NEWS
Move Over, Content
Distribution is King at NAB
by Patrick Gregston photos by Tomm Carroll
 Avid's booth. |
The 2006 edition of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual trade show brought 105,000 people to its exhibit floor April 24-27 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, a slight increase over last year. The aisles remained open and easy to navigate compared to pre-bubble-bursting years. Many attendees seemed to be searching vainly for––as one station manager put it––“something I can afford.” Featured themes this year were higher-definition cameras and scads of ways to distribute content, especially IPTV––or digital motion pictures delivered over some version of internet protocols.
Much like last year when high definition (HD) arrived as a consumer camera format even before it has become a sustainable commercial distribution channel, alternative outlets for content seemed to be springing like leaks from a system that seems more glued together than designed. The numerous announcements from the major distributors that they were putting content online, on-demand and on portable devices was not so much a signal that they have figured out how to do it, as it was a demonstration that their fear of loss by not getting in the online market has finally outstripped their fear of loss by being in that market.
Given the lack of clear business or technical models of how to distribute, the floor at NAB reflected the chaos with lots of ways to do it. While the majority of these had to do with video over Internet Protocol (IP), or IPTV (which mostly meant methods by which telephone companies will attack cable companies), there were also novel channels such as CustomFlix, a DVD on-demand service that permits producers to distribute their films without inventory.
 Apple Computer's booth. |
The HD camera explosion last year has given way to an intense competition to establish the next high ground of acquisition, with numerous innovations in camera design––such as a 32-million-pixel “Super Definition” system from NHK––and several 4K cameras––including one from the founder of Oakley Sunglasses, and another promising to “end time” by providing infinite frame rates for HD slow-motion capture. Where and how to store all the data generated by these cameras provided another overwhelming set of possibilities, including military specification, ruggedized RAID arrays in portable housings, solid-state flash cards of immense capacity and lots of vendors offering terabytes configured in clever ways and discounted so aggressively that blood could have been flowing in the aisles.
There were a number of products and announcements of interest to the motion picture production and post communities. Kodak introduced a ‘scan only’ camera negative and software package that permits a director of photography to expose, develop and telecine to emulate any other Kodak stock, including those no longer available. Kodak also has released a “light” version of its Display Manager tool kit, which enables the matching of displays for consistent replication of the images. While this may not yet be in the price range of a production, discerning editors and assistants would be improving the presentation in their edit and projection rooms to demand its use. Another interesting display product was the a high-definition monitor that can be calibrated for accurate reference.
 Quantel's booth. |
In the editorial area, the most significant announcements were all Avid. Parity of Media Composer capabilities on both PC and Mac platforms bring the Mac-based Avid equal capability for the first time in years. Projects can now be transferred between Mac and PC platforms. Full-screen display through the host graphics card is also added in this release. The new DNX36 codec means being able to work in HD media with standard definition (SD) bandwidth and storage parameters. The software-only Media Composer with HD capability looks ideal to leverage the latest laptops for mobile editing.
Combined with the newly announced Interplay application, billed by Avid as the world’s first nonlinear workflow engine, these advances mean a host of new possibilities to serve the ever-demanding circumstances of post-production. The Interplay product is the first technological attempt to leverage the editorial function into the many other aspects of the production industry.
One feature demonstrated at the Avid press event was the ability to shift from one type of media to another. Going from an uncompressed media set to a pocket drive of highly compressed media and re-linking automatically took less than a minute. Taking the job with you has probably never been easier.
Other Avid announcements of note: an open storage initiative to support third-party storage solutions and new storage capacities up to 40 Tb on Unity and 192 Tb with 150 users supporting 300 streams of 50 Mb video with the ISIS products. A full rundown of the many details is available at www.avid.com.
Apple made no major announcements regarding post-production products, although it did feature the new 17” MacBook Pro. With sufficient processing to run either Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer in its new HD software-only configuration, go-anywhere laptop editing may mean that even travel time is editing time.
As always, NAB included numerous fascinating bleeding-edge products. Along with the keyboard customizers and radio-controlled (RC) camera platforms, including screamingly fast RC cars and helicopters (requires three operators!), this year introduced one content creation tool that makes movies from two stills. Frame Free is a distinctly different application from the morphing with which we are familiar, producing both realistic movies and positively hallucinogenic images in both high resolution and tiny lightweight files appropriate for mobile phone viewing. You can check out the web-based application at www.framefree.us.
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