HD For Indies

MORE NOTES ON TIGER INSTALL:

-Installing FCP & Motion (existing versions from 2004, not new 2005 versions) gave an error about permissions after rebooting - QMaster wasn't happy

-After installing FCP 4.5, DVD Studio Pro 3, Motion 1.0, and iMovieHD (gotta have that AIC!), ran Disk Utility - it found only a couple of very minor privilidges to repair. Looks like the Installer in 10.4 MIGHT be nicer about leaving things tidier.

-running Software Update after installing those only found DVD Studio Pro 3.0.2, Motion 1.0.1, and iMovie HD Update 5.0.2 - the other stuff that 10.3.x would install, having to do with the Pro Apps stuff, must already be included in 10.4 Tiger. Nice touch.

HOLY BATF**K, Batman! 1920 pixel wide movie previews look GOOOOOOD on 23" LCD. This is the best looking trailer you'll see outside of the movie theater, PERIOD. Better than broadcast TV by a longshot. The detail is AMAZING. Even film grain is maintained - it's FANTASTIC.

Even if you're running OS X 10.3.x, you can download QT 7 and probably see these as well. WOW. Unfortunately, a dual G5, with a 1920x1080 (or greater) capable screen is required.

You can go to the Apple - QuickTime - HD Gallery and either view the 720 res stuff, or for Serenity, BBC wildlife, and Batman Begins (aww yeah, you know which one to click on first), and download the 1080 res fatties.

It's nice that Safari has returned to reporting download speeds in KB/sec- even while loading QuickTimes in the background the downloads of the 1080 res stuff continues - at 100 and 180 KB/sec. Apple's servers (and Time Warner Cable in my area) are fast.

-mike

Too many little things to do a zillion posts, so here's a bunch at once:

BUNCH O LINKS ON TIGER RELATED STUFF

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger incompatibilities


Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Software with Compatibility Updates for 10.4

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Review (Macintouch's)

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger reader reports from Macintouch

Apple offers treats for Tiger users | MacMinute News downloadable goodies - dashboard stuff, scripts, etc.

(BTW, PDFs are viewable WITHING Safari now - NICE!)

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger : Page 1 BIG, fat, honkin' review of Tiger by the astute John of Ars Technica

Pro Applications: Some features do not work if drag installed or if copied following an Archive and Install

OK, THIS IS RELEVANT if installing Tiger - Archive & Install will NOT always work for your Apple Pro Apps, you may have to reinstall. After I just typed that, I tried launching FCP 4.5 on the PowerBook I just updated to Tiger - it launched OK, opened a new file, but I didn't do anything with it.

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Apple - Pro/Video - Geoffrey Richman - Murderball

interesting little read on WAY distributed workflow used on Murderball, my favorite documentary at SXSW

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Apple - Downloads - Video - CHV Text-collection 4.0

cool little text plugins. As usual, you should be visiting this page on a regular basis.

Second Tiger install, this on my laptop:

INSTALLING OVER 10.3.9 ON MY 12" POWERBOOK 1.33GHZ with 1.25 GB RAM, Bluetooth and Airport.

-took a coupla tries to get it to reboot and go into install mode - first time just kicked out DVD (not CD, DVD install disc) and booted into 10.3.x.

Second time started working.

Started Upgrade/Update install at 11:19pm,

at midnight it restarted

this is my "working" install, where I do all my email, surfing, scheduling, etc., so this isn't a throwaway install, this is the important one.

-it wants to import prior email, not just open it and run

-opening up the little magnifying glass (white on blue) reveals "16 hours remaining to index" or something similar. Indexing takes TIME. Be interesting to see how well it works once it is done.

-importing mail estimate keeps going up in time - apparently, I have over 65,304 messages (what happens when it tops 65,536? Will that be a limit? That's a power of 2).

-poking around, I see iChat AV supports Jabber now, which allows you to connect to more IM networks. Cool.

Using Activity Monitor, I see that the CPU usage is maxed out as Tiger does stuff in the background, presumably indexing mail and files in my User folder.

I'll let it keep running overnight for that.

Got Doom III running on the G5 - there's visible lagging at 1280x1024 res (less than 60fps), so I'll drop the res when I try it next. Got stuck for a bit when I selected a resolution that my monitor didn't support. Or more accurately, selected a resolution that the refresh rate was too high for my monitor (not the graphics card). Option Command Escape got me out of Doom III. Just that keystroke, not the usual additional clicking of an item from the Force Quit menu. A nice touch. Got about 10 minutes into (no violence yet), decided to quit (it's 1:30am) since I'm telling myself I'll get up at 7am to go run a 10K at 8am downtown (a 2-3 mile walk from here)

so far so good,

-mike

OK, to bed

Tiger by the tail...

So I decided to install Tiger tonight on a couple of machines - an Install Over on my PowerBook (after using Carbon Copy Cloner to back it up - I'm crazed, not foolish), and a Nuke 'N Pave * on a spare SATA drive in my dual 2.7.

* tip-o-the-parlance to Reagan for that turn of phrase

Dual 2.5 GHz G5 with BlackMagic DeckLink HD Pro, Sonnet Tempo-X 8 port eSATA, and ATI X800 GT graphics card. This is NOT the recommended way to do these things. In an appropriate world, I'd pull the non-graphics cards and install with just the ATI card installed.

Also worth noting that 10.4 does NOT install iLife 05 - just iTunes, no iMovie, no iDVD, no Garage Band, etc.

I did an Erase & Install, selecting Mac OS Extended (Journalled). The only other choice is Unix File System, didn't want that.

Clicking Customize, I opted to skip all the extra languages, and DO install X11.

I clicked Go at 9:45pm.

It first says "Checking your installation DVD" - this is the first time I recall seeing such a message.

By 10pm it was rebooting

10:05...STILL waiting at "Starting up Mac OS X" on the blue screen...force power down, pull cards. I suspect I need to revert the ROM on the ATI card.

20 minutes of frustration - trouble trying to hold down option to boot, then shift to safe boot after selecting alternate boot drive. Took 4 attempts until it actually reached the Finder.

After reverting to the v104 ROM on the ATI card, powered up again, and finally got it to work.

There's a nice section that says "Do You Already Own a Mac", and asks if you want to transfer info from another Mac (nice!), another partition on this Mac, or not at all. For this install, my Nuke'N Pave, I don't want to transfer any information.

If you enter your .Mac info, it'll pull your address etc. Useful but ever so slightly creepy.

-create a user account with password, and bugs me to renew my .Mac since it'll expire in July

and then you're rolling...

I do my usual thing with a new OS and start going through the System Preferences to see what's new.

Dashboard is cool - hitting F12 for the first time, calculator, localized clock, calendar, and localized weather show up. Cool!

RSS Screen saver - very, VERY cool! Gotta figure out how to get HDForIndies RSS in there...

In the displays panel, there's a new button called "Gather Windows" that pulls all the windows to the main screen - NICE! Has been a serious problem in the past when I had "ghost windows" on non-existent screens. Finally, a fix!

.Mac Synching - you can sync multiple computers to a .Mac account now - so that your bookmarks, calendars, contacts, keychains, mail accounts, and mail rules/sigs/smart mailboxes can all be synched. (It's a checkmark list, you can pick any combo of those items)

Went and checked out RSS support, wondering if I'd have to do anything to support it in the new Safari with HD4NDs - nope! Works right off the bat! Very slick.

Next up: install mission critical software to test systems.

In other words, Doom III...tomorrow I'll play with FCP, etc., and install a bunch of stuff and see if anything doesn't work.

Also at the same time, I'm installing 10.4 over 10.3.9 on my Powerbook 12" 1.33GHz.

So Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, is out today. There's tons of coverage everywhere, so I'll let the world take care of that for me.

But what I do know is this - you can download QuickTime 7.0 for your Panther (10.3.x) system now with Software Update.

But beware - you'll have to buy a new "Pro" key, even if you bought one for QT 6.

-mike

Raw notes from some testing follow below, but here's the take-away: do NOT install two new things at the same time in your computer in order to test a third item (software). This is just WAGGING YOUR ASS at the Gods of Chaos and asking them to smite it, complete with fingers in ears and "Nyah nyah nyah" shouted from the mountaintop. After much frustration and several hours of Trouble trying to make a new ATI X800 (dicey at best as far as I can tell) play nice with a Sonnet Tempo-X 8 port eSATA card by installing both AT THE SAME TIME, I got nowhere. I was trying to rush all this to get it running in order to mess around with Final Touch HD, but clearly not tonight. It's probably the X800 card's fault, I'm going to pull it and go back to my 9800 Pro card....tomorrow. And now, beer followed by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy....my analog/meat way of zapping my PRAM and rebooting.

OK, what was going to be an Exciting Report on New Bleeding Edge Hardware turns into a Tale of Blood.

Perhaps my new tagline should be:

"HD For Indies - we put the blood in bleeding edge!"

OK, here goes:

HANDS ON REPORT: ATI X800 Graphics card for G5

OK, this is stream of conciousness notes, not summary. So bear with it, if you dare with it.

Got mine in the mail yesterday, but no time to mess with it.

So today, sat down to get serious:

-pulled ALL cards from the dual 2.5 GHz G5.
-installed the ATI X800 card
-powered up
-it's working - I'm running 10.3.6 on this box, I learn (later) that drivers are already installed.
-set screen resolution to desired res (defaults to 800x600 or something)
-started up, downloaded all latest ATI drivers/ROMs/etc.
-installed them in order by date, after installing what came on the CD. BWAHAHAHHAHAAAAAAA.....what a fool I am.
-after installation was COMPLETE, it pops up a web page saying "If possible, install the drivers before installing the card..."
-this is the second piece of hardware I've ever come across that has suggested that. This is the dumbest thing. EVER. (The other was an ATTO SCSI card that required voodoo, live chickens, and nakedness under a full moon. to get it working. And let me tell you, clients aren't down with that. Especially when there's a security camera involved.)
-reboot
-UH OH - grey screen of doom - it tells me I need to restart, in about a dozen different languages. When the computer crashes so bad it doesn't know what language to speak to you in....trouble.
-hold down front power button and cold boot.
-comes up OK!
-set screen resolution AGAIN, since it "forgot" after reboot. I'm running two screens, a 24" Sony CRT and a Dell 1280x1024 LCD.
-while piddling with the screen resolution options, I notice 2K is an option - and it works on my Sony! 2048x1536@60Hz works, @75Hz doesn't. But still pretty cool.....and it's doing an (almost) correct stretch of 2K to 16:9 (16:10, but you could do analog adjustments to bring it in line)
-just for kicks, rebooted again to see if it would remember proper screen res. Warm boot, just selected "restart" rather than shut down.
-the right hand, smaller LCD is the default monitor for the apple logo at boot, but then it switches over to the left hand one for the login screen. Wish both were on left hand bigger screen, but don't think I could do anything about that without connecting monitors to different ports.
-WORKS! remembers resolution properly.

-I uninstall all AJA drivers (I'm planning on some testing between two Blackmagic cards, AJA will come back soon enough)

-I fire up Motion, but can't tell the difference between this and my 9800 card (it's been too long since I played with it)

-shut down, install BMD card....

-I'm feeling like an old Melissa Etheridge song (Brave & Crazy), so I install the Sonnet 8 port eSATA card too.

-fire it up. I notice somebody's business card is sitting in front of the fan for the PCI cards. Woops.

-the fan on the X800 is noticeably loud while booting until the grey of bootup gets replaced by the blue of the login screen, then it spools way down to the point I don't hear it over the G4/867 a few feet away (The G5 in on top of the desk 18 inches away from me as I type, just the clear plastic lid on it, not the metal side plate).

-I install the Blackmagic v4.8 drivers (hopefully v5 drivers soon to take advantage of Tiger)

...and "you need to restart" is 4 different languages. Crap. Cold boot, try again..

-another reboot, and it sits at the "Welcome to Macintosh" screen with the CPU fans running full (WFO) and not apparently making progress. This isn't good.

-manual forced power down, power up again

-sits on blue screen for a looooooooong time. Manual power down again.

-pull the Sonnet card

-power up again

-boots, but once again has forgotten it's resolution settings, reverting to 800x600 @ 60Hz

-shut down

-power up - works ok

-reboot - blue screens, fans ramp up to max, it just sits there

-force shut down, power up

-powers up OK, even remembers correct resolution

-reboot just to see if it will behave - it does

-shut down cold, power up again - works OK

LESSON LEARNED - The ATI card seems a bit twitchy. The presence of the Sonnet card doesn't seem to be the sole source of trouble, either - after pulling it, still had wierdness

-shut down, install Sonnet 8 port eSATA card, power up again - multilingual reboot screen. I don't see a pattern here, other than suckiness. Hopefully, when I do a clean install of Tiger on Monday, this stuff might be better behaved.

-on advice of Joel from Sonnet, installed the v1.1 firmware updater.

-upon installation, rebooted

-4 languages of doom. Shit.

-SHIT.

-hard power down (hold down button on G5 front), power up.

-if this keeps up much longer, I'm pulling the card and trying next week with Tiger.

-boots up normally, but fans run high. SATA drives don't show up, shut everything down cold.

-4 languages of doom, dammit, on power up.

-shut it all down, let sit for a minute to think about what it's done.

-power up drives, give them a minute, then power up G5

-gsod

-gsod

FUCK!

safe boot mode - still gsod (grey screen of doom)

-it's very very not happy.

-shut it down, unplug all eSATA cables (just for fun) & power up

this is a classic example of BAD TESTING METHODOLOGY - I have TWO variables - sonnet card & ati card - and I don't know if it's one, the other, or both causing problems.

NOW it boots. Dammit.

-just because this thing is already so screwy, I update to 10.3.9 from 10.3.8 - more bad practice, but I'm PISSED now. Never a good testing environment, either.

-who knows, the problem may be thermal for all I know.

-after all updates (including 10.3.9) downloaded, mandatory restart

-gsod

-force power down

-power up - gsod again

-force power down

-power up - surprise! again gsod

-safe boot attempt - got to Finder - now what to do? Switch to alternative boot drive - running 10.3.5

-even the attempt to just SHUT DOWN causes gsod

Screw this - going to go drink with friends and see Hitchhiker's Guide tonight at midnight

4 port hot-swap SATA host adapter and hot-swap enclosures

Rob-ART over at BareFeats.com has done a review of the Seritek 1VE4 card and 1EN2 enclosures. This is a nice review, he has some hard #'s on testing, and tests in pretty much the same way I would. He's even using the BlackMagic disk speed test utility, which is what I've been doing.

Definitely worth reading.

-mike

If that didn't make sense, I don't blame you. Basically, this: you can get the older, better dual 2.0 GHz G5 for LESS than the new ones. If you're looking to do HD stuff and can live without included Apple 30" LCD support and a dual layer DVD burner, it's a helluva thing.

Geoff Smith wrote in:

Hi Mike,

Saw your note on the old vs. new dual 2GHz Power Macs in light of the updates. Yesterday I had a thought along the same lines and went to the Apple Store's special deals area (under the "Sale" tab at (URL deleted, was a personalized web store link, you will have to manually find it -mike)Lo and behold they were listing the old dual 2GHz config (with 8 RAM slots and PCI-X slots) for a stunning $1899 (a $600 price drop in one day, and a machine more capable than its replacement, and $100 cheaper than that one to boot). I called the local Apple store in San Francisco and they had some in stock at that price, so I went down and picked one up. Just a note to let you and other folks know that these are out there and the pricing is even more aggressive than expected. I'm a happy camper.

Almost forgot, one more thing is that if you buy _any_ new Apple system after April 12th, you get to participate in the Tiger Up-To-Date program, where you go online and qualify the machine by entering your purchase date and serial number and they'll ship you Tiger for $10. Also, I bet if you bought one of these in person (even an older config.) tomorrow night around, say, 6pm someone in the Apple Store might even throw a free copy of Tiger at you :).

--Geoff



Thanks for pointing that out Geoff!

-mike

Red Giant Software at NAB

UPDATED: If I bothered to read CAREFULLY, I would have noticed that ONLY the 2.7 GHz is liquid cooled. I've edited below to reflect that.

Apple - Power Mac G5 - Technical Specifications

The above link will take you to the Apple tech specs page for the new G5 computers.

Because of a change in the new PowerMac lineup, the NEW dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac is NOT capable of uncompressed HD work - it lacks PCI-X slots.

The single 1.8 Ghz model never was suitable for uncompressed HD.

The two new high end boxes, the dual 2.3 and dual 2.7 GHz G5's, ARE appropriate for uncompressed HD work.

Essentially, the new names are misleading if you assume the processor speed=the same box. THIS IS NOT TRUE.

The easiest way to think of this is that they took their existing line - dual 1.8, dual 2.0, dual 2.5 - and just speed bumped them - to dual 2.0, dual 2.3, and dual 2.7. With a bit more RAM, nicer video cards on some, and dual layer DVD burners. That's it.

In the past, I've stated that the minimum computer to work with UNCOMPRESSED HD has been the dual 2.0 GHz G5. This was mostly due to the requirement to have PCI-X, not merely PCI, slots. Both the AJA Kona2 and Blackmagic Design's DeckLink HD line require a PCI-X slot, not merely a PCI slot to operate at HD throughputs. PCI-X is faster than PCI, and the additional bandwidth is required to handle uncompressed HD quantities of data.

PCI-X is also darn handy for the storage throughputs required.

SO - until vendors update their system requirements, things will be confusing and misleading. Since the dual 2.0 GHz box was the base requirement for a LOT of different hardware and software, due to multiple processors, a faster bus, and the presence of PCI-X slots.

SO BEWARE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS. DO NOT BE MISLED INTO THINKING THIS NEW, $2000 DUAL 2.0 GHz BOX WILL BE ADEQUATE FOR CERTAIN TASKS, SINCE THE OLD 2.0 GHZ BOX WAS.

Of the new product line, the dual 2.3 GHz box is the "new" baseline for tasks that previously required the dual 2.0 GHz G5, since it has dual processors and PCI-X slots.

One marked advantage of the new machines is improved graphics cards (including support for the Apple 30" display) and dual layer DVD burners.

It should be possible to get some kind of a deal on still in stock, dual 2.0 GHz boxes - something in the $2200 range I should think. It's definitely worth more than the "new" dual 2.0 GHz box, but not nearly as much as the new 2.3 GHz boxen. Would that be worth it? You'd get a lesser graphics card, slower machine, no Tiger, and single layer (not dual layer) DVD burner. I'd say not worth it.

End of dire warning.

It's getting to be time for new system recommendations, and I'll be doing that in the near future - recommended configs for uncompressed editing, with updates for new computers, new SATA cards and new drives on the market.

-mike

Apple - Cinema Displays

20" now $799 from $999
23" now $1499 from, what, $1800 -$2000?
30" still $2999

a bit more competitive, but better deals can be found elsewhere for similarly spec'd monitors.

Apple - Power Mac G5

new Macs as expected. Not dual core, still liquid cooled. Faster processors at the high end, slightly faster bus with it (1/2 speed), dual layer DVD burners, and 9650 graphics card at the high end (does dual DVI for 30 inch Apple displays).

dual 2.0 =$2000
dual 2.3 = $2500
dual 2.7 = $3000

as expected

NAB Notables, Episode 2

More Charlie White NAB coverage.

NAB Notables: Serious Magic, Matrox Axio and HD on P2
Charlie White's NAB coverage

Kodak Unveils HD System for Television Production at NAB

This was leaked last month, here's more info. Essentially a 16mm film stock intended for scanning, paired with a hardware box that emulates various stocks in real time.

Shoot once, get many looks. I'm looking forward to playing with this...

-mike

Canon on HDV

Article about the no-show factor of Canon at NAB. But Canon has said they'll have stuff to announce in the second half of this year. The author of this article thinks it'll be an HDV GL-3 in the summer, and by year and an HDV XL3 (XL2 successor) with interchangable lenses, etc.

macosXrumors.com: Amazon slips, outs new Mac G5 specs

I should make some crack about premature speculation here. But I won't, because I have taste. Almost.

This is all over the web, the above link is to macosXrumors.com.

Amazon's direct link is working for the moment, but look quick, I expect it to come down soon.

Yep, just as suspected - dual 2.0, 2,3, and 2.7 GHz G5's, at $2K, $2.5K, and $3K.

512 MB RAM, 160 (on dual 2.0 only) or 250 GB HD, 16x Dual Layer SuperDrives, OS X Tiger 10.4

AppleInsider.com is also reporting this additional tidbit about the dual 2.7 GHz model:

Sources add that this model also sports a ATI Radeon 9650 graphics card (one dual DVI one single) and a 1.35GHz frontside bus.

AppleInsider is also showing pallettes of these Macs being shipped.

This is what I'd call a "Shame Release" - rather than launching them at NAB to underwhelmed crowds, who were promised dual 3.0 GHz machines would arrive OVER A YEAR AGO, they are eeking these out with little fanfare between NAB and WWDC. So it is a speed bump, but they face no underwhelmed audience.

Shame on you, Apple...where's our dual 3.0 boxes? Yeah yeah yeah, point fingers at IBM/Motorola/Freescale, but seriously...it's time for a serious boost here, and hiding a product launch doesn't count.

However, if these are dual core, or don't have (potentially leaky) liquid cooling, I'll give some bonus points.

-mike

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): DV eStore Theatre from NAB

OK, this is EXCELLENT. So excellent I wish I'd done it. They've done video interviews at NAB and now they have the edited stuff compressed and online. Most impressive, check it out. This is 90% as good as being there, except that you can't ask your own geeky questions.

-mike

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Blackmagic Design Updates DeckLink Card Features on OS X

Did I say this yet? If not, they synopsize nicely - FCP v5 support for HDV playback, 12 channel audio in/out, etc. Click and see.

Pictures from Day 3 posted here, my visit to the Sony booth are up.

Lots of interesting things - the 4K projector (talk about SGI booth stuff), the XDCAM HD prototype, specs on the new HDW-M2000 deck that plays back all the HDCAM (not SR) formats and all the Beta 1/2 inch formats; underwater casings for the FX1 and Z1U, underwater casing for the F900/F700/F730/etc., XDCAM HD camera mockups, revised SRW-1, Sony's new 4K projector (that Landmark is buying a bunch of).

I'll get my notes posted up tomorrow that explains what all of this is, plus more.

Somewhere along the way I lost my pictures of the new cameras that shoot 1080p60. Only the SRW-1 can record the output from it (or some kind of direct to disk solution, but it would require 320 MB/sec to do so in 10 bit full raster!).

-mike

Roland at Silicon Color was kind enough to set me up with an evaluation copy of Final Touch HD (a thousand thank you's, sirrah!) and I will be digging into that once I get up to speed. It's a different kind of application for color correction than your typical Final Cut Pro plugin, it is it's own standalone application with an interface that I've been told will be familiar to traditional color correctors, but for desktop guys like me is something new. So I'll be ramping up on that one slowly.

In order to best play with FTHD, I called ATI to give them a kick - I ordered my X800 video card back on January 13th and hadn't heard peep from them. I emailed them in February, never heard back. Finally called today and they're going to get one in the mail to me tomorrow, I should have it later this week. This will (hopefully) help Final Touch HD run it's best, since it relies on OpenGL to do much of it's high speed magic.

I need to also finish my Kona2 testing now that 10 bit 4:4:4 is working with their v1.1 drivers, and do a Kona2 vs DeckLink HD Pro Dual Link write-up.

I also have some retesting to do with SATA products - I'd given up on the Highpoint RocketRAID card, after finding some incompatibilities with the Maxtor Maxline III drives I'd given up, but have heard of others using it successfully. I now have 5 Seagate 7200.8 400GB drives to doodle with, I'm going to see what kind of performance I can get out of those. I also want to retest the SyncRAID card with the Seagates and see if that fixes the problem with my G5's.

Tiger supports a poor man's RAID 10 implementation, but if it's akin to the RAID 1 performance of Panther, I'm leery of it - Panther (OS X 10.3.x) will lose synchronicity between the two drives in a RAID 1...and not tell you about it. Ever. If they haven't improved this aspect, it's a stop don't start, never mind kind of a problem. I'll keep bugging Tim about implementing RAID 10 in SoftRAID.

I had an interesting conversation with Rob-Art Morgan from BareFeats.com concerning a bunch of drive stuff, once he publishes, I'll link to it. One thing already known is that the Sonnet eSATA card won't fit in slot 4 of a G5 ever, so this limits your slot configuration options in a G5 when working with a BlackMagic DeckLink HD card (since they don't always fit in slot 4 either). More on this issue later, but basically it means you have to be very, very careful with your slot configurations for BOTH physical installibility and bus contention issues.

That and finishing the 5 camera SD/HD footage comparison, the scaling/de-interlacing options, etc., should keep me busy until...sheesh, I dunno - August?

Why no more NAB news over the weekend and today? Two words: Social Life. Mine's in beta, but it looks promising. Bowling 0.7 and Dating 1.2b1 ran OK without crashing, extensive field testing to continue...and yes, I am a geek, at risk of becoming a dork.

-mike

PS - I might have to run Halo, Doom III, or somesuch to verify full mission critical functionality of the ATI card as well. Then NO reporting will get done. Did I mention I have an addictive personality? 30 hours of Halo once...in a row. Must....stop...self......

: D

AppleInsider | Updated Apple Power Mac G5 systems en route to company stores

If true, WOO HOO!

Dual 2.0, dual 2.3, dual 2.7 GHz models. Probably $2000ish, $2500ish, $3000ish price points (pricing is my own guess).

A mild speed bump, lower prices for same price point (inevitable, Mr. Anderson), pre-installed Tiger, and dual layer DVD burners. If you bought last week, kick yourself.

Macworld: News: Apple releases Xsan Update 1.0.1

Bug fixes etc.

Why no original news over the weekend or today? Two words: social life.

-mike

Seritek External Dual Drive

Review of the 2 port card and 2 drive hotswap enclosure.

Build your own Sata Raid

1TB RAID based on Sonnet card, Burly Box, & Hitachi drives

Wired News: Search Battle Heads to Video

...all part of the Master Digital Plan....

BlackMagic Design has a page about me, my studio, and a project I post supervised, and talks a bit about the field acquisition device I've been working on.

Talks about the benefits of the 1200a deck, progress made on the drivers in the last year, my studio setup, how to get things done, etc.

Also a nice example of what color correction can do for you in FCP - there's a before/after shot.

...and frankly, it's all about ME, people, OK?

Let's keep the focus here, people.

(Yes I am so kidding.)

-mike

8 port external SATA host adapter and RAID

Sonnet eSATA 8 external port card RAID testing. 500MB/sec? Doable.

I have LOTS more news to tell, it just takes time to tell it. I have over an hour of audio notes, a bunch of pictures, and lots of stuff in my head to report, theorize, and conjecture on.

I got home around 1am last night and my house is a mess, cat's been sick, mail's piled up, car's at the shop, yard is a jungle, messages to be returned, etc. I'll be spending a few hours each day to get news from the show posted. So stay tuned, lots more NAB coverage coming, just gotta get back on planet earth first.

-mike

Macworld UK - Sony, Toshiba discuss joint HD disc standard

Discussions on merging HD-DVD and Blu-Ray creep forward. This would be good - one disk, one standard. Buy a movie, trust it'll play on your gadget.

So I'm packing up for my last day of NAB. Yesterday I saw the Sony booth, briefly hit eCinema Systems with their new monitor, saw the Andromeda and the 3D camera next to it, saw.....I can't recall, a big blur without my notes (which are missing, dammit).

So if there's something Way Cool that I haven't written about that I should have, that is of interest to the general HD public, please post a comment on this and I can check it later today. If you have a booth number, that would be great.

At this point I don't know if I'm even going to make it to the north hall, I have no idea what's in there.

So use the link immediately below this line of text to post a comment for stuff I should be checking out. Please keep it relevant, not "please go see Bizarre Widget Maker X that solves my unique problem." Thanks all!

Torrey Loomis of Silverado Systems was kind enough to take detailed notes and email them to me from Sunday's press event when they rolled out all their new products. Torrey is a VAR (value added reseller) that handles Macs for video stuff, he's a good guy to talk to if you need to get set up.

His notes follow:
Rob Schoeben – Vice President Applications Product Marketing

Overview from 2004 releases

Bunim/Murray Video
Reality TV overview
30-40 hours per day shoot
Pressure to finish quickly
FCP and Xsan—puts more editors on board
FCP better suited to handle—more flexible

2005--Year of HD Video
16 million HD homes by end of 2005

FCP better positioned to move folks to HD editing

Complete end-to-end solution for HD editing

Brian Croll - Senior Director Mac OS X Product Marketing
OS X 10.4 Tiger
Next big release of OS X
Ships 4/29/05
200 new features
Built-on UNIX
Latest shells and tools
Access control lists

64-bit processing
More than 4 GB RAM
Single process can access 16 Exabytes
Better windows integration

Spotlight
Allows user to find anything on desktop instantly
Built into the OS
Metadata and content searches
Smart folders—multiple file types, mail, calendar, Metadata mega search
Can add your own Metadata tags to your files

Dashboard
Instant access to Widgets
Calculators, weather, flight trackers...information at a glance
Can create your own widgets
Based on HTML
Hot key based

QuickTime 7
Standards based -
350,000,000 downloads of QT 6
Single format - acquisition to archive
H.264 – next gen MPEG open standard
MPEG-4 Part 10, ISO/IEC

Comparison photo between MPEG Part 2 and Part 10

iChat AV
4-way video conferencing
10-way audio conferencing

Just a few of the 200 features of Mac OS X

Frank Casanova – Senior Director at Apple
Demo of spotlight
Search for “BBC”
Spotlight window can organize by time, date, contact, etc...

Smart folders
Search for “H.264” by encode codec and copyright by BBC.

H.264 demo video
Did a Spotlight search for video
Full 1920 video at 8 Mbits
Full screen HD video of “Fantastic Four”

iChat AV demo
Scrubs demo of iChat AV
Four way video conference with three editors and one window with a Scrubs sequence
Creative parties can be involved and review edits with a virtual cutting room
Plays a scene in Scrubs for review
Producer wants to see alternate take
Editor plays alt take - producer likes it
Producer specs a transition, editor does it in real time and previews it in the iChat window
Another window for timecode for composer
Unknown if

Rob back
Need beautiful video, stunning graphics, the perfect soundtrack, next generation DVD’s

Introducing Final Cut Studio
Final Cut Pro 5
Edit anything, wait for nothing
Native HDV
Edit camera-native long-GOP MPEG2
1080i 50/60 720p 30
Hundreds of real-time effects
NOT an intermediate codec

Sony – Hiroyuki Sato – Sr. GM Digital Imaging Business Group
HDV products – HDR-FX1, HVR-Z1 cams and HVR-M10
HDV format chosen as most pop format by volume sold
30,000 cams shipped by March 2005

Rob back

Back to FCP 5
Edits anything – shows matrix
Native IMX support added
HD – uncompressed, HDV, DVCPRO HD

Real time
Dynamic RT Extreme
Frame-rate and image quality changes dynamically
Playback optimization based on CPU speed and video format
Maximizes real time performance

Panasonic P2 card
Solid state
Transfers files directly to Browser
DVCPRO, DVCPRO HD

Multi-channel audio
One pass capture of multiple channels
24 channel audio input/output
Work with 24-bit/96 kHz audio

Multicam Editing
on-the-fly editing during playback
Group up to 128 sources
Playback 16 sources simultaneously
4-up, 9-up

Paul Saccone Product Marketing Manager
Demo

San diego news clip in HDV
3.2 MB second
FCP tackles compute intensive tasks with ease
Scrubbing is seamless
Add real time effects
Plays real time backwards
All done in software

DVCPRO HD video
Dynamic RT Extreme
Playback video quality adjusts on the fly
Adapts from one stream to 16 on the fly

Multicam demo
Multiclips—three video and one audio
Shows where clips overlap
Three streams of HD – exclusive shot of Black Eyed Peas
Pumped up to 9 angles
On-the-fly rearranging
New button bar for multicam
Edited a sequence with a mouse—choices laid out after playback ends
Can change any angle to another angle

New demo with uncompressed HD
Uncompressed HD with real-time effects – two streams!
With titles, color correction

Panasonic HD
Support for P2

John Baisley President Panasonic Broadcast and TV Systems
AG-HVX200 P2 cams
MiniDV tape drive
3 chip 1/3” 16:9 progressive CCD’s
DVCPRO 50 and HD to P2
FireWire AVC and SBP2
Variable Frame Rates like Varicam!

