the core of the Berlinale’s digital workflow. R&S CLIPSTER quickly and reliably generates digital cinema packages (DCP) for the screenings, ensuring that the quality of the videos keeps festival guests spellbound.

About 1100 films in total will be played at the Berlinale, including the European Film Market screenings. Some of the film material will be delivered in file formats other than final DCP, a few will even be delivered on reels. The R&S VENICE ingest and production server digitizes such material and exports it for further processing. R&S SpycerBox Cell buffers the video files to ensure that R&S CLIPSTER is able to quickly and efficiently process the immense amount of data. The mastering station supports a number of video formats, allowing previously digitized films to be quickly converted and processed. The mastering station generates high-quality DCPs faster than in realtime, so last-minute adjustments such as subtitle changes are easy to make.

Ove Sander, Technical Manager – Digital Cinema, Berlin International Film Festival: “Once again this year we are placing our trust in the systems from Rohde & Schwarz – especially due to the hectic environment during the festival. The VENICE servers help us by reliably digitizing the various input media and preparing them for further processing. With its incredible speed, the CLIPSTER mastering station lets us generate all DCPs in plenty of time before the festival starts.”

Stefan Weidner, Director of File Based Media Solutions at Rohde & Schwarz: “It’s our pleasure to partner with the Berlinale and to demonstrate the reliability and quality of our products to a wide audience of professionals. We have a close bond with the German film industry and want to express that with our dedicated involvement.”

The Berlinale is one of the international film industry’s most important events. Ticket sales hover around 325,000, and more than 20,000 industry visitors are expected from 124 countries, including some 4,000 journalists. The public program shows around 400 films each year, most of which are world and international premieres. Films of all genres, lengths and formats are presented in the various sections of the festival. The European Film Market (EFM) is the business epicenter of the Berlinale and one of the world’s most important international film markets. Up to 800 more films will be presented during the EFM.