Cineform’s big news was their acquisition by GoPro, and a reduction of their prices.  Neo (Previously “Neo4K”) is now $300 and the full Neo3D is $1000.  There is also a new free utility called the GoPro Cineform Studio posted on the GoPro site, designed to help users easily process their footage from the new GoPro3D.  That download effectively makes the basic Cineform codec freely available to anyone who needs it.  I highly recommend having the Cineform codec available on any system you do video work on, since it is a useful cross-platform compression format.

Adobe announced the next step for the Creative Suite line, which is a .5 update for most of the products.  Premiere 5.5 adds merged clips for better sync sound support, and some improvements to exports and Media Encoder.  After Effects 5.5 has a new Warb stabilizer, that should help fix rolling shutter artifacts in DSLR footage, among other uses, and it also has new options and presets for stereoscopic work, primarily focused on motion graphics.  Soundbooth has been totally replaced by the return of Audition as a standard part of the suite, which should improve support for multitrack editing and surround sound.  There are a variety of new features in the update, but nothing totally revolutionary.

AJA has a few new things to show.  The Kona 3G now supports outputting 3G SDI signal on all four ports at once, allowing preview of 4K media at full resolution, provided that you have a 4K display available.  They have updated their frame convertor with the FS2, adding support for HDMI and 3G SDI.  I am still trying to figure out if their implementation of 3G includes support for 2K over SDI, which could make it a useful tool in DCI theater systems.  They also showed off a new piece of hardware under development that they are calling Riker.  It is an external box connnected via 8x PCIe, that could support stereoscopic 4K at some point in the future.

Blackmagic has a variety of new products on display.  The Hyperdeck Shuttle allows uncompressed recording of SDI or HDMI to a SATA based SSD.  At $345 it is a bargain, until you count in the price of an SSD that supports uncompressed HD capture.  They will also have a rack mount version with two drive slots called the Hyperdeck Studio.  Among other things, they have a new Decklink 4K I/O card with 4 channels of SDI for $600, and some more live video switching products as a result of their acquisition of ATEM last year.  A stripped down version of DaVinci Resolve was announced, that will be available as a free download, which should further bring advanced color correction to the masses.

Sony has a variety of new products available.  Their OLED based displays look amazing, but are still quite expensive.  With the lack of HDCam-SR tapes available from Japan, Sony’s new SRMaster series of solid-state media products are probably going to get a big external boost into the market.  The new SRMaster devices replace tapes with 1TB SRMemory modules that use the same MPEG4 codec as HDCam-SR tapes, but with many benefits, including direct access to the compressed file format, and faster transfer options.  In the camera world, the F65 is Sony’s first 4K camcorder, writing 16bit 4K files to SRMemory, captured from what Sony describes as an 8K CMOS sensor.  On a more practical front, the PMW-F3 looks like a great camera for many applications.  While I don’t like the formfactor, the large single-sensor CMOS should produce an image similar to the look and feel that DSLRs have made popular.  That fact that it can output 4:4:4 RGB over the dual SDI outputs on the back is an impressize option.  Sony also has a small stereoscopic 3D camera coming out, that records to the same MVC format that 3D BluRays use.  There will also be an update released for Vegas 10 that will allow encoding of 3D BluRays, and that feature alone could make it worth purchasing, if you expect to need that capability anytime soon.

Convergent Design has a new recorder on display, the Gemini 444, which records uncompressed SDI at 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 to SSD drives.  I am still a bigger fan of their original MPEG2 based NanoFlash devices, since that is a more efficient use of space.  On the other hand, the dual link recording option is nice for stereoscopic 3D work, or VFX plates and greenscreen shots, especially if you have a new PMW-F3 with full RGB SDI output.

There are a variety of video I/O devices on display that use the new Thunderbolt connectivity technology, but they are all probably a ways off from being released as finished products.  They will be faster than USB3, but besides the daisy chain option, I see no immediate advantage over ExpressCard based I/O products.  AJA, Blackmagic, and Matrox all had their own flavor of external device hooked up to new Macbook Pro  laptops under glass.  Combining these devices with Thunderbolt based storage solutions will greatly enhance the expandability of laptop systems, especially for onset media management and review work.