Encouraged by Apple to incorporate HD into the camera
No deck is needed
Price is $5,995
Avail Q4 '05

Rob back

Motion graphics
Apple Motion recap
Mekanism demo –Rock the Vote

Motion 2 intro
Advanced animation—instant gratification
Film quality rendering
32 bit float GPU acceleration
8 bit, 16 bit float or 32-bit float
Unlimited RAM access
Replicator – innovative pattern-based design tool
Automat. duplicate graphics and movies along any pattern
150 replicator presets included

MIDI behaviors
"Play" Motion like an instrument
Trigger animation changes from MIDI devices
Adjust multiple parameters at once
Motion and After Effects – drag and drop Motion projects into AE compositions
Launch Motion from After Effects
Changes to Motion project automatically update

Real-time FxPlug
GPU accelerated 32-bit float plugs
Advanced UI controls
3rd party devs include Zaxwerks, Boris Effects, and DV Garage

Dion from Apple – demos Motion 2
Replicator places things on grid
Pattern can change geometry
Individual panes can be modified and altered
Keyframing greatly reduced

Motion 2 filters
3D rotation--adjust perspective
Boris 3D cube plug-in
Zaxwerks flag plug in real time
Earthquake plug built-into Motion 2
Mapped MIDI input to earthquake plug
Scrubalicious demo – MIDI keyboard created a 30-second commercial with just music key strokes

Rob back
Perfect Soundtrack
Introducing Soundtrack Pro
Built for digital audio post
Action based editing
Non-destructive and sample accurate
Action layer list with complete edit and processing history
Find and Fix
Automatically identify problem audio
Correct clicks pops hums
Selectively remove background noise
Audio processing - 50 pro DSP plug-ins from Logic Pro 7
Apply to tracks or clips
Supports Audio Units
Sound effects – 5000 cinematic sound effects and Apple loops
Explosions, impacts, foley effects, environmental ambiance
AppleScript Automation
Create AS droplets
Use Automator to streamline workflows
Execute scripts in FCP 5

Walter Murch / Sean Cullen video

Phil Jackson - Apple Product Specialist
Find and fix problems
Trailer – Batman begins with lots of pops and clicks
Automatically fixes clicks and pops in Soundtrack Pro
Sent back from SP to FCP 5
Allows you to create custom sound effects
Ships with lots of foley
Paste mixed a crash with a thunder effect
Adding some edge
Time stretched another effect and paste mixed into the track
Added a pitch shifter - combined two pitch effects
Actions list allows stepping through every part of the mix
Can re-order effects based on list
Fully supports control surfaces

Next Gen DVD’s
HD DVD and Blu-ray participants
DVD Studio Pro 4
Delivers HD on a disc today
H.264 for HD at SD bit rates
Author discs to current HD-DVD specification
Convert legacy projects to HD
Shows Clapton HD project in HD via DVD
Industrial Strength encoding
Optical Flow image analysis for format conversions
Qmaster distributed encoding
Integrated Dolby Digital Professional (AC-3)

Recap of Final Cut Studio

All available separately
As a suite - $1299
Upgrade $699

$499 from Production Suite
Available in May

Xsan environment at booth with 150 Tb
Shake 4 intro’d

Demo movie

I think I mis-posted this to Video Thing, Wiley's blog.

Here's my notes from the new high end cameras panel from the Digital Cinema Summit at NAB:

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: NEW HIGH-END DIGITAL CAMERAS

John Coghill - Dalsa
Franz Kraus - Arriflex
Jeff Kreines - Kinetta
Nolan Murdock, Panavision
David Stump, ASC, Moderator

David - film & digital are collaborating rather than fighting

3 chip prism based vs. 1 chip new camera

35mm lenses on HD cameras, depth of field & image quality

4:4:4 color space

film style accessories

talk about workflow, all the way to filmout- the WHOLE workflow

What makes these cameras so special?

John/Dalsa - 4K

workflow is the new mantra, a lot of intricacies to workflow, for cinematographers, they are worried that creative intent flows all the way through the process; Below The Line has an article on "DPs want pay for DI duty" - 2 things mentioned - Daviau said he couldn't have made Van Helsing w/out DI, Bob Richardson/Tarantino fight over control over Kill Bill.

how to will cameras ensure intent is carried through?
-metadata
-SMPTE .dpx - 4K 16 bit"format for the exchange of digital moving pictures ona variety of media between comptuer based system"

-flexible res indie, attributes in file header
-individual 16 bit files DPX inside folders, script supervisor info builit into that, each scene/shot/take recorded as a folder
-onset CDL (color decision list), look manamgement system can be embedded in file header
-render a full res "wedge" that can be embedded inthe CDL to be included inthe file header to make some basic decisions on set to go with the data
-when agreement is reached on a format it will be a siimple matter to implement within the .dpx header

"committees make progress one funeral at a time"

WHERE'S ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT FOR 35MM LIKE CQUALITY

Usability:
-compatibility with existing accessories, 35mm lenses, backfocus range, single chip, large format sensor
-optical viewing system with rotating mirror, SOA (safe operating area)
-simple user menus, not too many menu layers deep
-record via fiber up to2 2Km (cranes, remote spots w/limited space)
-records to drives
-bidirectional communication to send images to set

Image Quality:
-optical input - lots of exposure lattitude, spatial res, and "fill factor" are key (a catchall for how much of the surface area of the chip is capable of converting image into picture - minimal gutters?)
-they make their own sensors, their own chipsets
-conversion from analog to digital can't compromise images, highest bandwidth pipeline possible maintained - no video formatting
-record "digital negative" - no pre-baked decisions, you record 16 bit linear raw files, maximum room to mess with it
-good source to archiving

Workflow compatibility:
-capture to drives with digital neg quality
"DALSA Certified Post House" - (scary!)
-data centric approach enables compatibility with multiple formats and tools
-they have a 4K pipeline on their site for stuff to play with
-full screening room w/2K projector
-plan is to work w/post facilities to test facilities and certify the process, continuity of metadata etc.
-metadata - ensures elements don't get "lost" between multiple sights
-enables easy editing, conforms, synch sound etc.
-single source master philosophy
-dpx already supports film & TV formats - (film mfg & type, shutter angle, frame rate, etc. etc. etc.

Conclusion:
role of camera manufacturer changing:
-must take a system perspective
-must enable more than just great images
-must be compatible with familiar tools
-must integrate into the whole workflow

SHOWING DALSA SAMPLE FOOTAGE:

shots holds sky/clouds detail and mountain shadow detail

interiors seeing outside

seeing 12 stops of exposure lattitude, a couple more on the top end, 14 stops total

shot some night stuff, they couldn't get spot meter readings, saw detail on footage



JEFF KREINES, KINETTA
========================

-camera is designed for nonfiction and indie filmmakers, self contained recordeer

480 GB storage

records to "paranoid RAID", 12 drives, 10 drives primary, 1 RAID 3 parity, 1 hot spare

magazine in camera attach by bidirectional fiber link, can separate by a coupla kilometers, a single 6mm cable (3mm fiber optic inside)

-record 12 channels of 12 bit 96Khz audio, 4 analog, 8 digital

-workflow:
many different ways to go, store data in raw format, raw single sensor output like a digital still camera, get a 3:1 savings in storage space, don't do demosaic at time of capture
-data all stored raw w/metadata
-working w/Iridas speedgrade for Kinettta
USB cable into ccamera, load in up to 3D nondestructive LUTs, dual link HD-SDI, DVI LUTs for lots of stuff, looks recorded as metadata,
-don't ever mess w/your digital neg
-how do you store it inexpensively
-looked at HDCAM SR and nixed it, $100/hr, $100K deck
-two different options to store - using LTO3 tapes, uncompressed 400GB tapes, $100 each, 7 tape autoloader for $6 or %7K
-clones a mag to roughly realtime for almost 2 hours of stuff
-magazines are about 1 hour for 480 GB
-they also make a box that'll let you dump to a set of 6 drives
-one new exciting feature - new dynamic range expansion feature - camera is designed to be sensor agnostic, using Altasens at the moment, can run for hours on one battery (low power draw)
OLED viewfinder can be up to 10 feet away
-4 user definable buttons on the viewfinder
-camera designed to handle any sensor up to 16 megapixels, you'd need more than one magazine to record 4K
-concurrent photon amplification for dynamic range expansion - it takes 6 photons to make "real" data - if you add a little bit of light to that, or use more aggressively to reduce contrast
-have an integrating chamber, have RGB LEDs to boost around the sensor, all done optically around the sensor
-852x600 for viewfinder
-workflow: with Iridas, can make LUTs stored in camera, can plug laptop in via USB into a magazine, feed to monitor, can create new LUTs for every shot on the drive - can do a post shoot color grade onto the file header, can have multiple LUTs, do it into your hotel room
-workflow for smaller crews
-beauty of what they're doing serves different sets of users, not in competition
-JEFF STILL ISN'T SHOWING ANY SAMPLE FOOTAGE!!! DAMMIT!

Q: memory requirements for 100 minute of footage:

Nolan, Panavision guy:

don't limit yourself during acquisition is a lesson learned - don't limit to TV color space

"do no harm" during original acquisition

-they do ship more diffusion filters than lenses

-"the film camera that shoots tape" it was dubbed for the Genesis

Genesis uses all their standard cinema accessories
Millenium XL is about same size as their smallest/lightest camera, same weight about too
-super 35mm sized sensor
12 megapixel true RGB, no Bayer
1 to 50 fps
nominal exposure 400
dual link HD-SDI out
14 bit A/D
dockable VTR (no cables)
-10 bit log color
-custom gamma curve for extending overexposure lattitude
-wide color gamut for film intercut applications
-can load LUTs into the viewfinder to see what it would look like
-lens lateral color compensation
-can correct that lens on the fly and record an image without lateral chroma for pulling better mattes on green/bluescreen
-uses spherical lenses, will have anamorphic at CineGear
-they use a macrocell - a 6 pixel thing - RGB over RGB, 3x2 grid to make colors, these add up to make a pixel, like a Trinitron

Workflow:
-dual link HD-SDI 10 bit log, custom gamma curve
-raw image is flat and low contrast
-custom display boxes allow, can load LUTs made in PShop (nice!)
-can record all kinds of metadata
-provide to post facilities appropriate gray box and color cube for calibration
-load a LUT into a "preview box" to preview that way, without touching the raw source
Editorial opportunties:
on set downconvert to NTSC or PAL
-networked device with removable drive packs
-synced oaudio and time code
-listens for Genesis to go into record, it goe sinto record
-writes native Avid files
-collects scene and take info from other networked device, adds metadata
-remove disk packs, mount as Avid drives, cutting in minutes
WHAT ABOUT FINAL CUT PRO INTEGRATION?

Off speed tests done, showing in booth, check it out in Sony booth

ARRIFLEX GUY:

D-20 workflow technology
showed footage - looks like video, candle flames a bit sharp - the color is rich, and has very good color detail - come see their booth for more footage

goals of test:

-test in realworld environment, got some good screening material, proof of operational practice & workflow, got good feedback

D-20 modular design:
PL mount, optical viewfinder, mirror shutter,
-silent mirrored shutter
-camera control electronics down where they are expected
-wanted look & feel of operating traditional film camera
-CMOS image sensor, custom developed
-35mm format CMOS, ARRI custom development
-sensor can do 150fps, NOT accomodated in camera
-2880x2160
bayer mask
400 ISO equivalent
at least 10 f stops
on lattitude - most folks don't use film as rated, they are curious to see real world usage
-has three output boards - (they use metadata for digital and film related), so much intent gets lost with distributed production, wanted to fit into existing workflows. Have 3 different cards and electronic processes for different lookup tables, camera runs up to 60 fps, need dual link for that, log data stream for post, separate HD-SDI for monitoring, and an SD output for

HD and raw modes

alias free 1920-0x1080 @ 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 HD
LUT options including log/lin
variable speed - 1 to 60 fps (how to record/flag/extract?)
by using 3Kx2K that allows for an alias free HD

WORKFLOW:
shoot, conform/grading feeds all others
if film out, need a color management system to filmout

DI log workflow, need LUTs for video and projector outputs

4K digital cinema - they can't do it yet on their current imager (implies others can't as well)

If you pull a 2K out of the 4K

shows some image extraction if you pull subsections - zooming in

film offers res>2K, exposure lattitude>12 stops, archival advantages, high frame rates w/resolution, high quality, efficient film/DI stuff, worldwide workflow known

D-20: immediacy, no grain, no scratches/dirt/dust, no weave, cost of high shooting ratio

digital will complement, not replace film
DI provides a common platfor for material acquired on film & digitally

Q&A:
----

cost of media to store 100 minutes of footage:

400GB for 100 minutes for Kreines
TB/HR for Dalsa
D-20 size - HD as done now, so run the math there...
Nolan - same for his as well

Kreines said - Digital Cinema is a long way off for now...filmouts are going to be relevant for quite some time, against using dupe stocks for digitally originated stuff, use 5205 for affordable film stocks, make multiple original negatives rather than dupes, can take raw files, got into Iridas, work on timeline, go to film recorder

D-20 panel ready to run again:

AHH! some nice depth of field digital wouldn't do, good shadow detail video would never get, closeups of candles - OK, couldn't do vidoe for that well, outdoor stuff - Hmm...hI'm not loving it for some reason - maybe projection issues?

TAKEAWAY - image quality is pretty good, but film continues to sound better and better...costs of overall stuff! Kreines made no comment on image quality or cost or availability (later said looks like fall or 6 months from now). Somebody who's worked extensively with the Viper said that they were very underwhelmed with the Genesis after all the hype about it.

The Kinetta still sounds interesting, it's just taking a looooooooong time to get to market.

-mike

====================================================

OTHER NOTES FROM THE FCP MEETING:

COUPLA GUYS WORKING ON A JULIE DELPY MOVIE

Post supervisor "The Legend of Lucy Keys"

finishing post on the feature

new workflow for digital filmmaking

tapeless workflow

captured into 1200A via FireWire, tapeless until output at Technicolor

outputting TIFF sequence to color correct and transfer to film

Varicam let them be light on their feet, worked up to 30 setups a day

worked very fast

mostly shot handheld

up to 70 people on set - it's still important to crew properly

dailies were able to be brought into production as you shot'em

didn't have any issues with temperature

doing VFX, able to have somebody on set and be able to check it

mounted a leaf blower on the camera to get stuff blowing from point of view

the ability to see your exposure, WYSIWYG helps

brought the whole edit to the set on his laptop

shot a bunch of greenscreen, had a 1200A on set to do test composites as they shot it

were able to FTP shots to VFX vendor and ftp back

42" Panasonic to screen their stuff

the editor is working on 17" PowerBook, LaCie drive, and a 23" LCD to watch footage. cut a feature on your Powerbook.

used all the slate info, so the file gets named according to the reel/shot/take

-doing CC for movie will happen on a Technicolor grading station

-shooting ratio: 60 reels of 40 min each.

what would you do differently if doing something else?

audio - did separate audio for primary, and synced it later, 90% of what'll be used was from the slop track - shoulda recorded audio straight to camera

-they'll make an HD master to show to distributors and for screenings, they'll color correct that themselves, at Technicolor, they want to give them uncolor corrected as clean as possible for filmout - they'll match filmout to what they'd done in HD

Q: what did Avid have that you wish you had in FCP?

A: learning curve was about a week, likes it and wants to stay - sync issues were "spectacular"

Q: budget - A: shoot budget about $1M, total budget $1.2

Q: how much of a rough cut during the shoot - A: when they went back during the snow and flashbacks and during FX, had the assembled stuff ready to test for inserts for timing and for performance/continuity stuff.

had basic scenes assembled whiile director was out on set

Mike's Comments: eek - not meaning to sound snippy about it, but this isn't big news anymore. A year ago, yes. today, no. Maybe I just take this stuff for granted now. I'd be more interested if they'd captured uncompressed to disk (not feasible with much of their shooting style without Venom or CineRAM, but still....). Or I'm just spoiled since I've been playing with this stuff too.

==================

Ted Shilowitz from AJA:

making sure all the new features from FCP 5 work in AJA hardware

all the FCP 5 Macs at the Apple booth have AJA hardware in it

multicam, HDV (out their hardware), multi-audio in

at the high end of the market -

Apple doing a bunch of stuff for Sundance Channel, need a bunch of IOs

11 IOs all on G5's and Xsan, capturing a lot of formats down to DV25

-Fox wants to do games in 720 HD

-could Fox use DVCPRO HD codec, use for sports?

-did a bunch of pre-game stuff to prove it for other stuff

-fed from EVS "elvis" DDR boxes - simple UI stuff

-capture, cut it, push it back to elvis for playback

-Kona2 used in World Series - all the bumpers, all the highlights, all the stuff on the players, done in FCP w/Kona2

-for use in the Big Game - used for pre-game and bumpers for SuperBowl

-tons o'gear - 18 elvis DDR, 56 cameras, 24 NEP trucks for HD

-mobile studios in 18 wheeler rigs

-had 1 week of setup, 4 days before the game, have 2 FCP/Kona2 setups for pre-game packages

-FCP/K2 used for instructional videos for crowds

15 minutes before game start, editor and producer cuting in shots to the opening - shots are being cut into the 3 minute opening, literally a few seconds before needing to feed elvis for take to air

-same thing for Daytona 500

-within 6 months, went from experiment by Fox to SuperBowl and Daytona 500

-a chief tech said:

"there's 100's of millions of gear here...your FCP/K2 will see air...lots of stuff won't

-then they started showing new features of Final Cut Pro 5, all the nitty gritty things that got fixed or improved.

I remember something about increasing font size now resulted in changes in two places, and there was a lot of applause, but I was schmoozing and drinking and not paying attention from this point forward.

I went out in the lobby and talked to all kinds of cool people - the senior Panasonic guy in charge of the Varicam, heads of various user groups around the country, Graeme Nattress sat down next to me (maker of plugins, we've emailed a zillion times), Chris from DVInfo.net (he's just just the road in San Marcos from me), etc. etc. etc., drinky drinky drinky....

....I recall nothing technical after that, except that I didn't win anything in the raffle, especially the $5000 Video Workgroup Hub. Durnit!

Drink drinkety drinky.

I love scotch.

It loves me.

-AnchorMikey

PS-the Las Vegas monorail is a great thing late at night.

It's even better if you get on it going the intended direction.

So I've heard.

-Lost In Transcoding

At a very late night meal (too late to even call dinner) with Terence from the LA FCPUG, I came to this realization:

Perhaps the Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 camera is the first "razors & blades" camera.

The camera is relatively inexpensive for all that it does...and the media costs out the wazoo (since it's RAM). The camera sounds like like it might be fairly low margin with all the features they've shoved into. The MEDIA, however, is probably going to be pretty good margin. If not a first, certainly as their get their yields up and costs down. The P2 card reader station sure seems to be decent margin for them - it's cheap for a deck, horrifically expensive for a PC card reader. But as for that media....razor blades.

Not that I'm not psyched about it, I'm looking forward to this one more than the ProHD JVC camera. 4:2:2, easy edit workflow, all coolness.

The biggest question to me is whether they are going to go with a 960x720 res sensor, to match the 720p res of the DVCPRO HD codec, or go for 1280x720, in which case they would have a nice upconvert to 1080 res, since the codec for 1080p & 1080i is 1280x1080. Horizontally it would stay the same, just get stretched vertically. Or maybe they'll split the difference - use offset, wide green pixels like the Sony HDV cameras do at 960 pixels across. Then they could claim an enhanced resolution for the 1080p stuff, something closer to 1280 wide. (This is my sneaking suspicion of what they'll do, since it offers pretty good resolution, and lower pixel count for larger sensor pad size for better low light performance.)

It should be possible to record DVCPRO HD from FireWire straight to disk, either via an Enfocus (or similar) dedicated specialty drive gadget, or worst case scenario to a Mac running Final Cut Pro HD. I've already been cocktail napkin doodling on how to keep the Mac on, running, cool, and controlled in a backpack for run 'n gun shooting. Should I get a provisional patent rolling? Hmmm.....dibs.

Below are my notes on the P2 from the huge, awesome Final Cut Pro User Group meeting tonight:

I missed a bunch of it because Jan, the product manager, whipped through her slides so fast:


STATS ON PANASONIC P2 CAMERA:

1080i60, 30p, 24p

720 60p, 30p, 24p
24p 2:3, 2:3:3:2, 30p, 2/2 modes

480 60i, 30p, 24p
24p modes 2:3, 2:3:3:2, 30p modes 2:2

8GB card
108060i720p60 duration ????

720 mode, records ONLY unique frames

off frame rates on DV res too

SD memory card for setsups, 4 in card, 4 in camera

AVC, streaming and SPB2, file transfer, all levels of data 25mb, 50mb, 100mb on the firewire!!!!


USB 2.0 connection to computer

2 remote connectors, one for zoom/start/start, another for focus/iris

time code of all flavors, rec run, free run, time of day
2 xlr mike inputs
composite in/out
s video in/out
line level audio in/out
analog compontnet HD out (d)
720p cross convert to 1080i

2 p2 card slots
Prerecord prior to hitting record
loop rec
hot swap
thumbnail display (similar to SPX 800)
shot mark/tc stamp

5400 milliamp battery, 4 hours of record time

manual audio controls for 1 & 2, channels 3 and 4 only from built in mike

13x Leica Dicomar wide angle lense, 35mm equivalient

stereo mike that's usable, because it's a silent running camera

-neutral density filter

high res 4:3 LCD to handle the 16:9 stuff

when running 16:9, info goes above/below

zoom in for focus assist, pixel for pixel (like Z1U)

available to check while in record

viewfinder can be color or B&W



SMPTE
ALL THE SHUTTER SPEED STUFF THE DVX DOES AND MORE

auto/manual mode switch is obvious an discreet, not in a men

-audio selection area

camcorder w/no P2 is $5995, camcorder w/2x8GB cards is $9995

available Q4

production person's white paper is available in the booth (!!!)

P2 workflow:

shoot
mount drive
edit decisions,
edit
finish program
smart archive with metadata

start/stop DV detection works on the P2 - so auto scene detection on import

P2 transfer rate is 1 GB/min, bottleneck is at the hard drive, card can transfer 640Mbit/min, 260 mbit/sec transfer, 3 1/2 min at present P2 card transfer rate

4 solid state memory cards set up as RAID 0

8 GB card will be about $2k by time it ships

4gb cards presently $1700

there WILL be a PAL version of the camera

i've been very interested in Compression Master since Cleaner let their entire Mac development team go...away.

Here's notes from my interview with Compression Master folks:

Compression Master -

doesn't process in 10 bit at this time, if you codec flip it'll drop to 8 bit

-will do 10 bit, just not at this time, is on the roadmap

-can bring in whatever QuickTime codec you want that is installed

-can write out to any installed QuickTime codec

-they look for input from customers to add features

-H.264 support - they have their own H.264 encoder. Playback compatible with QuickTime's H.264 encoder. Open ended in terms of size and bitrate. We consider H.264 as a preview technology until the end of the year...it's not going to be commercially viable for awhile.

H.264 is going to be the codec they spend the most time on this year

They are thinking about splitting the product between a standard and pro model. The Pro model would be more focused on HD and HD res H.264 type stuff. It sounds like (I'm interpreting here) they are still noodling around about where to draw the line between regular and high end apps.

H.264 isn't ready for commercial deployment yet

MPEG-2 now has 2 pass VBR, different field encoding rates, can set peak rates to not be exceed (DVD Studio Pro cares about that),

in the resizing filter, you can scale fields independently if working with scaling from say, 1080i to 480i, it'll scale the fields independently and not screw up/blend/overlay one field into the other (except as appropriate). This is good.

-has deinterlacing options, edge detection to smooth out diagonal lines

-for indies that want to go from 1080i50, to 25p, to 24p, the deinterlacing quality is a priority. mess with edge detection on the deinterlace stuff, timecode is maintained (I THINK he said that, not sure....)

-conversion stuff for telecine and inverse telecine processing, with the combined with the deinterlacing. PAL-24p does involve processing fields, not just conforming

-they have an automatic scaling choice, a combo of blinear and bicubic. Better than After Effects? Hopefully as good he says. Scaling pre-processing is what people like.

Low pass - if shrinking something a LOT, low pass will just take one set of fields only to scale from

-they have an RGB filter

-smoothing and sharpening capabilities, no rocket science there

-Can encode Windows Media 9, the ability to do MBR (multi-bitrate), a link assembly to have multiple bitrate versions all linked together (QuickTime has done this for awhile, since version 4 or so I think). You can either make the MBR grouping on the fly, or have a preset that does'em all

-can't play that WM9 MBR back on the Mac, though. Maybe the new Flip4Mac will do it (from Telestream)

-price is $395 - that's why a pro/hd/high end version

-on the writing to codec side - can import any installed QuickTime stuff, can't do Cineon or DPX, they are working on MXF stuff for IMX

-so CAN write to any QuickTime codec that is installed on your system, BUT it's limited to 8 bit RGB. Didn't ask about RGB<==>YUV conversion

-their higher end version, Compression Engine, with a Watch Folder is $5K per seat. OUCH. That's a HUGE price boost, doesn't seem right to me.

Huge makes RAID stuff for HD usage

HUGE RAID stuff:
-4 gigabit capable system now, 2 LUNs of 5 disks, total of 10
-400 GB drives
-4TB of raw capacity, less capacity for RAID 3
-RAID 3 only.
-70 mb/sec outer zone per drive, about 40 at inner tracks
-stripe across the two LUNs for guaranteed throughput of 160 MB/sec, scales up to 240
-RAID 0 or 3
-list price
3 models:
160 GB drives, 1.6TB 7350
250 GB drives, 2.5TB 8500
400 GB drives, 4.0TB 12,400

roughly for list prices

this is surprising - 10 drives should be capable of up to a lot more - 240 MB/sec as RAID 5? That barely requires 4TB throughput....so be it. Once again, the RAID controller is the bottleneck by far - that's why the 15 drive Medea is so much faster - 3 LUNs of 5 drives each.

NAS box, 4TB, RAID 5 or RAID 10, 25 streams of DV for multiple users, connects over GigE, $15,000 or so, has hotswap drives, dual power supplies, everything but the server motherboard is hot swappable

Foundry has some new stuff, the OFX (Open FX) format is taking off, have lots of adopters

G-TECH

FireWire 800 hotswappable RAID with SATA drives, RAID 3, 3streams of 8 bit,2 of 10 bit in realtime, goes up to 2TB, 640 GB will be $1599, 2TB no price yet, 2.5 TB soon, hardware RAID 3

G-Safe - smaller 2 drive RAID 1 setup, hardware RAID 1, no striped reads

additional trays available to rotate stuff through

June for $499 2x160 G-Safe

G-Tech's nice but kinda pricey stuff


AHHH, VEGAS.....sitting in the buffet restaurant in my lovely hotel casino....the entire room shakes. HARD. I'm sure if I set my silverware just right it would buzz and jingle. Air conditioning system? Monorail? Coin sorting machines? Wood chippers for cheaters? (a la Fargo?) I have no idea.

Nobody is happy to be working here. Sort of a "Your punishment for staying here is my complete lack of respect or enthusiasm for serving you." system.

JVC booth - The GY-HD100U ProHD camera notes:

-the HD-SDI setup they were demoing was simply an AJA HD10A component hidef analog to HD-SDI converter. Let's you record uncompressed HD right out of the camera to...something.
-DTE (direct to edit) - record MPEG-2 to a battery powered hard drive
-the showed me some 720p60 25 megabit MPEG-2 encoding....on their different, more expensive, not the same MPEG encoder. So it looked quite nice on playback...but again, how much CC can it take? The higher end 7000 series camera that they are showing, $28k with no lense, will use a "similar" encoder. Hmm. Those external boxes to encode/decode are about as much each as the camera without lense is...each. And 25 mbit is better than 19, but how well is that heavily compressed 4:2:0 going to hold up to color correction, compositing, or a key?
-they chose CMOS as lower cost, lower power consumption as CCD
-CMOS won't give a vertical streak when shining at a light source at night.
-Dead pixels due to cosmic rays don't happen on CMOS according to this guy
-very low power draw on this camera - no CCD, no tape transport.
-June/July on the GY-100U
-1.1 megapixel sensor on 100U
-higher end camera (the 7000) will do 25mbit instead of 19.2, but


more on JVC camera -

talking to Frederic from Lumiere, after a coupla drinks -

he THINKS that 720p24 is more data per frame, because the datarate is still 19.2 megabits/sec.

-there are flags to duplicate frames on output, 24p recording on ProHD is more efficient and generate a better quality than 30p recording

Sony Booth:

preview of XDCAM HD stuff - 4:2:0 (4:2:2 possible but not being shown), 25 megabit, 35 megabit (inconsistent info), long GOP MPEG-2....no product until next year, they're just testing the waters for reaction....I'd strongly encourage 4:2:2 35megabit or more bandwidth...gotta key this stuff, gotta composite this stuff, ya know? single head XDCAM is capable of 72 megabit transfer rate

-also have two (one studio, one more mobile) HD cameras with 1080p60 capabilities...can record it to an SRW-1.

-in a year and a half, they'll upgrade the F950 to have 14 bit A/D converters, for the F900, in 2006 sometime

-software upgrade to SRW-1 to do 24.0 fps in summer/fall. Can (will?) be able to record at 3fps and play back at 24fps (or whatever set up as). Camera records to a buffer, then dumps the buffer to tape. Shoot 3fps, it fills up a buffer in the Genesis, then dumps that buffer to tape. So the deck only periodically records information, in wait state inbetween buffer dumps. Hence no flagged/duped frames to strip out, the way the Varicam does

IKEGAMI'S EDITCAM X10
-It's an HD camera that records to DNxHD, Avid's high quality codec. They are saying it can only do 145mbit, not 220 at this time (due to newness of facility, etc.) Interesting to note a computer codec drove a virtual tape format. It's 145mbit, not 220, claiming because of drive throughput limitations. 220 mbit = 27.5 MB/sec...OK, that makes sense for 2.5" drives. The new fast 7200 120GB Hitachi drives might change that
-might be a first - codec first, camera recording format thereafter


ARRI BOOTH

-Arrilaser recorder - talking about 4fps at 2K in September of this year
-ARRI D-20 - going to be rental at first, since they want to be able to baby it
-no stated ETA yet
-no stated price yet
-sensor is roughly 3K x 2K - it downsamples to HD res, after extracting a 16:9 section from the 4:3 sensor. If you put an anamorphic lens on it, it will use the full 4:3 sensor, and scale that to HD sized. The camera outputs 10 bit linear 4:4:4 RGB.
-60fps progressive max
-camera sensor capable of 150 fps, none available for that - 1.5TB/sec for 150fps!!!
-60fps 10 bit RGB is nearly 500 MB/sec
-it's a pipe issue - they have a 10Gbit interface on/in the camera
-they say they chose that to be industry compatible
-he gave an answer I wasn't entirely thrilled with about log "for us it is irrelevant...we create the final picture" so linear is OK. Hmmm...I'm not convinced.
-roughly $3000 to $4000 a day rental rate with package, including lenses etc....ouch.



IKEGAMI'S EDITCAM X10
-It's an HD camera that records to DNxHD, Avid's high quality codec. They are saying it can only do 145mbit, not 220 at this time (due to newness of facility, etc.) Interesting to note a computer codec drove a virtual tape format. It's 145mbit, not 220, claiming because of drive throughput limitations. 220 mbit = 27.5 MB/sec...OK, that makes sense for 2.5" drives. The new fast 7200 120GB Hitachi drives might change that
-might be a first - codec first, camera recording format thereafter

2-pop - Panasonic AG-HVX200

2-pop's coverage

P2 CAMERA INFO FROM NOAH KADNER, demo artist for Panasonic and Guy Who Knows His Shiznit

Panasonic will do 1080p24 for sure.

-they haven't locked in res of the sensor yet

-they want good low light sensitivity, which fights having a higher resolution sensor, so they're seeking best of both worlds. This camera is a ways from shipping.

