Archive for April 21st, 2009

An ebullient Dean Lyon, Marketing Director for da Vinci Systems, spent a part of the late afternoon Tuesday touring me through the company’s philosophy regarding how best to survive the current economic disorder. Judging from the spate of initiatives we discussed, that philosophy appears to be “full speed ahead.” Or, to be technically correct and in keeping with the official theme of the da Vinci booth, coined by Lyon, the approach could also be called “visualize the future.”

After making sure I enjoyed a quick visit in one corner of the booth to “The Museum of Every Panel da Vinci has ever built” (“A Japanese guy tried to buy one of the original panels yesterday,” Lyon chuckled), which included an ancient SGI O2 box that Lyon insists “two guys were spotted weeping over,” Dean got down to business. more

Globalstor CTO Scott Leif is two years into his Red workflow experience. Technology partner Assimilate worked closely with Red in the development process of the camera—Assimilate can deal natively with Red files. Now Globalstor debuts the next generation of its ExtremeStor-DI REDe video storage workstation. This is the first workstation to deliver native uncompressed 4K resolution, Leif says. Raw, DPX, and Cineon files are handled in real time at 24fps (it can also do stereo 2K). It’s built on the Intel Nehalem architecture, which Leif calls “nothing short of spectacular.” The system also incorporates Nvidia’s Quadro Plex 2200 D2. Core software is Assimilate’s Scratch.

Will be available in rack and tower versions at capacities from 1.4-9 terabytes.

What’s graphics card vendor NVIDIA doing at NAB? Lots, as I learned in a fast paced 30 minute visit this afternoon.

I started with a look at the GeForce 3D vision, which via stereoscopic glasses gives gamers a 3D experience on hundreds of computer games. At NAB, NVIDIA previewed compatibility with content creation programs like Autodesk Maya, so designers can actually preview in 3D right from the program. The only downside is that you need an LCD panel that runs at 120 Hz, essentially 60 Hz for each eye. The largest current single LCD with this capability is only 22�, so NVIDIA showed an array of four 22� LCD panels using their Quadro Plex 2200 D2 visualization system. more

It’s the solar charger that sucks people into the Anton Bauer booth—imagine a kind of picnic blanket embedded with solar cells with an adapter that plugs into the battery. It’s a just a technology demonstration at the moment, but since the collector part of it is real, Anton Bauer has a reasonably manageable task to deliver a camping-friendly batter charger that will run on sunlight.

Meanwhile the company has delivered a hot new 4-gang charger. VP of Marketing and Business Development Shinichi Minowa says the TM4 charges batteries up to two times faster than the Anton/Bauer TWQ charger. It doubles as four discreet AC power supplies; it can power various equipment with a 70W supply via a 4-pin XLR. The power supply can be used simultaneously with the charger, allowing three batteries to be charged while operating from AC mains.

Also new, the Dionic HC high current battery, capable of up to 10 amps, with 91 watt-hr capacity; a built-in LCD real-time fuel gauge tracks up to nine hours of run time.

When Adobe doesn’t debut new products at NAB, they tend to offer interesting and often far reaching product “previews.� This year, it was Adobe Story, a new online/offline program for collaborative scriptwriting that will debut in “CSNext,� no date announced or implied during our interview with Simon Hayhurst.

Why a screenwriting program? Because most serious productions have a screenplay that contains the dialog and descriptive information about scene location and the associated action. Scripts in Adobe Story get converted to metadata that Adobe can use all the way through to the Flash Player. In online productions, advertisers can buy ads in just the right locations, like auto insurance during chase scenes, or a Bombay Sapphire Gin advert when Bond orders his martini, shaken, not stirred. Basically, Adobe has staked a long term claim on the over-arching value of metadata, and Adobe Story is their latest investment. more

The AJA Ki Pro portable digital disk recorder records files to the Apple ProRes 422 codec directly from camera. Watch the video.

More videos from Broadcast Engineering TV

Press Release

Inlet Technologies, a leader in advanced encoding solutions for new media, announced at NAB 2009 that it is supporting ZillionTV Corporation’s distribution of high-quality personalized television. The ZillionTV Service utilizes Inlet’s Armada automated encoding workflow management platform as its backend encoding infrastructure to support the encoding handled by ZillionTV’s third-party encoding company partners. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2009 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Thomson Grass Valley‘s Kayenne video production center is a new family of switchers that integrates features of the company’s Kalypso and Kayak models and adds new advances that help to streamline production workflow for HD projects. Watch the video.

More videos from Broadcast Engineering TV

Press Release

At NAB (Booth N4031), world-leading media technology innovator Solid State Logic (SSL) will announce a partnership with Ross Video to fully integrate the Ross OverDrive Production Control System, used to control video and audio components in a broadcast environment, with the C10 Digital Broadcast Audio Console. This strategic integration delivers essential control of the C10 fader, channel on/off and pan operations to the OverDrive system, increasing production workflow through pre-programmed automation functions, resulting in reduced engineering time on task. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2009 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Sony’s HSC-300 HD studio camera is designed to provide broadcasters a high-quality, yet accessible entry into HD production. Watch the video.

More videos from Broadcast Engineering TV