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For more NAB coverage, see "NAB 2004: Ready for Change?" from the March issue of Millimeter.

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Millimeter's Pick Hit Judges

With an upbeat NAB 2004 now behind them, our judges faced a daunting task: choosing Millimeter's 15 Pick Hit winners for 2004. That's tough enough in an average year, but the 2004 show floor turned up an abundance of new HD NLEs, SANs, and DI gear.

Our judges prevailed, however. They winnowed the list of deserving gear and software down to these 15 best of show winners, in alphabetical order. So read on for our judges picks and comments.

1 Beyond | Harmony Shared SAN

Over the past few years, 1 Beyond gained a rep for high-performance desktops and laptops that priced competitively with more standard offerings. At the show, the Somerville, Mass.-based company debuted a number of new workstations and systems. Among all the gear, the 1 Beyond Harmony SAN made the most impressive debut. Claimed as the industry's first shared, uncompressed HD SAN and render farm for graphics and animation, the Harmony SAN also comes in at a system price that makes top technology accessible.

"I think the ability to have up to 32 concurrent users of 10-bit uncompressed HD is very important and very high-performance," says Bob Turner. "The ability to demonstrate it on the floor of NAB with 400ft. separating client and server was another important breakthrough that I saw no one else demonstrating. That is pretty powerful real-world stuff that is hard to fudge with smoke and mirrors." www.1beyond.com

AccuScene | HD Color Viewfinder

Color viewfinders only recently started turning up on pro cameras and camcorders. While consumer camcorders have come standard with color viewfinders for years, camera manufacturers insisted that only black and white yielded the resolution to properly adjust focus.

All that changed when AccuScene became one of only two companies to offer an HD color viewfinder. The Scotland-based company's model features a bright 2in. diameter screen; created via the latest LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology, the viewfinder has 24-bit color at 1280x720 pixel resolution.

D.W. Leitner, a director/cinematographer who has long campaigned for color finders on pro cameras, says "[AccuScene is] a low-power LCoS imager with terrific contrast and no apparent pixels—same technology as JVC's D-ILA. It sets the bar high for 21st century electronic viewing." www.accuscene.com

Apple | Final Cut Pro HD

Apple made big news at the show when it announced that Final Cut Pro could now handle HD—and that via a single FireWire I/O no less. Working with Panasonic—whose DVCPRO HD codec enables all of this—the software also supports HD-SDI capture over PCI.

Final Cut Pro HD foretells a radical change for high-definition postproduction. "Apple has really thrown down the gauntlet with Final Cut Pro, and the HD version just shows how serious they are about it," says Tony Fischer. Announcing the technology at a major broadcasting trade show is "a gutsy move by Panasonic and a triumph of Apple's OS X and G5 architectures,"says D.W. Leitner. And while there were several other compressed HD solutions at NAB, "FCP HD kept to [Apple's] 'high end for the rest of us' philosophy that has characterized their spectacular comeback in the film and video industry," says S.D. Katz. www.apple.com

Discreet | Lustre 2

For over a decade, Discreet's products have been key in creating looks for top commercials and feature films. But with the growing move to DI, the Montreal-based company lacked a robust color grading solution. Discreet addressed that by collaborating with Colorfront, a Hungarian company with extensive experience developing photochemical and digital film grading technologies.

The result? Lustre, the first high-end Discreet app that runs on a PC. Now in version 2.0, the turnkey system enables realtime 2K primary color correction and grading. The future looks bright too, with the coming release of advanced color correction tools based on a new, flexible image processing pipeline with multiple shapes per secondary and inside/outside color correction.

"They are really coming far with this product," says Tammy Kimbler Weber. "It's hard to conceive of the linear telecine world lasting a long time after this." www.discreet.com

eCinema Systems | EDP100

Sometimes, a DP just needs to see every pixel of an HD image. Previously, that meant lugging along a heavy, bulky, and expensive CRT display. Meanwhile, Apple's sleek, lightweight, and low-cost Cinema HD Display offers 1920x1200 pixel resolution, making it ideal for HD. But as it is, the display won't show HD-SDI output or support 24fps.

Up until now, that is. Martin Euredjian, principal behind eCinema Systems, solves this conundrum with his EDP100 monitor interface. The device's image-processing engine converts a single-link HD-SDI signal into a single-link DVI stream, while its processing engine offers great flexibility in signal handling including user-programmable look-up tables (LUTs) for colorimetry control.

