There have been a few interesting product announcements this week, presumably due to the IBC show inEurope. Most of them relate to the development of new tools for 4K workflows, which I expect will be the pattern for a while to come.
AJA announced a new 4K interface, the Corvid Ultra, which is based on the Riker technology they were showing off at NAB 2011. It has a new scaling engine called TruScale that I hope to see in other products in the near future. They also started shipping their T-TAP, which was announced at NAB 2012.
Blackmagic-Design released new 4K interface cards in PCIe and Thunderbolt form-factors, as well as a new mini-converter for quad SDI to 4K HDMI. Uncompressed 4K pushes the limits of the bandwidth available from Thunderbolt, but QuadHD should fit comfortably, especially at 24fps. They also have a stripped down Thunderbolt to SDI and HDMI interface, that look quite familiar. The release of Windows drivers for their Thunderbolt devices also allows them to be used on the rather small selection of Thunderbolt equipped PCs that are beginning to hit the market.
Adobe released the 6.0.2 update for Premiere Pro, which adds support the new Retina Display screens on Apple’s newest MacBook Pros, as well as official Mercury support for a few new NVidia GPUs.
Lastly, this is not super new, but I have finally gotten around to deeply researching Canon’s newest Rebel DSLR, the T4i. The key new features relate to video focus, with new silent lens motors, and a continuous auto-focus option during video recording. This will greatly improve the quality of most of the videos being recorded by consumers, the target market for the Rebel line. I have a T2i, and am seriously considering upgrading for that feature alone. The fact that is has a flip out touch-screen interface is just icing on the cake. But I bought the T2i right before the 60D was released, which would have been well worth the increase in price for my needs. The biggest issue being ISO options, since Canon’s sensors have the least noise at multiples of 160, which aren’t available on Rebels. So I am hesitant to make this T4i purchase when the 60D appears due for replacement soon, with a model that would presumably have the features I am looking for.
