NAB 2012 - Round Up

NAB 2012 - Round Up

I suspected that this year's show wouldn't be as overloaded with new product as last year because most of the major players have already rolled out the flagships that will carry them for the next few years. I found this to be somewhat the case but not entirely as there were definitely a handful of "show stoppers" on display. The emphasis this year seemed to be much less on new, groundbreaking wares and more "this is what we're working with now, and here's how we can do it better." 

While NAB is in many ways a portal of things to come, this year there were far fewer 3D announcements and a lot more emphasis on 4K which is evident in the current market as well. 3D has struggled to gain much, if any, traction outside of theatrical content and the resolution war is heating up now that all the major manufacturers are, or will be (IBC is next), intro-ing cameras offering greater than HD resolution. This is interesting because it's really not much different than the megapixel war with consumer digital cameras. Resolution while incredibly important is still relative to optics, image processing, presentation, and many other factors. Bigger isn't necessarily better though it's obviously a huge marketing opportunity for these vendors.

Maybe my interests have shifted somewhat as my market, broadcast bound projects, has decidedly settled on the Alexa for now. Because of this my energies are very tied up with solutions for that platform. That said, I didn't spend 3 days at the show exclusively checking out new cameras and hardware but spent much of that time researching workflow and archival solutions and demoing tons of new options for creating on-set deliverables, a topic I've covered at length on this site.

What was really excellent though wasn't all the new gack but the opportunity to meet in person so many people I've been in correspondence with. That's what's great about NAB - getting all these professionals from various facets of the industry together in the same location and the exchange of ideas and information that results. it's inspiring and I left Vegas feeling optimistic about the business and where it's going. 

Quick note, what I had on hand to shoot stills with this year was the trusty Leica M9 w/ Summilux-M 35mm Lens. My favorite camera in the world but defintiely not the best choice for shooting product closeups so I'll apologize for the the uninspired photographic component of this post. 

ALEXA. I was pleased to see Arri announce some very nice new features. Nothing earth shattering, but quietly useful. 

4:3 Sensor no longer exclusive to Alexa Studio:

You can now purchase an Alexa Plus with a 4:3 sensor in it. You cannot upgrade your existing camera to the new sensor which is certain to sour a few owners. However, this is nice because the Alexa Studio is a hefty rental and as neat as it is, I'm not entirely sold on the optical viewfinder. I'm not a camera operator though and a handful of my colleagues are really into it. I can definitely see the appeal. It will be great to have a more cost effective rental option for anamorphic capture or simply recording a big old square raster with spherical lenses for VFX work. The flexibility of the Alexa system continues to evolve along with the market. Ryan Koo wrote a good article on the topic >>>

2K ProRes Recording:

Existing 16:9 Alexa sensors will soon be able to record to SxS cards in ProRes 4444 or DNx RGB at 2K resolution, 2048x1152. The new 4:3 sensor will be 2048x1536. Not a ton of extra resolution but appealing nonetheless. Also on the horizon - new debayer algorithm for improved sharpness and real time ArriRaw playback out of ArriRaw Converter.

Also at Arri's booth, Pomfort was there demoing their solution for Alexa color management, LiveGrade.

Pomfort's Patrick Renner

I've written about this software at length and have been a beta user since day one. It's really come a long way and now that CDL and Pre or Post Linearization Color Correction has been implemented, LiveGrade is a legit on-set color management solution for any number of cameras. 

I think there is such a plethora of great NAB coverage I'm not going to spend the time creating a massive post covering all the big beats like I did last year. Here's a few things that stuck with me though - 

BLACKMAGIC DESIGNS:

I'm pretty excited about Resolve 9 but interestingly enough, this is the talk of NAB 2012 - the Blackmagic Cinema Camera aka "My First 2K", a $3000 camera that comes with $1700 of freebies (and I mean that in the MOST non-condescending way. I'm actually quite interested in this camera.. but c'mon look at it.. ViewMaster!)

One thing that no one is talking about with this camera is that the sensor is quite small by today's standards, a bit more generous than Super 16. The mount is EF and these still lenses are going to be quite telephoto on this small sesnor. 3x more telephoto in fact so that super wide angle Canon 8mm is going to be about a 24mm in Full Frame terms. The other thing is the practical resolution of a Bayer pattern chip at 2432x1366 after demosaicing is a bit less than 1920x1080 with chroma subsampling around 4:2:0. That's just the nature of debayering but it does offer very robust recording formats, 12 bit Raw and Log encoded ProRes 4444 and DNx RGB. 

