Editing and Grading - Reassuringly Inexpensive

When I started editing again a few years ago editing packages came in 2 flavours.  There were consumer ones aiming to suit the person wanting to cut out the foot shots from their 2 weeks in Majorca and add a few cheesy titles.  Then there were the Pro ones which added a nought to the end of the price tag and came with stern and complicated looking interfaces.  Most of these came with some form of colour correction built in.  Apple Color in the Final Cut Studio Suite was atypical being a hard-core grading suite.  At the lower end many of bought plug-ins like Red Giant’s Colorista or Looks.  More up-market productions would turn to applications like DaVinci Resolve which was a hardware/software solution capable of making a 6 digit hole in your bank account. 

On Tuesday all eyes were on the Supermeet to see what Apple might bring to the table.  Apple had been under-pressure from a strong, modern offering from Adobe and a returning to form and increasingly agressive Avid.  The rumour mill was running 24 hour shifts.  Was it going to be iMovie Pro, was it going to be 64bit and just a few short weeks ago even did Apple still care?  I was at the FXPHD party when the presentation started and the party went into suspension whilst the revellers turned to the blow-by-blow account on Twitter.  Well it turns out Apple did care - FCP X (at least what we saw of it) turned out to be more than most people expected.  It is a radically changed UI but not in a consumer direction.  Apple is looking for a paradigm shift in working and its clever and well-thought out.  There is still a lot we don’t know.  Experienced cutters in FCP with shortcut keys hard-wired into their brains are going to find it a shock but not as big as the price sticker.  $299 is what that last slide said which brought the room (and it was a BIG ROOM) to its feet at the Supermeet.  The vibe I got in the days after from people I spoke to was.  “It looks cool but I don’t know whether I can get used to it but for $299 I am going to give it a go”.

On the Colour grading front, two vendors announced free versions of their software.  Red Giant announced a free light version of Colorista.  Even more surprising was a free light version of Resolve.  Coming in July this will lack some features but is still a remarkable journey from super-high end through $1000 Mac version to gratis.  It should run on a laptop according to BlackMagic but remember Resolve really likes Nvidia Quadro cards, a fast raid array and a grading panel.  No-one is giving those away free but at lease Resolve is now supported on the lower cost panels from Euphonix.

Las Vegas

This was my first trip to Vegas.  This is at least partly deliberate.  I don’t really drink very much and the same goes for gambling.  It’s not a deep seated revulsion or based on principle - I just don’t.  So there has never really been a strong desire to go there.

Dawn view from Signature - damn you jet lag!

NAB finally gave me a reason to go - did it live up to my low expectations.  I think the answer is probably yes.  Las Vegas is aptly nicknamed “Sin City” as it is like a corrupted Disney World.  It is just as impressive, well-conceived and efficient and with the same talent for parting you from your cash.  However, whilst Disney blends a spirit of optimism and traditional values with a dash of sentimentality (OK, more than a dash). Las Vegas is set-up to live for the moment and to hell with the consequences.  It’s not a hidden agenda - its right there in the open.  It is unashamed and it is relentless.  It has the same level of sincerity that I see in Disney World that only seems to exist in America.  Its why you couldn't transport either resort to the UK without it ending up a bit rubbish.

I suppose part of my prejudice comes from growing up in a seaside town in Wales.  It’s fair to say that my hometown was not a resort that pitched itself at the upper echelons of the holiday market.  Seeing the massed ranks of slot machines in the Casinos took me back to the amusement arcades of my youth. So when I wander through the Bellagio shopping arcade where every top-line designer is represented to emerge into a giant hall of slot machines is just plain disconcerting.  Especially, when you see rows of people in Guccipradior playing.  That would never happen in Rhyl - well, not real designer wear and they would be trackies.

Ornate ceiling at Bellagio

So would I warn you off going to Vegas?  No, I wouldn’t go that far.  It is worth seeing.  Even if you are viceless, there is a lot to do and the architecture is monumental and the interiors are opulent if not always tasteful.  Its also a reasonably priced placed to stay as the gambling subsidises the rates and there are just huge quantities of rooms available.  Just don’t say I didn't warn you if you come home broke.

NAB and Twitter

They say filmmaking is not about the gear, its about the content - the story in particular.  But NAB is not a film festival its a trade show, so for this one week, gear takes centre stage.  Less evident, but no less powerful is that NAB is about the people.  New relationships, affirmations of relations, chance encounters - it’s all here. 

This same mix of gear and people is what drew me across the Atlantic.  I have had the chance to meet many of the key people in the UK DSLR movement through events like Converge.  However, many of the people I communicate with through the likes of Twitter and blog posts.  When NAB hits Vegas, many of these people emerge from the Interweb and head for Nevada.  I had hoped for a chance to meet a few of these folks during my visit.  However, thanks to events like All-in Film and the RC Live I think I have met pretty much everyone I knew before plus lots of new folks to follow.  Not being the most socially adept person or a even “proper” creative I worried a bit about what kind of reception I would get but I found everyone to be almost universally friendly. 

All-in Film at the Had Rock

I feel heartened that the online community is capable functioning as a real community when the opportunity arises.  I feel enthused and inspired listening to what people are doing and planning.  I look forward to seeing what they produce and I will continue to strive to be worthy.

Thunderbolt Hunting

I wandered round the South Hall looking for Thunderbolt devices.  As I have previously stated, I think Thunderbolt has great potential and I was hoping that a few manufacturers would be ready to respond despite the short lead-time from the announcement.  I did find a few which is encouraging.  The most common item on show was disk drives.  Promise, Sonnet, G-Tech and Lacie all had something to show.  Except for Lacie, they were mainly mini-tower RAID drives of various sizes. 

