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NAB 2004

Jun 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Dan Ochiva, D. W. Leitner, Bob Turner, S. D. Katz, and Michael Goldman

HD, Codec Wars, and a CEO

Editing: A great NAB

This year's NAB saw debates on HD compression, HDV editing solutions without the expected HDV camcorder offerings, an exciting new AAF Edit Protocol that finally offers capabilities previously wished for, extensive MXF-compatible products, and a major focus on postproduction workflows. In short, it was one of the best NAB conventions in my 37 years in this business.

Windows-based Adobe Premiere Pro Version 1.5 may have entered the same professional market that Adobe After Effects has dwelled in for years. The company believes that the new realtime HD-capable Premiere Pro can compete effectively against Apple's Final Cut Pro application in the professional postproduction arena. Version 1.5 is a significant upgrade from the August product introduction, featuring realtime HD capabilities, better media asset management, support for Panasonic 24p/24pA cam-corders, Bezier keyframe controls, major color correction improvements, AAF I/O support, and the ability to cut and paste to After Effects, plus many other integration features with other applications in the Digital Video Collection.

Another development may have had the most impact upon bringing Premiere Pro into this new market segment. That is third-party partners such as Boxx Technologies offering its Premiere Pro-based HD Pro RT realtime nonlinear HD editing system incorporating CineForm's new Prospect HD technology. Also important is 1 Beyond's announcement of its new HD/Digital Cinema division. This new division has Premiere Pro as the sole editing solution; it creates an amazing uncompressed HD workgroup environment, along with the other Digital Video Collection apps.

Apple announced Final Cut Pro HD, featuring realtime native DVCPRO HD editing in addition to realtime support for DV and SD. Coupled with the hot new Panasonic AJ-HD1200A DVCPRO HD VCR with its optional FireWire interface, this combination allows a new entry point for high-definition postproduction. It integrates with Motion, DVD Studio Pro 3, Shake 3.5 compositing and visual effects software, and the Logic Pro 6 music production application.

Thomson announced that it is integrating Apple Final Cut Pro into the Grass Valley Digital News Production product line to provide for postproduction-oriented feature stories while accessing GVG digital servers. BBC Technology, meanwhile, announced it would integrate Final Cut Pro HD into its Colledia production workflow solution.

Last but not least, Apple introduced Xsan, a 64-bit cluster SAN file system (MSRP of $999 per system, available in fall) — the perfect complement to Apple's Xserve and Xserve RAID hardware.

Avid Technology had another big show, with so many announcements that it is hard to cover briefly. HD was big, with HD capabilities announced for the end of the year on all Avid DNA products.

The company announced DNxHD, a new 10-bit and 8-bit HD mastering and encoding technology. Avid is making the source code licensable and free of charge through an Avid website download. Avid emphasized that this is a full-raster HD format, sampling every available pixel within the image. (Jokes about CEO Dave Krall being a “raster-farian” became common.) Avid was displaying uncompressed HD combined with DNxHD compressed video via a wipe and challenged people to identify, which was which. Many guessed wrong — Avid DNxHD is a very high-quality compression.

The advantages of this new compression technology include a significantly improved HD workflow (many more workstations can share HD on a Avid Unity), savings from needing less storage while working with SD storage, and the ability to edit HD on the low-cost Xpress Pro on a laptop (although Avid expects HDV to be a more common HD codec on Xpress Pro). Players for all operating systems will be available for free by compiling the source code, which means you will always be able to play back archived video. The prototype Ikegami camcorder using this solution is the first 10-bit HD camcorder without a tether.

Avid also announced that it will offer additional HD format support, including optional uncompressed HD capabilities for Media Composer Adrenaline and NewsCutter Adrenaline FX systems, and native HDV and native Panasonic DVCPRO HD for Avid Xpress Pro, NewsCutter XP, Media Composer Adrenaline, and NewsCutter Adrenaline FX systems.

The Avid DS Nitris version 7.5 will offer two levels of realtime and handle 2K/4K: realtime single playback of 2K from the actual RGB files and realtime multi-stream playback of HD proxies for both 2K and 4K with timecode tracking. The new version of DS Nitris also offers major improvements in color grading, matte creation, and enhancements to its Effects Tree compositing controls.

Media Composer Adrenaline 1.5 demonstrated major performance enhancements, support for both MXF and Windows Media 9 output, improved audio (including bi-directional MIDI control for Digidesign's new Command|8 control surface), FluidFilm, bundled Boris Continuum Complete AVX 3 plug-ins, and optional Avid Studio Tools (available Q3).

