Forensic Audio Enhancement Capabilities increased

Mark Whitehouse recently completed a 3 day intensive Forensic Audio course in Washington USA.  Information and skills picked up during this workshop are resulting in enhanced capabiliites in our audio restoration studio.

If you have surveillence recordings, micro cassettes, digital recordings or damaged recordings that you would like restored for transcription purposes call Mark on 08 9375 3902. Our discreet service is open to members of the public, law enforcement, investigation and legal services.

"My Big Gig" a West Australian school's initiative by Kosmic Sound

ProCopy is proud to support the Kosmic Sound "My Big Gig" competition for West Australian schools.

Kim Musa approached ProCopy some months ago with a fantastic initiative to encourage schools to showcase the many talented musicians that are out there, and this September sees the culimination of all this planning, over 30 schools will compete for many prizes including $1,000 worth of products or services from ProCopy.

Good luck to all those talented school musicians from all of us at ProCopy

ProCopy supports WAM

This year's WAM competition is being supported by ProCopy. A substantial prize of studio mastering time will go to the winner of one of the categories. Having supported WAM for many years by organising the initial WAM compilation CDs we're happy to be back on board supporting the local music industry. Good luck to all those that enter!

Fruitful visit to our CD & DVD Manufacturer

Lyndsey and I have just returned from a great visit to our CD & DVD Manufacturer.

Among our many discussions over the dinner table were how we can improve service to our customers and the future direction of the industry. During these discussions we realised that they have the same ideals that we aspire to at ProCopy. Customer Service is vitally important to us all and with that in mind they have helped us offer faster turnarounds on bulk CD or DVD work.

They have made a substantial commitment to us to enable us to offer bulk replicated work in around 7 days - This is a vast improvement on the 10 working days PLUS freight times (effectively 3 weeks)  that we have endured in the past.

Not only that but despite the increasing costs of raw materials (They have doubled in the last 8 months) they have held their pricing for the forseeable future.

If you'd like to test our new service call Lyndsey direct on 08 9375 3902 or email [email protected].

Lyndsey also witnessed the whole CD and DVD mastering process - gorgeous overalls to boot!  so if you'd like the lowdown on what a "glass master" really is then ask when you have her online.

Super thin DVD with Terabyte Storage

From One To One Magazine

Friday, 30 June 2006

Hitachi Maxell’s publicity has given only very sketchy details of its plan to deliver terabyte storage from super-thin DVDs. But full details of the research have now been published in patents filed in Japan. The patents were filed in 2004/2005 under the title "Recording and reproducing apparatus of thin optical disc". An English language version (US 2006/0101482) can now be read on the US Patent Office website. The patent tells how the new discs will be stamped from a one-metre wide sheet of PET plastics (polyethylene terephthalate) only around 100 microns – the width of two human hairs – thick. An array of 49-nickel pre-groove stampers (in 7 x 7 matrix) is heated to 180°C and pressed onto the sheet for five seconds. The imprinted PET sheet is then coated with pigment for write-once recording or sputtered with phase-change alloy for erasable discs. An aluminium reflective layer is sputtered on top of the coating and a 15-micron layer of protective resin added and cured with UV light. The imprinted zones are then punched into DVD-sized discs, and 200 of them stacked in a slim cartridge. Each disc has the standard 4.7GB capacity of a red-laser DVD, so total capacity of a single cartridge is 940GB, or just under 1 terabyte. The challenge, say inventors Hiroyuki Awano, Norio Ota and Osamu Ishizaki, was to keep the flimsy disc stable while spinning, and track it with standard low-cost DVD optics. The answer was to clamp the disc on a transparent turntable made from glass with the same thickness and optical characteristics as the 0.6mm acrylic substrate used for DVDs, and then read the disc by using a laser under the turntable. The laser shines up through the glass/PET sandwich and reflects back down onto a sensor. The individual discs are picked from the cartridge by an automated finger, slid onto the glass turntable and clamped with a magnetic chuck. Aerodynamic forces hold the disc flat and close to the turntable surface as it spins. Optical markers are used to align the disc and chuck with the turntable centre. Because it takes around 10 seconds to change discs, the cartridge has onboard memory that buffers the data at around 100Mbps. So the user perceives no waiting time. The same system can be used with blue laser HD DVDs, says the patent, to give several Terabytes from a single cartridge. No mention is made of adapting the technology for use with Blu-ray. Those in the industry with long memories may be reminded of the flexible analogue video disc system developed many years ago by Thomson of France, to rival the rigid Laservision and Laserdiscs made by Philips and Pioneer. Thomson’s 30cm optical disc could be rolled up for mailing. But the disc was thick and tough and the optics worked transmissively; the laser beam passed through the disc to a sensor on the other side.