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Vanguard Awards 2006

Dec 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer

HD workflow dominates this year’s lineup.

Sidebar
2006 Vanguard Awards Judges

As high-definition video pushes into the mainstream of professional production, our annual Vanguard Awards reflect its progress. Last year, the Vanguards celebrated innovations in affordable, professional capture of compressed HD, which we acknowledged in the form of four awards for HDV camcorders — plus one for the Panasonic AG-HVX200. Of course, cameras are but one piece of the 1920×1080 (or 1280×720) puzzle. This year's awards celebrate answers to the question, “Now what?”

Now that major manufacturers have offered up practical ways to capture HD content to tape, disc, and solid-state media, how do you display it in the edit suite and beyond? How do you process it efficiently? And, as bit-hungry as it is, how do you store high-definition video without breaking the bank?

This year, Digital Content Producer's judges gave Vanguard Awards to products that offer compelling answers to those questions. But even with the focus on post-acquisition workflow, our judges could not ignore a handful of camcorders that build on last year's accomplishments. Further, the caliber of what just missed the cut is simply amazing: This year, Sony introduced the HDC-1500 60p camera, which shoots 1920×1080 at variable frame rates — an impressive profile for a runner-up.

The Vanguard Awards honor groundbreaking yet practical products that were introduced in calendar year 2006. In some cases, we must take the manufacturer's word that a product is set to ship to customers before Dec. 31. (This year, InPhase's Tapestry HDS-300R drive is set to beat the deadline — just barely.)

Many thanks to our judges, and congratulations to each of the 15 winners. Without further ado, we present the winners of the 2006 Vanguard Awards.

InPhase Technologies Tapestry HDS-300R and Maxell media

There's no two ways about it: HD means huge files. That, in turn, means storage has to keep up with the growing archival demands of HD producers and broadcasters. Now, InPhase Technologies and Maxell have partnered to bring holographic storage to the market. After years of promises, the companies have delivered high-capacity drives to broadcasters such as Pappas and Turner. The current-generation drive, the HDS-300R, is impressive, reading 300GB discs from Maxell at 160Mbps (enough bandwidth for live playout of many flavors of HD). But the roadmap holds even more promise: By 2010, the manufacturers expect that Generation 3 will support 1.6TB holographic discs at a blazing 960Mbps. (For more, see digitalcontentproducer.com/storage/video_holographic_solution.)

Adobe Production Studio

Adobe's Production Studio encompasses After Effects 7.0, Premiere Pro 2.0, Audition 2.0, and Encore DVD 2.0, along with Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2. But it's not really the bundling of all that postproduction power that's new; it's the integration among the (very popular) programs. Adobe's new Dynamic Link technology blew away our judges almost across the board. This means editors can open their After Effects projects within Premiere Pro and edit them without first rendering out of AE. Asset management in the Production Studio gets a boost via Bridge, a file browser that's accessible on its own or from any component of the bundle. Leveraging last year's acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe now includes Flash Video export in Premiere and AE. (For more, see digitalcontentproducer.com/dcc/revfeat/video_adobe_spa and digitalcontentproducer.com/dcc/revfeat/saving_time.)

Panasonic BT-LH2600W

Manufacturers are moving inexorably toward LCD technology for reference monitors, so it's good to know that LCD reference monitors can be as advanced as the Panasonic BT-LH2600W. It's a 1366×768 screen with native display of 720-line material. True, that means no native display of 1080i, but a Pixel-to-Pixel mode allows you to eschew scaling for fine-grain image assessment. There's an integrated waveform monitor that toggles on and off, as well as something analog monitors didn't have: a side-by-side freeze-frame feature for scrutinizing image details. But most importantly, the BT-LH2600W's general image quality is spot-on. “Color was as good as I've tested on an LCD monitor,” says judge Jeff Sauer. (For more, see Sauer's review on p. 52 of this issue.)

