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At this year’s National Assoc-iation of Broadcasters convention, Avid stunned its customers and even many of its sales representatives by announcing an entirely new product line, the DNA series of editing systems.
The DNA line consists of three principal products: DS Nitris, which is a high-end finishing system, Adrenaline, which is the latest generation Media Composer, and Xpress Pro, which is a portable lower-end system that will scale from DV to uncompressed SD video and also enable editors to open and work with 24-fps projects from both Adrenaline and Meridien machines. Of these three, Media Composer Adrenaline is the system that most Guild members will adopt as their main editing workhorse. Its basic user interface is mostly unchanged from previous Film and Media Composers that Guild members are familiar with. However, the new system offers the first really radical change to Avid’s hardware in many years — in comparison with this, Meridien (Media Composer 8, 9, 10 and 11) was really only an incremental improvement over earlier ABVB (“Avid Broadcast Video Board” version 5, 6 and 7) machines. Hardware vs. Software Processing
DNA is Avid’s acronym for “Digital Non-linear Accelerator,” and
all systems using the term rely on a new relationship
between hardware and software to produce real-time
video capabilities. In the past, all
video and audio processing in Avids was done on proprietary
Avid cards, which meant that the power of the host
computer itself had little to
do with the performance of the system. A speedier computer
might enable the user to open or save bins faster,
but video performance was almost
entirely determined by the Avid hardware.
Because its processing ability scales with that of the computer, Adrenaline can play more video tracks than a Meridien or ABVB system. The company claims that with appropriate high-speed storage, the new machines can play five real-time full-resolution video tracks. That’s very impressive and compares favorably with the fastest machines on the market today. However, Adrenaline performance is difficult to predict in the neat way possible with earlier Avids. Hardware-based systems such as Meridien and its predecessors are limited in the number of video or audio tracks they can play in real-time, but editors are guaranteed that level of performance. An Adrenaline system will have more processing power to apply to a sequence, but if it is burdened with enough tracks and effects, a time will come when it can no longer play everything in real-time. And because each system will be different, and each sequence is different, it’s impossible to predict precisely when that will occur. However, in very complex projects, users can increase the number of tracks and effects the system will show in real-time by reducing the project’s viewing resolution to draft quality. This would be helpful in projects with complex effects that require the manipulation of many video tracks playing simultaneously. In cases where it’s essential to know that everything will play as expected, the editor can set Adrenaline to restrict the number of tracks and effects it attempts to play in real-time — in essence, telling Adrenaline to act like a Meridien system. Because the system is so processor-dependent, its performance is currently slightly faster on Windows-based computers, though with Apple’s G5 due for release in August [See Tech/News], that difference may diminish. (At the moment, Avid users around the world are split down the middle in terms of which operating system they prefer: In North America, Mac-based systems predominate, in Europe, about 30-35 percent of users are on the Mac, and Asia is mostly Windows.) The Editing Environment Those accustomed to using Film and Media Composers will find the overall Adrenaline interface reassuringly familiar, but there are a few key differences in the set of tools available.
What it doesn’t have: In many ways, Media Composer Adrenaline is a new system, and as with any new system, its designers had to decide which features would be included in the initial release, and which would have to wait until later. As a result, Adrenaline lacks some abilities that users of earlier Avids have come to expect: it cannot output PAL and NTSC from the same timeline, for example, and it lacks real-time Ultimatte support. But from the perspective of Guild members the biggest disappointment is Adrenaline’s inability to do real-time multi-cam. While the system can present more than one image in the source window, it cannot play them all at once; as of this writing, Avid has not specified a time when this will be changed. Media Compatibility: Nevertheless, Adrenaline delivers some important new capabilities. Because it is a software-based system with built-in codecs, it can accommodate a wide variety of different formats and resolutions — including the old ABVB AVRs, Meridien resolutions, JFIF, DV25, DV50 and IMX50 — even within the same timeline. This is a major advance over previous versions, which were unable to use media that had been digitized on systems using different hardware (Meridien systems could not read ABVB files, for example). Adrenaline can also handle 24-frame video in 3:1, 2:1 and even 1:1, resolutions that were previously available only on Symphony, making it possible to “online” standard-definition film-based projects. In the third quarter of this year, when version 1.1 of Adrenaline is released, it will support MXF, a media format that can contain not only video and audio, but also extensive metadata, or information about the video and audio. [See “Advanced Authoring Format and Media Exchange Format,” May/June 2003] MXF works with AAF, an interchange format designed to enable users to move projects between different types of systems. AAF is slowly gaining support among vendors, including Digidesign, which plans to release an AAF/MXF-compatible version of Pro Tools by the end of 2003. Current information on which companies are supporting AAF, and how, is available at www.aafassociation.org. In a future release — possibly Media Composer Adrenaline v. 2, which is scheduled for next summer — the system will also include high-definition capabilities. Currently, the plan is to offer one stream of compressed high-definition video using a proprietary Avid compression scheme. The company has announced two formats — 7:1 (145 Mbit, roughly equivalent to HDCAM) and 4:1 (220 Mbit, similar to D5). Color Correction: Another improvement is Adrenaline’s color-correction capability. Featuring a subset of the tools found in the Symphony, Adrenaline’s real-time 10-bit color corrector enables editors to adjust colors using HSL (hue, saturation and luminance) and curves. Unlike Symphony, it does not have a histogram, and in HSL, it’s not possible to restrict changes to shadows, midtones and highlights. However, Adrenaline can apply changes across multiple clips (between marks), and the one-step AutoCorrect function analyzes the material in a clip or project and tweaks the colors to bring them within legal broadcast range, providing a helpful starting point for color correction. While Adrenaline can be used for finishing, the more likely workflow would be to offline in Adrenaline, then conform in an online system. Because color-correction information is included in an AAF file, preliminary adjustments done offline could be passed along to a DS Nitris or Symphony system as a reference for the colorist. Unfortunately, until other online editing systems begin to use AAF information, color-correction data will be unavailable to them. Audio: The most significant new audio feature in Adrenaline is its ability to work with 24-bit/48 kHz files. It can also now create real-time audio dissolves, something Guild members have been wanting for a long time. The company says that as processors get faster, it may offer 16 real-time tracks. Adrenaline also introduces “Constant Power” dissolves; these are logarithmic dissolves, which unlike linear dissolves, have no dip in loudness at the midpoint. However, when volume levels are set using keyframes, the feature is not available. Set-up and Maintenance Another much touted advantage to Adrenaline is that is much easier to set up and maintain than previous systems. The entire system consists of a single rack-mountable box, which attaches to the host computer via a single FireWire cable. This should also make it easier to transport machines to distant locations and to set them up and tear them down when needed.
