Archive for April, 2006

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

The Dalsa folks seem particularly happy this NAB about the notion that their Origin camera (pictured) and its affiliated tapeless, 4K data path flow are finally on the verge of making the transition from the development and testing and specialty production world into the realm of hardcore, bigtime feature film projects. Look for major feature films to be announced this year that are expected to use the Dalsa camera and 4K workflow.

To make this a reality, Dalsa is actively celebrating and promoting its technology partners—companies like Quantel, Ciprico, and Root6 Technology, among others. Root6, for instance, is offering a universal encoding platform designed to allow content creators to get its 4K data transcoded and transformed into digital dailies on any of a number of platforms. Root6 says this is accomplished by achieving the notion of “remote transcoding,” meaning that its system identifies 4k files on a network and transcodes those files by reaching out to them—not ingesting them and talking up mega storage space within its system, in other words. You can find Root6, by the way, within the Avid Developer community section of the Avid booth. more

Yesterday D.W. Leitner and I had a meeting with Thomson Grass Valley. We chatted with Mike Wolschon, director of strategic marketing, about a broad range of the company’s current and future plans. The Viper Filmstream camera is coming into its own and exceeding expectations, according to Wolschon. The last year has seen important announcements related to the workflow of the high-end digital camera. DPX file import is now supported by Final Cut Pro, which Apple had shown us earlier in a testimonial by director David Fincher, who’s been working with the Viper on a recent project, Zodiac. Also, the Venom solid state recording device is now shipping—it promises to be a more manageable storage solution than what had been available previously.

About 18 months in gestation, the hard drive-based Inifinity camera is now a deliverable product. Wolschon noted that this is a significant new initiative for the company, which had never before brought out a camera near Inifinity’s price point (about $25K). Leitner pressed him on Thomson’s plans for introducing an even lower-cost camcorder—HDV perhaps—and Wolschon replied, “Ruling out the palm camcorder market would be a foolish thing to do.” Quoting statistics he heard from Larry Thorpe of Canon at the HPA Retreat, Wolschon said that there are about 150,000 HDV camcorders in the field currently. more

NAB opened its doors to the general public today, and there were plenty of announcements of new hardware and software to divert attention from the recognition that the industry is in the midst of change. Change, perhaps, is the theme of the show; Apple has moved to a new hardware platform, implementation of digital theatrical distribution is becoming a reality and IPTV turns telcos into broadcasters.

I arrived at NAB with my new Cingular Razor cell phone and was quickly informed at the NVidia booth that my phone was just so “yesterday.” NVidia is making chips for mobile devices and all three of the models they had to show put my cell to shame. It‘s clear that my even my next phone/personal media player/recorder/camera/GPS locator will have to be replaced every six months to take advantage of new services and new features. more

Press Release

da Vinci’s Splice Puts New Nonlinear Face on da Vinci 2K Color Enhancement Systems

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Press Release

AJA Debuts XENA 2K; Adds New Adobe Premiere Pro Support Into XENA Line; v2 Software Offers Elegant Adobe Premiere Pro Implementation and XENA 2K Brings Multi-Format 2K Workflow to the Windows Desktop

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I had a nice chat a while ago on the show floor with editor/post supervisor Jacob Rosenberg about his ongoing crusade to promote combined offline/online workflows into what he calls a desktop DI process for independent filmmaker, built around Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and the Cineform codec. Fresh off the buzz his team earned last year for editing/finishing the movie Dust to Glory using this workflow (read our coverage of that project here), Rosenberg is promoting the methodology at the Adobe booth at NAB.

When that’s finished, he’ll return to finishing up his latest project—editing and supervising post on the upcoming theatrical film LBS (Pounds), which has adopted elements of this workflow. Look for a podcast on this site shortly containing our full interview, but meantime, here’s an excerpt, as Rosenberg discussed his new project and his belief that indie filmmakers can benefit from his workflow experiences: more

We’re here at the Prism booth with Adobe’s Jim Guerard, who is an NAB veteran. Here’s his view from the vantage point of Day 1, 2006 about 3 .pm.

Jim Guerard: The show feels really good and alive. As I look around, two things pop to mind. One is on the historical point of view. Twelve years ago, when we talked about professional production, you had to have a $100K computer. And it was a very specialized industry where you had Media Composer artists, Flame artists—and the universe revolved around those people—in many respects, rightly so. The PC was considered a toy by this industry. What we’ve seen with the evolution of hardware technology and the approachability of software is a democratization of content creation. It’s very clear standing here today that what people—many more people—can do with desktop software is incredibly compelling.

From a technology point of view, we’ve matured as an industry to where it’s not about the latest feature and it’s more about the workflow and the productivity of these products together—whether they’re from the same manufacturer or a mix. On a business side, for the first time in a long time, this industry is on the cusp of some great new growth opportunities. After a couple of years of talking about it, with technologies like Flash the ability to build new revenue, distribution, and ad models has finally become a reality. more