Imagine a National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention with three major mainstream TV networks—NBC, CBS and FOX—sitting out. And imagine one of the industry’s leading filmmakers saying, "I can safely say I would never shoot another film on film."
Well, imagine no more. That quote was from George Lucas during a Sony Broadcasting press conference. Lucas deployed Sony’s hi-def cameras in the making of Star Wars: Episode II. "It’s the same issue with nonlinear editing," Lucas continued. "Fifteen years ago, I switched from the Moviola to editing digitally … I cannot imagine going back to the Moviola, because the advantage of digital enormously outweighs old methods."
As for NBC, CBS and Fox—they have dropped their NAB memberships over the issue of station ownership. These networks, as well as continuing NAB member ABC, want to acquire more TV stations—an expansion opposed by most of NAB’s rank-and-file.
The ownership issue was discussed and Lucas’ remarks came during the opening days of the NAB confab in Las Vegas. At press time, the convention had just gotten underway. Here’s a rundown of some of the initial product announcements:
ITK IN 4K
Innovation TK (ITK), the Hertford, U.K.-based telecine manufacturer, launched its 4K option for the Millennium Machine. The option costs $225,000. Shipping for $1 million, the Millennium was first delivered January 2000 and is designed around the concept of creating digital images which have a warmer, more organic, film-like quality. During NAB, ITK announced that Condor Europe, a postproduction house located in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and set to open in Brussels, purchased four Millennium Machines. Condor is replacing the Philip’s Spirit.
Cintel co-managing director Delphi Durrant said this brings Millennium sales to 23. "What is amazing is the fact that in the first year we have placed 17 machines in the field, globally," reported Durrant. In the U.S. there are nine machines in facilities including Post Perfect, New York; SMA, New York; and VTA, Atlanta. An additional two machines have been ordered by U.S.-based post houses, but not yet installed.
In order to maintain high levels of service support, a cap is being placed on Millennium, with sales restricted to around 24 per annum. Durrant told SHOOT that the company was planning on starting ITK in the U.S. The new company will be a fully owned subsidiary of ITK, U.K. The sales, marketing, and support base will be "somewhere in California," and should be fully operational by September. Durrant said ITK was also considering having a satellite research-and-development team working out of the U.S. office. A search is currently on for a sales executive to head up the operation; Los Angeles-based engineer Craig Risebury will be overseeing the development in the interim.
A 70mm option for the Millennium, which was scheduled to be shown at this year’s NAB, has been delayed until May. The option allows the user to transfer both 65mm and 70mm film formats without compromising the flexibility of the telecine, providing the same features, speeds and resolutions that are available with 35mm and 16mm formats. ITK is continuing to receive orders for supply upgrade products including the TWIGI system, the SCAN’dal and the Y-Front.
By the International Broadcasters Convention (IBC), to be held in Amsterdam this year, ITK expects to announce an additional product range. Durrant said it would be within the broadcast area, but he would not elaborate. Managing director Stuart Hunt, a former design engineer for Cintel, founded ITK in ’94.
CINTEL
Cintel, the Ware, U.K.-based manufacturer with a U.S. operation in Valencia, Calif., has a strong message to deliver to the industry: It’s back. Bought out of receivership last year (SHOOT, 8/11/2000, p. 1) by chairman Peter Giles and group operations manager Paul Briggs, Cintel has since worked on about 14 major equipment installations in the first quarter of this year.
"We are now focused on the order pipeline for the second quarter and expect to be profitable in the first half of 2001," stated Briggs. The profit forecast includes the cost of buying materials for production throughout this year.
"It’s been a roller-coaster ride," confirmed Ami Cooper, Cintel marketing communications manager. "But Briggs and Giles have really focused Cintel as far as our business plan, our research and development and our technology go. I think the fruits of all that are starting to show," she said. At this year’s confab, Cintel showcased upgrades to the high-end, HD-capable C-Reality telecine and RASCAL, the company’s stand-alone entry-level SD/HD machine that was launched at last year’s NAB. The C-Reality starts at around $800,000 and RASCAL starts at $500,000. Globally, 10 RASCALs (includes one Callisto) and 50 C-Realitys have been sold.