The processing within the Adrenaline box takes place
on programmable chips called
Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Avid loads its own algorithms
for video effects, format conversions,
3:2 pulldown insertion and
removal and other media tasks into the chips, which The hardware is also designed to accommodate future technological developments, such as 96 kHz audio and 10-bit video. Upgrading to HD, for example, will be simple to do in the field because it requires only the installation of a hardware I/O that can take in the signal from an HD deck. Adrenaline on Unity Just as it’s difficult to predict the performance of a single Adrenaline because of the scaleable nature of the system, it’s also complicated to determine how many Adrenalines can use the same files over a network. While Avid is still working on an official benchmark, they estimate that Unity MediaNetwork (Avid’s high-end shared storage system) can support up to 24 dual-stream 14:1 clients directly attached via Fibre (the highest bandwidth connection the system allows). An additional 60 single-stream Adrenaline clients working at 14:1 will also be able to access the network via Gigabit Ethernet or 100Base T Ethernet connection, if Avid’s less expensive PortServer Pro (PSP) servers are attached to the MediaNetwork system. With Unity LANshare EX, Avid’s lower-cost Gigabit Ethernet-based network, up to 20 single-stream 14:1 clients will be supported. Avid and Hollywood Avid kept the development of Adrenaline an extraordinary secret. The three product designers, Michael Phillips, Steve Bayes and Doug Hansel, collaborated with approximately 120 engineers, who spent two and half years designing the hardware, and about 18 months writing the software. Phillips says that the secrecy was part of Avid’s attempt to show that the company could still be surprising and innovative. Recent Avid purchasers may wish that the company had been a little bit less secretive, though, because there is no upgrade path from Meridien to Adrenaline. Avid is presenting the system, which sells for $24,995 without computer or monitors, as complimentary to the older system, rather than as a successor to it. While Meridien users can upgrade to Symphony, Avid will continue to market and support Meridien for the foreseeable future. Phillips believes that there is plenty of life left in Meridien, noting that even though Meridien was introduced in 1998, the last ABVB system wasn’t sold until early 2003. The relationship between Avid and the Hollywood community has been a complex one. At first, the company focused heavily on Hollywood and on tools that would appeal to customers working in high-end film and TV. During the early 1990s, Avid invited input from the film and television community, had beta testing in Hollywood and worked extensively with several local editors for detailed feedback. Later, Avid set up an organization known as the Hollywood Council. With two branches — one for business interests and one for the creative community — the Council was to meet every six months and advise Avid on how best to address Hollywood issues. But by this time the company was focused on other markets, the Council members often got details about upcoming developments too late to influence product development, and few of the Council’s suggestions were acted upon. After two years, the Council stopped meeting, and many in Hollywood began to feel as though the needs of the community were being neglected as the company put more emphasis on other users, including broadcast and news. Today, Hollywood represents 20 percent of Avid’s overall business, and Hollywood editors have lagged behind users in the rest of the country in buying upgrades. As a result, they have been less able to provide input to Avid. Moreover, as Phillips points out, it is difficult to beta test on Hollywood features, because Avid’s beta cycle is so short that the average feature would still be getting its material online by the time the testing phase ended, making it impossible for those users to give input on how the system performed during the later phases of post. Phillips admits that much of the company’s input from high-end users has come to them second- or third-hand, via sales people, application engineers or publicists. Now, though, as Avid inaugurates its new line of DNA products, he sees a chance for a fresh start. At the time of this writing, Avid was in the early stages of planning a new program to fill the role of the Hollywood Council. Although they had not yet released details about the format or schedule, the company plans to host regular meetings with representatives of the Hollywood community and to present educational opportunities to the Guild membership at large. This new attitude comes at an opportune time. Most Guild members continue to use Avids, but today, unlike in the mid ‘90s, other vendors, including Apple, Lightworks, Sony and Media 100, are competing in the feature and longform TV market. Adrenaline surely offers enough robust hardware to make any Guild member focused on visual effects very happy. And the simplicity of its hardware will appeal to rental companies who must set up and tear down systems constantly. But Avid must continue to reach out to our community and directly address the needs of Guild members if it hopes to retain its dominance at the top of the post production world. |
