Offline editors are getting a rush from Media Composer Adrenaline, the first product offering based on the new Digital Nonlinear Accelerators (DNA) from Avid, headquartered in Tewksbury, Mass. The system, which costs $24,999, is earning kudos from those who have used it.
"We bought six of them," reports Michael Raimondi, president of Union Editorial, Santa Monica, which opened its doors six months ago. "After working on them, it just made sense to buy them."
Billy Baldwin, CEO of New York-based PostWorks, agrees. His eight-year-old company beta tested two Adrenalines, and subsequently acquired 13 more. "I think it’s a very well thought-out system," he says. "It is significantly faster [than other systems], and gives you significant power in the tool set."
Avid DNA is a hybrid architecture that leverages the power of both host-based software capabilities and hardware-based acceleration. In addition to Union Editorial and PostWorks, the technology is already in use at editorial houses such as FilmCore, which has offices in Santa Monica and San Francisco; and Cutting Vision, New York. Additionally, Crawford Post Production, Atlanta, recently installed four Adrenaline systems, which have already been used for promos on the Sci-Fi Channel, and for some corporate projects.
Avid donated Adrenalines to the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. Among the editors using the system was John Zieman, founder/ editor of PS 260, New York, who has plans to add DNA to his facility.
The festival, a partnership between Chrysler, Universal Pictures, and bicoastal branded entertainment company Hypnotic, is a filmmaking competition held in stages, with the winner of the contest being awarded a $1 million production deal with Universal. Zieman cut The Delivery Boy, directed by Stephen Marro. He and the other editors cutting films for the competition used Avid’s Adrenaline system. The winner of the festival was Andrew Mudge for The P.T. Johansen Field Guide To North American Monsters. The winning film was announced at The Toronto International Film Festival.
The Technology
Speed, power and compatibility are the watchwords for Adrenaline. It natively supports Avid Meridien (JFIF), ABVB (AVRs), DV25, DV50, IMX and uncompressed 601 media. Its proponents say that with it, the vast majority of the media, projects and metadata can move bi-directionally back and forth between Adrenaline and Meridien-based Avid systems. It can operate in a collaborative workflow with Avid Unity MediaNetwork (it must be the current Unity version 3.3, however; other versions would require an upgrade). It offers real-time, multi-stream, uncompressed SD video editing and 10-bit HD media expandability.
Adrenaline runs on a Mac or NT platform and some qualified laptops over a standard FireWire connection. The product offers a feature set including 24p Film Composer offline editing functionality, 24-bit audio capabilities, and Autocorrect‚ a real-time color correction tool that lassos a sequence, analyzes the pixels, and automatically corrects the sequence, including white balance and contrast.
The fact that Adrenaline and Meridien-based systems are designed to share projects, bins, sequences, and media is seen as a big plus. "One of the advantages is that you can take in multiple sources and play them in the same timeline," says Raimondi. "You can play different resolutions together. That saves time."
According to Avid, the system must support all media types and effects to fully play a project. For example, Symphony cannot play ABVB media; DV25, DV50 and IMX playback is only available via purchasable option. Adrenaline doesn’t support secondary color correction. Adrenaline is fully forward-compatible with projects originated on ABVB systems. It is designed to accept ABVB system projects, bins, sequences and media. Avid does not support backward compatibility of Adrenaline projects, bins, sequences or media to ABVB systems.
Adrenaline digitizes and renders Meridien-compatible JFIF media and other formats. It doesn’t digitize or render ABVB resolutions. When it renders an effect on ABVB media, the user selects the desired format including 1:1, Meridien-compatible JFIF, DV25, DV50, or IMX50. Once ABVB media is placed on an Adrenaline system, the effects either play in real-time where possible or are rendered to an available Adrenaline resolution.
Real world
"It’s a well-thought-out system," notes Baldwin. "To me, it addresses all the embarrassing complaints people had with Avid over the years. Adrenaline allows you to carry through projects from multiple revisions and back. A primary complaint was that you couldn’t do that. … If you had projects archived with the older systems, you couldn’t open them with the new ones. The media were not compatible. This changes that completely."
The system also offers much speedier and easier editing of layered effects. "I’m loving it," says Greg Kiernan, senior editor at Cutting Vision. He cites a Tums commercial he is currently cutting with the Adrenaline, which has warps and a number of "nested" effects, such as shot repositioning and keying out information. He has accomplished the work incredibly quickly. "A stack of effects on a shot like that would typically take [forty-five to fifty minutes]," he says. "For a five-second shot with six nested layers, it took me twenty-five seconds to render. That’s a huge difference."