-Those P2 cards are smallish - 12 minutes of HD 720p60 or 1080i30 on the 8 GB cards. So 15 minutes of 1080p24 it would seem from extrapolation.

-Final Cut Pro can see the cards "appropriately" when in the P2 card reader (the $2500 device). You CAN put the P2 cards in the PC card slot of your PowerBook now and it will show up as FILES. Those files can be imported into FCP, but not as gracefully as the P2 import process. Need some driver work to make it work smoothly...but they have 5 months to work on it.

-I'm guessing they might make a smaller, 2 slot PC card reader for a lot less within a year, since the camera only has 2 slots, and desktop folks balk at $2500 for a PC card reader.

-can you FireWire directly from camera to PowerBook to capture live? If has miniDV, it's gotta have a FireWire port, right? And can't you FireWire out of the thing to a computer to capture realtime via FireWire? Or just DV over FireWire? A good question for down the road.

--back in Panasonic booth asking around----

P2 card import of 1.3 GB of data into FCP via driver- takes about 3 minutes, and the progress bar lies about how long it will take.

-the P2 cards are hot swappable - the cards will rollover from one to the other and keep recording. So you could record endlessly if you can download the cards faster than you are shooting...which is possible in theory. The hard drive thing is 60 GB drive, the battery socket is the same lithion ion battery that is sold at Best Buy consumer battery etc.

-can Finder copy over the P2 card content as files, not as FCP import, which is tidier and seems to preserve metadata better.

-640 mbit/sec can pass on the card's bus on P2 cards themselves.

-but the PC Card bus speed on laptop limits to 4 or 5 times realtime (of SD or HD? Not clear)

-They make tower solutions, an internally mounted P2 card reader to be mounted in the front of a tower chassis computer. He mentioned PCI bus, so maybe it hooks into that? Wicked fast transfers then.

As for chip sensor native resolution: they're messing with "low light and optical...we're trying to make a nice comparison...can't really discuss that right now."

-as for resolution and how 1080p will be handled, "like the Varicam does, it'll cross convert, so on the card you'll end up with 1080p24" which makes me think it's a hardware upsample. If you started at 1280x720, that's not so bad. If you started at 960x720, that's not nearly as good.

-Panasonic still has not finalized chip resolution

-keep in mind, it was a mockup and some specs

I'm very interested to know if you can record off of the camera over FireWire straight to a Powerbook wedged slightly open (to keep it on) in a well ventilated backpack. Since the camera is a long way off, we don't know. If you can FireWire DV out, can you FireWire DVCPRO HD out? Remains to be proven. That would be groovy, then you could record to a hard disk drive that would cost less than a single P2 card.

-mike

APPLE BOOTH, visit #2

FCP 5 native HDV editing DOES TAKE MORE RENDERING than other formats of similar size (such as DVCPRO HD) due to the long GOP structure and the need to do so much backtracking. So some simple things require a render that otherwise wouldn't. Faster processor required to edit HDV similarly to DVCPRO HD. This is the opposite of what I was told yesterday, and this is Mary (spoke to her at MWSF), so I trust her more.

CAN capture directly to uncompressed from HDV with a preset

-Apple says HDV is visually lossless up to the 4th or 5th generation of recompression due to compositing, effects, etc.

-CAN use AIC if you want withing AIC, it's installed with FCP 5, but like iMovieHD, capture then is not (necessarily) real time due to need to transcode

-as before, you cannot mix and match formats on a timeline - gotta use same frame size, codec, and framerate, otherwise Red Line Of Doom.

-To do multicam editing, you drag all the camera angles into what's called a "multi-clip" which is similar to a nested sequence - except this nested sequence has 2-16 tracks and can select just one to be live for multicam editing

-1080i50 is no better per frame than 1080i60 according to one Apple guy, purportedly it uses less bandwidth than 1080i60 for DVCPRO HD. I'd like to see some footage to verify this. Frame size is the same

-I noticed there's a new preset for a size of footage - 1440x1080, this is used for HDV.

-XDCAM disks are Blu-Ray like, in a little shell, 25GB per disk, media is about $40 a disk, the deck is a few thousand dollars, probably $3K to $6k, go ask at Sony booth

-XDCAM does support 16:9, can do 24p on the higher end camera.

4:4:4 10 bit RGB in FCP-Apple's saying dual link 4:4:4 HD is a preview, doesn't want to put their official stamp on it yet - got a BS answer from one lady about "we don't know what all the issues might be", got to a demo artist who said it's because there is NO 10 bit RGB processing in FCP - if you render anything, even a cross dissolve, it gets bounced into 10 bit YUV, then rendered from YUV back to RGB. Yuck. RGB is handled at 8 bits/channel max. The suggested fix was to do EVERYTHING other than cuts only editing with Shake. Who wants to do a cross dissolve in Shake? Then you can't change your edit whilst effects run. You coul do your FX & CC work in Shake, swap shots out, carefully managed if you had to. Once editorial was locked, THEN run the whole thing out to Shake. Do cross dissolves hand over to Shake? Do any FCP effects hand over? I doubt it. This workflow sounds barely viable at first but gets less and less so in a real production environment. Yuck. They know the need is there, it's on the roadmap, but it hasn't happened yet. It's a small user base, high end user problem. On the one hand, barely any users need it, but on the other, it's a high end, "glory" feature. So maybe next year.

Shake 4 is due in the summer, this will be important for SOME kind of workflow along these lines, since Shake is fine with 10 bit RGB (it processes in up to 32 bit float I think).

Avid Intros DNxchange , an I/O device to work with HD & SD. Single rack mount. Read the link, gotta run...

LumiereHD was showing off their work in progress to bring in 24p ProHD footage from the new JVC GY-100U into Final Cut Pro HD (either v4.5 or v5, showing 4.5 at show).

You can use Final Cut Pro 5 to capture in ProHD (looks like it, haven't watched it do it yet). However, it doesn't look like it'll be able to capture 24p from ProHD, and that's where LumiereHD comes in.

Here's notes from watching Frederic's presentation:


Lumiere HD for ProHD

lets you edit ProHD 24p into FCP

-first 24p HD under 10s of thousands of dollars

-ProHD is true 24p

-MPEG-2 transport streams coming off the camera

-isn't editable

-need to demultiplex transport streams

-can capture (timecode support?)

-demultiplexing is 3X realtime on 15" laptop

-after demultiplexing, it's a program stream

-have a 2:3 pattern in a 60p timebase with duplicate frames

-LumeiereHD extracts the clean, original 24p frames

-can take the demultiplexed clips into FCP, but they don't play back nicely

-need to define an offline codec (or an online codec if you want to never go back)

-use DV or other offline codec as a proxy for realtime performance

-about 2:1 for DV transcoding, on dual G5 is about 3xrealtime

-LumiereHD makes an XML file that manages proxies for you

-XML does 4 things:
-merge audio and video in browser
-rename those clips to be able to later relink
-makes those clips anamorphic
-and one other thing he forgot

make a DV 23.98 timeline for the offlineDV24p FCP project

-it makes a project from the XML with your clips ready to go. Make a timeline that matches our offline settings, including anamorphic

-when done editing, you select the sequence, go to MMedia Manager, select the ProHD preset, let it pick the files based on file name, and it will figure it out. Do a File==>Reconnect and you have a full HD res version of your project.

can either render out to a new master, render out H.264, make an HD-DVD, or go back to ProHD with LumiereHD

if doing graphics etc., build those at 1280x720 stuff and drop those into timeline, when you replace media, it'll figure itself out correctly. It won't degenerate the effects. FCP is smart enough to re-render text & effects at HD res when you go to your online.

Q&A:
====

Q: what if you have DV footage?

A: Frederic suggests not upscaling it, better to box it or put graphics around it if possible. Uprezzing DV to HD looks shockingly bad.

Q: If you shoot w/Varicam 24p, how do you mix & match?

A: if final is DVCPRO HD, use DVCPRO HD as a working codec. On a G5, about 3 times realtime to transcode

Q: What about the deck?

A: workflow if identical to capturing from camera. Deck is $3400.

$179

Avid updates their HD product line

Day Two pics online - strange omni-directional 360 degree whoseewhatsit in the parking lot, ARRI D-20, Fig Rig.

All is self explanatory except for Fig Rig (lost the vendor, google it) - it's a simple ring to mount a camera in that makes it easier to get steady hand held shots. It's like a steering wheel, the camera mounts in the low middle or stability.

I got to the JVC booth about 5:45 right before shutdown, got some info on the camera

-both camera and deck due in July
-analog component output is prior to MPEG encoder
-720p30 to tape
-$6300 for the camera with lens
-$5500 without
-ProHD/DV deck is called the BTE-HD50U, is $3400 with HDMI and component outputs (HDMI can be converte to DVI if the res/refresh is compatible)
-720p24/25/30 to tape, camera can shoot 60p but not record it
-tripod adaptor is $965
-1/2 inch lens converter is $1125
-there's lots of optional gear as you can see
-they had them out on display, and I played with one briefly
-lot of glass on that sucker - looks serious
-interesting focus assist - it gives a blue overlay on fine detail, you mess with focus ring to show the blue stuff sharp
-I'll see if I can get a pic, hard to understand until you use it
-I can now publicly say that LumiereHD is going to have a new version, more on that when I talk to Frederic

-mike

Axio is a boardset from Matrox, but they are distributing it as prebuilt systems from HP and IBM.

Does 1080p and 1080i, 720p59.94 not 24 fps yet. No HDV yet, no ProHD yet, no DVCPRO HD native yet. BUT it's a very powerful platform. Forgot to ask how much is costs. Basically, can do 2 layers of HD and 2 graphics layers in realtime. With alpha channels. Watched it to a 1080p24 uncompressed layer, with a realtime color key, on top of another video layer. In real time. Wow. It'll do that with 10 bit footage as well.

-It has fast/powerful realtime DVE stuff, looked pretty high quality
-50 to 300 Mbit compressed codecs for offline work
-realtime primary color correction
-no 4:4:4
-does 4:2:2:4
-realtime chroma key
-all on 10 bit
-2 video layers, 2
-MPEG-2 I-frame is 100 MBit, works pretty well
-7 megabit offline codec available
-DVCPRO HD by September
-realtime color match effect
-effects CPU dependent - some FX are hardware, some are software, all codec decoding is software based, so can get faster FX w/hardware improvements.

Pretty neat - I think I heard somebody say these would be in the $30K range? But that's meaningless without knowing what all is included.

Red Giant Software was next to Color Finesse in the Plugin Pavillion, so I talked to Andrew for a bit. My notes:

-Primatte is updated to v3.0 - has HDV, HDCAM, and DV presets so it preps it to get an optimal key

-adding a set of tools for post to clean up and tweak after the key - alpha levels and alpha cleaning tools, rewrote a bunch of stuff to be float internally, 16 bit in After Effects

-new view controls to do split screen in keyer to see composite and view matte

-edge lightening, auto color matching and color tracking per frame

-can do full high/mid/low tracking, or just midtone tracking

-adding a secondary spill correction, when you correct foreground objects, adding a second pass to remove blue or green cast or reflection in your foreground, helps to get rid of that "wrong" coloration. It's one plugin to do all this

-new thing in Key Correct tools to pre-key to have a flattening pass to remove the noise - apply to footage to do noise analysis - you highlight a section of what should be clean plate, it'll clamp down color noise etc. to even out the green for a cleaner key - selective color correction within the keyer to

-upgrading all the compositor tools to do Key Correct as standalone plugs - so you can use all the tools to get the benefits with other keyers

-more new things with GPU on Windows - Magic Bullet getting GPU luv on Windows, for Mac by this summer, not dependent on Tiger, but using an FX Plug - which is the new plugin architecture that lets you hook into OpenGL

-Look Suite has 8:1 render time - takes 8 times longer than realtime on a dual 2.5 GHz G5. Now they are talking about 10-12 frames a second - literally more than 10 times faster. WOW. Taking 8 bit input from FCP (all it will give you, limits of architecture for now), upconverting it to float (floating point math, more precise) on GPU, downconverting on output. Same exact image quality, just faster. Supposedly for color corrections, have a faster realtime blur system that does diffusion passes that are much cleaner and more detailed for better, more filmlike diffusion passes - highlights and shadows inside of the blur are more appropriately handled in a camera realistic fashion

-next version on Knoll will be GPU assisted on both Windows and Mac, about 5 times faster

-everybody can input HD, but have 3 to 6 times more image size to handle, pulls you away from ability to do realtime processing since there's so much more to be done.

-Magic Bullet in After Effects is 3 secs a frame before, 4 frames a sec with GPU now -"Makes it useful, can play with it."

Cool stuff.

-mike

OK, buncha notes on the hot camera at the show:

-$5995, due November...or early 2006, depending on who you ask. $10K with 2 8 GB cards
the P2 card reader holds 5 P2 cards, costs $2500 without any cards
-AJ-PCD10 is the model #, USB 2.0 interface, faster than realtime data transfer
-see the pics posted for a shot of the UI
-P2 camera is in a box, it's just a mockup
-the only thing running is their 17" HD screen, has "real" controls, probably 720 res
-camera and 2 8GB cards is $10K
-1080i60 is 8 minutes per card
-1080p24 is 20 min/card (????) that doesn't sound right....should be like 10, right? must chug math
-the field drive downloader thing is for acquisition people - pull a card, download the content, then free up the card to put it out in the field
-price point on drive/loader - $1800
-P2 card reader - "cheap for a deck for a broadcast news group" - but expensive for a card reader

A reader wrote in:


Dear Mike 
 Since you are in NAB I have a question you must ask Panasonic which will clarify much about their new camcorder
 
On on personal web page (SUNJIN JUKIC ONLINE) with info for the HDVX 200, I noticed on a screen shot from Panasonic video wall presentation  the following: 480i, 1080i, 1080p24, 720p60/24
 
But on the Panasonic press release (again taken from the same web page) I read the following:
 
On the newly-announced 8G P2 card, the AG-HVX200 records for 32 minutes in DVCPRO or DV, 20 minutes in 720p/24, 16 minutes in DVCPRO50, and eight minutes in 1080i/60 and 720p/60. The camcorder includes two P2 card slots to permit continuous recording, and the cards are hot swappable to assure non-stop recording.
 
Strangely no mention for recording times for 1080p24.
 
My guess is that 1080p24 is not real (maybe like Sony cineframe 24) and that the camcorder is in reality a 720p camcorder like the varicam.
We must not forget that only Sony so far has 1080p24 technology on a pro camcorder and it would have been absurd for Panasonic to introduce 108024p on a consumer camera and not on a pro camera.
Another funny thing is that Panasonic claims that DVCPRO50 records more information than DVCPROHD720p24 derived from their recording time quotations (16min compared to 20 min).
 
Keep on with the excellent job you are doing.
 

Here's what I know so far:

1.) I'm working on getting the skinny,

2.) camera doesn't ship until November so they can change their minds,

3.) actually, that's right about throughput - 720p24 is 5.7 MB/sec DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO 50 is 7 MB/sec. The math works.

OK, I'm back into the fray now...

Well, it's finally been revealed, if not shipped - Color Finesse 2.0. If you've been reading the blog for a few months, you've probably seen me mention this marvelous color correction tool - very very high quality color correction, just that it's kinda slow, and you have to use it in After Effects to get the full benefit (since Final Cut Pro limits you to 8 bits/channel in RGB processing with After Effects filters).

The basics:

-there's a plugin, and then there's a standalone application, not in Final Cut Pro HD
-standalone costs $1995
-there's a control surface, pictured here, that costs $3950. It's custom built for them, they are using 4 wheel/ball setups, not 3, so the JL Cooper device is not as applicable.
-there's a show special to buy as a bundle and save some hundreds of dollars
-expected to ship in late May, early June
-the standalone application lets you export XML from FCP, then open that up in CF 2.0.
-three up views, to see clips in context of prior/current/next clips
-reads and writes Cineon/DPX/TIFF sequences
-resolution independent
-can save & load multiple grades easily
-QuickTime Video Out support - Firewire for DV, SD & HD via AJA, BMD, etc.
-there's an available control surface, they're calling it the Colorociter CS-1, which has four ball/wheel setups, twelve high res twisty knobs, 8 grade selection buttons. Multiple page modes are available to assign different functions to different buttons at different time. USB interface (1.1 or 2.0?)

THE BASIC WORKFLOW:

-do you color correction there, then you have 3 choices:
1.) Render it out as one big movie
2.) Render out individual clips to relink/replace back in FCP (XML stuff handles this for you via a 2nd XML export, this time from CF 2.0)
3.) export a bin from FCP, open in CF, render it, relink clips in bin. This would let editorial keep moving I think, unless trims are made maybe? Doodle with this/ask when I get a demo version

NOTES:

-no windowing/masking - could do that in After Effects with the plugin, but not within the FCP XML standalone app workflow readily
-if pre-render, can play it out the AJA/BMD card
-rendering is pretty quick, much faster than After Effects style rendering
-NOT realtime. Doesn't do realtime playback of unrendered color correction
-if I saw it correctly, doesn't play back rendered color correction in realtime either, need to double check
-can do 6 secondary color corrections on top of the master color correction
-workflow: do your edit in FCP, export XML, open that XML in CF 2.0 standalone, do your CC (color correction) work, render it, XML it back to FCP
-nested sequences do NOT work at this time - gets all confused
-can render one big output for layback to tape
-BUT that won't work if you have other effects in FCP applied
-basically it's just for color correction
-maintains your trims etc. - you don't want to be editing in here
-keyframable, but the UI is underdeveloped at this time, still working on it
-nice navigation and scrubbing and playback controls

TAKEAWAY: a much improved version. By cutting out to a standalone app, it allows them to do more things than the FCP API would allow, such as rendering to a higher quality than 8 bit RGB (even though it's 32 bit float internally). At $2000, it does very high quality work for the money involved. BUT...it's a very slow workflow. You wouldn't want a traditional post client sitting there with you, it's soooo not real time.

Final Touch HD, at $5000, isn't always realtime, isn't realtime ever on HD-SDI outputs. BUT it's much much faster and has a lot of calibration tools that I haven't seen in CF 2.0.

Assuming they both work as expected, if I could afford it, I'd go for FTHD. But if I had Cineon/DPX files, it would be an issue since FTHD doesn't support those in their $5K product. Their $25K product yes, the $5K product no.

For existing CF users, it's a serious upgrade in usability. For the high end, client present, realtime expectation crowd, it's not a solution. There were rumors it might be realtime, it's not. But it's a lot of product and quality for the money (just not a lot of speed in the absolute sense).

-mike

Macworld: News: BIAS demos Peak 5 at NAB

talks about new features

MacNN | Seagate debuts high-performance 120GB notebook drive

Smaller bigger is better.

The Adobe buyout of Macromedia is a little funky - while Adobe gets the best HTML authoring tool, they also get a lot of stuff they may not care about - what's Freehand's future in light of Illustrator? Etc.

Here's some articles about Adobe buying Macromedia for $3.4B:

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/04/adobemacromedia/index.php?lsrc=mwrss-0405

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/04/18/adobeexec/index.php?lsrc=mwrss-0405

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/04/18/Adobe-Macromedia

one factual, two editorial. 2am, too...tired...to..link.......[thunk]

UPDATED: one more link:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=11360

Whether Dreamweaver is kept, since it rocks, or nuked, since GoLive is so well integrated into rest of CS, is being debated. Or what if they just lift out the features they want?

Flash is the only truly unique thing in the product line (other than Director, and that's no great money maker). But Flash doesn't generate tons of money....does it? How many Flash developers are out there? That paid for their software? Dunno...

Apple - Final Cut Studio - Quick Tours

Quickie feature tours of FCP5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, and DVD Studio Pro 4.

Found via Philadelphia FCP User Group site (which you should visit regularly anyway)

Think Secret - Briefly: Additional Power Mac G5 notes; Tiger GM emerges

Rumored details of rumored upcoming Macs...as I figured - single core, no PCI Express, just a mild speed bump is all.

Due sometime post NAB but pre-WWDC (which is in early June).

-mike

Macworld: News: NAB: G-SAFE, G-RAID Pro debut

More storage options. These guys are a spin-off from one of the established storage vendors, they seem to know their stuff. Worth investigation.

I'll try to check'em out this week.

-mike

MacNN | FWD unveils network RAID device

This sounds interesting....I wonder if it could be a poor man's Xsan, able to do a few stations of DV or DVCPRO HD 720p24? Maybe, maybe not.

Need to play with it to see, I'll check into getting a loaner...

-mike

random tidbits:

a guy who does a lot of long form shows on FCP in HD said it has a BIG problem when working with large amounts of data, stuff like a 90 minute edit with 1500 shots in the bins....after a half hour of working with it, it slows to a crawl and you have to reboot...but rebooting takes forever. Hopefully FCP 5 improves that. If this is a ubiquitous problem, then this is a major, major problem for Apple in the long form market. Which is admittedly rather small. I suggested breaking the show up into reels, he commented that others who've done that haven't had told him of the problems he himself had experienced.

-my hotel is not where the Glamorous People are. I've made a new game - in the walk from the front door to the elevator (which is always through as much casino as possible, I think it's in the Vegas building code), I look around, but do not find a single attractive woman. So far I've only been possibly wrong once.

-someone with a lot of digital moviemaking experience (Viper etc.) said they liked the Sony Luma monitor the best amongst all of the LCD based monitors so far, even though it's only 720p resolution, the color was the best.

-same someone said they were expecting much better results from the Panavision Genesis camera after all the hype - they liked the Viper much much better. His buddies have bought one, so possible conflict of interest there...but probably not.

-PCI Express is going to fix a lot of bottleneck problems we face with HD and eventually 2K res files

-my hotel has class, except that I think it's spelled with a "K". They feel it's time an upgrade, and it's going to be rechristened, after renovation, as The Hooters Casino. As in the food chain. Yes, the one with the owls. I shit you not. I wish I were.

Update on the Kinetta camera:

Kinetta: fall ship date for Kinetta, no sensors until next sensor model done from Altasens
spoke briefly to Jeff Kreines -

-no sample footage available yet, sooner rather than later
-6 or so months (very ballpark) until might be available
-waiting for an AltaSens sensor to be available is the big limit
-if I didn't mention this elsewhere, they are working with Iridas to get a special version of SpeedGrade made to work with their footage. Sounds like it'll work with their RAW format on a timeline - the ability to play back, color correct, and trim all in real time in one app. This is a big deal because the raw footage has to be undemosaiced (figure out, according to a map of the sensor, which pixels are supposed to be R/G/B and separate and interpolate the colors), then color corrected, then played back (and it's a BIG high res datastream!). Something like 60-80 MB/sec raw, so 180-240 MB/sec once in RGB.

update on DCI Spec tests

in short yes, they did do their testing the correct way - took a 2K segment of a 4K image AFTER decompression from a 4K, 24fps, 250Mbit source and found that adequate - so this DOES work for 4K 24fps, might be a touch weak for 3D - he said above 160 MBit was where they couldn't really tell a difference on the 2K stuff. So if you drop down to 125 MBit/sec for each eye of a stereoscopic image, then you may be able to see the difference, potentially see a slight problem going on with the 3D stereoscopic stuff. But you might see some very small artifacts. It'd work pretty well.
-250Mbit was picked for a variety of reasons - hard drive throughput (but I don't buy that one necessarily, but who am I to say, maybe they picked this a coupla years ago), network speed (that makes more sense), chipset bandwidth wasn't really a limitation according to him (no comment, but hey, like I know anywhere near as much as these folks....).

MacNN | FirmTek ships 4-port Serial ATA host adapters

Hooray! Firmtek ships their nifty inexpensive 4 port cards. Hotswap, fast, simple. Just watch out for SSC enabled drives such as those from Hitachi (there are part #'s to know which ones to get).

I was very happy with these in my beta testing. They took a lot of care to avoid some problems and possible problems to guarantee consistent playback. George, the engineer, drops me an email every once in a while to keep me posted on his very detailed testing he does. He's a very thorough fellow.

-mike

MacNN | Intel confirms dual-core launch

Good for Premiere Pro users - more power! Dual core is inherently faster than dual (individual) processors since they can communicate so much faster when on same die.

Went by the S.two booth to check out their Digital Field Recorder, a battery powered device to record HD signals uncompressed to disk, including 10 bit 4:4:4 log output from FilmStream mode on a Thomson Viper camera. Steve Shaw, guru from Digital Praxis was there and I chatted with him a bit, and he had lots of useful info to share. Very cool guy from the U.K.

In the S.two booth, they were showing their S.two field recorder, the D.mag dockable hard drive magazine (6 drives in there), the A.dock (their system to download and backup the drive mag's contents), and an LTO2 (soon LTO3) based system to just plug in and back up contents from A.dock or D.mags. Very cool. The S.two itself is the size of a large toolchest, it has a big handle on top to just pick it up and carry it around (battery powerable). Nice design, pretty well evolved. Surprised that both they and Doremi record to RAID 0 in the field for primary acquisition. S.two is really in the rental market - they sell to post houses who rent these things out. Not a whole lot of end users buy their own. So I didn't really get into price stuff with the engineer. Not having used this ever, but based on seeing the setup, and reading Steve Shaw's excellently detailed writeup on his website, made me think this would be a good field acquisition system. My own device I'd been looking into doing is much much larger, heavier, and awkward - instead of a one handed lift, mine's two adults to heft it out of the truck (and yes TRUCK, not car). This is a small, portable solution, looks to be built pretty tough.

Also went by the Doremi booth later, to check out their HD-SDI to DVI converter that Steve Shaw had said was better than HDLink. I watched a demo of the HDVI-20 (the HDVI-20S does dual link as well as single link). They showed the HDVI-20 next to "a competitor's product", which displayed some of the same types of display artifacting I've seen in the output from my HDLink. In short, the Doremi did a 1080p24 that looked much much smoother, without the field tearing lines, that I've seen on my BlackMagic Design HDLink. I want to set up some tests similar to what they did to verify, but it seems pretty clear that the $2000 dual link model is a major improvement over the $700 HDLink, and perhaps the AJA HDP as well (but I've yet to plug my HDP in so I can't say for sure). The single link Doremi is $1500.

The Doremi box also had a lot of extra features like scaling etc., and will also take in a 2K signal (but scale it down, so you lose the 1:1 pixel to pixel correlation, which is half the point with these devices).

I also took a look at their V1-UHD uncompressed HD capture and playback system. It works, it's cool for that, but the file import/export seemed lumpy/awkward - you could send it back out over TCP/IP, but you had to "push" it from the Doremi rather than "pull" it from your desktop computer. On the plus side, it's small and light - 3U tall, 15" deep, under 35 pounds with drives. They are still insisting on using SCSI drives..pricey and small. It captures to TIFF sequences, period. That, coupled with the price ($33K to start), coupled with the fact that it's RAID 0 inside the box, RAID 5 only with external storage, made me favor the RaveHD from what I know so far. Doremi's box is smaller, but seemed to lack in so many other ways in terms of features and ease of use. Plus, the attitude seemed very different between the two vendors as well.

I went into a Porsche dealership once in the late 90s to check out a Boxster, thinking I might (ha ha) be making enough soon get one (this is before The Crash). I walked in, said I did NOT want to test drive, I just wanted to know two things: a.) how much would it cost with the options I wanted, and b.) would I fit in it (I'm tall). The guy basically tolerated my presence, but was utterly (lets just say negatively) engaging. Pretty frustrating. I was asking knowledgeable questions, not asking for any free samples or demos or loaners, just for info to buy. It was pretty frustrating.

Guess who's booth I felt like that in today, and who I want to work with on a project; and even from a business sense, who I thought would provide, or strive to provide, the kind of product and user experience I'd want to deal with...

AJA

Swung by the AJA booth and talked to Ted Schilowitz and Gary Adcock about new toys from AJA.

No new hardware at this show, but lots of software tweaks.

As of v1.1 drivers, they have a 10 bit RGB 4:4:4 codec

New goodies for Kona2 in FCP5:

-Kona 2 will play back native HDV properly, with correct scaling (not rough like earlier tests I did in pre-v5 FCP)

-drag and drop app - KonaTV - lets you drag and drop a file onto an app for immediate playout, doesn't require FCP 5

-data rate utility - "How much data rate needed for this format?"

-disk testing utility - tells you how fast a drive/s will run

-put those two together, with a safety margin, to figure out if your drive system is fast enough for the intended video format you want to run

-split monitoring TOTALLY works on AJA - there are three outputs on the Kona2 - two HD-SDI and one analog component. Unless working in 4:4:4, you have three outputs, all of which can be configured for anything. No reason to stop you from outputting:

Output 1: HD-SDI to HDP for display on 23" 1920x1080 LCD for your 24p (23.976 actually) project
Output 2: HD-SDI to 720p24 on Sony Luma monitor (I think those have HD-SDI input....) Steve Shaw of Digital Praxis called these his favorite, even though they only have 1280x720 resolution
Output 3: analog to SD monitor, with pulldown to display 29.97.

Now, I can't think of why you'd want all three unless you had'em sitting around, but the option of Output 1 and Output 3 as described here sounds awfully nice. Also the ability to do dual link HD-SDI to an LCD with an adaptop and analog SD with pulldown to a standard SD monitor is a great way to not spend over $25,000 on the big BVM 24p monitor.

-can upconvert SD to HD, with pillarbox, or stretched, or whatever. It does it.

-saw a demo of 10 bit 4:4:4 HDCAM SR capture from a Sony SRW-5000 deck (that's a $100,000 deck). They have a 10 bit 4:4:4 codec now. It works, it runs, it's doable.

-there's a secret hidden menu to get LUTs into the Kona2 board. I know it, you don't. I am evil and not sharing, since it's a deep 4:4:4 power user feature Ted would be mad if I shared with 4:2:2 folks who don't need it. : )

-In general, Kona2 works for any kind of HD, they're on the ball on this one.

-they also have all of their SD cards, and converters, and IO boxes, but Kona2 was what I was interested in. The HDP still bears mentioning as a useful HD-SDI to DVI converter, it is only 4:2:2 but it has two single link passthroughs. Handy.

-mike

UPDATED midnight Monday

FINAL CUT PRO HD:

You can visit the website for most of the specs, here's what I learned today:

-Final Cut Pro v4.5 would process HD in the 601 (SD) color space when using approved codecs (the Apple uncompressed 8 & 10 bit codecs). Now they have proper 709 (HD) color space for working in HD. If you're using, or been using, the BlackMagic codecs or AJA 10 bit 4:4:4 codec, I'm not sure this mattered. Unless the processing (color correction, filters, etc.) were in 601 not 709. Anyway, it's mo bettah now. Wish I'd known before, however. This is exactly the kind of arcane nitty gritty nobody tells you about unless you specifically ask...and know to ask.

-new & improved 8 bit 4:2:2 realtime HD effects. Not clear how this was better than what you could do with the AJA and BMD cards...sounds like before the cards did some of the processing, now more is being done internally on CPU (possibly GPU?)

-Dynamic RT Extreme means that you can set a preference as to whether FCP should degrade resolution first or framerate, or both. Nice option. Want detail or fps? You can chose your preference for when the Mac can't do both.

multicam support, up to 16 cameras at a time, can see all at same time in a grid, can either click on the one you want and it drops it at that instant to timeline, or you can use the numeric keypad's 1-9 keys to drop in the shot/camera you want. Very, very, very fast, efficient, and cool. The showed 8 tracks of DVCPRO HD being used, with one track of audio. WORKS, COOL, FAST.

can lock the audio track to lay down the permanent audio track...when multicam editing, there are pop-ups to select whether audio, video, or both gets used in multicam editing.

numeric keypad selection for camera selection as live playback is going is really, REALLY cool.

NEW FORMATS SUPPORTED

HDV

-HDV editing - is truly native. yes, some stuff has to be recompresssed when doing color correction. Way of the beast. CAN YOU CAPTURE/FLIP TO UNCOMPRESSED? I need to ask about workflow for how to keep HDV as clean as possible.

-YES, you can master back to HDV tape. You have to do a "conform" as they are calling it - there's a progress bar that says "conforming movie" depending on how many cuts, and how far from I frames, etc. Get a dialong that says "conforming movie" with a progress bar. I should get a picture.