"Transforms Apple's Cinema Display into a low-cost, light-weight, way cool, professional HD monitor," says D.W. Leitner. "Especially since it offers direct one-to-one pixel mapping of HD-SDI to DVI and sophisticated look-up tables for color management. A godsend to location work, where big HD monitors are impractical." www.ecinemasys.com

ERG Ventures | HDM-EV HD LCD monitors

A field monitor might seem a pretty humble product for an awards list, but procuring a quality one for HD production hasn't been easy. That's why ERG Ventures' HDM-EV HD LCD monitor series garners a spot on our list.

Unveiled at this year's show, the 8.4in. HDM-EV80D joins with the company's other portable HD monitor, the 6in. HDM-EV30D. Features include enhanced color and gamma adjustment functions, additional framing markers, and a memory preset function. Tom Campbell likes the ERG monitors for their sharpness. "It's simply the sharpest monitor I can take in the field, and that's crucial for underwater shooting," says Campbell, who specializes in capturing marine wildlife in HD for National Geographic and the History Channel, among others. "The [colorimetry] in the new EV30D is spot-on too—it's simply state-of-the-art in its accuracy. These are rugged, reliable, simple-to-use monitors that I couldn't imagine doing without." www.erg-ventures.com.

GridIron | X-Factor

Until recently, grid computing turned up only in universities and R&D labs. The concept is pretty straightforward: a software program divides and distributes the work ordinarily performed on a single computer among several computers joined together in a network.

For the first time, GridIron's X-Factor brings grid-computing technology to post, specifically Adobe After Effects 6.5. The software greatly speeds up preview processing and rendering.

"This product will change the way boutique visual effects and motion graphic studios work," says S.D. Katz. "After Effects was never the type of product you put in a compositing suite with clients. GridIron changes all of this, since it allows RAM previews in AE to take advantage of all available processors in a studio. Performance gains are linear: Twenty processors speed renders and previews 20X. That's getting into [Discreet] Inferno territory at a fraction of the price." www.gridironsoftware.com

Kodak | Look Manager and Display Manager Systems Some thought Kodak might not make the leap from its previous existence as king-of-analog-imaging to find a place in the non-stop competitiveness of the digital world. While the full extent of that move will take years to play out, the Rochester, N.Y.-based company produced significant tools to manage that change with its software-based Look Manager and Display Manager Systems.

Look Manager enables cinematographers to create, pre-visualize, communicate, and manage every aspect of a film's look from preproduction through postproduction. Display Manager, meanwhile, makes sure every monitor along the post path shows colors correctly.

"A precision tool to calibrate monitors, with software to match the look of film," says D.W. Leitner. "Previsualization of popular Kodak film stocks, exposure levels, processing techniques, lens filters, and new 'looks' available in DI. For secure DPs only?" www.kodak.com

Maximum Throughput | Sledgehammer HD!O

The need for large amounts of fast storage doesn't seem to have an end. As the industry contemplates a wholesale move to HD, that need will grow even more critical. That's why Maximum Throughput's (Max-T) Sledgehammer system matters. The multi-protocol Sledgehammer HD!O NAS file server delivers both data and video fast. How fast? The Montreal-based company claims Sledgehammer as the world's speediest NAS device.

The magic that lies behind Max-T's products is the technology's virtual nature—it exists as firmware, unlike competing high-speed NAS systems that employ custom silicon. A software upgrade enables users to quickly move to new technology, such as 10Gb Ethernet.

"I liked what I saw of Sledgehammer's approach," says Dave Waller. "It's basically a big server that can be configured with different kinds of hardware, and then special software that enables a lot of different devices to get in and out of the system at the same time. It looked pretty easy to manage data properly." www.max-t.com

MTI Film | Control Dailies

Long known for its film restoration systems, over the past 18 months MTI Film began moving toward a broader line of DI products built around its datacentric Cortex Architecture. Now part of each product, Cortex integrates such basic post functions as telecine control and VTR emulation along with metadata handling.

That integrated management capability is key for MTI's Control Dailies product. By creating an ordered structure to handle all aspects of film dailies, the system increases postproduction throughput. PC-based and frame-accurate, Control Dailies creates a telecine and audio control environment that accelerates synching picture and audio in all SD, HD, and data resolutions during the transfer of dailies.

