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Reader SurveyNAB 2004: Ready for Change?
Mar 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By S. D. Katz, D. W. Leitner, Dan Ochiva, Bob Turner
Cheap HD, Applied Metadata Top List
This month, Rockwell Scientific announced that it would spin off its ProCamHD CMOS-based image sensor product into a new company called Altasens in a joint venture with Tokyo-based ITX. Ikegami and JVC already use the low power, system-on-chip HD imagers.
With so much concern over the past year focused on the economic health of the production and post markets, it's easy to miss the changes at work in basic technology. But NAB 2004 offers the best chance around to catch up on the burst of low-cost HDV cameras and related NLEs, faster graphics technology that pushes the limits of high-quality realtime rendering, as well as the first apps to use MXF as the basis for a new — and greatly improved — level of workflow control.
Meanwhile, cash-flush and highly competitive software and networking companies now want a position in the content creation and distribution markets. Expect Microsoft to push further into content creation and distribution with additional announcements around the high-def version of its Windows Media (WM9) codec. In a late February announcement, the DVD Forum dramatically buoyed the prospects of the Microsoft codec's movement beyond its Internet roots — the VC-9 code (core codec of WM9) was included as mandatory for the new HD-DVD video spec to be built into upcoming playback devices. Additionally, computer networking giant Cisco Systems will show products intended to make it a name player in the video networking and delivery markets.
So read on about what's shaping up as an NAB full of what contributing editor D.W. Leitner describes as “epochal change.”
Epochal Change at NAB '04
Camcorders Lead Charge
JVC pairs its HDV camcorder with the CU-VH1, a compact AC/DC HDV format recorder/player.
Extinction isn't pretty. When CCDs replaced camera pick-up tubes in the late 1980s, analogistas proclaimed another betrayal of superior technology in the name of digital (never mind that CCDs were analog, too). Audio CDs, in their view, had already coldly replaced better-sounding LPs, while linear-array CCD telecines would surely coarsen the better-looking images of flying-spot CRTs. Sony's recent bombshell that it intends to drop CRT displays in favor of contrast-challenged flatscreen LCDs and plasmas — the end of the Trinitron era — will prompt similar howls.
Meanwhile, two of three original networks, ABC and NBC, have suddenly announced the end of the traditional September-May seasons in favor of year-round specials, miniseries, and lucrative “reality-TV events” like The Apprentice.
While it makes no claim to Steadicam status, products such as Anton Bauer's Stasis—which integrates both a power supply and a stabilizing shoulder mount—highlights the innovative product development for a growing and more sophisticated DV market.
What do network television makeovers have to do with the demise of the Trinitron, or for that matter, the introduction of new camcorder technologies at NAB '04?
Everyone knows that CRTs are the last holdouts of high-voltage vacuum-tube technology pioneered in the 1920s. Parameters such as corner focus, image size, and geometry still necessitate adjustment, which is why the rise of lightweight digital flat-panel displays was inevitable despite CRTs' superior tonal reproduction.
The networks have survived almost as long, fending off cable and satellite for decades. Ad-busting digital disk recorders like TiVo, however, pose a deeper threat by undermining the basic revenue model that has made over-the-air broadcasting “free” for half a century. They also liberate, more effectively than VCRs, viewers from fixed broadcast and cable schedules. (The idea of network summer reruns now seems antediluvian.)
Worse for the networks, untold possibilities lie ahead for “video-over-IP,” which could one day present a free alternative to conventional broadcasting. (At NAB, check out JVC's new BR-DV6000-NET, a professional video-over-IP VTR that plays/records DV tapes and also encodes/streams MPEG-4 to LANs and the Internet.)
Evidence everywhere suggests, therefore, that we've reached the tipping point of epochal change, where decades of advances in solid-state electronics and computer science have now coalesced to abruptly overturn and replace prior technologies for capturing, processing, editing, distributing, exhibiting, storing for personal use, and archiving moving images. It's no secret that the agent of this change, information technology, is transforming every part of our lives, from email to eBay.
