NAB 2009 Journal

Zacuto''s Joe DeJulius demonstrates shoulder mount, viewfinder, and follow-focus for Canon''s EOS 5D Mark II, which captured a lot of attention at NAB Show 2009.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

By NAB''s own count, registration plunged 20 percent for the 2009 show vs. the 2008 numbers. By my count, the drop was greater, since registration numbers include veritable armies of employees, sales reps, and booth minions flown in annually for the occasion by Sony
, Panasonic, and other large exhibitors.

Was it a failed NAB show? Far from it. Indeed, it was one of the more interesting NAB shows in memory. I asked at least a dozen exhibitors what they thought about the show''s impact. They uniformly expressed satisfaction that this was one of the best shows ever, precisely because economic doldrums culled the crowd. Instead of gabbing themselves hoarse to throngs of techno tourists, they enjoyed leisurely conversations with decision-makers and industry veterans.

Another consolation of this pared-down NAB was that Sony and Band Pro Film and Digital—traditionally centerpieces of Upper South Hall—opted for cheaper floor space in Siberia, the far, empty end of Central Hall usually inhabited by small struggling lighting companies. This had the happy consequence of consolidating all camera companies—film and digital—along with lenses, lighting, and grip equipment into Central Hall. Rival megabooths Panasonic and Sony anchored the two ends of the large hall—a perfectly efficient arrangement that I hope becomes a permanent fixture of NAB.

With lesser chaos came greater clarity of purpose. Monday''s NAB Show Daily News headline was the perfunctory “Exhibitors, Buyers Ready to Do Business,” while a day later, the headline cried: “Super Session Addresses Quality Video on the Cheap.” Now, that''s adjusting to prevalent conditions with alacrity!

Canon TS-E 17mm tilt-shift lens.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

It''s worth noting what “Quality Video on the Cheap” means in this front-page NAB report about a panel discussion of “ways that independent filmmakers can effectively create ‘a million-dollar look on a thousand-dollar budget.''” (Should I point out the ironies of NAB''s recognition in 2009 that independent filmmakers suddenly matter?) Chief among the enabling technologies discussed by the panel were Red Digital Cinema''s Red One and Canon''s EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR—with the 5D getting most of the attention.

The article cited “lots of anecdotal notes” from the panelists regarding how digital special effects software along with these single-CMOS-sensor cameras “are revolutionizing the way indie films, short films, and TV commercials are lit, shot, and edited.”

Whoa. Wait a minute. Has a single significant project been broadcast or distributed, no less captured, using a 5D, which only arrived last fall? Worse, the article trumpets the 5D''s “ability to capture 1080p video,” but it fails to illuminate what sort of HD video it is—H.264/MPEG-4 AVC at 38Mbps—or what''s required to edit it: a steroidal NLE and lots of disk space.

Sundance-style pie in the sky? Wishful, if hysterical, thinking? It would have mattered less if Canon 5Ds hadn''t pervaded the Central Hall during NAB.

The new lower-cost Carl Zeiss Compact Primes, (18mm, PL-mount pictured here) are based on Zeiss'' ZF still-photography lenses.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

They seemed to be everywhere: at booths showcasing lighting (Litepanels Micro), rods and accessories (Zacuto), and of course, at Canon''s booth, where I road-tested a 5D with the fascinating new Canon wide-angle TS-E 17mm f/4. With a huge 104-degree diagonal angle of view, ±90-degree tilt-shift, rotating stages, and true circular aperture, there''s nothing else like it—and the 5D brings it into the fold of HD imaging.

(For a low down on the $2,700 Canon 5D, see my article in the April issue of millimeter or at millimeter.com/cameras/
revfeat/sign_times_0409. Please note that in late May, Canon announced a significant firmware upgrade to the 5D that added manual control of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed in motion-recording mode.)

