NAB2010 update for DSLR Workflows
Big announcements from Avid, Adobe and Matrox will have a MAJOR impact on your DSLR Workflows!
NAB2010 was very exciting for us and everyone I have spoken to who attended. Over the past couple of years the show had seemed to have lost some luster. The technology that was being shown was more evolutionary then revolutionary. While the past two shows had their share of technology innovations and hot new product announcements, the overall mood wasn't that great. We were in a maturing industry that was migrating to HD, but it was a long slow bumpy ride.
With each exciting new product came compatibility issues and the need for workarounds and patches. HD was here, but working efficiently with HD was not. Video producers and editors were forced to constantly make compromises in order to get things to work properly. Then the recession hit. With money so tight, why invest in new gear that created as many problems as they solved? We were an industry in desperate need of technology that made editing and producing video better.
At this years NAB2010 Avid, Adobe and Matrox did just that! Together they announced new products loaded with features and performance that will make working with HD footage and tapeless workflows so much easier and straight forward. No more worrying about if you can edit the footage you were given without transcoding or re-wrapping it, or 3rd party utilities to get the footage into your NLE. Finally everything just WORKS!
We'll be getting our full NAB2010 report out next week. For now we've updated our DSLR Workflow Guide with the following information:
Avid Media Composer 5 with Matrox MXO2 Mini
At NAB2010 Avid announced Media Composer 5, and it was one of the biggest hits of the show. Over the past year or two Avid's management has been reaching out to customers on all levels and asking them what features they needed and what they had to do to put Media Composer back on top. Avid listened and Avid delivered!
Media Composer 5 gives you AMA support for DSLR footage! In fact, Avid added AMA support for all Quicktime files including ProRes. This is HUGE! You can simply drag and drop your DSLR video files into Media Composer and start editing. No wrapping, converting or other work-arounds. Using a computer such as our DIY7 Core i7 machine, you can edit a couple of layers of DSLR footage, with some filters, effects and transitions in real-time. Mix & Match allows you to mix footage with different CODECs and frame rates on the same timeline with ease. AMAZING!
Just as important was Avid's announcement with Matrox that the MXO2 Mini can now be used as an HD monitoring device! At the show, Avid, Matrox and Canon held a special event that demonstrated the power of this tapeless workflow solution. All I can say is WOW! Avid has changed the game. When it comes to tapeless workflows with DSLR footage, MC5 puts Avid at the head of the class!
Adobe Premeire Pro CS5 Mercury Playback and Matrox MAX technology
At NAB2010 Adobe announced CS5. Actually, they let the cat out of the bag a few weeks earlier with a very clever teaser campaign. The big news for DSLR editing is the new Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Premiere Pro is the first native 64-bit NLE. This allows it to tap into a layer of power and performance that goes well beyond existing NLEs that may be ported to 64-bit operating systems but are still mainly, if not all, 32-bit code. The Mercury Playback Engine taps into multi-core CPUs and CUDA enabled NVIDIA GPUs to deliver an amazing level of real-time performance from the timeline. Now you can easily handle multiple layers of DSLR or AVCHD footage, as long as your computer has the power. With a NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800 or higher series graphics card, you'll get multiple layers of video, plus real-time 3D transitions, filters and effects.
The folks over at Matrox had their own announcement about the new Adobe Mercury Playback Engine. You may use a Matrox MXO2 family I/O device with Matrox MAX technology to tap into the Mercury Playback Engine and deliver mulitple layers of AVCHD or DSLR footage with full speed, HD playback to an HDMI enabled flat panel display. Cool! Combine it with a CUDA graphics card and you'll get an amazing level of real-time performance!
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