Shared SANs takes the benefits of having all of your storage interconnected with high bandwidth links, and extends it one step further.  By running special software to synchronize the connected systems, it allows each of the connected systems to access the same the data on the same volume on the SAN, without overwriting each others files or corrupting the data.  Most SAN software is designed to function as a peer to peer solution for smaller installations, (5-10 systems) or with dedicated servers for larger SANs.

As is probably obvious, there are many benefits to having multiple systems sharing the same set of files on a central high performance disk array.  First off, you don’t have to buy individual arrays for each system, making individual systems cheaper and quieter.  All the actual data is stored in single physical location, making it easier to protect and secure it.  With all the data stored on centralized volumes, file management is easier, with a single unified file structure, and you lose the need to duplicate source files across every system that needs local access to them.  This saves time and storage space.  It also makes it easier to make thorough backups, especially in automated form, which makes your data more secure.  On the flipside, the initial investment is usually rather high, and all of your eggs are in one basket.  If the SAN has an issue or problem, your entire production may grind to a halt until the issue is resolved.

Most all SANs use Fiber Channel as their primary physical interface.  Although this in not inherently required, until recently there was no other standard technology that offered that capability.  CalDigit recently launched a PCIe switch product that they claim offers shared SAN capabilities for their PCIe attached arrays.  While the idea is great, currently the hardware is still in a similar price range to entry level fiber solutions, and you still need expensive software to keep the connected systems in sync and prevent your SAN data  from getting corrupted.

iSCSI also offers some of the same capabilities, with block level drive access, but is only a viable competitor in the high end production world when running on 10Gb ethernet interfaces, which are still usually prohibitively expensive at this point.  Running iSCSI over Gigabit ethernet may be a viable solution for certain compressed workflows, but offers few advantages over regular network storage, at the expense of needing separate SAN software to share properly.

There are a number of different software options when creating a Shared SAN.  I am not familiar with every one of them, but the five I describe here should give you a place to start.  They all serve the same purpose of preventing multiple systems from trying to write data in the same spot at the same time, but they use a variety of different methods to accomplish that objective.

FiberJet is the cheapest option, but does not allow true file level sharing.  It prevents overwriting and data corruption by only giving one system at a time write access to any given volume.  On the otherhand, all systems can be given full read access any volume all the time.  This allows you to share source footage and other media with multiple workstations without the waste of having to duplicate the files.  It doesn’t allow you to easily share actually project files, since most apps will require write access, and will usually force you to share your files across a number of separate volumes, making it harder to find or backup your data efficiently.  So FibreJet gives you about half of the benefits of a Shared SAN, as a low cost starting point.

MetaSAN has been available for quite a while now, and is fairly common in PC based post-production environments.  It supports true file level sharing, allowing all of your systems to read and write files on the same volume simultaneously.  It supports standard file systems, and operates as a separate process over IP to keep machines in sync.  It also allows PCs to access files on Mac formatted drives and vice versa.  It requires one of the connected systems to host the server process, to manage the distribution of metadata and synchronization information.  That system does not have to be dedicated to that task, but it can be for maximum performance and stability.  If you use a user workstation, rebooting that system could cause other users to lose disk access.  I have used MetaSAN for many years, and it is an amazing tool, but it has its quirks that you have to get used to.  It has a tendency to freeze up workstations if something goes wrong, as it waits for certain requests to timeout, which can make it difficult to troubleshoot when you are in a hurry. (And when the SAN is down, you are always in a hurry)  On the otherhand, with all of its instability and frusteration, it has never allowed one of my arrays to become corrupted, or for me to lose data, so it clearly performs its function.

HyperFS is a recently released option, primarily offered by Rorke Data in the US.  It has its own proprietary file system, which can be directly accessed from Windows, OSX and Linux based systems.  The base software is priced similar to MetaSAN, and functions in a peer to peer fashion in smaller installations.  But if you have more than 8 systems to connect, you will be required to invest in a full dedicated metadata server and license, which significantly increases the deployment cost.

