I downloaded the Lite version and have been playing around with it, but it is not a very intuitive program.  I am about fifty pages into the manual, but have yet to be able to get a sequence of content I cut together in CS5.5 into Resolve successfully.  I can’t export it into any format Resolve will read, besides uncompressed HD, which my array is not designed to handle.  Using an EDL to link to my Canon 5D source files is giving me all sorts of issues as well, which is something we experienced at the office when we first switched from Speedgrade to Resolve.  Clearly it is going to take some time to learn how too get anything useful done in the program.  If I do get it to work, the automatic tracking tools are the features I am most interested in playing with.

In other major news that doesn’t directly affect me, Blackmagic-Design also acquired Teranex last week.  The first major change they made was cutting the price of Teranex’s primary flagship product, the VC100, from $90,000 to $20,000.  This is similar to what happened when they acquired DaVinci last year, but much more extreme.  It will be interesting to see if some of that high end image processing technology makes it into future Decklink cards, or any similar products.

After announcing it last week, today Avid released the next version of Media Composer, and it is a major update.  The key thing that will affect all users is that the program will now be a natively 64bit application.  This will exclude users who still have 32bit systems, but allow the software to use more RAM, and therefore effectively do larger projects, on 64bit systems, which are pretty prevalent at this point.  From what I can tell, re-coding an entire application for 64bit is also good for cleaning up the code for existing features, and streamline performance and threading.  Avid’s primary competition: Adobe Premiere Pro, saw a huge improvement in both performance and stability when the first 64bit version (CS5) was released.  This has led to a huge increase in that application’s popularity, especially for larger projects.  The level of competition presented by that change may be a key factor in why we are now seeing so many major changes from Avid.

The next most significant new feature, that will affect many users, especially new ones, is “Avid Open I/O” which is Avid’s new approach to integrating hardware with Media Composer.  Avid now supports hardware I/O via products from AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox and others.  We have seen hints of this coming, with support for the Matrox MXO2-Mini and AJA ioExpress in versions 5.0 and 5.5 respectively.  This change has two major benefits, it will allow most users access to professional hardware I/O solutions without paying for Avid’s overpriced hardware, and nearly as important, it will allow edit systems to run multiple applications on the same system and hardware.  Add this to advances in project compatibility and interchange, and users will be able move their editing projects between Avid and Premiere Pro (and FCP on the Mac side) on the same systems, using the same video output hardware.

Avid also added a myriad of new features to enhance more advanced workflows, with better support for stereoscopic content, more advanced color correction tools, and surround sound mixing options on the audio side.  They also have a 4:4:4 RGB version of the popular DNxHD codec, and natively support ProRes files.  Their Symphony finishing toolset no longer requires Nitris DX hardware, but I have yet to find the pricing structure for that option.  It looks to be a solid feature set, and I am looking forward to trying it out.

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.

Blackmagic has become the first company to support the Mac version of CS3 with their line of hardware products, with the version 6.6 release of their drivers on Oct 26.  I was aware of this at the time, but didn’t report it here until I had a chance to experiment with them myself.  I have installed a Multibridge Extreme in my MacPro and done some quick tests.  Everything seems to be in order, and most of the issues I encountered can be attributed with my lack of familiarity with the Apple way of doing things.

The only real advantage I see Mac offering over the equivalent PC system, is that the Quicktime engine allows a greater variety of compression formats to be played in realtime through the hardware output. (For example DVCProHD)  I am hoping that this more open approach to compression support will allow Cineform compressed MOV files to be output in realtime sometime in the future, maybe even at 2K with the MultibridgePro.  I also hope to see this on PC, but the Mac Quicktime architecture currently seems one step closer to achieving this than the eventual PC solution.

I plan to do a more full fledged test of the HD-SDI I/O options in the near future.  So far, the only thing I have been unable to do, is get a realtime down-converted SD output of my HD timeline.  Does anyone know if this is supported, and if so, how to configure it?  I will need it to add pulldown, since most of my HD work is 23.976fps.  Since I only have an internal SATA array on the MacPro, I will not be able to push the Blackmagic hardware to its limits.  My three disks will be struggling to provide the data-rate required for 1080p 4:2:2, let alone 4:4:4 RGB or 2K.

UPDATE: I found the settings for downconverting, and it seems to automatically add pulldown for SD output, but I don’t see a way to add pulldown to HD output.  Unfortunately my system is currently doing a center cut to SD even when I have anamorpic or letterbox selected.  I have also been having many other playback issues, so it seems there are still a few things to be worked out.

One other benefit that the Blackmagic solutions provide, is that the same hardware can be used by PC applications in Windows.  This will be a significant advantage to those of you out there who are using Bootcamp to run Windows and OSX on a MacPro.  Currently Blackmagic offers the only hardware solution that publicly supports this dual environment compatibility.

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.