Archive for April 15th, 2008

Cinematographer Liz Hinlein gave a presentation Saturday at the Digital Cinema Summit about assisting DP Rodrigo Prieto in color correcting dailies on set using Yuri Neyman’s Gamma & Density Company‘s 3cP software system. Today, she explained to me why she thinks 3cP is so useful for people like Prieto. He first used the system on Babel, and then again most recently on Kevin MacDonald’s upcoming film, State of Play, which was shot using a combination of the Panavision Genesis digital camera and 35mm film. The notion of 3cP is to provide a way to precisely preview color on set and communicate decisions about color precisely to colorists and others in the post production and approval chain. It’s built around the ASC Color Decision List (CDL), built on “the logic of cinematographers,” as Yuri likes to say.

Hinlein insists the approach worked well for Prieto because it helped him communicate his intentions to the colorist in a more direct and less labor intensive way than he would otherwise have to do. But, she emphasizes, using 3cP on set is not exactly the same job a digital imaging technician (she calls them ‘DITs’) might do on a broadcast style project.

Listen to a portion of our chat today at the Gamma & Density booth.

–MG

You may not be familiar with the term, the product, or maybe even the concept, but iVDR (Information Versatile Disk for Removable Storage) is big…in Japan. There, the compact, ruggedized storage is turning up in devices such as Hitachi’s plasma TV, which features a slot to hold these hot swappable HDDs. The consumer version of the drive contains—don’t be surprised—content protection firmware, in this case from the SAFIA group that can be triggered by content owners (TV stations, studios) to control who can record a TV show or movie.

The iVDR Consortium itself began in 2002 by companies including Canon, Fujitsu, Hitachi, SANYO, and Victor Company of Japan, joined later by the likes of Seagate and Maxell. However, the concept of creating a removable hard disk drive industry standard, one compatible with a broad range of devices from AV to PC’s, never really caught on with U.S. consumers. more

I just sat down with Boris Yamnitsky, the president and founder of his namesake Boris FX. A couple years ago Boris FX purchased the Media 100 line, keeping alive one of the most venerable nonlinear editing systems. It had been an extremely rocky time for Media 100; a company without such a devout and long-lasting user base probably would have folded up shop and discontinued its products.

Not Media 100. Under Yamnitsky’s leadership, Media 100 has advanced to 12.5 software, which was just announced at the show. The software is playing catch-up; one major new feature is HDV ingest via FireWire. The clips can’t be edited natively, but must be converted to another format, such as Media 100 HD or Apple‘s ProRes. These fit the workflow of most Media 100 users, says Yamnitsky, and the higher-bit-rate formats hold up much better under the stress of digital effects. more

The Digital Cinema Summit continues this morning with sleep-inducing updates like “Thwarting In-Theater Piracy� and “Report from NATO,� but the morning’s first exchange, “The Exhibition Perspective: Truth and Consequences in the D-Cinema Rollout� was chock full of provocative insights.

Turns out the U.S. has taken a long lead in Digital Cinema, with nearly 5000 digital cinema screens in commercial service, exceeding the entire rest of the world by a factor of 10. For instance, since Nov. 2005, over 300 Hollywood movies have been released digitally. Wendy Aylsworth, VP of Technology at Warners, said further that while all Hollywood films today undergo a D.I. in post, the primary purpose of the D.I. is the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative standard) projection master, and that the color-corrected files crafted for film output are created secondarily. If true, that’s a genuine “see� change. more

Origin Digital, a global video applications service provider, announced its support of video applications on Microsoft SharePoint Server and for applications using Web tools in Microsoft Silverlight. Origin Digital will showcase its Web-based Odaptor solution that seamlessly aggregates, manages, transforms, and distributes digital content and video anywhere, in any format, for any device or screen, in the Microsoft exhibit during the NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 14-17, 2008. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Automatic Duck produces one of those binary products that you absolutely need or you absolutely don’t need, no gray area at all. If you work on projects in Final Cut and either Avid or Quantel, the company’s Pro Export FCP 4.0 will let you export Final Cut Pro projects to either Avid or Quantel. Pro Import FCP 2.04 goes the other way, importing Avid projects into Final Cut Pro. Both products were substantially updated since last NAB.

For example, Pro Export FCP can now convert Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro media into Avid media files (like ProRes to Avid DNxHD); with previous versions you had to recapture your media. The program doesn’t support all Final Cut Pro effects, but lists unsupported effects in a log file, simplifying any required manual fixes. The program also inserts dummy clips for any media that it can’t convert, maintaining overall project synchronization. Pro Import FCP now uses Apple codecs rather than Avid, improving editing responsiveness and enabling compatibility with Color.

Both products cost $495; The 2.04 version of Pro Export will be available during the Summer, while Pro Import 2.04 should ship before June.

The expanding family of Sony’s XDCAM EX video production technology now includes new models that increase the benefits of a solid-state workflow. These include the PMW-EX3 camcorder, the PMW-EX30 deck, and the PHU-60K professional hard-disk unit.

Sony is also unveiling a prototype 32 GB version of the SxS PROâ„¢ solid-state memory card. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Back from Avid (see Jan Ozer’s earlier post). And if Dan Ochiva doesn’t fill you in on the new PCI Express-enabled harware upgrades to Mojo and Nitris I will. I didn’t get to ask about the non-future of Xpress Pro, but I’ll try to when I next talk to Avid here at the show they did not attend.

So, by way of segue, Avid certainly gets the metadata concept, and I expect a lot more from them along those lines upcoming. It’s the new black and with good reason.

Metadata is another topic at the Adobe booth–part of their so-called sneak peeks. more

Concurrent with the introduction of the PMW-EX3 and its interchangeable lenses, Fujinon somewhat unsurprisingly is making glass for the hot new Sony XDCAM EX model. (The model ships with a Fujinon zoom.)

First, there’s the XS8x4 wide-angle lens.

Then, if you’d like to use higher-quality 2/3in. lenses instead of naturally fitting 1/2in. lenses, Fujinon has the ACM-21 adapter built specifically for the camera.

This glass was under glass, so further details will have to wait…

In the spirit of its Z-series cameras Hitachi brings dockable flexibility to HD with a new studio/field production camera, the SK-HD1000. The high-quality 2/3 inch CCD camera (2.2 million pixel IT CCDs) has what Hitachi’s Sean Moran calls significant improvements (60dB s/n ratio at F10.0 and a real-world resolution of 1100 lines). The camera shoots native 1080i and 720p and is multiformat, including SD at the base station, for a flexible conversion to HD. $64K complete.

The shipping model is offered with digital OFDM wireless; at the end of this year, it will also be available with Hitachi’s digital triax system. “The biggest advantage is the clear, pristine image quality that allows, similar to optical fiber and without the image compromises that go with analog triax.� (Shorter runs of course).

A dockable P2 recorder will deliver in 2009 with the H.264 coded. ($50K retail).