Producers Video—a film, video, audio production and post-production house in Baltimore—relies on Fairlight’s XCS Constellation with the Xynergi as a center panel for a professional A/V solution. Producers Video runs advertising campaigns for nationally known brands such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Under Armour, and Toyota, among others.
Bob Bragg is senior audio engineer at Producers Video
The studio reports that adding Fairlight’s XCS Constellation has been a catalyst for its continued success and expansion. “We never want to turn away clients or work opportunities as the flexibility and options we receive with Fairlight products is our major strength,” says Bob Bragg, senior audio engineer. “Since the installation, we’ve been able to evolve and learn to incorporate more features that help expand our business and capabilities.”
Bragg notes that Fairlight’s XCS Constellation and Xynergi work with many file formats. “Fairlight continues to add new levels of innovation by adding HD video to the timeline, as well as the capability to import and export different file formats and VST plug-ins,” he says. “The ability to work on audio and signal processing on every channel, without a separate program, saves a great amount of time and helps to keep workflow constant. There is no need to launch another program or extension, and all the native EQs and dynamics are all instantly there.”
Bragg says that Fairlight consoles help to eliminate issues that can slow down workflow and productivity. The user-friendly footprint of the Constellation provides plenty of inputs and outputs, and the ability to instantly adjust feeds to send to other studios via ISDN with picture lock makes it easy to keep workflow constant.
“It’s great to work with other studios and be able to have both sessions running at the same time, helping to judge the performance and make creative decisions instantly even if you’re not on-site. Many of the more compact systems don’t have the versatility and ease of use with parameter adjustments and routing that you get with Fairlight and the Constellation.”
Bragg also says that the system comes with very good sounding native EQ and dynamics that are superior to most plug-ins that he has used. “The native processing really sounds rich and detailed, plus you still have the five plug-ins available to drop in per channel if needed, giving multiple options.
“Other features we use often are the AAF import and EDL conform capability. We drag and drop multiple cuts onto a single timeline. When a version is finalized, it’s great to be able to access the original polyphonic broadcast WAV files recorded during production. This gives us access to every microphone that was on-set or -location and can help us sort through the feeds to pick the best audio for the circumstance.”
Working under continuing deadlines makes maintaining constant workflow crucial. For one project, Bragg described that the timeline was extremely short and the project needed to be set up on Friday and mixed for completion by Monday. With no room for leeway, strict deadlines and a tight budget, the quality still needs to be at the highest level.
“At Producers, we pride ourselves in being able to do everything in-house: production, editing, motion graphics, audio, and color correction,” he says. “With the Fairlight Constellation and Xynergi we can do audio post for every kind of project. It is a very versatile tool and we use its networking strengths facility wide. We can have different engineers working on different aspects of the project and it’s extremely easy to bring it all together for the final version. We really rely on the gear to perform and push the project through workflow-wise.
“The ongoing support we receive is impeccable,” Bragg concludes. “We are constantly reassured of our decision to go with Fairlight and continue to enjoy working with them and the systems. It’s clear Fairlight truly cares about our professional needs.”
Visit Fairlight U.S. at fairlightus.com and Producers Video at producers.tv.
