Author: Philip

Categories
Item of Interest New Media

What is the future of Internet TV?

In his latest column, The Future of Internet TV (in America) Robert Cringely talks about the success of Hulu and the two dominant modes of distribution: streaming (RTSP) or download (HTTP). Hulu is firmly in the streaming camp while Apple and iTunes are in the download camp. (YouTube acts like streaming in that no download is left that’s easily accessible, but in fact it’s a download mechanism, not streaming.)

Now, I’ve been a long term fan of the download model, being very taken by the efficacy of RSS for this type of distribution. So much so that I helped invent a technology for doing commercial distribution through RSS feeds. Cringely tells of the unsatisfactory experience attempting to stream from Hulu – with rebuffering needed several time, even after they dropped the quality of the stream. RTSP is hard to do well because so much of the delivery channel is beyond the control of the “broadcaster”. But like established business models, they try and shovel their old model into the new channel. Rarely works like that.

By the way, Chris Albrecht has a column on the topic over at NewTeeVee.com with the clever name, Hiccups in the Stream, That Is What They Are.

We love the idea of streaming video over the Internet directly on our television sets. The issue is, when you stream video to your house, you open yourself up to problems you don’t get with progressive download. With streaming you need to get a continuous bandwidth to cover the signal or there are hiccups or temporary freezes in the stream. This can happen on cable systems during peak periods when more people are sharing the neighborhood bandwidth.

Hulu is undoubtedly getting very popular, and will become more so now that Disney are joining the group (with Fox and NBC-U). However Cringely looks at what is a viable business and Hulu, YouTube et al fail. RTSP is expensive, but more importantly, advertising supported media on the Internet has no possibility in covering the cost of production any time soon.

In other words, the model that has sustained television for its life is probably not going to sustain whatever we’re going to call the same thing delivered via the Internet. Funding will have to change. Personally I’d prefer to pay the equivalent to advertising-revenue-per-viewer for a show (because it’s a relatively low 25-75c per viewer per show) and skip the advertising.

Cringely’s suggestion is that Apple, or Google, could easily chip in say $3 billion or so a year for programming production and commission the same shows as are broadcast now (or, in Fox tradition, the same shows with different names) from the same producers that produce the best entertainment now.

This is something I’ve hypothesized on myself so when Cringely is on the same page, I have to go re-examine my thinking. It worries me to agree when so often I don’t.  

Let’s say a 13 episode half season costs from  $32.5 milliion (Friday Night Lights or Mad Men) to say$ 60 million per 12 episodes. There can be some substantial saving if these series were made outside the Hollywood Studio system – probably halving the real cost, but let’s not go there right now.  After all Cringely’s problem is that we can’t pay all those folk in the value chain from non-existent advertising revenue, while they do all get a small, slice of an iTunes Store sale. 

For easy math, let’s say the average hour of “television” is going to cost 50 million per 13 week season, or 200 million for a year’s programming. As we saw in my earlier post about how the numbers stack up for new media, programming in that price range rates 4-5 million viewers (or it’s produced more cheaply or cancelled). Some programming, like the Daily Show, is very viable at 10c per viewer per show.

There is cheaper television. The Daily Show’s $5 million a year deal with Comedy Central buys about 80 TV hours a year. (161 half-hour shows in 2008) so Apple or Google  pick up for $5.5 million or so per year. But the Daily Show is not Prime Time.

$200 million per Prime Time hour per year. $3 billion buys you 15 hours a day or Prime Time Television, with Network standard production and the expectation of Network size audiences. Keep in mind that Prime Time for the networks has been considered 22 hours a week, or an average of around 3 hours a day, not 15 hours a day.

Scale those numbers to Cable size budgets and audiences and an Apple or Google, putting in just 10% of their available cash-on-hand could create the equivalent of a five new Prime Time channels each.

It still seems that NBC-U, ABC-Disney, Fox and CBS need downloadable sales and rental channels more than ever. Clearly they don’t have the power in the argument.

Do I think Apple would ever go directly into the production business? Probably not “willingly” – as a first preference path – but as a bargaining ship against any network that wanted to withhold content….? It’s a very interesting thought. If Apple felt that commissioning the content themselves was in their best interest, they’d do it in a heartbeat. They have the money, it’s only a matter of a decision.

