Archive of the I/O Category

Back from the show. I like taking a day or so after my last postings to look through everything I’ve collected, selecting some last items to include in a final wrapup. While that’s not a lot of time for deep reflection, I am at least far enough away from the hype of the moment to enable a bit of perspective.

At the NAB press office earlier this week I overheard an NAB official talk to the editor of one of the leading trade mags. He was asked about what he thought would be among the most exciting developments of the show. Instead, he begged off answering, stating that as far as he was concerned it was all just a rehash. He could find nothing new or interesting worth commenting on. more

After AJA turned heads last year with Io HD, it seemed IO had gotten new preeminence and respect. Now Matrox brings the MX02 into the mix, an elegant, portable tool kit of Mac IO for Mac and MacBook Pros. Native support for XDCAM, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, and P2. Not ProRes dependent (though it will support ProRes). Available in July at $1595.

Also of note at Matrox, the RT.X2 LE at $1095, so the cheapest realtime HD editing we’ve ever seen. Works with Adobe Premeiere Pro CS3 and CS3 Production Premium. Now available through dealers worldwide.

FOR-A Corporation, a leading manufacturer of video and audio systems for the broadcast and professional video industries, will introduce expanded input/output options for its VPS series of digital switchers, including the VPS-700 GINGA and the all-new VPS-715 GINGA 1.5 M/E switcher at NAB 2008 in Las Vegas from April 14-17, 2008 (Booth #SU5220). Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

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

If you’ve ever watched network field crews work outside in DC (as I just did last weekend), it’s hard not to notice that the infrastrcture is sort of what you would expect from camping. Elegant is not the word you would use. Not surprisingly the brand new $450 million Newseum (which doubles as a giant broadcast studio) does have elegant solutions for news acquisition within and around their capacious space.

But not everyone, even the networks, has $450 million (or a portion thereof) to turn the world into I/O paradise. And yet news will unrelentingly continue to happen outside–even scheduled news that happens over and over again in the same inconvenient location, like White House lawn press conferences.

Enter Ensemble Designs BrightPak, the latest addition to the growing field of mobile I/O products. Ensemble’s respected line of compact video, audio, and optical convertors (up to 6 single high) can now be…elegantly…assembled in a tough Pelican case with a confirguarble connector bay, an Anton Bauer gold plate battery mount (plus A/C). New for NAB and shipping now, it’s already in use at CBS, perhaps even on the White House lawn.

At the Adobe dinner last night Mark Randall described NAB 2008 as the “year of plumbing.” Without a lot of blockbuster product releases (especially for the desktop), there’s a lot of truth to that statement. So what we’re seeing is a lot of infrastructure gear that’s not incredibly “sexy” (sorry, I can’t believe I just typed that) but is, or will be, incredibly useful.

Take 3Gbps HD-SDI transmission technology. This year (and somewhat last year) we’ve seen a wealth of products that can input and output 3Gbps worth of data i.e. video — it’s all over the show floor. Why is this number significant? Traditional single-link HD-SDI works out to 1.5Gbps. Dual-link HD-SDI and the newer 3G-SDI (which operates over a single coaxial cable) can handle 3Gbps. Standard HD-SDI can handle the transmission of 1080i video; dual-link HD-SDI and 3G-SDI open up the possibility of transmitting 1080p, 4:4:4 RGB, 2K “film” data, and stereoscopic 1080i. more

NEC Display Solutions of America, a leading stand-alone provider of commercial and residential LCD and plasma displays and projectors, announced an internal HD-SDI video input/output card, compatible with NEC’s Multeos Multi-Function Series and select NEC MultiSync Information Display Series large-screen LCD displays.

The HD-SDI card can be seen at the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters Show through April 17 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nev. NEC Display Solutions will be located in TVOne’s booth, No. N1725. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Blackmagic Design continues its move from a modest supplier of post gear made much better than it had any right to be to flowering into one of the more remarkable developers of postproduction gear more useful than you would have imagined.

The Blackmagic product—among all of the others they introduced at the show—most striking to anyone building a post business is the Broadcast Videohub. Described by the Aussie company as “the world’s largest affordable SDI router”, the device looks to bring order to the chaos of confusing patch bay madness most growing facilities face. more

New KONA Software to Add RED-Specific Video Format Outputs

In an effort to optimize support for RED Digital Cinema workflows in post production, AJA Video is adding RED-specific video outputs for some of the unique frame sizes that the REDALERT and REDCINE software applications can produce. This additional support for RED will be included in the version 6.0 software driver for the award-winning KONA 3 video card. The version 6.0 software update will be a free upgrade for KONA 3 users, and will be available for download in late May of 2008. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

IO is not one of your marquee topics, but it is one of those essentials, especially when you don’t have enough. NAB was full of technology designed to smooth the transition from format to format, device to device, signal/codec to monitor. AJA’s nifty IoHD–a portable survival kit for Apple Pro Rez users was just one standout example especially for in-the-field and/or small facility editing–it’s been discussed in earlier posts.

Another small victory in IO comes from Ensemble Designs. The Bright Eye 90 series of up/down/cross convertors can do everything from simple aspect ratio conversion in it’s most basic config to a host of HD up and down conversions, with processing that spans audio, HDMI, fiber, USB…. The company expanded the line at NAB offering more options for camera/projector interface, HDMI output for monitoring, upconverting analog camera signal to digital HD, handling HD and SD digital and analog composite signals and AES digital audio.