Resolve 9

The users spoke and BMD clearly listened. Resolve 9 is now a full fledged dailies solution with the inclusion of audio pass-through and syncing, burn ins, super clean interface and media management, and intuitive new toolset. No word on whether the dailies component of 9 will be available in Lite or whether Lite will even continue to exist. I'm guessing you're going to have to shell out $1000 to have access to the new features which fair enough. Or you can just buy their camera and get it for free ;)

On the topic of dailies and on-set deliverables -

Everyone is getting into this game now. Assimilate was showing Scratch "The Next Thing" (working title) which is looking more powerful than ever and in my opinion Lab still offers the best cost to value ratio and user support. YoYotta was demoing realtime F65 rendering with Yo Dailies, ColorFront introed a low cost version of On-Set Dailies called Express Dailies, Filmlight has their low cost version Baselight Transfer, Adobe SpeedGrade CS6, etc. Not to mention a handful of software startups with their own offerings. Price tags on these wares run the gamut of course and each one offers its unique take on the complex problem of creating a dailies pipeline. Now that there are so many options, in my opinion the true separating factor will be support. The importance of having an actual human being to communicate with for troubleshooting, software customization, and feature requests can't be understated. Among this crop, some definitely understand this whereas others, maybe not so much. 

On a software related note - Autodesk Smoke all-in-one editing and effects package now for Mac. $15,000 $3500. Yet another once nearly unattainable pro tool looking to go mass market through aggressive pricing. 

SONY:

4k projection of a variety of material from the F65; all manner of conditions and mixed lighting. It was very good to see what this camera is actually capable of and it turns out, the potential is enormous. 

4k can only be fully appreciated in a proper 4k projection. It's difficult to gauge the extra resolution on a HDTV or even one of the smaller 4k LCD displays that were floating around the show. Suffice to say, the image quality is remarkable. 

4k Stitch View:

This is a very interesting application of 4k technology. 2 F65's side by side, both rasters are seamlessly stitched into one 8k picture that can you can pan and tilt around in realtime with no resolution loss until you get to 1080. It's applications like this, an unintended useful outcome of the technology, that really excites me about all this stuff. I think this technological renaissance we're experiencing in motion pictures can and should extend far beyond the realm of film/tv.  

Sony NEX-FS700:

Everything about this has me scratching my head - from the form factor, to the generous specs (btw 250 fps at 1080p), the TBD 4k Raw recording, to the price ("less than $10,000). It's an odd one but it's a potentially very cool imaging machine nonetheless. 

CANON:

Canon EOS-1D C

I'm way more excited about this than I thought I would be; the specs are out of control and the images coming out of the camera are really impressive. This is a true digital stills and motion picture camera. It's got the form factor of a SLR but all the video features you could ask for - clean output, multiple resolutions and sensor windows, multiple compresson schemes, etc. The 4k video isn't raw but is compressed to 422 at 500 Mbps and written out to compact flash. I didn't see any interface on the camera other than HDMI so I'm assuming a 4k raw recording via transport stream isn't possible. Regardless, I think this is THE camera for someone looking to do both high quality stills and video with one machine and not looking to spend a fortune on peripheral equipment. 

This cracked me up so I took a picture -

ISO 204,800! On the monitor the video was looking super clean at 1600 but these days that isn't as special as it used to be. 

Canon C500:

I think where the C300 was lackluster, this camera brings it. No one seems to know how these 4k streams will be recorded quite yet but Convergent Design is ready to accomodate whatever with the Gemini Raw. All these cameras, it's a little overwhelming. I think with all of these new acquistion options, a universal workflow is going to have to emerge or anything that comes out trying to reinvent the wheel is going to sunk before the ship even sails. Once again, we've just been spoiled by the ease of the Alexa. For large scale productions requiring a fast turnaround, vendors offering up something new need to make it as painless as possible or it's going to be a tough sell.

PANASONIC:

Behind glass and very difficult to photograph was this.. 4k "Varicam" Concept Camera.

It's modular and comes in pieces like the EPIC and it's about the same size. Not much info to be gleaned other than AVC Ultra codec recorded to P2 Micro cards which are high capacity SD cards encased in stainless steel or some kind of tough alloy and the 4k recording is not Raw but rather Linear RGB. I'll reserve judgment but my instincts are leaning towards, "Too little. Too late."