OTOH, I don’t think that will qualify for being ‘new media’ any more than I think Hulu does. My definition, What is New Media anyway?, came to the conclusion that new media is where there is a direct connection between the viewer and the producer. Having Apple commissioning shows would have Apple as the gatekeeper, rather than the network and their advertisers. I suppose getting the prissy advertisers out of the loop might improve the programming by allowing to be more real.  

 

Categories
General Interesting Technology Video Technology

What we learnt from the editor/software face-off at NAB

Let’s start by saying we’re working with a very specific type of video production: trade-show style video where there is an A-roll interview and limited b-roll that goes specifically with the A-roll. These are generally shot on a trade-show booth with shots of product from the booth.

Finisher was originally conceived as the book-end to First Cuts. First Cuts will save documentarians many weeks of work getting to first cuts, with the ability to create first cuts almost instantly while you explore the stories in the footage you have. These cuts are complete with story arc and b-roll. We worked on the assumption that an editor would probably delete the b-roll while they worked on cutting the a-roll into the finished form. (Although not necessarily: I cut one piece while keeping the b-roll around to save me having to go find it again.)

Finisher was suggested by Loren Miller of Keyguides fame who wanted an “editing valet” that would take his a-roll and add b-roll and lower third back in. That suggestion became Finisher.

However, I’ve been long interested in the application to these trade-show type edits that had never been near First Cuts and had to use much simplified metadata. My gut told me that an experienced editor would be faster but the cost effectiveness of a novice with Finisher would be compelling.

I was wrong. As it turned out, I ended up being the editing contender. I was happy about that because I trust my abilities – I’m fast and effective at this type of video. Up against me was the software’s co-developer, Greg Clarke. Greg’s first FCP lessons (other than import XML, export XML, open a Sequence) were on Sunday afternoon ahead of a Tuesday afternoon shootout. To say his editing skills and FCP skills were rudimentary is a huge understatement!

Greg had his edit complete in 27 minutes from being presented with raw footage. (Both competitors saw the footage together in raw form in a new project.) This video shows the Greg + Finisher cut. It’s acceptable but could definitely use an experienced eye.

My cut took 40 minutes to add in lower third and all the b-roll. There is a third cut, which is where I took the Greg + Finisher cut and added my editorial experience to that, which took an additional 11 minutes, for a total of 38 minutes. Yep, almost exactly the same time to get to a finished result.

Until you work on the cost side of the equation. Let’s assume that an experienced editor is going to work for $45 an hour for this type of work. (That’s approximately the Editor’s Guild rate for an assistant on a low budget documentary.) Let’s also assume that we’re paying Interns $15 an hour.

Rounding to nearest quarter hours for easy math, my cut was $33.75 to the producer; the basic Finisher cut would be $7.50 and the Finisher plus novice with editor tidy-up (however you would write that elegantly) would add another $7.50 of craft editor on top of the cost of the Intern cut.

Under half price.

Scaling production

Here’s where it gets exciting (for me anyway – I am easily excited). The Digital Cinema Society and Studio Daily produced some forty videos during NAB 2009 with the talented Chris Knell editing. Let’s assume that Chris got paid the hourly rate he should have and worked 10 hour days (with breaks) to get forty videos done within the week. By rights he should have been paid in the order of $1800 for that time.

One craft editor can tidy and clean four videos an hour (five based on my numbers, but let’s say four). Each video will take an Intern about 30 minutes to prepare a video for the craft editor. We need two Interns to feed the skilled craft editor four videos an hour. (2 Interns producing two cuts with Finisher per hour). Now 10 videos can be produced in 2.5 hours instead of 10 (getting them to the audience faster).

Faster and cheaper: Cost per day is 2.5 x 45 = $112.50 plus 2 x 2.5 x 15 = $75 for a daily total of $187.50. For the four days the editor also gets to enjoy NAB – show or hospitality – and the total cost to the producer is $750, not $1800. The massive reduction in time means that one crew could shoot and edit without damaging their personal health.