IMX

Yep, it works, and you can ethernet over footage faster than realtime from the XDCAM "deck" (how fast? How much deck?). The XDCAM "deck" is really just an optical disk drive with tape transport buttons. I'm sure it's not cheap.

The camera does support 16:9, does support 24p on the higher end camera. NTSC footage was 6.1 MB/sec.

P2

They were only showing DV P2 usage, the P2 HD camera won't be ready until NOVEMBER, gosh durnit. But the interface is great - there's a simple little dialog under File==>Import==>Import P2 that shows a thumbnail frame and in/out points on media, highlight it and it copies it over (to your capture bin I guess). I'm guessing it copies it over, I don't think it'd make you work off of the card. It copies over faster than realtime (for DV, anyway). Cool little thing. The USB 2.0 interface box with 5 P2 slots is $2500. OUCH. P2 cards are Type 2 PC Cards, so eventually there SHOULD be a driver so you could just load it into the side of your PowerBook and copy it over. Won't that be the day. The camera is $5995, ships in NOVEMBER, the bundle with two 8 GB cards pushes it up to $10,000. 8GB is 20 min of 1080p24 in DVCPRO HD according to a rep I spoke with, 18 min for 1080i30

The killer app will be when Panasonic makes a Mac driver for the P2 cards to be read directly into the PC Card slot in a PowerBook. $2500 is cheap for a deck, insane for a PC card reader. $500 feels more like it. Yeah yeah yeah, small # of units in field, blah blah blah...but it stings to pay that much for a computer device, not a video device.

Motion 2 -

at first MIDI integration sounds like a ho-hum feature, but NO, it's very, very, very cool!!! Showed using MIDI keyboard to play back audio, and record live selections of pressing a key selected a video track (like the multicam editing just described, but with MIDI keyboard to pick tracks). On top of that, ANYTHING in Motion can be mapped to a key - so he was applying shaking effects to clips, in realtime. THIS IS THE COOLEST FUCKING THING. FUCKING EVER Apologies for the language, but it's necessary to convey the coolness of this. Finally, FINALLY you can PERFORM an edit. To do this kind of work in AE would take you DAYS to do what he did in real time. The ability to PERFORM this kind of work is AMAZING in terms of creative flow. I've sat in front of After Effects and had this kind of inspiration, but it's damn near IMPOSSIBLE to hold that creative vision in your head long enough to even write it down, let alone get it done. This allows creative doodling on a massive level. THIS ALONE will push forward the art of music videos to a new level, I think. Instead of a cutter suffering all day to try something once, doodle it out in real time....it'll take discipline to use this WELL, but for those who can....WOW.

It does do up to 32 bit float, so that's good, but it still uses an instancing based motion blur instead of motion vector blur, so that's bad.

There's a new capability to export to After Effects...but it's not as cool as it sounds. You can export form Motion, take that file into After Effects, but I THINK (don't know) it just comes in as a single clip, a gob, that you can't get back into to alter any settings. It maintains a link to the Motion project (since the Motion project file IS the QuickTime playable file) and maintains it's own internal links to clips etc., but you can't "dig in" and change stuff in it. You can apply further effects in After Effects and render it out, but not at keyframing level in there. For that kind of functionality, you need Wes Plates' Automatic Duck plugin, and that doesn't perfectly preserve everything, but if you convert Behaviors to keyframes on a Saved As copy of your Motion project, you can get keyframes and layers into After Effects, but not everything works right. Text loses size and font settings, rotation centers aren't always correct, etc. It's very hard to do right, and things like particle systems don't carry over. But if you wanted to use it for realtime comping of pan/zoom/rotate type stuff, you could do that, just avoiding "illegal" stuff that wouldn't carry over.

Motion 2 has some killer new features, but DI device it is not.

there is an open effects architecture, so vendors can write their own OpenGL optimized plugs, so that's cool.

UPDATED: SHAKE 4:

new FCP integration - you can highlight a clip or range of clips, and export to Shake (v4 only?), where it will open up a new composition of the correct size and duration and drop in the clips from FCP as you had them trimmed. My understanding (could be wrong) is that if you brought in a group of clips, it will all render out as one clip upon return to FCP (need to verify). But the rendered output will relink/replace in FCP from what you exported

-change in pricing - it used to be $1499/yr for maintenance and upgrades, now you can a la carte - either maintenance or upgrades. Still adds up to same price, but get what you want.

-no bundle that the guy was aware of with a discount on Shake bundled with other stuff - Mac version is still $3K.

-render nodes are FREE, so rig up a farm!

-you can pull in data clouds from 3D tracking apps like Boujou for 3D compositing stuff. Tracking data automatically generates it's own camera. Can have large (unlimited?) number of cameras, all you're likely to need.

-OpenEXR support (nice!). OpenEXR is a high dynamic range format, open source, proposed by ILM.

-new retiming and color correcting tools (need to ask about those CC tools)

-saw a demo of camera smoothing - handheld stuff shot from a slightly rolling boat was smoothed out to look steady - subtle but sweet.

-OpenGL acceleration for 3D compositing, helps speed things up.

-saw a demo of the retiming stuff - not perfect but very good - a woman flipping her hair. The face retimed looked great, but individual hairs that moved significantly frame to frame would dissolve from one frame state to the next, rather than be smoothly interpolated. Needs better motion vector estimation searching to do it better? Dunno.

RaveHD -

I finally got to meet Ramona from RaveHD and we had a nice chat. RaveHD makes software and hardware to capture HD directly to hard disks, uncompressed. Their boxes are bigger and heavier than, say, Doremi, but frankly I think RaveHD is more market responsive, cost effective, and better featured than Doremi (and a lot nicer to talk to, also).

I like their flexibility and configurability and aggressive pricing.

I wish I had time to do a nice synopsis of everything I saw, but no time. Transcribed audio notes below:

Their latest is a 6TB model using the Western Digital RAID edition drives, 24 drives, 250 GB drives,
-low end models (NOT 6TB!) start around $16,500, quite reasonable compared to other market entrants.
-in RAID 5, 4TB usable space
-sustained throughput "5 something...plenty to do the formats we support."
-I asked about 2K, she said they could but they're waiting on some hardware - I'm guessing interface card type stuff.
-they can throw an NVidia board in and they could like everyone else
-QuickTime stuff - they ingest single frames - YUV, Targas, DPX's, as you wish from that list (TIFF, Cineon too).
-can network'em off
-can on my G5, can access it over the network and just drag stuff off, it's just standard file systems, ships with JFS, can use NFS
-has dual gigabit, can do fiber with addition of card
-do Xsan? they haven't played with it yet, dunno
-The Orphanage captured as DPX and sucked'em off to do their work, rendered out their stuff as 10 bit something and finalled'em back to HDCAM SR (which, ironically, slightly lowers the quality).
-so you shoot a shot, then you can 'wrap' it in a Quicktime wrapper to get it off of the machine as a QT file. It's fast- NOT rewriting all the data.
-NOT exporting another file, internaly just putting a wrapper on it and "it'sREALLY fast"
-slaps a wrapper on it and it starts to play
-if you have an uncompressed QT, can unwrap to sequential frames in a hurry as well
-wrote it for Tippett to deliver some stuff as QuickTimes for Mask 2 to deliver to Laser Pacific
-most houses are doing DPX or sequential images, QuickTime is a rarer thing in the field
-more stuff with the hardware will be possible in the future, they are looking at AMD processors to utilize more capabilities, because capture, playback, downconvert stuff really doesn't load the processor in a meaningful way
-does downconverts on the fly, uses the AJA board so does everything AJA does (and that's a lot)
-RS 422 control in the back - master and slave for deck control, can use as a virtual deck
-SCSI integrated to shoot it out to array
-can add a fiber channel card if wished
-some cases are a coupla grand, some cases are $80
-the lower end case lets them attach to SCSI and stuff externally
-they have 3 basic systems, but can a la carte if a client really wants it
-can do HD off of 4 drives if necessary
-had a lot of nice things to say about AJA - at the high end, they are trusted to just WORK - nobody has asked for a BMD card in their box, everybody is happy with the AJA stuff

If you've been a regular reader of the blog, you saw my MWSF coverage of Silicon Color's Final Touch HD. I called it the most significant video product at MWSF 2005.

It does realtime color correction on HD footage, (including logarithmic footage) with realtime primary & secondary color correction, including masks, including tracking, including all kinds of stuff. Very very powerful, very very impressive.

Today I swung by the Silicon Color booth and talked to Roland again about the progress they've made with Final Touch HD.

My takeaway - with better workflow (editorial process can continue while color correction is going on), tighter FCP integration, FTHD is the best bang/buck color correction solution out there. It has a few problems left - NOT everything is realtime (blurs slow it down, for example), and you don't get realtime playback through a BlackMagic or AJA card (it'll take the advent of a PCI Express bus in a Mac for that). You can evaluate in realtime on a computer monitor, but if that isn't calibrated to your target deliverable, it's a guideline, not a reference monitor. You can get output to a "real" HD monitor, but it's not realtime, it's reduced speed playback (1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4 or so speed), and that's a hindrance to creative flow. But the ability to do things like primary and secondary color correction with masks in real (or near real) time is HUGE improvement. The rendering is all 32 bit float, so that should be pretty clean. I'll be getting a demo key tomorrow to start messing with this stuff upon my return to Austin.

The biggies:
-better XML support, such that they can handle nested timelines (woops, what's FCP's word for that? I'm using AE's term) properly. The XML gets all fubared if you write it out that way. FTHD will now properly read in nested timelines and then write them back out
-new control surface options
-conform & reconform tools (see below)
-new control surfaces from Tangent Devices, three separate modules available a la carte. Center is the CP200BK (for Balls & Knobs), the other is the CP200K (knobs for lift/gamma/gain for 3 channels), the CP200T (is transport), $4375 pounds sterling for the BK & K, the T don't know price.
-the original CP100, MCS Spectrum, option as well
-$5100 panel, a $17K panel (just described), and $28K for the biggie with buttoms for all functions (it's full desk sized, pics from last time, I'll take more)
-full Xsan support - Silicon Color is happy that it works OK with their system
-been working with a lot of drive manufacturers who can sustain throughputs and not drop frames. The new Huge fiber channel 4 gigabit array works with their 2K system, does a consistent 450 MB/sec, hasn't hiccuped once
-Serial ATA drive setups for all 3 versions (SD, HD, 2K). The DR drives from the DR Group on LA work great. 290-300 MB/sec. Qualified for AJA with Kona 2 for native 10 bit RGB.
-AJA card playout - if it's 720 get 24fps, 1080p get 10 fps...depends on writeback speeds from the card over AGP/PCI bus. PCI Express will fix this, when Apple eventually ships a box based on this
-CAN work with log footage on the HD product (somebody said otherwise)
-when working with 2K product ($25K), can play back 1K proxies, pause on a still and see full 2K res...it handles the proxy stuff
-the 2K is $25K, HD is $5K
-filmstream captured to log direct to disk, and graded it on site
-Kona2 and DeckLink can capture 10b444 stuff
-filmmakers worldwide using it
-having an impact on the indie market
-at least 100 indie producers on the first half day of the show
-the workflow & integration is the right kind of workflow
-can't find any other color corrector that integrate as well as they do with FCP
-not Nucoda, not Discreet, not Iridas, etc.
-rewrote a conforming and reconforming tool, so this means that the colorist gets his first cut list, starts grading, the edit is still moving, then you can re-conform, gets a list of shots moved/edit/deleted/etc. Non-destructive, lets edit keep moving forward while CC work continues
-less realtime than would seem at first...if want to do a blur, it slows to below realtime. If you want to play out AJA/BMD card, it's way below real time
-can do ZPR (zoom, pan, rotate) in realtime, animated
-can do a splitscreen for shot A/shot B color matching, to match the look
-rendering 720p24 is 2-4 fps...so it's pretty darn fast, not anywhere near After Effects speeds.
-uncompressed is the preferred format and doesn't make a difference in working/rendering speed
-something about Miranda for 10 bit preview, but I missed it -FOLLOW UP ON!
-SEE THE WEBSITE FOR THE REST OF THE STATS etc.

MacNN | Adobe licenses rotoscoping from Curious

This is good - since I expect Commotion to die on the vine since Pinnacle was acquired by Avid, if Adobe can get good roto/paint going from this, it'll be a good solution. Unfortunately, it'll probably take them a year or so to integrate whatever they come up with, and it'll probably be PC only...dammit. Adobe's not happy with Apple's incursion onto their turf.

-mike

MacNN | Digidesign releases Pro Tools 6.9

I've posted my Pictures from Day One of NAB 2005 online.

Included are pictures of:

-Jeff Kreines and his Kinetta camera
-Pictures of the Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 camera and it's Final Cut Pro 5 import dialong
-Accessories for the AG-HVX200 camera, including field card data dumper, field recorder, monitor, and USB 2.0 card reader (running on a laptop!)
-JVC's GY-HD100U 720p24/25/30/60 ProHD camera and it's deck, the BR-HD50U
-Color Finesse 2.0 and it's hardware controller (expensive!)

More pix tomorrow! I'm writing up my notes right now for the day, will post as soon as done...

Macworld: Editors' Notes: Apple Goes to Vegas

Rundown of Apple's NAB Announcements from Sunday. Covers Tiger, new Pro Apps.

Macworld: News: NAB: Squeeze 4.1 video compression software released

So busy I barely read this. No comments yet.

Dell UltraSharp 24" widescreen LCD for $999 - dealnews.com

Cheapest I've seen for the Dell. I saw LOTS AND LOTS of 23" 1920x1080 monitors, from BenQ, HP, and other vendors on the floor in other booths. Apparently, people aren't buying into the Apple Mystique since it's the same glass in everyone's panel. The electronics quality? I dunno...

NAB 2005 JVC Press Announcements

Ton of info on all the ProHD stuff, it's just a page of links on the two new cameras, the deck, the monitors, the formats, etc.

I'll get to my notes on the GY-HD100U shortly and post'em.

Adobe to buy Macromedia | MacMinute News

Wow. Adobe buys Macromedia for $3.4B. The staff at the show had no idea it was coming. Either staff. What will this mean? Not sure yet, somebody commented that this would put a greater percentage of the company's focus on print and web, less on video (since adding a huge chunk of web dev, and some print, but no video).

Ironically, I think Final Cut Pro was at one point a Macromedia product if I recall correctly until Apple bought it off of them.

-mike

DV Info Net - Rai & Markus' "Drake" HD camera

This is a thread on the Drake camera, for which I make no claims of quality, but their initial stance of "matching film" sends up warning flares, rockets, and suborbital nukes in my mind. In any case, this is a discussion about the camera.

AppleInsider | Apple announces Shake 4

Article on Shake 4. I saw a demo, the new "optical flow" stuff is AMAZING. Image stabilization and retiming were quite good.

Post - JVC SHOWS PROHD CAMERA AND DECK

Same stuff we already knew, except they are claiming the camera and the deck will be available in June (sooner than I thought).

The deck is the BR-HD50U. Does ProHD and and DV, not HDV.

Post - AUTODESK UNVEILS TOXIK FOR FILM COMPOSITING

New compositing app for high end (film) projects. For integrated, collaborative workflows, based on Oracle database, high dynamic range processing, software only. Targeted at >5 seat installations. $6500, plus $2500/yr support/update package required.

Post - AVID UNVEILS SYMPHONY NITRIS

Edits like Media Composer, finishes like Symphony, DNA acceleration for realtime, multi-strea, 10 bit HD/SD. Realtime primary and secondary color correction, realtime titling, universal mastering capabilities. $90K with storage.

XPress Studio HD apps get bumped up - XPress Pro HD now offers realtime multicam editing, Pro Tools LE, Avid FX (now does HD), Avid 3D (new animation & modeling tools), Avid DVD by Sonic (new artwork for menus etc.)

XPress DV is now $495, XPress Pro HD is $1695, XPress Pro Power Pack is $2495, XPress Studio HD Essentials is $3495, XPress Studio HD Complete is $5995. Native HDV editing is being shown at the booth, available later this year.

Post - APPLE INTROS FCP 5, MOTION 2 AND SOUNDTRACK PRO

More coverage of the apps of the day. Coupla things I missed about FCP 5 - multicamera editing (cool), and workgroup editing. 24 channels of audio, etc.

Apple - Final Cut Studio

Apple's posted pages with details on Final Cut Pro 5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, and DVD Studio Pro 4. Start here and dig down...

Post - SGI AT NAB: IT 4K=PRISM

Strikingly attractive price for this box to do 4K work. Based on Itanium processors....so whether it's worth it depends on how much real time stuff the box is capable of with it's graphics cards.

Got an email from Grant Petty of BlackMagic Design this morning, they have some new products.

The quick rundown:

Multibridge Extreme: Take a regular Multibridge, add HDLink's functionality and more (handles 2K files!), add a PCI-Express interface (G5 PCI-X also), so you can capture, convert, monitor just about any signal, including 2K. $2495, July-ish.

MultiBridge Studio - same thing, more I/O's (12 audio in and out, more video outputs). $3495, after the Extreme ships.


FrameLink - software to mount an AVI or QT file (on PC or Mac as appropriate) as a volume so you can pluck out individual frames. Handy for network rendering, paint, and anything where you want to access jusst one frame without having to resave the whole QT/AVI movie. For high end folk, this is great.

DeckLink for Mac v5 - supports all the FCP5 stuff, like HDV out, etc. Tiger compatible, blah blah blah. Basically, it keeps up to date and does what you'd expect with FCP5.

DeckLink for Windows - more HD realtime stuff, recent Premiere Pro certification, only 10 bit 4:4:4 uncompressed for Premiere Pro certified (wait and see what else is rolled out at show to see if that changes...), Vegas 6 support as well.

HDLink v1.7 - gamma curve editing & it's interface improved, includes default gamma tables for Panasonic cameras and Thompson Viper cameras for previewing, can load those tables into DeckLink cards now.



Here's the email in full:

Hi,

It's NAB time again, and we have been working hard on new products and
updates!

Introducing Multibridge Extreme

One of our new hardware products for NAB 2005 is called Multibridge
Extreme. This is very exciting, because we have taken our Multibridge,
which is a bi-directional converter, and added DVI-D as well as PCI Express
to it.

What this creates is a bi-directional converter that's great for connecting
analog equipment to SDI in either high definition, or standard definition.
However when you connect the built in PCI Express connection to a computer,
it instantly turns into a capture playback device with support for standard
definition, high definition, dual link 4:4:4 high definition or 2K feature
film quality.

The PCI Express connection is high speed at 10 Gbps, so we easily have
enough speed for the highest quality feature film resolution, while also
being very low cost because it's already built into most new PCI
motherboards. We supply a plug in PCI Express adapter card and 7 foot/2
meter cable to connect the Multibridge Extreme into the computer's
motherboard, and because it's a direct bus connection there is no latency.

If you're using a PowerMac G5, we have also developed a PCI Express Bridge
that plugs into the G5 PCI-X 133 MHz slot, and has PCI Express on the back
panel.

With the built in Dual Link DVI-D connection, we can connect a low cost LCD
display directly to Multibridge Extreme for local monitoring. This DVI
connection is dual link, so you can connect larger 30 inch displays, and we
will use the high speed of PCI Express and the extra resolution of dual
link DVI to display real time 2K images played back via Multibridge. That
means we are now actually higher resolution than the HD television system,
which is cool, but you can also use smaller, single link DVI-D displays.

I think this is really exciting, and you could use Multibridge simply as an
independent converter, and if you need an extra editing system, just grab
it and connect it to a computer. If you don't need the editing system any
longer, you can still use it as a converter. Because all the electronics
are external to the computer, we have plenty of room for connectors.

Multibridge Extreme has 2 channels of analog audio in and out, component
video in and out, and composite video in and out. Genlock input, RCA low
level audio output, DVI-D dual link, RS-422 remote, 8 channels of AES in
and out, with each input featuring a sample rate converter, dual link SDI
in and out and USB. Amazingly it all fits into exactly the same size as our
current Multibridge so that means it's small enough to hide when space is
tight.

Introducing Multibridge Studio

Multibridge Studio is a larger 2 rack unit version, that has extra
connections. It has all the connections of the 1 rack unit Multibridge
Extreme, however has 12 channels of AES audio in and out, 4 extra composite
video outputs, and 6 RCA audio outputs. It also has a sync generator built
in, and generates black burst or TriSync output for locking equipment in
your facility.

Multibridge Extreme is US$2,595 and Multibridge Studio is US$3,495. We
expect Multibridge Extreme to ship first, in about a July timeframe.

We are excited by these new models, and they are really different to just
plugging in a card. Even though the current Multibridge models have been
held up with a delay in getting a component for them, our engineers have
not wasted time while they wait for the components to arrive, and have
continued to develop Multibridge with models incorporating new ideas.
Incidentally the current Multibridge models should ship any day now, as we
received the component we have been waiting for.

There is a lot more info on our updated web site at
www.blackmagic-design.com. Please check it out.

Introducing FrameLink

We have a new software utility we are showing at NAB 2005 that will be
included free with all DeckLink cards, and it allows DPX file format
compatibility for Digital Intermediate (DI) feature film work.

One of the big problems, with using QuickTime and DirectShow compatible
capture cards for film work, is their use of QuickTime and AVI file
formats. These files are not compatible with most network rendering
software, and don't allow single frames to be opened and saved back into
the movie, which makes dirt and scratch removal hard. Lots of software use
the DPX file format, and FrameLink allows DPX compatibility while retaining
the speed and flexibility of QuickTime and AVI files.

FrameLink actually mounts a QuickTime or AVI file as a disk volume, and the
disk volume appears as a numbered image sequence. It's all handled in real
time so mounting is instant, and you can immediately open a frame. When you
save, the frame is written back into the movie, and you can then play the
file immediately. You don't need to wait for heaps of DPX files to be
rendered into a movie as with a file format conversion utility. FrameLink
does it all in real time.

So you can just mount the movie file, open a frame in Photoshop, paint it,
and select save. Instantly play back, and you can see the effects of your
painted frame inserted right back into the movie file. The movie file can
even be open in a NLE application and you can work on it and play any time.
It's very exciting.

FrameLink uses frame numbers to work out where frames go in the movie, so
you can network render and as numbered frames are written into the volume,
they are automatically ordered in the correct position into the movie. You
can create empty movies and just render or copy to the volume to build the
movie. The length of the movie becomes the highest frame count, and as each
frame is saved, the QuickTime or AVI header is saved so you don't loose the
movie file if there is some kind of crash. That's one of the biggest
reasons many people like rendering in DPX files, and we get that benefit.

We had considered writing software to capture and play DPX files, however
it's very hard on disk systems, and SAN's because you need to open 24 files
per second when doing real time capture, and you cannot edit folders of
frames very easily in NLE software. Media management is also a mess. This
method is much better and has the advantage of single file QuickTime and
AVI files, with the flexibility of DPX whenever you need to work in that
format.

FrameLink will be included in DeckLink V5 software for Mac OS X and Windows
XP. This will be released in a few weeks.

DeckLink for Macintosh v5

We have a new version of DeckLink software for full compatibility with the
wonderful new features in Final Cut Pro 5. We have support for all features
such as HDV playback via DeckLink, uncompressed HD real time effects, 12
channels of audio capture and playback in HD, and many more. It's a
wonderful update, and it's also compatible with the upcoming Tiger OS
release.

We will include FrameLink with this update as well as a new feature
allowing HDLink custom gamma tables to be loaded into the capture side of
DeckLink HD Pro. You can apply custom gamma tables to any captured video,
and that's great for feature film work. We have seen a lot of feature film
work being competed on DeckLink HD cards such as The Aviator, and these
enhancements will help film workflow dramatically.

DeckLink for Macintosh v5 will ship when Final Cut Pro v5 is released, and
will be recommended for use with Final Cut Pro v5.

DeckLink for Windows

We have a new DeckLink for Windows update, and this release builds on the
real time effects we added into the last update. We now have real time
effects working better in HD, and that really speeds up most HD editing
work. We will be adding more effects over time as we release more updates.

Adobe has also just announced that DeckLink is now certified for Premiere
Pro, and that's really great news. DeckLink HD Pro is the only solution
available for editing with Premiere Pro in 4:4:4 RGB 10 bit, so that's
really exciting if you're using Premiere Pro for film editing or other high
end work.

Sony Vegas v6 is also supported in this new DeckLink for Windows update,
and we know a lot of people have been asking for this. Support is mostly
for standard definition currently, however we expect that to expand. We
will be showing Sony Vegas on one of our demo stations at NAB playing back
to DeckLink.

HDLink v1.7

We have a new HDLink software update, and this includes default gamma
tables for Panasonic cameras and Thompson Viper cameras. We have a blue
only setting, as well as a field emulator to make field movement look a
little better on progressive LCD displays. This update also has a pulldown
override mode so you can use monitors that won't automatically configure
because they don't provide correct EDID info. Some Plasma displays and
projectors suffer from this problem.

HDLink v1.7 is in final testing now, and should ship within a week or two
after NAB.

As you can see this is going to be an exciting NAB for us and if your
visiting the show, please stop by to see these updates. It's really
exciting that after all this development we can finally tell people about
these new updates! We are located about halfway down the south hall.


Regards,

Grant Petty
Blackmagic Design

Live Blogged notes from the Apple Event Pre-NAB

Live blogging from the Apple event I skipped -

some excerpts:

QT 7 features:

H.264 does 1920x1080 playback on DUAL G5 - so takes a lot of horsepower.

Final Cut Studio -

native HDV, edit long GOP MPEG-2, 1080i50/60, 720p30, NOT an intermediate codec

native IMX support

Dynamic RT Extreme -something about frame rate and

P2 support

transfer files directly to Browser in FCP from P2 cards - DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD (over FireWire, or P2 cards on USB 2.0 bus, or what?)

multicam support

HDV native support

Dynamic RT- adjusts on the fly to do what it can is what it sounds like

more on the Panasonic P2 AG-HVX200 - P2 and DV tape recording, FireWire AVC and SBP2 (whatever that is)

P2 doles allow varicam style frame rates

NO DECK NEEDED!

this'll be big...

Motion 2:
film quality rendering, 32 bit float GPU acceleration, 8 bit, 16 bit float, or 32 bit float, unlimited RAM access (mor than 4GB)
Mike's Comments: yeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!

lots more details on the above link

ALL AVAILABLE IN MAY

Raw notes from panel below. There were some very contentious questions from the audience, some "murmur murmur" at some statements made...the audience seems to have the MOST doubt and lack of confidence in the industry being represented by the panel, moreso than the other panels so far.

Next Gen Digtal Projectors for Dailies, Post, and Cinemas

Brian Claypool from Christie
Joseph DeMeo, Barco
Harry Mathias, NEC
Rod Sterling, JVC ILA
Paula Parisi, Hollywood Reporter (editorial director, features - supervises 200 special sections a year)

Projection is a key element in all of this - it's an equalizer - combining best of TV stuff with best of theatrical stuff

CHRISTIE:

online & offline apps (online is critical environments, 2K DLP), offline can back down a bit

- a good light source is critical, Xenon is most similar to sunlight

-Xenon is pricey since Xenon is a rare gas, at high wattage lifespan is reduce

Metal Halide arcs - lack reds, as do UHP

YNF - Yellow Notch Filter

DLP has a wider color space than SMPTE 709 (HD)

single chip - only around 6000 lumens max, 3 chip does more

TI does a 3 chip, 2K device with a prism for the 3 primaries.

DLP for post

most important image attributes: color gamut, contract, & color uniformity

for post, gotta have consistency

DLP gives a truly stable display

high contrast image
stable colorspace carefuly matched to film
center to edge illumination with no drift or color shading issues
-no black current shifts or non-linear color tracking
-high image sharpness without noise of analog

CRT - limited colorspace,
T have limited color space, black current shifts, nonlinear color tracking, not stable over time, need daily calibration

Film projectors issues:
lamp color temps not adjustable,

DLP cinema illumination spec: 80%

DLP cinema in ost:

-high fixed image contrast - should be stable
-calibrated, consistent white levels
-colospace uses a 3D LUT to control primaries & secondaries

can simultaneously to CC at multiple sites and having matching color (supposedly)

some projectors are small enough for room in suites as we move from monitors to projecors

there are calibration tools

projectors can be calibrated by dialing in chromaticities

709 colorspace is smaller than regular (powerpoint) DLP, film has more of a saddle shape rather than a triangle, DLP cinema projectors can match film, because that's the best we can do for now if you're acquiring on film for going back to film. To do that, you need the colorspaces to match.

Resolution: "when was the last time someone said that looks sharp"

Color, contrast are viewable from every seat in the house, resolution is only visible from a few rows at the front of the house

4K has original resolution, release print is NOT

A LIST ACTORS - do we want 4K closeups? Look how old the A-List actors are...resolution is NOT the holy grail

NYTimes said "Kevin Spacey was 47, too old to play Bobby Darin when he died"

closeups of actors are ALWAYS diffused

more diffusion lenses go out the door from panavision than lenses

Sony - Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD)

4096X2160 is their res, in response to film community & DCI

LCOS based device, 1.55 inch 4K panel

first device is out in field in consumer market and is used in post, is HD res,

2nd device is 12 bit based 4096x2160

SIMPLE DEVICE - it's a reflective device, a cavit filled with liquid crystals

base contrast ratio is 4000:1 and getting better, 200 fps with 5ms twist

can do large contrast ratio, can keep the speed up to get frame rates

Xenon lamp color space is STILL smaller than film, but IS bigger than 709

there are color ranges HD can't do that film can

the new 4K due in July

JVC's is technically quite similar to Sony

size of chip and liquid crystal thickness are the only differences

in 2K range have a couple of models in post field, no gear in exhibition at themoment.

LCOS gives a filmlike look because you don't see the pixelization

-in the future, looking to 4K, scalability is doable

-4K gives new creative capabilities

-everybody wants more contrast ratio, current chipsets are about 5000:1, projection systems are limited to about 2000:1, there is room for improvement

-archival vs. exhibition copies - current 709 stuff can be printed from that color space, but if you want extend beyond that, you are locked into that color space. If you have wider color gamut, it does you no good since the color is already decided. Once you've limited the colorspace, you're stuck.

For archival, 4K very wide color gamut will be useful/necessary

3D is another area for growth - don't loose any light to make 3D with polarization

4K 12 bits will be a tough interface - what's the interface? multiple DVI, dual HD-SDI's? Fiber optic interface to start moving that kind of data around

4K has work to do to make the complete system work, even if projectors were there

stability and reliability - 8 years of manufacturing experience from JVC

LCOS guys are focused on consumer, DLP is more focused on high end exhibition & post workflow

Theatrical market - 100,000 screens in the world. How about post market?

Post Production is the first market and early adopters.

Studios are buying DLP for mastering for film & d-cinema. That doesn't happen until they see a requirement and ROI

Q&A:

Q: "specious argument about resolution" - a big smackdown from Stuart Little 2 guy

A: argue argue argue

Q: any reason why LCOS can't hit color gamut of ??

A: Gamut is based on dichroics and lamp source - everyone's using Xenon, does involve your 3D LUT

Q: Frank Stirling - 4 years ago reviewing systems, challenges faced - temperature variations in the booth on the chip to cause color drift - how has that been addressed over past several years?

A: early QX-1's had trouble with expansion coefficients, current product has active cooling, "pretty much worked it out, can't say it's perfect...a good order of magnitude better...8 years...6 or 7 years to learn how to do it wrong" Chip size does contribute to that effect

all heavy projectors need active cooling, DLP uses liquid and piezo thermo-electric cooling...arguement between folks

Q: Cost is a big deal for post folks, Sony guy said simplicity was a factor

A: cost should go down due to simpler methodology

Q: projector is delicately tuned thing...exhibitors want to buy for $40K, that's low

A: Christie guy - "lots of glass in these things....glass is not expected to get cheaper over time...it probably will not be....can't use this coating on the lense...can't use lead...formulation of glass is some of the most expensive part..

Barco - extremely long

Q: Film projectors start around $20K, glass is expensive, what are projectors costing these days...

A: hard to talk cost, it's a cottage industry, units in the 100s, when it gets into the 1000s, it'll go down. On 4K...if you ask eFilm etc. can you do 4K, but clients want 2K, eFilm etc. say it's too expensive to produce 4K

She's hearing $65K to $75K

Christie guy - volume affects pricing, audience grumbles, says "come on!"

