Continued from Part 1

Avid

As the only NLE company with cross-platform offerings, Avid provide the most direct competition to Apple and frequent comparisons, and distinctions, are made between the two company's editing products. At NAB Avid fired a shot across Apple's suite of tools by introducing their own suite: Avid Xpress Studio. Sadly Express Studio is a PC-only bundle. Some of the applications areavailable on OS X but the complete bundle is for Windows only. This isn't entirely surprising since the code-bases for the Windows only products in the Suite - Avid 3D (from the Softimage team) and Avid DVD by Sonic - have never existed for OS X and it would be more work than there would be commercial return for, to create OS X Macintosh versions for these products.

Avid Xpress Studio

Billed as "Its everything you imagined" the Xpress Studio provides the core tools that an editor needs because these days the craft of editing has gone way beyond Non-linear. For software Xpress Studio includes Xpress Pro (Editing), Pro Tools LE (Audio mixing), Avid 3D (3D modeling and animation), Avid FX (Compositing, High Quality Titling and Effects) Avid DVD by Sonic (DVD Authoring) and in hardware Digidesign Mbox (audio I/O), Avid Mojo (real time output) and Digi 002 (control surface).

Mojo and Digi 002 only come in the Xpress Studio Complete bundle ($6995); without them, Xpress Studio Essentials is $3995. The bundle pricing represents a huge saving on buying individual products. The Xpress Studio isn't just a bundle of independent applications - there's no way that would fly in a modern edit suite. All the applications in the suite are integrated via a combination of Metasync (AAF) metadata transfer between the applications and watch folders to avoid the need to specifically import files from one application to another. Send a video file "To Avid 3D" and it's there in Avid 3D ready for you to work with it. Complete the project there and export for Xpress Pro and it's in the "incoming" Bin in Xpress Pro. Files do need to render to transfer.

The Xpress Studio is one of the most complete bundles available and, as is the goal of all manufacturers these days, it will make it much easier to keep facilities' workflow entirely in the Avid family. The Studio also marks the first time that Avid's three divisions have worked on integration and a common release.

Xpress Pro 4.5

Xpress Pro got updated with MULTICAM, 23.976 project and support for the Panasonic AG-DVX100's advanced pulldown and DV scene extraction. Xpress Pro now supports script-based editing and custom music tools from SmartSound - SonicFire. Export options include MPEG-2, Macromedia Flash and (on PC) Windows Media 9 HD. As always Xpress Pro includes Mac and Windows software in the same box and you select the platform you want to work on by plugging in the dongle a.k.a software key. Some of the color correction technology has migrated into Xpress Pro with a new one-step AutoCorrect to improve the color and contrast of the entire sequence in one click. Xpress Pro 4.5 is a competent upgrade to a well-placed application.

Avid Pro Tools LE

Pro Tools LE is an Avid-branded version of Pro Tools that links with either the Mbox or OO2 Digidesign hardware. Pro Tools LE supports 32 tracks of 24 bit/96 Khz audio and 256 MIDI tracks with easy automation and sample accuracy - it might not be a full Pro Tools system but it is enough for video editors' audio editing needs. If you need more then the full Pro Tools TDM product range is completely compatible - even for further sweetening of the initial audio mix. Pro Tools LE will play synchronized audio out through Mojo with video from Xpress Pro. Some would say that Avid have finally managed to integrate the Digidesign purchase after all these years!
In the Suite-of-applications game, you need to have the most complete suite available and right now Avid have the most complete suite with enough of everything that editors need to create visually compelling stories.

Avid 3D

Avid 3D is billed as "3D for the rest of us" and is a purpose built application from the Softimage division. Built on a drag-and-drop interface it's designed for the specific needs of video editors: extruded text and logos through to full scene visualization. Models, textures, materials and shaders are dropped into 3D scenes. Fortunately Avid includes a generous library of objects that can be used as-is or customized, including customized by using video from Xpress Pro as a texture - or as a background. It includes the expected range of particle systems, warps, deformations and he inevitable explosions. Avid 3D's camera view can be output via Mojo hardware. Preview is in real time with OpenGL hardware acceleration. Avid 3D is Windows only.
Avid 3D is the first, simplified 3D application designed to open a lot of 3D functionality without the long learning curve of traditional 3D applications. Even a brief preview shows the potential of the drag and drop interface in real world modeling. It isn't the application to do the creatures for your next Sci-Fi flick but it's well up to the demands of simple scene preview, 3D graphics and fly-arounds. It's such a good idea and fills an important niche in the market, that I'll bet Apple and Adobe are watching very closely - my bet is that they'll be playing catch-up and showing or previewing similar 3D programs at NAB 2005.