So, what I learnt at the Face-off is that Finisher is a tool I can use as an editor (more on that shortly); it helps scale large volume production to get results out faster; and it can substantially reduce the cost of the mass production of these types of video. It was not only Studio Daily producing forty videos but FreshDV, Mac Video and  MacBreak were also producing video and could have achieved similar savings.

Analysis

Both approaches required logging the material. During the Face-off we both trimmed or subclipped our b-roll to individual shots. (Here’s a tip we both used: drop the b-roll clip or clips in a Sequence and add edits, deleting bad sections of b-roll as you go, then convert to independent clips and name something appropriate. Finisher will use the name as metadata).

We also trimmed up our A-roll adding Markers as we went. For Finisher the Markers were added to Sequence Markers and given a duration that the novice wanted to cover with b-roll. I was placing Markers into the A-roll clip – so they would move when I cut the clip – so I could locate where b-roll shots would go based on topic.

What I learnt was that, if I adopted the convention from Finisher and basically added comments to my Markers that matched clip names, I could automate the process of laying in clips to the Timeline – 2 minutes for the Finisher round trip vs 10 or so to do it manually. It’s basically an automation tool.

Plus, as an editor I’d be closer to being finished as I’d place my Markers a heck of a lot better than a novice does/did.

But it’s really in the scaling and cost reduction for mass production that came as a surprise – a pleasant one.

Categories
Business & Marketing

Why did Philip Hodgetts write a business book?

At the NAB 2009 Supermeet I revealed, and sold, the first copies of my new book - The New Now: grow your production or postproduction business in a changed and changing world.

This is a new venture for me for two reasons: as the title suggests, this is my first business book and this is also the first time I’ve used a print-on-demand service.

The second is easier to explain. I contemplated going with print-on-demand for 2008’s HD Survival Handboook (about to be revised for the 2009 edition) but the cost of a color book of that size made the selling price, I thought, unattractive. But The New Now is a black and white book only so the economics work out. For anyone interested I’m using Amazon Createspace who handle the whole thing – ISBN number, listing in Amazon, Print-on-Demand, Shipping and I still get a decent cut of the selling price.

I will be interested as to the balance of PDF vs Paperback purchasers there are given the price differential: PDF download is $9.95, while the paperback will sell for $18.95 plus shipping etc. 

As to why a business book this time. Because this knowledge needs to get to people in production and postproduction businesses. The principles would apply to any service-oriented business but the examples are for production and postproduction people.

I also wrote, in part, to force myself to focus on, and analyze the application of, a whole range of new communication forums – blogs, social media, twitter – and new ways to do branding, PR, marketing and advertising that don’t involve the cost structures of more traditional approaches (which still work well for those who can afford them). 

I’ve learnt a lot writing the book. Some of which I’ve been able to put in practice already, and some of which I still have to apply for myself. I could have waited until I had personal results to report, or I could get the knowledge out there so other people could start to benefit from it asap.

The current economic downturn just exacerbated changes that were already happening, but instead of happening over the next five years, they’re happening much more suddenly. The demise (or imminent demise) of newspapers foreshadows the dangers for television and production industries if we don’t adapt. 

I also think that I’m well positioned to write a business book for the production and postproduction industries because I’ve owned and operated businesses in those industries since 1987, and been digital NLE since 1994. We’ve adapted and will adapt again. One of the lessons I learnt along the way is the value of owning content. It’s the last section in the book but the most valuable lesson I learnt in business, other than to keep my prices higher, in some cases doubling the price on products we created and sold. 

So, I’ve bundled up my 36 years of business experience – 22 years of them in production or postproduction – and learnt how to apply all the new techniques and The New Now is the result. It’s an easy read, packed with information that is guaranteed to grow your business, whatever the economic circumstances.

Categories
New Media Presentations

Where are those interview videos?

I’m so pleased you asked 🙂

The Ken Stone Sessions: Recorded at Ken Stone’s Studio in January 2009, these two interviews feature founding members of the LAFCPUG talk about what the digital video scene was like at the time. We relive the excitement of what can be described as a technological and creative revolution, and give insight into where we’ve been and where we’re going. As well as myself, the interviews feature Andrew Balis, Michael Horton, Ken Stone. Produced by Rick Young.

