Adobe announced all of the features of the new highly anticipated Creative Suite CS5, which will include native 64bit, CUDA GPU acceleration, and better support for formats like DPX and DSLR clips.  I will have many more CS5 details in future posts, delving into how that will change the landscape of many workflows.  There are lots more new developments in the post world, but those are the primary things that stick out to me right now.  We still have two more days, and I will be spending a good bit of time demonstration Cineform’s Neo3D features at their booth at the back of the Lower South Hall.  So if anyone wants to catch up with me, feel free to stop by.

I know I haven’t posted anything here in a while, but there will be quite a bit coming in the near future.  I am writing a series of articles that will be posted between here and Shane Hurlbut’s blog at hurlbutvisuals.com.  I have worked with Shane on a number of projects, the largest one being the Navy Seal film over the last year.  I will be offering an overview of the post workflow options for video DSLRs on his site, with links back to this one to delve into the less glamorous, nitty-gritty details.  So stay tuned for some very focused articles detailing specific workflow obstacles in the next few weeks.  And then NAB is only a month away, which I am sure will bring a whole variety of new things to talk about.  I will be at Cineform’s booth as a demo artist/workflow consultant again this year, so feel free to stop by and check it out.

First off was the Nikon D90, that shot 720p24.   That is a good frame rate for film makers, but the quality of the MPEG4 files is not worth serious work, especially with a lot of motion in the frame.  Canon’s 5D MarkII was the next option to hit the market, with 1080p30.  Dealing with the framerate is the most challenging aspect of using this camera.  30p is a fairly unusual framerate, supposedly requested by the AP for reporters to get both pictures and video for the web.  Canon’s next 1080p release in the Rebel Ti offered an even more awkward and useless framerate of 20fps.  Canon finally got it right with the next release, in the new 7D, which has options for 29.97, 25, and 23.976 fps at 1080p.  It also has options for 50 and 59.94 fps at 720p, which makes it a much more versatile film making tool.  The new 1D MarkIV offers those options on a slightly larger sensor, and with less rolling shutter artifacting, a phenomenon I will go into more detail on later.  Nikon has released a number of other cameras, but with no new features beyond the D90′s 720p24.  Panasonic released the Lumix GH1 which offers 1080p24, but the 4/3 lense system is not as universal as the Canon and Nikon offerings.  Canon has pushed the technology the furthest, so most of my dialog will be in regards to their offerings and workflow options.

Regardless of which DSLR camera you chose, there are many challenges to be overcome in using them on a large production.  First off, as mentioned before, you don’t have real timecode or keycode to track your footage or sync audio with.  It is a tapeless format, so you have to have a separate data backup solution.  In the case of the 5D there is the framerate issue if you plan to intercut it with film.  There are also issues with monitoring and playback, since calibrated HDMI based monitoring solutions are hard to come by.  All video capable DSLRs have CMOS sensors and therefore exhibit rolling shutter issues during rapid movement.  This is caused by the top of the frame recording a slightly earlier moment in time than the bottom of the frame, with any rapid changes producing inconsistencies in the picture, changing from top to bottom.  I am most familiar with the specific issues of the Canon 5D workflow, since I am in the middle of production on a feature film that is being shot primarily on the 5D.  I will go into much more detail about how we solved those issues to leverage the enormous potential of that camera in my next article.

Convergent Design had both of their digital recording devices on display.  The Flash XDR has been available for a while, but I have been waiting for the smaller NanoFlash.  It can record full 1080p HD-SDI or HDMI onto CompactFlash cards in the same MPEG format as Sony’s new XDCam-HD422 gear.  It is absolutely tiny, at about half the size of a 3.5″ hard drive, and is solid state.  I can envision a number of uses for it in rigging small camera’s on vehicles and in other rough spots.  The most challenging spot is usually as a backpack recorder for a helmet cam.  If Iconix ever releases a smaller CCU for their Studio2K, the backpack may someday become a belt.  The HDMI input allows cheap camcorders to record at much higher quality than their internal storage allows.