XSAN is Apple’s shared SAN software offering, currently on version 2.2, and it is limited to OSX and requires Xserve systems as metadata controllers.  As a PC guy, I have no experience with XSan, but it is used by many Mac based post-production facilities.  The underlying technology is based on the last option we will examine, StorNext.

StorNext is by far the most expensive option, but it offers higher performance, specifically for frame based media, than any of the other choices.  Frame sequence based media bog down other SAN software due to the high number of individual files that are being opened, accessed, and closed, in rapid sequence.  Each individual frame requires the same amount of metadata and synchronization data as an entire video file, overloading lower end software options.  StorNext is an enterprise level product with a variety of options and tiers, with versions that support every different OS, and even ones that interoperate with Apple’s XSan.  It is clearly an expensive option, but you are paying for stability and performance, putting it at the core of many DI facilities that have a DPX based workflow.

Shared SANs are one off the most complicated and expensive investments available in the post-production world.  Lower cost network based alternatives are a better place to start, for smaller oragnizations and compressed workflows, until you are sure you need the performance that SANs can offer.  Once you are working with uncompressed high definition video, or 2K frame sizes, especially with multiple users, a SAN will probably be worth the investment.  The effect that they can have on your workflow and level of collaboration is dramatic, making them worth the effort it takes to get them up and running.

AJA released a variety of new products, most of them adding 3D related features to previously existing offerings.  The Kona3G is a revision to the existing Kona3/Xena2Ke that adds stereoscopic support through HDMI 1.4 output and dual stream SDI-3G I/O, while also dropping in price about 30%.  Their Hi5-3D replaces the Hi5-3G and adds HDMI 1.4 output as well as a variety of options for processing dual stream and muxed stereo inputs.  The Ki Pro Mini is a smaller version of the Ki Pro that can now be mounted directly to camcorders, and record ProRes files directly to CompactFlash cards from HDMI or SDI inputs.

Blackmagic Design had their own selection of new products to announce.  Their line of SDI routers must have really taken off, because they are really scaling their offerings upwards, with new models that offer up to 288 Channels of input and output, and options for coaxial or fiber based connections.  I am just now upgrading to a 16×16 3G Micro VideoHub, but maybe someday.  Their other big news comes from their DaVinci line, with previously announced Resolve 7.0 for OSX finally being released.  It will be interesting to see what effect that new option has on the marketplace and the price of existing products.  My company will definitely be looking into setting up a Resolve system, and our primary colorist is very interested in the new capabilities it would give us.

NVidia released their new line of Fermi based Quadro graphics cards at Siggraph.  The Quadro 4000, 5000, and 6000 will be the successors to the current QuadroFX 3800, 4800, and 5800, with similar form factors and interfaces.  I have not had a chance to test them myself yet, but everything I hear has been positive.  Adobe has announced that the Quadro 4000 and 5000 will be officially supported for CUDA acceleration by the Mercury engine in Premiere Pro CS5.  This support came in the form of the Premiere Pro 5.0.2 update last week, which also adds the GeForce GTX 470 as a fully supported GPU option.  More significantly from a technology standpoint, they added 10bit Displayport support for Quadro cards, and also support for RedRocket acceleration, RMD files and newer Red camera updates, as well as better support for Broadcast Wave and certain XDCam-HD files.  There is also a 6 page list of smaller fixes in the new release, many of which fill significant holes in certain workflows.  I haven’t had much time recently to test out the new features, but getting 10bit color to my Dreamcolor is at the top of my list.

Avid Media Composer 5 was released three months ago, and they are now on the 5.0.3 revision.  I have had a chance to test it out at work, and while the ability to import any Quicktime via AMA can totally change the workflow for certain tasks, I wouldn’t use it as a primary way to edit large projects.  The performance and stability is not up to the same level as MXF based editing is.  You also need a very fast system for that to work.  Most of our Avids are HP XW8600s, while we have been dedicating our newer Z800 systems to CS5, but AMA playback requires more computing power than DNxHD editing, which is to be expected.  We also found Version 5 to be less stabile and less responsive on our large feature length DNxHD project, even without AMA based media.  The fact that it fully supports Windows 7 will be the factor that motivates our facility wide upgrade in the near future.