The Ken Stone Sessions Part 1

The Ken Stone Sessions Part 2

Sync-N-Link for Final Cut Pro demonstrated at the Editor’s Lounge Jan 30, 2009

Online Video: Codecs, Encoding and Compression for Debra Kaufman’s summary of my Codecs, Compression and Encoding presentation for the Digital Cinema Society, Feb 7, 2009. The video is available for Digital Cinema Society members.

The  original presentation of The Assistant Editor: taking the work out of editing (which became First Cuts upon release) at the NAB 2008 Supermeet. 

There is another interview with me by Rick Young from NAB 2009 where I talk about the philosophy of Assisted Editing and my history, called Philip Hodgetts: Digital Video Pioneer.

Categories
Interesting Technology The Technology of Production

What were the technical trends at NAB 2009?

There certainly wasn’t much new in NLE at NAB. Avid had already announced, Apple are keeping to their own schedule that apparently doesn’t include NAB (although Apple folk were in town) and Adobe have a 4.1 update coming for Premiere Pro CS4. The only new NLE version was Sony’s Vegas, which moves up to version 9. With, of course, RED support. Can’t forget the RED support – it was everywhere (again).

Lenses for RED, native support, non-native support: everyone has something for RED, or Scarlet/Epic coming up. Lenses are already appearing for those not-yet-shipping cameras.

Even camera technology seemed to take a year off. I certainly became convinced of the format superiority (leaving aside lenses, and convenience factors) of AVCCAM, which is a pro version of the consumer AVCHD, with higher bit rates. The evidence supports the hypothesis that AVCCAM at 21 or 24 Mbits/sec should produce a much higher quality image than MPEG-2 at the same bitrate. Before this NAB I was only convinced “in theory”. Of course, choose the AVCCAM path and you’ll be transcoding on import to FCP or Avid to much larger ProRes or DNxHD files, which is an optional (and recommended) path for HDV or XDCAM HD/EX.

Everyone has a 3D story to tell. Panasonic promise 3D-all-the-way workflows “coming” and there were all sorts of tools on the floor for working with 3D, projecting 3D, viewing 3D…  As one of my friends quipped “The presentations were amazing. What’s more I took off my glasses and the 3D experience continued around me!”

I confess to being a little torn on 3D (and Twitter, but that’s another post). I’ve seen some really amazing footage, and some that simply tries too hard to be 3D.  I also worry how we’ll adapt to sudden jumps in perspective as the 3D camera cuts to a different shot. I noticed a little of this when viewing an excerpt from the U2 3D concert film. There are natural analogs to cutting in 2D – in effect we build out view of the world from many quick closeups, so cutting in film and TV parallels that.

I can’t think of an analog for the sudden jumps in position in 3D space and perspective that would help our brains adapt. Maybe we’ll just adapt and I’m jumping at shadows? Who knows. I don’t plan on 3D soon.

Nor do I expect to see Flash supported on a TV in my home for at least a couple of years. That’s the problem that Adobe faces in getting support for Flash on TVs and set-top boxes. For a start it will require a lot more horsepower than those boxes have already, but Moore’s law will take care of that without a blink. A bigger problem is the slow turn-over cycle of Televisions. Say it’s 6 months before the first sets come out (and none are yet announced). It’s probably ten years before any particularly provider can rely on the majority of sets being Flash enabled. Assuming it catches on.

So I rather see that as a non-announcement. Remember the cable industry already has it’s own Tru2way technology for interactivity on set-top boxes.

I am much more interested in Adobe’s new Strobe frameworks, even though it could take some business away from my own OpenTVNetwork.

For the geeky, my favorite new piece of technology for the show would have to be Blackmagic Design’s Ultrascope – an HD scope package, just add PC and monitor to the $695 hardware and software bundle for a true HD scope at an affordable price.

I’ve already given my opinions on the Blackmagic Design announcements, AJA announcements and Panasonic announcements during the show.

Two more trends this year: cheaper and better storage and voice and facial recognition technologies are becoming more widespread.

