This morning we received a nice package from Anton/Bauer, containing their new ELIPZ 10k mega-battery. This battery powers a camcorder and it’s on-board accessories at the same time. Much more info to come, including a full Test Bench review.
But for now we’ve started charging, and we plan on extinguishing it by running our camcorder and the Anton/ Bauer Elightz on-board light for as long as we can. We’ll get back to you when we’re finshed.
-Andrew @ Videomaker
Ahoy, loyal vidcast viewers! We’re out of our cram period for the Videomaker Summit at UCLA, so we’re back posting show notes. (We’ll post some show notes for past episodes once we get to that point in our catching-up process.)
Video Bits and Bytes, with Mark and Derek:
Special segment: On Location at NAB with John Burkhart and Mark Montgomery:
Tips and Tricks with Jennifer O’Rourke: A few tips on getting better voiceovers if you don’t have (or can’t attach) an external mic.
Take 20 with John Burkhart and myself: We look at an excerpt of Critter Corner, a public-access show for a Butler, Pennsylvania animal shelter, submitted by Carmen Bianco.
Hands On with Mark Montgomery: a look at JVC’s Everio GY-HD7 high-definition hard drive-based camcorder and its companion CU-VD40US Share Station. This is the first consumer camcorder that can record a full 1920×1080.
So NAB 2007 is winding down, time to recap the show highlights from the Videomaker perspective. Be sure to tune into our upcoming Vidcast and our YouTube channel, for video and interviews from the show floor.
Adobe’s big news was of course the announcement of CS3 Production Premium to be shipped this summer. I’ll be heading down to Adobe HQ in two weeks to get a hands on a beta version over a few days and I’ll give you my impressions of the new workflow and software.
AJA turned heads with it’s new I/O HD, a capture device that has hardware encoding support for Apple’s new Pro Res 422 codec.
Apple announced two new products: Final Cut Studio 2, and Final Cut Server. FC Studio 2 is a major upgrade of all the final cut apps (except DVD Studio Pro), and saw the addition of the new color correcting application: Color (aptly named). Final Cut server is a media asset management solution for organization and easy workflow for approvals and collaboration between departments.
Avid was touting it’s new release of Media Composer and Avid Express Pro, both now running on Intel based Macs as well as on the PC. Also in the line up was Liquid Chrome XE an all in one production solution that allows optional hardware support from AJA.
Black Magic came to the show to promote its new Intensity Pro HDMI I/O card with analogue support, as well as a new flagship capture device the MultiBridge Eclipse, with support for 3Gb/s SDI allowing 2k resolution support.
Bogen/Manfrotto/Kata was there along with their new 503 HDV head, as well as the extremely clever 561B Monopod with tilt and pan support. Kata is showcased their new line of camera gloves for specific camcorder models.
Canon’s popular line of HDV camcorders remains unchanged this year, with some new lens choices for 1/3″ cameras.
JVC Pro’s GY series also remained unchanged, but very popular as well. New technology announcements included a clever microwave transmitting solution for the GY series that required no re-encoding. JVC also came out with some interesting DV/DVCAM to DVD decks from their pro division, which are great for making dailies and duplication.
Lowell brought their new Rifa-lite kits to show, that had adapters allowing you to use different wattage lamps and even flourescent fixtures in the same soft box.
Matrox came to NAB to showcase their new products. Most remarkable was the MXO the HD capture and monitoring solution for the Mac. They added some new calibration features to the device.
Maxell was there showing off their new technologies. Holographic Storage, the next big thing that’s going to let you say good bye to your spinning disks forever, was at the forefront. Still pricey at this time, but in the near future, prices will drop and capacities will increase. Perfect for all those hours of HD video you’ll have stored up by then.
ProDAD the European Plug-in provider, was launching its VitaScene series of Plug-ins for the US market.
Panasonic Broadcast was showing their AG-HSC 1U small format, 3 chip AVCHD camcorder. It records to a SD card, but the unit also comes with an external 40GB portable hard drive to store up all your data for long days in the field.
RED, Everyone was talking about the immanent launch of RED 1, the 4k Digital Cinema solution. The highest quality at the lowest price of all the professional cinema cameras out there. The body itself lists for $17,500, and some nice lenses and accessories could easily push that over $40K. This puts it out of most consumers price range, but fear not, RED also annouced they were working on a little brother version of the RED 1, but no specific details about it were forthcoming.
Sony’s big announcement was for the upcoming XDCAM EX format and prototype camcorder. It had three 1/2″ sensors, recorded mpeg2 streams to the new ExpressCard format. Run times were quoted as being four hours with 2 32GB cards. expected to retail for about $8,000.
Tiffen was showing off a new arm for the Stedicam Merlin, as well as software suite of plugins called DFX that replicate the look of Tiffen’s famous filter sets in post production.
Varizoom brought along their DV Media Rig shoulder mounted camera support system, allowing great balance and stability for your small format camera.
Be sure to check out the video of our NAB coverage on next weeks vidcast.
JB
NAB Update:
Apple announced they had passed over 800,000 Final Cut users, and unveiled two software packages today at NAB: Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Server.
Final Cut Studio 2 consists of the following parts:
Final Cut Pro 6, whose major new features include:
1)An open format timeline, allowing you to mix and match any frame rate and resolution on the same timeline, with no rendering required.