Avid FX

Based on Boris RED, Avid FX adds a wide range of titling and effects right inside Xpress Pro (or other Avid NLE). Avid FX is a fully featured version of RED with the same OpenGL acceleration, 1500 customizable effects templates and more than 110 filters including Wire Removal, Grain Match and more. In addition to all the RED features, Avid FX displays output from the Avid FX composite windows to a broadcast monitor via Mojo in real time.

As the composting "application" in the Avid package, there is bound to be comparison with Apple's Motion. While Motion does many things very well, particularly the real time performance, it does not have the features of AvidFX/RED - not surprisingly since RED is a very mature version 3, while Motion is a new Version 1. Motion's strength is its real time; Avid FX the depth of features, particularly 3D space and 3D extrusions.

Avid DVD by Sonic

Avid DVD was built by Sonic to Avid's specifications providing tight integration with Avid's MetaSync and a simple-to-use point-and-click interface to take the pain out of DVD authoring, as has come to be expected. Avid DVD assets can be created in any of the Studio applications: 3D buttons and menu animation in Avid 3D, music from Pro Tools and SonicFire and video assets from Xpress Pro with effects from Avid FX. Avid DVD is only available for windows.

Avid Xpress Studio Hardware
The Xpress Studio comes with a Digidesign Mbox for high quality audio I/O but users can optionally buy the Studio Complete bundle for the Digi 002 control surface and Mojo DNA output device.

Avid DNxHD

One of Avid's under-told stories at NAB was the introduction of the DNxHD codecs. Apple have adopted the native source codec for HD; Pinnacle an all MPEG-2 HD strategy and Adobe adopted Windows Media for it's rebuild of Premiere into Premiere Pro. Avid took a different approach by developing 8 and 10 bit HD codecs optimized for compositing.

Native codecs are optimized for image acquisition; Windows Media for natural image distribution while MPEG-2 is now aging technology compared with modern codec design as well as being optimized for distribution. Now, with HD, there's enough detail in the image for codecs to not be quite as crucial as for standard definition but it is still important. The DNxHD codec approximate the primary HD compressed formats with maximum data rates in the codecs at 220 and 145 Mbit data rates. The 220 Mbit codec comes in 8 or 10 bit variants. 145 Mbit/second would be a good match for DVCPRO HD (100 Mbit) or HDCAM (135 Mbit) and 220 Mbit for D5 or HDCAM SR source. For HDCAM SR you'd want to use the 10 bit version

Avid have placed their DNxHD codecs inside a standard MXF wrapper (MXF is a media-included subset of AAF) so that any system that reads MXF reads DNxHD. The DNxHD codecs don't downsample the resolution like HDCAM and DVCPRO HD.

User response v share price and profitability

Apple makes announcements and the crowd cheers; Adobe release new versions of the flagship products and users rejoice; Avid announces it's new Studio collection with innovative codecs, the first in a new class of 3D applications and transparent integration and get "Lots of HD "me too" in there" and "a little interesting".

It has to be the "Avid Enigma" - how a company that has had something like 9 profitable quarters with a great stock price isn't getting recognition from it's long term users? There are users who feel that Avid "abdicated" the individual user to Final Cut Pro but the development of the Avid Xpress Studio shows that to be far from accurate - the Studio is clearly targeted at the individual/small studio. The very position Senior Product Manager Tim Wilson was in just a few years ago. In fact Tim has been heard to say that Xpress Studio is what he was looking for when in independent production.