It's clear that IT and TV are now one and the same. Chip firms like Intel make LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) chips to meet surging demand for large TVs; Microsoft takes aim with Windows Media Video 9 (and especially the WMV HD variant) at MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, as well as the emerging realm of digital cinema; and industry bellwethers like Sony embed IP addresses and Ethernet connectivity into their professional player/recorders, including camcorders.
No single device at NAB '04 embodies these seismic disruptions to the degree that camcorders do. Both prosumer and professional designs will, of course, contain the latest CCD or CMOS solid-state imagers, optical beam-splitters or color microfilters, optical or electronic image stabilization, digital video processing, image compression, metadata management, ambient display (flip-out), high-res display (viewfinder), digital audio processing, dynamic power management, IP connectivity, high-speed I/O, FM and microwave signal return, helical-scan tape drives, and this year, random access recording, both solid-state and disc/disk.
OConnor's Ultimate 2060 Fluid Head includes the same feature set as its flagship 2575C, but the smaller, lighter head is pegged for mid-size cameras and camcorders.
Even B-4 bayonet-mount zooms for 2/3in. CCD camcorders, long able to communicate aperture data to camera, are brainy with new sensors to transmit focus and zoom data, new microprocessors to drive zoom ramps, memorize rates, positions, even dynamically fine-tune lens groups during zooming to offset aberrations. And high-speed HD primes from Zeiss, Fujinon, and Canon — many introduced last year — promulgate film technique: T/stops instead of f/stops, cam-driven internal focusing, large engravings, uniform diameters, and follow-focus gears. These marvels challenge optically the best cine lenses, themselves readily mounted on B-4 cameras using P+S Technik's Pro35 Digital Image Converter, which was introduced last year.
As I've pointed out many times, camcorders became image computers when DSP (digital signal processing) prevailed in the 1990s, and coincidentally, digital tape formats enabled by DV and MPEG compression transformed the recorder section into a computer drive for bitstream storage. Videotape and VTRs ceased to exist, replaced by data recorders, which would be just as happy storing MP3s or Microsoft Word files. It was almost preordained that Apple's replacement for SCSI — FireWire — would prove the ideal bus for interconnecting digital camcorder drives, tape, and disk.
If camcorders had not evolved into computers, with the power and flexibility of digital programming, we would not today find ourselves at the frontlines of constant format warfare: SD or HD? 1080 or 720? Interlaced or progressive? 4:3 or 16:9? DV or MPEG? 25Mbps or 50Mbps? 30i or 24p or a frame rate in between? Shutter speed? Conventional gamma or flatter “cine-style”?
Solid State Logic's C100 Digital Broadcast Console—with support for up to 128 channels—includes new router integration and redundancy features, and will be showing at NAB.
All of these choices must be made at the camcorder, and they're permanent. (Not a pastime for the ill informed or indecisive.) Which explains the runaway success in the last year of two multi-format Swiss Army Knives, namely Panasonic's standard-def AJ-SDX900 camcorder with 24p/30p/60i, CineGamma, switchable 16:9/4:3, and choice of 50Mbps 3.3:1 or 25Mbps 5:1 DV compression; and the amazing Grass Valley LDK 6000 mk II WorldCam (camera only), with 2003 Emmy Award-winning DPM (Dynamic Pixel Management) that permits native support for 1080p, 1080i, 720p, and via a base station, simultaneous 480i (NTSC) or 576i (PAL) downconversion, at 23.98fps, 24fps, 25fps, 29.97fps, 50fps, and 59.94fps, for all aspect ratios including 2.35:1 widescreen “Cinemascope” using standard spherical lenses.
If you were a company, large or small, with a mixed clientele, in an unpredictable market that required you variously to produce corporate or industrial films, documentaries, occasional news, sports, episodic pilots, even indie films, which would you choose — a fixed or multi-format camcorder? Hmmm, let's think…
In “pro” camcorders, CRTs cling as black-and-white viewfinders (sensory deprivation in the view of this writer). Last year at NAB, Sony debuted a wonderful high-def HDVF-C30W color 2.7in. LCD viewfinder, remarkably sharp with a zoom mode for fine focusing, excellent peaking controls, and a unique built-in grayscale to aid exposure decisions. This year a Scottish company, AccuScene, will unveil for Sony's HDW-F900 and HDW-750 an especially clear, colorful, lifelike HD viewfinder based on a 2in. LCoS chip. AccuScene's prototype, shown last year, and Sony's HDVF-C30W, were then priced above $10K, but volume production will hopefully kick in this year to lower this remaining threshold.