Control Dailies works its magic by integrating computer workstations and logging software, along with Fibre Channel-based switched storage. The payoff? Faster than realtime film transfer, automated audio ingest, and easier post synchronization. www.mtifilm.com

Nucoda | Film Master

Nucoda provides a range of realtime, resolution-independent tools for DI. With Film Master, the London-based company seeks to bring workflow efficiency to a sometimes complex series of post processes, such as conforming from EDL or AAF, creating primary and secondary color grading functions in realtime on 2K, 10-bit log files, removing defects, and even a bit of basic editing.

This isn't just another wannabe product. For example, Film Master incorporates the highly regarded Truelight color management technology from FilmLight, one of the leading designers of DI gear.

"Its realtime color correction capabilities really speed up the finishing process," says Preston Kuntz. "Clients love being able to see things immediately, like a realtime 2K pan-and-scan or a realtime flop shot. When you stop and think that all this is all happening on a PC, it's very impressive stuff." www.nucoda.com

Nvidia | Gelato

Nvidia's Gelato is the brainchild of senior software architect Dr. Larry Gritz, which, according to contributing editor S.D. Katz, gives this version 1.0 renderer a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, if one exists for such important production technology. Gritz, once a senior scientist at Pixar and the creator of the Blue Moon Render Tools, leads a team that poured years of practical knowledge into Gelato, the first hardware-accelerated renderer for Linux and Windows XP.

Described as a "no compromise" renderer, the long list of features includes raytracing, global illumination, and of course, acceleration on Nvidia hardware, which yields a very cost-effective render farm solution. "This is a product that will be taken very seriously within the visual effects industry," says S.D. Katz. www.nvidia.com

Panasonic | AJ-HD1200A

It's Panasonic's DV-HD codec that enabled Apple to proudly introduce Final Cut Pro HD at the show. But it just might be Panasonic's AJ-HD1200A production HD VTR that really enables HD on the desktop. With a price that makes it the lowest-cost HD VTR by far, the deck is the first and only production-quality high-definition video player/recorder with a FireWire interface.

"A stunner," says D.W. Leitner. "All DV tape formats including HD, portable size for field or studio, built-in FireWire, modest $21K price tag."

"I like to own my own equipment," says Matt Skurow. "To go out and buy a Sony HD [VTR] is out of my range, but this new Panasonic deck is only [$21,000], so that puts HD in my hands, in my studio, on my desktop." www.panasonic.com/business

QuVIS | Digital Mastering Codec

The release of the QuVIS Digital Mastering Codec (QDMC) ASIC looks revolutionary. It demonstrates just how quickly technological advances could obviate problems that now hound HDTV and digital cinema implementation.

This motion-imaging codec comes out of the small Topeka, Kan.-based QuVIS, rather than the R&D labs of a billion-dollar multinational.

The QuVIS algorithm lies at the core of the company's postproduction servers and digital cinema playout devices. But until now, the codec existed only in firmware. With the first ASICs delivering just prior to NAB, the power of the QuVIS approach is now coming to bear on 2K and higher res production. For example, the Acuity player—introduced at the show—supports full 4K image files. The Cinema Player 2K and Cinema Player 4K—also introduced—are the first DDRs to playback 2K and 4K content in addition to today's D-Cinema and HD formats. www.quvis.com

Zaxcom | Stereoline

Described as the very first digital wireless microphone system, Zaxcom's Stereoline receiver is blessedly simple to use. Since it includes two channels, a single Stereoline system takes the place of two separate transmitters and receivers. Don't worry about mic-on-body noise—Zaxcom offers clothing noise reduction software.

"This has two channels built into one unit, and it's very lightweight, which reduces the weight greatly in having to deliver a two-channel camera link," says Tom Piozet. "And since it's purely digital, it sends just data—it's not hybrid like a lot of other systems. Fully digital with two channels of sound is a very good idea." www.zaxcom.com

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Millimeter’s Pick Hits Judges

Tom Campbell, Tom Campbell’s Film/Video Production, Santa Barbara, Calif.
Tony Fischer, owner/executive producer, Fischer Edit, Minneapolis
S.D. Katz, producer/director, Millimeter contributing editor, N.Y.
Tammy Kimbler Weber, managing producer, Hi-Wire, Minneapolis
Preston Kuntz, CEO, Karma Bank, Hollywood, Calif.
D.W. Leitner, producer/director, cinematographer, Millimeter contributing editor, N.Y.
Tom Piozet, DP, Home Planet Productions, Santa Barbara, Calif.
Matt Skurow, Skurow Enterprises, Las Vegas
Dave Waller, founder, Brickyard VFX/Boston, Discreet Flame artist, Boston

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.