I am amazed at the way hardware-RAID protected systems have fallen in cost. Not only the drives themselves but the enclosures are getting to the point where it’s no longer cost-effective to build your own, certainly not if you want RAID 5 or 6.

Five years ago the only company demonstrating facial and speech recognition were Virage, who I didn’t see this year. But there are an increasing number of companies that have speech recognition that seems to be, overall, about the same quality as that bundled with Adobe’s Premiere Pro and Soundbooth CS4, i.e. it can get reasonably high in accuracy with well paced, clean audio and no accent. Good enough for locating footage.

Facial recognition seems to be everywhere, from Google’s Picassa to news transcription services. Not only do they recognize cuts but they also recognize the people in the shots, prompting when a new face is recognized.

How long before the metadata that powers First Cuts doesn’t have to be input by a person, again? That’s what really excited me about NAB 2009.

Categories
Business & Marketing

What about NAB?

NAB 2009 is now finished, gone and done. The annual meet-up in the desert is over for another year, and this year, I’m over it. Well, Las Vegas for sure. Driving out I was not in a happy place and, for the first time, I was a little jaded by NAB. But I think that’s just me.

For the first time since I moved to the US in 2001, I wasn’t speaking in any part of the official conferences. That was a change for me. In fact, I was heading to Las Vegas and NAB 2009 with no official role(s) at all, apart from an offer to “help” Larry Jordan, Cerina and Debbie, and their amazing crew, with the NAB Show BuZZ. This year the Digital Production BuZZ was the official podcast of NAB and I couldn’t have been more proud. How the show has grown under Larry’s guidance!

Greg, my long term partner, had a much more clearly defined role as streaming engineer – basically fixing anything podcasting, internet or web page that needed fixing. He was pretty busy all week. Ultimately I did some special reports and contributed to the regular news feed while everyone’s attention was focused on putting out 37 shows in six days.

My first impression of NAB was that it was quieter. That was on Saturday before the show opened, but the show floor was cleverly hiding a distinct drop in floor space – more aisles, three carpet aisles and lots of comfortable seating areas each one representing a no-show to the show.

Attendance was officially down – about 17-18% in pre-registrations for a start. Tuesday turned out to be the busiest day of the show floor as many people planned their trip to avoid the Monday crush! So many that Monday felt like a regular Thursday it was so quiet.

As well as registrations being down, I got the feeling that people came for fewer days. I heard of a number of people who caught early flights into the show and a late flight out that same day, and people staying two days, instead of three or four. But the quality of attendee was very good.

It seems that the economic conditions weeded out students and tire kickers. Exhibitors report good sales leads and quality attendees, which is good.

Socially (well, that’s the main reason I go to NAB now) the week went well. The highlight had to be the AJA party at JET in the Mirage. They booked out the nightclub and invited a couple of hundred of their dearest friends. A great night was had by all and the AJA guys should be very proud of the Ki Pro, Io Express and Kona LHi announcements. I hear they had a good year last year and this year’s shaping up to be even better.

Monday night’s MediaMotion Cafe was a less formal version of the regular MediaMotion Ball, set in what felt like deep suburban Las Vegas, even though it was really only a couple of blocks past The Palms. A lot of great friends, although the night was a little dampened by the loss of Mik Vitti but brightened by Blackmagic Design’s sponsorship. A good time was had by all because by the end of the night the sponsors had more free drink tickets than takers!.

Monday was also both the formal and informal Avid Events, which I had planned to attend as well as the MediaMotion Cafe but logistics – the Cafe was further from the Strip than I expected) made that a little difficult. I hear it was a good night as well.

Tuesday night’s Supermeet was the other highlight of the week for me, since I’ve been part of that community since it’s inception and worked with Mike Horton on the BuZZ and count Dan Berube among my friends. (Real friends, not just Facebook.) 

It was also the formal, if that could be said, launch of my new book The New Now: how to grow your production or post-production business in changed and changing circumstances. A little bit of a departure for me, this being more a business than technical book, but I think the content is great. More of that in a subsequent post but the digital download is live now, with paperback coming shortly.

