HD For Indies

OK, it's late and I've been going for about 16 hours, so here's a bunch of stuff from today. To paraphrase the soup guy, no bold for you:

-I was WRONG about the analog outputs on the HDR-FX1 - you CAN capture the feed from the analog outputs when shooting live to another format. AJA can plug a couple of connectors together to get the analog feed into their Kona2 card to get uncompressed HD input recorded to whatever. You could also record to a field deck, like a Panasonic 1200a DVCPRO HD deck to get something smaller and more portable, but then you'd be recording compressed 8 bit 1280x1080. Still arguably better than the MPEG-2, and certainly easier to edit with (until FCP HD supports DVCPRO HD, which I'm 99% certain will happen with FCP HD 5 at NAB).

-FCP 5 - expect a lot of foundation support, not building new stories on top. By this I mean that it is expected to be a stability release without a lot of stunning new features. DVCPRO HD 1080i50, HDV, and 50 mbit IMX are all nice, but don't expect realtime 10 bit color correction (drat!), don't expect better than 8 bit RGB processing (damn!), and don't expect a big FCP to Shake Luv In from Apple. Said one source about the relationship between FCP and Shake teams "It's a battle." in reference to better FCP/Shake integration. DO expect the Apple Intermediate Codec to be used for HDV import.

-*Conjecture* - thinking about it, this makes sense. Tiger offers a lot of cool new stuff in Core Image, a floating point color correction and manipulation engine in the core OS. But Tiger won't even be finished until summer, and I'd expect Apple to launch it (or announce imminent launch) at WWDC in May or June (dates not set yet, I recall they bumped it to later a year or two ago). BUT once Tiger is done, THEN the FCP team can start coding to take advantage of it, AND so can the Shake team (if they haven't already - Motion has been described as a "practice run" for what they plan to do in real time in Shake in the future, this release or maybe next). After Tiger is done, then FCP will be able to add all kinds of amazingly powerful new realtime stuff that Core Image offers, so plan on version 6 at NAB 2006 to Rock The House. All that cool realtime stuff that Motion can do? Expect those types of capabilities (realtime geometry & color correction changes on multiple simultaneous video layers, high speed compositing) in FCP 6. But not till then, darnit.

-Apple Intermediate Codec is what is used in iMovie HD and Final Cut Express HD. I kept getting inconsistent info about 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0, but 4:2:0 seems to be the consensus. It is a variable bitrate codec, sample footage I saw runs from 6.9 to 12.3 MB/sec for 1080i60 footage.

-I'm betting that the Apple Intermediate Codec gets used in FCP HD, and that if it isn't 4:2:2 capable, there will be a 4:2:2 version of it for FCP HD. It's a Good Idea who's time as come. It's an editing codec, not a delivery codec. But that's fine with me so long as it works.

-Final Cut Express HD when importing DOES dice shots into individual clips based on start/stop times, so the iMovie HD step I mentioned the other day is not necessary.

-Final Cut Express HD capturing of HDV is different than other kinds of captures - it buffers the HDV and converts it as fast as it can, which isn't necessarily realtime. There is a little readout in the bottom right corner of the capture window that states whether capture is realtime or not. If capture is NOT realtime, what you see on screen is delayed from what you see on the viewfinder on the camera. So watch the CAMERA flipout screen on the HDR-FX1 during capture, NOT the computer screen to figure out when to stop capturing. If transcoding lags behind the live feed, after you stop capturing it displays some kind of a "still working on it" type display with estimated time to remain. You can abort out of that by hitting the Escape key a second time to bail out of it. So this process works by buffering the HDV stream to disk, and converting those frames to the Apple Intermediate Codec (so it's writing two data streams to disk - the temporarily buffered HDV AS WELL AS the Apple Intermediate Codec, which is much larger).

-Apple Intermediate Codec has three options: 1080i60, 720p30, and "Other" in the QuickTime Export dialog. Other brings up no options, so I don't yet get how it works. But we'll be using this in FCP HD I'm sure, so get used to it.

-Setups in Final Cut Express HD support list 1080i50, and Mary Massey, a product marketing manager at Apple, told me they were demonstrating Final Cut Express HD in England using the HDR-FX1E (the PAL version) right now.

-so that opens the door to shooting 1080i50, converting that to 1080p25, and retiming that for 1080p24. You'd end up with an effective true resolution of about 1440 pixels across (at best, it's 960 CCD pixels with the green pixels offset halfway horizontally) by about 750 pixels vertically of effective resolution. This is based on digital math presuming the optics of the camera could catch that in the first place. But it's still better than the other options at this price point, so I'd encourage it. Anybody interested in the details of how to do this? I can write up a workflow if there's enough demand. Email me, link at top of page.

