From the Publisher DV and HD Create New Competition and New Possibilities by Steve Cohen One of the big splashes at NAB this year was Sony’s new XPRI system. It offers full HD non-linear online capabilities as well as a group of integrated hardware control devices that might set a new standard: a flying-fader mixer, jog-shuttle controller with magnetic feedback and a color correction/effects interface. The system borrows heavily from the Avid, with JKL shuttle control, trim rollers and many other interface features that we’re familiar with. The cost for all of this is about $150,000 – including 360 gigs of storage. Avid’s Symphony online system is more mature and does some things that the Sony machine doesn’t: it removes and reinstates 3/2 on the fly, takes care of film lists and will output simultaneously in 16x9 and 4x3 – what it doesn’t do is HD. For that you’ll need an Avid/Softimage DS HD system at roughly double the price. The Sony system isn’t aimed at offline – yet. But it still has broad implications for us. The company has entered the non-linear market before and failed to produce a product that has caught on. But this time might be different. Meanwhile, support for DV grows every day. Final Cut Pro is being used on more and more shows. It hasn’t made it to the studio feature world yet, but Apple just acquired Focal Point Systems, the company that made FilmLogic, the most successful cut list software for FCP. This may indicate a new Apple commitment to the professional world. Combined with the XPRI, it means that Avid must now face new rivalry from above and below. Competition is nothing new for the company and they’ve responded to it vigorously in the past. In fact, our favorite user interface improved tremendously when Avid was threatened by Lightworks. DV and HD share a new paradigm – both bring the online and offline worlds together. DV is compressed, but it looks great and can be broadcast. You can’t decompress and recompress DV material repeatedly without hurting picture quality. But you can move the compressed DV files over Firewire without degradation, which makes the material functionally equivalent to uncompressed NTSC in many situations. HD tape formats are also typically compressed, with similar ramifications. Sony’s HDCam, for example, which is the basis of the Panavision cameras that George Lucas has been using, is compressed but can be moved around without degradation via the Serial Digital Transport Interface (SDTI). It has the same data requirements as full-resolution, uncompressed NTSC but looks far better. This year, for the first time, we’re beginning to see many shows finished in HD and actually broadcast that way. You can do this three ways: shoot with HD, shoot on film and telecine cut negative to HD or shoot on film, telecine dailies to HD and online in HD. Many shows are transferring film dailies to HD and finding that the 24P format offers the most flexibility because you can online once and then convert the 24P master to any HD, NTSC or PAL format you like. The growing popularity of 24P is good for us because any editing system that handles it can be made to deal with film without a great deal of additional work. Real competition for 24-fps editing machines will mean only one thing: better and more capable equipment for us. And as fast hard drives continue to get cheaper, we may see HD onlines taking place in picture editing rooms sooner than many people expected.    Steve Cohen is an editor, Guild Board member and publisher of the Guild Magazine. He can be reached via email   Reprinted from The Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine Vol. 22, No. 3 - July/August 2001   Guild Home | Magazine Home | Top of Page   Copyright © 2001, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 700