The only presentation I did all week was on the subject of Growing your business in a recession at the ProMax Digital Lounge. It seems to have been well received – both the talk and the new format from the new ProMax. Over three nights, instead of the one big event, they packed the program with informative talks and presentations, great food (best of the show from our experience) and good quality surroundings.

Then it was off to the RED User party to get the only mind boggling information of the week. Graham Nattress has managed to develop a distribution codec for RED that puts full 4K of pixels down a 10 Mbit/sec pipe. That’s pretty amazing, well incredible.  I could see no difference in quality between this year’s show reel, played out uncompressed, and last year’s show reel at 10 Mbits/sec. That’s within the bandwidth I get from my cable service here in Burbank, so they could be streaming me 4K! 

Well, not soon as it needs hardware assisted playback afaik, but I think it’s an amazing piece of technology.

Our own technology face-off caught me off guard. First, the dates got all confused and they were busy reshuffling the Superbooth schedule to get us back into it. I had a nasty piece of bad health all morning (Unfortunately NOT caused by over-indulgence) and was delighted when Jim Mathers from the Digital Cinema Society had already selected two booth pieces and had them on the show floor. Saved the day because I was running very late thanks to the health problem. 

Then it turns out my editor didn’t turn up. Again due to the confusion and that he was setting up over at the Supermeet, so I had to step in and used a borrowed laptop and play the editor role, and try and MC. I can’t do both, so I fear the presentation was a little dull for the audience, for which I apologize. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.

As it turns out Finisher had a useful result faster. More on that later.

We also had some nice business leads. Not from anything planned, which pretty much takes me full circle to my post on why I was still going to NAB. The serendipity. The person who introduces you to someone else; the casual meeting in a line; or visiting a booth you didn’t know about. That’s NAB and that’s why I’ll probably be back for the 13th year in 2010.

More on the Finisher/Editor Faceoff shortly.

Categories
General

Mik Vitti – Lost in Las Vegas

There have bene many tributes to Mik Vitti but I thought I’d add my thoughts.

When I heard the news Monday morning I went into a mild shock. Mik was a lot younger than I am, and that’s always scary. He also seemed the picture of health. If he knew of the condition that killed him, he never let on.

Mik was a friend both online and in person when I’ve travelled to New York and, of course, at NAB time. So many people have attested to his generosity of spirit, good humor and generally gentle nature.

Appropriately the 2009 NAB Supermeet was dedicated to Mik’s memory with tribute paid by Carey Dissmore and Rob Birnholz and a slideshow of Mik – mostly at user group functions – was presented by Dan Berube.

The International Media Users Group has posted a tribute page.

God speed Mik, you will be missed.

Categories
Interesting Technology

What do Blackmagic Design’s NAB announcements mean to you?

For the details of the announcements, see my news report at the Digital Production BuZZ.

Among a blizzard of NAB announcements Blackmagic Design’s Ultrascope is another of Grant Petty’s breakthrough products. Grant has always had as his goal to bring down the price of truly professional tools without sacrificing quality.

Until now, HD monitoring has not kept pace with the drop in prices for other parts of the HD production workflow. The Ultrascope runs on commodity PC hardware (i.e. cheap) and a 24″ display to bring six SD or HD Waveform Monitors into a single display, for a total investment of around $2000. The bundle includes a DeckLink card and the Ultrascope software for $695: bring your own PC and monitor.

Like the VideoHub router, Ultrascope breaks through the price/performance barrier. All we can wish for now are future software updates that add Vectorscope and other scopes to the display. (All things in time I guess.)

The optical fiber support in HDLink and a new DeckLink card positions Blackmagic Design well for the “big iron plant” business. Optical Fiber is a little out of my league but it is becoming increasingly important in those large facilities and previously needed to be converted to HD-SDI before capture. The new card takes the conversion out of the picture for direct capture to anything offered.

While I didn’t mention it in the main press release, I was interested to notice that there is now Linux support for Blackmagic cards and their Media Player software. Linux is not widespread in the post industry except in the large facilities that would also be likely targets for VideoHub and optical fiber support.

Seems to me that Blackmagic Design are providing more and more for the higher end facility while maintaining low cost products for the wider production community. And that’s a good thing.

