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MillimeterNAB 2008 Wrap-up
May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By D. W. Leitner, Jan Ozer, and Dan Ochiva
Cameras, desktop post, distribution, I/O, and storage from the show.
Red Digital Cinema 5K Epic
Cameras
By D. W. Leitner
Once, the big three ruled the world. Who could imagine a car industry without Ford, Chrysler, and GM calling the shots? But the world turns.
Missing this year from NAB were Apple, Avid, and Eastman Kodak. Those with several NABs under their belts will also recall the glory days of RCA, Ampex, Cinema Products, Agfa, Marconi, and ITK. Or even SGI, 3M, and Cintel — still exhibiting but wisps of the powerhouses they once were.
The broadcast industry, born of technology, must ride the tiger of technology.
New at NAB this year, for instance, was Content Central, a large section of Central Hall devoted to “the convergence of content and new technology” and “the place to become truly plugged in to ‘what's next.’” The space included both a Content Theater — packed packed for the sessions on stereoscopic 3D — and the IPTV pavilion, where I did not recognize any of the companies from prior NABs (nor find any of their booths particularly compelling).
Still, blogging from NAB 2007, I had predicted that “next year’s NAB will be the year of mobile TV,” and I think I was spot on. Consider NAB’s stated raison d’ętre for Content Central: “From mobile to movies to podcasting, today's content is always ‘On.’” Obviously mobile TV is uppermost in NAB’s thoughts. The NAB Show Daily News reported that the Open Mobile Video Coalition’s (OMVC) breakfast at NAB “had the feeling of a gold rush,” with one presenter projecting new ad revenues to ATSC broadcasters at $2 billion by 2012.
Groundswells of deep change often build slowly, imperceptibly, to a tipping point that feels like sudden change. We’ve been adjusting to video on tiny screens since Flash came to Windows Mobile and H.264 to PDAs and iPods. In this country, Verizon and now AT&T are testing the waters of mobile TV to cell phones, while in Europe and especially Asia, cell phone TV has been popular for several years.
Apple’s iPhone has irrefutably demonstrated the power and popularity of the Internet in your hand. Can anyone seriously doubt the appeal of free, over-the-air ATSC broadcasting in your hand, including network hit shows and local newscasts with weather?
Which is why NAB, OMVC, and the ATSC itself are pushing for adoption of one of several competing mobile ATSC technologies by February 17, 2009 %#151; the official U.S. cutoff of analog TV as we know it. They want mobile TV from the ATSC right out of the starting gate and it looks like they’re going to get it.
The impending analog TV cutoff makes NAB 2008 the last NAB show of the analog era, which helps explain why familiar analog-era technologies went missing from NAB this year: standard definition, 4:3 aspect ratio, CRTs, analog VTRs and switchers, flying-spot telecines. Interlace continues to cling as a legacy of broadcasting, whose future also dims considerably after February 17th. Over time 1080p/60 will overtake 1080i/60 %#151; it’s already happening in consumer HD displays. Consumer CCD-based HD camcorders are another story; they’d melt running at 60p. It's why CMOS is coming on strong.
Leaving behind the analog era also means no new proprietary videotape formats ever again at NAB. Future video formats will be based on compression standards. For instance, in Panasonic’s case, both their high-end AVC-Intra and new low-cost AVCCAM line use the MPEG-4 standard.
P+S Technik Interchangeable Mount System for Red Digital Cinema cameras
In another sign of where formats are going, native recording of progressive images has been formally appended to the tape-based consumer HDV standard. JVC pioneered this technique with their 720p HDV camcorders, Canon joined with their Frame Mode HDV camcorders, and now Sony has hopped aboard: their new HVR-Z7U records true progressive-scan images to tape using native HDV 1080p/24 or 1080p/30. Significance? Saves time and de-interlacing: Flash and H.264 have no need for interlacing and work better without it. Adopting native progressive recording therefore simplifies and speeds image creation for web and mobile TV. Hint: recording wave of the future.
Upstarts Red Digital Cinema, Iconix, and Vision Research were responsible for some of the most arresting developments in cameras at the NAB Show this year. Red, barely two years old, announced two upcoming cameras: the 2/3in. single-CMOS 3K Scarlet (“3K for $3K”) and the 5K Epic, smaller in body than the flagship 4K Red One. The pistol-grip 3K Scarlet, capable of 120fps, will have a fixed zoom and record RAW or RGB at up to 100Mbps (Redcode wavelet compression) to dual CompactFlash cards. Both new designs will be available by next NAB, per Red.
Anyone who still doesn't take Red seriously needs to view the sample clips projected (in 4K) at NAB from Steven Soderbergh's upcoming Che Guevara duology, The Argentine and Guerilla. The first was shot 2K with anamorphic lenses and the second flat at 4K. Both looked superb; fully cinema-tographic. No paying audience is going to reject either for occasional shadow noise or clipped highlights (endemic to all solid-state sensor cameras).
To counter the growing scarcity of affordable PL-mount lenses for Red, P+S Technik introduced the Interchangeable Mount System (IMS) for the 4K Red One, featuring a replacement camera front with an assortment of lens mount adapters that invites the use of countless affordable Leica, Canon, Nikon, and Zeiss Contax still-camera lenses.
Iconix Studio2K
Iconix introduced the Studio2K, a 2K version of its tiny 3CCD HD cube camera — ice-cube sized, actually — which, since introduction at NAB a few years back, has suffered from the absence of HD-caliber C-mount lenses.
Rumor at NAB was that Schneider, at the behest of Band Pro(the folks who coaxed DigiPrimes out of Zeiss), had agreed to create first-rate HD C-mount lenses for the Iconix, and that Fujinon had agreed as well. The Band Pro/Schneider effort was confirmed a week after NAB by press release. This is great news for inventors of tiny, low-cost 3D HD rigs. (3D was another major theme at NAB this year, with renewed interest in digital 3D production, recording, and exhibition. The weekend's Digital Cinema Summit was obsessed with the topic — see my Saturday NAB blog.
Vision Research's Miro is shaped like a digital SLR; however, it's a 3.5lb. high-speed camera with a larger-than-2/3in. sensor that captures uncompressed RAW 800×600 progressive images to a CompactFlash card at up to 1265fps — with 500-ASA-equivalent speed. Amazing.
Like Iconix, it relies on C-mount lenses. Will the new Schneider C-mount HD lenses arrive just in time for Miro? Perhaps, but there's a proviso. Iconix uses a prism for its three CCDs, while Miro is single-CMOS, so there may be field-flatness issues when using the upcoming Schneider HD lenses on a Miro. (Abel Cine Tech's Mitch Gross showed me a Miro sporting a Zeiss lens attached with a Nikon-to-C-mount adapter.)
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
