Reports | Technology

NAB 2005 Highlights

1 May , 2005  

Written by David Tames | Posted by:

A report from the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the definitive media and entertainment event for sizing up industry trends and checking out new gear.

The annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) held annually at the at the Las Vegas Convention Center remains the definitive media and entertainment event for sizing up industry trends and checking out new gear on the near-term horizon. This year an estimated 97,000 people attended the conferences sessions, user group meetings, new product introduction events, and walked along 800,000 square feet of exhibition halls packed with 1,800 exhibitors from around the world. Somehow it’s appropriate that this annual event is held in a city best know for casinos and simulacra. In this article I’ll highlight some of the things that stood out at this year’s show.

Broadcasters, especially local television stations with considerable investments in SD equipment, are still dragging their feet when it comes to HD broadcasting. They are currently focused on the FCC mandated transition to digital television (DTV) broadcasting. On the other hand, the rapid evolution of HD cameras and postproduction solutions are a boon for independent filmmakers looking to upgrade their production values. This year was clearly the year we could say "HD is viable and affordable at the prosumer level" with a wide range of new products that finally begin to drive some nails into the standard definition coffin, though I suspect the wake will go on for several years.

There were dozens of new products that stood out at the show, however, the top four for me included new HD camcorders from Panasonic and JVC in the under $10,000 price range, Apple’s new Final Cut Studio (especially Soundtrack Pro), and the comeback of Ikegami’s Editcam.

Camera innovation: small HD camcorders

Not much changed this year in the high end video camera category with the Panasonic AJ-HDC27 Varicam and Sony HDW-F900 maintaining their flagship positions. There were some incremental improvements in the mid-range, but not much to get excited about. Sony’s HVR-Z1U HDV camcorder (and its HDR-FX1 consumer sibling) generated considerable interest and excitement this winter, however, at the show these new cameras were overshadowed by the buzz over Panasonic’s AJ-HDX200 hand held DVCPRO HD camcorder and JVC’s GY-HD100 shoulder-style ProHD HDV camcorder. Each camera places a stake in different ground with different philosophies regarding form factor and workflow.

Panasonic’s AJ-HDX200 HD camcorder

At last year’s NAB Panasonic said they would introduce an MPEG-2-based HD camcorder to compete with the HDV cameras expected from Sony, JVC, and others. But recent rumors and what was unveiled at the show was far more innovative. Panasonic showed a mock-up of the AJ-HDX200 HD camcorder they hope to start delivering before the end of the year. The camera is based on a form factor similar to their DVX100 that has been widely praised for its image quality, small size, and ease of hand holding. Since the camera was a mock-up, it’s hard to say anything about the image quality, however, given Panasonic’s track record with the DVX100, I’m certainly willing to wait and take this camcorder for a spin when it becomes available before buying anything else.

The AJ-HDX200 has a built-in Leica Dicomar 13x zoom lens and features three 16:9 1/3" CCD chips with 1280 x 720 pixels (the same pixel dimensions offered by the Varicam). The camera will capture a range of formats including 1080 lines at 60i, 30p, and 24p as well as 720 lines at 60p, 30p, and 24p. Much like the DVX100, the camera offers Cine Gamma and Color Matrix settings for a film look. The camera includes Firewire and USB 2.0 ports for connecting the camera directly to a computer or hard disk recorder. Countering some current speculation on the web, Panasonic representatives confirmed that both SD and HD capture formats will be available via the Firewire port.

There were two significant and profound design decisions made with this camera. First, Panasonic eschewed the use of tape in favor of their P2 cards. Second, the camera uses their high quality DVCPRO HD codec instead of something like HDV designed to fit on a tiny tape. The DVCPRO HD codec, currently employed on more expensive cameras, features intra-frame compression (discrete frames) and the favored 4:2:2 image profile that provides high quality color encoding for better results when compositing and color correcting. Panasonic, by avoiding the use of MPEG-2, offers a high quality alternative to the HDV and ProHD formats. The down side is the high data rate of 100Mbps, roughly five times that of the MPEG-2 codec used in ProHD. Instead of introducing yet another tape format adding complexity and cost to the camcorder not to mention another level to the video format tower of Babel, Panasonic made a very bold move by adopting P2 solid state storage cards as the recording medium for this camera. This is probably two years ahead of where the market is right now. Will the market embrace this new approach?

While the use of the DVCPRO HD codec translates into significantly better image quality compared to HDV and ProHD, the use of P2 cards requires a whole new way of thinking about your recording, capturing, and archiving workflow. This will result in resistance from many producers, but I predict as memory prices continue to fall P2 will end up the winner in the tape vs. solid state memory skirmish.