SONNET AND THE TOPIC OF "MAC EXPANSION":

The consensus at the show regarding Apple's commitment to the pro market was grim to say the least. Even the future of 17" MacBook Pro has been called into question... I'm seriously about to start stockpiling computers. But you never know with Apple and that's the thing. They could announce something tomorrow and this discussion would be over. One has to maintain a cautious optimism with Apple products which is why I haven't started my stockpile just yet. I try and get as much mileage as I can on-set with 17" MBP's. I'll bring a tower out if I have to but my M.O. is usually to try and keep a small footprint and do a lot with a little. That said, I'm very excited about some of the stuff Sonnet is working on. Like the RackMac 1U shelf for Mac Mini's!

And this kind of blew me away.. xMac mini Server

xMac™ mini Server 1U Rackmount PCIe 2.0 Expansion System With Thunderbolt™ Ports

Sonnet’s Xmac™ mini Server (previously known as RackMac mini Xserver) 1U rackmount PCIe 2.0 expansion system with two Thunderbolt™ Ports mounts a Mac® mini inside a specially designed enclosure that also contains two x16 (x4 mode) PCIe 2.0 slots, a 150W power supply, and an installed Gigabit Ethernet card. This system enables users to plug in two PCIe 2.0 adapter cards (one half-length and one full-length) to slots connected to the Mac mini via locking Thunderbolt cables while allowing the connection of additional Thunderbolt peripherals to the daisy-chain Thunderbolt port.

A powerful and expandable computer that fits in your rack? This might be it. If Apple jettisons the Mac Tower, maybe they'll come out with a suped-up Mac Mini. Drop it in something like this and you're ripping. At least in theory ha.

Echo Express Pro Expansion Chassis for PCIe

These are a nice size.

The Magma Thunderbolt ExpressBox 3T is a similar solution but it's a monster. The thing holds 3 PCie cards so it's nearly the size of a tower. You could get to a certain point where you're trying to make a laptop into something that it's just not. Is it worth it and is it really even feasible? At any rate, modularity is now the name of the game and I like to see lots and lots of viable options. 

AND ONE LAST THING:

I'm really running out of time for this post but this an item that's very cool and under the radar that I wanted to write about -

AXIS1 Single Channel Wireless Lens Control System:

This impressively machined motor can be used for focus, iris, or zoom and the control is very nuanced. The range is similar to what you would get with a Preston. These are produced by a gentleman in the UK named Peter Hoare and the kit goes for about $5000. I've been looking for a solution for wireless Iris control and a couple of these might be it. 

That's all I've got for now. I'll try and revisit this post at a later date. 

3D on the cheap(ish)

3D on the cheap(ish)

I'll preface this post with the disclaimer that this isn't a good way to shoot stereo and I wouldn't shoot anything I was getting paid to deliver with this setup. But I love experimenting and right now I'm looking for ways to independently shoot high quality stereo images that doesn't involve thousands and thousands in equipment rentals, insurance out the wazoo, and all the accompanying personnel to make it go.

For stereo acquisition, using DSLR's in the most cost effective beamsplitter we could find was certainly an avenue worth exploring but I'll say it again, a less than ideal way to get there. 

Peter Clark from Attic Studios and I did these stereo tests with Canon 5D's 3 or 4 months ago and I've been meaning to write this post ever since. Sort of like these NAB interviews that are sitting here in a Final Cut bin ;(

The company who provided the beam splitter, 3D Film Factory, wrote this blog post awhile back, publishing a truncated version of our findings. This post will attempt to go a little deeper into how we did it, what worked, and what didn't.

Here's how it all breaks down -

These are the problems with using DSLR's for stereo acquisition -

No way to genlock them, or in other words, force both sensors to begin scanning at the exact same moment in time. If you don't have genlock, you don't have 3D. Temporal offsets will kill the stereoscopic illusion so quickly derails any attempts to make 3D. Also, no timecode. While this isn't necessarily a deal breaker, it certainly makes syncing the left and right eye images together a heck of a lot easier. But as we discovered, there are some practical workarounds. 

These DSLR cameras are notorious for their Rolling Shutters. It's bad but only slightly worse than the Red One which was and still is to a certain extent, very commonly used for 3D. I basically approached using the Mark 2's in stereo like I would for Red One's - just make sure the sensors are both scanning in the same direction which means mounting the reflected eye camera from the top instead of the bottom (more on that in a bit).