10K projector, (missed it)

4K 5000 lumens is $50K, plus $10-15K for glass, $2K for interface board

Q: Dailies were suggested to be lower end projectors, right?

A: Clients don't want to rent the full-on suite for dailies, they want the color space and digital clarity for dailies, may not need full res (720p res with same color space as the biggies, just lower res, same quality of color as bigger stuff)

-plus folks don't want to move the big stuff into the field

Q: eFilm guy - images that consumer sees in theaters needs to match in facility --- in the field, stuff is NOT matching eFilm to theater - what are the manufacturers doing to make it match...there's some assumption that it'll automatically match

A: D-cinema goes a long way to help with that...metadata goes with the package to help it calibrate....having a thoroughly digital pipeline helps...film is a tightly controlled reproduction system, but it's analog and prone to drift...IF THE EQUIPMENT IS ALIGNED AND CALIBRATED will go a long way for solving that problem

inthe end the theater has a responsibilty to maintain

moderator thinks DI helps, she thinks there might be some 4K mastering and 2K distribution

Q: Scott McDonald from panavision - a lot of concern about post & exhibition matching....he's concerned about matching on set to down the road - are there efforts to make this a fully functional chain

A: sony guy - Rodriguez likes having the big BVM on set, as we have wider gamut, have some kind of monitor/direct view device, it's doubtful that many DP's want to hear "you're looking at really good video" instead of what it'll be in theater

CRT's too large, heavy, delicate to take it around, CRT has the best blacks (sony guy talking), 20,000:1 contrast on monitor, 2000:1 or so for the other stuff

a

Came in late (25 minutes to get a cab!), here's what I got:


Digital Post Production


[LATE, CAME IN AT 9:30]

Leon Silverman, President, LaserPacific Media

Digital Post Production

8 1/2 hours to transfer 1 hours worth of data off of LTO2 for 2K res

4K data is 4 times larger

It is possible to push 2K/4K around in real or near real time, but it's expensive

there's lots of moving parts, it's complex & expensive

as things become data centric, the focus is DI at the moment

"any sort of digital post production process" is the morphing definition instead of the intermediate element between different deliverables

all this tech has been under the radar of most of the film industry

MOST of the studio post prod studio people are just now starting to understand HD (HD used for dailies & previews)

studio folks aren't aware of, nor do they care much about, they aren't amazed they are dismayed and depressed by technology. The current 2K 10 bit DI process is still foreign.

The coming digital cinema projection stuff for the DCI spec.

2K/4K 12 bit/channel, set up to handle long term extensibility

the Digital Source Master is the starting point, the DCDM is tightly specc'd, but the DSM is NOT tightly specced. Typically DPX or Cineon 10 bit is current standard.

Extended DPX and OpenEXR are being floated for new file formats. And they are RGB not XYZ. "Right now doing XYZ is a bit like standing up in a hammock."

We're going to need to live in a device independent world.

Today's workflow is driven by how we make a DI is not driven by how to make a Digital Source Master. A TRUE DSM to be used as a master from which all other assets could be derived, would be device independent. We have a whole lot of refernce monitors for different targets. Even the DI reference monitor cheats and uses a LUT to distort it to preview the print density of film.

For home video, a different LUT is used on a different reference monitor (a CRT) to work within 709.

When making Digital Cinema masters, usually "bake in" that film print LUT using a digital projector to simulate a D-Cinema master.

Film recording, home video, digital cinema makes

make an archival, didn't reflect constraints production technology used at the time, and device independent

need DSM to be indepedent of LUTs for film, home video color space, or limits

need to change some of the tools just used for DI - does it do 12 bit? Handle XYZ? Big enough pipelline? Have device independence?

Since no spec fo DSM.

No agreement on file format or ??, currently our stuff is plenty complex enough

ASC is working on this in Tech group, Academy AMPAS tech council

This is a large task and include many stakeholders.

Just making sure we're seeing images with clear expectations with how it'll look on TV/film/d-cinema is hard enough, so many things tunes to color space, gamma, output expectations...what are we looking at, do we know? Does anyone?

how to make a future proof element?

how to make a common industry workflow? How may studios execs/DPs/post folks etc. have even HEARD of a DCDM yet, or know what a DSM is or should be? Who will teach & guide them? If WE don't know what it is and should be, who does & will teach?

We don't know how the industry will handle all the making, delivering, mastering, archival, etc. stuff.

DCI spec work is NOT finish line - need to make complex technology transparent to creative and business people. Prod & Post is digital and data centric, need to understand how d-cinema itself is transforming the process.

Lots of whiteboard/meeting/conf. calls to make sure choices made are good ones.

WORKFLOW IS A BIG, BIG PROBLEM.

Gotta understand clear paths for all this.

LaserPacific is working on this, hopefully studio clients will understand that we (post industry) will need to invest in a lot of new hard & soft that will be evolving

good for folks making hardware/software tools for new stuff.

manufacturers will be increasingly competitive.

Be good, long term, for filmmakers.

When is early machines would go down, while the engineers scurried to fix, he'd show up and distract and do balloon animals, and distract them while things got fixed. He's honing his balloon animal skills once again.

MacNN | Buena releases Depth Cue for After Effects

plugin for After Effects 6.0 or later that works with AE's 3D layers. $150 until the 22nd when price goes up.

OK, so I've been thinking about my bitch-list on the DCI spec - it's a high hurdle with a high fixed price of entry, requiring some technical infrastructure. Fine. It'll be $10K in 10+ years for the server, and probably $50K or less for 4K projector and nobody will care anymore about the cost of that so much. But what about the quality? This 250 megabit/sec JPEG2000 stuff had many grumbling. It just sticks out amidst the rest of the spec - there's so much that is so flexible, and open ended, and ready for future expansion....but here's this one aspect that is nailed, perhaps arguably crucified, to the present state of the art technology. I was told (unconfirmed) that when they blessed 250 megabit, they were reviewing 2K res (and that's DCI 2K, 2048x1080) at 24fps. 2K @ 48fps and 4K @ 24fps were not reviewed. Perhaps they were, perhaps it looks fine, perhaps I'm making much ado about nothing. I haven't seen much, and there are some very, very smart people working on this stuff.

SO HERE'S A TEST YOU CAN DO YOURSELF

Go out and get some high quality imagery that is uncompressed. JPEG'd digital stills or downloaded stock photography doesn't count. Get yourself a RAW image from a high end digital camera, at least 12 bits/channel, and crop it to 4096x2160.

How big is 250 megabit? Divide by 8 (8 bits to the byte) gives 31.25 megabytes/sec (a unit of measure my brain is more comfy with), now divide that by 24 (24 fps) to get 1.3 megabytes. That's your target data size per frame.

And then save as a 12 bit XYZ JPEG 2000, or even RGB. Woops, you can't, never mind. But you see where I was going....anybody got any tools to do some useful research along these lines? Does Photoshop CS2 let you save a 16 bit JPEG2000 I wonder? Dunno, I'll find out this week...

I'll see if I can come up with some more untestable tests.

Hey, no problem, sure, it's what I do....

-mike, getting hungry now - time to walk the Strip on a Saturday night....

SOME COMMENTS ON DAY ONE OF THE DIGITAL CINEMA SUMMIT:

On the spec itself:


It's good that the spec is media independent -

now that the specs are here, the tricky part -

what's it all mean?

It's lumpy, complex and expensive

it'll keep smaller players out or at bay...right?

you'll need technically sophisticated help

Off the hip thoughts/conjecture:

HEY! IS 2048X1080 SQUARE PIXELS OR NOT? HOW TO HANDLE 2.4? (I think it's square and you'd crop vertically? Dunno...)

250 Mbit was found acceptable for 2K @ 24fps...not 4K, not 2K@48fps. 4K @ 48fps isn't even in the spec. The industry may be shooting itself in the foot by choosing what is doable now rather than what it needs to be. 2K@24fps is great for now..but what about 4K? What about 2K 3D (48fps), what about 48fps 2K? It just smelled wrong to claim this'll last for 40 or 50 years with this standard. If you want a 50 year technology lifespan, you then need some really, really mature stable tech to hope it'll last that long. Otherwise, you're too financially constrained up front to bootstrap it to start. Like 4K projectors for now...they're barely doable. They did well to specify wide color gamut, 2K & 4K resolutions, 12 bits/channel non-linear...but this one detail, 250Mbit JPEG2000 may be the achilles heel of the whole system. The good news is that it's supposed to be pretty easy to make a good JPEG2000 encoder. The bad news MIGHT be that also implies there's not a whole lot of optimization to be done on JPEG2000 encoders, that unlike MPEG, it won't get much better over time.

Talking to someone, it's NOT the chipsets for decoding that are the limitations, it's not the drive speed (250 Mbit is about 30 MB/sec...totally doable on a single drive, even across the entire capacity). Conjecture: perhaps it's because the current servers would require too significant a retooling to handle it? What a shoot yourself in the foot gesture...to have got so much else so right and shortsheet it on this one crucial gesture....

I curious/saddened that they declared 24fps it, with a 48fps alternative. This doesn't play nice with existing broadcast standards...still. 60 fps would be idea, but they aren't doing it, because the bandwidth was quoted as a problem. However...playback at 250 Mbit is about 30 megabytes/sec....single modern hard drives do that no problem. Perhaps he meant network bandwidth? Where's the pinch point?


DCI is a brittle system - you can afford the spec or not....2K projector vs 4K is only point of flexibility I see so far. With film, you can keep handing it down - big markets get first prints, as those are finished send to smaller markets, etc. Smaller markets can afford the basics - a 35mm projector and some kind of sound system. DCI spec calls for projector, server, all kinds of infrastructure which is likely to be pricey.

ON JPEG2000 FORMAT

Good choice, not interframe nonsense (no frame to frame compression, each frame is it's own freestanding entity). You sacrifice some bandwidth, but the quality stays up during harsh transitions.

The quality is good, the flexibility is good, I'm just dissapointed at the bandwidth limitations in place.


ON AUDIO

LOTS of headroom here to do whatever they want. 16 channels of 48 or 96 Khz audio is TONS of room. 24 bit audio, too. Far better than CD (which is 2 channels of 16 bit 48 Khz)

ON PACKAGING

Sounds like they've got it under control, I like the metadata open endedness of this with MXF and XML. I like that the movie itself insists on being seen correctly - the unauthorized Mormon recutting of the topless scene in Titanic couldn't happen again. (Heard about this from Wendy.)

The guy discussing the spec talked about how human readable it was as an XML file....but that realllllllly doesn't jive well with the "just hire some high school/college kids" to run theaters. I should get friendly with Alamo Drafthouse folks some more and see who runs what...

ON POST WORKFLOW FOR THIS

nobody (at the high end) was too worried about the XYZ stuff. You get a box, you plug it in...no big deal. For indies, perhaps you take things as far as you want with your system and hand it over to the XYZ house...they'd need a profile of your color authoring environment to make sure it carried over correctly....doable in theory, hassle in practice. How close would you get with "Yeah, I was using a SuperBigCo projector model # 1138, white point 5000, gamma 2.6, Xenon bulb" and that gets them going....

As a practical matter, you just do your thing and take it to their place, say "no no no...mine was lighter/darker/whiter/etc" and spend some time checking color on their setup. Perhaps a generalized adjustment and you're off...



ON SECURITY VS PIRACY

The DRM they want to put in place feels similar to military levels of paranoia on distribution of military intelligence. Failure to communicate is sometimes desirable if communication isn't guaranteed secure.

They talked about only a very few circumstances where you'd get "dark screen" - if you messed with the content, tried to play it on wrong server or outside allowed dates, etc. But that's only if everything is working right....and there's a loooooooooot of pieces that need to play right here.

In current practice, the film is a point of vulnerability, but it's fairly well controlled since it's a single piece of physical media that is awkward to read into digital form and has forensic marks on it.

BUT....camcorder theft is still a wide open field. They can put forensic marks on it to backtrack after the fact. This will help cut down on "from the booth" theft, and will assist in investigating viewer theft, but won't stop it beforehand. "Spiking" films with the brown dots is distracting to the audience and creates difficulty for the camcorderists, creates a recording problem for them, but doesn't stop them altogether. They'll have a very well documented base of "Yessir, the barn door was in fact left open at 0837 hours, and an unknown quanitity of cows got out." But no idea who opened it, or how much value got away...

Good quote: "We've created the most popular online game, it's very challenging: it's called piracy."

The studios are very, very worried about digital piracy. Notice large chunks of time spent discussing piracy as well as the technical capabilities of these systems.

One other thought for the long term - once they go this route, if there is a problem with the DSM, there are no longer tons of readily readable digital copies in the field.


KDM (key delivery message) is the unlocker for content - only good for a given device in a given time window

Clearly, the studios are taking security VERY seriously. They are scared to death someone is going to make perfect digital copies of their stuff, to the point that they're worried about someone breaking open a D-Cinema projector and inserting probes into the guts of the machine between the on-the-fly decryption chipset and the part that feeds the projector. Clearly, at some point, a plain, raw, unencrypted signal will have to exist in some machine to be projected....but they're trying to protect against everything they can. Because even if someone did this...the plan is to have watermarks and forensic fingerprints in it to know which exact projector (down to the serial #, who it was sold to, and where it is supposed to be) and AT WHAT TIME OF DAY it was being projected. If the encrypted keys are decrypted, it's just for the copy for that one projector and that one movie, NOT for all the movies everywhere as was the case with DVDs. They are upping the ante to military levels of paranoia.

ON DCI IMAGING SPEC

2K/4K flexibilty - great. Adequate to more than so.
12 bits/channel - Wow. People can't tell the difference. The valid point was raised that using 12 bits to cover a color space that goes WELL beyond what the human eye can perceive is a bit pointless; there's a lot of wasted bandwidth in there. The presenter agreed, saying only about 1/2 was used. But they found 11 bits adequate, 12 bits gave double the space.
audio - all the room you'll ever need. 16 channels, and can have alternate sets of 16 channels for foreign languages. Wow.
JPEG2000 - good compression choice, meets the needs
250 Mbit/sec - DAMMIT. Good enough for 2K@24fps. 4K @ 24fps WAS NOT EVALUATED from what I was told by someone who supposedly knows. 2K @ 48fps wasn't evaluated, I don't think. I need to find out more, sounds like this could be the weakest point in the whole structure.
Security - Secure? Very. Complex? Much moreso than presently. Don't expect $8/hr employees to understand it all. "Uh, she broke, boss." might be a common refrain. The level of technology being brought to bear, compared to the skill level of those expected to use it is SCARY. The ability to fully automate a theater is a good thing....because it'll have to be fully automatable to run in this user environment.

Overall - it's ambitious at this point. It'll take some more time to nail down the practical business execution side of things - what logging data gets reported to whom, how often do dark screens happen (miss a screening, $4000 lost on a Friday night), and all of the technical infrastructure for a multiplex can be daunting. There's another aspect of it - might this add yet MORE pressure for theaters to have more screens, if the core data management infrastructure is a fixed cost to get started? It's gonna cost BIG to get into this game at the level they're asking.

Smaller markets would be in trouble for awhile, since they wouldn't be able to afford this level of gear. A thought - at exactly what size of community could you cost justify an install? Since theaters only really service folks within a 15 mile radius (that's the furthest I drive anyway) at best in cities, and sometimes just a few miles, what kind of population density is required to cost justify one of these suckers? There's a crucial graph - how big the local community in "convenient" driving range has to be to cost justify placing one of these....then cross that with what percentage of US population lives below that threshold. Would we be seeing another cultural ghettoization, like us poor souls who were late to get cable? Growing up in Austin, TX (state capitol, many tens of thousands of university students), we were "hearing about the MTV" for a couple of years before we got it...and Austin while not huge was not exactly small. It's always big markets and then trickle down, but how far the trickle down goes and how long it takes is the pertinent question. Even SMALL communities have movie theaters for 35mm. And Oh Yeah - you can't really charge more for digitally projected movies, either. The only thing better is the quality - if done right, it's better than answer print, and never degrades.

A big server, network, digital projectors...just to take a completely wild stab at it, I'll guess (don't know real #'s) it's $100K of infrastructure, and digital projectors (I'll be nice) at $75K apiece with all the goodies these guys want (that's below current market price for such things...at least based on last NAB's pricing and the recent Sony 4K projector pricing). Plus all the audio stuff, but that's largely the same. I heard somewhere along that way that a good 35mm projector was $30K...still true? This theoretical 10 plex would require $850K of digital gear, or $300K of analog projector gear. (This is pointless, I so don't know the numbers involved). It'll take some time to make $1/2M in difference up in saved costs. Then again, I hear Hollywood spends $600M to $700M on prints each year. Assuming for the moment that once you have a DI the prep costs to compress and package up the stuff and put on a recycable hard drive is about $100, vs $300 (heard that # somewhere, I could be so wrong), it would take
3.5M prints to....oh never mind. I don't know the real numbers here so this is bullshit wasted time. Gotta eat.

-mike

OK, last session of the day. Packaging has to do with the digital assets involved to send to a theater for projection.

RAW NOTES:

D-Cinema Package (DCP) Requirements

-efficient
-secure
-tamper proof
-extensible - essence codings (essence=actual content - audio/video/subtitles)
-single inventory

DCP Uses:
transfer to distribution
transfer to theater
archival storage - fits the needs of a well defined spec

Terms:
DCDM: D-Cinema Distribution Master (X'Y'Z')

Package - a collection of files to be transferred to exhibitor

Composition: Reels begin and end in lockstep - picture, sound, and subtitle are all EXACTLY the same length. A very firm boundary of what is a reel, and no overlap.

the ability to augment a compostion in the field with replacing material or replacing broken assets

Therefore compositions could be broken up into pieces, so that modules could be replaced

Composition playlist with track files is like an EDL - different header info and has features to verify integrity. Includes start & end frames, etc.

Track files carry the "essence" content

composition Playlist Features
-identifes originator
-identifies track files and in/out points
-provis hashes to verify
-may be signed by rights owner to verify it hasn't been damaged, altered, etc.

(Titanic got edited, in the field, unauthorized, often by Mormons, who didn't like the nakedness...they manually cut it out. Studios didn't like it, so this is a big deal for them. You'll play the movie, the whole movie, and nothing but the movie.)

MXF

SMPTE standard 377M
meta-format for essence & metadata
-wide adoption
-existing mappings
-well known process for defining new mappings
-open to different codecs etc., even though DCI picked one to use

XML for non-essence containing file formats
-W3C standard (XML 1.0, 1.1)
-it's human legible, unlike MXF content (can YOU tell what a QT looks like from it's hex dump?)
-wide adoption
-well known process for defining new structures - existing schema languages & documented process
-pre-existing companion specifications for security - MXF didn't have specs for encrypting content in an MXF file
-XML community has means of both encrypting files and signing them to verify no damage no tamper

these two meta-formats (XML & MXF) to describe all the stuff they needed

Packing List

the means of packing the files is different from the files themselves is to need to send more than one composition to a theater - might be sending a dozen trailers, or an update package to a theater, or replacing damaged assets, etc.

It collects the list of what is to be transferred from A to B.

Packing list is just the list of the NAMES of the things to be moved, not the FILES & DATA themselves

Packing List Features:
-identifies originator (the distributor or manufacturer)
-identifies asset set
-provides size and unique "thumbprint" for each asset (hashes & checksums)
-may be signed to package creator to allow tamper detection
-receiving equipment can verify it came from source as indicated and was not damaged or tampered with

storage options:

-hard disk
-optical media
-tape
-network storage
-SFTP

packaging has remained above the fray - it's not locked to any storage medium - can be on a hard disk, emailed, whatever...doesn't matter

Storage limitations:
-file namign and directory depth
-file size
-unit capacity
-transfer rate
-orthogonality (can't just take a piece of storage media and transfer to any other....a bit for bit copy isn't always doable...can't fit DVD on an Shuffle)

Asset Map - only exists once the package exists on some storage system - tells you the name of the files on the asset system and where they are stored. Can divide assets into multiple pieces if necessary if storage volumes aren't big enough.
Asset Map identifies originator, identifies asset set, allows assts to be divided into chunks, provids location of chunks on file storage device

-allows assets to be stored across more than one volume. If you had 500 GB of package, could be on stacks of DVDs, or two 250GB hard drives, etc.

Defining a Storage Mapping

-chose a spec for the storage system (eg firewiere disk w/UDF)
-chose a naming convention for chunk (diced) files
-and more things I couldn't type fast enough

Reading a Volume: open the asset map, locate & open the packing list, select tracks files and compositions to know whatcha got

Raw notes follow:

JPEG2000

latest ISO image compression standard

ISO 15444

published jointly with ITU

published in multiple parts

part one is royalty and fee free

JPEG2000 has 12 parts, and not all parts are complete

part 1 is core coding system, includes minimal file format compatibility, everyting you need to encode/decode JP2

part 2 contains various value added stuff, enhanced performance and niche markets- hyperspectral, multispectral, space stuff, etc.

part 3 is motion JPEG 2000 that includes timing and audio stuff

DCI is NOT using JPEG2000 motion imaging stuff, they are using MXF

part 4 - is conformance stuff

part 5 -references software in

part 6- for document imaging - compound text/graphic images

part 8 - watermarking and encryption for security, DCI not using this

part 9 - client/server protocol for imaging huge images using scalar/layered/tiled stuff I'd guess

part 10 - 3D and floating point data for medical and scientific - CAT & MRI stuff

part 11- wireless - help for protection from image errors on noisy comm channels

part 12- media format for common architecture for MPEG-4 & JPEG2000

part 13 - reference decoder

JPEG2000 FEATURES:

very scalable code stream (extract lots of image products from a single stream)
progressive transmission - good for transmit over slow links, can organize how they send it - progressive download, 4 different kinds

-lossless and lossy (available naturally by progression)
-handles binary as well as continuous tone
-random code-stream access
-can do region of interest to vary quality in one region as opposed to another can rob bits from other parts to enhance another
-and of course, very high quality

take your high res source, compress to 4K JPEG2000, can extract a 4K or 2K from that without downsampling - just pull the bits we need for 2K, decompress and display. Can do a 1K extraction for CRT's and stuff. Not great for cinematic display, useful for workflow
-can extract a piece of an image without having to read the whole image and crop it, can find the piece you want and only decompress that

progression by resolution - 64x27 to 128x54 to 256x108 to 512x215 up to 4096x1714 (was his scope source)

decode a little bit of data and you get progressively more info

can do progressive downloads for enhanced quality - just like progressive JPEG on the web - multiple passes makes it better

he shows a zoomed in stuff - looks quite quite good at 85 Mbit. 250 is the standard

can see some small changes in grain structure between 24:1 and source

can load by raster lines is another option.

JPEG 2000 ALGORITHM - how it works

Decorrelating Color transform

typically RGB, but X'Y'Z' for digital cinema possible to

no subsampling

applied indepently to each color pixel

most energy is in resulting Y component - the other two factors are highly compressible

this itself improves compression efficiency
2:1 rate improvement for same quality

there's a lot of correlation and redundancy between Y, Cz and Cx...by stripping out some redundancy, it's still mathematically possible to get a perfect recreation of the source, but you've made compression much much easier

then a wavelet transform - filtering and downsampling

by downsampling part of it, and doing a high pass, you create a way to still make a mathematically perfect source, but still takes up even less dataspace

3 kinds of high frequency detail that get recorded on top of the half res first part.

bit plane coding - high and low quality extractable from save file - you start slicing off bit planes - take the most significant bit and compress it and put it in the file, then the next significant bit and compress that, etc. etc. etc. Not just resolution sampled, but bit order sampled

codeblocks and precincts - all the data is divided into....shit I don't understand. It's all organized into packets, so each chunk of the image is written into it's own piece. NOT a row then a row then a row, it's like tiles. You can access just the tiles you need.

SO..it's tiled geographically - you can access just the piece of the image you want. And it's tiled in terms of image quality - you can dial in just the resolution you need

Q&A:
-------

Q: MPEG can have good and bad encoders - is JPEG2000 like that?

A: encoder quality can vary, but it's not nearly as critical as it is in MPEG. It's easier to build a good JPEG2000 encoder than a good MPEG encoder. There will be better and worse

Q: How granular can you get on your blocks (physical size):

A: user selectable 4x4 up to 64x64 as long as the footprint isn't bigger than the 4K wavelet coefficient. For digital cinema, it's 32x32 pixels.

Q: What are some constraints of j2k for d-cinema usage?

precincts are locked down to 256x256 (last two spatial geometrical regions shown) a bunch of specialty modes in j2k encoder, for cinema you're locked to default mode to be most compatible for interchange, bitrate is constrained to 250 mbits/sec, image must be compressed as a single tile (can tile image before all this), it's forbidden in DCI spec

# of wavelet transforms is flexible, 0-5 for 2K, 0-6 in 4K, progression order is fixed,

Q: some aspects are variable - would the wavelet transform itself be variable?

A: No. The 9/7 is used for the DCI stuff. "The quality of the 2K extract from the 4K is quite good."

Q: It's an intraframe compression technique - are there any problems with motion, frame to frame, that only show in motion?

A: At the bitrate in use, it's quite OK. Many algorithms were tested, JPEG 2000 was best picked on 50 foot screen. For visual quality and quantitative quality, intraframe JPEG2000 was up there with best MPEG. "You don't buy much by doing the inter-frame stuff."

Q: how does metadata survive encoding
A: metadata is separate - color space isn't even known to JPEG2K, it doesn't care. DCI will be using MXF to carry the metadata

Q: guy from Kodak, about 250 Mbit/sec spec. Backwards compatibility is important, but we've built a hamstring w/250 Mbit. Aren't we sticking ourselves with this bitrate?

A: many arguments over this, "a lot of people were involved in the testing, prepared material, testing done side by side with butterflies with original and compressed content" the folks looking were satisfied it would do the job.

comentary based on conversations: the 250 Mbit is a contentious issue - evaluations were down for 2K @ 24fps at 250 Mbit...not 2K @ 48fps, not 4K @ 48fps. 250 is what's doable with current technology...there's arguments as to the efficacy of 250 for 4K over time. May have hosed ourselves based on what's doable now. A 2.0 spec in future? Have to have multiple deliverables if did that, against the point

Clearly, the studios are concerned about security and protecting their content.

OK, here's raw notes on that panel:

SECURITY

Speaker Pierre Lemieux, worked for Dolby for 5 years, director of Technoogy Strategy

pal@dolby.com

this is more SMPTE perspective on content security

D-Cinema content distribution problems

High value theatrical release content - first release window content, high quality digitla content

ultimately over 100,000 screns worldwide

physical media (DVD, tapes, hard drives, etc.)
sattelite or land based networks

respect the 100 year history and business practices

Requirements:
protect content against wide range of attacks (during transport & during exhibition)
prevetn theft and unauthorized playback of content
-enable forensic detection of scecrity breaches
thwart content manipulations (why is such a concern?)

respect existing biz relationships

basic workflow:

author content with keys
manage those keys
ship encrypted content
ship keys (encrypted as well) separately

watermarked content is shown
logs are generated

key management=>security manager=>log records
author content=>encrypt=>decrypt=>show watermarked show

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:

open standards
standard crypto ciphers (128 bit AES, 2048 bit RSA
standard formats and protocols- XML, MXF, TLS

single inventory - make the content once and distribute to EVERYONE with no further modifications

simplicit and reliabilty
-single algorithm when possible
control loosely but audit tightly
one way comm when possible
-

To gurantee integrity

content encrypted with a content key
sent encrypted

ONLY decrypted on the fly at playback time on physically secure devices

128 AES encryption

distribution package can be verified with hashes on a track by track basis, composition playlist and packing list signatures have 2048 bit RSA

track files (audio, picture, subtitle) forensic analysis of playback integrity and sequence
indiviaula essence frame HMAC: SHA-1 (SHA-256?)

Key management - once encrypted, gotta have keys to work with it

KDM - key delivery message - has 3 things - content key, time window to play'em back between x & y dates, a list of trusted devices in the theater

they can play the content at will in that timeframe

can sent over email, USB stick, whatever

all theaters get same content package, but each key delivery message is customized for each screen

each trsuted device needs a unique crypto identity (2048 bit RSA)

if one device is compromised, unlike CSS, doesn't unlock the world

datavase of trusted devices/locations has to be maintained of trusted sights

X.509 baed digital certificates

reliability - standalone screens - if there's a problem, only stops 1 screen at most

physical security: crypto protection isn't enough by itself
cost commensurate with level of physical security
-hidden PCB traces to tamper-reactive resistive mesh
different level of secity for differnt types of info

more physically secure costs more

using FIPS 140 family of standards, defines basic rules of physical security

differnt parts of equipment may be protected with different levels of paranoia: baseband watermarked content is protected, but it's watermarked so back traceable

logs record access to plaintext content (decrypted stuff) contenet and keys

authenticatd by device, IE digitally signed - thwarts tampering and forgery, uniquely identifies the device

interoperable log redcord format - baseline info, e.g. content, time, device, etc.
multiple delivery mechanisms - email, web, ftp, etc.

FORENSIC WATERMARKING

critical to protecting

exposes security breaches and lwers physical security requirements

watermark insertion at exhibition a device identifier and timestamp audio and/or picture

so after the fact, can indentify where/when content was pirated

basic requirements:
-perceptually invisible
-survive multiple generations - camcorder compression and DiVX-ing
-renewable - be able to change the watermark without replacing hardware, just update software
-simple insertion of the watermark

why mess with this? single watermarking standard, then hopefully everybody does it, and it simplifies recovery without a zillion standards

leave some flexibility to the content owner

NEXT STEPS:

D-cinema has a lot of unique needs different from set-top box, DVD, consumer, etc.- they've managed to re-use

SMPTE DC28 has studios, manufacturers & exhibitors involved, liaision with other organizations to make this work

building blocks for a baseline architecture defined, but more work remains

OK, blood sugar was low and I didn't type a whole lot. Raw notes follow:


JAPAN REPORT:
-================

His group in Japan was established last year, but he worked with JPEG for 15 years on standards body

Ugh. Lots of stuff, not unique info. Has a nice slide on watermarking and it's challenges - how to watermark something in a way that the camcorder will record it, even after keystoning (distorted angle view) to find it later

metadata is a priority, as used in the commerce side, the DRM side, P2P distro, etc.

I'm not taking many notes because he's tough to understand and talking about a lot of future think stuff that's not as immediately applicable.

change every picture, one by one, just a little bit for fingerprinting that goes to each ouse

watermarking is same for all viewers - he is talking about changing a tiny bit of stuff for each transmitted copy (based on hardware on client side?) fingerprinting every copy that goes to each house - everybody gets their own copy (why does this sound scary to me?)

talked about animation and performance driven stuff...seems like that's really more SIGGRAPH content than for here...

=================

4K Digital Cinema screening last year on October 25th

picked a 1997 film, 107 mutes long

process:

35mm film scanner

color correction
water mark
compressionto Motion JPEG2000 (10-20:1)
4K image server
file transfer to or IP stream to....
Motion JPEG 2000 realtime decoder
to 4 dual HD-SDI 6.4 Gbps RGB (10 bits each) goes to 4K projector
500 inch screen, 4096x2160

In practice, it's huge - server to GigE hub, JPEG 2K decoder & projector

Used a 2nd gen 4K DiLA projector

3 panels (1 per color, no spinning wheel)

120 Hz or 96Hz refersh rate

24fps x 5 or 24fps x 4

8000 ANSI lumen

approx 500 inch screen

4 dual link HD-SDI to do it in 10 bit RGB 4:4:4

171,670 frames

original camera film used for making 100 release prints usually

original had a lot of damage

4096x2160, 12 bits/channel, gamma 2.6
6.5 TB of data
8.7 TB packed as 48 bit/pixel on disk due to bits/bytes issues

JPEG 2000 projected at 3840x2048 (HD-SDI problem)
RGB 4:4:4

total size - 385 GB

copression ratio : 15:1
peak bitrate - 420-440 Mbits (HDCAM SR datarate - but 4K!)

in another test, they shot 4K over OC192 (10Gbit connection)

A very nice French gentleman got up and gave a report on status of E-Cinema (basically, lower quality projectors used just for ads and trailers) and D-Cinema (higher quality digital projectors used to show the main attraction in high quality).

