By Debra Kaufman
It's nearly 11 pm on Monday night and I've just come back from a really enjoyable and informative dinner with Canon. Canon took me and a small group of journalists to Japan in November; I had the privilege of touring their lens factory and meeting many executives. The NAB dinner, a tradition that is in its 11th year, was a reprisal of much of the great stuff that I saw a few months ago, with some new twists.
As always, Larry Thorpe was the master of ceremonies for the evening's informative section. He began the evening by introducing all the filmmakers and cinematographers in the audience who have been using and enjoying Canon's Cinema EOS cameras and lenses. And it was an impressive group: Richard Crudo, ASC, who is the president of the American Society of Cinematographers, cinematographer James Chressanthis, ASC, Shane Hurlbut, the filmmakers from HBO's Vice and several others. It was an impressive list, and a benchmark for Canon, which launched this line of cinema cameras and lenses not long ago.
"We are the new kids on the block," said Thorpe, who praised the legacy of lens manufacturers Zeiss, Cooke and Angenieux. He posed a question of all the filmmakers, cinematographers and press in the audience: what is the "personality" of the Canon cine lenses? He showed a demonstration shot by cinematographer Alfonso Parra that used a variety of Canon cinema lenses to shoot a single scene. But he left the main question of what the personality of these lenses are open to filmmakers to tell Canon what they thought. Are you using Canon cinema lenses? Let them know.
The day began with AJA introducing its 4K camera, the Cion. I'll write more in depth about this camera (which was being introduced just a few minutes before Blackmagic Design unveiled its new camera, the URSA) when I have time to address all the cameras debuted at the show in my wrap-up article. In brief, the Cion has a 4K CMOS sensor, is based on ProRes and is PL Lens Mount only. A lot of attention was paid to ergonomics with a handle made of wood and aluminum and a contoured suede shoulder pad. Of course, it's AJA, so all the connections are there, including a LAN Ethernet connector. The camera offers a 4K 120 fps workflow to AJA's Truezoom System that does slo-mos in real-time. Oh, and the price? $8,995.
Thinkbox Software's Krakatoa is now available on Maxon for Cinema 4D Volumetric Particle Rendering. It was first available for 3ds Max (in 2007) then in 2013 for Maya and as a standalone renderer and now has come to Maxon. "What's exciting to me about Maxon is that the users are really engaged," said President/CEO Chris Bond. "After we announced Krakatoa's availability for Maxon, we got 7x the web traffic and double the number of requests to beta test it. We've gotten a lot of really great reels and art on the forum from people who want to be involved."
I mentioned in yesterday's report that Dalet had acquired AmberFin. This bit of news was a total surprise to me, since I have breakfast every year with AmberFin CTO Bruce Devlin and had no idea this was in the works. First, the acquisition is a good thing, says Devlin. "Dalet has an awesome MAM and metadata system and a simple user interface," he says. "They also have an API from 2006 that still works. They've kept it static so everything is backwards compatible. They do exactly what I've always talked about: how do we take something complex and make it simple?"
The story of AmberFin's sale is a cautionary tale about venture capital money. The company, which spun off from Snell, has apparently always been VC-owned and, therefore, always for sale. Dalet intends to keep the AmberFin brand and of course Bruce Devlin, as well as work to integrate their products. Bottom line, if Devlin is happy about the future of AmberFin, so am I. I'll try to visit Dalet and write more later about the company's future path.
A first-look meeting at the HP secret meeting room (OK, it wasn't really secret, but it was secreted at the back of the South hall) was also valuable. Jim Douglas, product manager for workstation storage, gave me a close-up look at the HP Z Turbo Drive, a cost-effective PCIe-based SSD (Solid State Drive) for desktop workstations. HP Z Turbo Drives reduce boot up, calculation and graphics response times—even with 4K video—and revolutionizes how HP Z Workstations handle large files.
"Typically it's SATA-connected and data limited," Douglas said. "With this drive, we have performance in excess of 1 GB per second, at the same cost of today's SSDs." With data limits unleashed, the PCi Express opens the door to higher performance especially with the data-heavy images found in Ultra HD (our 4K Ultra HD show theme again).
Users need a PCi Express 4x slot; it is available for the Z230, Z420, Z620 and flagship Z820. The new cards can be daisy-chained together for additional performance and can also be used in conjunction with hard drives and SSDs. Shipping in May, they are available in 256 GB and 512 GB options for $499 and $899 respectively.
I didn't have an appointment with The Foundry but had a hunch they were up to something good, so I made sure to make a surprise stop. I was the first to get the news (albeit embargoed until 7 pm) about the new Nuke Studio, an all-in-one application for VFX, editing and finishing. "It brings all the power of collaboration but can also be used by an individual who wants to use it as an end-to-end product," said a Foundry spokesperson. Nuke Studio supports files from Avid and Apple and has its own solid editing functionality.
Nuke Studio goes into beta in the next two to three months and is due to ship in late 2014 for an as-of-yet undetermined price. "We know people have wanted something like this for a long time," said the spokesperson. "People love the power of Nuke, the workflow and the great architecture of Nuke and Hero. This is all that plus a lot of new features. It's not a direct competition with anything else in the marketplace."
I also saw Facility Technology, EditShare, CineDeck and Boris FX but since the clock is ticking towards midnight and I've got to be up in six hours, I'm going to sign off for now. More adventures tomorrow, Tuesday, and, again, look for my coverage to go live in the wee hours.