While there didn’t seem to be all that much “wow” factor at this year’s recently concluded National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, SHOOT sought out some postproduction and/or editorial studio executives as well as artisans for their assessment of the confab and what struck a responsive chord for them.
Some saw Red (as in the digital camera) when discussing technology that captured their fancy. Others were much more about getting themselves into the flow–workflow that is, particularly of the file-based variety. Yet another related topic touched upon was storage. Media management was another subject broached.
We posed the following query to a cross-section of post/edit industry folk:
What technology (hardware, software), development and/or idea struck you as most significant at the recent NAB convention?
Here’s a brief sampling of the responses:
Andy Davis,
VFX supervisor, Riot, Santa Monica
I hate to jump on the already crowded bandwagon, but in my opinion, easily the most exciting technology out there is being pushed by Red. The new 5k high-speed, high-color depth camera that complements the current Red One is at a price point lower than many professional digital cameras. These cameras will become indispensable to those of us in the VFX field needing to shoot plates that need to be manipulated both in size and color. The tests I’ve done on Red footage so far pulls reasonably good keys which is where many of the current range of digital cameras fall apart. Admittedly the technology is in its infancy and much needs to be worked out as the current Red One gets rolled out into production. Inevitably these cameras will start to be common in production and strengthen purely digital workflows. I’m impressed that they are pushing the envelope of quality to make the bigger players take notice. I am still a strong proponent of shooting on 35mm, but this is easily the best candidate I’ve seen so far in the digital cinematography realm. Very inspiring.
Tom Duff, president,
Optimus, Chicago and Santa Monica
From an overall symbolic viewpoint, walking into that hall and not seeing the big dueling booths of Avid and Apple was somewhat eerie.
From a practical viewpoint, there really wasn’t anything that really rocked the world this year, just no special buzz at all. The Red Camera had its long lines again, and is still pretty cool, but it was last year, too. We were looking at data workflow solutions, HD monitors, and a type of innovation that can take any format a camera can output and have an easy way to ingest it into our editing systems. I don’t think we were alone.
We found none of the above. All are works in progress, which is tough for us because we are getting demands for all of them, NOW! It seems like every job is shot on a different type of camera with a different storage, from tape to data. For monitors, Sony had a 42″ displayed and it was not as impressive especially with no advanced cost but expected to reach the $50k range. For editorial, still not one box that can do it all. For workflow, still in the beta stages for overall solutions.
Phil Mendelson,
chief technical officer of creative services, Ascent Media, Santa Monica
One of the most exciting things for me is the maturation of the DVS disk recorder product line. With new enhancements to the Clipster, it not only becomes a more powerful Conform tool than ever, but can encode, package and key manage content for Digital Cinema. Providing powerful timeline based tools enabling the user to compare and play out their Digital Cinema tracks or packages, added to the existing toolset that has been maturing over the years, Clipster is a most impressive and useful postproduction “Swiss Army Knife.”
The Pronto continues to mature as well, adding great value in a scaled down tool that addresses the need for a cost effective bridge device. The Spycer Project and Storage management tools add the ability to manage media and projects across multiple devices and volumes, turning Clipsters and Prontos into an integrated, Enterprise class solution. All of these can work together with DVS’ own DVS SAN storage solution, making for a tightly integrated bundle that can play in a wide variety of postproduction applications from SD to 4K resolution.
Keith Neff,
senior VP of technology, Grace & Wild, Inc., Farmington Hills, Mich., and managing director, hdstudios and Filmcraft Imaging.
This year’s NAB has seen a cottage industry build up around the Red Camera. At Grace & Wild we received our camera a little over a month before NAB and it was good to see work flow and hardware solutions from Apple, Kona, Assimilate, Boxx technologies and others.
The next biggest thing is storage! There were “solutions” from $200 to $2 million and it was a challenge trying to figure out the salient features of each. My favorite in the trinkets and trash department came in the form of a big yellow button with black lettering that said ‘TAPE SUCKS.COM’ from a company selling storage, I wore it proudly.
Finally, it is good to see some of the big iron companies starting to open up their systems somewhat–the downside is that they are still slow to embrace newer formats like P2, XDCam HD and Red Code.
Jon Ettinger,
managing director of FilmCore, NY, LA, SF.
By far the most prevalent trend at NAB was file-based work flow solutions. Starting with camera upgrades (P2 and other technology) and going all the way through the finishing process, it seems that we are closer than ever to a totally file-based environment. Companies like Quantel were showing software and hardware that will allow users to deal with the ever growing complexity of final deliverables, thus addressing a big client demand. It appears likely that we will soon be able to complete jobs without ever laying stuff off to any tapes or DVDs. The inherent benefits for our clients are huge. We will be able to deliver things faster than ever before and share work in a manner that up until now has only been a dream.