Raw notes below:

EUROPEAN REPORTS:

500 e-cinema screens in Ireland, 500 screens

200+ screens for CinemaNet using DLP

Norway - 250 screens for commercials (e-cinema low cost)

250 screens for e-cinema

another coupla dozen in some smaller organizations

Italy 50 2K screens planned
Portugal 20 2K screens planned


ISSUES:
exhibitors and distributors are US based, studios should put together policies and information for the euro reps

proactive approach for the minority communities - for those who can't handle the DCI spec. Want to see studios address what smaller communities can do

-------------

FRENCH REPORT:

bleh bleh le bleh

(just kidding)

suffers some tech difficultles...

Avanti is a consulting company

EUROPEAN DIGITAL CINEMA LANDSCAPE

e-cinema screens - smaller venues that can't afford

e-cinema from the advertising perspective - it's separate from showing mainstream movies

d-cinema wannabes - early adopters that aren't up to spec, or gov't backed efforts

distro oriented projects - folks working

projects led by manufacturers

WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT EUROPE?

-powerful vertically integrated media groups - producers/distributors/exhibitors in one company, they are strongly motivated to chase digital since it save the one entity money

-there might be 1 -3 players responsible for most of the box office

-France has most of the box office in 3 companies

there are 400 distributors - a much wider and tougher group, harder to bring them together

state regulations and subsidies - d-cinema is perceived as a challenge and a threat to local cultures

a challenge since they fear invading American features taking over their new digital cinemas, but offers a possibility to show more local content since it's lower means of

UNDERSTANDING STANDARDS:

1-Exhibitors questions - they don't know what SMPTE is, don't understand need a standard from an exhibitor's point of view isn't obvious. They think it's as simple as buying a server and a projector and go...manufacturers promise it'll all work. They think the distributors will just provide something that works.

"Do we really need THAT standard?" IT's the US standard, why care about that standard in Europe? You hear complaints that the spec is based on standards that aren't ready and won't be for years. Security fears - it's complicated and many are afraid that the security, mixed with rules, would lead the distributors to have even more power than they have today, "if that is even more possible"

who is validating that I meet the standard? Who says you're compliant?

DISTRIBUTORS' QUESTIONS:

400 COMPANIES that don't talk to each other

3 types
- distributors of Hollywood majors "I'll do whatever the Hollywood folks say I should do
-distributors of mainstream national films - they say they'll wait for the Americans to decide and wait and see, or they think of digital as digibeta - they don't realize there's a . They have a vision horizon of 6 months to a year, they don't think/care about future much

distributors of art-house national films - some feel film is only noble medium so won't talk to you. Others see possibilities for small docs, small distro films in digital, they don't care about thequality of the equipment, they are in a rush to get it out there and see stuff scene, but don't care about the quality - they just want it out there

POST HOUSES' PERSPECTIVE:

Is D-Cinema finally here? Is it done, is the final standard? don't want to invest in obsolete tech. Many houses collapsed based on investment in digital tech that was underutilized or strip-mined of it's amortization base.

are we going to make a living at this? No more film dupes....

so that's it, we going to be replaced by tech manufacturers?

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS:

what should I do to help digital cinema (digital releases of film)

many see an opportunity for the local market films to distro at lower cost

US Standards Go Home! politicized, you hear it pretty often

DCI=Studios=people you fight in ministry of culture - there must be some heathen motivation in there somewhere.

studios must have hidden agenda
don't need that level of standard (why for my DV film?)
we should have our OWN standard, we're Europe
we can't afford the DCI/SMPTE standards - can't afford all that high end tech

a lot of effort has to be taken to make all this work

I need a standard I can rely on without losing face politically

It's not easy for a Euro gov't to say "We need to build some kind of DCI certification facility in Europe." they'd get splashback of "why do that?"

EXAMPLE: FRANCE

France has lots of state funded/assisted film

CNC elps exhibitors buying equipment - part of tix $ goes to a state fund to buy equipment

this is the box that people see it this way - they keep wanting to turn to state to make it happen. You get requests from exhibitors to the state for tests, will you help me? companies say they'll help only if you'll buy

one single standard for all types of movies

a new norm led by CST at AFNOR, DCI/SMPTE compliant=>French norm - it's standardized the level of quality for the equipment in projection booth etc. DCI compliant is within French norm
French norm compliant can fit w/in DCI spec

WHAT CAN WE DO TO START THIS?

communication on the golas of the SMPTE standards:
-industry standard
-quality of the cinema experience
-open architecture
-worldwide circulation of content
-no impact ont eh business relations - (example: DRM debable w/MS)

workflow tests to turn theory into reality

Certification entity in Europe would be useful - manufacturers are the only voice about compliancy or not, and of course they are the ones most motivated to be less than truthful if there is a problem

X'Y'Z' is the color space the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative, backed by the studios) has recommended to be used for digital projection. It's not RGB, it's not YUV, it's not CMY or CMYK, it's not Lab. It's X'Y'Z' ("capitol ex prime why prime zee prime"). It's based on the CIE 1931 XYZ color space, if you've ever seen that famous color chart on somebody geeky's wall. What it is and why it was chosen was explained. Here's my raw notes, quite similar to what I published last year at this thing (search for X'Y'Z' or XYZ using the search bar at the top of this page and you'll find it quickly). Raw notes:

X'Y'Z' ("cap ex prime why prime zee prime") color

Why XYZ picked, why it's better, why this was necessary, etc.

X'Y'Z' Color Encoding for Digital Cinema Distribution

Glenn Kennel - same guy as last year

issues for post, color corection, projectors (both in post and distribution)

Basic requirements for DCDM color encoding:

-one master for all projectors to look the same (one ring to rule them all)
-one standard with no licensing fees
-extensible to wider color gamut and wider contrast in future projectors
-future masters shall be compatible with todays
-compatible with today's systems

planning for the future - today's projectors are RGB, 3 primaries, 2000:1 upper end projectors, color gamut similar to film. In the future, there may be 3 different primaries, or more primaries, with wider color gamut and more contrast


the ' primes indicate a non-linear signal

2.6 gamma

R'G'B' -
the problem was it's not extensible and not as well defined

Parametric R'G'B' - parametric R'g'b' with metadata to define color primaries or Reference Projector

then looked at Wide gamut R'G'B' - to push the primaries out to cover all possible visible gamut..the biggest case CIE 1931 XYZ color space

based on international stndard
-explicit device independence, extensibility, backward compatibility
-robust implementation, not dependent on metadata (even though metadata is useful)

XYZ color space is bigger than what is humanly visible, and is on an absolute scale it would seem - it's definitive

DSM goes to a color grade conform, viewed on a calibrated color mastering projector

Then gets color encoed with color gamut metadata appllied to the DCDM X'Y'Z'

compress it, encrypt it, package it

the DCP (digital cinema package) gets sent out

MASTERING PROJECTOR
-------------------

today's mastering projectors are the DLP projector set - it's beigger than the HD 709 color space (lots more green). Let's em do more film like gamut.

The white point isn't locked down in capxyz, they wanted to specify white points and tolerances

-consider the installed and future stuff coming are Xenon, using 6300K white point, since it's efficient for Xenon based projectors

peak white- existing 12 ftL (foot lamberts) -

DCI tets verified that film prodcues 14 ftL for peak whites from best source possible on film

so they decided to match that - 14 ftL was chosen

they studied contrast sensitivity function to the human eye, and decided to go with gamma 2.6 to match human

encoding the data with 1/2.6 before

11 bits was good enough, but chose 12 for convenience and headroom in digital systems

downstream gamut mapping is within the spec

capxyz fully defines the color, but if you need to be ready for new stuff

capxyz numbers are easy - three numbers from 0 to 1

gotta apply a llnear space matrix applied to a linear signal...this is differnt from TV coding.

SHORT VERSION - THERE'S MATH INVOLVED

gotta linearize the data, go through a 3x3 linear matrix, then reapply the gamma 1/2.6 gamma to create capxyz prime...

post production facilities and vendors make mistakes in their first stab at it...it's complicated and confusing

CV=4095*(L/P) to the power of 1/2.6

means something, didn't catch it (woops)_

implications for CC work:

gamma corrected R'G'B' video for TV
log R'G'B' printing density for film

color correctors can workwith XYZ but need to recalibrate controls...

JUST XYZ PRIME transform can be done downstream from RGB work in color corrector

Cinema Projector needs it's own code to convert it

basically RGB has to be derived from the XYZ values, but in that process you can

projectors will need to be able to convert from cap xyz prime to calibrated native RGB of the projector
1. linearize the signal (2.6 gamma)
2.) apply a device dependent linear matrix
3.) calibrate for screen and port glass effects
as wider gamut proejctors are inroduced, gamut mapping capability will be necessary for today's smaller gamut projectors...

all current stuff are aiming for same color primaries right now, but in the future as wider gamut displays come out, it'll be necessary to take masters produced on wider stuff to map it down to smaler gamut stuff already in the field

may need in 10 years or whatever

COLOR PROCESSING FOR DI - delivering both film and digital cinema masters

1.) color corrected master is ready for filmout (printing density)
2.) render ("bake in") the film LUT when outputting the DCDM; encode color to cap xyz prime

scan your film, make DSM that's ready for film, 3D Print film LUT's for film matching

blah - can bake in your film look stuff so digital projected stuff will have those characteristics as well, so film masters and digital proejcted match

could in theory have 3D LUTs in projectors to handle this stuff...

method 2 would be to color correct directly for projector and apply the film mapping characteristics to 3D film LUT for film recorders. Shovels the extra work to the film side rather than the digital side

making video masters from the DCS:

smaller color gamut

if you used stuff outside the color gamut of video, it'd get clipped if you used a simple linear matrix

in theory, a 3D LUT can be bult to convert 709 preserving the look, soft gamut mapping etc. IT WOULD BE HARD, NOT LIKELY TO BE DONE, TOO MUCH WORK. a trim pass is still necessary to tune color aesthetics. BASICALLY, YOU CAN'T JUST GO TO FILM/HD/VIDEO/DVD etc. from one single file - they ALL REQUIRE some tweaking

another slide boils down to calibration is crucial throughout, down to

mastering projector has GOT to have optimal best black level possible. If your theater projector is better than mastering projector, you might start showing details you thought you'd intentionally crushed out....see this in video versions all the time

proprietaary color processing (3D LUTs etc.) should basically be baked in before stuff goes to projectors or theatrical stuff

they've tested this stuff with StEM and out in the field with post facilities that they've run it through and it works.

TAKEAWAY - new tools, or at least another layer of stuff on top of what you've got...and it's likely to be strictly proprietary at first, then very, very expensive when it is commercially available. I _think_ you can master in a normal RGB environment...if you have a calibrated setup (calibrated to WHAT?) can you just hand that off to a facility for X'Y'Z' processing? If and only if they XYZ shop knows the stats on what you had - it's white point, gamma, etc. They'd need a profile of your calibration environment to carry it over.

IF USING 16 BITS, THROWING MOST OF THE DATA AWAY IN XYZ - you see banding. Are you stretching the range too far? XYZ is less efficient since it covers a wider range. Answer - with intrinsic noise in imaging systems of photographic stuff, you don't see banding. But for CG, with pure curves, it's something to be concerned about.

Q: 3D LUTs to encapsulate image color transforms - have defined minimum specs for that 3D LUTs? How many notes, interpolation methods to avoid errors?

A: nope - trying to define standards, not implementation - Kodak and others have worked on it, those are practical, not theoretical concerns.

Q&A:

Talked to Howard Lukk about frame rates - he said 60fps (progressive) was about the limits of human useful perception (poor ROI to jump from 60 to 72 fps)

They thought about 60fps, but the bandwidth was an obstacle. Not just drive speed, but acquisition, etc. It would have been nice to see 60fps in the spec

the 250 Mbit limit is pretty open ended - you can do 250Mbit 2K 48fps if you want, the bitrate limitation is pretty flexible - 2K, 4K, 24fps, 48fps (practically 2K only, 4K 48fps is specifically verbotten)

DC28 is the group doing the DCI spec. here's notes on the overview:

DC28

Digital Cinema Technology Committee DC28 Wendy Aylsworth - Chair

It's not quite done yet, it'll be a long time before it's mature (and implied, stable and reliable)

DC28 charter to make engineering docs
Three working groups:

mastering
distribution
exhibition

standards authoring kicked in hard at this point

probably about 35 documents foreseen, 24 in progress at the moment

others in drafting format in ad hoc groups

1 is ready for publication

4 are going to draft standard ballot

8 are in final committee draft cycle

5 in committee draft cycle (1st ballot for everyone to comment on it)


MASTERING - making the DSM

DISTRIBUTION - prep for compression, encrypion

Exhibition - key Mgmt, forensics, certificates, mesaging

(note how much attention is being spent on tracking...FAR beyond what is done now)

when mastering, there will be specs for exhibition screen luminance, chrominance, and conformity

NO OFFENSE TO WENDY, BUT THIS IS ALL ABOUT WHAT DOCUMENTS THEY ARE GOING TO CREATE...UNLESS YOU'RE HUGELY INVOLVED, I DON'T THINK THIS IS TERRIBLY INTERESTING. NECESSARY, BUT NOT INTERESTING.

MXF J2K CONSTRAINTS - OK, this'll be interesting

Operational constraints - all the things to worry about as you make this stuff

clearly they intend1 1 Gigabit/sec networking, as they reference 1 Gb/sec link encryption

SMPTE N26 Dual link 1.5Gb/sec interface...so is this dual link HD-SDI or something else? Encrypted link between projector and server

FOUR TUTORIALS TODAY -

1.) X'Y'Z' Color Encoding
2.) security architecture
3.) JPEG2000 compression
4.) packaging for distribution

15 key standards will be published in 2005...it takes a long time to get stuff balloted, commented, and approved after writing stuff.

SMPTE is unique in that it's not driven by corporations and nations, it's driven by the engineers

OK, here we go again. Below are my raw notes, as I took'em, on the Digital Cinema Summit Day 1 Panels. Opening remarks start, then the DCI spec is described & explained a bit. I'm writing some comentary and analysis, I'll post that up when done (which will probably be more interesting anyway).

-mike

DIGITAL CINEMA SUMMIT DAY ONE

side note: Lucas announced Star Wars movies to be re-released in "dimensionalized" 3D version

Today:
DCI Spec explained
DC29
XYZ color for D-Cinema
Lunch
international
security
compression
packaging

Sunday

Reinventing workflows
next gen digital projectors for cinema and prod/post prod
high end digital cameras
digital cinema servers
lunch
6 studios will have their input
world screen: europeans working on this
Asia/Pacific report
moving digital cinema forward - what can we do over next year

DCI SPECIFICATIONS:

this is the first public discussion - it's 167 pages, available online

"Understanding Digital Cinema" book is for sale in NAB bookstore

Walk ??Ordway CTO Digital Cinema Initiative, LLC

he developed Hughes digital cinema system, using sattelite distribution system

worked for DirecTV, director of development lab there

Over last coupla years and publishing specs, folks wondering about bits and pieces, after a coupla hundred questions

----------

guy from Disney, guy from Universal

been working on this for 6 or 7 years

John Pierce, Universal Pictures
Howard Lukk, Walt Disney Studios

Digital started with film

35mm film took 20 years to settle in to standardized 35mm film which continues to evolve, 4 or 5 different versions out there, keep changing as sound and other aspects change

SMPE formed and standardized 35mm

History of how they got there:

security is really hard

E-Cinema - in the 50s, the goal of e-cinema was shown as television in theaters

E-cinema
in theater ads
ODS (other digital stufff)
preshow stuff

D-Cinema
Digital Cinema for major releases

E-cinema has been ood practice by running ads

DCI spec -
12 bit X'Y'Z' color
2049x1080 24p/48p
4096x2160

1999 Disney/TI/Technicolor tries 40 screens on 40 screens

really only got out to 5 or so screens

didn't do well because of the drift in it

TI spent a ton of work on building their projector to roll out about 40 screens at the beginning to see audience response.

Lucas has been a fairly major force in digital cinema adventure

each time he wants more digital cinema projectors

every 3 years another release
LEARNED IN TI TEST
Consumers LIKE digital cinema - no pushback as feared, thought

TI projectors work, but were barely good enough, esp. for creative community
need a standard - why not SMPTE
costs a lot, hard to make content without DI

EXPENSIVE - digital projection cost 3 times as much per screen for DI than film (or did he say 10x)

leanred how to distribute and how not to

common format very important

in 2000, SMPTE to define needs and tech standards - DC28 was formed

eight groups to make requirements docs:

steering, mastering, audio, comrpession, encryption, packaging, transport, theater systems

in 1st coupla years, the smart guys who looked at what the requirements should be in each segment

-a good overview of what needed to be done

DCDM numbers game
v6 had 4928x2048
v5.5 - 3680x1536
v2.5 - 2464x1024
1920x1080 came up, 3840x2160, 4096/2048

pixel count had a ton of meetings

issues - is it better than home? is it too expensive to make that? Is it a nice round number divisible by two? How are DI's done? 4K scans? What is a 'REAL' 4K scan? Is it divisible by 8, or 4, or 2?

presently 4096x2160 or 2048x1080

TI announced a chip that matched their numbers, supposedly TI did it on their own

....all that took a LOOOONG time to nail it down, hard choices to be made

what compression to be used? MPEG? JPEG? can't pick a standard in SMPTE, so DCI was formed in 2002

waiting for DCI to come up with a spec...nothing happened for a while

Decisions made:

2K/4K layered compression
'JPEG2000 chosen
finalized the audio - including 96k
publishing the spec - has been troublesome - how do you get it published? Will be published when ready, some things still being tweaked. IT'S NOT DONE YET. STILL WORKING ON. DETAILS IN SECURITY BEING WORKED ON.

some companies pulled out, some companies came in

StEM got done

things nailed:
image resolution and color
audio bit depth and sample rates
compression type & but rate (JPEG2000)
subtitles types & limits
encryption and key exchange methords
packaging and metadata

StEM test material will have a long shelf life

in 2005 -

people with real money involved - total rollout in US is $4 billion, 35,000 screens in US, 120,000 screens internationally

real money, real systems, real deployment with commitment of content to it

presently only 3 studios actively supporting it

use of DCI spec

SMPTE will continue it's efforts to approve stuff

DCI - Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Universal,, Sony, Warner

Goals of Digital Cinema from the beginning

better image than answer prints (was better than distribution prints)
projectors have improved to the point that they beat answer prints - what does this change? Does the consumer respond same way?
Presentation better than home
-extensibility to grow
-backwards compatibility as new tweaks added
-worldwide system -ECDF compatible (euro guys) to keep'em compatible
-reduced distribution costs (major reason to do it) - total cost of film systems quite high, $600m to $700m a year spent on prints by US studios
-long term viability - has to last 40 to 50 years
-new foundation for new stories - let's em do 48fps, 3D, 4K, etc.
-has to be able to ripple down to the consumers

DSM - digital source master (cut negative in old school film world) (what I called DM) completely conformed digital master, from whence to strike all copies

OCN-IP-IN-RELEASE PRINT

DCDM - Digital Cinema Distribution Master (sort of like Timed release print, but not the same)

DCP - Digital Cinema Package (similar to release print in can shipped to theaters)

DCDM (compressed) - the compressed one

Master & approve the digital presentation (part of DI process)

Prep sound/image/subtitles/flow

encrypt, Compress and Package it using TLA techniques (add encryption keys here)

Ship it sattelite it hard drive ship it, whatever

decompress with keys & play

image is required to be encrypted, audio/subtitles optionally encrypted

security key gets handed off to a security manager person - they are very, very serious about this stuff

somewhat like what's done in DVD production

"we're authoring for digital cinema now"

Picture Goals: Be Better than an answer print:
-if going to bother making a big global change, it should be better enough to make it worth the cost & hassle
-every theater can have a premiere quality experience
-long lasting, non-proprietary format
-handle all aspects supported, as well as older formats
-gotta handle future movies OK as well

PICTURE STUFF

2K camp and 4K camp back and forth - so they decided to include the possibility of both

max 500 GB per movie

the solution was to agreed to by everyone to be possible to do both

the key is a hierarchical/layered approached in a compression system that would allow 4K & 2K to go out - 2K can be extracted on the other side from the

the 2K projection system can extract 2K on the fly

as much quality and color space as can be fit in there that's practical

2048x1080 or 4096x2160 FLAT (film numbers horizontally, video resolutions vertically...can work for all players, non-anamorphic pixels)
-only active pixels are transported (????)
24/48 fps
X'Y'Z' 12 bits/channel of color
hierarchical (layere) file structures

48fps breaks the bank for 4K...so 48fps is only for 2K

on the color side, wanted to be future proof. didn't want to lock it down to NTSC and live with that limited gamut indefinitely

proposed XYZ color space, will handle everything..."a good color bucket" to handle anything likely to come down the pike

-RGB with metadata or what for color space? it was argued hard to try to come up with good long term future proof solution

-it's not the easy route - XYZ? what are dat?

current display primaries don't cover the full visible spectrum

XYZ is bigger than the human visible range, so will handle MORE than people can see

requirements testing:

Objective testing:
screen luminance
contrast
dynamic range (transfer function/gamma)
geometry
compression (picture signal to noise ratio)

they measured all this for film

subjective testing:
-visual discrimination threshold (bit depth)
-35mm answer print side by side with digital cinema
24 to 48 frame play out comparision, as well as BS check to make sure it was doable
-compression types that meet the "better than answer print" requirements

invited ASC folks to show'em side by side on 50 foot screen - on one side the best that the cinematographer's could create in an answer print, on other side mirrored over to show digital stuff

-could see the gate weave even on a really good projector gave away the film

-"butterfly test" - one source on left, mirror flipped (butterfly) from other source of same looking material from other source projector

SOUNDS LIKE THEY WENT ABOUT THIS THE RIGHT WAY - GOTTA BE BETTER STUFF

JPEG2000 - why that'un?

no temportal comprression
had to support 4K/2K, and handle 2K extraction from 4K
-needed international standard
-needed clear/clean intellectual property
max 250Mbit/sec for all formats
-ICT required (??)

Guess: typical 2K 24fps movie: about 150 Gigabytes

studios got to see results of double blind tests from compression tests

JPEG2000 came out on top of list

picking the compressor is one factor, what data rate? What can disk drives, and chipsets, and the rest of the system handle to make sure there would be no bottlenecks

250 Mbits/sec was the number they picked based on above

can achieve visual transparency with MOTION pictures at 2K 24fps 125 Mbit. STILLS you could stare at and find flaws from compression

ICT transform gets a

9/7 inverse wavelet transfer functions

SOUND - 48/96 debate, 16 channels uncompressed 48/96K, 24 bits
able to support multiple languages, commentary, audio headphone tracks, etc.

sound quality is better in this standard...best

WHY 16 CHANNELS?
-they wanted to future proof - some research into 10 channels in theater
-defined 5.1, ,1, 8.1 plus hard-of-hearing, plus alt language configs
-96k sample rate - exhibitors said "you can get 96 in the home, we want that" even if 48 is good enough for 24 bits
-16 channels at any one time
-in a new region, can send another set of 16 to handle international releases that can go with the movie with one image with all these sets of 16 (if you chose). 16 simultaneous playout, other SETS of up to 16 can be included in package

SUBTITLES:
----------------
on screen and off screen issues
-what's it for? hard of hearing of alt language? on screen or off screen?

so two categories - on and off screen

supported methods - they looked at two possibilities

TEXT - most preferred method - rendering in the projector or server/media block or al display - selectable fonts & installed fonts, more fonts can be sent with teh package

PNG 32BIT color overlay - up to 20 MBit/sec - have to figure that into your bit budget if you use it - 2K or 4K. 2K upped to 4K will be OK, servers would need to know how to downrez 4K to 2K on the fly for the subtitles

FLOW AND REELS
------------

stuck with the reel model
-emelents delivered as package or separately
-broken into "reels

reels can be electronically spliced together to create a "composition" - feature, trailer, logo, etc. - can keep a discrete entitity together driven by a list that ties these parts together in the field

consider the 'reels' to be like VOBs in DVDs. Can be down to a 1 second reel

reels include parallel Track Fileds of diferent image, sound, subtitle, etc. (THIS IS A LOT LIKE A DVD's STRUCTURE)

Track Files are tied together by Composition Playlists

this means you can have standard and director's cuts, possibly even differently reated versions that are all just different "playlists" if you will (my word) like iTunes playlists of an album...move parts around as you wish

can edit after released to theaters with this...will see what happens. Can send replacement reels, also allows for Reel 7 to arrive at last minute in production as it's finally completed since editors tend to edit up to (now past) last minute

SHOW PLAY LIST - plays a list of compositions, which means trailers, ads, movie, etc. can be played in desired order

Distribution Package - has all the parts in it (more on this later today)

SECURITY AND ENCRYPTION
-----------------------

struggled with security a huge amount - it's such a business thing - separating the biz from the technical is TOUGH

if you try to make everyting possible, it doesn't work. So they had to establish boundaries when dealing with the stakeholders (the studios). Had to extract all the business decisions for stuff like log reports, etc.

The problem with security - if it were just the keys to unlock it, that is not as hard....security wraps up lots of other things - secure records of what played everywhere...like an onion that you're adding layers to instead of peeling them off.

they have to send out movies encrypted, with keys

picture that hits the screen is getting camcorded, available with 10 hours from first screening....on internet within 3 days

"some studios make movies no one wants to see...we have not taken that approach"

: )

camcorder theft is one big problem

now that they have this beautiful digital master, that will fit under 300GB, how to we protect it, and how do we have key management?

SECURITY MANAGEMENT MODEL

buncha studios make movies that go to distributors

(presently for premieres, locked film cans with combination locks that only 1 or 2 people know)

key management and delivery is crucial

at exhibition - the DCDM arrives...if it's encrypted it's safe...keys are sent separately...

content comes in, keys come in separately

keys are provided to content to decrypt and decompress and play out...done on the fly

security message protocols have to get nailed down

two thresholds - stuff that comes in from outside the theater (extra theater messages) and intra theater messages (just within a given movie complex, server room to projector, etc.)

MEDIA BLOCK ARCHITECTURES
-------------------------

Media block is where everything hapens - decrypted and decomopressed, gets re-encrypted if it has to be

there's different ways of doing this - where does the final decryption happen?

you don't want to send decrypted dual link HD-SDI....someone like me could jump in and record it....so the HD-SDI has to be encrypted with link encryption...

so now they are saying put the de-encryption within the projector itself...so you just have hard drives streaming encrypted data to the projector, which decrypts it inside the projector. They want a way to keep someone from hardware hacking the projector to "knife in" and extract the image during projection. YES, THESE GUYS ARE GETTING REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT IT

forensic marks are applied upon decryption - so that a "print" can be unique it sounds like, to tell which one it came from...keeps stuff back-trackable.

the projector has to do 2K/4K extraction if needed, decompression, handling audio, security issues, etc. etc. etc. etc....so theater projectors are way, way, WAY more complex than just projecting

OR can put media block in the server and uses link encryption to decrypt on the fly...can optionally forensic mark again.

Forensic mark puts in the image a mark that can be recovered after the fact...so that if somebody camcorders it, they can know what theater at what time to be able to tell EXACTLY where it came from....important for studios "since it's their first line of defense against piracy" - yeah, but that's after the fact

Theater Management System

In general, control loosely and audit tightly....logging is very important for DCI spec. If the show can play, it should play - if there's a problem, it plays and can be recovered

if you clamp dwon on security on the front end, you risk losing shows (not projecting due to problems and snafus)

what kinds of logs, who gets it, who filters it, etc. Exhibitors and distributors need to argue out exactly what info gets passed back and forth. DCI spec allows for robust communication, how much gets used, how much gets recorded and reported and who sees it, is up to someone else to decide

they haven't done a lot of multiplex installations

It's clear that they aren't sure how things are going to be done - whether internet transmission, sattelite, mailed hard drives, or whatever. There's no known path yet of what folks will do. This also leaves them open to do whatever.

control protocols are still up in the air - automation interfaces are still all over the map - manufacturers are left to figure it out

14 different companies have servers to handle this stuff, every one has a different design for this stuff. Some want a disk drive closer or further away from the projector to satisfy reliability, acceptance to exhibitor, and cost of the system. THIS WOULD SEEM TO IMPLY THAT EXHIBITORS ARE ONLY GOING TO CARE ABOUT WHAT WORKS FOR THEM - THEY'LL PROBABLY GO CENTRAL STORAGE EVEN IF THE SECURITY ISN'T AS ROBUST - BECAUSE IT'S NOT THEIR PROBLEM. Studios in theory could NOT distribute to them if they felt it were insecure.

This stuff is going to be expensive. The advantages of "better than answer print" quality sounds really good...but the added costs of security makes this a lot tougher.

they had to go back and change the specs so that stuff could be moved around in 15 minutes rather than 2 hours to move stuff around. Makes it really tough for the 4K files. large files going over 1GBit Ethernet is limiting. local drives get walked around, etc. Changing platters can take 15 minutes. They need to be able to meet/beat that. Exhibitors have a different list of needs as compared to those of distributors and studios.

CONCLUSIONS:
future of distro to the cinema will be digital, and will take time (less sure after watching this today - mike)
must have a new stable system in place for the long term - unlike consumers who replace every 5 years, needs to have a long shelf life
-all 7 major studios are supporting the DCI spec
-cant trade short term expediency for long term support

-early stages, folks did a telecine hurried at the last minute

new opportunities - Bug's Life ran one way 2 weeks, then reel 3 got swapped out for different jokes at end to try to get folks in again. Easy to do with this D-Cinema stuff.

Creative & marketing will take advantage of goodies that you give them. They put in as many hooks as possible to keep things flexible.

Q&A
---

how do you market to consumers? How do you pitch digital as better?

-don't pitch it as "have to see digital", advocate as a value add that can have it

-D-Cinema will be of benefit in smaller markets (once it gets there eventually)

Can change from AES 128?

yes, have allowed in the spec to be able to change encryption algorithm in the packaging stuff in the future

Piracy -inside or out?

a myth that it was an inside job - is in the audience more often now, tougher with hard of hearing plugs in the seats

How to standardize?

If we have LCOS, DILA, laser, whatever projectors, how do we get consistent projection?

Need to have a consistent DCDM, by using XYZ color, can begin to support color profile type stuff using LUTs. Lamp source - metal halide vs xenon vs. what. If it's outside of Xenon then you get in trouble. Gamma mapping will be a key for the future. How to gamma map it properly, say from laser to xenon without just slicing off chunks of color space?

CAN YOU SCALE BEYOND 250 Mbit?

they wanted to limit it for backwards compatibility. So 250 Mbit is IT for this spec. Can have a 2.0.

For archiving it's a different question. DCDM is for distro only, is not a mastering or archive format.

For archival, could use JPEG2000 for a light compression for archive.

WILL D-CINEMA EAT E-CINEMA?

thinks it'll consume it, all be on same projector

maintainability of double systems is an expense, but if the cost savings shrinks to make it worthwhile, it'll happen. But not right off the bat.

SO HOW DOES FORENSICS HELP STOP ENCRYPTION AFTER THE BARN DOOR IS LEFT OPEN?

(my unasked question)

A question about 'dark screen' issues?

IF YOU TRY TO PLAY OUTSIDE OF PROSCRIBED TIMEFRAMES, IT WON'T WORK. IF YOU MESS WITH CONTENT, IT'LL GO DARK. IF YOU TRY TO PLAY ON UNAUTHORIZED PLAYER, IT'LL BE DARK AS WELL.

...on top of if anything breaks in the system.

dcimovies.com - can download the spec from there, but it's not finalized as yet.

DCI sequel to StEM - the whole thing as a package to make sure all this stuff works.