On the other side of the story, DNxHD runs on the Adrenaline systems, not Xpress Pro and is quite expensive by comparison to competitive offerings and Mojo - in the competitive price range - doesn't have the full range of professional input and output of competitive offerings. It's definitely a difficult path for Avid - if they bring down the price of Adrenaline to compete it devalues the entire product line and Avid, right or wrong, value their feature set quite highly. While sufficient users buy the products to give them highly profitable results and a strong share price, it's very hard to criticize even if uncompressed HD hardware for use with Final Cut Pro is 1/6th the price of a similarly equipped Adrenaline - with no dual-link 4:4:4 HD option on any Avid product until next year.

Pinnacle

In all the Avid, Apple and Adobe clutter is seems like no-one even got to the other letters of the alphabet, especially down to P! Pinnacle had a few major releases at NAB, mostly focused around Liquid HD in a news or station workflow, and Cinéwave 4.6 - the latest released of their Final Cut Pro compatible hardware.

Although Pinnacle now have a similar suite of tools - editing, compositing, audio and DVD Authoring - to Apple, Adobe and Avid, the integration isn't yet as tight and the focus is most definitely on broadcast and news customers, not individual customers looking to purchase a single suite of tools. (Liquid Edition is comparable to Premiere Pro, Xpress Pro or Final Cut Pro although each have very desirable features not in the others!)

Liquid HD

Liquid HD picked up a Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit aware at NAB with "affordable entry" to HD editing. Liquid HD provides native support for HDV without recompression or proxy use, or full bandwidth uncompressed HD. Pinnacles' HD strategy is entirely built on MPEG-2 files, making it very easy to work with HDV. Pinnacle do not use all I frame like traditional MPEG-2 editing formats, but rather a more conventional IBP structure. Even with long GOP MPEG-2 for HD, Pinnacle achieve remarkable responsiveness in the interface - not easy considering that each editable frame has to be derived from many delta (or change-only) frames in MPEG-2's Predictive and Backwardly predictive structures.

Liquid HD has similar real time performance to Final Cut Pro HD - 4 layers of HD playback of 720 P 30 footage, without hardware, and is a $200 software-only upgrade.
Pinnacle provide native support for Panasonic P2 and XDCAM Although both are MXF media, Pinnacle is the only company actively courting both Sony and Panasonic.

Cinéwave 4.6

Hard on the heals of Cinéwave 4.5, announced only slightly more than a month before NAB, Pinnacle released version Cinéwave 4.6 at NAB. The version 4.6 update is primarily focused around supporting more HD features from Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD within Cinéwave, including capture and transcode of popular formats and frame rates to DVCPRO 100 a.k.a DVCPRO HD. All DVCPRO HD formats and frame rates are supported with multi-stream real-time effects and simultaneous output of both HD and SD (assuming the appropriate BOBs are connected).

Transcoding from any HD source to DVCPRO HD means that one or two Cinéwave ingestion/output stations could capture media for any number of software-only Final Cut Pro seats working in DVCPRO HD within the facility.

Cinéwave 4.6 also supports Panasonic's VariCam scan rates giving undercrank or overcrank playback as intended. At 4.6 Cinéwave remains the only hardware to support real time alpha channel playback and real time support for multiple frame sizes, frame rates and codecs in the one timeline, without rendering.

The upgrade is free to Cinéwave 4 customers, and $295 for owners of earlier versions.
Pinnacle's integration strategy is focused toward integration with broadcast servers and newsroom integration, an area where they are very strong.

Vegas 5

Sony take a totally different approach to integrating suites of applications - they build everything into Vegas! Vegas has long supported almost any video file on it's timeline - with multiple formats in a timeline no problem. It exports to almost any format with a competent encoding engine, has exceptional real-time capabilities, is resolution independent and authors DVD in the same package (if Vegas+DVD was purchased). Now that it is in the hands of a larger company, and positioned within the broadcast department of Sony rather than the more obscure Sony Pictures Digital, Vegas is beginning to achieve the groundswell of support it deserves.