Chrosziel's 411-53PK Mattebox system provides a solution to handle shades and filters for front-mounted lens accessories on Panasonic AG-DVX100 cameras.
As for component video, the juggernaut of digital still cameras coupled with the wide popularity of Photoshop and similar image editing programs has familiarized the world with both the RAW image format — raw RGB data directly off the CCD with no in-camera processing — and JPEG compression. It requires a convoluted explanation to enlighten non-video types as to why raw video signals must be matrixed into color difference signals (Y, R-Y, B-Y), then encoded into NTSC, all of which must be undone to display the original image. Therein lies the legacy of NTSC broadcasting, of course.
But alternative digital moving-image technologies are fast gaining ground. NAB '03 saw a demonstration of the huge Dalsa Origin Digital Cinema camera, which uses a single 35mm-sized, progressive-scan, 8-megapixel CCD to output four times the resolution of HD in RAW file format to banks of hard disks, or whatever else can absorb the deluge of data.
The precedent for RAW data output (“4:4:4 RGB” in video-speak) was set by Grass Valley's three-chip 2/3in. CCD Viper FilmStream camera, introduced at NAB '02. Sony answered that last year with its own 4:4:4 RGB system, the CineAlta HDC-F950 camera and HDCAM SR VTR combo, linked by dual HD-SDI and mild, lossless MPEG-4 compression with no pre-filtering or sub-sampling. Since then, HDCAM SR has been warmly embraced by both production and postproduction, so expect this year at NAB to encounter an enhanced HDCAM SR product line. At the Lilliputian end of RGB camcorders with RAW output, place your bet on this year's NAB to produce a working model of camera inventor Jeff Kreines' Kinetta, not much larger than a Sony DSR-PD150 and considerably cheaper than a Dalsa.
Panavision spent years developing its 300x Digital Zoom Lens (7mm to 2100mm) for HD. Based on its Primo cine optics, the new video lens offers a very wide field of view at a short focal length, very low veiling glare and ghosting attributes, and a continuous zoom without the use of image degrading drop-in extenders, says the Woodland Hills, Calif.-based company.
HDCAM SR videotape, incidentally, is tape design and manufacture at its apex. Compared to HDCAM tape, Sony made HDCAM SR tape 20 percent thinner, 130 percent stronger, reduced its shrinkage 50 percent, reduced track pitch 40 percent (to 13.2 microns), shrunk its high-energy magnetic cobalt particles 50 percent, and increased recording density a whopping 175 percent.
However, it's still tape. So Sony premiered at last year's NAB a rewritable blue-laser (405nm) optical “Professional Disc” along with a new disc-based XDCAM format featuring two camcorders, the PDW-510 DVCAM and PDW-530 MPEG IMX/DVCAM (switchable). These camcorders will be in the field by NAB, so real-world feedback on disc camcorder viability is just around the corner, including notes from audio recordists regarding noise levels of disc drives and cartridges. But XDCAM brings with it so many advantages — instant playback without rewind, no tape wear or shrinkage, no clogs or drop-outs, no tape path or magnetic heads to maintain, 1,000 erase/write/read cycles, 50 years shelf/archival storage — that wide adoption is a certainty. Sony claims that as of March it will have a thousand XDCAM units in the field.
And there's another thing that ensures its success. Call it the iPod effect. Or call it instant gratification, our immediate “on-demand” access to music, cable movies, and all manner of information on the Web that has shaped our interaction with digital technology in such a way that, by habit, we've come to expect instantaneity. If we don't get it, dopamine doesn't flow along the medial forebrain, and we experience unusually heightened frustration, even pangs of depression. This alone dooms tape, especially as the brisk attention-span “thumbs” generation graduates from GameBoy to Final Cut Pro and beyond.
XDCAM optical discs offer instant random access to original scene files on a Sony Xpri Mobile and Xpri MetaStation (both set to debut at NAB) or, as just announced by Sony and Avid, a Media Composer, with metadata compatibility via MXF (Material eXchange Format, a new SMPTE standard akin to Avid's OMF, whose birth will be celebrated at “MXF University” in the LVCC South Hall at NAB '04).
