Trailblazer Studios
Trailblazer Studios
Based out of Raleigh, North Carolina, Trailblazer Studios handles a wide variety of projects, from agency to long-form television. Recent projects include the original series Salvage Dawgs, and EMMY® award-winning hospital documentary, Twice Born. From a 20,000 square facility, Trailblazer provides production services, post, music, and audio-post to HBO, Amazon, Full Frame and the Sundance Film Festival.
Embracing digital production to meet network, platform, and festival delivery specifications, Trailblazer has developed a high-speed digital pipeline and implemented the latest cloud-based technology to allow clients and artists to tap into their resources from across town, across the country, or from anywhere in the world. Key components of their digital workflow are Avid Media Composer | Ultimate and Avid Artist | DNxIQ.
Dealing with many different clients, sometimes projects might come in from Avid, sometimes they might come in from Adobe Premiere. Regardless whether a project comes in from either NLE, they will often take it to Resolve for color correction, so flexibility is key.
(If) I’ve got a project in Avid, and I want to switch it to Resolve, DNxIQ makes the transition completely seamless. I don’t even have to think about switching settings or anything. DNxIQ just takes care of it very easily.
Katie Gerdon, online assistant editor at Trailblazer
The DNxIQ interface is equipped with extensive analogue connectivity for legacy formats, and built-in baseband encoding to Avid DNxHR to allow Trailblazer to edit massive 4K/UHD files with ease. A big plus for their workflow is the real-time format and frame-rate conversion on output and playback, thanks to hardware-accelerated Universal Mastering provided by DNxIQ.
When the team at Trailblazer Studios needs to deliver to different regions, or different markets, and the project originated in 24P and a 60i version master is needed, they simply go into the menu, set it in the conversion, and it goes out to tape in real-time. “All without having to spend time transcoding and mixing down,” comments Shawn Pinner C.S.I., online editor & colorist. “DNxIQ enables me to work quickly, and handle any notes and concerns the client may have while in review,” he adds.