NAB Day 4

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I finally got a chance to explore the rest of the show today, and found a few more interesting newly released products.

Panasonic has released a number of new camcorders.  They have three lines of solid-state recording: AVC-Intra to P2 Cards, DVCPro-HD to P2 Cards, and AVCHD to SDHC cards.  At the upper end, the new HPX3700 and HPX2700 both record 10bit 4:2:2 to P2 in AVC Intra.  Both support “Varicam” variable framerate options at 1080p, and the top of the line HPX3700 model also has Dual-Link 4:4:4 RGB output capability.  In the prosumer market, three cameras that I would describe as variations to the HVX200 have been released.  All have 3 1/3″ CCDs, and have the same basis shape look of the original.  The updated HVX200A has improve optics and sensor, as well as the addition of an HD-SDI output.  The lower cost HPX-170 removes the outdated SD-MiniDV tape option option, allowing only P2 recording.  Lastly, the HMC-150 is similar in physical formfactor, but record to SDHC cards in the AVCHD codec, at much lower bitrates.  The other two options in the new professional AVCHD line are the shoulder mount HMC-70 and the 1 lb, 3CCD, HV30 competitor, the HSC1U.
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NAB Day 3

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I am jumping straight to Day 3, since Day 2 was rather uneventful, although I did attend the AJA party last night, which was quite the experience.

I have come across fewer items of interest since my last post, but there are a couple.  Canon released two new revisions of their original HDV camera, the XL-H1.  The XL-H1S is just a slightly improved version of the original, while the XL-H1A is the lower cost option without the profesional level SDI outputs.

Sony has a few other new releases.  The SRW-5100 a new lower cost HDCam-SR ingest option.  This will allow you to read tapes shot with the new F35, Sony’s new Genesis level, single sensor 35mm replacement camera.  They also have a new 42″ addition to their Trimaster series, the BVM-L420.  Also on display was an SxS recording option for the new PDW-700, allowing you to store 50Mbs MPEG2-422 to solid state.

Convergent Design showed their XBR, an SDI recording device that stores MPEG2 on CompactFlash cards.  It is much larger than I anticipated, but a smaller model should be soon to follow.

One last NAB installment to come after tomorrow, when I hope to get a chance to explore the Panasonic and JVC booths, among other in the Central Hall.

NAB Day 1

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So the NAB exhibition opened to the public today, and I spent the majority of the day at my post as a demo artist for Cineform.  Honestly the day seemed to go by much more quickly than I anticipated.  I did get a chance to look over a few other booths, and noticed a couple items of interest.

Blackmagic has a number of new mini-convertors for analog component HD, HDMI, and HD-SDI, as well as an updated and expanded Video hub. The new “Broadcast” Video Hub is in a whole new category, increasing sixfold from 12×24 to 72×144 inputs/outputs, while adding support for 3Gb SDI.  They also released the BlackMagic Video Recorder, a micro sized H264-encoding HD capture device that offers component HD, and optionally SDI input, connected via USB.

Adobe has released another update for Premiere Pro CS3, so now we are at 3.2.0.  Among other smaller items, this update adds native support for XDCam-HD, and XDCam-EX, in all standard formats.  Adobe was much quicker to support Sony’s SxS solid state recording format than they were Panasonic’s P2 solid state format that had been out for two years.  On that note, I personally prefer the Sony varient for a number of reasons: modern ExpressCard interface, high transfer rate, 1080p cameras, etc.  Now we just need larger and much cheaper SxS cards.

Although I have yet to personally make it to that hall, I hear that Sony has a couple of cool new toys.  The PMW-EX3 extends their XDCam-EX line with a second model that adds support for interchangable lenses, capable of interfacing its 1/2″ imager with both 1/2″ and 2/3″ HD lenses.  There is also an XDCam-EX VTR, the EX30, which I anticipated was coming, but it seems that it is physically larger than I was hoping.  The EX format lends itself well to the creation of a small scale HD-SDI recording and playback device, which would pair well with a tiny HD-SDI camera.  They also seem to have finally finished their new XDCam-HD camera that records their new MPEG2-422 format to XD.   I expect that new 50Mb/s XDCam format will eventually be a broadcast HDCam replacement.  No 24p support there, so I won’t be using that format for a while, but we have seen that pattern before, and it will arrive eventually.

 Red also released details on their future products, but they aren’t due out until early 2009, so I will discuss those at a later date.

NAB Coming Up

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NAB is coming up in a little over a week, which should stir up a lot more news than we have had for a while.  I have been quite busy recently, but even if I hadn’t been, not much worth posting has come up recently.

I am also involved in a shoot this weekend using both the Red One and the Sony EX1 for the first time, so that should provide some good info to write about.  So stay tuned, as I plan to resume posting regularly pretty soon.

Seeking Interns

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If you reside in the Southern California area and have a strong interest in the topics discussed on this site, I may have an opportunity for you.  My primary employer, Bandito Brothers, is looking for post-production interns.  These position would include assistant editor work, as well as many other media production related tasks.  We are looking for people with an interest in, and at least minimal experience in a variety of tasks, possibly including: editing, audio post, motion graphics, VFX, encoding, Flash, web design and programming, disc authoring, file management, PC troubleshooting, and other tech work.  We are a company that primarily uses Adobe products, so experience with those applications is required.  Mac experience is great, but you will really need to be a PC person to survive in this position.  Do your friends come to you with their technical problems?  Because that is the type of person we are looking for.  The positions would be well suited for someone in college, and ideally we would like to find someone who was looking to make it a summer job (we would be paying them by that point).  If you are from the area and want to work at a company that is on the cutting edge of technology, send me an email at mikemccarthy@hd4pc.com with your resume or reel or portfolio or whatever you’ve got.