The camera carries a suggested price of $6,000, however, a more realistic price for comparison is the cost of the camera bundled with two 8GB P2 storage cards, bringing the price of the camera to $10,000. While this certainly leads to serious sticker shock for a prosumer camera, one must consider that P2 cards are designed to be reused again and again for a life of 100,000 rewrites. You must consider the cost of the whole image capturing system over its life cycle. Tape may be cheap, but is it the best archive medium? Are the shorter capture times going from P2 direct to hard drives worth the added cost? Are we ready to embrace an data file based workflow? This all remains to be seen.

As a companion to the AJ-HDX200, Panasonic showed a mock-up of the AJ-PCS060, a small field transfer device that accepts P2 cards and copies them to an internal 60GB hard drive. An 8GB card can be copied to the hard drive in 8 minutes. With 720p/24fps material files can be moved to the hard drive 2.5 times faster than real-time capture. I predict that a laptop with a collection of external Firewire drives will make a popular downloading and archiving device for use in the field, especially one sporting a dual-layered DVD recorder, offering storage, archiving, previewing, and editing in the field using the non-linear editor (NLE) of your choice.

With it’s small size, weight around five pounds, high image quality, and the ability to record HD video to either hard drives or P2 cards, this is the camera many independent filmmakers have been waiting for.

JVC’s GY-HD100 HD camcorder

Two years ago the HDV format was introduced and last year JVC promised a professional enhancement to the format they are now calling ProHD. This new format offers MPEG-2 video (at 19Mbps with six-frame GOP), timecode, and adds two PCM audio tracks (48kHz, 16-bit) in addition to the MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio channels already in the HDV specification.

While Panasonic chose to offer a small camera in a hand-held form-factor, JVC opted instead for a shoulder design with the GY-HD100 that is popular with event videographers and news gathering. The camera utilizes the ProHD format and is packed with many professional features. The camera features three 1/3" CCD sensors with 1280 x 720 pixels and captures a range of formats including DV at 24 or 30fps and 720P ProHD at 24, 25, and 30fps. 24p has apparently become a mandatory feature for a small HD camcorder, and you have to wonder why Sony continues to resist this trend, leaving true 24p out of their HVR-Z1U camcorder.

Unlike the Panasonic with a built-in lens, JVC designed the camera to use interchangeable 1/3" lenses. Lenses for the camera include a Fujinon 16x zoom lens and a wide angle 3.5mm 13x zoom lens. JVC also announced an adapter that will allow the camera to work with a variety of existing 1/2" lenses. Two XLR audio inputs with independent control of each channel and a Cine Gamma mode for a film look round out this camera. A Firewire interface is used for video out with stop-start control of a remote hard drive recorder. An optional module makes the uncompressed signal available via HD-SDI.

This camera will be a formidable contender against the Panasonic camera and will be appealing to those people who need interchangeable lenses, want a tried and true videotape-based workflow, and are not lured by the small form factor or DVCPRO HD codec. The suggested price for the HD100 including the Fujinon 16x zoom lens is $6,300 with deliveries expected to start in July. As a companion to the camera JVC also introduced the BR-HD50U, a video deck designed specifically for use with the HD100 that works with ProHD, HDV, DV, and DVCAM and uses FireWire I/O to connect to NLE systems.

Apple unveils Final Cut Studio

On Sunday at the Paris hotel, Apple unveiled Final Cut Studio in an event akin to an evangelical tent revival. The effects of Apple’s excellent Kool-Aid aside, Studio is packed with significant upgrades and new features including enhanced HD support. The bundle consists of Final Cut Pro 5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, and DVD Studio Pro 3. With each upgrade Apple has improved the integration between their Pro Apps making it a very attractive platform for postproduction, and this year I’m starting to see some extra sparkle. Existing Final Cut Pro users can upgrade to Studio for $699 and existing Production Bundle owners can upgrade for $499. Users of individual applications may also upgrade to the new versions on an individual basis.

Final Cut Pro 5 adds support for native HDV (a.k.a. long GOP MPEG-2) editing without the need to recompress. This new version also adds the long-requested feature of multi-camera editing, once again narrowing the gap between the features of Avid’s xPress Pro and Apple’s Final Cut. A new IMX codec in Final Cut Pro 5 allows for native editing of broadcast content from Sony XDCAM media. Direct support for Panasonic P2 solid state media provides reliable and efficient tapeless transfer of DVCPRO, DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO HD video to Final Cut. New audio capabilities include the support for 24-bit 96kHz and the use of audio control surfaces. Final Cut is really coming into its own with this release. Media management issues and lack of seamless support for mixed media formats on a single timeline remain Achilles heels for Final Cut and I hope Apple will address these issues in a future version, but Final Cut has really come a long way since it was first introduced at NAB in 1999.