One other thing that I didn’t notice until after the show was over, was that NVIDIA announced a new SDI I/O solution, which should become available later this year.  SDI output is nothing new for NVIDIA, and has been available as an option since back when the AGP based QuadroFX 4000 was the top of the line.  I had heard over two years ago that SDI input capability was in development, but the Quadro Digital Video Pipeline has been the first sign of it becoming a reality.  Based on the developments in GPU accelerated encoding with the Quadro CX, I predicted last year that this must be coming soon.  I am still curious to see the details on how this will be implemented at the software level, and more specifically, what types of realtime HD compression will be supported.  The fact that it supports multistream capture is somewhat unique, and will be very useful as stereoscopic video production becomes more common.

That pretty much sums up the main things that stood out to me at NAB.  I have deliberately steered clear of discussing a few products that I will be using a lot in the near future.  I plan to post much more detailed info on those products and the related workflows once I have experienced them first hand on large projects.

Sony has a number of new toys that span the budget gamut.  On the high end, the SRW 9000 is an HDCam-SR camcorder with capabilities similar to the F23, and an all in one shoulder-mount formfactor like the F900.  With option boards, this unit is capable of recording up to 60fps at full raster 1920×1080, with up to 10bit 4:4:4 RGB of color information.  The next step below SR is really XDCam-HD422 at this point, since regular HDCAM is basically obselete.  The new PDW-800 basically replaces all of the functionality of the F900 (30i/p, 25/44p, etc.) plus the advantages of full 1920×1080 recording in 4:2:2 instead of HDCam’s 1440×1080 at about 3:1:1.  The 50Mb files can also be edited in their native form in almost any NLE, and can be accessed in a non-linear fashion directly from the storage disk. (No rewinding, preroll, or realtime capture required)  The new camera even has a network jack right on the side for copying the recorded files to a network, and can dump the proxies to a USB flash drive if you want to go that route.  That won’t be necessary for any workflow I will use, since Premiere, FCP, and even Avid can access the full resolution files directly without import conversions, for truly native editing.  Finally a workflow that is actually designed to “work” and “flow.”  Sony also had a number of new LCD monitors on display, including a 4K one, two circular polarized 3D screens, and two new 30″ and 17″ additions to their BVM line of LCDs.  The 3D screens look great, and while I couldn’t confirm the inner workings, with a single input, it seems to use an interface technology that would be compatible with Cineform’s new Neo3D software that I have been demoing all week.

The only thing I was really impressed with at the Panasonic booth was that they created an Economy line of P2 cards, but I have yet to find the specifics on the new pricing levels.  With $900 being the minimum price, an economy option was definitely needed.  SxS cards at least have SDHC based replacement options, which is especially ironic since the P2 cards are rumored to physically contain 4 SDHC cards.  Panasonic also has a new 3D plasma screen, based on sequential alternating frames, which requires active 3D shutter glasses.  I have also heard they have a new 10bit 1080p projector for $2400 that I should go check out tomorrow.

NVIDIA has released OSX drivers for the QuadroFX 4800, so it seems that that will probably become the highend card of choice for those purchasing the new MacPro, which was recently revised with Nehalem based Xeon CPUs.  I have been pleased with the performance I get from my equivalent QuadroCX card, and I am looking forward to trying a QuadroFX 5800 on my SpeedGradeDI system sometime in the near future.

Blackmagic Design has a lot of new products available, many utilizing SDI over fibre optic cable.  It is a pretty straightforward idea, but since fibre is even more expensive than BNC cables, I personally will have little use for it in the near future.  Their new UltraScope product is very exciting, and if it works as well as advertised, fills a big hole in the market.  Most other HD-SDI scope products are in the five figure range, so a $700 solution will be a very welcome option.  They also have two new variations to their Videohub line, the Enterprise version with 144/288 I/O channels, and the more reasonable Studio version with 16/32 channels.  I have filled our old 12/24 channel original model Videohub at Bandito Brothers to capacity with about 8 edit stations and the supporting equipment.  But between having 33% more connections, and 3Gb SDI support to avoid wasting two channels at a time, the new version would probably support facilities twice as large.