Things are Busy, News is Slow

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Nothing overhelmingly interesting has been released recently.  Everyone must be saving up the good news for NAB or something.  I have been keeping busy, so I haven’t had time to run any thorough set of benchmarks on my new system.  After much frusteration and delay, I did successfully get Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition installed though.  I have never had more trouble with an OS install before, between Raid drivers and SATA Optical drive booting issues it took like two weeks to get it right.  Now when I get all eight threads rendering in AE CS3, the lights dim and my UPS starts beeping.  I don’t know whether to be thrilled at the computing power or disappointed at my electrical power, or both really.  Once I get some time I will get a new UPS and max out the system for a while.  It the mean time, Company of Heros gets great frame-rates.
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New Workstation

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After much searching and waiting, I finally got myself a new workstation to replace my Precision 670.  I now have a maxed out XW8400:

Dual 3.0 Ghz 5365 Clovertown Intel Xeon Processors (8-Cores)
8GB Ram (Once I get a 64bit OS)
QuadroFX 4600 Graphics Card (To power my 30″ LCD)
2x300GB 15k RPM SAS Drives (125MB/s each)

The XW8400 is currently one step behind the new top of the line XW8600, but the PCI-X slots, wider 3rd party support, and much lower price, weighted in its favor.  I will be doing some tests and benchmarks in the near future, so stay tuned for the results.  I am also curious to see if the Quadro4600 properly allows fullscreen overlay output in Prospect2K’s CineformRT Premiere mode, fixing the Geforce8 overlay problem.
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CES News

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It has been awhile, but not much worth noting has taken place recently.  Bits of news have been filtering out from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.  There are no individual announcements worthy of dedicating a post to, but I figured I would mention a variety of them since it has been so long since my last update.

Surely the biggest issue at the moment related to consumer electronics would be the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD competition.  It looks like Blu-Ray has a majority of the market, and recently more companies have been dropping HD-DVD in favor of Blu-Ray.  As a consumer who doesn’t yet own an HDTV, and is not interested in paying $30 or more per movie, it doesn’t really effect me as much as it could, but I have been rooting for Blu-Ray from the side lines.  I have a Blu-Ray burner, and Adobe Encore CS3 supports Blu-Ray authoring, and I also just think the technology is better.  50GB on a dual layer disc, more capacity in the future, it is just superior all the way around, higher priced or not.
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2K Cineform 444

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While Cineform’s initial products were developed for broadcast-level HD 10bit 4:2:2 YUV editing, they have added many other features to their compression format, many of which I have had the opportunity to take advantage of during my last few projects.  One of the first improvements that was made over a year ago was an increase in the maximum frame size, from 1080p to 2K.

Originally the only way to generate Cineform AVI files at this resolution was to scan film to DPXs, and then convert those image sequences, presumably in After Effects.  Interestingly, while being at 2K resolution, these files were being downsampled to YUV colorspace, which improved compression rates and performance, at the expense of the quality certain color information.  Eventually the SI-2K camera provided a second root source of Cineform2K imagery, that did not involve converting from an uncompressed source file at any point in the process.  I anticipate we will see 2K data being captured over SDI directly to Cineform files in the near future, if they are not doing so already, as both AJA and BMD have products with the required hardware capability.

The SI-2K brought with it one other new option to the format, which was an alternate pre-debayer RAW ‘colorspace’ instead of the YUV data that was normally being compressed.  CineformRAW video files had even better compression ratios, but the only way to take advantage of the benefits of pre-debayered images was by tapping directly into a single sensor imager, as the SI-2K did.  This eventually led to a third underlying option, with the development of Cineform 444.
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XDCam Format Updates

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Sony has been moving forward with a number of significant developments in their XDCam line of products.  Two of the three new variations of the XDCam line that were announced back in April at NAB2007 have begun to ship to customers.  The dual layer upgrade to XDCam-HD increases the capacity from 23GB to 50GB, effectively doubling the recording time, but is only available in the newest revision of the XDCam-HD products, with the F335 and F355 camcorder replacing the previous F330 and F350, and the F75 deck replacing the F70.  Doubling the capacity is the only major feature enhancement in these new products.

The solid state flash memory based XDCam-EX is obviously targeted to compete with Panasonic’s P2 flash based recording.   XDCam-EX is different from standard XDCam-HD in a number of ways.  Instead or relying on BluRay based optical ProDiscs discs, it records to ExpressCard34 based Flash memory cards called SxS Pro cards.  While still 35Mb/s at maximum quality, the new EX format is able to encode the full 1920 pixel width for 1080i/p frame sizes instead of downsampling to 1440×1080 like XDCam-HD and HDV.  Clips are still saved as files on the recording medium, but XDCam-EX uses the MPEG4 wrapper with the .MP4 extension instead of the previous XDCam .MXF wrappers of the Media eXchange Format.  Continue reading →