I was also able to test Media Composer 5 with my Matrox MXO2-Mini, for hardware HDMI out, and while it worked great at first, I once again saw a major hit in stability, with an escalating number of system crashes.  It is so close, but not quite there yet.  Hopefully we will see many of those issues worked out in intermediate dot releases, since most of these features are brand new.  Stay tuned, since I have a few other new toys that I will review in my next post.

FTC Disclosure: Many of the companies I refer to above have made their products available to me or my company in the past, but none of the new items discussed above were provided to me without independently purchasing them.

The CS4 applications that will see significant performance gains from hardware acceleration, are After Effects, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro.  The improvements in After Effects and Photoshop will also be evident with any other previous generation high end GPU, while the new hardware accelerated H264 encoding support for Premiere Pro is specifically tied to the new Quadro CX card.  NVidia has also recently announced the Quadro FX 4800, with basically identical hardware specifications to the Quadro CX, and which retails for about $200 cheaper.  The extra cost is buying you access to the CUDA based RapiHD H.264 encoder, that is available in no other form besides in conjunction with the Quadro CX card.  If you have no need for accelerated H.264 encoding, you could consider saving $200 with the FX 4800, but I envision the possibility of NVIDIA releasing more CX-only tools for creative professionals, since that card is targeted towards that specific market.  Not to be overlooked, NVIDIA has also released the Quadro FX 5800, with an incredible 4GB of memory, but that should only be needed by applications with the most intense processing requirements, and is a class above NVIDIA’s previous Quadro products.  The Quadro CX is compatible with the same HD-SDI output daughter card that the previous Quadro FX 4600 and 5600 cards used, for broadcast and post-production applications.  Hopefully we will see more software applications directly supporting that interface card in the near future.  The Quadro CX is based on the same core architecture as the new GTX 200 series of consumer cards, while the Quadro FX 4600 was based on the same technology as the GeForce 8800GTX, which is now two generations out of date.  It is to be expected, that there is an all around performance increase with the new cards in almost any application, but Adobe has been specifically adapting their software to leverage the power of these graphics processors.

Of the many applications in Adobe’s new CS4 Suite, After Effects is the one that most fully and effectively integrates the power of GPU acceleration to increase processing power and application responsiveness.  Many of these features are not new, but by nature of the way they are designed, grow more powerful as GPU performance increases.  OpenGL allows most of the 3D processing required for advance compositing to be offloaded to the GPU for dramatic increases in performance and responsiveness.  There are also many plug-ins and effects that specifically take advantage of GPU power.  Synthetic image generation like noise and fractals, as well as artificial 3D blurring are some of the best fits for effective GPU acceleration in AE.  Many of these improvements are only implemented for faster previews unless the user specifically selects OpenGL exporting, due to a possible loss in quality based on the lack of precision of OpenGL, but certain effects such as the new “Cartoon” vectorizing filter, that experiences dramatic (30x) rendering improvements with GPU processing, utilize GPU acceleration both for rapid previews and for accelerating the final export render.  In most of the synthetic object (Noise, fractals, shapes, blurs, etc.) previewing tests I did in AE, OpenGL acceleration with the Quadro CX provided a ten fold increase in performance over CPU based rendering.  This is the difference between an interactive experience, and a plan-next-move-while-rendering workflow.  While any graphics card with OpenGL support can accelerate processing in After Effects, as compositions and projects become larger and more complex, the benefits of the Quadro CX’s increased memory and processing power will come into play.  Complex projects will experience a greater increase in performance than simpler ones, when upgrading to a higher end GPU.