Version 5 announced at NAB adds control surface automation, network rendering and tighter integration with the mother-ship's products. Vegas 5 also includes features usually found in high end compositing applications like: 3D motion tracking and 2.5 D compositing (2D planes in 3D space, like After Effects 5 and later); keyframable bezier mask, transition progress envelopes, 5.1 audio editing, Flash.swf import and a whole host of DVD authoring related features and new features in DVD Architect 2, which can also be used as a stand-alone DVD authoring application.

If you prefer the PC platform, there's a lot to be liked about Vegas. In fact, on Windows there is serious competition between Premiere Pro, Vegas, Xpress Pro and Liquid Edition. There are advanced features in these applications that Apple's Final Cut Pro customers are missing out on and don't know it (yet). Strong competition is good and I hope Apple keep looking over their shoulder at what is happening on the "other" side of the tracks. Still, power and functionality are only part of the story and Apple have good news on the usability front, and, of course, one of the largest user bases.

HD Acquisition

HDV

Sony announced plans to introduce the HDV format showing a prototype camera that had originally been previewed in Europe. (See earlier DV Guys Views of the News). Planned to record 1080i as a professional solution, which is interesting because the rhetoric from Sony is that HDV is a consumer/prosumer format, but seems to be having problems positioning the camera. Earlier pictures of the prototype shown 2 months ago, had it positioned in the "professional" products group - DSR, not VX or PD in product prefix parlance. The NAB official photographs have no model number or product-line designation visible.
Sony also plan HDV decks (shown as a block-of-wood prototype) and plan a iLINK (IEEE1394/FireWire) to HD-SDI converter for the camera. Sony's 3-Chip HDV camcorder is expected to sell for less than US$5000.

JVC also pre-announced two new HDV camcorders - on a competitor for the Sony HDV camcorder - sub $5000, 3-chip - and the other a more professional HDV camera. (Think DSR 300 compared with PD 150). This new camera will use 2/3 inch CMOS imagers with native resolution of 1920 x 1080 (1080i ) and be capable of shooting 720P and 1080i. Most interestingly, the new camcorder will be capable of 1080 24P which will reduce the amount of compression per frame (slightly) in the fixed bandwidth. The deck record up to 276 minutes of HDV on a full size DV tape or up to 60 minutes on a miniDV tape. This camcorder, shipping late 2004, will sell for about $20,000 and be a compromise between the fully featured HD Camcorders (DVCAM, DVCPRO HD) and the less robust and featured sub $5000 HDV camcorders. JVC are positioning this camcorder for newsgathering, documentary and feature work.

Fully featured HD acquisition is certainly more affordable than ever but is a huge jump over the, as yet not shipping, 3-Chip HDV camcorder from Sony and JVC (and no doubt more to come). While no-one will argue that HDCAM or DVCPRO HD are more professional formats for HD acquisition than HDV because of the extreme compression on HDV, if it comes to a decision to shoot HD with heavy compression or shoot Standard Definition, it's more likely that many, many more people will opt for HDV despite it's inherent flaws.

The arguments we're hearing now "it's too compressed", "it's not really a professional format" et al, echo those we heard just 5-6 years ago with DV 25 formats. Despite the arguments at that time - all valid - DV25 very quickly established itself as a "good enough" format for a very wide range of professional production - even network broadcast production, particularly when handled by professional shooters. Even today, though, projects are shot on DVCPRO 50 and Digital Betacam for all the right reasons - acquisition quality is higher and that quality is needed for some functions (particularly keying and compositing).

Of course, there's the "HD myth" - if it's shot on HD, it must be better than if it's shot on SD. While in broad terms there's some truth in that, there are situation where well-shot standard definition may look better when scaled up to HD after editing, compositing and effects than a project that started with heavily compressed HD.

The other point that isn't often taken into account is that compression becomes less of a problem the higher the resolution of the image - or more accurately, a less visible problem, the higher the resolution. Even so, the amount of compression to fit a High Definition from about 880 Mbits/second down to 25 Mbits/second is rather extreme! However, it should be kept in mind that HD television broadcasts are capped at 19 Mbits/second in the US ATSC system (assuming the full bandwidth available is dedicated to one HD stream) and both Windows Media 9 and H.264 are delivering very high quality HD in 5-8 Mbit/second. These are delivery formats, not intended for editing, but then again, in the original design, DV was intended as a delivery and home video format and ended up changing an industry.

