Archive of the Company News Category

Serendipity on the show floor makes for impromptu sessions. Tuesday I ran into cinematographer Bill Bennett in front of the Sony F35 parked on a dolly in front of Brand Pro’s booth. Not much to say about the F35–35 means its newly developed single CCD is the size of a Super 35mm film frame–except that it’s as impressively thought out as last year’s F23 on which it’s based, and like its double first cousin, Panavision’s Genesis, did once, it sets a new highwater mark in 4:4:4 RGB high-end digital cinematography cameras.

Well, for $250,000 without lens, it ought to. A lot to pay in weak dollars for tighter depth-of-field and better dynamic range than the F23, plus 1-50 fps variable speed in 4:4:4 (compared to F23’s 1-30). But you do get every pixel you pay for. This is a full-on 1920×1080 RGB image—no Bayer interpolation of phantom R and B pixels here, no sir. Leave that to lowly CMOS cameras like the REDs, Silicon Imaging 2Ks and Minis, and Arri D21s (at NAB upgraded from D20 with new 2K RAW data output mode). more

Monday’s dharma at NAB was about bigness and smallness, and I’m still thinking about it.

Yesterday Tim Robbins gave the keynote speech. Ever since FCC Chairman Newton Minow gave his famous “vast wasteland” speech at NAB in 1961, it seems NAB has played it safe. Past keynotes I’ve attended have featured Ronald Reagan (attacked on stage by an ice sculpture-wielding assailant, yards from where I was sitting), Barry Diller, Richard Parsons of Time-Warner, James Cameron and the like. Safe Republican choices, not likely to get former NAB CEO and good ol’ boy Eddie Fritts in any Washington hot water.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Convention Center this year.

How Tim Robbins got invited to give the keynote is anyone’s guess. But there he was, on stage, facing a large morning audience of radio and TV broadcasters, cable owners and mixed-media types. more

HP announced it is the first company to release Microsoft’s Media Center Extender capability to an Internet-connected TV.

With the capability, people using HP MediaSmart TVs not only get access to rich content from the Internet but they also can enjoy their own digital treasures from their home PCs on a big screen high-definition TV (HDTV). Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Sonnet Technologies announced a price reduction for the company’s award-winning Fusion line of high-performance SATA storage solutions for professional content creation and editing. Price reductions of up to $1,200 give users in the broadcast and post-production industries the opportunity to invest in the speed and capacity they require without compromising quality or performance. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Cine-tal Systems, a leading manufacturer of image processing, display and collaboration solutions used in digital cinema and video production, has reached an agreement with Rising Sun Research (RSR) to wholly acquire its cineSpace color management technology and product line. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

In a place of honor at the Vinten booth, a slowly turning display holds one of Sachtler’s original tripods. Tripods are workaday devices that rarely get much attention. Here, it might be worthwhile to pause for a moment, just to consider what we’ve gained.

After all it was only in 1958 in Munich, Germany that cameraman Wendelin Sachtler–who also had turns as an inventor and actor–devised a dampened gyro system that helped add a professional gloss to location production. Up to this date there were few alternatives for camera head stabilization in the field. The heavy film cameras of the day employed massive geared heads requiring complex geared assemblies that need to mesh just so in order to work correctly. (Careful! Don’t strip the gears!) Meanwhile, lighter 16mm and 35mm cameras used freely moving heads or ones employing friction elements that offered a regular amount of resistance. That bit of resistance or drag made it easier to pull off a smooth pan or tilt, as it gave motion in any particular direction a countering force to move against. more

The quality of the H.264 video produced by Ateme is near legendary, and now Anytream will make the encoder availble in its encoding product line. It’s a good deal for both companies, since it will give Ateme some mindshare in the US and improve the quality of the H.264 video produced by Anystream.

Over the past few years, Ateme has evolved their focus from licensing software to buidling their own branded hardware and software encoding products, primarily sold to telcos and broadcasters overseas. Now they’re coming to the US, targeting the same types of clients. Good to see that they’re still doing some licensing software deals.

There was something of a Yogi Berra moment at the Hard Rock Cafe on Sunday when Avid’s new executive VP and then the new CEO took the stage to pledge that this time we’re going to get it right.

Oh no, I thought, not another set of promises about working well with others and thinking outside the box. Well, we got those promises again. And yes there were some snickers around the floor of Hard Rock’s music venue (Avid’s traditional space over their years at NAB) at inappropriate times from the hundreds in the audience of users along with a smattering of press.

After all, neither CEO Gary Greenfield nor Kirk Arnold, executive vp and gm of Avid Video, have any video industry experience. (Give Avid’s board credit though–both of these very recent hires have solid reps for turning around high tech companies.) more

MTI Film announces the sale of its revolutionary dailies processing solution, CONTROL Dailies, to LaserPacific Media Corporation. LaserPacific, one of the largest providers of post production services in Hollywood, has purchased four CONTROL Dailies systems with CONVEY and plans to use them to increase the speed, capacity and quality of its dailies processing operations for episodic television and feature films. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

For those Mental Ray users out there with questions about what will happen with the Mental Images line, I don’t have answers, yet. Officially, neither does Nvidia’s Dominck Spina. Yet. But as you can imagine, it’s sort of an embarrassment of rendering riches at Nvidia now; work is underway to design the best future for both Gelato and the Mental Images products. It seems inevitable that those futures will change, given Nvidia’s opportunity to deploy both. Since Nvidia acquired Mental Images in December, the focus, Spina says has been analyzing the very different roadmaps and build new roadmaps. Juxtapaosing IP, inevitably changes both roadmaps, especially since the two companies were pursuing very different rendering technologies. Complementary, Spina seems to think, but different enough to suggest there is a new best way to go forward for both Gelato and Mental Ray. Both…being the operative word.

Spina himself is only about a year into advancing Nvidia’s goals for GPU rendering for Gelato among other things. So the opportunity to put these two great graphics leaders together is I am sure a big job. Not only do the Mental Images IP, technology, and team have to be integrated with the Nvidia, but the Mental Images OEMs must also factor in the merge. As a reporter I wish I knew more.