THERE ARE ADDITIONAL DARK SCREEN PROBLEMS THAT DIDN'T GET DISCUSSED - SUCH AS IF A LOG DOESN'T GET REPORTED FROM PROJECTOR BACK TO SERVER, THE NEXT SHOW CAN'T BE SHOWN.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

THOUGHTS:

-2K/4K mastering, either plays on either res projector in this setup

-security as implemented, is very complex, sure to be costly and complex

-that 250 Mbit standard that won't be bumped up...that's tough, there's NO WAY that's going to last 40-50 years...the good thing is the projectors are left open to improve

Richard from Sony talked about how DPs will spend a week retiming the HD masters even after doing the filmout DI masters - so not truly one master for all, each will need to be tweaked....it's a master to start from and tweak, not a master to just process to each deliverable "blind"

Final Cut Pro News (Phila FCP Users Group): Profiles and Levels

All about profiles and levels in MPEG-2. Good background reading to better understand HDV, especially with another entrant in the field expected this week, JVC's 720p camera capable of 24p.

-mike

You may recall Nicholas Way's report earlier this year that he planned on recording an F950's output straight to disk. He's done some further week recently, involving using a specialized device called the T Cam that extracted the camera block from the F950 and had a cable that ran back to allow recording. This device was made for Lucas and the upcoming Star Wars Episode 3 movie, so this is very exciting to see this stuff in use. I'm not sure anyone else has used this particular piece of tech.

Below is his report on using it, I've also posted some pictures he sent me from the set.

The Girl from Serrano –Production Notes

This is a follow up article to the one that I wrote in the beginning of February, concerning direct-to-disc capture of Uncompressed 10bit RGB 4:4:4 1080p 23.98 video from the Sony F950 dual link 4:4:4 Cinealta ,to the Apple Xserve Raid 3.5 TB array. Initially there was a lot of great information that I got back from the readers, so thanks to the many that responded, I tried to get back to most of you. What I’d like to talk about for this follow up is just how well the array preformed, and some goodies that we were able to use on the set.

A quick recap of the production. The Girl from Serrano is a student short that is to be the most technologically advanced student production to be done to date. The film is a short in which all the environments and interactable objects are all generated in the computer. In addition, the capture process will make the production a wholly digital production, whereas the only physical subjects will be the actors, which furthermore is fully digital from conception to storage. Here’s the setup I used.

Apple G5 -XRAID w/ATTO FC

Dual 2.5 G5 (4gigs of RAM) OSX 10.3.7

Black Magic Pro (dual link) capture card-in slot 3

ATTO Celerity 22XH 2Gb-in slot 4-set to 2Gb/s speed, and automatic topology. Using ATTOCelerityFC Version 1.4.0, and ATTO ExpressPCIPlus 2.0.4 drivers.

Xserve RAID 3.5TB w/ LC adapter-the fibre channel on the Xraid is configured to automatic, drive caches and write caches are enabled, and read prefetch is set to 128 stripes., using journaled volume format using AppleXserveRAID firmware-1.3.1-1.24.xfb, and also newer version 1.3.8
(the LC adaptor allows for optical connection, this doesn’t really boost performance, but protects against electromagnetic interference, and is needed to connect to the ATTO card)

RAID 0 disc speeds:280 reads, 236 writes-from beginning to end of array.


Our production package was from Plus 8 Digital in NYC, this place is really great. They really try to make your workflow work for you, and they give you the time to come in and play with the toys you’ll need. Not to mention that they have just about everything. The package I got was basically the F950 body, 3 beautiful Zeiss Digi-prime lenses(70mm, 14mm, and 5mm), and a 14” 4:2:2 monitor, and a neat little thing called a T-Camera.

Most of this stuff you can go and check out on the internet, but the T-camera is a special case. It was recently created by Sony, specifically for the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, to be used with the F950. Basically what it does is it allows you to take the CCD out of the F950 camera, and store it in housing case, which a lens may be mounted, and then is attached via 2” Fibre cable from the back of the unit, to the body of the camera. The cable we used was 50’, but I believe it can be extended to 200’. With the T-Cam we were able to take advantage of a simple jib to get a lot of dynamic axis shots, and just have a lot of freedom in general. The size of the unit is about 8”X 5”X 8”, and can also have an eyepiece attached to it, and I believe it also has external monitoring capabilities. I’ll be sure to attach some pictures of it, all in all it’s a really liberating addition to the camera, unfortunately I believe there is only 1 in existence presently.

Another issue that I know many would probably be interested in is just how did the array perform on set. Well Ill cut to the chase again and tell you that it was virtually flawless, and ultimately, (in a studio setting) optimal and liberating. I believe there were maybe 2 cases of dropped frames during capture, for over 2 1/2 hrs of footage shot, and over 100 shots, over 2 days. Since there was no audio and no background continuity to be concerned with, the whole production really was done in the utmost efficiently. There was a lag between beginning the capture process, and actually having “speed”. I asked my AC Mandela Gregoire, if he would mind sharing a little of his experience about the capture process with us, so these are his observations of the capture process.

I recently worked with NYU student/director Nicholas Kay on his film, The Girl from Serrano. I was the AC in charge of capture and storage of the uncompressed footage.
There was 20-second lag between the time I clicked Capture and when video was actually being recorded. The colorful Apple wheel would just spin and then the blue LED indicators on the Xserve would start blinking after approx. 20 seconds. This was a bit of a nuisance, but we would just “roll camera” early to compensate with a little extra header.

Due to the tapeless nature of this setup, we were actually working without any kind of timecode. The Blackmagic software has two windows, one to show you the previous clip that was just recorded, and another to presumably show what's currently being recorded in real-time. During capture, the real-time window remained black. The software made it very easy to playback the last take (or any take) on the monitor the
director wanted to see.

For the most part, the software was very reliable. There were a 2-3 instances where we got dropped frames and had to restart the software and recapture that take. There was one instance where after a take, the software loaded the clip and there were just black lines. I opened the clip in QuickTime and it was fine.

Overall, it was a great production experience. For work on a set, it's a viable approach. Shooting on location would be difficult because the camera would have to be tethered to a disk array, but I wont say it cant be done.-Mandela Gregoire

So here is something conclusive, and it works. Maybe Mike will let me do one more follow through regarding my post-workflow, concerning off-linining, animation, compositing, and rendering. Thanks for the attention and I can be reached at nwk204 at nyu dot edu for any details (and I'd appreciate being cc'd on that at mike at hdforindies dot com), and if you’re in NYC in the fall, come to the NYU international film festival and check out “The Girl from Serrano” at Cantor Film Center at 36 E 8th St. And a big thanks to Mike for his incredible site!

Mike's Comments - Very very interesting, huge thanks to Nicholas for taking the time to share this info. The 20 second delay is odd, I'm not sure what that's about, I haven't seen such delays in my own lab tests, but those are machine to machine, not camera to machine.

So of course, I wrote until super late last night rather than doing things, like, doing laundry, buying cat food, conversing with the neighbor to feed Girl Kitty, packing, sorting all my digital Commando Field Kit for the trip.

So that meant I packed like a villager who sees the Vikings pulling their long boats up on beach, pulling out their axes, and squinting up at said villager's house with a really, really hostile takeover in mind.

So I'm here, in the Hotel San Remo Casino & Resort, because like a doofus I waited until this month to try to get a room. It was the least expensive available place I could find, but it's still not cheap, and it's really, really depressing to walk through the lobby/casino area on the way to the elevators. Every Vegas hotel requires you to walk through a quarter mile of gambling on your way to the elevators to your room. It's probably in the city building codes or something. Let's just say this place is soooooo not James Bond and leave it at that.

OK, I can't leave it at that. The car you win at the slots? A Beamer? A Mercedes? (I saw a Maybach parked somewhere else tonight) Nope. A Jeep. Wheeeeeeeee...a Jeep. THAT'S your aspirational thing, the stuff you aspire to, hope for? Hey, at least it's not a PT Cruiser like I saw in a place last year...

Anyway, I've been tossing a bunch of blog entries up to try to keep up with product announcements, and early in the morning the Digital Cinema Summit begins, so I need to lay out the Commando Kit and be ready for the 8am start (meet 'n greet first).

This year will be a big change from last year for me - last year I was the noob asking questions after every panel, complete with ponytail, cargo pants, and an overall visual demeanor that probably said "Hello, I'm Mikey, I'll be your archery instructor here at camp today..."

This year, short hair, growed up clothing...and probably still questions after every panel.

They prefer that you say your name and affiliation when you stand up to ask a question - I hope I don't get booed by some of the cinematographers I've pissed off lately....

Ah, the challenge of the new and unknown!

Hopefully there will be wireless access and I can post my notes & pics.

One unfortunate thing is that Apple's press event and the new cameras segment of the Digital Cinema Summit are at the same time in different buildings. If anyone is going to the Apple event, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I would love it if someone were to take COPIOUS LITERAL NOTES that I could post to the blog.

Yes, this is a cry for help.

-mike

blah blah blah

although at first skim, it looks like they're wussing out by using JPEG2000 compression. It's targetted at applications requiring image and key and audio.

No booth number listed in article - BAD!

-mike

handle bracket for Sony HVR-Z1U HDV camera

Whee! Simple stuff, but potentially useful....

RT 4K from Nucoda

Off the shelf platform for realtime 2K and 4K DI work. 4K was on the bleeding edge of highest end stuff last year - a big deal was made of the fact that Spiderman 2 was done with 4K DI, even though a LOT of the effects work were just 2K uprezzed.

How do you monitor this? I'll have to be checking it out.

in Ciprico booth SL3628 at NAB

Live from NAB

I think I linked to this the other day, not sure....ContentAgent-XR does video encoding, management, and secure deliverables. I need to check'em out. WM9 and VC-1 are possible. VC-1 is in both the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray specs, so it matters.

blimps are cool: Directing as resource allocation

Stuart Willis, a regular contributor to the blog (sends me links 'n stuff, emails me crazy long stuff and I email crazy long back) added to what I had to say the other day about working with HD.

Upon further reflection, a LOT of that feedback was from DoPs who don't want anyone second guessing them in their tradecraft, and they are the most quality stickler people of all when it comes to images, since that's the core of their job. They GOTSTA care or nobody else will enough.

Anyway, Stuart chimes in with a lot of his thoughts. A little cross blog link luv action for ya.

-mike

Apple - Mac OS X - New Features

Apple's put up a ton of stuff about Tiger, above is the main link of new features.

Others of interest:

QuickTime 7 page

H.264 page

H.264 FAQ

QuickTime 7 and H.264 are going to matter. A LOT. So you should read this stuff.

-mike

MacNN | Wacom debuts Bluetooth wireless pen tablet

OK, this is cool. Ever used a Wacom? They rock. I used one for YEARS to do Photoshop retouching. It was my primary source of income for several years in the 90s. Now they have totally cordless - the pen was always cordless, but now the tablet is too by using Bluetooth. Coolio...

Creative Cow - Read Post

Globalstor Data announces DVD TransPro-DD, burns dailies. I should read this, but I have 37 other open windows to read....

Creative Cow - Read Post

In case you hadn't guessed, there's a ton of press releases right before NAB. This talks a bit about Photoshop CS 2, and how it has FireWire previews and other video handy goodies like HDR handling.

PSPWare 2.0.3 - VersionTracker

PSP hasn't been out long, already there are apps on Mac to load content onto it. Cool.

RadTech tekmod features use-in-case design | MacMinute News

can be set up to run out of the padded case, with port access etc.

About the Mac OS X 10.3.9 Update (Delta)

Apple releases 10.3.9 before 10.4 is released.

From the Apple page, here's what's changed:

Improvements

This update offers many reliability and compatibility improvements. These are just a few of the enhancements and improvements included:


Stickies

Addresses an issue in which Stickies could unexpectedly quit when creating a new note.

Addresses an issue in which new Stickies are invisible.

Stickies windows can now be minimized (an issue with Mac OS X 10.3.4 through 10.3.8).



Safari

Accessing certain websites, such as msnbc.com, mail.yahoo.com, ticketmaster.com, and others, no longer displays a "bad server response" alert that could occur in Safari.

Addresses an issue in which "safe downloads" files are not automatically opened after downloading.

SSL webpages (pages with URLs that start with "https://") load faster in Safari.

Adds some important Verisign root certificates to Safari, allowing you to connect to certain secure websites that you might not have been able to surf before.

Adds other trusted root certificates to Safari, such as VISA and RSA.



Finder

Addresses an issue in which copied files could become fragmented (but still usable) when you copy more than one file at the same time in the Finder.

Addresses a rare issue in which a file could become damaged when copying to a FAT16- or FAT32-formatted volume.

Improves reliability when mounting (making available) a disk image that's larger than 4.7 GB.



More

Addresses slow vertical tracking and intermittent trackpad behavior on PowerBook G4 12-inch 1.5GHz, 15-inch 1.67/1.5GHz, and 17-inch 1.67GHz computers.

Adds an "Apple Internal 56k Modem (v.32)" modem choice that you can use if you have difficulty using Verizon's Airfone Jet Connect service.

Addresses an issue with Mac OS X 10.3.6 and later in which the Calculator window won't appear if the Speak Button Pressed or Speak Total options are enabled.

Fixes an issue at the login window, where clicking the small space just below the bottom user account picture would produce this alert:
"Internal Error *** -[NSCF Array objectAtIndex:]: index(-1) beyond bounds (X)" (where X is the number of user accounts shown).

Addresses an issue in which the startup time in Mac OS X 10.3.6 through 10.3.8 may be extended if a large number of PostScript fonts are installed.

If your PowerBook G4 sometimes wakes up with a kernel panic, installing this update may help.

Addresses a data loss issue that could occur when syncing your iDisk at the same time that .Mac servers are experiencing heavy usage.
Avoids a potential Mail issue if the application is running when Daylight Savings Time changes.
Addresses some formatting issues that could occur when replying to HTML messages in Mail.

...so I've been getting slagged over on the Cinematography.net Mailing Lists for some comments I've made about digital acquisition & production. Some of them are good points, and their lashes sting but are lessons well learned. Some of the folks are arguing irrationally (of course _I_ think they're being irrational, and _I'm_ being rational...yeah right) and it's been driving me nuts. I've been discussing on and offline a bunch about the pace of technology in mature vs immature fields, costs as enabling factors, etc. After a lengthy heated discussion with someone, I came to discover they were a student and was miffed about it. I mentioned this to a usual contributor on the site, and out of the conversation came my favorite quote this week:

"A student? A STUDENT? Get out on PLANET BLEEDING, F******G EARTH and then get back to me once you have some dirt under your nails, some mud on your boots, and some scars on your flesh."

...and probably some blood in your socks.

(this was probably inspired by having chatted about Sin City too much beforehand)

....which is good advice for anyone, me most certainly included. I've been crowing about the cost advantages of digital acquisition, and there have been a lot of valid points made about workflows using HD and the perils and missteps involved. So rather than pack for NAB, which is useful but boring, here's some slivers of truth pulled out of my skin after the whipping. Some of this is good info gleaned from others with more experience, some of this is "duh" obvious that I feel needs to be stated for the beginners & dilletantes (like me!). If it's dumb and obvious and in here, it's probably mine.

Here goes:

-staring at a monitor isn't necessarily a good way to direct a film - watch the actors, please. In real time, with your own eyeballs.

-playing back performances on set is not always a good idea - not only does it take time, but if the actors are allowed to see themselves, they'll often dissect their performance to death and leech all the spontaneity out of their additional takes as they try to address particular little issues while they lose the bigger picture of their performance. So play back judiciously, for the eyes appropriate (a highly contextual call)

-the ability to "let it roll" isn't always great for creativity - one good thing about film was that everyone took it very seriously and was very focused when rolling. The whole "It's cheap, let it roll" can often mean a lot of missed marks and sloppy/casual work. Take a few more minutes, get everything right, THEN roll camera/tape.

-time on set IS super valuable - playback steals time

-time on set is incredibly valuable - while HD can require less light in some circumstances, it's lower exposure lattitude and quickness to blow out highlights can mean it takes longer to light your sets, because you're aiming at a smaller acceptable target range than film allows. Want to aim at a tea saucer or a serving platter? It's easier to aim for the target with greater margin of error.

-I made the point that HD lets you immediately check your results - it was countered that properly trained film people know what they are going to get and don't have to check it. Fair enough. But "properly trained people" from the film side are harder to find and cost more. Better trained people work faster, regardless of medium you're shooting with (assuming their experience is with that medium!).

-on bigger movies, the cost savings of HD become less and less of a valid issue, as the percentage of funds saved using digital tools becomes a smaller and smaller piece of the overall budget - big shows don't need HD to save meaningful amounts of money (docs the possible exception)

-maybe, perhaps, the best way to shoot HD is more like a film set's discipline - you CAN check playback etc. if you HAVE to, but otherwise treat it like a film shoot. "Letting it roll" can simply be burning valuable time. Time on set is the most expensive time of your entire movie process - you're paying actors, you're paying grips, gaffers, DPs, etc. etc. etc. Tape is cheap....time on set is most definitively NOT. Let's say you let it roll at the beginning of the day and do 15 or 20 takes of a scene, "because tape is cheap" (and I've spoken with directors of DV films who've done this)...are your actors exhausted and burnt out? Wasn't take 3, or 5, or 9 really good? Were takes 10-15 adding anything new? And more importantly, do you have time to finish the rest of your scheduled pages for the day? Most often HD is chosen motivated by a desire to save money in the budget, not for aesthetic reasons. If your budget is tight, your shooting schedule is certainly tight...you DON'T HAVE TIME to "let it roll", so it's a moot point.

-there were complaints about directors sitting in the video village staring at a monitor and "directing" the actors via loudspeaker, like some soap operas do. This is NOT a good way to get optimal performances from your actors, nor (obviously) good rapport between director and cast. Quality of the image is of lesser concern than quality of the performances. If the performances aren't convincing/compelling, it doesn't matter how perfect the exposure or focus was, or how well continuity was maintained.

-a lot of the points dissing the advantages of HD (let it roll, reviewing performances on set, direction from loudspeaker afar, etc.) had more to do with workflow rather than the quality of the medium itself. They dealt with HOW the technology was used, rather than the innate pros and cons of the technology itself. Some of the complaints of HD - lesser exposure lattitude leading to longer time lighting the scene, for example - WERE innate to the technology and were inescapable. But the "bad workflow" complaints of HD were just that - choices for workflow. I see no reason why you couldn't shoot HD with a film set's discipline and get good results (within the limits of the technology).

-big movies can afford to burn a lot of film, so it doesn't matter as much to them in the overall budget

-HD's niche is in lower budget projects, and not all the time

-a lot of folks kept saying that 16mm and HD cost about the same, and with new stocks like Vision 2, you're better off shooting 16 - but those budgets are usually predicated on doing your HD online on a godawful expensive Avid, and doing tape to tape color correction on a high end tape to tape system. Last year, such systems were many many many hundreds of thousands of dollars machines when I looked around at NAB. (and NO, I'm NOT talking about buying them, just using their price as a basis for what renting them+operator must cost!!!!) There are MUCH more cost effective systems that have 95+% of the image quality, 80+% of the features, and less than 10% of the cost. Unless your needs are extreme, your time very very little, and your budget large, these other options like Final Touch HD are worth looking at. (Plus they can offer you more flexibility in your editorial process, like the ability to edit after color correction is completed.)

-Stuart Willis of biki.net added: the only thing I think is really worth adding to your comments is the standard number of set ups per day. 10-15. 15 is moving VERY fast. 12 is average. setups are different from shots and you can probably get 18-20 shots from 12 setups if you're very good. He also has this posting on working with DV, and said biggest advantage of not paying for post is having the time to get things right. "I once spent nearly a year editing my own 7 minute short! why? cause the story didn't work (i didn't write it :)) and i had to experiment a lot and spend a lot of time thinking. the problem with most amateur productions in terms of editing is that they're done quickly. time is the greatest asset any filmmaker can have. use it." I agree. At least this pulls somewhat back to my side, rather than subbing it all out.

-on acquisition - I got rained on HARD for suggesting that there was a point of "good enough." A lot of film folks said this was typical of videographers who were happy with a "decent" image. I probably didn't explain myself sufficiently - if there's a point, either for film, video, digital, whatever, where you've captured X stops of exposure lattitude, your focus is Y sharp, your color is sufficiently whatever you want it to be...that's good enough. I said that it had to meet yours and your client's needs, and yours had better be more than your client's or something's wrong. Man, I got pounded on for that - some folks interpreted that as "make the client happy and you're done." which from a business perspective is technically all you have to tdo. Beyond that is gravy that only you and a few others care about. The story gets told sufficiently compellingly and gorgeously. Some of the film folks hated this idea and said so. Somebody said that if this attitude prevailed, no progress would be made. Nope. I just meant that once that threshold is reached of "good enough" at an affordable price point, the market opens up for the technology that made that possible. As for the "no progress comment" not true - if there are 2 or 3 vendors making competing products that are all good enough, somebody is bound to try to make theirs less costly, and/or somebody is bound to try to make theirs higher quality for the same price. The buyers are likely to pick the best bang for the buck that meets their personal quality needs, as most buyers always are. So inevitably, somebody will make, and somebody will buy, something that works better. Then the remaining competitors are urged to catch up. See? Inevitable progress, so long as there are multiple vendors not colluding. Basic Business 101.

-there are a lot of people very, very married to what they know and like, and will defend that irrationally, using rational arguments to defend their choice and irrational ones to attack the other choice/s. Most incredibly frustrating. Both the pro-film and pro-HD folks are guilty of this, so beware of "that's what I'm comfy with" biases. I'm trying to do this less, but I'm still guilty of this. But I'm certainly not alone is all I can say. Grr.

-actors on set on a greenscreen have a much higher requirement to "act" than do actors in a natural environment. So far, I haven't seen a well acted movie shot on greenscreen. Then again, all the entirely/most greenscreen movies I've seen (4 I can think of off the top of my head) have been scifi adventures, so subtle/great acting wasn't really a priority for them. It would be interesting to compare those to other similar scifi type films made with sets. But it's such a low number of candidates, it might not be a statistically valid comparison. Or maybe we need to develop better rules for shooting greenscreen movies, and actors overall haven't learned how to act well against them. Time will tell. But reacting to nothing has got to be harder than reacting to something believably.

-working faster isn't necessarily working better, but working faster saves money, and sometimes fitting within your budget is the only way to get it done

-perhaps a hybrid shooting style might be best - directors should watch the actors act and not the monitor during shooting. DP could watch the performance after the fact to verify technical adequacy if there's downtime. Otherwise, keep moving...

-actors need context - if you're shooting greenscreen, do everything you can to let the actors know where they are supposed to be, what's going on around them, establish eyelines, have stand-ins to be roto'd out later
-I once had a creative director at an agency suggest we should shoot all our stuff on greenscreen and put backgrounds in digitally. I wanted to smack him on the spot - pulling good greenscreen keys is timeconsuming and requires skill, and involves a whole lot more besides clicking an eyedropper on the green part

-on running over time on set- talking to an experienced gaffer, he was talking about the checks and balances present in the production industry that aren't present in the visual effects (or gaming) industries. If you've already booked someone for an 8, 10, or 12 hour day and you run over, it's already agreed that you'll pay extra for that privilidge. It's a choice for the filmmaker - don't shoot it and wait until tomorrow, slipping further behind, or shoot it and pay overtime tonight. If the crew is working at a reasonable pace, and you aren't finishing shooting your pages per day, whose fault is that? Probably you or your producers for not setting a reasonable amount of work to be done in a day.

-one of the most common beginner's mistakes is not realizing how long things will take, and having overly ambitious goals in terms of what can be accomplished in a day/week/month - this ends up costing them more in the long run

-three week shoots for indie features are common but brutal, and often lead to panicked last minute re-writes, trying to shoehorn more story into less running and shooting time. And these changes are made in desperate, panicked, hurry. So have a reasonable shooting budget. Your movie will improve for it. Personally, I feel it is a far, far better thing to do something simple and do it very well, rather than attempt something (overly) ambitious and do a mediocre job, or even worse do it poorly . How many late night cable indie flicks have you seen with poor lighting, mushy audio, and rushed acting that could have been so much better with a bit more time and effort? Cut some scenes, cut some characters if possible, do something small and simple well. It'll be more memorable that a poorly done overwrought mess. (Or at least memorable in a good way.) Budget getting tight? Sorry, the winged monkey space battle must go....

-as a practical matter, you raise the amount you've budgeted, or some fraction of that. You work with what you've got money for - you shoot as many days as you can afford and do the best you can. A lot of folks arguing against my pro-HD position slagged on backing off on quality, "producing crap", not caring about quality, etc. Hey buddy, on planet Earth, we got this thing called a budget, and ya gotta do what ya gotta do with whatcha got.

-post, especially digital efffects & sound/audio, are the most likely to get screwed in the budget - if you ran over your budget in shooting, it now comes out of what's left....post production.

-so if you're involved in post, apply all the pressure you can to make sure the shooting budget is reasonable. Common
scenario - unreasonably tight shooting schedule & budget established, it doesn't work, ends up costing more in overtime than if it had been reasonably scheduled in the first place. Post budget gets slashed, because post needs to work with the money left, not the money budgeted.

on money - this is perhaps the most significant, give-me-pause thing I've heard in the last year - if you're going to raise $1.5M for your indie movie, why not raise $1.7 and farm out the post to experienced post folks with high end gear, and not have all the headaches and suffer all the BS of doing it yourself? This was a very, very good point, and depressed me substantially. Why NOT farm it out to folks who know how to do it better than you, rather than have you do everything amateurishly, or suffer all the difficulties involved? The only good response I could come up to this would be to farm it out to someone using all these 80/20 solutions - 80% as fast overall, 20% the cost. Final Cut Pro, Final Touch HD, etc.

-very very few people are technically competent to tackle all of this themselves. And even if they are, should they really be this focused on technical execution rather than the storytelling? Very very few people have the technical proficiency and the storytelling capability to handle both parts...and with the demands of tight budget, no-time indie filmmaking, do you REALLY want to focus that much on technical arcana? In the end, where do you want your energy to go - to the creativity, or the technical cleanliness of the production? Or another way - do you want someone to say "Wow - great story! Great movie!" or "Gee, look how sharp and focused it is, how pretty the colors are." It's all about content. Story first, technical execution later. It takes both to make a good movie, and screwing up either can kill it. But bad story/acting/pacing/editing will kill it faster than some blown out highlights.

-As I posited on the CML list, how often do you hear about some slasher flick "I would have liked it better if the highlights had 5 or 10 percent more detail." For some kinds of movies, make it look as good as you can, but there is a point of "good enough" beyond which returns on your effort are rapidly diminishing, beyond which your time is better spent on other aspects of the movie. Although in response to my question, somebody pointed out Blair Witch...yeah kinda, but it was SUPPOSED to look amateurish as a story point, an active choice.

On a related aside, as for DP's chosing to shoot wildly panning, dark/underlit shots, I have no control over this...although I heard a good story about how theater chains like to turn down the bulbs in their projectors to make them last longer...so it's not all the fault of the DPs! : ) One complainer at a theater expressed dismay at the dim images during a movie to the theater manager who said it's because of DPs...and the guy whipped out his card - HE was the DP and didn't like how dark his footage looked on screen, he KNEW he hadn't shot it like that!

-on technology in general - film is a fairly mature technology - by this I mean it's been around for quite some time, and that a lot of the easy work has been done to refine and improve it. It's pricing and rate of improvement have somewhat stabilized. A lot of progress has been made in the quality of film stocks over the last 20 years - look at older films vs newer ones, it's not just the telecine that's improved. New stocks like Kodak's Vision 2 have done much to improve the look of film, especially when working with Digital Intermediate processes. On the other hand, HD, in terms of affordable, high resolution digital cinematography suitable for filmmaking, is a pretty new thing, arguably less than 10 years old. I got slagged on this for not defining my terms - the F900 (and Varicam) were the first viably affordable, functional, available cameras for digital cinematography in a commercially viable context as far as I can tell. So THAT kind of HD moviemaking - is pretty new, and still has a lot of room to grow. As traditional cinematography was based on film based still technology, so HD cinematography is based on CMOS and CCD based imaging technology often used in still cameras - a newer technology than film. Digital image acquisition is still fairly new and young, and the rate of change in terms of increases in quality and decreases in price are moving pretty fast. If you just chart the rate of progress for each of these in terms of increase in quality and decrease in cost, this gives me confidence that the quality and cost of digital cinematography will advance pretty quickly relative to the progress film technology is making. I think digital will catch up to film's current quality level well within my career (I'm 36), and is already of sufficient quality and cost to make interesting, compelling, commercially viable movies.

-Costs as enabling factors, and critical thresholds in the market...I wrote a bunch on CML about critical thresholds - when digital cinematography gets good enough to make a commercially viable/successful feature film that audience watches and leaves merely thinking "that was a movie, I liked it or I didn't" rather than "Why did that look wierd/different/bad?", that's a critical threshold. And man, I got nailed for that one. Lots of film folks said this was the classic videographer's mistake, squinting and calling something "good enough." I say that's cheating. When you set parameters, let's call them goals or required minimums, and can meet them, that's an important threshold. (Excuse me, this is redundant to something I said elsewhere, what follows isn't).

I tried to make the point that cost is a critical component in this equation, that it has to be affordable, that it has to be viable to make a commercially successful product. Some filmhead responded this was a moot point, "affordable" is a highly variable and subjective thing, that any product could be commercially successful or viable depending on it's usage.

I vehemently disagreed, saying "Technology is meaningless without a price point. Think about the effect of $1 chainsaws in the rainforest, of $200 cars in China, or $50 laptop computers available worldwide. Or what if computers to do animation, high definition editing, and/or visual effects were still $150,000 each?" The "true artists find a way" counter argument starts to fall flat when you proffer "What if paint brushes were $50,000 each? How much art would get made then?"

Just because something is possible does NOT make it commercially viable. And while costs do fall, they don't all fall at the same rate, nor do they inevitably fall to what one might call "affordable" in a given time frame. About the time I was born, it was possible to fly around the world, and it was also possible to fly to the moon. Have YOU flown to the moon yet? WHY NOT? When was the last time you flew across the country for two or three hundred dollars? Technological achievement is meaningless without a price point to make is accessible to a "viable" percentage of the marketplace. If movies cost $10 billion to make, there wouldn't be as many released. If GOOD movies cost $1 million, a whole lot more movies would get made. Woops, they are being made, just not necessarily good ones. Of course, would we have or want to spend the time to see more "good" movies per year...market saturation is another factor in this big equation.

I'm also wondering (no hard data) if the film industry might start suffering from financial pressure - it used to be that motion picture film could amortize it's R&D costs across the much wider base of still photography, both amateur/consumer and professional. Consumer film photography is drying up, FAST. Kodak doesn't sell film cameras in the US anymore. At all. As consumer film sales dwindle, won't this add financial pressure to the motion picture film group? Will this, won't this, imply smaller R&D budgets? Longer development cycles? With a smaller user base to amortize R&D costs, won't this eventually create pressure to start making film prices go up rather than down? This is conjecture, I have no hard evidence to support this other than decreasing film sales to the consumer market. If the cost of film holds steady or starts to rise, if it's competing with digital cinematography tools, which take advantage of digital technologies' penchant for rapid improvements and rapid cost decreases, that only hastens the day when digital cinematography can compete more effectively with film. How long might this take? I don't know, I'd guess (wildly) 2 to 20 years for this to start happening. At what point might, or what if, Kodak were to start selling film at a loss, solely to be perceived as "the high quality choice" used by Spielberg etc., as some other industries have done with decreasing margin products in order to promote the rest of their product line? This is all conjecture, motivated by me wanting digital filmmaking become more prevalent. (At least I can see SOME of my own bias, OK? ; ) )

Is HD the BEST choice overall? I think it _might_ be a good choice for certain types of projects as a budget driven thing, but certainly not all projects. Further research into budgets and end results quality will further illuminate the specific answers for specific types of projects. I'd certainly advocate digital for documentaries needing a lot of footage on a tight budget, for instance. Dust To Glory is a good example of mixed formats in a doc - they used DV for the "need tons of this stuff footage", literally placing DV cameras with people watching the race and saying "shoot'em as they go by!"; they shot HD for a lot of the "hero" footage and interviews, and they used 16mm for their (gorgeous) high speed, slow motion stuff. And for the most part, you don't notice or care much what each segment was shot on - it's exciting stuff. Even more impressive is that it was all edited with a heavily compressed, 14-20 MB/sec wavelet based codec using Cineform in Premiere Pro. But I digress, back to topic....

