Bwana Devil is alive and well and it lives in Las Vegas! I’m not talking about another Cirque du Soleil extravaganza but, rather, the 1952 drama considered to be the first American 3D feature in color. Bwana Devil set off a two-year boom of 3D filmmaking in Hollywood during the 1950s. Once again 3D stereoscopic production is in full bloom, and that was nowhere more evident than at the 2009 NAB Show. 3D tools were in every corner, ranging from camera support gear and lenses to postproduction software and even flat-panel monitors. In spite of an attendance count that was down by 20 percent or more, most manufacturers were upbeat—reporting better “face time” with customers and showing more new products than I’ve seen in recent years.
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Stereoscopic 3D production has the buzz, but two other technology trends were also in full force: 3G and fiber optics. 3G connectivity—meaning the 3Gb/s SDI standard for 1080p/60 and 4:4:4—lets you run higher-bandwidth data through a single cable. Plenty of manufacturers, ranging from Barco to Kramer to Blackmagic Design, were touting 3G-ready gear. Fiber optic SDI as a replacement for copper coax also appears to be a trend. Transceiver costs are lower, so it is now realistic to wire a station or post house infrastructure with fiber in place of coax.
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Production Equipment
This year was a bumper crop for cameras. Sony, Panasonic, Grass Valley and JVC were among those offering new cameras. SONY was pushing the high end this year with its new PDW-F800. It offers everything that’s been added as an option to the 700 camera, like 24fps shooting, but extends the feature set with variable-frame-rate recording. This camera is truly the replacement CineAlta product for the venerable HDCAM F900 camcorder. This would make you think tape is dead for Sony, but, in fact, they also introduced the first one-piece HDCAM SR camcorder, the SRW-9000. Sony views this as a companion for the F23 digital cinematography camera, which has become very popular as the “film replacement” camera of choice for many DPs and studios.
In total, Sony announced 30 new products, including the PDW-F1600. This is the first XDCAM HD deck with insert and assemble edit functions, so it can now truly be a VTR replacement. Many XDCAM houses also master back to that format, so a deck like the 1600 serves many needs.
PANASONIC is getting the buzz with its AG-HPX300 P2 camcorder. This camera does it all (1080i/p, 720p, SD) and is the first affordable camcorder to record in 10-bit 4:2:2 full-raster AVC-Intra, as well as DVCPRO HD. Customers who use the smaller Panasonic 200 and miss the ergonomics of a larger camera will be happier with the shoulder-mounted format of the 300. Camera and lens come in at $10,700.
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Panasonic made a number of announcements related to the expansion of the AVCCAM and P2 families, but the most welcome news is the introduction of the P2 “E” series cards. They are faster with a little less life (still five years), but best of all—less expensive. 32GB cards will be available for $625. If you stress about media backup, then check out Panasonic’s AJ-HRW10 P2 Rapid Writer. This self-contained field unit has slots for removable hard drives and P2 cards. At the touch of a button, the Rapid Writer can simultaneously back up data to two RAID drives. Panasonic also announced a partnership with RIMAGE for an automatic P2 archiving station. The Rimage DVD station can handle automated data burning to Blu-ray ROM discs from P2 media.
GRASS VALLEY celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The biggest news is their Kayenne Video Production Center. That fancy name simply means it’s the biggest production switcher made to date, with up to four and a half mix-effects banks and as many as 30 keyers. Last year Grass Valley spun off its digital film business unit (Digital Film Technology now controls the Spirit DataCine and Bones software products) and has been concentrating its imaging R&D efforts on broadcast cameras. Many of the features of the Grass Valley Viper FilmStream camera (used to film Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) have migrated into the Infinity and LDK camera series. New for NAB 2009 was the LDK 3000, a budget-oriented HD camera that uses the in-house-developed Xensium CMOS imagers. The LDK 3000 uses three 2.4MP sensors, which allows the camera to switch between 1080i and 720p.
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JVC has been working hard to make HD cameras that professionals take seriously. The newest push includes two exciting offerings: the GY-HM700 and the GY-HM100. Both record media wrapped as QuickTime (.mov) files that can be natively opened in Apple Final Cut Pro. The 700 is the pro camera, while the 100 is more of a prosumer model. The 700 can record to inexpensive SDHC memory cards or SxS media compatible with Sony's XDCAM EX. SxS recording requires an optional GY-HM700UXT module. The camera with glass (Fujinon 17:1 lens) is $8,000, plus another $1,000 for the optional SxS recording module.