2)Smooth Cam, an image stabilization feature
3)Motion templates that are editable within FCP, (no need to return to Motion to make changes)
4)FX Plugins, a new set of GPU accelerated plugins.
5)Pro Res 422. A new apple developed codec that is 10 bit, 4:2:2 VBR. This codec allows you to use uncompressed HD quality video, at a fraction of the storage space and bandwidth. Sony, Panasonic, and RED have signed on in support for this codec, as well as AJA creating a hardware capture box that has a Pro Res 422 encoder built into a chip in the device.
Motion 3
1)A full and pervasive 3D environment.
2)Vector based paint tools.
3)Match moving to reduce the headaches of rotoscoping, and traveling mattes.
4)A video clip independent, and keyframless time remapping function.
5)Audio behaviors, that can trigger actions based on the beat and tempo of your soundtrack.
Soundtrack Pro 2
1)New multiple video frame display (clip beginning, cursor position, and clip end) making much easier to sync sounds to video.
2)Advanced Take Management, allowing you to seamlessly mix and match portions of different ADR takes.
3)5.1 Surround Mixing.
4)A conform feature that automatically re-syncs your audio mix, if you’ve made changes to the picture edit.
5)Spectrum Analysis tools to visually manipulate the an audio clip.
Compressor 3
1)Major upgrade, elevating Compressor to a full fledged Studio Ap, instead of a utility.
2)New user interface
3)Support for Time Code overlays, and water marks.
4)Multiple Instances, the ability to select the number of CPU cores to use during compression.
Color
1)New color correction and timing application.
2)Real time color grading.
3)Primary and secondary color correction (up to 8 secondaries).
4)3D Scopes.
5)Up to 2k resolution.
DVD Studio 4
1)No changes or upgrades to this package.
Final Cut Studio 2 will be released in May 2007, for a price of $1,299. Upgrade from Final Cut Studio is $499, while the upgrade from any version of Final Cut is $699.
Final Cut server is a cross platform media management suite, designed to catalog and search through all your digital media assets, and assist collaboration between different departments. The pricing is $999 for up to ten users, and $1999 for unlimited users. Available this summer.
Sony teased a brand new small format camera called XDCAM EX, similar in size to the Z1. This new camera has three 1/2” imagers (unknown if CMOS or CDD), records an mpeg2 stream to a 16GB PC Express card. Each 16GB card is said to hold 1 hour of video. No release date, or price has been offered. We’ll try to pin down some more details on this camera later this week.
More updates to come…
Well, it’s that time of year again, and Videomaker is gearing up and heading to Las Vegas to cover the world’s largest broadcast and video industry event: NAB (National Association of Broadcasters).
As always Videomaker is right there in the middle of the action. We’ll be meeting one on one with the movers and shakers of the video industry, such as Sony, JVC, Panasonic, Canon, Apple, Avid, Adobe, RED etc. And bringing you the news straight from the floor.
So if you can’t make it to NAB, stay up to date on all the announcements here. And if you can make it to NAB, stop by and say hello as we prowl the Las Vegas Convention center for all the latest video technology.
The venerable VX1000 camcorder has been granted what may be the greatest honor: a shoe deal.
That’s right, eS Footwear has made a special edition shoe just for you. DV tapes not included.
From eS Footwear:
“The Accel gets all decked out in a special new colorway inspired by world famous eS filmer Scuba Steve. The light and dary grey upper represents the Sony VX1000 video camera; the yellow, white and red eyelets echo the cables.”
If you aren’t sure about this style, be sure to find me at NAB. I’ll be sporting them.
-andrew
The Boys in Brown delivered a nice video editing treat yesterday from HP. We now have an xw8400 workstation.
The machine looks identical to other models in the xw lineup from last year, but that changes once you open it up. Check out the Dual Core Intel Xeon chips, new heatsinks, and low-RPM fans. Ahhh, the fans. This machine sounds very different than the xw9300 we have next to it. The new 8400 is nearly silent.
See it in: the November issue of Videomaker magazine,
and episode 23 of Videomaker Presents.
Episode 15 of the vidcast should be up today, along with it’s streaming counterpart. No guinea pigs were physically harmed in the making of this video. I think we called it a “gerbil” though, so some emotional damage may have occured.
If you’re sending these videos to a TV set, be sure to subscribe to the “High Quality” version available just below the streaming video window.
Be sure to check out all of the NAB streaming video also. Lots to watch! Enjoy.
This morning left us one HVX200 and one FS-100 DTE heavier than yesterday. We’re eager to start using the two together, as the FS-100 is capable of recording up to 100Mbps HD video. Maybe we’ll just fill up the whole 100GB DTE drive with high definition slo-mo from the HVX200.
Both of these support DV video along with HD video, so we’ll see how easy it is to migrate between the two formats.
Okay, who else out there is offering you this kind of deal? Really, let me know. We’ve put together 40 minutes of video, distributed over two vidcasts for you. It’ll all stream from the vidcast page too. Take it as a good way to see personalities behind the products, or just to get up to speed on what’s new. Part 1 includes interaction with fun robots, monorails and reps from Matrox, Zaxworks, Tapco, Petrol, Red Rock Micro and Apple. Part 2 will include interaction with SmartSound, Chimera, Sonic, Canon,Tiffen, and Videscence. The final section of each episode features Videomaker editors talking about the show.