In a world of open ended budget, film rocks-detail, expressive depth of field, great exposure lattitude, etc.. But film, at least 35mm for sure, is overall a more costly medium to work with than HD. Arguments can be made about 16mm quality vis a vis HD, but the cost arguments are falling down for 16mm-most budgets claiming 16mm & HD are neck and neck were based on traditional high end posting environments, and it's not necessary to rent those kinds of facilities for equal quality from what I've seen so far. Bang for the buck? That's still debatable I think. Or at least I'm not satisfied I know for sure on that one.

Perhaps the best bang for the buck MIGHT be (I don't know, I'm surmising, not positing) to shoot 16mm and do a 10 bit 4:4:4 1080 res desktop based digital intermediate process, using the latest/greatest desktop tools like Final Cut Pro, BMD or AJA cards, SATA or X-Serve RAID storage, After Effects/combustion/Digital Fusion/Shake for visual effects, split monitoring (HDLink/HDP/one2one for pixel level detail monitoring on 23" LCDs, and downsampled SD analog component on calibrated studio monitor for color accurate/critical work), and products like Final Touch HD for color correction for eventual mastering to either HDCAM SR or a filmout. That's what I think is optimal at the moment, I'm sure that'll be tweaked in a week after NAB.

As Dennis used to say, "Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."

-I'm trying to position myself as a consultant to help those filmmakers that want to take advantage of the technology but not tackle it all themselves. If you want help on what format to shoot/telecine to, what to get, how to set it up, what workflows to use, how to keep your editor running and happy, how to be ready to hand it off to the various people that need to touch/work on the project, that is what I'm offering myself to assist in.

Thanks to all on CML who contributed this feedback, even when it was harshly offered, it is much appreciated. 80+% of what is above is from CMLers, not me.

OK, enough rambling for now.

-ramblin' mikey

HAVE ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ALONG THESE LINES? PLEASE POST THEM TO COMMENTS USING THE LINK IMMEDIATELY BELOW THIS POST!

MacNN | Flip4Mac tools integrate WMV, QT for Mac users

Make, edit, and play WM9 formatted media on your Mac.

They have modules for playback only ($10), modules to import and edit in FCP etc. ($50), and compress to WM7/8/9 ($180 for Pro version).

At NAB in Telestream booth No. SU11404

Mike's Comments: Cool.

Mike's Further Comments: This is good news - WM9 is really good stuff, and quite prevalent on the PC side. Flip4Mac has been shipping for a little while to compress to the format, and this fleshes out their product line in a very useful way. I will need to lay hands on this and play with it pronto to see how well it works in the real world, especially their high definition WM9 encoding and playback components.

-mike

Understanding HD Formats

Found this on the web while researching something else - it explains the HD tape formats fairly well.

Here's another similar article

Here's a page on Sony's SRW-5500 HDCAM SR deck, which is mostly the same as the SRW-5000 but can now record to HDCAM as well, but doesn't address the 880 megabit SRW-1 only format (it only does 440 megabit).

Here's an HDCAM SR FAQ, it's a good primer on the 4:4:4 capable tape format.

Enjoy! There will be a test, this is your homework.

-mike

Hey all -

If you're planning on, or have already shot, a 16mm or 35mm project that you want to do a digital intermediate of, or want an HD master of; please get in touch with me. I have some technology developed to do 10 bit uncompressed 4:4:4 telecine to disk at reasonable price points that I wish to field test.

The main advantage is quality - totally uncompressed, unlike all tape formats (even HDCAM SR).

A quick rundown or 1080 resolution storage options:

my solution - 1920x1080, 10 bit, 4:4:4 (if the telecine supports it, otherwise 4:2:2) completely uncompressed, 1:1
HDCAM SR - 1920x1080, 10 bit, 4:4:4 compressed 4.2:1 (or 4:2:2 at 2.7:1)
D-5 - 1920x1080, 10 bit, 4:2:2, compressed 5:1
HDCAM - 1440x1080, 3:1:1, compressed 7.1:1
DVCPRO HD - 1280x1080, 8 bit 4:2:2, compressed 6.7:1 (and no 24p support on decks).

As you can see, the solution I'm providing provides the highest possible HD resolution recording, with no reduction in resolution, 1024 vs 256 gradations of color, and no compression artifacts whatsoever. Exactly what comes off the telecine is what you get.

There are overall cost savings with my system as well, since it doesn't require rental of a deck for ingest into your NLE, or an HD capture card to edit with. First projects will receive a substantial discount.

I believe this process can offer cost & quality advantages over traditional tape based telecine workflows.

It also offers many of the advantages of a traditional high end 2K digital intermediate at a fraction of the cost:

2K scans: 2048x1556, 4:4:4 RGB, 10 bit log
my process: 1920x1080, 4:4:4 RGB 10 bit linear (10 bit log Phase II, later this summer hopefully)

2/3 of the resolution, same color space/resolution, the same bit depth, but linear not logarithmic (for the moment...log is higher quality but much more awkward to work with) at a fraction of the price.

Compare my process to 2K scanning costs, and the price/performance advantage is substantial. 2K log is better...but is it THAT much better for your project's needs? Do you need it?

If you're planning on editing with Final Cut Pro, and want to produce the highest quality digital master you can, with maximum flexibiilty, let's talk.

Projects with strong color correction or visual effects needs preferred, as they will have the most to gain from this workflow.

Offline/online is all worked out, hardware/software testing has been going on for months, I just want someone else's project to work with, make sure it all works as planned "out in the wild." My own field tests will continue upon my return from NAB.

Email me at mike at hdforindies dot com if this is something you'd be seriously interested in learning more about or utilizing.

If you have friends or co-workers that might be interested, send'em my way please.

-mike

..I want to re-write it to be sure I'm on track. It'll be back up tonight/tomorrow. If you are press and want to know more, email me.

-mike at hdforindies dot com

MacNN | Apple updates iMovie HD, iPhoto, iDVD

Apple has tweaked it's iLife apps to fix a bunch of bugs, including stuff that would affect HDV editing, DVD authoring, stuff like that.

ProLost: Sin City

Also on ProLost, Stu has some links to coverage of the work he and his company The Orphanage did on Sin City. They were responsible for all of the effects in the "That Yellow Bastard" storyline (1 or 3) in Sin City.

There's some really good stuff in there - my favorites are some comparisons between the original Frank Miller artwork and the completed shots, and some very informative raw/finished shots showing the raw greenscreen elements and the finished black and white shots. These show the TREMENDOUS amount of work that went into creating the digital environments.

Keep in mind, there was very little in the way of sets & props used in this movie, the CG folks had to invent the backgrounds.

-mike

....that of course, he contributed to, called Adobe After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques (boy, I need to get my Amazon Affiliates stuff set up soon!).

Want to learn some more about compositing with After Effects?

Buy/read/learn/grok about it here

-mike

MacCentral has posted reviews of three different audio apps today:

Review of Logic Pro 7.01

Pros: Most instruments, effects, and tools available in one box; gorgeous user interface; deep feature set; integration with GarageBand and Apple Loops.

Cons: Logic Environment makes some basic tasks more confusing than necessary; limited automatic audio slicing and warping; editing requires switching between multiple windows.

Review of Digital Performer 4.52

Pros: Easy to use, flexible, one-window interface; robust Digidesign support; powerful beat-slicing and scoring and marker features; numerous workflow time-savers.

Cons: No included instruments.

Review of Cubase SX 3.01

Pros: Cross-platform compatible; MIDI editing in main window; powerful arrangement, audio warping, and MIDI features; ideal for complex software-and-hardware integration.

Cons: Limited included instruments and effects; sometimes-clunky interface; no support for Audio Units or Digidesign DAE.

Mike's Comments: I am soooooo not an audio guy, I barely know how to differentiate these products, so you're on your own.

: )

All I know is, as with any aspect of moviemaking, bring in experts if you aren't competent on your own. And if you can't afford to bring someone in, take someone to lunch/dinner and learn all you can.

-mike

Random post production thought:

Motion is good for realtime stuff - positioning, scaling, rotating, stuff like that.

But it's render quality is sub-par for high quality work - poor motion blur rendering, and only 8 bits/channel max, not 10, not log.

But Automatic Duck makes a tool to get a Motion timeline into After Effects...where you can do high quality rendering.

As part of the DIY DI process, I wonder how valid it would be to use Motion to sketch stuff out, then render out of AE for high quality finals, with good motion blur, high bit depth, and maybe even eLin for better compositing results?

I should try this.

-mike

Drachenfeder - Drake digital HD film camera

Somebody sent in a link to this - $20K 720p camera that records uncompressed 10 bit log to disk. I think cameras of this nature will be important to indie filmmakers....whether this particular one is, I don't know. Samples are all dim and undersaturated, makes me wonder:

-whether they are hiding something (like blown highlight detail)
-whether this was their aesthetic choice
-what sensor the camera is using

It uses a 2/3" HD CMOS sensor, so it is most likely recording the raw, greyscale, undemosaiced output to disk, which is why it requires post processing to make is usable.

You can convert that raw footage to sequential files (on a PC it sounds like), and from there convert those image sequences to whatever format/codec you want.

Log frame sequences are harder to handle than linear frame sequences, since most NLE's can't handle logarithmic footage.

I wonder if you could load a log to lin conversion curve into an HDLink to monitor in realtime when editing with the log footage?

Otherwise, I'd think you might cook out an offline codec version in linear color space, edit, then relink to the logarithmic online version. Then perhaps use something like Final Touch HD to do your color correction, tuning for intended deliverable (filmout or mastering to tape).

The image quality doesn't look stunning so far, but I want to learn more. This kind of approach - capturing digital log RGB to disk - I think is the closest thing to film digital offers at this point.

Issues of sensor quality, sensor size, light sensitivity, color fidelity, exposure lattitude, etc. are the areas that are most lacking in terms of image quality compared to film from what I can tell.

-mike

Sonnet | Downloads

Sonnet has added hotswap capability to their eSATA 8 and Tempo X 4+4 cards. Download the new firmware for hotswap capability.

Sonnet | Tempo-X eSATA 4+4 - 8-Port Serial ATA PCI-X Host Controller

Sonnet today announced their new TEMPO-X eSATA 4+4 card. It replaces the prior card that had SATA connections. What's eSATA? Just SATA but with a sturdier, external intended connector. eSATA on one end, SATA on the other cables are available.

It also supports hot swap and brings back the activity LEDs present on the beta boards. $200.

MacNN | RealViz to add SMART engine to MatchMover Pro

Essentially a new move matching architecture to be incorporated into their product line. Showing at booth SL4065 at NAB. MatchMover Pro 3.1 is $3,500.

MacNN | Automatic Duck to debut Pro Export FCP 3.0 at NAB

An improved version of their tool to export your FCP timeline to Avid - not only will you be able to get your offline from FCP onto an Avid for onlining, you'll be able to export your sound mix via OMX to Pro Tools with levels and keyframes intact (a big improvement).

-mike

Think Secret - Revealed: New Power Mac G5, iMac G5, eMac Specs

They aren't sure whether the rumored machines would have single or dual core G5's. A dual core chip would run markedly faster than two single chips due to improved communication speed between the two chips.

A dual 2.0, dual 2.3, and dual 2.7 models are anticipated.

IF true, this makes a bit of sense - we aren't getting the much much faster machines we've wanted. Every time Apple wants to slip by with just slightly faster machines, they "ahem" and slide them out at relatively idle times - between big shows/events, for instance.

Again, IF true, then this makes sense - Apple will release these slightly faster machines in short order, and then at MWSF in January possibly announce the quad dual core machines with PCI Express and all the new goodies. That would be a HUGE leap forward, and a large engineering challenge with so many new components. They would announce the high end box's availability as "next month", and it wouldn't be available until March/April if events unfolded at their usual pace, acording to historical experience.

If all these assumptions are true, that means we won't see dramatically faster Macs...for almost a year from now.

Harrumph.

Again, this is all conjecture based on rumor so we'll have to wait and see.

-mike

Macworld UK - Sony calls for alliance in DVD war

Mike's Comments: this is the second time I've read press reports of Sony offering to merge the two competing standards (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) for high definition DVDs. A single standard is what is needed - if there are two different formats, with studios releasing on only one or the other, it would incredibly hinder consumer adoption - would you buy a device that wouldn't play all of MGM's movies? Or all of Disney's, or Warner's? Of course not.

So the offered hand for a merged standard is a good thing. Whatever other politics might be going on behind it, I don't know. But this is progress.

MacNN | Popwire to debut Mac OS X product upgrades at NAB

Mike's CommentsCompression Master gets a long needed upgrade - they are claiming "full QuickTime integration" which I read as meaning full QuickTime read and write - if it's a QT codec, you should be able to read and write it. Previously they had to hand code for new codecs, which meant DVCPRO HD, Sheer, etc. were out of the question.

It supports all kinds of other stuff - MPEG-2, H.264, WM9 (maybe VC-1 as well?), so it'll be good. This has been a big "missing piece" in the workflow stuff I've been working on.

-mike

MTI Film To Showcase DI Workflow Solutions At NAB

30fps ingest of film telecine stuff. Interesting...

ROOT6 to Show ContentAgent-XR 2K WM9 HD Transcoding

Got serious quantities of media to encode and manage? Perhaps consider this. Handles SD, HD, WMV HD DVD, etc.

MacNN | Red Giant to launch three applications at NAB

Knoll Light Factory 3.0 - lets you create lense flares. Let your bad scifi fantasies run rife....

Primatte Keyer 3.0 - color keying software - I used an earlier version several years ago, very simple to use, good results.

Key Correct Pro 1.0 - lets you mess with alpha channels in a lot of ways, and color match any 2 layers

Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac

If you know which Mac model you're interested in, this is a handy little list of whether it's a good time to buy it at the moment, based on whether they are about to be upgraded or not in the near future.

Son of the USB 2.0 Hi-speed Flash drive roundup : Page 1

10 USB flash drives reviewed (aka thumb drives, keychains, pen drives, memory stick, whatever).

I use these to carry drivers, FCP project files (not the media) and other stuff around.

FCP TitleCleaner 1.0 - VersionTracker:

From the description on versiontracker.com:

TitleCleaner is a tool which makes use of the Final Cut Pro XMLs to clean text from subtitles much easier and faster than it can be done within FCP. TitleCleaner can be used to quickly clean titles from Final Cut Pro XML, eliminating duplicate/extra spaces, additional carriage returns, and more. TitleCleaner automates the tasks with a few clicks and also allows users to perform a custom "Find/Replace" and spell checking within the text of the generators in the XML as well as batch renaming of clips based on the titles themselves.

2-pop - The Digital Filmmaker's Resource Site

If you're into After Effects, this is a good thing. More for the heavy AE geek into scripting behaviors and stuff, or heavy production. Distribute layers vertically, arrange layers as grid, that kind of thing.

AppleInsider | Special Apple NAB event to usher in new products

Bunch o' rumors.

I feel confident about the new apps and bundle - expect new versions of Shake & FCP for sure, Motion & DVD Studio Pro possibly (sure, why not?).

The media app? Would be interesting, wait and see. Bundle that with a Mac Mini and a DVR software/hardware solution and it'd be very very interesting.

They think new hardware is coming (new G5's), I don't. One good point raised in the article - Apple has never launched new hardware at NAB. WWDC in June is the much more likely venue, with September/October as a "available on the street" date for highest end models (which is what we'd be interested in, anyway).

-mike

Three Studios Join Technicolor in D-Cinema Plan

Disney, Warner, & Sony have teamed with Technicolor to roll out digital projectors in 3000 screens across the country, with the studios covering some portion of the costs as an attempt to offset the costs of creating and distributing prints.

Mike's Comments - about time it happened this way. One of the best quotes I heard at last year's Digital Cinema Summit at NAB was that the studios were the primary beneficiaries of digital projection, but the theaters were being expected to cover the costs, and that would never fly. I heard wind of this a couple of months ago, nice to see it happening.

With digital projection, yet another barrier to distribution of indie projects is potentially removed - film prints cost $30-60K US (or more for DI process). You could already screen digitally at all the major festivals, but for there to be NO requirement for a film print ever is a nice option. Now, whether they'll start allowing regional screenings, or micro-distributions, or micro-runs, is another question...if the big studios are fronting some large portion of the costs, does that mean that ONLY their digital movies can be screened on them according to the contracts? THAT would be a very interesting question...and quite possibly it might be that way - that they wouldn't want/allow somebody else's digital movie to be shown on the projectors they paid for...yet another potential way for the established players to control the means of distribution...

-mike

Macworld: News: SDK for Canon XL2 camcorder coming in July

This could be interesting geeky fun - a Mac SDK (software developer kit) to let you control the XL2's functions from a Mac app. Should be some interesting capabilities to be extracted from this - timelapse, funky exposure settings, multi-frame blending, etc.

More details on Panasonic P2 camera on this Creative Cow Forum

This is a thread, that includes this link that seems to confirm a few details:

-16:9
-3 1/3" CCD chips
-CineGamma
-FireWire port (for DV or all the others too? Makes sense that it would, but not confirmed...)
-CineSwitch (is this 24p? -mike)
-1080i60, 1080p24, 1080p30, 720p60, 720p24, 720p30, 480i60, 480p24, 480p30p
-DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO25, DV
-P2

Mike's Comments:

So it's nice to see this stuff confirmed on the Panasonic site. If I'm interpreting this correctly, and I may not be, I think the formats should break down like this:

DVCPRO HD: -1080i60, 1080p24, 1080p30, 720p60, 720p24, 720p30

The 1080 res will be 1280x1080 pixels to tape. The 720 formats will be 960x720 to tape. These are the resolutions recorded to tape, subsampled from their higher end source. This camera is expected to have a 1280x720 image sensor (see prior report).

The interesting challenge will be figuring out which resolution to record in to get most useful info. I'd previously written that the 1080p24 would be the best way to get full detail - but since the 1280x720 source chip image would be probably blown up to 1920x1080, then downsampled to 1280x1080, I'm not so positive that distortions from the stretching may goof it up. I don't think you'd be getting a 1:1 correlation between image sensor pixels and pixels recorded to tape, even though they are both numerically 1280 pixels wide (this is different from what I'd postulated before). Or wait a minute, maybe it is, and they're just stretching in the vertical dimension to get up to 1080 from 720. Argh. Late, tired, too much math for my head right now. I'm thinking 1080p24 WILL be worth doing, I think I had it right in the first place (sorry for the distraction but hey! It's a BLOG!). : )

720p24 mode has quality issues as well - it has been shrunk to 960x720 from 1280x720, so you've tossed some data out there, never to be recovered. Your NLE will stretch it back out to 1280 for display, but it's making up pixel color values for the 960=>1280 stretch, rather than having original, accurate, recorded, non-guesssed-at pixel color values to work with.

Elsewhere in another thread, someone said the European model would be around $5500 US...this is in line with what I was expecting, so definitely price competitive with the ProHD camera from JVC (less actually but $1500ish). My way, way uninformed guess is that the JVC will capture better detail, but the Panasonic will resolve more color detail and have fewer artifacts...but that's massive conjecture at this point.

DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO 25, DV: 480i60, 480p24, 480p30p - 720x480 pixels

This sounds like a REALLLLLLLY nice camera. If you thought the DVX100a was the s**t, then this is the killer s**t...for probably not much more money.

They'll spill details at NAB, but when will it ship? Probably not right away...so when? Summer?

Sony only had vague details about their HDV camera, and it took them until November to release the prosumer model, and until what, Dec/Jan for the pro Z1U model?

With this level of detail published and established at this point, and lots more details due next week, I'm guessing they are 0-4 months away from shipping...but that's a guess.

-mike

MacNN | Apple announces "Tiger" bargains

OS X 10.4 ("Tiger"), iWorks, & iLife for $250. $40 off. Not a bad deal if you need some very basic DTP software and presentation software.

Macworld: News: Kanguru offers 20GB Zipper Pro portable drive

Sweet little 20GB portable USB 2.0 drive. But requires a powered bus, and most laptops' USB bus is NOT powered, at least while running from battery, so that may seriously limit this device's usefulness. I'd love a 20GB drive that drew power from my PowerBook that is this small (2.4x4.1x0.4 inches, 40g).

-mike

Torrey Loomis of Silverado Systems forwarded me some info in an email:

From Nick Rashby at AJA:

There are three new FREE utilities available for immediate download at our website:

AJA KONA TV -
an application for playing Kona QuickTime movies directly to the KONA VideoOutput. It's a quickie way to put clips "on-air" without having to launch Final Cut Pro, make a sequence, etc.

AJA KONA QTToDPXTranslator -
takes a 10-bit RGB QuickTime movie (e.g. one that was captured via KONA 2 DualLink) and turns it into a series of DPX files (the DPX file format is a common interchange format for high-end film and graphics workstations).
Mike's Comments - this would be very handy for folks in high end post, as would the one below...

AJA KONA DPXToQTTranslator -
does the opposite of the above: it turns a folder full of DPX files into a KONA 10-bit RGB QuickTime movie.

These are in addition to the previously released free utilities, the AJA Data Rate Calculator, and the AJA KONA System Test, and add real value to the already overwhelming reasons to sell your clients KONA 2!

More information can be found at the support section of our website:

As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions, via email to:

Sales - sales@aja.com
Support - support@aja.com

Just thought this would be of general interest.

-mike

First, a little background, further info on the JVC cameras - they shoot in 59.94 progressive mode, but do have a 24p mode. It does NOT record native 24p to tape as Steve Mullen had stated in a previously published link, it records with a cadence, akin to the way the Varicam, XL2, and/or DVX100A record 24p on a 60p or 30i medium. It's most like the Varicam's solution, working with a 59.94 timebase and duplicating frames to pad out to 60p from 24p. So this will be a true 24p HD camera for under $10,000 (under $8000 more likely from what I gleaned from the European price, translating to dollars).

It is unlikely that FCP 5 will handle this correctly right off the bat, however I've been communicating with Frederic from LumiereHD who will be demonstrating a 24p solution for getting 24p ProHD footage into FCP at the JVC booth at NAB. Obviously, it will handle the 60p format as well, and continue to handle the Sony and JVC HDV formats as before. There will be other improvements to the program as well, just can't talk about those yet. Stay tuned for details - I'll be covering this promptly at NAB next week, I leave on Friday to attend the Digital Cinema Summit.

-mike

Think Secret - Tiger shipping April 29, New Power Mac G5s likely at NAB

Not clear what the PowerMacs will be exactly. The article speculates Blu-Ray burners will be included, I don't think they are ready yet.

I'm betting we'll see a speed increase, perhaps to the 3.0 GHz we were promised to receive over a year ago, but I'd be very, very surprised if these are the dual core (allowing for quad processors) that have been under development, and again I'd be very surprised if these Macs had PCI Express, an even faster bus than the current PCI-X, which is faster than PCI.

-mike

see Apple site today

Ships April 29th with all it's groovy new stuff.

For futher details, see here, here, here, and here.

Here's Apple's page on Tiger.

Tiger Server will also ship at the same time. Yet more info on that here.

My suspicion is that FCP 5 will require Tiger. Therefore FCP 5 will NOT be shipping at the show, since Tiger won't ship for a week after the show closes. So April 29th is the earliest possible ship date for FCP 5. And since it's such a major rev, I wouldn't be surprised if they are still working on it and it won't ship until May, or June...or (shudder) possiblly July..

LinkHD Wireless Camera System -

Link Research showing a working model of it's LinkHD wireless HD doohickey. Compression certainly involved....

Details on the Venom RAM pack for Thomson Viper camera

-dockable on Viper
-RGB 10 bit 4:4:4
-10 minute capacity
-can do 4:2:2 as well for 18 minutes
-solid state, no moving parts
-can do wireless (Bluetooth) metadata entry that is permanently associated with content
-2 or 3 on set at a time in a likely movie setup
-about $60,000 US. Each. Ouch.

This is cheaper than film, right? Uhhhh.....

Sony's DSR-400 and DSR-450

Not HD, the DSR-450WS shoots 16:9, 24psf, on DVCAM, for $18K list.

The next jump above this is the Panasonic SDX900, which does DVCPRO50, for around $25K, which has been called a good competitor to Digibeta at lesser cost. It records twice the color information that DVCAM does.

Be interesting to see how these compare to JVC and Panasonic's new low end HD offerings.

-mike

Live from NAB

Talks about Sony's new HDCAM SR deck, the SRW-5500. Now records & plays back HDCAM as well as HDCAM SR, but does NOT handle the SRW-1 only, 880 Mbit format for highest quality 4:4:4 and stereoscopic (3D, dual camera) HD. Better, but doesn't fix all the problems.

Lists for $98,000. Ouch.

Keeps making me think about RaveHD and Doremi.

-mike

Live from NAB

A head's up on NLE stuff to watch out for at NAB. No spoilers, nothing dramatically new or unknown, just the known stuff to check out.

I consider this my shopping list.

-mike

Live from NAB

From an official NAB source, a little info on upcoming stuff. Not entirely accurate, it mentions "Canon will debut it's XL2" ....which has been on the market for quite some time (shot with one a coupla months ago).

anyway, this is camera and lense specific.

Think Secret - Briefly: More Apple seeds, Discreet update, iPod graphics engineer

ThinkSecret is reporting that 10.3.9 is nearing completion nad should ship around the same time as the OS X 10.4 Client, 10.4 Server might ship slightly later.

Lustre, Discreet's very high end color grading software, might be coming to the Mac. If so, we'll see glimmers of it at NAB. This would be GREAT news, if only to legitimize Macs as high end stations to work on. I've been seeing a lot of ragging on sub-$100K gear on the CML mailing list. But this move surprises me.

Then again, these sites are infamous for spouting total vapor, so we'll have to wait and see.

Interview and Pictures: JVC's ProHD Camcorders from filmimaging.com.

Interview with JVC guy, and includes high res photos of the sub-$10K camera, discusses the $28K cameras (including lense).

Really nice, high res pictures of the under $8000 GYHD100U here, here, here, and here

-they are claiming to have superior quality MPEG-2 encoding.

high end camera (the GYHD7000) will have:
-2/3 inch CMOS imagers
-interchangable lenses
-720p or 1080i
-$27,950 list US
-1920x1080 sensor resolution

lower end camera (GYHD100U)
-3 1/3" inch CCD chip camera
-interchangable bayonet mount lenses
-under $8K US
-24p
-widely adjustable gamma controls
-skin tone detection
-settings savable on memory card
-does 720/30p
-1280x720 sensor
-no 1080i mode apparently
-definitely strictly progressive
-2 XLR mike inputs
-384 kilobits/sec MPEG layer 1 audio/channel, "roughly CD quality" (hmmm, we'll see -mike)
-the ProHD format allows for 4 audio channels eventually, this camera only uses 2
-6 frame GOP (as opposed to 15 with the Sony cameras)
-supposedly more robust, less likely to have dropouts than DV
-can record ProHD format straight to hard disk (hooray!)
-will be demonstrating at NAB with Avid.
-there will be demonstrated solutions with FCP and Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro will be shown using Cineform. No mention made of what the FCP solution is (I know but can't say, suffice it to say there will be a prompt solution)

Other Stuff at NAB from JVC:
-a ProHD deck, the BR-HD50U - HDMI output for monitors (nice!), (but what about component or HD-SDI?)
-new 10-inch HDTV monitor, the DT-V100U
-plasmas, LCDs and CRT monitors throughout the booth
-a 1920x1080 progressive D-ILA projector , the DLA-HD2K.

Mike's Comments - it'll be nice to have a midrange camera in the $30K price point. That gives us HD cameras in the $3K-$8K range, then again at $28K, then at $43K, then at $65K, then at $100K and up. Nice to have more options. I'm still very concerned about the MPEG-2 efficiency of this format and how well it holds up to color correction (I've had problems with the Sony HDV footage in this regard), we'll just have to wait and see. Nice glass, nice imagers etc. may all be great, but the compession may be the achilles heel on this one.

-mike

MacDevCenter.com: Xsan and You

talks about some workflow models and uses for Xsan in a hypothetical post environment.

The author talks about working with uncompressed and compressed SD video, but compresed HD video is smaller than uncompressed SD video, so workflow issues are similar.

Rumors from around the campfire indicate that there is NO CoreImage support in the upcoming Shake 4 (expected to be announced at NAB, don't know about shipping date though).

But there will be FCP integration. Sounds like, from my limited info, that there will be a "send to Shake" type of option from FCP, so that you can send a clip or sequence of clips to Shake. The render out from the FileOut node would then replace/relink/link to the proxied stuff in FCP.

If this is correct, sounds like you'd be able to do some high level stuff on a clip by clip basis in Shake. This is useful and an improvement, but doesn't solve the whole high end color correction challenge, but this is a big improvement.

I'm still really interested in seeing Color Finesse 2.0 at NAB, and see how much/how fast/how good/how efficient a workflow it is. As well as taking Roland up on that offer of a demo key to mess around with Final Touch HD. I'm starting to get some favorable user reports in. Somebody said it rendered faster than After Effects, but that's a far, far cry from realtime on the rendering (previews are realtime in FTHD). But how long DOES it take? That'll be a crucial question, and also depend on how many soft edge selections with selective color corections, etc., I would imagine.

-mike

Gateway Computers - Product Details for Gateway 823 LTO-3 Autoloader storage

Jeff Kreines pointed out this LTO-3 tape autoloader after I commented on $5000ish dollar LTO-2 drives. LTO-3 is better, for only a coupla thousand more, you get more capacity and more speed, too.

Macworld: News: Hitachi eyes 1TB desktop drives with new tech...but not until 2007. Perpendicular recording. "Plastics, son, plastics!"

Beginners Guide to NAB

Going to NAB? Read this as a primer.

AppleInsider | Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger build declared gold master

Looks like Tiger (OS X 10.4) is getting close - should be announced at NAB or thereabouts.

-mike

MacNN | New Magnum Autoloader offers 1.4 TB backup

Need to back up a ton a of HD material? This is a really good option. I haven't seen an LTO3 autoloader's price yet, which is the only other option to consider for these kinds of volume of data.

The BRU software is the New Thing to use instead of Retrospect, which I hear more and more complaints about the recent versions.

-mike

Media 100 sw is a new, software only version of their Media 100 HD product, lacking the hardware to capture or output to tape. Supports all Media 100 codecs, RT effects (depending on hard drives and processor speed), media & graphics import & export, compatible with Media 100 HD.

It'll ship later this year, they'll be giving out demos at NAB. This is a good thing for them to do, it would let you capture on one station, then edit on another (with no video output, however). Good low cost possibility. But I still don't think this product line has legs.

Another article on the subject from MacWorld magazine.

Yet another article (from MacNN)

-mike

Macworld: News: LaCie offers 2TB Bigger Disk Extreme

La Cie has announced a new Bigger Disk Extreme with 2TB of storage (4 500 GB drives). These are a big chunk of storage set up as a hardware RAID 0. A lot of storage, but vulnerable to failure - if one of the 4 fails, it's all gone. Available later in the spring, $2,299.

JVC GY-HD100 camcorder with interchangeable lenses | Digital Camera Magazine: "JVC GY-HD100"

Article: Simplifying Your On-Lining

In FCP. I've just skimmed, but looks promising.

Creative Cow - has this article with more details on the FireStore DV File Converter Pro which will support P2 stuff.

Alienware MJ-12m 7700 Mobile Desktop

A huge, heavy, desktop replacement laptop. Need some serious horsepower in a PC laptop? Consider this 13 lb monster of a laptop. Need USB 2.0, 2 FireWire ports, a builtin webcam, RAID0 or RAID 1 in a LAPTOP? This has'em. About $3100.

-mike

The New York Times > Movies > Movie Review | 'Sin City': A Savage and Sexy City of Pulp Fiction Regulars

They get introspective, and take aim at Rodriguez's perhaps overly literal translation of the comic book to the screen.

-mike

CNN.com - Review: 'Sin City' a visual pioneer - Apr 1, 2005

CNN's take on Sin City.

Everybody is acknowledging what a stylisic and technological breakthrough this is.

(I'm still trying to organize my own thoughts.)

News of the dead: Sin City

Wiley's first comments on Sin City. Mine coming up.

Wired News: Sin City Expands Digital Frontier

Wired's take on Sin City. Mine to follow (writing it now)

-mike