NAB 2012: What we are talking about

fxguidelive at NAB

Tomorrow (Tuesday, April 17th), fxguide will be LIVE all day from the Foundry booth (#SL9724), streaming live from 1700GMT – 2300GMT (1800 London). For the time in your part of the world, check out our time zone calculator.

Here now are some of the announcements that have been made already, embargoed until this morning, or cool stuff we expect to be talking about tomorrow – in addition to the great user presentations – as part of the LIVE Coverage. This is not an exhaustive list,  just a list of things the somewhat exhausted fxg crew are talking about this morning – 6:30 am the morning of the first day of the show. There is bound to be a lot more today as the NAB show officially opens.

Note: follow us on twitter for NAB news all week , we’ll also be using hashtag #fxgnab.


Pretend LLC

Pretend

Ever wonder what the ex Shake people were up to? At Siggraph a group, headed by Allen Glenn Edwards, showed industry insiders a range of tech in a private suite. This year at NAB the company is prepared to show the first of their efforts based in part on the feedback they got from Siggraph.

The most requested software was apparently inexpensive, easy to use Stereo prep tools. Pretend is a $995 Mac/Linux stereoscopic correction tool. The idea is you load the shots (L&R), analyze it to produce a disparity map, then it will automatically correct for the lens, the color differences and allow animated control of convergence and interaxial.

Having used the software briefly it is responsive and built on a impressive stereo engine. This first version is aimed at multiple seats doing stereo prep, and will be in public beta in a few months. Personally we are keen to see a Pro version sometime as these just small team of six people are incredibly experienced, highly talented and proven programers.

Check out more at Pretend LLC.

Nathalie Bergeron walks through a pre-release version software

 


Smoke 2013

Smoke 2013

Autodesk launched a new look Smoke and it is …smokin’ (too soon?).

– aimed at the disenfranchised FCPX crowd, it now looks like a NLE and yet has the power of Flame (almost).

– Smoke has Action still, as well as ConnectFX [CFX] (at first glance appears to be very similar to BatchFX [BFX]), but for those people who don’t want a nodal workflow, the timeline has almost everything at hand.

– New tabbed UI (tabs at bottom), which includes Media Hub, Conform, Timeline, and Publish workspaces.

– Priced at $3495.

– Very nice UI/workflow changes in Smoke 2013. A takeaway from event seems to be implied admission that Smoke on Mac was hard to learn.

– There is a special Smoke web page.

Red

Red Event NAB 2012

The Reduser party was a good party, great party, but not a place for actual Red product news – which was actually announced online around midnight instead.  There may be more at the show today, but for now this seems like a comprehensive list. In summary:

•    Red Dragon $6k This year
– 6K for 6K (2 soccer moms in a hot tub) ,
– 15+ stops DR (what is Epic MX?)
– 120fps @ Full 5K (at least 85fps at 6k) $6k
– ‘slightly larger’ than current sensor and the pixel size is slightly smaller
Sensor size is 30×15.8mm  X 1.2 crop  (5DMkIII is 36 x 20.3)  (Epic is  25.9 x 14.4)  X1.4 crop
Low light performance much better than MX

•    Red Projector
-Simultaneous R/L Eye 3D
-3D up to 120fps
-25,000+hr laser No calibration
-Under $10K up to 15 foot creen
-Scalable to large theatre throws
-This Year

•    Canon Al mount $700 (in stock)

•   New SSD’S
Turbo 512GB SSD (higher frame rates?)  $???
32GB SSD  for scarlet (price to come)

•   Pro IO module  $3,750  Preorder now, Ships July

•   Rear SSD module   $1200 ships June

•   Dual Redvolt module $1200 Ships July

•   New Wheel handle (finally)   $295 ships May 1

•   Red ray player price soon, ships with projector this year
4K 120fps playback
4 x HDMI outs
7.1 sound
Tablet control

•   New OLED Bomb EVF  $3900 – In Stock Tomorrow.
– Contrast Ratio dramatically improved
– Black uniformity near 100%
– White uniformity near 100%
– Power Consumption reduced by almost 75%…. yes 75%
– Operating Range improved to -46C to 70C ( compared to -10C to 50C of original Bomb EVF
– Upgrade your existing BOMB EVF – $1200


 

ASSIMILATE Scratch

New version with support for Sony F65, real-time ARRIRaw, 48fps RED Epic 3D Stereo playback, SCRATCH Lab certification program, new turnkey Lab systems, and expanded online Store.

There is a technology showing of a new possible version of Scratch or maybe a new product that is their move into compositing. (more later)


Fusion-io

Fusion ioFX

Fusion-io announced a 420 GB Fusion ioFX – it connects via the PCI Express bus to provide low-latency data performance. The ioFX is also designed to accelerate video playback and rendering, video and image editing and compositing, encoding and transcoding as well as other data-intensive activities required in contemporary digital production. This is getting a lot of buzz on the floor and the press release mentions its use by Pixomondo on Hugo. List price is $2,495 U.S., which includes a one-year support contract.

Press Release

We’ll have an interview with Fusion-io in Tuesday’s live show.


AJA

AJA T-Tap

AJA Video Systems announced several items:

T-TAP™, a very small bus-powered device that takes advantage of Thunderbolt™ connectivity for high-quality 10-bit SD, HD and 2K output through SDI and HDMI connections. Price is $249.00 US.

