Sohonet
Encyclopedia
Sohonet is a community-of-interest network for the television, film and media production community.
Founded in 1995 by a group of Soho
-based post-production
companies, Sohonet links many of the British film studios to London's post-production
community. Sohonet also provides access to the Internet
, and private wide-area links to other countries.
Sohonet has a global media network with private connectivity to the United States
, (Los Angeles
, New York
, etc.), Canada
, New Zealand
, Australia
, France
, Netherlands
, Germany
and Italy
(Cinecittà
studios, Rome
) and the ability to provide connectivity to locations worldwide via fiber
and satellite
links.
The leading British film studios, Pinewood Studios
, Shepperton Studios
, Three Mills Studios, Twickenham Film Studios
and Leavesden Film Studios
, have direct optical fiber
connectivity to the Sohonet London
Fiber Ring, with campus connectivity on the sites provided via fiber
and VDSL technologies.
Sohonet is the winner of numerous industry awards, and was a pioneering user of IP-over-ATM
networking. Sohonet has since moved away from ATM to using Gigabit Ethernet
, 10 Gigabit Ethernet
and MPLS
technologies, including the use of wavelength division multiplexing on backbone connections. It has its own private optical fibre networks in several cities.
Today Sohonet is one of the pioneers of tapeless Digital intermediate
, and one of the instigators of the Pro-MPEG
media dispatch protocol
, now a SMPTE standard.
All types of media file formats, from QuickTime
DV
MPEG AES/EBU
MXF
through Serial Digital Interface
, OMFi, AAF
, OpenEXR
, to 4k DPX
files are supported.
Founded in 1995 by a group of Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
-based post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
companies, Sohonet links many of the British film studios to London's post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
community. Sohonet also provides access to the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, and private wide-area links to other countries.
Sohonet has a global media network with private connectivity to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, (Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, etc.), Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
(Cinecittà
Cinecittà
Cinecittà is a large film studio in Rome that is considered the hub of Italian cinema.-History:The studios were founded in 1937 by Benito Mussolini and his head of cinema Luigi Freddi for propaganda purposes, under the slogan "Il cinema è l'arma più forte"...
studios, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
) and the ability to provide connectivity to locations worldwide via fiber
Fiber
Fiber is a class of materials that are continuous filaments or are in discrete elongated pieces, similar to lengths of thread.They are very important in the biology of both plants and animals, for holding tissues together....
and satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
links.
The leading British film studios, Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...
, Shepperton Studios
Shepperton Studios
Shepperton Studios is a film studio in Shepperton, Surrey, England with a history dating back to 1931 since when many notable films have been made there...
, Three Mills Studios, Twickenham Film Studios
Twickenham Film Studios
Twickenham Film Studios is a film studio located in St Margarets, London, England used by many motion picture and television companies. It was established in 1913 by Dr. Ralph Jupp on the site of a former ice-rink. At the time of its original construction, it was the largest film studio in the...
and Leavesden Film Studios
Leavesden Film Studios
Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden , is a film and media complex owned by Warner Bros.. The studios and backlot sit on the site of the former Rolls-Royce factory at Leavesden Aerodrome, which was an important centre of aircraft production during World War II...
, have direct optical fiber
Optical fiber
An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...
connectivity to the Sohonet London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
Fiber Ring, with campus connectivity on the sites provided via fiber
Fiber
Fiber is a class of materials that are continuous filaments or are in discrete elongated pieces, similar to lengths of thread.They are very important in the biology of both plants and animals, for holding tissues together....
and VDSL technologies.
Sohonet is the winner of numerous industry awards, and was a pioneering user of IP-over-ATM
Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a standard switching technique designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing, and it encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells. This differs from approaches such as the Internet Protocol or Ethernet that...
networking. Sohonet has since moved away from ATM to using Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second , as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard. It came into use beginning in 1999, gradually supplanting Fast Ethernet in wired local networks where it performed...
, 10 Gigabit Ethernet
10 Gigabit Ethernet
The 10 gigabit Ethernet computer networking standard was first published in 2002. It defines a version of Ethernet with a nominal data rate of 10 Gbit/s , ten times faster than gigabit Ethernet.10 gigabit Ethernet defines only full duplex point to point links which are generally connected by...
and MPLS
Multiprotocol Label Switching
Multiprotocol Label Switching is a mechanism in high-performance telecommunications networks that directs data from one network node to the next based on short path labels rather than long network addresses, avoiding complex lookups in a routing table. The labels identify virtual links between...
technologies, including the use of wavelength division multiplexing on backbone connections. It has its own private optical fibre networks in several cities.
Today Sohonet is one of the pioneers of tapeless Digital intermediate
Digital intermediate
Digital intermediate is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. It often replaces or augments the photochemical timing process and is usually the final creative adjustment to a movie...
, and one of the instigators of the Pro-MPEG
Pro-MPEG
Pro-MPEG – the Professional-MPEG Forum – is an association of broadcasters, program makers, equipment manufacturers, and component suppliers with interests in realizing the interoperability of professional television equipment, according to the implementation requirements of...
media dispatch protocol
Media dispatch protocol
The Media Dispatch Protocol was developed by the Pro-MPEG Media Dispatch Group to provide an open standard for secure, automated, and tapeless delivery of audio, video and associated data files...
, now a SMPTE standard.
All types of media file formats, from QuickTime
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
DV
DV
DV is a format for the digital recording and playing back of digital video. The DV codec was launched in 1995 with joint efforts of leading producers of video camcorders....
MPEG AES/EBU
AES/EBU
AES3 is the standard used for the transport of digital audio signals between professional audio devices. It is also known as AES/EBU and is published by the Audio Engineering Society and as part of IEC 60958. It was developed by the AES and the European Broadcasting Union and first published in...
MXF
MXF
Material eXchange Format is a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by a set of SMPTE standards.- A brief summary of MXF :...
through Serial Digital Interface
Serial Digital Interface
Serial digital interface is a family of video interfaces standardized by SMPTE. For example, ITU-R BT.656 and SMPTE 259M define digital video interfaces used for broadcast-grade video...
, OMFi, AAF
Advanced Authoring Format
The Advanced Authoring Format is a professional file interchange format designed for the video post production and authoring environment. The AAF was created by the Advanced Media Workflow Association . The AMWA develops specifications and technologies to facilitate the deployment and operation...
, OpenEXR
OpenEXR
OpenEXR is a high dynamic range imaging image file format, released as an open standard along with a set of software tools created by Industrial Light and Magic , released under a free software license similar to the BSD license....
, to 4k DPX
DPX
Digital Picture Exchange is a common file format for digital intermediate and visual effects work and is an ANSI/SMPTE standard...
files are supported.