HD For Indies

UPDATE - it has been pointed out to me that BMD announced the Multibridge Express for July shipment, and that Studio was the only one promised to deliver 2K (and it was to ship after the Extreme). So I have been unduly harsh in my original criticism that I wrote the other day. July was original ship date, 2K was not promised at time of annoucement at NAB. The product has been shipping since December and 2K support was added 3 or 4 months thereafter. Apologies to all for the inaccuracies and undue criticism.

Blackmagic Design: Software Downloads

BlackMagic Design shipped new drivers (version 5.5) for their Multibridge Extreme, and the main new feature is support for displaying 2K images at 23.98 or 24.0 fps on a 30" LCD (Apple, Dell, etc.) These displays have 2560x1600 resolution; 2K res is 2048x1556.

The other big news is that the new drivers are in flavors for BOTH Mac and Windows, so Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 and Final Cut are both supported.

From the press release:


Software release Multibridge Extreme 5.5 includes:
- True 2K, 10 bit RGB real time playout support for Apple Final Cut Pro
on Mac OS X and Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 on Windows XP

- True 2K real time preview for popular effects and paint applications
such as Adobe After Effects 7.0, Photoshop, Shake and Combustion

- Support for 30” dual-link DVI-D displays at full resolution 2K 2048x1556,
and support for 2048x1536, 2048x1157, 2048x1106, 2048x1080 at 23.98 and
24 fps

- Closed caption support in high and standard definition analog and digital
video

- Added Windows 2003 server support for software version 5.5 for Windows
XP


Multibridge Extreme is ONLY for PCIe Macs & PCs (the PCI-X bridgeboard has been removed from the website, so don't expect it anytime soon, if ever), and lists for $2595.

Mike's Comments:

First off, it's about time! The product was announced nearly a year ago at NAB 2005, and we're less than a month from NAB 2006 and it finally has the feature they promised at last year's NAB. While the switch to PCIe certainly is an understandable reason to delay product release (and they only have one PCIe card out, but at least it's the best one), it is frustrating to see products announced at one year's show and not see it working as promised until very nearly the next show. The Multibridge Studio, which is the bigger brother, of course has not even shipped yet. OK, enough whining, on to the cool news:

The press release states that it maps pixel for pixel, so your 2K images are likely to be overly tall - 2K scans are usually anamorphic, and at pixel for pixel, the image will be too tall. This also implies that the image does not fill the screen, but has about 250 pixels on either side of the image and a small number top and bottom of the image that are blacked out. This is the sharpest possible option, but it would be nice to scale to fill screen at correct aspect ratio. But this would involve some serious realtime math, so I'm not expecting that anytime soon.

As for editing 2K on Final Cut or Premiere, I think I read recently that Premiere Pro 2.0 can handle 10 bit 4:4:4 now (and anybody bust me if I got that wrong). Final Cut, however, much as I love it, can either do 8 bit RGB 4:4:4, or 10 bit 4:2:2 YUV, but CANNOT properly process (as in cross dissolve, color correct, or any other filter) 10 bit 4:4:4 RGB.

And both editors cannot properly interpret logarithmic data as far as I know. Final Cut definitely not, Premiere Pro not as far as I know - I've never heard this mentioned.

That is their CURRENT status however. Perhaps at NAB we'll see improvements. There were rumors of a "super" version of Final Cut Pro (Final Cut Extreme I think they called it) earlier this year on one of the rumor boards. Perhaps 2K support for Final Cut Pro is to be announced at NAB? That is complete conjecture based on rumor and this product stuff, but it'll be interesting to wait and see.

Personally, I'd be delighted to see it happen, but it would seem to be an impractical move for Apple - it is SUCH a small market to serve, and while it would have prestige, with so few customers using it for that, how well would it actually work to fit those client's needs? If there were problems, how much manpower would Apple put behind it to really, REALLY work right, rather than well enough to trumpet that they could do it? With more and more work sliding over to digital acquisition, would Apple be best served to support digital film workflows in this way, or should they be focusing on better HD support? I'd think they'd serve more customers better by putting effort into more day to day practical stuff like supporting realtime SD and HD on the same HD timeline (but I hear that would require a COMPLETE rewrite of HUGE chunks of the core code, so while I'd love to see it, I'm not expecting that this year).

But since I DO want to work on film style workflows, I'd be DELIGHTED if Apple supported 2K in FCP 6.

: )

-mike