Apple Mac Pro

2006 was the year of the great Apple changeover to Intel processors. Discounting the expected lag in getting every piece of software optimized for Intel-based Macs, Apple did a tremendous job settling into its new chips. The Mac Pro is simply the flowering of that effort, with two dual-core Xeon processors clocking up to 3GHz each. Apple claims this spells performance that's up to double that of the Power Mac G5 Quad. The Mac Pro is a perfect platform for Apple's ever-popular suite of video creation software, Final Cut Studio. Of course, with the free Boot Camp software, those Intel-based Macs Pro can now run software designed for (gasp) Windows systems.

Blackmagic Design Intensity

HDMI burst onto the professional video scene from its origins in the home theater world, and now it's touted as an affordable I/O alternative to HD-SDI. Blackmagic Intensity (only $295 MSRP), a PCI Express board, allows video capture of HD video direct from the CCDs of cameras with HDMI output (such as the Sony HVR-V1U and the Grass Valley Infinity), bypassing HDV compression entirely. With its HDMI output, the dual-platform Intensity can feed HDMI-enabled HD monitors in the edit suite. It also does cross-conversion from 720- to 1080-line HD and vice versa, and downconversion from those formats to SD.

Intel Core 2 Duo

It's not often that our judges award a Vanguard to a manufacturing process, but that's essentially what they've done with the Intel Core 2 Duo line of processors. The new 65nm manufacturing process has enabled this generation of processors to be 40 percent faster than its Pentium D predecessors, while consuming just more than half the power. Higher performance at lower clock speeds is a beneficial paradox for editors working with multiple streams of video and facility managers integrating ever-growing, power-hungry racks of CPUs. The Core 2 Duo line, available in workstations such as the HP xw4400, exemplifies the benefits of the manufacturing technology, and was the first salvo in an impressive year that also saw the debut of Intel's new dual- and quad-core Xeon processors. (For more, see Jan Ozer's review of the xw4400 at digitalcontentproducer.com/desktoppost/depth/test_drive_hp and his review of the dual-core Xeon-based xw8400 on p. 44 of this issue.)

Matrox MXO

For anyone who's had to sit through an interminable HDV project render, the MXO is a godsend. That's because the new Matrox box allows editors to bypass the rendering process in Apple Final Cut Pro and other QuickTime-based apps. How does it accomplish this singular — yet significant — task? The MXO takes the DVI output of a Mac (the FCP realtime preview, for instance) and converts it to broadcast-quality video, which then can be recorded directly to tape. The MXO has genlockable HD/SD-SDI, HD/SD analog component, Y/C, and composite outputs, and it offers interlacing artifact elimination and gamma correction when previewing video on a second DVI monitor.

Optoma HD70

When a high-quality native 16:9, native 720p projector is available for $1,000, facilities no longer have an excuse not to set up a screening room (or at least a screening area) onsite. Sure, the price of the Optoma HD70 is a no-brainer, but don't ignore the quality. “The projector industry is finally paying serious attention to good video,” Sauer says of the HD70. It's not super-bright (1000 ANSI lumens), but when judging video, you'll want a controlled environment. Rated at 3000:1 full-on/off, contrast is strong. Connectivity is typical, but with HDMI on top of the usual VGA/component/composite/S-Video.

Grass Valley Infinity

Finally, a camera name that makes some sense. Here, the nomenclature refers to the infinite flexibility of Grass Valley's new Digital Media Camcorder. The Infinity truly leverages the IT-based nature of digital formats — and offers a vast range of them: 1080i50/60, 720p50/60, 625i50, and 525i50 for starters. Then there are the compression flavors: DVCAM, DVCPRO 25, JPEG-2000 for SD and HD (both at 4:2:2, 10-bit), and MPEG-2 for SD (4:2:0 and 4:2:2) and HD (4:2:0). The recording is forward-looking too, with simultaneous read/write to and from REV PRO hard drives and pro-grade CompactFlash media.

Panasonic AJ-HDX900

For many cinematographers, the Panasonic HDX900 offers almost all the capabilities they need from the popular Varicam for about half the price. Looking in the other direction, it matches up well against HDV models. Comparing the HDX900 to small-format HD camcorders (see digitalcontentproducer.com/cameras/revfeat/handson_hdx), Barry Braverman says, “The HDX's larger 2/3in. chipset and more sophisticated processing deliver vastly better low-light performance for not that much greater investment.” The camcorder shoots to medium-format DVCPRO HD tapes in 1080i and 720p at 24fps, 25fps, 30fps, 50fps, and 60fps.

