HD For Indies

Upcoming product announcements for NAB:

Leitch-VelocityHD is a new HD capable NLE, similar user interface to VelocityQ

AJAwill be showing IO LD and LA, with digital (SDI) and analog breakouts respectively for 10 bit uncompressed video. They'll also have a 2nd generation HD D/A converter, the HD10C2

Quantel will be showing a whole bunch of digital intermediate tools. Expensive, not likely for indies.

The Foundry will be showing Furnace for Avid/DS and After Effects. Sounds intriguing - the blurb mentioned motion estimation, which is frequently used in retiming, and automated dirt removal (useful for DI, not for HD).

Red Giant, the distributor for The Orphanage's wares (among others) will be showing Primatte Keyer. It's a good, solid keyer, and affordable for the indie crowd. Also, Magic Bullet for editors - this sounds good, as it has been an After Effects only tool until now. Also Misfire, a plugin for film type effects - "grain, splotches & scratches."

Profound Effects has created some excellent After Effects plugins in the past, and will show some new ones. Digital Anarchy and GenArts will have some of their own to show as well.

Boxx Technologies based in Austin, Texas, will have two new workstations, allowing for 8 to 12 internal drives. Boxx makes some very powerful and interesting HD wares, and are worth checking into.

Sony HDCAM SR is being pushed for high end post work as a tape and raw file format. XDCAM uses blue laser 23GB optical disks and is being pushed for a shooting format.