Motion 2 adds Replicator, a new automated design tool that allows you to animate and duplicated movies or graphics along user-defined grids and patterns. Also new in Motion 2 is MIDI support that allows Motion 2 to be played like a musical instrument with animation changes triggered by a keyboard or other MIDI controllers. I predict a new generation of video artists will use Motion 2 to do some really amazing work for live events.

DVD Studio Pro 4 adds support for H.264 encoding in order to fit HD content on DVDs using existing drives and media. While it’s still up in the air which standard will dominate consumer players, in the mean time you can play your HD DVDs on G5 Macs and a (hopefully) growing number of compatible players. DVD Studio Pro 4 also includes Qmaster for distributed encoding. This new integration with Compressor allows you to put other Macs on the network to work performing processor-intensive conversions and encoding, speeding up this time consuming portion of the DVD authoring workflow.

Soundtrack Pro steals the show (at least at the Apple booth)

The most dramatic upgrade was the unveiling of Soundtrack Pro, a dramatic upgrade to Soundtrack making it a serious contender as a sound design and editing too. It includes waveform editing, an integrated multi-track mixer, and dozens of plug-ins. Like the original Soundtrack, Soundtrack Pro includes thousands of Apple Loops for use in building music and sound effects tracks. Apple Engineering Manager Bill Jackson showed me how easy it is to fix and enhance audio with this application. With a few clicks of the mouse, audio pops and unwanted noises in the track were eliminated with ease. Another thing he demonstrated was time stretch audio clips with automatic pitch correction. This will certainly make it easy to fine tune voiceovers and looped dialogue.

One of the most impressive aspects of the demo was Soundtrack Pro’s support for Editing with Actions, allowing you to perform nondestructive and sample accurate manipulations of your audio tracks. It was really cool to apply a variety of effects to a track and then be able to go back and change parameters long after you’ve applied an effect, much like working with the history in Photoshop. Now if only Apple would see to add this amazing feature to Final Cut Pro.

SoundTrack Pro supports multi-channel audio output devices, including the Mackie control surface protocol so you can use hardware faders and knobs providing tactile control over mix parameters. Synchronization with an external video display is also supported. Soundtrack Pro fills in a serious gap in Apple’s offering of postproduction tools and will provide serious competition to other audio applications. Soundtrack Pro does lack some professional features like 5.1 surround mixing, but Apple has Logic in it’s arsenal for that.

The comeback kid

When Ikegami and Avid introduced the Editcam in 1996 it was an amazing breakthrough ahead of it’s time: recording video directly onto removable hard drives and easily moving the media into an Avid, however, the cost and weight of this alternative led to lackluster performance in the marketplace. Today the practice of recording to hard drives is starting to challenge videotape. Ikegami continues to hang in there and this year they introduced the HDN-X10, an updated Editcam in the $50K price range using Avid’s DNxHD codec for recording HD. The camera features three 16:9 2/3" CMOS chips that captures a full HD image at 1920 x 1080 pixels. The camera supports 1080i at 50 or 60 fps and 1080P at 24, 25, or 30 fps. A future upgrade will support 720P at 24, 25, 30, 50, or 60 fps. The camera records video onto shock-resistant removable hard drives called Field Packs that store an hour of HD video. In the future Ikegami will offer Field Packs based on solid state memory.

But wait, there’s more…

There were several other new products at the show that deserve mention here: the SM Transmitter, a new miniature wireless microphone transmitter from Lectrosonics; SCRATCH, an integrated, real-time, 2k digital intermediate (DI) workflow solution from ASSIMILATE, Inc.; VISION2 HD, a new hybrid film-digital system from Kodak for shooting Super 16mm film on an HD budget offering the use of hundreds of look-up tables (LUTs) during telecine transfer to emulate the imaging characteristics of numerous film stocks; a small wireless transmitter from Zaxcom that includes over an hour of uncompressed audio storage on board with timecode avoiding the problem of drop outs; and two cool products from Tiffen/Steadicam: the Merlin, providing an elegant alternative to the Seadicam JR and the Flyer, offering a real sled and double-section iso-elastic arm perfect for the new generation of small HD camcorders, bridging the gap between the Seadicam Mini and more expensive models.

For more information about NAB, visit www.nab.org The conference web site is at www.nabshow.com.


For more information about NAB, visit www.nab.org The conference web site is at www.nabshow.com.

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