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MillimeterVanguard Awards 2008
Dec 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer
Fourteen new products represent technology’s leaps and bounds.
When they consider the tools they use daily, professional video producers notice that their software tends to get more expansive and more complicated as the cameras and display gear get smaller and lighter. The computers, of course, are continually optimized for the ever-more-powerful software, and software is, in turn, rewritten to shine on the faster machines. Video codecs improve incrementally and then take occasional leaps when a new format emerges and earns wide acceptance.
This is the way of things. It's what we expect and what we demand from the new gear that we inspect at tradeshows and showrooms. But not all progress follows a straight path. Our annual Vanguard Awards recognize the disruptive moves, the technological leaps, and the product introductions that initiate a new path.
Our Vanguard Awards judges engaged in a passionate debate on the relative merits of almost all the major camcorders introduced in 2008. Many new camcorders, especially the Varicam models from Panasonic, embodied combinations of several appealing technologies introduced in the past couple years. The new Varicams offer a choice of several high-quality, efficient HD formats, and they record 10-bit video in a plethora of frame rates and to nonlinear media. Combinations such as these represent smart business for the manufacturers and appealing choices for consumers. But when our judges considered what really fit the appellation “vanguard,” some excellent new products seemed less like disruption than the result of previous technological risks paying off. Which, of course, is still a very good thing.
The Vanguard Awards reward 2008's risks, innovations, and revelations. So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are the 14 products that we've judged to be the most groundbreaking. Thank you to our judges and congratulations to all the winners.
Judges: Barry Braverman, Trevor Boyer, Gary Eskow, D. W. Leitner, Franklin McMahon, Dan Ochiva, Jan Ozer, and Cynthia Wisehart.
Blackmagic Design Video Recorder
Simple, tiny, and oh-so-useful, the Blackmagic Design Video Recorder is a USB-based hydra that records composite, component, or S-Video to the web-video-friendly H.264 format. In a world where content is king, you're leaving money on the table if your analog video library isn't online. And for $119, there's no excuse. During downtime, your intern should be loading tape after tape, steadily increasing the supply of eyeball bait for your various video channels that pay per click (on Metacafe, YouTube, et al).
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection
Postproduction suites don't get more complete than Adobe's Master Collection, and the new CS4 version does fill some previous gaps — such as adding a Mac version of OnLocation and finally making Flash keyframe-friendly, but a few forward-looking features make the suite truly compelling. Most notably, speech-to-text transcription in Premiere Pro and Soundbooth promises to automate the generation of metadata, amplify the googlability of any video you put online, and ease your documentary or news-editing workflow by several degrees. Then there's the fact that Photoshop CS4 Extended is now a real 3D-animation tool (see p. 37). Who knows what video artists will do with all that power?
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