The next program in the CS4 suite to experience major performance improvements through GPU acceleration is Photoshop CS4.  Most of these improvements come from newly added implementation of OpenGL processing, and therefore, like After Effects, they are not specifically tied to the new Quadro CX.  But the power of the new Quadro CX makes the benefits of these improvements more dramatically obvious, especially on larger images.  These improvements in Photoshop are fairly extensive, and I will review them in detail in the next posting in this series.  As far as the Quadro CX is concerned, with its large 1.5GB cache of onboard memory, it is more than capable of handling the largest and most complex operations that almost anyone would attempt in Photoshop.

Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS4 also takes advantage of the GPU in a few less significant ways, for basic effects.  The one totally new aspect that the Quadro CX brings to the table is accelerated encoding, specifically encoding to H.264 with the new RapiHD encoder from Elemental Technologies.  This is the primary marketing piece specific to the CX card, and my third and final post in this series on the Quadro CX will be about CUDA and its implementation in this new encoder.

After all of the Adobe tests, I had two other programs that utilize the GPU that I wanted to try on this new high end card.  The first was Iridas SpeedgradeDI, which is specifically programmed to run on NVidia’s Quadro cards.  The base version running with DVI or 8bit DisplayPort attached monitors worked great, and nothing I could do with my limited knowledge of the program could even get it to drop a frame.  The real test for that application would involve connecting the optional SDI daughter card for true 10bit output.  Hopefully the 10bit color depth supported by the DisplayPort will eventually allow that level of monitoring without the high priced SDI daughter board.  The highest-end customers will still require an SDI output in order to use SDI interfaced external waveform and vectorscope tools, or live broadcast outputs.

Lastly, I ran my favorite program, Battlefield 2 to test out the card’s 3D rendering capabilities.  BF2 was released over three years ago, and therefore is not a cutting edge test, but it is my most recent high performance game.  With all of the settings maxed out, at maximum resolution on my 30″ LCD, I was able to get 99.9 FPS about 90% of the time, with the occasional dip into the low nineties for complex scenes.  Anyhow, the Quadro CX should be more than up to the task for those late night “stress relief” sessions with any modern 3D “application” if desired.

Once I had thoroughly tested the Quadro CX’s acceleration capabilities, I endeavored to verify the capabilities of it’s newly supported output interface.  I hooked my HP Dreamcolor LCD to the card via the new DisplayPort interface, hoping to get some taste of 10bit color output.  Unfortunately, currently none of the major applications I currently have installed are programmed to take advantage of this capability.  I do have a small utility from NVidia that displays 16bit TIFF files in 10bit color depth, and I can confirm that yes, there is a difference, and yes, the combination of the Quadro CX and the HP Dreamcolor does give you full hardware support for 10bit color display.  Hopefully in the future we will see updates and plug-ins that will unlock this feature in useful ways.  There is a 10bit capable SDI plug-in that NVidia released for After Effects 7 quite a while back, as a simple demonstration of their new SDI capability, and I am hoping to see an equivalent DisplayPort version for both After Effects and Photoshop, especially since NVidia and Adobe seem to be working together more closely these days.

Anyhow, if you are in the market for a new high end GPU, the Quadro CX has all of the processing power that most people could possibly need.  At its currently available price of about $1800, it has directly replaced the Quadro FX 4600, and no question is a superior product.  Now if you already have a 4600, the jump to the CX is not immediately necessary unless you are currently pushing your system to the limits, or you encode a lot of footage to H264.  The Photoshop and After Effects GPU support in CS4 will work nearly as well with a 4600, but there is a difference.  With any other previous generation card, you should see a significant all around performance increase with any application that leverages GPU processing power.

That information should give you a good general idea of what the new Quadro CX card is capable of, and I will be detailing the improvements in Photoshop CS4 and the RapiHD encoder in my upcoming posts.

Originally the only way to generate Cineform AVI files at this resolution was to scan film to DPXs, and then convert those image sequences, presumably in After Effects.  Interestingly, while being at 2K resolution, these files were being downsampled to YUV colorspace, which improved compression rates and performance, at the expense of the quality certain color information.  Eventually the SI-2K camera provided a second root source of Cineform2K imagery, that did not involve converting from an uncompressed source file at any point in the process.  I anticipate we will see 2K data being captured over SDI directly to Cineform files in the near future, if they are not doing so already, as both AJA and BMD have products with the required hardware capability.