Sony HVR-MRC1 memory recording unit with CompactFlash card and FireWire (aka IEEE 1394, iLink).
Photo by D.W. Leitner

5Ds also floated across the show floor on various Steadicam-type and stabilizing rigs. At one point, a swarm of young men with stabilized 5Ds descended on Sony''s circular camera display area. One, wearing a Steadicam
with a Cinevate
DSLR rig, hopped inside the ring and made repeated passes at the fetching, well-lit Sony models (with the 5D, that is). Amazingly, no one stopped him until an elderly security guard came over and muttered something about how they weren''t covered by insurance and he would have to leave the ring. At which point he meekly climbed out. That''s how laid-back NAB was.

With competing HD-enabled DSLRs from Sony, Nikon, Pentax, and others, it''s only a matter of time before the DSLR ring too, so to speak, gets crowded. Blame it on Red, a no-show, for proving that a growing market exists for affordable, “full-frame,” single-sensor cameras. A consequence of this growing market has been overwhelming demand for affordable large-format lenses, especially cine-style PL-mount primes used with the Red One, Arriflex D-21, Sony F35, and Vision Research Phantom HD, and used via PL-mount adapters from P+S Technik, Kinomatik Movietube, Letus, Redrock Microsystems, and Cinevate. Stocks of older 35mm motion-picture Carl Zeiss and Cooke Optics
lenses, once plentiful on eBay, have dried up, as have 16mm PL-mount lenses used by Silicon Imaging''s SI-2K series.

Which is one reason Red sneaked in through the back door at NAB 2009, at an ad hoc RedUser “SuperMeet” Wednesday night in the Amazon ballroom of the Rio Hotel, to announce a new set of low-cost, PL-mount Pro Prime lenses: 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm, and 300mm. (The same large conference room was similarly exploited the night before by no-show Apple
at the Final Cut Pro User Group Network SuperMeet celebrating Final Cut Pro''s 10th anniversary.) This set of lenses, except for the 300mm, suspiciously match an impressive new set of PL-mount, digital cinema primes announced at the show by uniQoptics—a Simi Valley, Calif., firm led by veteran Hollywood lens designer Kenji Suematsu. (Both companies deny the match.)

Panasonic AG-HMR10 AVCCAM recorder for SDHC cards.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

Not to be outflanked, Band Pro and Zeiss introduced lower-cost Compact Primes—18mm, 21mm, 25mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm—which are based on Zeiss'' ZF still-photography lenses (Nikon F-mount). Rebarreled in cine-style housings and PL-mounted “for digital and film cameras,” per Zeiss, these smaller and slower Compact Primes will never be mistaken for Master Primes or even Ultra Primes. What an audacious and welcome stratagem on Zeiss'' part since these lenses are superb in most ways that count: full coverage, high contrast, and round iris.

Similarly, Cooke announced the rebirth of the legendary Panchro. (Veteran cinematographers like myself who hear the Panchro name think classic Hollywood films from the 1930s onward and start salivating.) Available in the fall, the all-new Panchros—18mm, 25mm, 32mm, 50mm, 72mm, and 100mm—resemble the Cooke S4/i series, including the “/i” technology, but they sacrifice a stop of light to achieve a smaller size and lower price point.

Even Bavaria''s little IB/E Optics (repped by Abel Cine Tech) climbed into this ring, announcing a PL-mount “4K Supreme” wide-angle T1.8 14mm with an unusual two aspheric elements, and a C-mount “2K” wide-angle T1.6 6mm that will tempt users of the SI-2K Mini or Iconix''s Studio2K. IB/E Optics also announced its own upcoming series of PL-mount primes, from 10mm-180mm.

Incidentally, most of the new primes mentioned above sport some sort of large red marking or band on them. This is a Red-friendly marketing theme epitomized by the compact Angenieux Optimo DP 30mm-80mm T2.8 zoom, nakedly named “Rouge.” Exceptions are the Band Pro/Zeiss Compact Primes with their contrarian blue bands and Panchros with their metallic blue PL mounts.