Categories
Interesting Technology

How will AJA’s NAB announcements affect you?

For the details on the releases see my story at the Digital Production BuZZ  AJA’s NAB Announcements.

The Ki Pro is the most exciting announcement I’ve heard at NAB so far this year and is likely to garner a number of awards before the week is out. A direct shot at Panasonic who are constantly touting AVC-Intra as “pristine 10 bit full raster capture”, that quality is now available to any camcorder, regardless of format, direct to ProRes 422. It’s even possible to shoot with an SD camera and have the Ki Pro scale to HD before converting to ProRes. At $3995 it’s comparable to similar recorders from Panasonic for AVC-I and AVCCAM.

It’s a smart device – recording either to removable hard drive modules that come complete with FW800, or to Flash RAM modules in the ExpressCard 34 form factor that will go directly into any modern Mac laptop. I’m told there’s also an ‘exoskeleton’ that mounts the Ki Pro under the camera between camera mount and camera so it doesn’t need to hang off the camera.

This is a great product for those who mostly want to shoot, say, XDCAM EX/HD but require higher quality at times; or for those with older cameras who want to move forward to a ProRes workflow. Unlike the JVC GY-HM700 or GY-HM100 “Final Cut Pro ready” camcorders, the Ki Pro is full raster ProRes master quality while the JVC records in XDCAM HD within a QuickTime movie.

Definitely the Ki Pro is an amazing product, if only they could get the price down a little.

The Io Express appears to be a direct challenge to Matrox’s MXO 2, at a slightly lower price point. The key difference is that the Io Express, like the Io HD, converts to ProRes 422 in hardware before sending it to the computer. The MXO 2 pushes uncompressed video through the ExpressCard34 slot (or PCIe slot on a desktop) where it can optionally be converted to ProRes on the CPU. (Of course Matrox have new products as well, the MXO 2 mini at $449, which I’ll cover shortly.)

With fewer inputs than the Io HD (although not that many fewer, mostly reduced audio input support) the Io Express at US $995 is pretty darned cool.

Finally, the Kona LHi and Xena LHi (essentially the same card with minor differences due to platform support) seems to be everything the Kona 3 was with added support for HDMI in and out but at only US$1495 it’s cheaper than the Kona LH/LHe with more capability than the Kona 3 that was twice the price. Plus the new cards have analog input support missing from the Kona 3.

A great set of new tools for us all to play with. Now, let’s see what everyone else has been up to!

Categories
Interesting Technology

What did Panasonic reveal at their NAB 2009 Press Conference?

With Panasonic executives lining the wall, Nation Marketing Manager for Services, Jim Wickizer reminded the crowd of Panasonic’s role in the last 10 Olympics and revealed that Vancouver 2010 will be shot exclusively with Panasonic P2 HD -  the official recording format for the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympic games. Interestingly he noted the format would be 1080i60, which is not my first choice for fast action sports.

John Baisely, President Panasonic Broadcast waxed lyrically about MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) compression, commenting that it’s used in a “full range” of cameras, conflating the all-I-frame AVC-Intra used with P2 cards, and the AVCCAM range of camcorders featuring long GOP H.264 MPEG-4.

In probably the most exciting announcement, Panasonic revealed the P2 E series of cards. The E series are faster at ‘up to’ 1.2 Gbit/sec but more importantly, it is a more economic series, with 64 GB coming in under $1000 ($998); 32 GB $625 and 16 GB just $420. Unlike the original P2 media, the E series has a limited life of five years. The 16 and 32 GB cards will be available in May with the 64 GB coming in August. This significantly changes the cost dynamics of P2 media making it much more affordable to a wider range of people.

For the first time that I noticed, Panasonic have stopped using 720p24 as their benchmark for record time on P2 media, instead stating that a 64 GB P2E card will record one hour of 1920 x 1080 (full raster) 10 bit, 4:2:2 Intra-frame recording. With five slot cameras that’s a lot of continuous recording time at the highest HD resolution.