The SI-2K brought with it one other new option to the format, which was an alternate pre-debayer RAW ‘colorspace’ instead of the YUV data that was normally being compressed.  CineformRAW video files had even better compression ratios, but the only way to take advantage of the benefits of pre-debayered images was by tapping directly into a single sensor imager, as the SI-2K did.  This eventually led to a third underlying option, with the development of Cineform 444.

Cineform444 allows full RGB encoding, processing, and mastering of image data, which is the norm in a digital intermediate environment.  The RAW files of the SI-2K had the required information for RGB processing, but it hadn’t been fully taken advantage of until that point.  DPX filmscans have full RGB info, as do most still images and CGI files.  Only ‘broadcast video’ files and formats are limited to YUV.  While increasing file sizes and processing requirements, this RGB processing brought the “Cineform Intermediate” to the next level quality wise.  Cineform now shows off their format in comparison the the popular HDCam-SR format, which doesn’t directly compare since SR can’t be accessed natively, but it communicates the idea to people who still think in terms of tape formats.  I believe SR tapes that are recorded in 444 RGB can be captured directly to Cineform444 via BMD hardware, but I have not had the opportunity to test that myself.  I have worked on projects where we captured 444 RGB data uncompressed through a BMD Multibridge, and then later converted parts to Cineform444 to work with.  I have also extracted CineformRAW files from the SI-2K directly to full range Cineform444 files.  Either way, this workflow has allowed me to work on visual effects shots at full 2K resolution in RGB, on my system at home without a dedicated RAID, and even on my laptop if I could suffer the 12inch screen size.

Around the same time that the Cineform444 capabilites were being developed, the option to include an imbedded alpha channel was added, and the maximum bit depth was increased from 10bit to 12bit.  I have yet to take advantage of the 12bit capability, but the embedded alpha channel can be useful for everything from animated titles to visual effects.  I find the biggest gains from this development when using Cineform for my After Effects work.

Cineform has also been working to develop a cross-platform solution, so that Cineform compressed media can be easily shared between Macs and PCs.  Their first step was to develop a Quicktime wrapper for their original AVI codec.  Next, they ported the compression codec to OSX, assisted I am sure, by Apple’s switch to Intel processors.  The last steps remaining to be completed are an accelerated CineformRT engine for the new Mac version of PremierePro CS3, and an OSX port of their HDLink conversion tool.  At this point Cineform is the only reliable compressed format for transfering video between Windows and OSX systems, besides saving to a DPX sequence, which has obvious disadvantages.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Cineform has recently released a beta of their next improvement to the capabilities of their format, with support for 4K imagery, or higher.  Although 4K filmscans could be used as source, their immediate target is data from the Red One camera, with 4K output from the RedCine conversion utility.  With wavelet compression for efficient reduced resolution decoding, RGB colorspace, 10 or 12bits of color depth, support for alpha channels, and cross platform compatibilty, Cineform seems well positioned to meet the needs of this emerging market.

3Gb SDI has very little hardware available to support it at this point.  The only real solution on the market at this point is to use Blackmagic’s Multibridge to generate it, and Blackmagic’s HDLink Pro to receive it.  This solution merely converts it DL-DVI, which we will discuss below.  The Multibridge allows fullscreen 2K without depending on the workstation video card.  In the future, I expect that this standard will be widely adopted to replace dual-link SDI.  This is especially beneficial as we move towards more 4K finishes, which currently require 8 HD-SDI links to support full resolution in realtime.

I am not aware of any solutions allowing 2K to be displayed over VGA besides using software to output the signal from a computer graphics card.  Certain older 21-22″ CRT monitors support 2K resolution, but you will need to be able to configure your software and/or your graphics driver to allow you to get fullscreen video output to the monitor.