Canon calls its J22ex7.6B the widest angle portable telephoto lens ever made. Designed for SD use, the lightweight lens includes an LCD read out and digital drive.
In the case of a remote XPRI MetaStation, Sony says a field-based PDW-510 or PDW-530 camcorder in 25Mbps DVCAM mode can fire low-res, frame-accurate MPEG-4 proxy images over a high-speed IP network at 50X realtime. That's 60 minutes of video in 72 seconds.
At NAB, Sony will also intro the HDC-X300, a cute, compact (2.6lbs., slightly longer than 6in.), three-chip HD “POV” multi-purpose camera, a.k.a. box camera (no viewfinder), with newly developed 1.5 megapixel 1/2in. Power HAD CCDs (“world's first”). Frame rates include 1080i/59.94i and 50i, with digital cinema progressive scans of 24p, 25p, and 30p. Special features include a slow shutter, HD-SDI and analog RGB outputs, and genlock. Sony claims less than 0.01-lux minimum illumination. The camera uses Sony's bayonet mount for 1/2in. CCDs (like a small B-4). Problems may arise over the fact that few high-quality lenses exist in this realm, which is usually the domain of less expensive non-broadcast cameras.
Where Sony has zigged with its XDCAM, Panasonic has zagged. What could be more instant that no laser, no drive motor, no tracking mechanism, no seek time, no cartridge shutter? Why, flash memory! But, can what works for a gimmicky 6oz. Fisher Pocket CameraCorder (30min. of full MPEG-4 video on a 512MB SD card) cut it in the pro world? Panasonic VP Stuart English made it quite clear last year at NAB that it certainly could, promising a working DVCPRO version by this year with reductions in camcorder weight and power consumption of up to 40 percent and a 25X realtime transfer of DVCPRO25 over FireWire.
Azden replaces the FMX-2 portable, two-channel field mixer with the FMX-20, which adds XLR I/O as well as a mini-plug output. Beyond the improved signal-to-noise ratio, new features include a three-step LED array for monitoring, a 12V DC input for external power, the mixer, a switchable input limiter (guards against the possibility of overload distortion), and a channel-addressable 1/4in. monitor headphone jack with its own level control.
Panasonic's P2 (Professional Plug-in) format starts life at NAB as a PCMCIA “PC card” containing four 1GB chips that can capture 18 minutes of DVCPRO25. These flash memory chips are identical to those in consumer SD Cards, which should help reduce costs over time. (Panasonic, Toshiba, and SanDisk developed the Secure Digital Card format jointly; the first consumer 1GB SD Card from SanDisk shipped in January with a $499 retail price each!) Recording time per card is expected to repeatedly double as 2GB, 4GB, 16GB, and then 32GB chips become available (by 2006).
P2 has lately gained the support of Grass Valley, Avid, Pinnacle, and Quantel, who have announced P2-compatible products for NAB. The biggest splash at NAB will be made by Panasonic itself, which is introducing its AJ-SPX800 DVCPRO P2 camcorder. Features include five slots for hot-swappable P2 cards, a slot for a standard SD card to record MPEG-4 proxy images (playback on any device that accepts SD cards and plays MPEG-1 or MPEG-4), a generous LCD flip-out viewing screen, FireWire and USB 2.0 ports, and two surprise options: a GPS receiver (positional info captured in metadata helps later locate scenes by geography!) and a WiFi link that enables an editing system to wirelessly access and control the camcorder's P2 cards.
Sound recordists, rejoice: the AJ-SPX800 is the world's first truly 100 percent silent camcorder. (A century of film camera design has yet to achieve this.) And talk about retro-loop: this camcorder is always recording, cycling unused flash memory. The imagination boggles at the undercranking/overcranking possibilities.