The most significant development is the C-Reality’s ability to process 4K data, which provides high-speed, full-bandwidth, high-resolution scanning to data stream output. "Last year we kind of had the 4K option ready, but it wasn’t in full-blown production. So this is the unveiling of the 4K full-blown production model," noted Cooper.
Two installations of the 4K machine have been made in Europe—at Listo Video, Vienna, and Wave Pictures, London. The Hippi Interface for fast, economical data exchange has been added to the RASCAL and C-Reality, and Cintel is offering additional data scan formats: 1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720 data outputs.
A prototype of Pin Gate, which provides film stability for C-Reality, was also shown, with the production model scheduled for release later in the year; and a high-speed data transfer solution based on Dual Stream HDSDI is in research-and-development too. "We know that C-Reality can probably scan as high as 8K, but the technology to move it and do something with it is not there," Cooper explained.
Cintel also claims a revolutionary discovery regarding the ability to compress high-resolution data files. "What would happen if you could take a 4K data file, which normally occupies approximately fifty megabytes of storage space, and compressed the file to two megabytes without causing noticeable artifacts and noise?" Cintel asks. A 35mm projection test will soon be demonstrated.
REALVIZ
In a vote of confidence for the Apple Macintosh, image-based content creator Realviz announced that its software applications are now available for the Mac OS X and the Mac platform. Realviz is headquartered in Sophia Antipolis, France, with U.S. headquarters in San Francisco.
The move was based on the firm’s attempts to provide effects and CG tools to a wider audience, reaching professionals and amateurs in film, broadcasting, gaming and the Internet. Stitcher, which allows users to deploy standard photographic equipment to create virtual vistas of existing real environments, will be the first application to ship on the Mac platform.
Panoramas are automatically warped, color-blended and de-blurred in ImageModeler, a stand-alone application that allows users to create photo-real 3D models for the Web. ImageModeler will be available for shipping on the Mac platform by the time SIGGRAPH is held in Los Angeles in August. In a press statement, Guillame Doboc, Realviz VP, worldwide marketing of professional software, noted that the Macintosh has long been the platform of use for a wide variety of designers, and has a large installed user base in the Web-design community. "Since our products have been introduced, there has been a great demand by artists in the Macintosh community to port our applications, and we are now able to respond to these users’ requests," he said. Stitcher ships for $800 and ImageModeler ships for around $4,500, with limited versions starting at $2,100.
NOTHING REAL
Venice, Calif.-headquartered Nothing Real launched Tremor 1.0, a compositing system scheduled to ship following NAB. Tremor aims to enhance workflow for digital compositing professionals working in HDTV, commercial, video and broadcast. Tremor is fully compatible with Shake, Nothing Real’s flagship product. (Shake is a general-purpose image manipulation toolset that provides users with a low-cost, high-performance compositing solution without the need for specialized hardware.)
This compatability ensures that projects can easily migrate from front room to backroom to render farms, thus allowing facilities to manage talent and resources more effectively. All third-party plug-ins for Shake will be available in Tremor.
Nothing Real also announced the shipping of Shake 2.4, the newest version of the company’s compositing software. Features on Shake 2.4 include a new vector-based procedural paint node, new rotoscoping tools and several ease-of-use improvements.
5D
London-based 5D, developer of visual effects software for Linux, IRIX, Windows and NT, has extended its collection of 5D Monsters image-processing effects with the development of over 100 new effects. This brings the total number of effects available on Monsters to 450. Discreet’s high-end compositing and editing systems will be among the first platforms supported by the new 5D Monsters—together with 5D Cyborg, 5D’s new integrated effects environment due to ship after NAB2001. Also shown at NAB were upgrades to 5D Masher, the offline rendering system which opens Quantel’s Henry, HAL and EditBox solutions to plug-in effects and 3-D, including 5D Monsters and other third-party tools such as Maya. Shipping soon after the confab will be the upgraded 5D Cyborg, which is designed to improve workflow in postproduction by integrating a range of advanced resolution-independent, image-processing tools into a central working environment.