Thats all for now, as I have to prepare for another big day, but I will be checking in with my friends at AJA, Matrox, Sony, and maybe even Avid over the course of the week here.

Adobe has added many minor tweaks and improvements to all of their apps in CS4.  My favorite so far would be the new Adobe Media Encoder, which allows you to render and encode Premiere Pro and After Effects sequences  in the background, while you continue to work in the applications themselves.  This should help finally utilize all those extra CPU cores we all have buried in our systems.  There is also supposed to be more support for 64bit processing, especially in Photoshop.  The speech to text engine and enhanced dynamic link are the other features Adobe has been highlighting, but I don’t have as much use for those personally.  One thing that has been made clear by third parties, is that Premiere Pro is not finished, and that we should expect a major update soon.  I am not sure which details of that have been made public, but until that release, most third party extensions of Premiere will not be compatible with CS4.  Specifically I am awaiting support from Cineform for ProspectHD/4K, and from Matrox for the AXIO line of products.  Both companies have stated that their software will require support from the extended SDK in the update, so stay tuned for any news on that from Adobe in the near future.

The announcement of NVidia’s new high end GPU, the Quadro CX came as a bit of a surprise to me, since I had seen the specifications for what I believe will be the Quadro 5800, which should include 4GB of memory, and will be found in the new QuadroPlex.  The new Quadro CX card is very similar to the current Quadro 5600, with 1.5 GB of memory, and supports the same SDI daughter card, for broadcast preview and output.  This brings to mind the way that the GeForce9 series of consumer graphics cards were very similar to the previous line of GeForce8 cards.  The new Quadro CX seems most closely related to the Geforce 260 on the consumer side, but with a lower memory bandwidth for some reason.  One key new feature is the edition of DisplayPort output, which is made even more significant by the fact that is supports true 10bit color.  When combined with the new HP Dreamcolor LCD or similar display, this should allow true 10bit display of HD or 2K content without the need for expensive SDI interfaced components.  This is especially critical for desktop based color correction applications, many of which have been written specifically to be run on NVidia Quadro hardware.

Between better multithreading, and more use of the GPU, we should see significant performance increases.  The possibility of 10bit color out of CS4 is exciting as well, but I have not heard any details about that.  I have recently received one of the HP Dreamcolor displays, so I plan to post some info from my experience with that soon.

Apple recently released a free ProRes playback decoder for both OSX and Windows, which is pretty significant.  This with allow Final Cut Pro editors to share their footage using this efficient codec with Windows users and Mac users who don’t have Final Cut Pro.  Since there is still no way to encode to ProRes on PC, another format is still required to get footage back from the PC to the Mac.

Reading between the lines of some of NVidia’s Nvision, I believe I have acertained the specs on Nvidia’s next top end workstation graphics card.  The NVidia Quadro FX 5800 will have 4GB of memory, with a PCI-Express 2.0 interface, for 8GB/sec of bandwidth in both directions.  It should have two dual link DVI connectors and one DisplayPort connector, besides the usual Quadro stereo port.  It should support SLI Mosaic Mode, using four connections from two cards to support a four quadrant image, which will eventually allow full resolution display of 4K footage in realtime.

Speaking of 4K, Red has announced that Adobe will be releasing a plugin to edit R3D files natively in the CS3 suite of applications.  Coinciding with that due to the release of the first version of the Red SDK, Cineform has finally released an “official” version of their Red4K convertor.  They have also begun to advocate an offline/online workflow for the first time, under the brand name of Cineform Express.  My only comment is, once Adobe supports Red natively, shouldn’t the online be done straight from the R3D files?  In a perfect world, a Cineform offline with a relink to R3D files, exported as an EDL to SpeedGrade for color would be the ideal way to do post with Red footage.  If only life was that simple; maybe someday it will be.

