Archive for April 25th, 2006

The NAB is reporting attendance of 105,046 for this year’s show, slightly up from last year’s figure of 104,427.

At the Autodesk booth a short while ago, I ran into David Cole, the award-winning supervising colorist on King Kong. David was at the booth to test out the new, custom-designed hardware panel for the Discreet Lustre digital color-grading system, which Autodesk is showing at NAB, and hopes to offer to the marketplace before the end of the year. He was also visiting Vegas fresh off his arrival in Los Angeles from Down Under, after taking a gig as senior DI colorist at Laser Pacific, Hollywood.

David is currently working on a couple of modest-budget features at Laser, but insists the time for that company to land a DI gig on, in my words, “a major, blowout, big-time, studio effects film,” is not far off for the facility known as a legendary video mastering house for TV. Making Laser Pacific a major DI player, David concedes, was a major reason he left his comfy life in New Zealand for Hollywood. more

The venerable Chyron is celebrating its 40th anniversary here at the show. The biggest announcement at NAB 2006 is Lyric PRO, a live graphics renderer that splits graphics into component parts (”persistent objects” within “scenes”). Senior VP and COO Kevin Prince showed me how these objects can be added, removed, and altered at any point during an animation, live, regardless what’s happening on the air. Based on InterFuse technology, Lyric Pro is available as an option for Chyron’s HyperX and LEX graphics platforms.

Prince also showed off HX200, a lower-cost HD/SD switchable turnkey graphics platform that fills in gaps in the product line. Channel Box is Chyron’s first channel branding product. Chyron heard complaints from broadcast stations that it’s unreasonably hard for their staffs to remember how to change channel branding content - it doesn’t happen very often, and staff turnover is such that often those with expertise have left the building once it’s time for a rebranding. Chyron claims that Channel Box’s GUI makes it super-simple to update content. more

Earlier today, Michael Goldman gave a good update on JVC’s plans, including that very interesting initiative with DuArt Labs. DuArt is really pretty unique anymore, as they still act with the hopes and aims of the Indie film/video community foremost in their business strategy.

I’m sure we’ll hear more intriguing details on that as the project evolves.

But I’m writing right now because I’ve heard JVC’s name come up a number of times as I’ve visited booths around the floor, especially from the once rather boring seeming companies that are providing the broadcast products that take your completed video efforts and transform them into something to broadcast or record.

JVC has come up in those booths by name because although the camcorder puts out a beautiful HD/HDV signal, in the end it’s an analog HD signal, something which doesn’t fit so easily into an increasingly all digital infrastructure. Well, the solution is to convert that signal to digital video, and it’s those companies providing the converters, signal processors and various interfaces that are talking about providing the solution–a box that’s a converter of analog video to digital. more

Avocent is an interesting company. They made their name in KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switching for large enterprise clients - command and control centers and the like. From there it wasn’t too much of a “switch” to the broadcast world. After all, what facility wouldn’t want the power to grant access to any computer system (editing, graphics, etc.) from any suite? Flexibility is always nice.

The company also has an interesting line of products that are a bit peripheral to the broadcast industry. The Emerge WMS series are “wireless media streamer” products that send video images from source to display without messy wires.

At NAB, however, Avocent’s theme is “KVM switching for broadcast.” The company was touting its KVM switching support for Avid (Avocent is an Avid technology partner). At its many demo sites at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Avid is using Avocent switching to allow its presenters to use any keyboard, monitor, and mouse location to access any Avid system across a 16×64 matrix. New for the show is support for dual-head switching, which covers the many editors who need dual monitors. And within Avocent’s control software is integrated baseband audio/video switcher. Using an Nvision router at NAB, Avocent is showing how its KVM switching infrastructure can be tied directly to audio and video switching. If an editor switches workstations, the preview monitor switches AV as well with no latency.

I met with Broadcast Pix president Ken Swanton this morning in the South Hall (listen to our podcast later tonight). Over the last three years the company has sold about 200 all-in-one broadcast-level production studios based around a hardware switcher and a Windows box. Broadcast Pix software makes it possible for one person to control still store, onscreen graphics, remote-control cameras, as well as the live switcher to produce programming for a wide variety of intended applications. These include educational video, corporate training, houses of worship, and even TV news for smaller-market network stations. Inputs can be analog (composite, component, S-Video) and/or SDI.

