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Millimeter Vanguard Awards 2007

Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer

Our editors honor the best products of the year.

Sony PMW-EX1 and SxS flash-memory card

For the first time, Sony has affixed a CineAlta badge to a handheld camcorder, as the company enters the arena of solid-state recording with the PMW-EX1. The camera records 25Mbps and 35Mbps high-definition MPEG-2 video (in an MP4 wrapper) to SxS cards, co-developed with SanDisk, that use the familiar ExpressCard/34 standard. That's the slot found on new MacBook Pro and PC laptops. The 4lb., 13oz. PMW-EX1 has three full-raster 1920×18080 1/2in. CMOS chips, a built-in 14X Fujinon zoom lens, two SxS card slots, HD-SDI outputs, and a 921,600-pixel LCD screen that does 2X magnification for true 1:1 pixel matching. “With XDCAM EX,” says Vanguards judge D. W. Leitner, “Sony is staking the argument that palm-held HD camcorders, no longer second-class citizens, merit professional specs — including larger, full-count HD sensors made possible by adoption of cooler, power-efficient CMOS technology.”

Sony BVM-L230

Reference monitors represent CRT technology's last, bulky stand, as every studio knows. You simply can't judge color accurately on a flatpanel. Well, at NAB, Sony seems to have finally upended that piece of conventional wisdom with the introduction of its BVM-L230. The LCD reference monitor is a 22.5in., 1920×1200 screen for 2K, 1080p60, and SD formats. It has an LED backlight that supports a wider color gamut and a 10-bit driver, and it incorporates Sony's new TriMaster technologies, which include a new wide-color-gamut panel, high grayscale gradation (1,024 levels), and color calibration. But how does it look? “Floor comparisons at NAB between a BVM-L230 and BVM-A series HD CRT confirmed that onscreen results were functionally equivalent,” says Vanguards judge D. W. Leitner.

Panasonic PT-DW10000

The 10,000-lumen Panasonic PT-DW10000 projector is about as good as it gets before you make the substantial leap to 4K projection. The three-chip DLP model features 5000:1 contrast, 120VAC operation (unique among projectors at this brightness level), 10-bit processing, and a robotic filter cleaning system that, Panasonic claims, enables about 2,000 hours of use without filter maintenance. The relatively small (71lbs.) DW10000 even accepts an optional HD/SD-SDI input board. “Outstanding image, exemplary layout of controls and inputs, lightweight and compact, 120V,” says Vanguards judge D. W. Leitner. “What more could you ask for in a full 1920×1080 theater projector?”

Ciprico MediaVault 5100 series

Ciprico has been a leader in providing high-end video storage for some time now, but with its first-out-the-door implementation of the new direct-connect PCIe bus architecture standard, the company has come up with a real winner. “Ciprico's MediaVault 5100 series storage array harvests the enormous bandwidth and low-latency benefits of your computer's PCIe bus, stepping around the protocol conversion overhead of Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, and Ethernet cards,” says Vanguards judge Dan Ochiva. This adds up to a raw line speed of 20Gbps, far beyond that of pricier 4Gbps Fibre Channel setups. Although the standard arrays have either eight or 16 drives, there's support for controller-level spanning of several MV5100 series boxes to create single arrays of up to 32 disk drives.

Panavision 2-perf camera

Panavision demonstrates its confidence in the future of film by building new lightweight 35mm Millennium XL2 Panaflex camera bodies, but it also refurbishes and updates older camera systems with the latest electronics. Out of this practice has come the new Panavision 2-perf camera, basically a 20-year-old Platinum body with a new 2-perf pulldown. Magazines double their running times, cameras are quieter, film stock costs are halved, and what you get is native 2.40 widescreen without the hassles and inefficiencies of anamorphic lenses. Using fast spherical lenses, tight-grained stocks such as Kodak's Vision2 5218 (or the just-announced Vision3), and today's DI process for creating anamorphic-squeezed negatives, a new era of low-budget widescreen filmmaking is poised to take off. “Panavision's 2-perf model represents a major step forward in efficiency and economy,” says Vanguards judge Barry Braverman, “offering filmmakers the option now of shooting 35mm at roughly the price of 16mm.”

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium

Premiere Pro has definitely earned a second look. Especially considering the level of firepower that now surrounds it in Adobe's recent CS3 release of the Production Premium suite. (And, of course, for Apple editors, Premiere Pro is now once again available for the Mac.) There are new versions of After Effects, Encore, Flash, and a new basic audio editor (Soundbooth) that focuses on audio-for-video tasks. Integration among the various parts of the suite gets a boost with improved Dynamic Link technology. This means users can work on a Premiere project in After Effects and see the changes reflected in the Premiere Pro timeline, no rendering necessary. Flash is becoming an essential part of web deployment, and the new version of the former Macromedia program can now import Photoshop layers directly. “If you need to do a mix of design, animation, and editing, this might be the suite for you,” says Vanguards judge Dan Ochiva.

Panavision G Series

These compact, lightweight anamorphic prime lenses are designed for the first time to meet the needs of handheld and Steadicam work. There are six primes in the series — 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 60mm, 75mm, and 100mm, all T2.6 with close focus less than 3ft. According to the company, the G-series primes are comparable to Panavision E-series anamorphic primes in performance and size, but their lightweight, compact format is similar to Panavision C-series primes. Panavision has also recently released two lightweight anamorphic zooms. The first zoom, the wide-angle AWZ2 — 40mm to 80mm, T3.5 — was introduced in 2006 and is now joined by the new telephoto ATZ — 70mm to 200mm, T3.5. Panavision says these are the first modern zoom lenses with an anamorphic element in the front.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.