NAB 2017 Cloud Editing and Dante Heaven

And what’s new this year?  Well, at NAB the march of technology continues. 

 

On the video side, arguably the biggest single item ballyhooed was “cloud editing.”  Yes, all else seems to pale in terms of advancement. 

 

You may know my feelings on “cloud” anything but from a flexibility standpoint using a cloud for editing makes some sense. 

 

Generally, you have inexpensive, unlimited storage space for audio, video, metadata and, if you’re paranoid, multiple versions of your resume.  That means keeping every strand of every scene.  No one’s staring over your shoulder as you pull in another disc for storage.  No one has to decide what gets deleted at the end of a session. 

 

Edit from anywhere.  Want to trim a frame while waiting for a flight?  Go ahead.  Pull down the scene and have at it.  And if you have access to multiple monitors, you can pull down a number of threads.  Yep!  You can sync up all the footage and edit a 4 camera live comedy on the fly.

 

And lots of folks can participate.  Director, editor(s), sound designer, DP can all get in on post.  Sound staff can work in tandem as the video is being edited,  PA’s can make notes that go directly into metadata and can transcribe and post all audio for reference.  It leads to consensus before you can even hit the “Sleep” key on your machine.

 

I hear the yabuts.  “Ya, but, Len, what about security?”  Don’t label me a hypocrite despite my earlier blog admonition.  Security has improved but it’s still an issue.  If you found another reel in Abraham Zapruder’s basement, you may not want to put it into cloud storage.  First ask, what’s the security being provided?  Is the cloud hackable?  Software and hardware firewalls?  Long, looooooooong password that change regularly, and every time someone joins or leaves the group?  Then ask, who inside the cloud organization can see your files?  I love it when I call with problems and the “tech” at the other end says, “I can’t help you with that.  I can’t see those files.”  On the other hand, when the cloud help desk says that they see the problem, you have two files with the same name and one running two seconds longer than the other, grab your Maier-Hancock and run.

 

Speaking of storage, that edit-from-anywhere advantage is great provided “anywhere” is secure, too.  Programming a dissolve over Boingo at McCarren Airport may well be a bigger crap shoot than what’s happening at Caesar’s.  If you’re not paranoid, you may want to consider taking it up.  I did; it’s fun as long as no one's watching.

 

Then, about that participation thing.  Back in the dark days of coax, I proposed installing links with editing houses so that creative folks could participate in a session without leaving their offices.  Best worst idea I ever had.  Creatives climbing on my desk (worse, my boss’ and his boss’ desk) screaming.  Turns out they don’t want to stay in their offices.  Who’da thunk it. 

 

What’s worse is that people who shouldn’t be part of the edit get invited.  Notice I left out “writer.”  That poor bloke (or bird) never makes the cut.  But just about everyone else logs on.  And they all chime in.  They have to or why would they have been invited.  So you wind up shaving a frame here, mixing music a little louder there and pretty much wasting time. But, wow, you’re doing it in the cloud.

 

Think it through before you decide to move.  Maybe those discs aren’t that expensive after all.  And when you’re done, you can find two really secure places, maybe on different continents, to store everything. 


FLASH:  Now, two days later, a number of news sources have announced that Netflix was hacked by an extortionist threatening to release five stolen episodes of the new season of Orange is the New Black unless they receive a ransom payment.  In addition, there is a good possibility that Amazon and others were hacked, too. 

 

We now return you to our regularly scheduled blog.  Before I leave video, here’s a visual quiz:  Find the actual camera.  Not the lens…the camera.

 

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro, 4.6K, 15 stops dynamic range

 

 

Now, on to the audio world.  Of everything, I think Audinate’s campaign, “Dante Spoken Here” is fantastic.  If you haven’t run across it, Dante, (Digital Audio Network Through Ethernet) is a relatively mature (11 years old) system of packet delivery of audio. Whether you want to edit and send AM quality mono or 96 tracks¹ of a film’s sound track, you can do it.  Simply and with no degradation.  While it’s packeted, it can still be lossless – your choice. 

 

The “Dante Spoken Here” sign could be seen hanging in just about every audio booth.  They’ve gone beyond foothold and are mainstream.  If you’re not familiar with it, the trial version is free (fully functioning but time limited) at audinate.com.  Licensing is inexpensive and with it, you can encode, transmit and decode great audio to that same anywhere I was talking about for the cloud.

 

How does it work?  Anything that runs Dante can talk to anything else running the protocol.  It’s transparent in that it flows easily over Cat5 or Cat6 cable and can even operating on existing networks without interfering with current traffic.  That, of course, is provided you have enough bandwidth.  It runs with Windows or Mac to allow distribution, and ingestion. 

 

Best yet?  No rocket science here.  Easy to set up.  No, wait!  The best-best is that you’d be hard-pressed to hear any latency. There’s always something on the horizon, but Dante seems to be a system that will have a long useful life. 

 

Other folks raved about other products.  4K is now mainstream and the incandescent lamp has all but disappeared from lighting gear.  Drones are getting larger and smarter and microphones are now dots.  For me, though, the effect of cloud editing on workflow and of Dante on signal flow blew everything else away.

