Archive for April 23rd, 2009

Press Release

Chroma key specialist Reflecmedia introduced its new Deskshoot Lite chroma key bundle at NAB 2009. The new Deskshoot Lite bundle comprises an 8ft x 8ft Chromatte Curtain, small or medium LiteRing, controller and power supply, all for under $1,500. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2009 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Ensemble Designs is here with 28 products, celebrating 20 years and good health, says Ensemble’s founder David Wood, (who is also a DSLR fan like so many on the show floor). For NAB, Ensemble brought five new 3G products in their BrightEye line and nine 3G products in their Avenue line, from an electrical to optical convertor to automatic gain control for audio and sync changeover. Avenue also gets new conversion, protection and TSG tools and two new ASI/310M convertors. more

AmberFin iCR Software is an end to end system that ingests a range of video formats, pre-processes and encodes the video, performs quality control and then delivers the files in the necessary formats to a range of delivery options. The feature set is so broad that it would take weeks to understand and assess the individual features, so I focused my time with the company in several key areas.

In terms of ingest, the system is one of the few that can input footage and convert it to Avid DNxHD and QuickTime format for Final Cut Pro, getting editors up and running as quickly as possible. The system can also start processing and encoding during ingest, which obviously shortens overall processing time. In addition, AmberFin uses industry standard capture hardware and storage, so users aren’t locked into buying expensive proprietary systems like some of their competitors. more

At the 2009 NAB Show, Echolab took the wraps off Atem, a paradigm-busting 1 M/E 3Gbps 1080p/60 production switcher that sets new standards of flexibility, functionality, and utility for government, educational, corporate, live entertainment, and house of worship customers. more

Maya artist Bryan Thombs is walking the floor for his day job at Picture Mill. Specifically he’s looking for stereo 3D technology (he’s come to the right place). Hollywood-based Picture Mill is moving into stereo 3D title sequences, prologues and epilogues, and trailers to expand on their existing work in the same vein in 2D for clients including Paramount, Disney, Universal, Spyglass, Red Wagon, Nickelodeon and the BBC.

Bryan also made the titles for the Reel Impressions showcases that have been running all week in the Central Hall Content Theater. These showcases feature the Cinematography, Graphics, and Visual Effects work from millimeter‘s Reel-Exchange members and NAB attendees.

See the Picture Mill reel here.

Grab Networks’ (nee Anystream) Agility 2G (for second generation) can pretty much grab video from anywhere, process and encode it, and deliver it in the necessary format for an expansive range of broadcast and streaming formats. I looked at Agility last year; since then, it’s been completely redesigned from a standalone application to a web based interface that’s obviously more accessible to multiple users from different stations on the network. For example, here’s a screen of the new web-based encoding preview screen.

I spent 30 minutes late in the day looking at a demo of the new system, and it was impressive. I’ll share my major takeaways.

First, the system is very flexible regarding licensing. If you buy a five license system, you can float the licenses over ten or twenty systems as they become available on the LAN, you can just run five instances simultaneously. This makes the system very easy to deploy. more

Brad Winnett of Isilon Systems was so happy to tout the company’s emergence into the digital intermediate marketplace as a scaleable NAS-based storage solution for such facilities that he brought in old pal, Dean Lyon, of da Vinci Systems, to join our chat this morning. (See my post earlier this week about what Dean told me da Vinci was up to at NAB 2009.)

Both men made the point that postproduction houses need to fundamentally restructure their technology, and their thinking, when it comes to the file-based world they have now, irrevokably, entered. Thus, such previously “mundane” or “expensive” propositions like file-based data protection procedures and tools are now central to their business. more

Next time you watch a newsfeed of a reporter out at a really remote location (like really remote), you may notice that the picture quality is better than you previously remembered. If so, it may be because Inmarsat just boosted the bitrate of their BGAN (broadband global area nework) X-Stream service from 256 kbps to a minimum of 384 kbps, with the potential for streaming up to 450 kbps. At these rates, according to Frank August, Inmarsat’s Director of Business Development for the Americas, quality is sufficient for wide shots and real action, not just jerky postage stamp talking heads.

Don’t know much about satellite delivery? I didn’t either; here’s the Cliff Notes version I got from August. Inmarsat is the world’s leading provider of global mobile satellite communications. When I say mobile, I mean a dish that’s smaller than a 17� notebook. Obviously, if you can get a satellite truck involved, with a huge dish, you get much higher speeds, but such dishes tend to be tough to check on a plane, or for roving reporters to carry. more

Press Release

Calibrated Software, an innovator of applications and plug-ins for video, asset management and mobile platforms, announced an enhanced family of cross-platform tools to streamline and speed the process of viewing and using high-definition camera and other video files within popular post-production systems and editing packages. The products are being demonstrated at NAB booths #C5108 (Ikegami) and #SL8307 (Square Box Systems). Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2009 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

While we’ve handed the buzzword crown this year to “3D,” let’s not forget about old friend “workflow.” Solutions and improvements abounded this year at NAB, and the Vision Research people are no exception. They are addressing the issue as it relates to their popular high-speed digital camera technology.

The guys at Vision Research showed me their new 10gigabit Ethernet Phantom CineStation—a docking station for its hot swappable CineMag memory magazines designed to speed up the transfer of data from the magazine to the people who need it—both the transfer and the download of the data. When you consider, according to Vision Research, that the Phantom HD system gobbles up about four megabytes of memory for each frame shot, just a few seconds of material can suck up internal camera memory quickly. more