Editing

The non-linear editing market seems to be dividing into four segments: DV, standard def, high def and film. Surprisingly though, there still aren't many systems capable of handling film or 24P video.

Final Cut Pro: Apple had a presence in both convention centers and many hotels, giving attendees a strong impression that the company is serious about entering the professional editing market. Their booth was directly across from Avid's in the new South Hall of LVCC, and it was big enough to include a 100-seat theatre, directly facing the Avid booth. The focus was on education, with informative presentations running on stage and Final Cut Pro classes running in a booth-turned-classroom at the Sands.

In what must have felt like an out-of-body experience for many Avid users, Tom Ohanian, whose name has become synonymous with Avid, shared the Apple stage with Final Cut Pro designer Randy Ubillos. The theme of their presentation, which played to a packed theater, was that open systems, where work is done on the "host" CPU rather than a dedicated card, are the future, and they showed a series of charts demonstrating that such systems are gaining power more quickly than machines based on proprietary hardware.

Final Cut Pro 3 was Apple's primary focus. OS X native and multi-processor capable, it adds some notable new features including primary and secondary color correction, offline capture modes, some real-time preview effects (they have to be rendered for output) and voice-over recording directly to the timeline. Apple also introduced Cinema Tools, a $1,000 suite of film and EDL utilities that plugs into Final Cut and allows you to create cut lists and audio EDLs, via the FCP Export command. The program is similar to its predecessor FilmLogic, and still suffers from some of its limitations: no film information available while editing, no trimming or navigating in feet and frames and no change lists -- a major drawback.

But Cinema Tools now offers support for import and export of 24-fps EDLs, as well as conversion between 24 and 30 fps lists. With the Aurora Igniter video card, it facilitates removal of 2:3 pull-down in real-time during capture, but Cinema Tools runs only under OS X, and OS X drivers for the Igniter won't be available until the fall. (FCP will run under OS 9 and various workarounds are available until the drivers ship.) Without extra video hardware, 24-fps material must be captured with 2:3 intact, and extra fields can be removed via rendering. If you've captured using FCP's OfflineRT resolution, you can also create 24-fps material by instructing the program to skip every fifth frame during playback. This is similar to the Lightworks approach and produces 24-frame material much more quickly than rendering.

FCP can be used to cut anything from highly compressed material to full-res HD and this flexibility is one of its key strong points. It can also function as an online conforming tool, but there's no support for OMF import, so you'll have to bring cut material in with an EDL. The program does support OMF2 audio export with embedded media, but without metadata like clip gain or pan automation.

FCP's interface is Avid-like but there are many differences. The program offers some important and original features but there are also limitations: no multi-cam, no auto-sync, no customizable keyboard, no audio mixer, no asymmetric or live trimming and limited JKL trimming.

However, for a combined price of just under $2,000, FCP and Cinema Tools continue to lead the industry in price/performance. A DV system can be assembled with nothing but the FCP software, a suitable Macintosh, a deck and drives. If you need uncompressed standard-def or high-def capability, all you need to do is add hardware.

Avid: While Apple takes the "one size fits all" approach, Avid continues to offer a wide range of editing products, each intended for a specific audience. Xpress DV 3, Avid's answer to Final Cut, was a key focus of their booth -- an aisle-to-aisle display of Xpress systems running on Mac and PC laptops was the first thing you saw upon entering the LVCC South Hall. Priced at $1,699, Xpress DV's interface is now very similar to that of the Media Composer. But to avoid competing with its bigger siblings, Avid chose to omit some features, including JKL trimming. Projects and bins are compatible with the Media Composer, but film editors don't enjoy this flexibility because Xpress is a 30-fps-only system.

As with FCP, if you want to conform film you'll have to spend more money -- for the Xpress DV PowerPack, which adds $1,300 to the price. It includes FilmScribe, Avid's list software, as well as Pinnacle Commotion 4, Sonic Solutions DVDit!, some AVX plug-ins, and several important Avid features such as dupe detection and AutoSync. But since Xpress has no 24-fps or 2:3 removal capabilities, conforming 24-fps material will result in cheated frames.

Avid has also embraced real-time, software-based previews, and offers over a hundred such effects, compared to roughly 20 in FCP. Depending on the settings selected, the type of effects and the processor power, up to four tracks can be viewed without rendering. The number of video tracks is limited to eight, but you can nest within each track.

