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NAB thread

LethalWolfe

LethalWolfe

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jan 11, 2002
9,370
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Los Angeles
I know that once Apple previews the next FCP at the Supermeet Tuesday night the main page is going to blow up but hopefully we can have a slightly more sane discussion here as well as talk about other cool things that show up at NAB.

Baselight introduces Baselight on Final Cut Pro
One of the first big announcements out of the NAB gate comes from Filmlight and it involves their Baselight product line. The overall news is an update to Baselight (taking it to version 4.3) and a new Blackboard 2 control surface. But the biggest surprise comes in the form of the Baselight Plug-In for Final Cut Pro. This “under $1,000” plugin looks to offer parts of the actual Baselight user interface right in FCP’s Viewer window.
Click to expand...

This is cool for a number of reasons. Not only is it another inexpensive color grading tool for FCP but it also allows you to send your FCP Baselight corrections to a stand alone Baselight system via XML. So you can do a first pass on your own and then send it to more experienced, and much more expensive, colorist to finish it off.


Lethal
 
The Baselight announcement has got me all excited. (NERD!)

I'm not expecting as many announcements in the big categories this year. There were a lot of unveilings last year, and major updates would be premature for a lot of those products. And it seems like all the big cameras have been announced. So it leaves the stage for the likes of the Baselight announcement.

Initially I was a little lukewarm, but now I'm really behind the idea of using the iPad as a touch-screen interface for Mac applications. So I'd like to see some of that. But I'm expecting the big thing to be workflow, and it seems like there are going to be numerous company hook-ups to that end.

But whatever its reception, Final Cut is going to be the story of NAB 2011.
 
LethalWolfe said:
Got Final Cut? Get Media Composer for Just $995.
Click to expand...

Wonder how long Avid had been planning that...


I don't know if this will be helpful or an irritant, but I'm just going to do a dump of what I've heard so far...

Sony:
F65 — 8K sensor, 4K 16-bit "raw" recording
PMW-TD300 — 3D with built-in lens, shoulder-mount, 1/2" sensors, recording XDCam EX to SxS
HXR-NX3D1U — 3D at 60i, 2D at 60p, handheld, auto-parallax option, AVCHD to built-in 96GB flash drive
Vegas 10.0d — 3D Blu-ray creation

Panasonic:
AG-3DP1 — 3D, shoulder-mount, 1/3", AVC-Intra, 12-60fps
AG-HPX250 — handheld, 1/3", AVC-Intra
AJ-SF100 — P2 to LTO software
AVC-Ultra preview — "visually lossless" 4K 4:4:4

Canon:
Pair of PL-mount "4K" zooms

Arri/nVidia/Iridas:
Real-time CUDA-based ArriRAW SDK

Adobe Production Premium 5.5:
Adobe switching to annual .0, .5, .0, .5, etc. cycle
Studio Daily suggest upgrade will cost as much as .0 release
Can rent suite for $129/month
Audition replaces Soundbooth
Over 10 new card supported for CUDA
AE Warp Stabilizer deals with vertical rolling shutter "crushing"

AJA:
Free 4K Mode for Kona 3G owners
Preview of "Riker" — 3D, 5K, real-time scaling up and down, modular
Preview of "Phaser" — Thunderbolt, 3D

Blackmagic:
Free Resolve Lite
Resolve 8 — OpenCL for iMac and 17" MBP
UltraStudio 3D — Thunderbolt I/O
UltraStudio SDI — USB3, $395
DeckLink 4K — $595
HyperDeck Shuttle — file-based SDI playout
Media Express 3 — tape capture and playout

Promise:
SANlink — Thunderbolt to Fibre adaptor

Fraunhofer:
Curator Archive Suite — Master Archive Package (MAP) and Immediate Access Package (IAP) for Digital Cinema production
EasyDCP — software-based DCP creation and playback

On Tuesday SCCE is showing a comparison of 11 digital cinema cameras and Kodak Vision 3 film. Alexa, F35 and RED One M-X, as expected, but also Panasonic AF100, Sony F3 and Canon and Nikon DSLRs.


So Panasonic are offering the AVC-I handheld everyone was asking for 3 years ago, Canon are showing very little, and Sony are laying down a real marker at the high-end. If Studio Daily have it right, Adobe seem to be wanting a lot of your money for half an update. And Blackmagic... Wow...
 
All the early impressions I've seen for CS5.5 have been glowing though. And, yes,Blackmagic has been working overtime. A plethora of new devices, a sold upgrade to DaVinci and offering a 'lite' version of DaVinci for free! The apparent support for OpenCL is also very cool. Once the Mac Pros get updated w/Thunderbolt I'm most likely going to upgrade from my 1,1 but trying to decide if I want to go ATi or Nvidia has been killing me.