Raimondi also found the system offered fast work on two Ford spots done at Union, "Spider" and "Frame," directed by Marcus Nispel, of bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander for Pancom International, Los Angeles. "Both were futuristic spots, full of effects," recalls Raimondi. "They took place inside a Ford factory, with robots painted bright orange. For one spot, we wanted to make the robots a darker color. Usually, you would have to go in and color-correct every frame. In Adrenaline, you set the color for the first image, and then it does color correction for the rest of the spot. It saved us tons of time. It’s a lot easier."
Raimondi adds that being able to do that helps sell the work more easily to the client, since nothing is left to the imagination. "Inevitably, in the past, when you show the work to the client, they don’t see it the way it will finally look," he notes. "So much is about perception."
"The color correction tool is a big advantage," agrees Rick Breniser, technical director at FilmCore. "It’s superior to the one we have now. It saves time and offers flexibility."
Keith Neff, managing director of the business communications group at Grace & Wild, Farmington Hills, Mich., reports that the company bought nine Adrenaline systems to use in both its corporate and commercial divisions. "We had several issues," he explains. "We really wanted more speed and reliability. We currently have four Adrenalines banging away [on a corporate project for a car dealership]."
Over at the company’s commercial division, Griot Editorial, Southfield, Mich., Craig Duncan, the VP/ general manager, says the Adrenalines proved useful in the editing of 15 spots for Arby’s, "Oven Mitt" campaign, directed by Tim Hamilton, of Avion Films, Toronto, for Doner, Southfield. "We used it for speed and the enhanced color corrector," he relates.
The company also finished a campaign for Bissell vacuum cleaners, created by Campbell-Ewald, Warren, Mich., and directed by Larry August of Avalon Films, Farmington Hills, Mich., and Los Angeles. Jim Talbot, the senior editor on the campaign, says the 3/2 pull down removal function on the Adrenaline saved time. Film is shot at 24 frames per second, video at 30. To compensate, video repeats frames. "Sometimes you want to remove the repeat frames to increase the speed of the shot," explains Talbot. "Before Adrenaline, I’d have to do that by hand, which was very tedious. Now, I can do it with the touch of a button."
One reason the system works so quickly is because it runs off a computer platform, which has a number of advantages. "It gives you significantly more power in the tool set. The software offers a more efficient processor," observes Baldwin. "It used to be that you had to buy additional hardware every time you had to upgrade—it was crazy. This opens up the market. By having the Macs competing directly against SGIs, you have lower-cost products leveling the playing field. We are moving over to a software-only platform, which means we are not encumbered by having to buy proprietary hardware. Practically speaking, it gives you quicker rendering times, and speeds up the entire process because it uses two processors."
Some editors point to other positives. "Adrenaline has a great function called Transcode," says Jeff Beckerman, president/editor at Cutting Vision. "It allows you to take the whole project or a clip home with you and work on it there. I’ve done it a number of times."
More DNA
In addition to Adrenaline, Avid is introducing Nitris and Mojo, two developing systems also based on the DNA architecture. Nitris combines the DNA architecture with Avid DS version 7 software. In this case, DS and Nitris will probably have identical toolsets. The system can be used for editing, conforming, and finishing compressed and uncompressed 10-bit HD and SD formats. Avid claims it offers the media processing power of more than 30 of today’s Pentium 4 processors.
Nitris is designed to offer real-time performance for multi-stream effects such as real-time dissolves, SMPTE wipes, DVEs, Symphony-style color correction, keys and downstream gaphics. Nitris includes 2k file support, and is scheduled to ship in the fall with prices starting at $78,995.
Avid Mojo, starting at $1,695, is designed to offer real-time effects and simultaneous DV and analog output with Avid Xpress Pro, and Avid NewsCutter XP software. Avid Mojo could connect to a notebook computer, or a qualified PC or Mac via a FireWire cable. It scales to support uncompressed SD video.
PostWorks is one of the first facilities to install both Nitris and Mojo. Baldwin is pleased because images can be carried across systems with "true compatibility. All project parameters can cross over each platform—that’s huge," he notes, adding that one of his clients is using the three Avid systems on an entire project.
There have been some bugs found during the beta testing of the systems. Raimondi reports that there have been "problems [on Adrenaline] with audio where you have to restart. But on System 10, the restart is incredibly fast, and [Avid is] addressing [the issue]," he says.
Many predict that the Adrenaline system will eventually find widespread use, although initially there will be some hesitation. "People will be reluctant to spend twenty-five thousand dollars [to upgrade their systems]," says Beckerman. "I think it’s tough in this economy. Right now, there is a twenty-five percent difference in functionality [between Adrenaline and other Avid systems]. It’s not huge enough to justify a change. But as they add features to it, that will change."