-LTO2 tape format from Exabyte is the format that's making me reconsider tape as an option to hard drives. A 7 cartridge rotary autoloader is about $4500 they said, and backs up 1.4 TB of data at about 40 MB/sec, which should add up to 140 GB/hr, but I recall him saying 100 GB/hr. So 14 hours to back that up. Hmmm...but then again, how much footage are you likely to generate in a given day? That's all you need to back up overnight. Tolis BRU (Backup & Recovery Utility) is the recommended backup program for working with the LTO2 tape format according to Exabyte. Retrospect the booth guy said is low end, and I've heard Bad Things about version 6 of Retrospect.

-ATTO has a dual controler 2 Gbit fiber channel card, so 4 ports, 2 x 2 ports, each pair of ports has it's own 2Gbit hub chipset. Hmm. So in theory could attach to two different X-Serve RAIDs, or stripe'em all up for more speed, or other options like that. Around $1100/$1200. They also have a $1400 4Gbit card, but no 4 Gbit products currently on the market, but I literally overheard from several feet away someone say that Huge is supposedly coming out with a 4 Gbit array, but I don't know anything else about that.

-G-Tech is a new company that is a spinoff of Medea. Remeber the G-RAID? That is this guy's product and company. They have cool little enclosures that look like G5's you left in the dryer too long (shrunken). 320 GB is $369 list, 500 is $500 list, and 800 is $1299 list. The interesting twist is that they have them in FireWire 800 and native SATA, both at the same prices listed above.

-G-Tech also has a little piece of gear that LaCie is introducing something similar to, but G-Tech's enclosure looks better. LaCie calls theirs Silverscreen, G-Tech calls theirs...shoot I lost it in my notes...but it's the same kind of thing. It's a tiny gadget with a 40 or 80 GB 2.5 inch (laptop sized) drive in it that has a USB 2.0 socket for power or computer connection to load it up with media files - MP3's, pictures, and movies. Movies can be MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, or DiVX, and can be SD or HD resolution. The device will play out to SD or 1080i screens, not sure about 720p. But it's interesting, and assuming it can take a decent data rate file, would be a great presentation device as it can run freestanding, no computer required. Comes with a remote and has a passably decent user interface with menus. Great HD presentation idea if the playback can be made to look decent. Their demo footage looked pretty crunchy, pretty compressed and not great.

-I was told that one of the reasons why the "serious" arrays cost so much is that they qualify their drives - they buy a pallet and then send back all those that don't meet the RAID guys' tight specs. That's one reason why their arrays cost so much, they screen their drives and test them. So where do those cast-off drives go? Apparently there is a chain of preference - the big OEM's (Dell, HP, Apple, etc.) get first dibs on the drives, those not sold there or passed up go to second tier folks like RAID manufacturer's, and somewhere down at the bottom of the list are places like CompUSA and Fry's who get all the rejects. After asking several unnamed but well placed sources today, 3 times I heard Fry's mentioned as the Don't Go There place for drives. So seriously, it makes a difference - don't buy from Fry's.

-LaCie has the Silverscreen as mentioned above for digital content presentation, same price, $259 for 40GB, $329 for 80GB (those are G-Tech prices, they said same price as LaCie.)

-LaCie also has FastCoder, a tiny box that connects via FireWire that does realtime DV to MPEG-2 transcoding. Didn't see the quality. Comes with a DVD authoring app that you just feed DV and it relies on the hardware to convert to MPEG-2, so can make a DVD very quickly from MPEG-2. Tiny little consumer looking box, smaller than a remote control.

LaCie's 321 monitor is very bright and contrasty, and I mean that in the best possible way. Perhaps the best looking color I've seen on an LCD, the black levels were pretty good, not too high. It's 21.3 inches, 1600x1200 resolution, roughly comparable to CRT levels of bright/contrast according to sales guy (but he's a sales guy), and $1799. A $399 calibrator is available that I mentioned earlier this week.

Media100HD - their own uncompressed 10 bit codec (or 8 bit) for HD, and can mix on the same timeline different sized media (HD or SD), different codecs (animation, 844x, MJPEGB, Media100HD, etc.). Pretty powerful stuff. Time Warner has some installs in Texas apparently. Color correction done in 32 bit/channel float, derived from their fast 844X engine. For news type guys OK, but I'm hesitant about indie film usage. I'm still not convinced about their longterm stability/longevity, check where they are in a year. They had the whiff of death about them when they went through bankruptcy (or threatened to? Can't recall) and Optibase bought'em. Announced HDV support using Lumiere HD.

OK, one more post and to bed, it's 1am. Sheesh, what I go through for you folks...

-mike