Dual Link DVI can support 2K, but flat panel LCDs are the only products I am aware of that support this connection interface.  This makes it less than ideal for color grading work, but a great solution for visual effects work.  The excess resolution removes the need for dedicated full screen output, but that can usually be achieved as well.  Both computer graphics cards and the HDLink Pro can output 2K resolution over DL-DVI.  Graphics cards are obviously cheaper, and will likely work better in AE, but an HDLink Pro, with the appropriate hardware to drive it, will probably offer better performance in an NLE, like Premiere Pro.  It really depends on your budget, but if you can afford dual desktop monitors PLUS a full screen monitor, the HDLink Pro enables this configuration.

So those three interfaces dictate most of your actual display options in that regard.  Current 2K projectors are driven by Dual Link SDI, but we will see DL-DVI and 3Gb SDI replacing that in the future.  2K CRT monitors can be driven via VGA connections, and LCD flat panels can support 2K and above using DL-DVI.

The HDLink is a small box that converts HD-SDI video signal to DVI or HDMI, for monitoring video signals at full resolution with a computer LCD screen or projector.  It supports regular 1080 and 720 in most variations, and RGB 444 over dual link SDI.  It also has stereo sound output for audio monitoring.

These HDLinks are in widespread use at a number of the facilities I work at, and at under $500, they are within the reach of independent editors or anyone else who needs an economical solution for monitoring SDI.  They do get hot though, so they should be powered down when not in use, and they don’t last forever.

The new HDLink Pro adds 3Gb/s SDI for 2K support on a single SDI cable, but lacks dual link support, which is still the most popular RGB standard.  It also adds 6 Channel Audio de-embedding to analog RCA ports for 5.1 surround sound monitoring.  I have not yet had the opportunity to try one of these out yet, but I look forward to doing so as I find myself doing more 2K work, especially now that I have a 30″ LCD to connect it to.

 Separately but related, Blackmagic’s Workgroup Video Hub is a 12×24 SDI router.  It supports SD and HD, but currently not the 3Gb/s SDI standard that Blackmagic has been rolling out this year.  With a bit of creativity, it can easily support dual link connections, but that lowers the number of devices you can connect by half.  All patching is controlled in software via USB, which is connected to a single system, that hosts a network utility to share control with all users.  Their utility for patching as well designed and fleshed out at this point.  You can also patch through a built-in downconverter to SD, and it has a Still Store, ideal for color bars or logos.

We use these at three facilities I work at, and they bring a dramatic increase to the flexability and efficiency of your workflow.  They are not economical for use by a single individual, but will be well worth it in work areas shared by 3-10 people.  They greatly ease the sharing of high end video equipment.  For example, I can output any edit workstation’s SDI playout to either: a projector on an HDLink, an LCD on an HDLink, an HD CRT, our vectorscope, or any combination thereof.  Using a Video Hub can have a significant effect on your environment if you frequently find yourself reconfiguring your peripherals when switching between different projects.

The original ProspectHD supported compression of 1080p/i 10bit 422 data into a variable bitrate codec that only required around 15MB/s or 1GB/min.  Lowering the datarate had two significant benefits, both related to lowering the cost of disk storage.  Data rates at that level can be supported by a single hard disk drive, removing the need for expensive arrays, and much more HD content can be stored on a given drive.  The catch was that the amount of processing power needed to compress the data required the fastest CPUs, which at the time, meant dual processor AMD Opteron systems.  In the two years since then, processing power has greatly increased, and many more capable options are available.

Capture and playback over HD-SDI is supported in realtime using Premiere Pro.  Motion and opacity effects are realtime, as well as limited color correction and transitions.  The performance of these features scale with the power of the system, with many tasks being multithreaded to utilize multi-core CPUs.

The Cineform codec itself has many inherent advantages.  Wavelet codecs can easily be viewed at lower resolutions in an efficient manner.  As far as quality goes, Cineform is hard to beat, especially for their file size.  Another advantage I find significant is that their files perform well in After Effects, unlike many other compressed formats I have tried.

