Monthly Archives: April 2008

Equipment

FED Monitors

Field Emission Technology

Behind a complicated name hides a monitor technology simpler then the popular LCD monitor technology.

At first sight FED monitors are similar in appearance to LCD monitors. They are flat and thin but that’s where the similarity ends. FED is similar in approach to conventional CRTs.

The inside of a vacuum sealed screen is coated with light emitting phosphorus. The phosphorus coat can be formulated to exact EBU and SMPTE specifications assuring a high level of color accuracy.

Unlike a CRT which has one deep-set electron gun, FED display has thousands of micro emitters positioned in close proximity to the phosphorus layer.

The advantages of FED technology include high color accuracy, low power consumption and the ability to display very high frame rates (240fps as of 2007).

However, this technology is still in development. There are no available production models as of 2008.

Industry Press Releases

Matrox Announces Matrox MXO2 – Portable, Affordable, Complete I/O for the Mac

NAB 2008 – Las Vegas, NV – April 14, 2008 – Matrox® Video Products Group today announced Matrox MXO2. Designed to streamline editing workflow with Apple Final Cut Studio and Adobe Production Premium on MacBook Pros and Mac Pros, Matrox MXO2 provides broadcast-quality input/output, monitoring, and up/down/cross conversion. Users can benefit from file-based workflows with native support for XDCAM, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, and P2. In addition, they are not limited to using a single codec as with some other I/O devices on the market.

“Matrox is leading the way in mobile editing on the Mac,” said Alberto Cieri, Matrox sales and marketing director. “Broadcasters tell us they need a way to upload video from laptops in the field and MXO2 is our answer for them. It’s lightweight, fits in a laptop bag, and runs for hours on a field battery. It’s also a complete I/O solution for post facilities, at an incredibly affordable price point.”

Matrox MXO2 will be demonstrated at NAB 2008 in booth SL320.

Key features of Matrox MXO2

  • Truly portable – fits in your laptop bag, runs off a field battery (or its AC adapter)
  • HD/SD SDI, HD/SD analog component, Y/C, and composite inputs and outputs
  • Genlock – SD analog black burst (bi-level) or HD tri-level sync
  • HDMI input, output, and monitoring with calibration controls including blue-only
  • 10-bit realtime hardware up/down/cross conversion
  • Up to five user selectable simultaneous video outputs – HD and/or SD on HDMI, SDI, and analog
  • Professional audio inputs and outputs with 5.1 surround sound monitoring
  • RS-422 machine control for frame-accurate capture and print-to-tape
  • Captures to a variety of codecs – Apple ProRes 422 HQ, 10-bit uncompressed HD and many more
  • Supports file-based workflows – XDCAM, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, P2
  • Works with Final Cut Pro, Apple Color, Adobe Premiere Pro and all QuickTime applications that support the V-out component
  • For use with Intel-based MacBook Pros and Mac Pros

Price and availability

Priced at $1,595 US in North America (?899, €1,295) not including local taxes, Matrox MXO2 will be available in July 2008 through a worldwide network of authorized dealers.

About Matrox

Matrox Video Products Group is a technology and market leader in the field of HD and SD digital video hardware and software for realtime editing, DVD authoring, capture/playout servers, clip/still stores, and CGs. Matrox’s Emmy award-winning technology powers a full range of content creation and delivery platforms used by broadcasters, post-production facilities, project studios, corporate communicators, and videographers worldwide. Founded in 1976, Matrox is a privately held company headquartered in Montreal, Canada. For more information visit www.matrox.com/video.

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Note: Print resolution artwork can be downloaded at http://www.matrox.com/video/press/artwork/home.cfm

Matrox is a registered trademark and Matrox MXO is a trademark of Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.

ARTICLES

RED Epic and Scarlet Cameras

Read the November 2008 article here.

RED Digital Cinema has announced several new camera products at NAB 2008.

There were many speculations about improvements to the existing RED ONE camera but few suspected RED EPIC which is an entirely new 5K camera.

RED EPIC is not going to be available until 2009 but the specifications are truly impressive. The camera boasts a new Mysterium X imaging sensor capable of recording 5k RAW or RGB images images at 100MB/S.

RED EPIC can shoot at frame rates of 1-100FPS and has WiFi remote control capability. The camera comes in black aluminum styling similar to RED ONE. Most of existing RED ONE accessories are compatible with EPIC.

RED Digital Cinema also showed Scarlet. This new camera features a smaller 2/3″ Mysterium X imaging sensor that produces images at 3k. Scarlet has similar specifications to EPIC with the ability to shoot up to 120 frames per second. Scarlet body is smaller but still compatible with most accessories designed for RED ONE. Scarlet will ship in early 2009.

The cost of EPIC is going to around $30,000 (USD) with upgrade options for customers who purchase RED ONE in the period before EPIC is released. For more information visit RED Digital Cinema.

ARTICLES

Avid Mojo DX and Nitris DX

Avid Technology may not officially participate in this year’s NAB but its presence is felt on the show floor. The company has just released additional information on pricing and availability of the new Mojo DX and Nitris DX hardware as well as Media Composer, Symphony and NewsCutter software.