Avid Studio Tools includes three powerful content-creation applications: Avid 3D, a 3D animation and effects application; Avid FX, a compositing, effects, and titling software based on Boris Red; and Avid DVD by Sonic Solutions, a DVD-authoring application. Version 1.5 should be available by the time you read this.

Avid Xpress Studio is a content-creation suite that includes Xpress Pro NLE software, Avid Pro Tools LE audio production software, and the rest of the Studio Tools suite mentioned. Avid Xpress Studio comes in two packages: Avid Xpress Studio Essentials and Avid Xpress Studio Complete. Avid Xpress Studio Essentials combines the five software applications with the Digidesign Mbox audio hardware. Avid Xpress Studio Complete comes with the five software applications, Avid Mojo, and replaces the Digidesign Mbox hardware with Digi 002, which offers eight touch-sensitive “flying faders,” touch-sensitive knobs, and transport controls that interface with both the Xpress Pro and Pro Tools applications. The Digi 002 hardware may be the most exciting component of this new suite. An additional upgrade for HD capabilities will be available before the end of the year.

Discreet's big product announcement was its Lustre digital color-grading system, but there were several smaller announcements to be aware of. The Montreal-based company demonstrated its new low-cost Smoke 6 on an Intel-based IBM workstation running Linux (starting at $68,000 MSRP) and launched a Linux-based Flint 8.5 — also on the IBM IntelliStation Z Pro workstation (MSRP of $119,975 for turnkey system with special introductory offers of $99,975 and $109,975 for a Flint/Smoke combination). Although this version of Smoke is said to be SD-only, I believe the big limitation is the hardware, and that may be remedied in the foreseeable future.

Discreet also presented the tremendous power increase with the Irix-based Smoke 6 HD, due to both a hot new SGI Tezro four-processor visual workstation and new streamlined code. (See my “Some Smokin' New Versions” in the February 2004 issue of Video Systems or at videosystems.com.)

Discreet Combustion 3 was also promoted, featuring new editing capabilities, new custom brushes, and Macromedia Flash output. The product now includes RE:Flex, the free-form warper and morphing solution from RE:Vision Effects. Discreet announced support for Wes Plate's Automatic Duck software, allowing Combustion artists to load edited timelines from Avid or Final Cut Pro directly into the Combustion workspace.

Additionally, Leitch introduced its VelocityHD system at NAB. It is available as a turnkey product or as a software, boardset, manuals, and cable kit (MSRP for the kit starts at less than $10,000 without options). The operations methodology and graphic user interface are based upon the Velocity/VelocityQ software application, a non-“industry standard” interface. This may be a major concern for some, but it presents a powerful and professional operational workflow nevertheless.

VelocityHD features include the new Altitude hardware board, EyeCon View timeline interface tool, multi-camera editing, optional A3DX 3D DVE module (one channel of realtime HD 3D DVE or four channels of realtime SD 3D effects), and realtime primary color correction and realtime secondary color correction (with the A3DX option).

One of the big secrets at NAB may be Open Source Cinelerra software — free if you're a Linux fanatic or purchased from systems integrator Linux Media Arts, which supports the kits or integrated systems it sells. Too many walked by this booth without understanding how powerful this system really is. Cinelerra features MXF-wrapped media, true 24p editing (as well as all other ATSC formats), six-channel HDTV audio, unlimited audio and video tracks, extensive realtime audio and video effects and transitions, realtime titling, built-in test monitoring, and background render with an HD render farm support. The software is developed for the 64-bit AMD Opteron platform. Southern California-based Key Information Systems may soon offer a turnkey solution of Cinelerra on an Ensantra HD Media Network.

Nucoda introduced Film Master version 2, which it claims is the “world's first complete resolution-independent end-to-end film finishing solution.” This becomes the newest edition to its family of Postcode solutions for film and video. Its Data Conform 4K and 2K conforming solution and its Data Play HD media player were also displayed.

Film Master includes editing with realtime 2K playback, RGBA compositing, effects (including 3D color-cube technology, pan and scan, and a powerful tracking module), unlimited layer-based color correction (with secondary color correction utilizing a user-defined keyer), paint and touch-up (dust-busting/dirt removal), and mastering toolsets, enabling last-minute tweaking in a fully interactive environment. It includes the entire Data Conform toolset. Conforming can be done via both EDLs and Keycode cutlists. Then editors can process and export final sequences to film recorders at any resolution up to 6K and deliver multiple formats to any device via LAN, SAN, or single- and dual-link HD-SDI.