As more PL-mount cameras crowd the field—Aaton''s elegant, handheld 2-perf/3-perf 35mm Penelope, shown at the show as a production model, gains an interchangeable 4K “Digi-Mag” by next NAB; JVC''s eye-catching prototype 4K 60p camera must surely trade its vintage Nikon zoom for a PL-mount prime—the demand for these lenses will climb further.

Who would have guessed a run on PL-mount lenses five years ago or even just two years ago?

If this was the NAB of PL-mount primes, it was equally the NAB of LCoS viewfinders and inexpensive flash recording.

Sony PXU-MS240 mobile storage unit with single slot for copying SxS card, shown with a PXU-HC240 240GB removable hard-drive cartridge.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

Introduced by Sony''s HVR-Z7U in late 2007, the smooth, pixel-free LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) viewfinders—similar to those used in JVC''s D-ILA and Sony''s SXRD projectors—appeared in both Panasonic''s AG-HPX300 and JVC''s GY-HM70, two new 1/3in. three-chip, bayonet lens, shoulder-mount camcorders with flash recording. Both viewfinders are bright, clear, large, sharp, and colorful. Panasonic also introduced an à la carte color viewfinder, the AJ-CVF100G ($8,495), with a huge 1in. LCoS imager, for existing Varicam and P2 HD camcorders.

(The AG-HPX300, with three 1920x1080 CMOS chips and 10-bit AVC-Intra recording to P2 cards, is reviewed by Barry Braverman in the April issue of millimeter. Read it online at millimeter.com/cameras/revfeat/panasonic_ag-hpx300_review_0409. The CCD-based GY-HM700—with 25Mbps and 35Mbps MPEG-2 recording to SDHC cards and Sony''s SxS cards and a huge 4.3in. flip-out LCD screen—will be reviewed in an upcoming issue.)

First P2, then SxS and CompactFlash, and now postage-stamp-sized SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards. Truly, flash cards for HD recording can''t—and shouldn''t—get any smaller. JVC''s Craig Yanagi has been quoted saying that an SDHC card “allows you to record high-bandwidth video at about a buck a minute … on par with Betacam SP.” This is a gauntlet thrown in the direction of Panasonic and Sony. Only, Panasonic and Sony seem to agree.

You''ll find SDHC cards not only in JVC''s new handheld GY-HM100 and shoulder-mount GY-HM700 (both MPEG-2), but also in Panasonic''s AVCCAM (AVC/MPEG-4) handhelds including last fall''s AG-HMC150 and the AG-HMC40, which was announced at NAB. If you add Sony''s slimmer Memory Stick Pro Duo to the SD card category (and I do), another example is Sony''s snake-like HXR-MC1 POV camcorder. At NAB, it was displayed attached to the end of a long K-Tek boom pole.

Then there are those SDHC-to-ExpressCard/34 adapters by the likes of Hoodman (called SxSxSDHC at NAB) and eFilm to replace SxS cards in Sony XDCAM EX camcorders at a fraction of the cost. But we won''t go there today.

If flash cards are minuscule, why should flash card decks be much larger? There can be, after all, no moving parts. (Ergo, they ought to be cheaper than tape decks.) Only their batteries need weigh anything.

Consider Panasonic''s answer to Sony''s HXR-MC1 POV cam­corder. While the 9ft. cable connecting the small Sony POV camera to its recorder/control unit permanently attaches to both, Panasonic''s cable—up to 30ft., which joins the small AG-HCK10 camera to its AG-HMR10 AVCCAM recorder—is detachable. As a result, the $2,650 HMR10 recorder module doubles as a standalone AVCCAM deck. About the size of a fat pack of cigarettes (remember those?), the HMR10 has HD-SDI in/out, HDMI out, an external mic mini-stereo jack, and USB 2.0 for file transfer (in lieu of an SDHC card reader, which is dirt-cheap, by the way). Like the Sony, the AG-HMR10 recorder features a built-in LCD screen and a tiny loudspeaker for playback.

