NAB Roundup
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Then it was off to Serious Magic's demo, where the company that wowed us with Visual Communicator has released Ultra Key, an impressive chromakeyer that can track 3D images as part of an exquisite virtual set production package. To be priced at $795 and shipping in early June, the system comes with a dozen high-resolution animated virtual set backgrounds, where you shoot your talent on a locked-down shot, and then that scene is perfectly tracked inside great-looking graphics. Some of the animations will even let you place a second source in another key window. All this is easy to use, too with a slick interface that reminds me of the Visual Communicator interface that my nine-year-old daughter learned in about five minutes. But don't let that scare you away -- although it's run-while-asleep easy to use, this sucker is highly enhanced and in highly professional trim. It's pro gear all the way, with key quality that's been seriously goosed. Definitely worth a close look.
Next stop was NewTek, with a demo of the newest Toaster that's not called Toaster any more -- it's VT [3], whose best new feature is its ability to let you switch multiple DV cameras. There are also new features like Bezier curves for keyframing, frame accurate 1394 batch capture, and excellent proc amp controls in preview mode, just like in a big-time engineering control room. And, the price is right. At $2495 if you buy Toaster [2] now, you'll get the upgrade to VT [3] for free when it ships in Q3. Such a deal.
Following that was a look at the latest iteration of Media 100's monster compositor, 844Xi, which is now sporting the ability to create four real time blurs at the same time. The most compute-intensive filter in its arsenal, 844Xi cuts through these blurry effects like butter. Sheesh, this thing is powerful -- and although Avid's new behemoths are far better editing machines, they will be hard-pressed to be able to match this kind of real time effects processing power. This battle for the muscle-car crown of the DV world is certainly getting more interesting by the minute. I had a one-on-one chat with Media 100's charismatic CEO John Molinari, which will appear on DMN very soon, so keep an eye out for that highly entertaining talk with one of the most intriguing CEOs in all of digital video.
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The last demo of the day was another eye-opener. A company called DALSA showed a packed room full of Hollywood-types a new prototype it called "Origin," a 4K digital cinema camera that can capture higher resolution images (4046 x 2048 pixels, otherwise known as "4K") than have ever been shot before. Origin is a work in progress, but what I saw shows me that film's heyday in the high-end arena is drawing to a close. Able to nearly match film's contrast ratio at 11 stops, to let you see way into the blacks, and shoot with higher resolution than film can record (well, unless you think film's resolution really is equivalent to 8K -- which it probably is -- but then that's another academic discussion and perhaps fodder for an entire book), this unit will be setting the film world on its ear when it ships in early 2004. This is the real thing, folks. The demo was met with rousing enthusiasm from nearly all in attendance, with loads of crystal clear footage that looked every bit as good as film, and without all that pesky gate jitter. Remember when still photogs all insisted that digital stills would never be used professionally? They turned out to be wrong. And the filmsters who cling to celluloid will also see their notion that film will always be better than video proven to be mistaken as well, in my opinion. It's just a matter of time. This Origin camera showed us that that day will be sooner than we thought. But there are still numerous problems to be worked out, like, uh, how do we edit these huge files? It certainly won't be convenient, but they're working on it. Should be interesting to say the least!Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
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