Also on Panasonic's plate: the AJ-PCD10, a 5-slot P2 card reader (can't be called a drive) that fits in a 5.25in. drive bay, a 5-slot P2 studio deck (can't be called a VTR) with a built-in DVD burner for archiving, a rugged laptop editing system that will probably incorporate some of that FireWire 800 technology Apple and Panasonic have been quietly collaborating on, and a compact, 2.4lb., 3-chip MiniDV AG-DVC30 camcorder (form factor and pro audio features match the Sony PD170) which offers a Super Night Shooting mode for detailed black-and-white images in total darkness using an optional $380 onboard infrared light. It runs at 29.97i only, although the AG-DVC30 offers a frame interpolation technique for which Panasonic claims near-progressive results.
Which pretty much leaves open the field of magnetic hard disk recording to JVC. Last year at NAB, in collaboration with direct-to-edit systems leader Focus Enhancements, JVC introduced a cheap, dockable, 40GB FireWire hard disk drive system called the DR-DV5000, which piggybacked onto JVC's MiniDV GY-DV5000U camcorder. The camcorder controlled the hard disk's record functions and displayed both disk status and playback information in the viewfinder, while the DR-DV5000, basically a Focus Enhancement FireStore FS-3 interfaced to the GY-DV5000U, contributed to JVC's low price-point a host of innovative features: 184 minutes (40GB) or 369 minutes (80GB) uninterrupted recording, time-lapse, retro-loop recording, simultaneous backup of the camcorder's MiniDV tape, and hot swapping while recording.
Keep an eye on this development, because JVC's other debut last year, also tied to DV, was a certified smash hit, if notoriety is any measure: the world's first handheld HD camcorder, the JY-HD10U, the size and cost (under $4K) of a Sony PD 150! Never mind that it's merely 720/30p and uses heavy ATSC-level MPEG-2 com-pression on standard MiniDV tape — a FireStore FS-3 could easily handle its 19Mbs bit rate. How does 369 minutes (80GB) of uninterrupted HD recording sound?
Sony's PDW-510P and PDW 530P Professional Optical XDCAMs offer instant playback without rewind, no tape wear or shrinkage, no clogs or drop-outs, no tape path or magnetic heads to maintain, 1,000 erase/write/read cycles, and 50 years shelf/archival storage.
Last July after NAB, JVC, Canon, Sharp, and Sony announced a new HDV standard, identical to that of the JY-HD10U: 8 bits, 4:2:0, 19Mbs for 720p, 25Mbs for 1080i, and recorded on MiniDV tapes.
Which raises the question: Given the JY-HD10U's plentiful MPEG-2 artifacts and dull color rendition from its single 1.18 megapixel CCD, will JVC's competitors step to the plate and do better? Will they provide realtime up/down conversion between MPEG-2 1080i, 720p, 480/60p, and DV 480/60i — two codecs! — like the JY-HD10U does? And FireWire I/O and dual audio XLRs like the JY-HD10U does?
JVC, meanwhile, isn't standing still. At NAB, JVC will launch what it calls “the world's first portable high definition player/recorder” — the CU-VH1. Features of the compact HDV deck include a 3.5in. LCD monitor, and for multi-format recording and playback, FireWire, USB, dual in/out connectors for composite and S-Video and audio, output-only for component (BNC with RCA adapters), plus an SD card slot for capturing stills from tape.
Vinten's Pro-6 pan and tilt head, part of the new Protouch line, offers a quality variable fluid drag head at a lower price, says the UK-based company.
To the realtime digital-to-digital conversions featured in the JY-HD10U — including up/down, aspect ratio, MPEG/DV — the CU-VH1 adds extensive digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital, facilitated by its generous connectivity. At 2.5lbs. — barely the size of two piled U-Matic cassettes — the CU-VH1 would seem ideal for studio or field: same battery/AC power as the JY-HD10U, guard-bar protection of inputs/outputs and jacks. Oh, and did I mention under $2,000?!
Epochal change, like generational change, shocks, wrenches, excites, inspires. Suddenly a man can fly, atoms explode, computers fit a desktop. All the rules upend rudely like laws of physics abruptly revised: HDV brings HD to the masses. LaCie delivers a terabyte for $1,000. Larry Thorpe departs Sony.
Larry, now at Canon, whose career from Betacam to HDCAM is synonymous with the camcorder era, will, like Arnold, be back. A new era begins. That's what makes our disruptive times so fascinating. See you at NAB.
— D.W.L.
