Crawford, Georgia. Pop. 300

Atlanta's Crawford Communications is taking the opportunity afforded by its move to a huge new facility to undertake some major gear upgrades for its audio and video post-production enterprise.

Crawford has grown its industry presence since it began its post operations in 1981, and now that presence will sprawl over a dual-building facility on a 27-acre site on Pleasantdale Rd. in Atlanta, about 15 minutes north of the current Crawford location. The moving process began in June and is expected to wrap up by September 30, by which time the company's 300 employees, in-house clients and audio and video gear will be fully installed in the new compound.

Crawford's gear complement includes nine Avid suites and Discreet Fire and Inferno rooms which are used for the shop's long form and commercial HD work. With a Spirit Datacine in house, Crawford has capability to import data directly from the datacine stage into the Discreet systems. The shop also houses a Flame suite and a Henry Infinity nonlinear room, used largely for commercial work. An existing analog online suite will be overhauled during the move with the installation of a Softimage DS system. The company is banking on the DS solution and will likely invest in additional systems, particularly as Softimage releases the HD version later this year, says Bill Thompson, VP of Crawford Post Production.

With the move, the facility will also upgrade four of its Avids to full 601 systems and will assemble a second "hybrid" HD room, which will be primarily a linear room, but with a bank of disk recorders to allow a nonlinear style of work. Going forward, both HD rooms, (as well as the Henry room, which will likely be converted to DS next year) will be designed as theaters, with stadium seating and video projection, which Thompson says will be unique in the region.

Also in support of the HD mandate, the new facility will feature three 5.1 digital audio recording studios designed by top audio engineer Tom Hidley. The audio gear complement will include three Solid State Logic Avant digital consoles. The online and audio rooms are expected to be completed by the end of August.

The facility has oriented itself to provide service to the emerging HD market, both on the commercial and long form side. "We have an interesting mix of rooms; unlike facilities specializing in one thing we can meet anyone's post requirements," says Thompson. Crawford is currently working in HD on 13 one hour episodes of Treasure Seekers, a show on which the facility also acts as co-producer with National Geographic TV and JWM Productions, Washington. The company is looking at launching another series with National Geographic and has done other HD work for Discovery. Crawford has done commercial HD work including spots for clients Hi Fi Buys and a series of spots for Best Buy. "We're starting to see more and more commercial work finishing in HD," says Thompson. "Whether it gets broadcast that way today is another story."