 

¹You can go 512 bidirectional if you want to.  Let’s see, that’d be 24 for the orchestra and 488 for drums.

NAB 2012

NAB is probably the largest collection of professional gearheads in the world.  The absolute latest, some still prototyped and demonstrated only after the sales engineer bows his/her head in prayer, broadcast goodies emerge there. 

As you would expect, given the continuing convergence of broadcast and “new” media, all those Oreos and sodas are there, too.

Things have changed.  Duh! But this year was especially significant.  It wasn’t a great anniversary like ’06 for quad tape.  No single revolutionary product like Red in 2007.  Instead, it was a year of, well, for me, realization and for the industry, one of maturation.

Here’s my take:

First, I saw hundreds of boxes to do thousands of things.  Convert anything to anything with a BNC in/BNC out black box.  Seriously.  I think I saw one that had ATSC in and black coffee out.  Then, if you look a little further, you find out that a lot of the same things that you buy black boxes for can be done in the digital domain with software.  One case, one processor (or multiple processors) with ins and outs and you don’t need any of the little black boxes at all.  It’s interesting to see which manufacturers are looking at software solutions compared to those looking to sell hardware problem solvers.  

Imaging devices:  Unless I get an assignment that calls for day-in, day-out shooting, I’m gonna rent. It’s changing so fast that you make a commitment, sign the papers, and before delivery, the XV3 is out, replacing the XV2.5 you just bought. 

I will say this – images are just plain gorgeous.  The range of the sensors is so wide (claiming up to 13 f/stops) that they’re presenting new challenges to the receivers/monitors…and working at 20-30 fc of light.  Lenses have caught up with HD and the definition and resolution are terrific.  And it's funny seeing a jib floating around with apparently nothing on it - only to see a DSLR  anchored to the baseplate.

Of course, a couple of things you can’t do anything about – depth of field is depth of field.  HD shortens it and that’s that.  But add a little extra light, get a couple more stops down, and you get your DOF back.  And, speaking of lighting, the LED luminaire is mature.  You can shoot with cool, low power lighting just about anywhere.  [After the fact note:  when you increase the sharpness of the "sharpest" area as with improved lens and sharper sensor, depth of field apparently goes DOWN.  But it depends on what you're viewing it on.  A hi-def image has lots more apparent depth of field when viewed on an NTSC receiver.  That's because the maximum sharpness is much less - so the sharpest image appears less so,, more like the slightly out of focus portions of the image just to either side, in distance from the lens, of the actual focused distance.]

One thing remains the same – the use of lights to control the resultant image.  LED’s don’t eliminate the need for multiple instruments (you can’t dump a bunch of LED’s onto a ceiling and shoot away expecting different results compared to doing the same thing with incandenscents,  fluorescents, or HMI’s).  But whatever you do, it’s a lot cooler and easier.  Hang a two pound panel and you’re shooting f11 at 15 feet – and for 3 hours on a battery.  Awrighty then.

3D.  Don’t sell that flatscreen just yet.  Sony, among others, demonstrated their glasses-less 3D.  This is for large screen.  I’d rather they called it 2.5D.  Nothing really came off the screen at me like when the Creature from the Black Lagoon scared the pants off me in a theater.  And while the gathered crowds oohed and ahhed at first, there was a bunch of sotto voce grumbling as the demo ended.  Same with Dolby’s version.  They suffered some additional problems, a bunch of high-end artifacts that spoiled the motion.  If you have HD with glasses, well, good for you.  Not a lot of programming but you’re an early adopter.  As for glasses-less…wait for the .1 version if you know what I mean.

Workflow:  Nobody wants to sell you just a camera.  Or a switcher or storage by itself, either.  They want you to use their entire system for “workflow”.  It’s the only way to ensure quality.  Well, that’s what they said!  It ain’t true.  If there’s any interface problem, either software or one of those boxes I talked about will solve it.  Speaking of switchers.  Ha!  They’re not.  They’re video program managers capable of controlling multiple feeds with multiple layers (and in multiple languages).  And they’re smart enough to automate a lot of what a TD once did.

Audio:  Both AES and IP audio abound.  In fact, once audio goes into the digital domain – which can be a USB microphone or hard disc audio – it doesn’t have to leave until it reaches the final audio amp or transmitter input.  I saw a guy named Hum out in front of the convention center begging.  He’s pretty well out of business.

An interesting thread was talk regarding the CALM Act and most of the techies laughing at the fact that, once again, trying to pass legislation to control laws of physics doesn’t work.  And speaking of the CALM Act, Rules:  The big concern was text-to-speech in the EAS rules.  Breaths were bated in anticipation of the commission’s announcement that would reinstate the TTS rule that they eliminated in the Fifth Report and Order.  It didn’t happen.  OK.  It did, but they waited until after the event.  None too soon since April 23 is the deadline.

Worth the trip?  Absolutely.  If you have to stay current, you have to make it out there.  I had some assignment and was looking for some particular gear.  Even if I hadn’t, well, it’s still so doggoned much fun just lookin’ at the goodies.