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A lot of people might have missed the JVC technology display of their own 4K camera. It uses a single Bayer-pattern CMOS imager with a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels. It was pumping out live, real-time images at 60fps to a JVC 4K display. Right now it’s an engineering prototype that may or may not make it into the video or film market. JVC sees other potential markets for this technology, including engineering and medical imaging applications.
Of course, if you mention 4K, people immediately think of RED DIGITAL CINEMA. Their red alpine tent was absent from the floor, but RED organized an eight-hour RED User Event on Wednesday at the Rio Hotel. A series of demos and workflow presentations took up the event, but there were also a number of announcements. The biggest news was RED Rocket, a real-time PCIe accelerator card for under $5K that will ship in a couple of months. It’s supposed to be compatible with any application using the RED SDK, plus applications with tight RED integration (Apple FCP, Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, and RED Alert, RED Cine and RED Rushes). It will decode, de-Bayer and play back high-quality, real-time 4K at up to 30fps.
The other big announcement was the impending availability of the RED Pro prime lenses. A set of five T1.8 lenses (25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm) sells for $19K—far less than many other top-of-the-line prime lens sets. RED is taking deposits now, but exact shipping dates haven’t been announced.
There seems to be much slower progress on RED’s Scarlet and Epic cameras and RED RAY player. Both cameras were still shown only as aluminum mock-ups. RED also ran a demo reel at 4K that was afterwards announced to be playing from a prototype RED RAY player at 10Mb/s. The playback system wasn’t actually shown, so you might be skeptical, of course. I don’t doubt that honest engineering development is proceeding, but this all just reinforces the fact that bleeding-edge R&D simply doesn’t follow marketing deadlines. No camera before its time, I suppose.
Postproduction Equipment
FCP editors are well-supported by AJA, Blackmagic Design and Matrox where extra hardware is needed that Apple can’t provide. Each company brought plenty to the table this year.
AJA VIDEO hit another home run with Ki Pro. This is a product designed to be a standalone recorder—essentially another VTR replacement. In a sense, this is really AJA’s first production product, so it’s a good product to transition into the post segment of this overview. The Ki Pro is a small unit (the size of a couple of paperbacks) that’s sort of a mash-up of AJA’s FS1, IoHD and removable recording media. It can be mounted under cameras using the Exo-Skeleton accessory and, like other recorders, has a variety of analog, SDI and HDMI inputs.
The real secret sauce is AJA’s relationship with Apple, which means that Ki Pro records media in the Apple ProRes 422 codec. This encoding happens in the Ki Pro hardware. Remove the storage from the Ki Pro, connect it right to a Final Cut Pro editing station and you are immediately able to access the media and ready to start editing. Other manufacturers, like Focus Enhancements, Edirol and Convergent Design, have similar products, but the combination of AJA’s reputation for reliability and the ease of ProRes for FCP editors is bound to make this a winner.
MATROX brought more MXO2 versions to the show for a broader selection. The MXO2 has been picking up steam and popularity among Apple users, and now the MXO2 Mini and MXO2 Rack add both a smaller and a bigger unit to address expanded needs.
The story gets better, because Matrox has been working hard to accelerate H.264 encoding with its MAX technology. H.264 is becoming a mainstay of Web videos as well as Blu-ray DVDs, and it is notoriously slow to encode. Matrox speeds this up with faster-than-real-time hardware encoding that’s available in two forms. New customers buying any of the three MXO2 products will soon be able to purchase them with the MAX option, which integrates the H.264 hardware encoding chip right into the MXO2. Existing MXO2 owners and those who don’t own an MXO2 can purchase the separate CompressHD PCIe card for $495. The CompressHD card blazed through a compression demo consisting of a 30-second clip encoded to iPod specs. The hardware encode took only 8 seconds, while a software encode of the same clip lasted about a minute. Once installed, CompressHD operates through Apple Compressor, making it transparent for the user.
BLACKMAGIC DESIGN defines the word "busy," with 17 new products at the show. Many of their products are 3G and fiber-ready, but UltraScope caught the immediate attention of most. This is Blackmagic’s solution for cost-effective technical monitoring. Install the card (a modified DeckLink) and the UltraScope application into a qualified PC and you have a low-cost HD waveform monitor and vectorscope. Want more? How about two new Videohub routers: Enterprise Videohub—a massive 144x288 model—and Studio Videohub—a compact 16x32 model. There’s more across the whole line, but if you own some of their Mini-Converters, look for the new Converter Utility 1.0 software update. This will let you adjust levels over USB instead of flipping dip switches with a screwdriver. This update will also allow the SDI-to-analog model to become a high-quality hardware downconverter.