Serious Magic DV Rack 2.0 HD

The original version of Serious Magic's DV Rack made a splash as a laptop-based on-set video recording and monitoring application. Version 2.0 of the software, recently purchased by Adobe, ups the ante considerably. The boost in sophistication starts with its new HD version, which supports up to 1280×720 screen monitoring for pixel-to-pixel 720p support. Also new is timecode support for Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, and Avid NLEs. DV Rack 2.0 can now trigger your camera for single-frame recording, either manually or at a set interval (frames per second or per hour). There's also onion-skinning via a semi-transparent overlay or splitscreen for comparing what you're shooting to frames of captured video.

Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P

Capturing HD requires not just cavernous storage, but generous bandwidth. If you've got a capture card that ingests HD-SDI, you're halfway there, but how about getting that high-def material into your RAID-protected hard drives? That's where Sonnet's Tempo SATA E4P card comes in. If you employ port multipliers, the card can connect to up to 20 drives for realtime HD-SDI captures. The E4P host adapter is a 4×PCI Express card with four eSATA ports.

SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 4

SmartSound has given busy, do-it-all editors reason to celebrate for years, but the company has outdone itself with Sonicfire Pro 4. From the first version, the software has featured canny algorithms designed to wedge modular royalty-free music tracks into frame-exact spots in videos. Sonicfire Pro adds another one with Mood Mapping. Each music selection has a Mood Map track, where users can set points where the video's mood changes. Then they can choose among several preset mixes of the score to fit the new mood: Heavy, Sparse, Dialogue, and more. There's also a good deal of manual control. Vanguards judge Jan Ozer sums it up: “Press a button, and create a custom-length soundtrack that ebbs and flows to match your dialogue. All for well under $20 a track.” (For more, see digitalcontentproducer.com/dcc/revfeat/smartsound_sonicfire_pro.)

Sony HVR-V1U with HVR-DR60

HDV recording is no longer groundbreaking, but the HVR-V1U's imaging technology certainly is. This new 24p-capable Sony camcorder is a smaller successor to the popular HVR-Z1U, but it uses three of Sony's brand-new 1/4in. ClearVid CMOS chips instead of CCDs. (Sony claims the photosensitive area of these chips is equal to that of the Z1's 1/3in. CCDs.) With 960×1080 pixels, these chips are oriented at a 45-degree angle to produce a 1920×1080 image (at 60p) while avoiding pixel-shifting. Of course, a companion product shows that Sony's recording technology is also advancing steadily: The HVR-DR60 is a 60GB hard-drive recorder that captures about 4.5 hours of DV/HDV. It mounts to the V1U and sends its status to the camera's viewfinder. (For more, see digitalcontentproducer.com/fieldprod/video_victory.)

Sony PDW-F330 and PDW-F350

Nonlinear acquisition is clearly the future of professional video production. The only question is when, not if, tape will become obsolete. With the PDW-F330 and F350, the first two XDCAM HD models, Sony presents a viable disc-based HD capture option that's suitable for both news stations and storytellers. Both camcorders support 24p recording, and the F350 shoots in one-frame increments from 4fps to 60fps. They're powerful 1/2in. camcorders, but not too unwieldy for their 23GB blue-laser media: The XDCAM HD models do variable-bit-rate capture of 1080i at 18Mbps and 35Mbps (constant-bit-rate capture is at 25Mbps).

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2006 Vanguard Awards Judges

Barry Braverman
Digital Content Producer
contributing writer

Gary Eskow
Digital Content Producer
contributor

S.D. Katz
Digital Content Producer
senior contributing editor

D.W. Leitner
Digital Content Producer
senior contributing editor

Tom Patrick McAuliffe
Digital Content Producer
contributing writer

Franklin McMahon
Digital Content Producer
contributing writer

Steve Mullen
Digital Content Producer
contributing writer

Dan Ochiva
Digital Content Producer
senior contributing editor

Jan Ozer
Digital Content Producer
contributing writer

Jeff Sauer
Digital Content Producer
contributing writer

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