The news can be summed up as “slashed prices” and “new gear.” The new products are expected to ship by June of 2008.

Avid Xpress Pro has been retired and replaced by Media Composer. This editing software can be used with no special hardware. For added productivity and I/O options Mojo SDI, Mojo DX and Nitris DX are available. Media Composer is available for both Mac and Windows Vista.

Symphony software runs only with Nitris DX hardware. It is available on both Mac and Windows Vista workstations.

NewsCutter can work as software only or with Mojo DX or Nitris DX hardware.

The price points are (USD):

Symphony Nitris DX $35,995

Media Composer Nitris DX $21,995

Media Composer Mojo DX $9,995

Media Composer (software only) $2,495

NewsCutter Nitris DX $24,995

NewsCutter Mojo DX $19,995

NewsCutter (software only) $4,995

8 core workstations are included in some of the above pricing.

Among notable new features are real time performance improvements in both SD and HD, native support for DVCPRO HD, XDCAM HD, AVC-I, XDCAM-EX and HDV. The performance improvements are achieved through intelligent task apportioning between the CPU, graphics card and the dedicated hardware (Mojo DX, Nitris DX).

For more information see this article.

D-cinema, Equipment

RED ONE Camera

Advanced digital film camera.

“Digital film” is a bit of a misnomer. RED ONE is an electronic camera that captures digital motion picture images for a purpose of theatrical motion picture exhibition. Theatrical distribution still involves film prints hence the “film” part in “digital film.”

The camera is remarkable for the fact it captures raw data from the CMOS imaging sensor. This method has been used in high end digital still cameras. Unprocessed raw files don’t look very good at first but they contain a great deal of information that can be retrieved in the DI process.

RED ONE records 4k or 2k images and audio to solid state record media or hard discs.

ARTICLES

Avid Announces 2008 Products at a Pre-NAB Event

Avid Technology unveiled a streamlined line of products at a pre-NAB 2008 event held at Universal Studios Hollywood. The event was a part of the “New Thinking” campaign designed to connect and listen to the user base.

The keynote speaker Kirk Arnold of Avid Technology told the select group of users the new simplified product line is a direct response to requests Avid has been listening to over the past months.

The new Avid software lineup consists of three products:

Media Composer

Symphony

Avid DS

Avid Xpress Pro has been retired while the price of Media Composer has been competitively reduced. All new applications except Avid DS run on both Windows Vista and OS X Leopard.

On the hardware side Avid has introduced two new boxes that complement the already existing Mojo SDI. The three hardware products are:

Mojo SDI

Mojo DX

Nitris DX

The hardware devices will ship in June of 2008.

In spite of the best efforts by Avid to reduce product confusion by discontinuing Xpress Pro it still takes a bit of mental exercise to understand how to pair up all these pieces of hardware and software. On the other hand the “mix and match” options give customers a great degree of flexibility in choosing the right features at a comfortable price point.

On the high end of things the Avid DS is still delivered on Nitris hardware. This product is used for visual effects and 2k and 4k work.

Symphony Nitris DX

The Symphony is now delivered on the blazing fast Nitris DX box. It comes in both Mac and PC versions and offers facility class finishing.

Symphony Nitris DX shares the same toolset with the older Symphony Nitris although there are some new features which have to do with native HD format support.

Nitris DX delivers fast data transfer (many times faster than firewire) and real time features. Up to eight tracks of HD video with effects can be played in real time. The actual number of real time playback streams depends on the native HD file format as certain HD formats are more demanding then others.

The Nitris DX hardware is the smallest Avid rack mountable box yet. It is 2RU tall and has a handsome honeycomb grille. It features HD SDI, SD SDI, HDMI, Analog Component and Analog Composite connections. It also has 4 channels of balanced analog audio and a multipin AES/EBU digital audio connector. Standard VTR serial control is provided.

Media Composer

The new Media Composer can run on either Nitris DX or Mojo hardware.

Media Composer Nitris DX offers high performance productivity. Although this is a product intended for offline editing it can be used for some finishing jobs much like the older Media Composer Adrenaline.

Media Composer running on Mojo DX or Mojo SDI hardware is intended for offline capture and editing. The Mojos lack some of the real time features of Nitris DX.

Mojo DX comes with SD and HD SDI as well as analog and HDMI connectivity. Mojo SDI works in standard definition only.

In Development

Avid also gave a sneak peak of the new stereoscopic editing technology which is still in development. The new hardware aided system allows the editor to watch 3D output in the client monitor while working with 2D clips in the familiar Avid Media Composer interface. The new stereoscopic workflow also takes advantage of the already existing features of Avid DS.

Although Avid did not demonstrate support for RED ONE camera, a workflow tool which will allow direct access to RED Quicktime proxies is in development.

Avid chose to feature only the professional video products at the Los Angeles user gathering. ProTools and Pinnacle products were absent although Avid will probably make more announcements during the week of NAB 2008 in Las Vegas.