Greg Smokler grew up playing in his father Peter Smokler’s documentary camera truck and schlepping cases on his dad’s film sets. For a while, he balanced a growing operating career with his interest in technology. Then, partnering with Local 600 DIT Dan Kanes, the two co-founded Paralinx, one of the original, affordable, viable wireless video solutions in the world of filmmaking. The company exploded in popularity and was acquired by the Vitec Group. Today he’s a vice president with Vitec’s Creative Solutions Cine Market Segment, responsible
is a custom-designed microprocessor designed and manufactured by Amimon for use only in Teradek devices. This technology uses an ingenious transmission scheme to send flawless video wirelessly over very long ranges with high signal integrity and, most importantly, incredibly low latency – less than one millisecond. What’s great about this technology is that it can be used without any special radio operating license, so anyone can legally operate it.
for Teradek, SmallHD and Wooden Camera. In February 2021, Smokler and Teradek won the coveted Sci-Tech Award.
so many different applications? One of the challenges we see on set today is that WiFi has become much more important and powerful with the “internet of things” reality we live in. Cameras, lighting and social media profiles need continuous WiFi, while other devices share the same frequency bandwidth. It is becoming a necessity on sets for departments and studios to coordinate their frequencies so that all the important systems can play nicely with each other.
What initially drove the need for wireless technology? Wireless technology has been around in the film industry for many years, but remote control of lenses and remote monitoring of Steadicam shots were probably the original key drivers. Before I was born, many clever technicians built wireless video and remote-control systems to solve the inevitable problem that the director would love to see a critical shot from a “wild” camera on a Steadicam or some special mounting deployment. What did Paralinx accomplish? Paralinx brought wireless video to the people. Then in neck-and-neck competition with Teradek, we made wireless video a necessity to every camera on every set. How is Teradek different? They both use the same core technology invented by Dr. Zvi Reznik and the team at Amimon, but our initial approach was different. Since Teradek was a high-tech engineering company led by such brilliant engineers as Nicol Verheem (CEO) and Dennis Scheftner (hardware designer), it delivered features that included the ability to apply a 3D LUT to the video signal. Paralinx was design-centric, which led to minimalistic approaches, such as Tomahawk. It was designed to “get out of your way,” which is an axiom about cameras that I think applies to all product design. What was the Amimon breakthrough? Amimon (now part of Teradek) has a unique and patented technology deployed in an application-specific integrated circuit. This
How has wireless technology adapted to
How did you bring your technology off set to post? During the pandemic, we worked with Larry Chernoff and his team at MTI to facilitate a remote 4K HDR color-review session for cinematographers. LA-based Local 600 DP Shana Hagan, ASC, used this system that allowed her to review realtime color sessions on an iPad that were being transmitted on a Teradek 4K encoder in Hollywood while at lunch on her set in Wilmington, North Carolina. What do you see as the next step in wireless? We are adding more connectivity on top of our wireless video signals, allowing for extended camera metadata to be captured and transmitted and cameras to be controlled remotely by a camera assistant or DIT. Rich metadata is important as camerato-cloud workflows become ubiquitous on many productions, and instant proxy files require additional metadata so remote collaborators can understand what is going on in the clip they have just received. Remote camera control is a new feature we have always wanted to include in our Bolt systems, and now it has been added in integration with SmallHD touchscreen monitors.
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