The goal of this test was to try and use somewhat readily available or cheaply rented articles and to use software that most people are already using such as Final Cut Pro and Plural Eyes, without having to spend a bunch of money on custom plugins and codecs. Of course in the end, all of this bric-a-brac added up to a hefty sum and for all of the headaches and work arounds needed to make it function, in my mind it's not worth it. You're better off sweet talking someone with deep pockets into financing your "dream" 3D project and just renting a couple of Sony F3's and an Element Technica Pulsar. There's a reason we have pro gear in this business. Time saved not trying to make the hoopty rig go is time spent crafting the images the client is paying for. 

Here's what we used to make this happen:

2x Canon 5D Mark 2's with Battery Grips so to avoid taking the cameras out of the rig to change batteries. 

AC Adapters would have been better but we didn't have them. Once the cameras are in, don't touch 'em! Aligning the Film Factory rig is a brutal chore. Make sure to record sound because this workflow needs audio tracks on both cameras to work. 

1x 3D Film Factory Beamsplitter Rig. 

Gotta make sure that mirror is at 45 degrees. That's a great place to start. 

I'm not sure which Film Factory Rig we had, might have been the Mini. The rig itself is made up of readily available 80/20 Aluminum tubing, I would guess about 5 or 600 hundred dollars worth which means there's a significant margin on the rig if you were to buy one. While apparently an alignment plate does exist that will allow you to adjust pitch, height, and roll so as to match the position of one camera to the other, we didn't have it for this test. Without those adjustments, you're really up against the wall as far as your alignment goes. I was able to approximate an alignment using video overlays but there's not way to correct for foreground to background vertical offsets like using Z, Pitch, and Roll adjustments on an Element Technica rig. So in other words, if you do find yourself working with the 3D Film Factory, make sure to get the "Specialty Plate". 

2x Canon 50mm Lenses set to manual. 

A little wider would have been better but once again, this is what we had to work with. 

2x Pocket Wizards with Sync Shutter Cables. Very important.

Here's where we got theoretical - As I mentioned, one of the main issues with using DSLR's for stereo is that there is no way to genlock them together. In order to create the illusion of binocular vision, the sensors on both cameras we're using need to start scanning at exactly the same moment in time. It's like syncing cameras together for live tv, all your AV devices need to be hitting on the same cylinder so that when the switcher goes to that camera, it's an instantaneous switch and not a frame or two or black or garbled signal while phase is being found. DSLR's have no ability on their own to be locked to an external signal but there's a device called a Pocket Wizard that's used to lock the shutters of multiple cameras to a strobe light. It works great for shooting stills so we thought that if we used the Pocket Wizard to shoot a few stills while video was rolling, theoretically that would align the shutters within the level of tolerance. After trying it a few times, we found that to be the case. It does work quite well actually and all the stereo video we shot with the Mark 2's had zero temporal sync issues. 

1x Heavy Tripod Legs to get the rig on to. It ain't light so a set of standard Ronford Bakers or heavy duty Sachtlers.

1x Consumer grade 3DTV. We had a Panasonic Viera with Active Shutter Glasses. I was hoping to be able to monitor the 3D images in real time on this display but there were some snafu's.

Here's the rig up and running. We had to use duvetyne scraps and black gaffer to make it light tight. Looking good.

2x Blackmagic HDMI to SDI Mini Converters. I needed these to convert the camera's HDMI out to SDI for use with the new AJA Hi5 3D "mini muxer". It takes 2 discrete SDI signals (i.e., left and right eye) and muses them into a single 1920x1080 raster that can be output in side by side, interleaved, etc for monitoring in stereo. This is a sweet little box and it would have been perfect if the Mark 2 didn't output some funky, irregular video signal. I couldn't get the box to take the converted signals for more than a few seconds. We tested with other SDI sources though and it works great so it was on to Plan B.

1x Leader LV5330 multi SDI monitor. 

This is probably the most expensive thing used on this test and is certainly not your typical "indie" tool. Because the muxer didn't like the Mark 2 signal I had no way of monitoring stereo in realtime but with my scope I knew that I could at least align the 2 cameras in the rig to the ZERO position. In 3D, you have to start from zero, both cameras must be seeing approximately the same frame and from there you can separate them to create interocular distance, thus creating stereo images. The Leader can take 2 SDI sources and freeze frames so what I did was set the left eye position, froze the frame, and then switched to the right eye and adjusted the position until it matched the overlay of the other camera. A crude alignment but a successful one. If you can't monitor both eyes simultaneously, I don't how else you would align other than the freeze frame method. The alignment was incredibly frustrating and involved wedging and shimming, sliding and taping. Basically creating a Frankensteinish like creation just to get a semblance of an alignment and this was only for the foreground. Fortunately the deepest thing in our scene was only about 25 feet from the lens so we were in the margin or error. I could tell by looking at it though that there were major offsets and if we had been outside with deep backgrounds, we would have been in trouble. 