There were no surprise announcements from Apple, so the desktop NLE space was an Avid versus Adobe comparison. Both maintained solid booth traffic throughout the show, but neither had any big product launches. Instead, NAB gave each time to focus on promoting features launched earlier with Avid Media Composer 3.5 and Adobe CS 4.
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Avid's New Logo
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AVID’s return to the South Hall included the unveiling of the new corporate branding, complete with a new logo. The letters A-V-I-D are made up of icons based on audio and video keyboard commands. What shouldn’t be overlooked is that the features in 3.5 include some huge jumps for Avid. The USB licensing key (dongle) is gone in favor of software activation. Either can still be used until 4.0 comes out.
Avid Media Composer 3.5 is now the first desktop NLE used for creative cutting that can work with 3D stereoscopic media. Files first have to be prepped in Avid MetaFuze, but after that they are ready for editing in Media Composer. You can choose to monitor either the left- or right-eye view or one of the various stereo image display formats. There’s also a more straightforward effects editor and a new Fluid Stabilizer effect to stabilize shots. The latter builds on Avid’s FluidMotion and Steady Glide technology. The biggest advance is Avid Media Architecture (AMA), a plug-in API for tapeless camera formats. Sony and Panasonic have signed on, so currently P2 and XDCAM media work. No more need to ingest or transcode—simply mount an AMA volume and your clips appear complete with all the camera-generated metadata.
ADOBE worked their main stage demonstrating the finer points of the Creative Suite 4 applications, including design, Web and video solutions. The main focus was the upcoming 4.1 release, which offers better integration with third-party hardware companies like AJA, as well as continued enhancements of the native RED camera raw workflow. That’s an evolving process, but Adobe’s implementation is one of the better desktop approaches if you have a powerful computer.
Adobe presented a number of technology sneak peeks, including one they showed me of Adobe Story. That’s a working title for an application designed to augment scriptwriting. Adobe is all about metadata these days, so Adobe Story takes an imported script (Microsoft Word, Final Draft and other formats) and then turns the standard descriptions for locations, characters and shot setups into searchable metadata. Theoretically, this metadata is moved through the various Adobe apps like OnLocation and Premiere Pro. It could eventually even be used in a Flash-based Web site to let fans search based on the original metadata—for example, to locate every scene in a series that showcases a favorite character.
Storage
Media makes the film and video world go around, and as tapeless recording becomes the norm, storage becomes even more critical. Plenty of companies offer high-performance, robust storage solutions, but EDITSHARE is one of the few that combines storage networks with workflow solutions. EditShare is the only company to offer both Avid and Final Cut Pro project sharing. At the show, AUTOMATIC DUCK and EditShare announced a partnership to develop seamless solutions for mixed NLE installations. A new media tool is EditShare Flow, an integrated solution to handle ingest, media browsing and metadata management. A key component of Flow is EditShare’s Universal File Format support. This means one ingest can generate media that is accessible from both FCP and Avid NLEs on the storage network.
EditShare has centered on the use of Gigabit Ethernet-based storage networks instead of Fibre Channel. They have been able to deliver robust performance and now have introduced EditShare XStream, a high-performance storage environment for the most demanding applications, like digital intermediate film postproduction. With XStream, EditShare supports Apple, Adobe, Assimilate, Autodesk, Avid, Digidesign, Sony and Grass Valley users. They can connect using either Gigabit or 10-Gigabit Ethernet and freely share media regardless of file size or format, according to EditShare.
Other high-performance manufacturers at NAB included ACTIVE STORAGE, a company founded by former Apple Xserve RAID engineers. These systems look very similar to their highly regarded Apple forerunners but have been designed around newer specs.
Another company to watch is GLOBALSTOR. They are an OEM integrator of high-performance RAID, SAN and video servers. At NAB they announced REDe 4K, a solution that can offer uncompressed, real-time 4K playback of RED files. The REDe unit is powered by Assimilate Scratch software and uses the Nvidia Quadro Plex 2200 D2 display card. REDe workstations are available in rack and tower versions with integrated storage capacities ranging from 1.4TB to 9TB.