Avid was showing beta versions of Xpress running on Mac laptops under OS X, and the Mac version may be available by the time you read this. But oddly, all the Xpress DV systems I played with at the booth, on either platform, stalled with an error message whenever I got too friendly with the JKL keys. It might have just been an NAB software bug, but none of the Avid staffers present could explain it. Unlike FCP, Xpress DV is designed to cut DV only -- there's no upgrade path to other formats.

Media Composer Version 11 was shown with some new features, including a powerful new effects interface with separate timelines for each parameter (similar to After Effects), the ability to cut DV in its native form and acquire it over Firewire, Photoshop imports with layers intact, and the Marquee title tool. However, with only one Media Composer on display, Avid's emphasis seemed to be elsewhere. Mac Media Composer remains on OS 9, but an OS X version will be available later this year. (Marquee will be Windows-only until then.)

Symphony 4 ships with several enhancements including beautifully smooth motion effects. Many Avid editing systems pick up what the company calls "MetaSync" capabilities -- timelines can now contain triggers to external events, making it much easier to author interactive television applications or create subtitles.

The rest of the booth was focused on news and networking. The company offered a diverse array of newsroom and remote editing solutions and an impressive "digital dailies" system, designed to share media over a local area network.

Avid/Softimage: Avid inherited the Digital Studio (DS) product when they bought Softimage several years ago, and they've been improving it ever since. It's a terrific compositing and conforming tool, but it has never really gained widespread acceptance as an editing system -- its interface is too alien to those weaned on the Composer. Avid is attempting to change that with Version 6 by including some Media Composer features, but the interface may still seem idiosyncratic to some editors.

The program does many things extremely well: painting, rotoscoping, layering, 3D text with lighting in 3D space. And once you learn the layering and "effects tree" philosophy behind these tools, performing complex tasks is relatively easy.

It comes in several flavors and the HD version (DS|HD) is Avid's only HD-capable editing product. It's impressively fast -- dragging uncompressed HD around the timeline didn't seem to phase it at all. What makes this more amazing is the fact the DS|HD relies entirely on the host CPU to perform its magic.

DS has impressive OMF and AAF support, and with AAF can recreate bins and sequences from other Avid systems. It handles all popular formats -- uncompressed SD, HD and 24P.

Sony: Introduced at NAB last year, Sony's XPRI non-linear editor was back with some impressive new features, including the ability to run two streams of HDCAM, high-definition video with color correction and 3D transitions as well as a 32-bit graphics track -- all in real time. This makes it the only real-time HD editor available except for the Discreet Fire/HD which costs several times as much.

The system has many similarities to the Media Composer and offers some new twists as well. Onboard HDCAM codecs and SDTI inputs allow HDCAM material to be digitized in its native, compressed state -- saving a huge amount of hard disk space while preserving image quality. In standard-def modes, XPRI can capture from two VTR's simultaneously, or using Sony's new MPEG-50 IMX VTRs, it can digitize at double real-time. Also shown was OMF import and OMF audio export with pan and fader automation to both Avid and Protools.

Lightworks: Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, the Lightworks shark appears again! Despite the demise and resurrection of Lightworks over the years, there are enough fans around the world to give this system a shot at a comeback. Now owned by Fairlight of Australia, the Lightworks team has ported their code to Windows 2000 and christened the new machine "Touch." It comes with a beautiful hardware console that now includes a perfectly weighted and very responsive jog wheel -- perhaps the best in the industry. It's still in beta, but the system did not crash in demos and offers more capabilities than any previous Lightworks, including real-time visual effects, a plug-in architecture and full film functionality.

Media 100: With a great deal of fanfare, slick graphics and a well-designed booth, Media 100 used NAB to introduce an extremely powerful new system called the 844/X. Based on their own custom-designed silicon and boards (called the GenesisEngine), the 844/X is capable of playing back four streams of uncompressed SD video, each with its own moving alpha channel. You can also add a graphics track with an associated alpha for a total of 10 streams in real time -- all of it at 10-bit, 4:4:4:4 quality. There's also a new and well-designed user interface. For now, the system is limited to standard definition, 30-fps video. But Media 100 claims their hardware was designed with HD in mind and that many capabilities are not yet implemented. The machine brings an impressive level of real-time responsiveness to short-form work and might just change the way editors approach effects design.