T-TAP Key Features:
–High-speed Thunderbolt™ connectivity
–10-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 video and audio output
–HD/SD SDI and HDMI connectivity supports simultaneous output at incredible 10-bit quality
–3D support on HDMI for real-time stereoscopic review without requiring additional hardware
–Full 8-channel embedded audio allows for multi-channel playback
–Bus-powered via Thunderbolt™ connector so no additional power supply required
–AJA Mac driver and proven software compatibility
–Backed by AJA’s quality, reliability and 3-year international warranty

A new product in its Ki Pro family, Ki Pro Rack, enabling recording of high-quality, edit-ready files for the fastest path from camera to edit in a new 1RU rack mount form factor. MSRP of $3995.00 (US).

Ki Pro Rack Key Features:
–Ability to switch between Apple ProRes 422 and Avid DNxHD
–Built-in broadcast-quality Up/Down/Cross conversions
–HD/SD SDI, HDMI, and HD/SD analog video I/O
–Multi-channel AES, analog balanced XLR, and embedded audio I/O
–Familiar buttons and operation minimize learning curve
–Dual media drive bays
–Delivers the functionality of much larger devices without taking up valuable rack space
–Sturdy and dependable with removable storage modules engineered for repeat use
–Remote configuration and control via Ethernet LAN connection
–Ethernet file transfer
–Stand-alone operation and configuration, no need for external computer
–RS-422 machine control, genlock, and LTC connections

Ki Pro Quad, a portable video recorder that supports 4K and 2K recording. It’s a solid-state portable video recorder capable of capturing high-quality edit-ready files in formats including 4K (4096 x 2160), Quad HD (3840 x 2160), 2K (2048 x 1080), and HD (1920 x 1080) with 10-bit 4:4:4 and 10-bit 4:2:2 color support. MSRP of $3,995 US.

Ki Pro Quad Overview:
–4K/Quad HD/2K/HD Solid State Video Recorder
–Supports 10-bit 4:4:4 and 10-bit 4:2:2
–RAW support
–Debayer and ProRes encode to on-board SSD
–Realtime pass-through of RAW data via Thunderbolt
–Uncompressed and debayered 4K monitoring output
–Dedicated HD monitoring via SDI and HDMI
–Record to edit-friendly 4K, 2K, or HD ProRes files on removable SSD media
–Offload ProRes files to your non-linear edit system via AJA Thunderbolt SSD reader

Ki Pro Quad Workflow:
–Camera outputs 4K RAW over SDI
–Ki Pro Quad accepts 4K RAW over SDI
–Ki Pro Quad performs debayer processing of RAW
–Debayered image is used for on-board compressed recordings to SSD media
–Debayered image is used for 4K monitoring output
–Debayered image is used for scaled/cropped HD monitoring via SDI and HDMI
–RAW signal is passed from camera to Ki Pro Quad and out via Thunderbolt to computer/storage
–Further manipulation of RAW is made possible via Canon software tools
–HD, 2K, and 4K compressed recordings made to SSD media may be used directly in popular non-linear editors

AJA also announced Ki Pro Mini v4.0 firmware that supports Avid DNxHD codec.


Colorfront

COPRA (www.copra.de) is a free-of-charge iPad App that allows selected footage to be streamed as high-definition media over a local Wi-Fi network from Colorfront’s On-Set Dailies system directly to an iPad. The footage and associated notes can be reviewed in a variety of ways utilizing the COPRA App, either on or away from set, or streamed wirelessly in full HD to Apple TV. Users can make notes as they review materials in the COPRA App, and these can be streamed back to the production team via On-Set Dailies.

Colorfront Express Dailies delivers integrated, production-proven tools for dailies work – including playback and sync, QC, color grading, audio and metadata management – with state-of-the-art color and image science, and the delivery of simultaneous faster-than-realtime deliverables in all common file formats.

Highlights of Express Dailies include a simple GUI, for users such as DITs or camera assistants, realtime RAW support for the very latest digital cameras, faster-than-realtime deliverables in multiple formats, plus data and archival management.

Transkoder Engine is based on Colorfront’s award-winning On-Set Dailies architecture and uses cost-effective, commodity hardware, to deliver faster-than-realtime processing to transcode, decode, convert and process files for multiple deliverables.

There is an update to Colorfront On-Set Dailies – – the Summer 2012 release delivers unprecedented rendering speeds, the first realtime 4K IIF/ACES workflow, support for Canon’s new C500 4K camera, live on-set grading, integrated HD dailies on iPad, and on-set verified copying and archiving.

The Summer 2012 release supports also the new HP Z820 16-core workstation, and the latest Kepler CUDA processing. This combination delivers in excess of 100FPS parallel rendering for multiple deliverables, faster than real-time JPEG2000 MXF DCP and IMF deliverables, realtime ARRIRAW 4K de-Bayer and 4K F65RAW, plus Avid DNxHD 444 support and Sony SRFile (SStP) playback/encoding. It also substantially speeds-up customers’ existing systems.

4 thoughts on “NAB 2012: What we are talking about”

  1. Would you use Pretend for first pass stereo adjustments and then use something like nuke/ocula for more detailed shots and fine tuning? Would this supposed to take the place of Ocula? Either way this is very cool software.

  2. Great article! ‘Pretend’ looks super cool! So this is the original Nothing Reel guys and girls?

    It would be super cool with more “causal” tweets. Just pictures and short pieces of what you see that is cool. Nto so formal but more “Hey look at this cool shit!”. =)))

    Keep it up guys and don’t forget to drink. 😉

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