Regardless of the practical realities, HDV will be to the HD world what DV is to the SD world - acquisition quality that is "good enough" for most purposes. HDV will, when it gets truly rolling later this year and early into next year - just wait for NAB 05 - be very, very popular compared to HDCAM and DVCPRO HD, which is why all editing systems manufacturers are rushing to support it. Pinnacle supports it now in Liquid HD, Adobe are supporting it in Premiere, Ulead in their edit system , naturally Sony support it in their Swiss-army-knife-of editors Vegas 5 and even Apple announced native support in "a future revision" of Final Cut Pro after joining the HDV consortium during NAB 04. (In the meantime, LumiereHD and Heuris have support for HDV in Final Cut Pro.)

HDCAM/DVCPRO HD

Moving up product line, Sony also announced the HDW-730S HDCAM Camcorder. This $48,000 (list) camcorder is a high resolution 3-CCD unit "designed to make it the HD camcorder of choice for program producers, while also providing a more attractive price point into HD" according to Sony. Panasonic's comparable product at that price point, the AJ-HDC10A DVCPRO HD is a few thousand dollars cheaper but has only 800 TV Lines resolution compared to the HDW-730S with 1000. (Panasonic do have DVCPRO HD models that can be purchased for less.)

Summary

In my virtual NAB we've visited just five of the thousand plus booths at NAB. There was a lot more going on than the HD Story for editing. I haven't looked in any detail at the new hardware for Final Cut Pro from AJA (Kona 2) and DeckLink; ventured into Boris Continuum 3 for AVX and soon After Effects compatible hosts and Boris RED which I was demonstrating for part of the time. Nor looked at Sony's XDCAM, Promax's budget-but-powerful single-use SATA-Max or Terrablock's SAN solution.
3D application developments and codec news will have to wait for another article and the whole worlds of lighting and audio need articles of their own. In fact, acquisition has also been treated briskly, with only a few select highlights being examined.

I'll have to let others write up the social aspects of the week. For me, NAB is one of the most fun times of the year as friends and associates from around the country and around the world arrive in Las Vegas together. Like the lead title says: the show is at least one day too long but several nights short.

Thursday at NAB is semi-jokingly known as "Exhibitors Day" where the hardworking folk on the booths get a chance to walk around and talk with other booth-dwellers. The aisles are quiet compared with early in the week and attendees have dwindled to comparatively few.

But if there are too many days, there are too few nights. Days start with breakfast meetings and end almost when they start 20 hours later with email. There were times in the post show hours I wanted to be in three places at once - vendor or user group activities spread across my many areas of interest.

Needless to say, I got to comparatively few: the IMUG MediaMotion Ball on Monday night kept me from the Avid-L get together the same night; Tuesday night I had to leave Promax's excellent Digital Media Café early to get to the formal Avid event blocks away (and the only time I ventured far from the Stardust and Convention Center area). Wednesday night would not have been complete without the Final Cut Pro User Group event, but it was hard to get past the gossiping and news with friends and associates in the foyer to get to the meeting inside.

NAB isn't just the most exciting time of the year for techno geeks like me to drool over the latest tools (a.k.a toys) it's time to observe industry trends and enjoy the company of friends. If it were only 3 nights longer and a couple of days shorter, NAB would be perfect! See you in 2005.

DV Guy Philip split his NAB time between the Post|Production Conference, demonstrating for Boris, enjoying the company of friends and trying to see the show. It took him until the following Sunday to recover.

Philip Hodgetts is President of Intelligent Assistance, makers of KILLER Titles, PRACTICAL Color Correction, GREAT visualFX and other tutorial and training titles for Final Cut Pro and Boris Products. He's "the software guy" on DV Guys <dvguys.com> - the Internet's only radio show for Digital Storytellers. DV Guys is live 6pm Thursdays Pacific time, or catch the show in the archives. He's a regular contributor to MacDesign and Digital Media World magazines and writes regularly for a multiplicity of websites. He's the principal architect of the Pro Apps Hub <proapps-hub.com>.