Director, Product Marketing Joe Facchini took the stage to reintroduce the HPX-300 – originally released just a few months ago – with 3MOS chips. 3MOS is Panasonic’s way of saying 3 CMOS chips. With 10bit AVC-Intra 4:2:2 recording, 20 variable frame rates and dynamic stretch it is a very nice camera. What was new is that there is going to be a customized studio configuration, for under $10,000.

Joe also addressed the rolling shutter issue that affects some CMOS implementations, like that in the HPX-300 (and most CMOS camcorders for that matter). He announced that a future firmware update for the HPX-300 will have “Flashband Compensation” to accommodate flashes that take less than a full frame, by borrowing information from an adjacent frame.

New to the P2 range are the:

AG-HPG20 P2 Portable 10 bit, 4:2:2 general purpose portable player/recorder weighing just 2.5 lbs (about 1 KG). The HPG20 has HD-SDI in and out for easy integration in existing workflows.

AJ-PCD35 five slot P2 card reader that connects to the computer via PCIe for high speed transfer.

AJ-HRW10 – a P2 ‘rapid writer’ that offloads up to five P2 cards at a time to two 3.5” hard drive RAIDs simultaneously. It includes the PCD35 and connects via Gbit Ethernet to the rest of your facility.

The only new P2 Varicam is the AJ-HPX3700, which outputs 4:4:4 RGB dual link signals live from the camera and records HD in camera to 4:2:2. It is positioned as a premium production Varicam.

Robert Harris, VP Marketing and Product development took to the stage to talk about the success of the AVCCAM format – based on the consumer AVCHD format but with higher bitrate options for improved quality. Pitched as “for those who can’t afford P2 independent frame products” like schools, event videographers, churches, etc.

AVCCAM records to ubiquitous SD media at data rates comparable to HDV. Like HDV AVCCAM is long GOP, although AVCCAM is H.264 not MPEG-2. H.264, which is also known as the AVC coded (Advanced Video Codec for MPEG-4). AVCCAM is gaining NLE support and theoretically provides significantly higher quality at any given data rate. H.264 is generally considered to be 2-4 times higher quality than MPEG-2 (HDV and XDCAM HD/EX).

So, while both HDV and AVCCAM produce Long GOP material, all else being equal, the AVCCAM footage will be significantly higher quality than that from HDV. All else being equal!

Panasonic announced a new camera to join the existing two products in the AVCCAM line: the AG-HMC70 and HMC-150. The new camera – AG-HMC-40 is a compact handheld camcorder (prosumer form factor) that weighs in at around 2.2 lbs (1 KG) with three 1/4” 3MOS chips, 12x optical zoom, Dynamic Range Stretch and Cine-like gamma. The HMC-40 records full raster 1080 at 60I, 30P and 24P; 720p60 and SD. Well equipped with outputs the camera features HDMI; USB 2; Composite and Component out. An optional XLR input adapter has manual level control. The HMC-40 will be available in August. The HMC-40 will carry an MRSP of $3195 and records to standard SD cards.

Also in the announcements from Robert:

HMR-10 – a compact, portable, battery powered recorder/player with  3.5” screen, HDMI and HD-SDI output, HD0SDI Input, USB port, audio input, remote start stop. At the highest bitrate it offers 3 hrs full raster recording or 12 hrs at 1440 x 1080 and a lower bitrate. (1440 x 1080 matches HDV and XDCAM HD/EX at below 50 Mbits/sec).

Billed as “HD Quality” the AG-HCK10 is a compact camera head with 3MOS 1/4” images. It teams with the HMR-10 where iris, focus, zoom and remote control come from the deck over HMR cables up to 10 meters each.

Both deck and compact camera head will be available in August with the HMR-10 coming in at $2650 and camera head similarly priced.

That completed the new product announcements but Robert Harris returned to the stage to commit Panasonic to supporting 3D throughout the entire camera-to-home workflow. He noted that the recent Monsters vs Aliens release had 28% of the screens showing a 3D version but those screens took in 56% of the total revenue! No wonder the industry is heading for 3D. The slide showed a single camera that had two lenses on the body – most unusual looking as the appeared to merge into the body.

No timescale was revealed for the Panasonic push to 3D but they are previewing technologies, particularly display technologies, on the NAB 2009 booth in the Central Hall.