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.

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.

I have come across fewer items of interest since my last post, but there are a couple.  Canon released two new revisions of their original HDV camera, the XL-H1.  The XL-H1S is just a slightly improved version of the original, while the XL-H1A is the lower cost option without the profesional level SDI outputs.

Sony has a few other new releases.  The SRW-5100 a new lower cost HDCam-SR ingest option.  This will allow you to read tapes shot with the new F35, Sony’s new Genesis level, single sensor 35mm replacement camera.  They also have a new 42″ addition to their Trimaster series, the BVM-L420.  Also on display was an SxS recording option for the new PDW-700, allowing you to store 50Mbs MPEG2-422 to solid state.

Convergent Design showed their XBR, an SDI recording device that stores MPEG2 on CompactFlash cards.  It is much larger than I anticipated, but a smaller model should be soon to follow.

One last NAB installment to come after tomorrow, when I hope to get a chance to explore the Panasonic and JVC booths, among other in the Central Hall.

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 simplest solution that provides HD-SDI input to a laptop is the Motu V3HD.  Connected via Firewire, it allows capture of digital and analog High-Definition video signals at DVCPro-HD quality.  Limited to 1280 pixels in width, and 100Mb/s, this is a lower end HD solution, but bears mention none the less.  I have not personally used one, but it is supposed to be compatible with Premiere Pro CS3, as well as Final Cut Pro.  The data rate and processing requirements allow this format to be used on most high end consumer laptops, but those looking for full resolution 1920×1080 solutions must look farther.

The next solution is currently only available to Mac users in Final Cut Pro, but is a significant  technological development.  AJA’s “I/O HD” is a Firewire800 based solution that can capture and playback full resolution material, with 10bit color, in Apple’s new ProRES codec.  Although not a PC based solution, it does enable mobile users to capture high quality, full resolution footage.

Anything beyond that will involve a bit of creativity, and what follows is highly speculative.  Newer laptops have replaced PCMCIA card slots with ExpressCard slots.  The new formfactor is much simpler, and has two basicinternal variations.  The slot has pins available to interface directly into the USB subsystem (480Mb/s) or directly into the Southbridge via the PCIe x1 interface (2000Mb/s).  The PCIe interface provides an ExpressCard slot with enough bandwidth to support uncompressed HD video, at least 10bit 422 at 1080i/p.  RGB 444 might even be possible at 24fps, but that would depend on how much overhead was imposed by the interface itself, among other things.  This bandwidth has been utilized in the design of the ExpressCard option for the CalDigit HDPro, but having a single slot with the capability of transfering video at uncompressed data rates leaves us with a problem.  If the ExpressCard slot is being used to connect some form of video I/O interface, how do I connect my storage at uncompressed speeds.  Unless you find a laptop with two ExpressCard slots, you will not be able to use both at once.  I guarantee that the capture card is necessary for realtime full resolution HD acquisition, so how can we do it without using the high speed storage?  Compressing the video becomes the obvious solution.  So a capture solutionis needed that allows realtime compression, and can be jury-rigged to connect to an ExpressCard slot at PCIe x1 bandwidth.

A company named Magma has developed a solution that really opens up the available options.  Their ExpressBox Pro product allows a PCIe card to be inserted and connected to a laptop via an ExpressCard slot.  At the very least, PCIe x1 cards can be expected to work, and ideally higher end PCIe x4 based capture cards may function properly as well.  After all, the HD video data itself is usually well under 200MB/s, depending on the specific settings and format.

The first option that comes to mind are the Intensity cards from BlackMagic Design.  They allows full resolution capture of 1080i/p at up to 10bit color in the 422 YUV colorspace, over HDMI or analog on the Intensity Pro.  Convienently, Blackmagic also makes an HD-SDI to HDMI converter, the HDLink, so we can use this to pump HD-SDI into the Intensity card.  Blackmagic also has a MotionJPEG codec that we can capture directly into, so it would seem that they offer a fairly complete solution to our problem.

Another option using the same hardware is to use Cineform compression, as detailed here.  In my experience Cineform’s compression results in a higher quality final picture than Blackmagic’s current implementation of MotionJPEG codec.  The downside of using Cineform is that they don’t support live playback, out of the Intensity card the way Blackmagic’s codecs do. If you have an external monitoring device available, this can be a very helpful option when trying to edit on a small laptop screen.  To Cineform’s credit, they allow you to use the secondary display output from your laptop as a full screen video output if your graphics card supports it.

Our next PCIe x1 based solution is the RT.X2 from Matrox.  Although I have not been able to confirm that this has ever been successfully used in this capacity, it remains a theoretical possibility.  The RT.X2 would be advantagous in that it would offload much of the compression processing from the laptop CPU to the PCIe card.  It would allow analog HD capture, but would be limited to 1440 horizontal resolution, and would allow preview via DVI or analog HD.  On the positive side, with hardware acceleration, Matrox’s MPEG I-Frame codec would probably give the best creative editing performance of any of the solutions we are examining here.  Realtime effects and exporting would be advantagous for the editing process, but the original footage acquired would not be as high quality to begin with.

In theory, the Magma ExpressBox could support other cards.  While the bandwidth is limited to the 2000Mb/s (200-250MB/s) of the ExpressCard’s PCIe x1 bandwidth, the phyical connector in the box is a PCIe x16 slot.  It would be interesting to know if it would support an AJA LHe or a Decklink HDPro.  The AJA card would allow 10bit capture into the Cineform ProspectHD codec at full resolution, and Decklink might allow RGB 444 capture at 24fps.

There is one more Blackmagic based option that I know isn’t fully developed yet, but seems very close.  The Blackmagic Multibridge is based on the same technology that allows the Magma ExpressBox to work, external PCIe.  If an ExpressCard could be fabricated that interfaced the ExpressCard PCIe x1 bus to the DVI shaped cable that the Multibridge uses, that would be a great solution.  When the first Multibridge Extreme was released, it was listed to be compatible with PCIe x1 slots, at least at SD resolutions.  PCIe x1 has the bandwidth for HD if used efficiently, and the Multibridge has many I/O options, so I think it would be the ideal portable solution.  I know it can capture to MotionJPEG, and I believe Cineform includes capabilities to capture from it into their codec as well.  I have not been able to confirm that, but it is implied on their website.

The last option I will mention has been discussed and rumored about for years, but I have yet to see a product hit the market.  Why not have an ExpressCard with HD-SDI I/O directly on it?  Heat will be an issue that needs to be overcome, and mini-BNC connector could be used to improve the form factor of the physical connections.  Ideally if it was a Blackmagic product, it would support live capture into MotionJPEG, Cineform, and ProRES on a Mac, for maximum possible market.  If/When it gets developed, I know it will sell well, assuming it functions correctly in an established normal workflow.  Realtime compression will be required for any laptop solution, but this doesn’t have to be accomplised in the card itself, it just has to be compatible with it being done by the CPU.  I look forward to seeing a product like this released, as it would greatly enhance the workflow for portable post-production solutions.

The Xena HS is a simple card that only supports single channel HD-SDI (422) and 6 channels of AES audio.  The lack of analog audio options can be a significant hinderance.  Their are sync issue when trying to use the sound card audio and the Xena SDI for picture.  It does allow realtime preview of surround sound which the newer LHe does not.  I recommend get speakers that allow direct connection of AES audio.  I have used ones from Roland and JBL that work well.  Using AES convertors to get analog signal can be a real pain.

 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.