Cineform also includes a stand alone utility called HDLink.  HDLink can convert capture and convert files into the Cineform format with an efficient multithreaded encoder.  It currently supports HDV, Firewire, HDMI, SDI, P2, XDCAM, and a number of other formats.  The recommended Cineform workflow is to convert all of your footage from different sources into the Cineform Intermediate codec, for realtime online editing in Premiere Pro.  I will include more details on HDLink in a future review, which hopefully will coincide with the release of an OSX compatible version of the utility.

As with any workflow, Cineform is not perfect.  It can capture and playback in realtime, but file exports to and from Cineform compression tend to take much longer than one would expect.  You may also find their default settings in Premiere and AE need a bit of tweaking, and are rarely persistant upon reboot.  Certain systems may experience a color shift between stills and motion video with Nvidia cards, although their recent development of an RGB overlay processing option seems to have largely aleviated that problem.  Another minor frusteration is how they hand AE imports, since their custom importer is not compatible with other AVI formats.

(EDIT: As pointed out by David Newman, this seems to have been fixed in CS3.  I just imported CF, CF RAW 2K, Matrox 10bit, BMD444, DPX, HDV, and DV into my my AE project one after the other.  This would have saved me a considerable amount of time a few weeks ago, but I was working in AE7.)

There are newer developments to their codecs, including OSX and Quicktime support, Cineform RAW with the SI-2K,  Cineform Neo, 12bit 444 RGB, 2K, and soon 4K, but I will discuss those in future posts.

 The Xena LHe has many more features, most importantly analog audio and video support.  Component HD video I/O, as well as stereo XLR I/O.  My favorite feature of this card, as well as the HS is that they support realtime capture and encoding of Cineform AVI files, and realtime playback and effects from CineformRT in Adobe Premiere.  The big missing feature missing from the LHe is surround sound support.  I have not found a way to monitor surround in realtime with the LHe without having sync problems.  Keep in mind, this is only with the Cineform RT engine.  I have never tried with native AJA uncompressed files. 

 The Xena 2Ke is a card I have not used, but this is what I know.  It is similar to the LHe and adds support for 8 channel audio I/O, dual link SDI for 444 RGB, and HSDL (High Speed Data Link) mode for 2K.  Xena handles 2048x1080p24 in realtime, and 2048×1556 at 15fps. (not realtime)  In the Apple world, the same basic card is called the Kona3.  The only feature missing that is found on the LHe is analog component HD input.  It does have analog HD output though.

There are a few disadvantages I am aware of compared to the competition.  No conversion capability like a Multibridge, few realtime effects like an AXIO, and no single card has all the I/O you might want.  They have no support for DVI or HDMI out for more economical monitoring solutions.  Their implementation of 2K over HSDL is not as simple or fast as 3Gb/s SDI, but the card was developed before that standard was created.

On the PC side, they support three basic editing modes, well really two and a half.  Uncompressed is their primary format, 8 or 10bit, 422 or 444, and now 2K.  They recently added a compressed MotionJPEG codec, but they have not unlocked all of the options to vary the quality yet.  This allows the realtime capture and playback of compressed files through their I/O.  Their MotionJPEG codec is 8bit 422, and from my use, I would class it as a great codec for full rez and frame rate offline editing, if you are finishing to HD or Film.  For Web encodes or SD, it is probably fine for online work, unless you need 10bit for Digibeta.  The last option is a Capture only one, into the Cineform codec.  I know for a fact that this works over HDMI on the Intensity card, but I have heard that all of the Blackmagic products are supported.  Blackmagic products are the only way to capture RGB over dual link SDI in realtime to the new Cineform 444 codec, and possibly even to Cineform2K.

There are a few disadvantages I am aware of.  Low realtime effects or rendering support in their hardware or editing modes.  They don’t support many compression schemes, MotionJPEG being somewhat limited.  The big issue in using it with Cineform is that it seems that realtime monitoring is not available from Cineform RT projects in Premiere.  Lastly, Blackmagic products are known for their reasonable prices, but not their long lifespans.