LEXX is the latest tv series to switch to Sony 24p hdcam origination, and Halifax's Salter Street Digital, a full-service audio and video post-production facility, reports it's ready to post in the show's new format.

"We've done our research," says Rob Power, vice-president of ssd. "I saw this stuff at nab [the National Association of Broadcasters trade show] and have been talking to the Sony guys for about two years."

LEXX, a production of Salter Street Films [ssd's parent company] and Germany's TiMe Film und TV Produktion, is a sexy sci-fi program about a group of misfits who inadvertently steal the Lexx, an enormous living insect genetically modified for space travel and planet destroying. Nicknamed "Star Trek's evil twin," the show airs in Canada on Space: The Imagination Station.

The producers' decision to go 24p represents a natural evolution for the program's fourth season. In the first two seasons the program was shot on 16mm and 35mm film, switching to Sony HDW 700 high-definition cameras in season three. The 24p Sony HDW-F900 brings cost-efficient digital video closer to film with a 24 frames per second capture rate and 180-degree shuttering similar to that of a motion picture camera.

Power expects ssd will be able to handle nearly all of the series' post needs, including 2D and 3D visual effects and offline and online editorial. All that need be done outside of Halifax would be the processing of any film stock the crew might shoot, as for off-speed sequences, in which case the film would be sent to a lab in Toronto.

On the production end, the crew at ssf's Electropolis Studios in Halifax learned a lot in season three about the challenges of shooting hd. The major obstacles include the unflattering way hd records hard lighting and its seemingly infinite depth of field - problems that can be rectified with filters and long lenses. Power says the show's producers want to keep the style consistent with what was established initially in the film domain, and the post team can also contribute to that end.

"I'm sure we will end up treating the images," he says. "You can 'film look' stuff. We've used CineLook from [Massachusetts company] Ice and it's okay. We will probably add grain." Adding grain is only one of 50 film presets the software offers; others include color adjustment and the addition of film artifacts.

Power believes the move to 24p is a business strategy many tv programs will soon adopt, and admits the LEXX team monitored the progress of the Alliance Atlantis/ Tribune Entertainment Company series Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, the first program to switch formats to 24p.

"Those shows are finished and no one's dead, so obviously it worked to some degree," he says. "It makes you feel more comfortable. When someone like Alliance Atlantis gets behind this, you feel 'Okay, we've probably made a good decision here.' "

Three guys in a basement

ssd has experienced tremendous growth since opening as an audio facility in 1991. Power recalls when it was "three guys in the basement of Salter Street's corporate offices, with a little Yamaha digital board and some Studer Diaxis systems." In 1998, it expanded to five audio rooms, and in the past year it built up the video component to be on par with the sound.