Nucoda's Data Conform enables users to conform image data files at any resolution and from any location. Once conformed, a Virtual Film Out can be created to pre-visualize the sequence, providing tremendous cost savings over traditional film-out costs.

Pinnacle Systems introduced Pinnacle Liquid HD to its Liquid family, offering an affordable entry to realtime multi-stream HD editing and effects. Pinnacle Liquid Edition with native HDV format support will be only $699 MSRP. The Pinnacle Liquid HD software upgrade will be only $199 MSRP for all standalone and workgroup Pinnacle Liquid Edition 5.5 customers — only those new and existing Pinnacle Liquid family customers looking for HD-SDI I/O, support for Pinnacle's HD Elite editing or HD workgroup will need additional hardware.

Pinnacle intends to offer users of Pinnacle Liquid systems the “best of all HD worlds” through options to work with the bandwidth-efficient HDV format, premium-quality/low-bandwidth Pinnacle HD Elite, or the full quality of uncompressed HD SDI — all on standard PC workstations. Pinnacle Systems has been a leader in long-GOP MPEG development, and HD Elite is a long-GOP MPEG HD compression solution with a flexible scaleable bit rate. Pinnacle expects that 50Mbps will offer a sweet spot, balancing quality and storage/bandwidth requirements.

Pinnacle's Liquid Editing for Workgroups is a complete, low-cost networked editing solution for SD (and soon HD) video utilizing Pinnacle's Palladium Store 100 RAID-Protected Solution. Starting at just $49,995 MSRP for standard definition, the system includes 2TB of usable storage (enough for 140 hours at DV/HDV-quality video or 70 hours of Pinnacle HD Elite video), ultra-secure RAID 10 mirroring, the Pinnacle Liquid Project Server collaboration application, Gigabit Ethernet switches, and Pinnacle's exclusive Media Access Server.

Pinnacle also introduced CinéWave 4.6, delivering full support for multi-stream realtime effects with simultaneous HD and SD video out for Panasonic's DVCPRO HD (DV100) format. CinéWave 4.6 can transcode popular formats and frame rates in realtime (e.g. 1080/24psF to 720/24p) and supports all frame rates with Panasonic's Varicam progressive-scan variable frame rate HD camcorder.

While it felt like much of the news in the Quantel booth was focused on broadcast solutions with sQserver, the new QEdit news/sports NLE, and compatibility with both Panasonic's P2 and Sony's XDCAM acquisition formats, there was quite a bit happening with its postproduction solutions as well.

Quantel's eQ editing/effects/grading/mastering system now has a new HD-RGB option coinciding with a move toward Sony HDCAM-SR's mildly compressed 4:4:4 HD-RGB signal data.GenerationQ 2.0 software now offers significantly improved compositing with a multi-view compositor. With version 2, there are now more than 600 plug-ins embedded in the architecture and available in the compositor. Highly requested custom transitions are now available. The ability to import and export native Windows Media 9 series files (including HD) is now supported. Finally, version 2 gets dramatically more horsepower out of the existing Quantel hardware.

The Quantel iQ digital intermediate system will soon have the Kodak Display Manager software available. This application takes advantage of Quantel's resident 3D color cube in iQ to enable realtime monitor output to faithfully reproduce the projected film print look for a variety of different Kodak film stocks. It was also announced that iQ will support Arri's 3D LUT (look-up table) technology as an optional integrated component. The Arri LUTs offer directors and DPs confidence that what they see in front of them on the monitor will be what is projected when the material is transferred to film stock.

While Sony's XDCAM may have caused the most buzz, Sony's booth theme was “Riding the HD Wave,” and for postproduction solutions this included the introduction of Sony Vegas with proposed 1080i HDV support and XPRI.

Vegas+DVD Production Suite included Vegas 5, DVD Architect 2, and Dolby Digital AC-3 Encoder software. Sony Vegas 5 software now offers realtime scaleable production for SD, HD, HDV and other formats across unlimited tracks, plus an extensive upgrade to the audio subsystem.

Sony's XPRI 7.0 featured tremendous performance improvements, a powerful new interface, realtime high-definition and standard-definition primary and secondary color correction (with color matching, limiters, HSL control, and RGB curves), nine source-window multi-camera editing, up to 100 SD and HD realtime effects, CineAlta, HDCAM, and XDCAM support, XPRI Net shared storage, and the “Virtual TD,” an interface with compatible Sony production switchers that allows live switches to be exported and saved as a live cut on an XPRI timeline.
— Bob Turner

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.