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Production and Post at NAB 2008

May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By D. W. Leitner and Dan Ochiva

This year's show saw many advances in digital cinema and color-management technologies.

           

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Cameras
Color and Postproduction
3D on Parade
Autodesk Pricing

Autodesk Pricing

By Dan Ochiva

Considering its many complex products and systems, just acknowledging everything Autodesk is up to can take a lot of bandwidth. While each of the major products announced have plenty of notable and usable improvements, I’ll vote for lower price points and the ability to work with compressed media as two of the company's more significant moves that herald future trends. Smoke 2009’s $64,000 tab for a turnkey hardware/software finishing machine—storage included—is a great breakthrough. For the first time, (fiscal) hope is offered to those many mid-level shops that blanch when faced with six-figure offerings. (At the show, this was described as an introductory price available through July 21, 2008.)

Acknowledging broadcast production by allowing the import of Panasonic P2 MXF files shows that Autodesk doesn’t want to turn its back on this quickly growing market. Likewise, the ability to integrate with third-party software and gear that employ common pro QuickTime codecs keeps Inferno 2009, Flame 2009, Flint 2009, and Smoke 2009 relevant to a new generation that widely deploys Mac-based products.

For pure creative fun, I enjoyed hanging out at the Autodesk booth and watching the Smoke demo. The Smoke artist showed how intuitive and powerful Batch FX—the app’s new tree-based compositing workflow in 2K—could be as she worked on an ESPN demo. Tying together Smoke’s editorial timeline with a 3D compositing interface makes a lot of sense. The straight-ahead speed and linearity of Smoke’s timeline somehow tames the excess that a pure 3D environment can engender. With a timeline, you know there’s a goal you have to reach, so adding and creating 3D elements to integrate with that goal delivers the richness of the added dimension without the pitfall of losing yourself in complex 3D space.

Part of the fun also came from the sheer interactivity that's delivered by the latest Nvidia card in that demo workstation. At the show, Autodesk announced it would be offering Nvidia’s Quadro FX 5600 SDI graphics in all of its new effects and finishing products, as well as in Autodesk Backdraft Conform 2009.

Meanwhile, Smoke's Extension 1 also gains Pixel Expression Language (PXL). The script tool is claimed to make it easier for compositors to create customized new effects (warps, blurs, transitions) without getting into C++ coding or building a plug-in from the ground up. OpenEXR workflow was announced. It enables artists to perform composites using high dynamic range (HDR) files from apps such as Autodesk Maya 3D and Toxik software. Improved blur and glow tools look useful, while enhancements to the 3D tracking toolset enable faster match moving, and as well as auto-stabilization. WiretapCentral, finally, allows users to browse the Autodesk systems' clip libraries and encode media using a network-connected web browser.