Elsewhere on the mobile recording front, I have been using some prototype units that record HD-SDI directly to SATA drives.  We tested them in some pretty extreme operating environments, and when used with Solid State SATA drives, they held up pretty well.  While we weren’t without our share of problems, the units were able to capture some pretty amazing footage when combined with an Iconix camera system.  I won’t post a full review until the creators have had an opportunity to solve some of the issues with the units, that our tests exposed.

Nvidia also released a new high end professional video card, the QuadroFX 4700 X2.  This card has two independent GPUs that can be harnessed together with SLI or used separately to drive 4 separate displays.  The stats are not much more impressive than the current top of the line 4600 and 5600 solutions, so they are really just updating the previous 4500X2 which was made obselete by the new generation of GeForce8 based cards released last year.

Panasonic has released a number of new camcorders.  They have three lines of solid-state recording: AVC-Intra to P2 Cards, DVCPro-HD to P2 Cards, and AVCHD to SDHC cards.  At the upper end, the new HPX3700 and HPX2700 both record 10bit 4:2:2 to P2 in AVC Intra.  Both support “Varicam” variable framerate options at 1080p, and the top of the line HPX3700 model also has Dual-Link 4:4:4 RGB output capability.  In the prosumer market, three cameras that I would describe as variations to the HVX200 have been released.  All have 3 1/3″ CCDs, and have the same basis shape look of the original.  The updated HVX200A has improve optics and sensor, as well as the addition of an HD-SDI output.  The lower cost HPX-170 removes the outdated SD-MiniDV tape option option, allowing only P2 recording.  Lastly, the HMC-150 is similar in physical formfactor, but record to SDHC cards in the AVCHD codec, at much lower bitrates.  The other two options in the new professional AVCHD line are the shoulder mount HMC-70 and the 1 lb, 3CCD, HV30 competitor, the HSC1U.

Panasonic has also announced that a 64GB P2 card will be available later this year, which will double the maximum record time of all their cameras utilizing that technology.

Fibre Channel technology marches onwards, with the release of 8Gb products by ATTO.  Not to be confused with the existing 10Gb Fibre Channel specification used for Fibre switch interconnects.  The new 8Gb client connection technology provides 800MB/s bandwidth per channel.  Since I don’t currently have any application for transfers at that speed, I am most excited about the implications this will have on the prices of current “obselete” 4Gb Fibre HBAs, that I actually do use.

Last on the list, is the item I was most impressed with, but have the least realistic practical application for.  I was stunned to see a true 3D image on a large flat panel TV as I walked by a booth.  I guess Philips released this a couple of months ago, but a totally separate company was displaying what they could do with it.  The display uses lense technology at the individual pixel level to control the projected light pattern, which allows it to display different images when viewed from different angles.  With the ability to send each eye a different image, a depth effect is easily created.  Instead of alternating only two left and right images, the Philips solution displays 9 different angles before repeating the sequence, greatly improving the probability that the viewer will percieve the image depth correctly.  This leads to the question of: where do the nine angles come from?  Instead of the traditional way of producing 3D depth effects by creating two separate streams, the Philips TV accepts a single flat video input, as well as a Z-depth map, and renders the different angles live based on that information.  A Z-depth map can be easily created for animated content, but is nearly impossible to produce efficiently for regular video footage, limiting the potential sources of content.  A technology called Declipse allows multple layer to be input, allowing a full lookaround effect for objects in the forground, which I can confirm, adds significantly to the effect.  Although it can not be easily applied to my stereoscopic style of shooting 3D, it was definitely a very impressive technology to see in action.  I intend to keep an eye on its further development, and look forward to seeing it deployed on a large scale.