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MillimeterNAB 2006
Jun 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By S. D. Katz, D. W. Leitner, Dan Ochiva, and Jan Ozer
Bitcasting Arrives
Editor Cynthia Wisehart—shown here in discussion with (left to right) Jim Cook, VP creative, Clearchannel; Tim O’Hare, senior flash developer, Scripps Networks; and Jim Guerard, vice president of web and video, Adobe Systems—moderated a Super Session on Tuesday, April 25, called “Earthquake Insurance—Are You Ready for the Tectonic Shift in New Media?” Photo by Mark Forman
Forays in Editing
By Jan Ozer
When cruising the NAB halls in Las Vegas, you're in the belly of the beast of the editing world, and it's hard to stop by a booth without running into a newsworthy announcement or demonstration.
As always, Avid saved its news for the show and made significant announcements throughout its product line. At the high end, Avid announced Interplay, a server-based workflow engine with asset management, workflow automation, and security. Although Avid claims that it's making the system as open as possible — including the ability to plug users of Apple's Final Cut Pro into its new storage network — we'll have to see which facilities want to implement Avid's infrastructure to handle the soup to nuts of post. The product costs $18,000 for a five-seat system, and is scheduled to be available in Q3 2006.
Technically, the software sits atop the Avid Unity network, checking assets in and out and providing revision tracking and conflict management. Optional tools provide logging and annotation functions that enable facilities to ingest and organize large amounts of incoming assets. The system tracks up to 100 file types, including still images, Excel spreadsheets, and multiple video formats, and it can automatically transcode video for different uses, from low-resolution proxies for desktop viewing to best available for editing.
Avid expanded its price point offerings, and debuted software-only versions of Media Composer software ($4,995); running in both Mac and Windows platforms, it is capable of HD editing. Both programs leverage multi-core CPUs and GPUs to provide full-screen DVI output of SD and HD, and they are compatible with the new Mojo SDI Digital Nonlinear Accelerator ($2,495), which, as the name suggests, adds an SDI interface to Avid's popular capture/preview device with FireWire connectivity for DV, HDV, and DVCPRO HD projects.
At the low end, Avid also announced Avid Xpress Pro 5.5, which delivers feature parity to both Mac and Windows-based systems, including HDV support.
Also mum before the show, Apple's flashiest announcement was its 17in. MacBook Pro notebook, which features a 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 1GB of SDRAM, a 120GB serial ATA hard drive, and 8X SuperDrive in an elegant 1in.-thick aluminum enclosure that weighs just 6.8lbs. As with most Apple hardware, the beauty wasn't just skin deep; with ATI PCI Express-based graphics with 256MB GDDR3 memory, a DVI-out port, and both FireWire 400 and 800 ports, the unit is ready for serious on-location editing and authoring. Paired with Apple's dual Mac/Windows Boot Camp software, it marks a significant introduction for editors and graphics artists alike. Initial test reviews rate the machine highly, in some cases, beating comparable Windows machines, even when running in Windows mode.
Less showy, but probably more important, was the announcement of Final Cut Studio version 5.1, a universal version that runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes. Significantly, version 5.1 also includes 24P support for the Sony XDCAM HD and JVC's GY-HD100 cameras, as well as 24F support for the Canon XL-H1 HDV camcorder, filling a critical feature gap in previous versions. Apple also announced that more than 500,000 editors were using Final Cut Pro, most of which, it seemed, thronged into the company's huge — and always packed — training theaters.
Located in a trailer across from the convention center, Assimilate and partners Creative Bridge, S.two, and Plus 8 demonstrated a portable, all-digital film production workflow based on Assimilate's Scratch digital intermediate solution. The system ingested and calibrated uncompressed 1920×1080 video from Viper and other high-resolution digital cameras with realtime editing, color grading, audio, visual effects, and final mastering in Scratch. Great stuff from a company determined to rule the lower price points of the DI post market.
Under the theme “Creating the Whole Picture,” Autodesk showed its complete line of content creation programs, with several updates including Toxik 2007, the collaborative compositing software; Discreet Inferno running on Linux; and 10-bit RGB versions of Discreet Flint and Smoke. Per a statement at the show, Autodesk also committed to the continued development of 3ds Max and the recently acquired Maya, with assurances that both products will continue with its pre-acquisition development roadmaps. Whether that holds for five years down the road or not, at least each product's users can now breathe freely.
Da Vinci Systems unveiled Splice, which provides a nonlinear workflow for Da Vinci's 2K and 2K Plus color enhancement systems. The new product incorporates technologies from the company's Resolve DI mastering suite to provide realtime sizing and rotation. Colorists can also conform, transform, grade, arrange, and deliver images in any order, all in realtime.
Quantel announced that both its Pablo and iQ digital intermediate systems will deliver realtime true-4K resolution playback with realtime pan and scan. Both systems reportedly read continuous 1.15GBs of data per second and are powered by Quantel's TimeMagic realtime display technology. Quantel also announced the eQ FX, an “all-in” configuration for HD and multi-resolution postproduction at a “highly competitive price,” which they did not quantify with a dollar figure.
Harris Corp. demonstrated Leitch's VelocityX software-only, non-linear editor, which shares the same interface as the hardware-based VelocityQ and VelocityHD. The company reported that project files will be compatible between all three systems, so editors can start projects on the software system, which is scheduled for release sometime in 2006, and migrate the projects to either or both of the hardware platforms. Harris also showed VelocityHD version 9.1, with HDV support.
Thomson/Grass Valley/Canopus announced Edius Pro version 4.0, which features multicam support, nested sequence editing, and keyframe support for color correction. The program also features realtime, mixed format SD/HD editing on the same timeline, and supports HD, HDV, and uncompressed SD video. Also new is Edius Broadcast, which includes Edius Pro and support for Panasonic DVCPRO P2, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD, Panasonic Varicam, and Sony XDCAM.
On the storage front, 1 Beyond exhibited the new IntelliRAID FC-XPR, an enterprise-level storage system with 16 SATA2 drives with RAID 6 protection and dual four Gigabit Fibre channel connections. With a dual-PCIe bus, new processor, and parallel processing RAID 6 accelerator, the FC-XPR reportedly achieves more than 600MBps operating standalone, or more than 1GBps aggregate in a SAN configuration.
In addition, EditShare announced EditShare version 4.0, which includes support for uncompressed HD over 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and a new architecture that can scale to more than 200TB. The new system supports Mac and Windows computers, as well as legacy Avid systems including Symphony, Meridian-based Media Composers, and DS Nitris.
Maximum Throughput showed its new Sledgehammer Dual Stream digital disk recorder, which can read and write dual streams of uncompressed HD, for example, allowing it to supply source footage for grading while simultaneously acting as a destination VTR. The company also showed MAXcluster, a clustered storage solution for multiple Sledgehammer systems.
Exavio exhibited its ExaMax 9000 I/O accelerator, supporting uncompressed HD workflow for Power Macs, running via Xsan, and a multi-stream PC-based 2K DI workflow running off an accelerated storage area network (SAN). The ExaMax 9000 provides a dynamic cache, and is scalable up to 1TB and optimized with proprietary storage algorithms, which improves the performance of existing SANs.