BOXX: QuickTime native and running on Windows 2000, the new HDBOXX editing system had the most responsive timeline performance of any uncompressed HD system I tried at the show. It handles all the popular SD and HD formats, including 60P/HD and 2K-film -- and it can process all this in 10-bit YUV or 24-bit RGB color space.

The front-end to all this power is Speed Razor's 2000-X editing software, adapted by BOXX to handle 24P material in the timeline. Speed Razor is a good software package, but it has had very limited success in the long-form market, mainly because of it's non-standard interface and less-than-robust EDL capabilities.

With an asking price of about $50,000 including 360GB of storage, HDBOXX has the potential to be a serious contender in the HD online editing and conforming market, especially if the company can find a more suitable software package to go with it.

Other Systems: As disk drives become faster and cheaper, non-linear, uncompressed, standard definition finishing systems are becoming a popular alternative to online -- a one-stop-shop for editing, effects work and finishing. In addition to the 844/X described above, other notable systems were shown, including the Leitch dpsVelocityQ (with four uncompressed real-time video streams and ten graphics tracks), the Accom Affinity with Dimension 8.2 software and the SGI-based Mule from a company called The Electronic Farm. None of these systems offer film or 24P capabilities yet, but they provided a tantalizing look at a future workflow based on the merger of online and offline.

Cameras and Decks

Thomson: Digital camera technology continues to evolve rapidly -- and now there's a new manufacturer taking aim at the top end of the digital cinema market, Thomson Multimedia. They unveiled a new HD camera called the Viper FilmStream. Designed in collaboration with Technicolor, Thomson claims the camera combines the best of film and video features, with resolution and dynamic range approaching film. To achieve this goal, it employs three 9.2 million-pixel CCD sensors feeding 12-bit A/D converters. Unlike other HD cameras, all of which employ some form of compression, the FilmStream produces the purest video image yet achieved, but there's one very big catch -- it can't be recorded in the camera. Instead, it must be tied via an umbilical to a disk array or hefty, tape-based data recorder.

Panasonic: Up to now, the ability to shoot video at 24 frames per second has been restricted to expensive HD cameras. With the announcement of the AG-DVX100 24P mini-DV camera, Panasonic brings 24-fps progressive-scan video into the standard-definition domain. Using the camera, which should be released in the fourth quarter, anyone can now shoot at low cost without the worry of pull-down issues when transferring to film. As an added bonus, Apple has announced that it will offer support for it in a future version of Final Cut Pro. The palm-sized camera is equipped with three 1/3" 410,000-pixel progressive-scan CCDs and can create video at 30 or 24-fps. Panasonic also announced a joint effort with Apple to add FireWire capability to their DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO100 HD decks.

Sony: Sony had the biggest booth at the show, displaying a huge array of products from cameras and decks to video conferencing gear. Its 24P CineAlta camera was a big focus -- the company set up a mock shooting stage with a series of cameras set up around it so that show-goers could play with the gear and create real images. Acceptance of the camera continues to pick up steam, and many pilots used it this season. It's also being used on features, most notably Star Wars Episode II.

To celebrate their success Sony held a "CineAlta Festival" at the Century Orleans Theatre in Las Vegas, which showcased feature and episodic television clips from the U.S., Europe and Japan. The show demonstrated that in the right hands, 24P is capable of yielding terrific results. But in the wrong hands it can look like, well -- video!

Conclusion

NAB 2002 proved that most camera manufacturers recognize that HD and 24P are here to stay, but there are still only a handful of editing systems that properly handle 24-fps material. Though it's not trivial to add, those editing systems that fail to provide it will have little chance of penetrating the long-form market. This year NAB showed that multi-layer, real-time effects capabilities have improved dramatically. Let's hope that by this time next year we'll see more of these systems add the film capabilities that will make them appealing to the long-form community.

NAB 2002 Audio | Digital Cinema Summit

Michael Buday has served as a consultant to Sony Broadcast, Leitch, Inc. and JVC.
His company, The Software Grille, produces OMF and EDL tools, including EDLMAX24.
He can be reached via email