SOHO, LONDON - Rainbow Post Production recently completed mixing services for Pioneer Productions' high definition documentary Extreme Machines: Offshore Rigs. The 50-minute program will run on Discovery HD Theatre before being broadcast on The Learning Channel and Discovery networks worldwide.

"We are pioneering new ground here in the UK with high def documentary production," says director Toby Macdonald. "This film will not only be [shot] in high def, it will be finished, delivered and broadcast on high def."

Rainbow managing director Nick Rogers mixed the audio for the special using one of the facility's two 48-fader Soundtracs DPC-II digital consoles.

"This was our first high def program," says Rogers, "and [it] presented new challenges for me and the DPC-II console. In the end, we comfortably met our deadline for the delivery of Dolby 5.1 and stereo masters, as well as for the stereo premixes of effects, music, dialogue and narration for foreign language reversioning."

"We noticed no real physical difference between the mixing of normal stereo and the 5.1 used in the program," says show producer Kirstie McLure. "The end result, however, was phenomenal, bringing a new dimension to the special effects with an overall far superior audio quality. Having now experienced high def and 5.1, I will find it hard to return to Digital Betacam and normal stereo."