While I was at, I also used the scope to match the picture profile of one camera to the other. There's always a lot of green/magenta shift when going through the beamsplitter mirror so if you have the means to correct for it at the source, it's always a good idea. I think for this I used my usual preferred Picture Style - Faithful with Contrast all the way down and Saturation down a few points. I then used the White Balance and Tint controls to dial in the best match I could create for the pair. 

Once I had Zero, I measured the lens to subject, lens to foreground, and lens to background distance. I then used the iPhone app, IOD Calc to find an Interocular distance that would put me safely within this range. Because there was no way to Converge, or tow-in the cameras without ruining the alignment, I just left them in Parallel knowing that I could always adjust the convergence in post. I set my IO distance and we were ready to shoot. Because there was no way to monitor in 3D we just kind of winged it and hoped for the best. 

POST:

1x license of Final Cut Pro / Compressor. 

We wanted to see stereo bad so after shooting a few tests, we took the Left and Right eye images into Compressor and made ProRes files making sure that the audio recorded to the cameras was embedded in the new files. 

1x license of PluralEyes. 

Next we imported all of the transcoded material into FCP, and set up a timeline for PluralEyes sync. Because the audio is the same on both left and right eye images, PluralEyes does a frame accurate sync and from there it's only a matter of getting them into a stereo pair somehow. 

There are a lot of ways to do this but I didn't want to spend any money on plugins so I thought how can we easily create a Side by Side 1920x1080 video right in FCP. It's actually incredibly easy. PluralEyes put the 2 image streams in 2 separate video tracks and synced them together so they're on the same frame. Now take the left eye video, in the Viewer go to the Motion tab, go to Distort and then in Aspect Ratio type in 100. You now have an anamorphically squeezed one half of a stereo video signal. You need to get it on the left side though so in Center type -480. This will place it on the left edge of frame and it occupy exactly 50% of it. Now with the Right Eye, first do a little Flip Flop Effect to get it in the right orientation. Any time you're dealing wtih mirrors there is always image inversion. In the right eye video's parameters do the same thing but in Center type 480 instead of -480. You now have a stereo pair in your timeline. You can't really make screen plane adjustments to them, at least not easily, and in order to edit them, they would need to be output again so that 2 images get baked into the same raster. But it does work and if you have FCP, you don't need anything else. 

1x Matrox MXO2 LE. 

Now the fun part - Watching your stuff in 3D. In order to watch stereo from your timeline, you've got to have some sort of external hardware that will get the video signal off you computer and into an HDMI or SDI cable. I've had the Matrox box for a few years and too my delight, they keep adding functionality to it free of charge all the time. They recently added 3D support to the HDMI output so if you have Side by Side media in FCP, the Matrox can send it to a HDMI receiver like a 3DTV and flag the signal as stereo so that it knows how to display it. This worked great with the DIY Side by Side's I made in FCP and we were watching stereo from my laptop in realtime. Awesome. 

Model: Andrea Grant

That's it in a nut shell. It's always fun to experiment with this stuff. Like I said, this wouldn't be my first choice but in a pinch, you could make it work. 

Peter will be publishing the stereo video from these tests online at some point. I'll post when I have it. 

EPIC. Questions answered.

EPIC. Questions answered.

via Final Cut User

The touch screen auto focus is a f-n incredible feature and I'm glad to see Canon L Series lenses working flawlessly on the EPIC. I think when I inevitably unload all my Canon gear next year (unless Canon gives me a reason not to), I'll probably keep the lenses as it seems there are a growing number of alternative cameras able to utilize the Canon EF (Electronic) mount. These lenses are a good combination of cost and quality and I'm excited to use them to shoot motion that isn't crawling with moire and aliasing. 

Update on 2010-11-23 06:16 by Ben Cain

Red Rocket compatability with 5K Epic footage is "in the works".

I think Ted said it best, "working with RED footage without the Rocket is like working with one hand tied behind your back." That is definitely the case. These files need dedicated hardware.