Many from the commercial editorial community made the annual trek to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention, which concluded yesterday (4/21) in Las Vegas, to get the latest from industry leader Avid Technology, Tewksbury, Mass., and its rival, Cupertino, Calif.-headquartered Apple. Both companies focused on new price/performance goals and their continued emphasis on making HD accessible to the masses.
Also, as prevalent rumors suggested (SHOOT, 4/8, p. 1), Avid introduced an HD Symphony–the Avid Symphony Nitris, a nonlinear SD and HD finishing system with the popular Avid interface, designed to offer real-time editing and effects for multi-stream 10-bit HD and SD media, as well as HD Total Conform with its Media Composer product family. This represents a development that many Symphony users in the spot community had been hoping for–a high resolution finishing system with the familiar Avid interface.
“We are very excited,” said Steve Beal, co-president of New York-based Bionic Media, which posts commercials, promos and long-form projects. Following a demo during his meeting with Avid at NAB, Beal told SHOOT that his company intends to purchase a new Symphony Nitris, as well as upgrade its current Symphony system. “It’s good to know that we have a future with Symphony,” he said. “We book it everyday.”
“This box will let us finish HD on the [familiar] Avid platform, and no retraining is necessary,” related Bionic co-president Todd Feurer, whose company plans to use the systems for finishing, in conjunction with its newly purchased Avid Adrenaline editing systems.
The hitch to Symphony Nitris may be the $89,995 price tag for a new system. (Avid officials said that upgrade pricing had not yet been determined.) Some NAB attendees felt that the system was overpriced yet Beal called it “a decent bargain.”
Avid reported that Symphony Nitris includes Avid’s “Total Conform” functionality for HD, meaning that it recreates every detail of an offline edit from other Avid systems in full HD resolution. Video and audio I/O support includes Avid’s Meridien JFIF and ABVB resolutions; it additionally includes project collaboration capabilities through the Avid Unity MediaNetwork.
At NAB, Avid also presented new versions of Media Composer Adrenaline HD (v2.1) and DS Nitris (v7.6); both are now available. Avid announced MediaNetwork 4.0, which would deliver 4 Gb Fibre Channel throughput and is expected to ship during Q2. Avid previewed MetaFuze, a standalone application that enables users to collect metadata for files. The company also introduced Avid Xpress Studio HD, a software bundle that includes Avid Express Pro HD, Pro Tools LE, Avid 3D, Avid FX and Avid DVD by Sonic.
APPLE
Apple previewed its anticipated new OS X 10.4 “Tiger,” which includes Quicktime 7, supporting the H.264 codec; Spotlight, a search engine that would enable users to add metadata to their files; and iChat AV, a four-way video conferencing feature which appears to have an application as a collaboration and review/approval system for spotmakers. Tiger will be unleashed on April 29.
Apple also introduced Studiotrack Pro, a new audio editing and sound design application available in May for $299. Apple presented upgrades including its Final Cut Pro 5 nonlinear editing system, Motion 2 motion graphics software, Shake 4 compositing system, and DVD Studio Pro 4, which is being designed to support emerging high definition DVD specifications. Apple also arrived in Vegas with a production bundle, offering Final Cut Pro 5, Motion 2, Soundtrack Pro, and DVD Studio Pro 4 for $1,299.
Final Cut Pro 5 is designed to support DV, SD, film and HD formats including HDV, DVC PRO HD and uncompressed HD. The RT Extreme engine in Final Cut Pro 5 has been enhanced to allow uncompressed HD effects to be viewed in real time.
Examining Final Cut Pro 5 for the commercial space, Kirk Paulsen, Apple’s senior director of professional applications marketing, acknowledged that an increasing number of spotmakers have Final Cut Pro. But, he noted, “We’ve turned a corner [with this Final Cut Pro release], we’ve moved to client-supervised sessions.”
Separately, Avid said it plans to support Tiger with its Media Composer Adrenaline HD and Xpress Pro HD system, which will ship later this year.