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MillimeterMark In
Jun 1, 2007 12:00 PM
This year's NAB show saw the debut of innovative design-it-yourself camera systems, including the Silicon Imaging SI-2K HD camera, which allows you to unhook the camera head and place it in a more advantageous position.
NAB's New Tune: DIY, Open Systems
By Dan Ochiva
Will this past NAB be remembered as a watershed for do-it-yourself innovation and the opening of closed product lines?
That's how things are shaping up. The big news at the show was hard to miss if you could get anywhere near Red Digital Cinema's jammed booth. The Red One digital cinema camera system shows just how far the new “if it doesn't exist, create it” ethos can take you. In just a couple of years, Oakley sunglass entrepreneur and camera manufacturer Jim Jannard is on the verge of turning out a 4K camera system that looks to be competitive with products from established multinational corporations.
Design-it-yourself camera systems were, in fact, one of the top draws at the show. Silicon Imaging, out of the small town of Troy, N.Y., delivered the finished version of its innovative SI-2K HD camera, which, among other chops, allows you to unhook the camera head and place it in a more advantageous position.
Another small manufacturer, Vision Research, out of Wayne, N.J., debuted its Phantom 65 at the show, which is described as “the world's first 65mm digital cinema camera.” Already available for rental, the 12lb. camera offers 10-megapixel resolution at speeds of up to 125fps.
Need to store all that rich data? You could buy the Sony SRW-5000 HDCAM/SR VTR, which offers full 4:4:4 bandwidth for $88,000 list. Or you could turn to another neophyte manufacturer, Wafian, which introduced new direct-to-disk recorders at the show. The 10-bit 4:4:4 Wafian HR-2 recorder is priced at $25,000, and it can record in QuickTime or Windows Media, allowing you to begin working immediately.
Overall, the move toward opening up formerly closed systems became a clarion call at the show — and not just for upstarts. Avid says it will soon release a software development kit (SDK) that will allow manufacturers to incorporate its DN×HD codec directly into their products. Graham Sharp, vice president and general manager of Avid's video division, says customers wanted the freedom to be able to use the efficient compression algorithm in conjunction with applications, products, and operating systems they prefer most.
Avid also touted 27 hardware and software partners in its interoperability booth, as well as the latest collaborative production developments of its Open Storage Initiative (OSI), which makes it possible to run practically any third-party Mac OS X or Windows XP content creation tool on Avid Unity storage systems.
Kulabyte, which introduced its first video encoding products at NAB, also proclaims the benefits of openness. With a partnership agreement with AMD, Kulabyte sees a time when readily available processing power will take over pricey specialized hardware. “We are entering the second generation of digital video encoding, and today's producers require fast, interoperable, efficient solutions for encoding that run on any codec, hardware, and network,” says Chris Gottschalk, president and chief technology officer for Kulabyte.
As our industry becomes democratized and affordable tools empower a broad range of content creators, will those tools inevitably come from a widening circle of manufacturers?
Digital Content Producer's The Briefing Room
615 Music Announces Latest Custom Division Projects
615 Music—one of America's preeminent production music companies and provider of original/custom, library, and production music for television networks and programs, feature films, radio, commercials, on-air promos, interactive applications, and multimedia clients—has announced the latest projects from its Custom Division. 615 Music President and CEO Randy Wachtler made the announcement. …
BBC Motion Gallery Forms Strategic Alliance with Peachpit
BBC Motion Gallery (BBCMG), the footage-licensing arm of BBC Worldwide, is aligning with educational publisher Peachpit to deliver added value to customers of both organizations. The two companies have formalized their relationship to give Peachpit customers and authors special pricing on BBC Motion Gallery content and BBCMG users discounted rates on Peachpit'svast resource of training materials covering creative production and post. …
Stage 3 Media Hits World Record with Sanctuary
Stage 3 Media, an independent production company specializing in new media entertainment, announced Guinness World Records' recognition of its web-based science fiction series "Sanctuary" as the "Highest Budget for a Direct-to-web Broadcast." Full production and visual effects design cost for eight "Sanctuary" webisodes, averaging 15 minutes in length, were completed by Stage 3 Media for $4.5 million. …
What hardware does the Hayden Planetarium use to create realtime visuals for its Cosmic Collisions space show?
Nvidia Quadro
To create the scientific simulations and visualization in the Cosmic Collisions space show at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York, the planetarium's creative team relied on Nvidia Quadro solutions with G-Sync option boards. Using a multichannel projection system, the planetarium is able to play seven prerendered and synchronized films that cover the theater's 100ft.-diameter dome to create a single seamless image. To create the film, the team had to weave data from various simulation and visualization processes. First, the staff viewed the rendered content in realtime without compres-sion, allowing them to look at "digital dailies" in an artifact-free state, speeding up content decisions. Overall, the Nvidia-based system has revitalized the planetarium experience while providing a smaller technical footprint at a lower cost with a lower heat and power load, according to the museum.
On reel-exchange.com
Brad Burrow, Real Media, Lenexa, Kan.
Real Media is a full-service production company specializing in motion graphics, 3D animation, and visual effects. The company also has extensive experience in all forms of media delivery, including HD, SD, DVD, web, and Flash.
Real Media's client roster includes Sprint, Tim Hortons, USA Football, and
Kansas City Chiefs.
Check out Real Media's demo reel and full profile at reel-exchange.com/members/73ae26ab/profile.
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Skillset
Lighting for Video Film Style
July 13-15
Wilkes-Barre, Penn.
$425
www.videolightingclass.com/lighting.html
This weekend production lighting class—designed for video, HD, and DV professionals—will help you light the way it's done on A&E documentaries, national TV commercials, or feature films. Students will get hands-on experience with a number of lighting applications ranging from one-person interviews to feature film scenes, and they will also learn a number of cine-style camera-operating techniques that can apply when shooting DV and HD cameras.
DV Cinematography
July 14
New York
$280
www.dctvny.org
Designed for videographers with at least three months of experience with the Panasonic DVX100 or equivalent 3CCD camera, this hands-on workshop takes students through advanced camera and lighting techniques. Topics include manual image control, camera movement, calibrating an NTSC monitor, and using both natural and artificial light to make professional images with the DVX100. Downtown Community Television (DCTV) members receive a $30 discount.
Media Resources
Whitepapers
Centralized Management Software: Best Practices to Control Your Data Center, Avocent
www.avocent.com/web/en.nsf/
content/whitepapers
Solutions for centralized management of multiple servers and network devices.
Books
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 A-Z
By Philip Andrews, Focal Press
Ready-reference tool for digital camera manipulation with insider tips, workarounds, and resources are also available on a companion website
(www.elementsa-z.com).
High Definition Postproduction: Editing and Delivering HD Video
By Steven Browne
Real-world guide to HD post-production, with information on HDV and answers to common questions about HD.