This year at NAB Broadcast Pix goes smaller-scale with a more affordable (under $10K) all-in-one system. The Broadcast Pix Slate 100 includes a video switcher, a character generator, camera control functionality, and clip, still, and logo stores like its bigger, older brother. Instead of having both SDI and analog I/O, however, customers need to choose one or the other. Unless they want both, in which case they can pay a bit more for the option.

Swanton told me a bit about the types of customers Broadcast Pix is attracting - major broadcasters, corporations, universities, and even a church in Africa round out the client list. Again, check for our podcast with Swanton later tonight…

JVC executives were a happy bunch at the company’s press luncheon today–promoting the latest steps in JVC’s PROHD strategy to bring “HD to the masses.” They touted the GYHD-200U HDV camcorder, bulked up for 60p acquisition; the GYHD-250U camcorder, with a studio conversion kit; the SA-HD50U HDV MPEG-2 encoder/decoder; and a 48-inch, 3-chip, DILA reference monitor capable of showing images at 1920×1080, called the DLA-HRM1.

But, personally, I was most struck by the company’s announcement of an initiative with DuArt Film Lab of New York. That initiative is called the Digital Den, and is essentially being designed as a resource center, based at DuArt and using JVC display technology, for independent filmmakers who are trying to design workflows and solve problems for their projects. more

Lots of interesting things to report.

One of the big trends at the show is turning out to be alliances of every sort and at every level of manufacturer. Thomson, as reported, notched Avid, HP, Telestream, and a host of others in its new Infinity Open Alliance. Avid, as part of its Open Storage Initiative, is working with SGI to fashion huge, fast storage array networks while pledging that they will work with any third party, Mac or PC, to foster the development of further editing scenarios.

Quantum is working to integrate its SDLT-600A MXF-informed archiving data tape drive with Avid‘s Newscutter line. (It will work with other Avid products too.) The 600A is the first such archiving product to enable drag-and-drop file transfers between standard post and archiving storage. (Pictured: Quantum consultant Thomas Goldberg points out the speedy transfer capability of Quantum‘s SDLT-600A as it restores an Avid file from an archive.)

This looks to bring real benefits to anyone who moves back and forth between these two systems on a regular basis. Say you‘re a small facility or cable station which can‘t keep terabytes of hard drives tied up with past work, yet need to access it quickly when a client comes in for a quick change on a commercial, or perhaps prepare a foreign language version. more

As I whipped across the Central Hall show floor, no doubt late to an appointment and well aware I hadn‘t eaten all day, I grabbed a free fortune cookie from a basket at someone‘s stand. Snapping it open, I read this ominous warning: “Be aware of those who try to sell you insurance.” Huh?

Was the cookie challenging me to “be aware” of all the spin and hard sell at NAB? Or to beware of desperate assurances that some latest incarnation of broadcast technology at the show would have a shelf life longer than its amortization?

Pressing on, pondering more Big Thoughts, I arrived at a meeting with Apple—which yesterday had neglected to hold its annual splashy press conference—only to be reminded that when it comes to hype, less is mo‘ better. As Apple‘s reps did their demo thing, the realization quietly stole into my mind that at least two of Apple‘s low-key announcements had the potential to rock my world. I guess the sugar had kicked in. more

Contributing writer Jeff Sauer and I had an illuminating breakfast today with Avid. We spoke with CTO Mike Rockwell, VP of Avid broadcast and work groups David Schleifer, and Dana Ruzicka, VP of Avid post solutions. We were especially interested in two announcements that Avid made at its press conference on Sunday—the release of the software-only, full-featured Media Composer, and the announcement of Interplay, Avid’s new pervasive asset-management-and-more solution.

Media Composer on a laptop is a very intriguing proposition for Avid facilities. Schleifer noted that many editors take work home with them, and in the past they’ve had to use Avid Xpress, which is limited in features relative to Media Composer. Not anymore. more