What I Want to See at NAB

Beyond Faster, Better, Cheaper

Every year I join the spring pilgrimage to Las Vegas and worship at the shrine of unaffordable and unavailable equipment. Every NAB I’m impressed, inspired and frustrated; sometimes all by the same vendor. But like a moth, every year I’m drawn back to the flame because I have real equipment needs. And I like flashing lights. This year is all about HD, so here is what I want to see in Vegas for production and post.

Everything shown at NAB 2005 but shipping now. Come on, manufacturers. You’ve had 12 months. Some NAB exhibits seem like experiments to provide data proving the mythical Osborne effect. So show me shipping versions of what I saw last year!

Mid-range HD cameras. With so many of us buying HD cameras this year, let’s see economies of scale kick in for HD cameras and lenses. I mean beyond HDV. I’m not looking for five-dollar prime lenses. HDCAM and DVCPRO HD are good mid-range HD formats. What can you sell me for $20,000 to $30,000?

Industrial HD lenses. Lenses for HD cinematography look great and cost a fortune. The lenses on HD prosumer cameras are passable. What about the middle ground? For those mid-range HD cameras, I want to see the HD equivalent of moderately priced industrial SD lenses for low-cost HD cameras.

Higher bit-rate HDV. Both 19 Mbps 720p and 25 Mbps 1080i HDV look better than they should. The 6-frame GOP on JVC’s GY-HD100U HDV camera is appealing. Sony’s HDV-like 35 MBps XDCAM HD is intriguing. Why not 50 Mbps HDV with a 6-frame GOP? HDV isn’t the right term, but it’s so much more concise than the anti-euphonic quartet of long-GOP MPEG-2 MP@H-14, MP@HL, 422P@H-14 and 422P@HL.

New acquisition compression formats. HDV, DVCPRO HD and HDCAM are fine. But what about JPEG2000 and all the other great ideas engineers have developed? Let’s see more compression options in cameras.

Improved tapeless location storage. The undead media format, videotape, needs a wooden stake through its heart. But not yet; the current alternatives for HD field production neither warm my documentarian heart nor calm my producer gut. I want to see more HD cameras and formats recording to optical disc, P2 cards with greater capacity and compact hard-drive systems with longer run times and support for more HD formats.

Kinetta or Red ready to ship. I want to see a full-raster HD camera at a down-to-earth price. Like Kinetta’s compelling plan: a single large CCD or CMOS sensor, standard PL lens mount, uncompressed 1920 x 1080 10-bit log images, all in a small hand-held camera priced far below $100,000. For the past two years, Kinetta’s shown impressive prototypes. But with Red on the case and every other camera manufacturer not sitting still, it’s time for someone to finish and sell something.

Cheaper digital wireless mics. Digital wireless mic systems from Zaxcom and Lectrosonics rival the audio clarity of balanced audio cables. But at $2,500 and up, three to four systems (for talent and a camera link) will set me back a bundle. Some corollary of Moore’s Law needs to kick in to give us quality digital wireless systems at significantly lower prices.

Better HD monitors. My Apple 23-inch Cinema HD LCD panel makes an okay HD monitor, but it doesn’t have HD-SDI inputs, broad frame-rate support, great blacks or consistent color. BMD’s HDLink and AJA’s HDP converters address some, but not all of these issues. I want a monitor specifically designed for evaluating and grading all SD and HD video up to 1080p. I want 601 and 709 color. I want to see every pixel without scaling or motion smoothing. I want the color, blacks and off-axis viewing of a CRT with the precise pixels and compact depth of an LCD. What I saw at NAB 2005 was either expensive, disappointing or both. I want a monitor with the quality of the eCinema Systems DCM23 but with a much lower price.

Affordable HD Scopes. Hardware HD scopes cost more than $10,000. I can get along with software scopes, but the online editors I work with can’t. I’d rather they not pass on to me the cost of an expensive scope. If someone can sell a good HD vectorscope and waveform monitor for under $5,000, they’ll find many happy customers.

Fast and secure storage. More HD means I need more and faster storage. I’m set for SD and some compressed HD formats, but I want the option of working with uncompressed or lightly compressed HD, support for multiple streams and data security. I can live without shared storage if I must. I can find all of this in Fibre-Channel systems, but I’d like to keep the price under $4,000 for a couple of terabytes. In other words, I want Fibre-Channel performance at SATA prices.

Intermediate codecs. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m impressed with HD video encoded in Avid DNxHD and CineForm Prospect HD; the material is less compressed than HDCAM and DVCPRO HD but much easier to move through post than uncompressed HD. And intermediate codecs can make my storage needs much more affordable. This year I want to see digital intermediate codecs that work across platforms and across more applications.

Broader inter-application metadata sharing. Software companies let me share media and metadata between their own applications. Utilities from Automatic Duck move timelines across vendor’s lines. But I want broader metadata standardization and sharing. And let’s include cameras in the equation. AAF and MXF sound great, but they haven’t done much for me yet. I want to see working demonstrations of metadata moving all the way from camera to display, all with equipment I use or can afford.

Everything at NAB 2006 Available in 2006

Exhibitors got a one-year grace period to ship what they showed in 2005. For NAB 2006, let’s give them eight months. I’m not talking about clearly experimental projects. But if it looks like a product, be close to shipping it. Don’t waste my time with FUD-inducing balsa-cams. If it’s at NAB 2006, let us buy it in 2006.

None of these requests are impossible. I’m looking for stuff that really could be available in 2006. A theme runs through all of these topics. I want to see kits equal to or better than those used at large and mid-sized production companies and facilities but priced for small production houses and boutique design shops. There’s a good financial motivation for manufacturers to meet the needs of companies like mine— there’s a lot of us, and if you price your equipment right, we’ll stop just renting the same single piece of gear and we’ll each buy our own. Why should the rich kids have all the fun?

Write Jim at jfeeley@accessintel.com