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.

Make Way for 4K

Ahhhh.  Fresh on the tail of the wildly successful* 3DTV push, 4K makes its way out of the laboratory and into the stores.

 

Ultra HD, which currently defines itself as "4K" for its approximately 4000 lines of resolution, is on the move.  The meaning?  Four times the resolution.  Wait.  1080 is 2K (its horizontal resolution being 1920 - about 2000 - lines)  So 2 to 4 should be double the resolution.  But, remember the resolution is doubled vertically, too. There's that nasty square law.

 

That's OK.  It's a good thing.  Increasing in one dimension only usually leads to a strange looking picture.  Doubling resolution in both dimensions evens it all out.  If you've seen it, you know it can be a really handsome picture.  Lots of folks thought 1080 was "reach out and  touch" but 4K really outdoes it.  In addition, the increased resolution keeps the picture from breaking up as you approach the screen.  Spend a few minutes viewing and you're sold.

 

OK.  Everyone excited?  Great.  Now, think about what's waiting in the weeds.

 

Delivery - 4K is a bandwidth monster.  Even using the latest compression algorithms, 15mbps is about as low as you can go. For true 4K quality, twice that is recommended. That, of course puts ATSC over-the-air television out of the picture (pun intended), unless the heavier compression is used.  But if you look at 4K for broadcast - at least at the tests run by KBS (Korean Broadcasting Service) it's more like 2-and-a-half-K. 

 

Cable - Comcast is already gearing up and they're projecting 15-to-20 mbps.  Cool. 

 

Granted, there will be some losses in the transmission.  Many systems save bandwidth by reducing the color depth so content may continue to look cartoony.  And that kind of puts us back to the turn of the century - where one stream can tie up the entire connection.  So unless you're fiber to the home, uhhhhh, turn off the X-box while you're watching Netflix in the bedroom.

 

For DVD, BluRay can accommodate 4K - sort of.  Certainly, the increased size of storage means that a full feature length motion picture won't fit on a BluRay disc in 4K, but necessity is the mother here.  And it will take additional processing software to decode and export the signal.

 

Also of interest, the CES guys claim that HDMI 1.4 will be able to handle 4K with no  alterations.  All you have to do is provide the 4K set.

 

Origination - Wait, didn't everyone just upgrade from SD to HD? Well, get ready to do it again. Sure, you can continue in HD and upconvert but how well do you like upconverted SD programs?  OK - that's an exaggeration.  Current day processing does a much better job of upconverting. 

 

Production - All sorts of concerns arise.  First, the cost of new gear. Red, Blackmagic, et. al., are out there just waiting to be purchased.  Note that you have to rethink a few things.  4K prides itself in being 24P.  The "P" is great but a funny thing happens psychologically - when you have a higher definition picture, artifacts are more pronounced.  Said another way, NTSC was so bad it hid a lot.  

 

Things like fast pans on the basketball court can actually have more apparent problems. The 24 fps frame rate doesn't help. Yes, 50/60Hz rates are available but, man, are those things cranking digits.  The bandwidth goes sky high. Asking 12 megapixels to perform at that rate is rude but I haven't seen a sensor catch fire yet.

 

In some cases, you may need additional lighting power - depends on the camera but if you cram more pixels onto a sensor of a given size, the actual light falling on a given sensor is less.  Soooo...wider lens opening.  But that's not so bad.  You may want a shallower depth of field but things that are sharp are very sharp.

 

Mattes will be fun.  Can't wait to see the first attempt at matching an SD background to 4K talent.

 

One great advantage is that if you're shooting in 4K and delivering in a lesser format, you can crop the frame.  If you're going to 1080, it's almost like having a 2-to-1 zoom in your editing box.  (Many years ago, a good friend once approached the reasoning behind shooting in 35mm versus 16 - or 70mm versus 35.  In his words, "Once I have it, I can go anywhere with it.  And I can pan, tilt, zoom..."  The same applies here)

 

Storage - Bulk up!  In fact, when you're buying storage gear, think ahead.  8K is just around the corner.  Quadruple the requirements again.  But looking at an 84" picture and thinking you really are part of the scene is really, I mean really impressive.  And talk about being able to crop and/or pan-tilt...

 

As a consumer, if I were buying a receiver today, I'd go 4K.  I might even look at 3D.  Dismal sales and performance so far, but some 4K3D looks a little better.  But I'd definitely go 4K.  Even with minimal content.  Reminds me of a line from an old sitcom, "I just bought a fax machine.  I can't wait for someone else to buy one so I can send one."

*Sarcasm, Sheldon.