Lethal
 
ScopeBox is now $99 (down from $699). I don't have any hands on experience with the software but the previous versions seemed to be well reviewed. It does take a dedicated machine to run (even a G5) but that's still less expensive than buying traditional hardware scopes which can start at $7k.


Lethal
 
LethalWolfe said:
ScopeBox is now $99 (down from $699). I don't have any hands on experience with the software but the previous versions seemed to be well reviewed. It does take a dedicated machine to run (even a G5) but that's still less expensive than buying traditional hardware scopes which can start at $7k.


Lethal
Click to expand...

Huge, HUGE...Mega Fan of Scope Box, using it for several years with HVX and HPX cameras F/W direct to MBP... Significant money saved during the high price days of the P2 cards. Not as bad these days, but if it's a stationary or relatively still position shot, ya can't beat ScopeBox...even though I've owned CS2-CS5, I significantly prefer SB to On Location. and I paid the $699 price moons ago...to their credit, I think the major upgrade was only fifty to a hundred bucks. Their service is second to none....and their support techs are active posters at dvinfo.net with their own specific location on the board.

At $99, ScopeBox is an absolute steal!

J
 
KeithPratt said:
I don't know if this will be helpful or an irritant, but I'm just going to do a dump of what I've heard so far...
Click to expand...
It's helpful like dropping a kid in a candy shop is helpful:D

Panasonic's AG-AC160 and AG-AC130 look interesting too. Better competition for the Sony NX5P.
 
CORRECTION: Blackmagic's HyperDeck Shuttle is actually an uncompressed recorder. And it costs $345!

CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 — 2 ports of SATA 6Gbps and 2 ports of USB3 on one PCI-E card

JMR SilverStor — PCI-E RAID systems that look like little Mac Pros

Qubemater Xport — Compressor plug-in for JPEG2000 and DCP creation, starting at a lean $799

Sound Devices MixPre-D — 2 channel mixer and USB audio interface, with the interesting implication that you can record to an iPhone


That HyperDeck Shuttle is worth some more exclamation marks!!!
 
more stuff

I would really like to see the introduction of a real audio meter, along the lines of a PPM. :p
I know you yanks don't use them, ;) but it would be a valuable addition to FCP as real hardware PPMs cost mega-bucks.

Quantel have them , so why not the new FCP, which has pinched allot of the actual editing interface from SQ-Edit [oooh controversial!] :D
 
Canon have announced version 1.2 of their E1 plug-in, which can "import footage without requiring the THM file" and from "any folder, without needing to mirror the folder structure on the camera itself". It's also apparently "smoother".

And Canon have paired with Technicolor to release the 'Cinestyle' profile for their DSLRs. Free download, 30th April. Which is nice.
 
wow I am so excited about Davinci lite and assimilate scratch. time to see if apple does anything with Color I guess. But now it really doesn't make sense to stick with it.

although with a two node limit for davinci lite it looks more like a free trial that you can keep. either way i'm excited can't wait to upgrade I love messin with color
 
KeithPratt said:
That HyperDeck Shuttle is worth some more exclamation marks!!!
Click to expand...
I'd actually be a little bummed if it only does Uncompressed (no option for ProRes or DNx) and it doesn't like look it can do any up/down/cross conversions. I was hoping for a feature-for-feature competitor to AJA's KiPro and KiPro Mini but I guess that's part of the reason the HyperDeck Shuttle is so much cheaper. The lack of any sort of display is a con in my book too. No way to see things like TC or how much storage space is left.


Lethal
 
LethalWolfe said:
I'd actually be a little bummed if it only does Uncompressed (no option for ProRes or DNx) and it doesn't like look it can do any up/down/cross conversions. I was hoping for a feature-for-feature competitor to AJA's KiPro and KiPro Mini but I guess that's part of the reason the HyperDeck Shuttle is so much cheaper. The lack of any sort of display is a con in my book too. No way to see things like TC or how much storage space is left.


Lethal
Click to expand...

I agree with all of that (though perhaps there'll be an iPhone app for settings and info) — the exclamation marks were just to exclaim that in 2011 you can buy a device for $345 that records uncompressed HD onto a single drive!
 
LethalWolfe said:
$345 + drive. ;)


Lethal
Click to expand...

The drive will probably end up being double the price of the unit if you think about it. Uncompressed video takes up a lot of storage space as we know, and you'd really want at least a 256gb SSD drive to make the box useful. Which at the moment costs £350/$570 on Amazon for example.

So cheap on the face of it, but a lot of extra cost on top of it to make it work :)
 
1 minute of uncompressed HD ~ 10 Gb
and hi capacity SSDs are really too expensive
 
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Oh, and some pre-NAB news that's definitely worth a mention: GoPro have bought Cineform and will use some variety of the codec in its products.
 
And let's not overlook the Sound Devices PIX 220 and 240, which record ProRes/DNxHD video as well as audio. That's a bit of diversification, and looks to be of the winning kind to me.
 
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