Smaller 4 drive Promise RAID

Promise seemed to have the most fully formed offering and were quoting the lowest lead time.  Prices are expected to be a little higher than FW800 versions but not stupidly so.  Some manufacturers were waiting on Intel to hand over the silicon. 

G-Tech with Thunderbolt v Firewire

G-Tech for example were using Thunderbolt card on a board.  I got all excited as I thought it was a PCIe card suitable for a Mac Pro but was told that this was just an engineering version of a Thunderbolt chip. 

Lacie had a different kind of offering.  They were using Thunderbolts daisy chaining capabilities to link up lots of their Little Big One drives.  Each of these contains twin 7200RPM laptop drives.  They had used Drive Utility to RAID 4 of these together and were seeing read times of over 200MBps which is impressive for mobile hard drives.  SSD versions are in the pipeline too.  Lacie did reveal that Intel were currently trying to sort out an issue on write speeds currently which affects drives using a popular interface bridge chip from Marvell which He didn’t think SSDs would be impacted as they use a different chip.

I saw two non-disk devices from Blackmagic and Matrox. 

BlackMagic Thunderbolt equipped capture device

The Blackmagic is an interface box and decoder allowing you to connect up several different kinds of video feeds to a Thunderbolt device, it also has 2 ports so Thunderbolt drive arrays can be connected to the host.  Its not ready to ship yet (waiting on Intel for a decent inventory of chips) but it is working and it could be seen doing just that on the Adobe stand. 

Little black box links MXO2 PCIe connector to Thunderbolt

Matrox had taken a slightly different route.  Some of their MXO2 devices required a PCIe card and, with Apple only offering that on the 17” for the last 2 generations,  They have created a little black box which effectively acts as a Thunderbolt converter,  Remember Thunderbolt can act as a PCIe bus so this is not a giant engineering leap but still usefully offers new and existing MXO2 owners some new machine options.  I asked if Matrox’s hardware encoding still gave benefits especially with GPU accelerated options like Adobe Media Encoder.  The representative assured me that with Thunderbolt support and recently improved Premiere integration it still gave performance gains.

NAB 2011 - Some Thoughts on the Show Themes

My entry into this media world was through the DSLR.  The DSLR revolution we called it for a while.  As a DSLR enthusiast, it was clear that its not a revolution anymore - its absolutely mainstream.  Both its strengths and weaknesses continue to inspire hardware and software designers to find new ways of using it.  The old revolutionary council has not lost its enthusiasm and even its most vociferous opponents are more likely than not to be making their pitch down the lens of a Canon EOS.

Duelling Gurus - Bloom v Laforet - Different approaches but both still evangelising DSLRs

That said the show was a bit dull from a DSLR gear point of view for me.  I think there are a few reasons for the lack of progress.  Firstly, most of the major photo shows have been and gone and thats robbed NAB of any scoops.  Secondly, the Japanese Tsunami has had a major impact on the supply side.  Even if the manufacturers have a new story to tell, they will be wary of doing it when the shipping date may be a long way out. Whilst there have been worthy additions to the video capable DSLR market over the last year nothing has really extended the envelope and NAB has done nothing to change that.  About the only area where there was a buzz was EVFs.

Zacuto EVF

Zacuto saw a lot of interest in their new EVF and sitting right behind them on the show floor was Cineroid who beat everyone to shipping last year and now are preparing a metal bodied version with a choice of outputs.  I believe there was a new entrant from LCDVF but I didn’t get to see that.  I did get to see a prototype from SmallHD using a larger 4” screen.  This is more overtly a dual purpose device but it is going to sacrifice a little pixel density compared to the Zacuto.  Redrock Micro seem to have fallen by the wayside a little with their design which wasn’t one show.  I was told, but not by RRM, that they were reviewing the design or price point due to the coming influx off dual purpose flip designs.

If there was a vibe about this year then it was not DSLR or 3D it was 4K.  RED has been banging the drum about HD (roughly 2K) not being enough.  However, with 4K cameras on the way from Sony and JVC and 4K lenses from Canon, I just get the feeling that the electronics industry is looking for what comes next. 

Canon's PL mount 4K compatible zoom lenses

With Full HD already pinned on 1080p they need a new moniker to rally round.  4K has the advantage that it breaks the cycle of getting into ever more desperate superlatives.  There are alternative names floating round like Quad HD or perhaps even Cinema HD.  Remember, obsolescence is part of their business model - so change is inevitable.  Of course from a content creation view 4K is not just Quad HD its Quad Hassle.  Top movie productions and post houses may be used to a 4K pipeline but not the rest of us.  With Thunderbolt, CUDA, 64bit and all that I think the post and hardware vendors are just about ready but the display and distribution side for anything except movie theatres is nowhere near ready.  To see the difference from 1080p you are going to need a very large display device.  I must admit I struggled to see the difference in the RED Theatre at the show which was using a Sony 4K projector.  I liked the short they made but there was no shock and awe for me on the image quality. 

Sony F65

Sony’s own theatre showing footage from their new F65 was more impressive if partly because the screen was huge and the room was not.  The demo material was more overtly “demoish” than REDs but what impressed me was the latitude and the lack of noise.  But would I expect to see a difference on a 50" or smaller panel on a wall 3m away like most people have - I just don't think so.  How is that 4K image going to reach me.  My rural internet connection struggles to deliver me AppleTV 720p in a reasonable time.  Broadcasters are not going to sacrifice 4 HD or 16 SD channels to show one 4K channel and current blu-ray players would are going to struggle with the format or the capacity - probably both.  The market is still trying to digest 3D and I guess it will be a while before the marketing machine gets into its stride.