Boys with toys. The surreptitious Steadicam and Canon 5D at Sony booth.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

Convergent Design''s $4,800 Flash XDR (Xstream Data Recorder), on the other hand, was designed for high bit rates. Originally meant to piggyback on a camcorder and connect via HD-SDI, the four-slot CompactFlash (CF) card recorder, a mere 8”x6”x2.5” and 2.7lbs., won awards at last year''s NAB. It houses a Sony MPEG-2 codec that encodes to 50Mbps or 100Mbps long-GOP, or to 100Mbps or 160Mbps I-frame (your choice of Mac-friendly QuickTime or, as of NAB, MXF for the PC crowd). It also encodes to HDV and XDCAM EX formats, as well as two channels of analog audio to 24-bit, 48kHz uncompressed PCM (phantom power at the XLRs). Wonderfully, it permits redundant RAID 1 recording of the same stream to two CF cards. An option to capture uncompressed HD is promised.

With 32GB CF dropping below $100, Convergent Design returned to NAB this year with a smaller Nano Flash—functionally equivalent to Flash XDR but minus the XLR audio inputs and two of four CF card slots. Entirely new, however, is HDMI in/out. It''s $2,900 and available mid-year.

Germany''s Fraunhofer Institute introduced an even smaller HD-SDI CF card recorder designed to complement tiny crash and POV cameras such as its own MicroHDTV. Called microStorage, the 3.3”x3.3”x1.6”, 13.5oz. CF card recorder has one slot, touchscreen controls, and a mini-stereo jack for mic/line in. It encodes to 1080i60 or 1080p30 using H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Level 4, High Profile up to 20Mbps.

Then there''s Sony''s tiny HVR-MRC1 memory recording unit. This was introduced last year as a detachable module for Sony HVR-Z7U and HVR-Z5U HDV camcorders to enable them to dual-record to MiniDV tape and CompactFlash simultaneously. At NAB, Sony re-introduced the single-slot, 4oz., iPod-sized MRC-1 as a standalone unit that can record the FireWire output of any DV or HDV camcorder of any make. The MRC1''s street price of $820 gets you the MRC1 plus its docking cradle, which includes a 6-pin FireWire port to attach to the camcorder. Battery in this case is not included, but the MRC1 uses the same Sony InfoLithium L series battery as the Z7 and Z5. The draw is so small—2.2W—that the smallest, lightest L series battery lasts for hours.

With most camcorders—a Sony DSR-PD150, for instance—the MRC1 starts and stops with the camcorder. If this doesn''t work (you do need to test), there are start and stop buttons on the unit itself. Bottom line: An MRC1 with an $80 32GB CF card turns any camcorder outputting a FireWire signal, with or without tape, into a flash-memory camcorder with 2.4 hours of storage. (For more on the MRC1, go to millimeter.com/cameras/revfeat/video_sony_hvrzu.)

JVC introduced a single-slot SxS docking recorder, the KA-MR100G, for its new shoulder-mount GY-HM700. It''s similar in design sensibility to Sony''s MRC1, but bigger. Like Sony''s PMW-EX1 and EX3, the GY-HM700 generates 25Mbps or 35Mbps MPEG-2 files, which, unlike with the Sony EX camcorders, are initially recorded to SDHC cards. Using the KA-MR100G, the 700''s files can be dual-recorded to SDHC and SxS simultaneously. (Dual flash media—now that''s a first.) An adapter also permits the KA-MR100G to function with earlier GY-HD200 and GY-HD250 camcorders.

Speaking of SxS, Sony introduced a single-slot SxS card storage device at NAB. The compact PXU-MS240 mobile storage unit enables one-touch copying and verification of SxS cards at 10X realtime to a PXU-HC240 240GB removable hard-drive cartridge. It''s $2,000 combined and available September. The MS240 uses the same BP-U30 battery as do the EX1 and EX3.

AJA''s petite Ki (“key”) Pro, 8”x5.25”x3”, 3lbs., adopts another path: mimicking the familiar VTR. Control buttons, status display, headphone jack, and a pair of LED audio level meters are all where you would expect them. The front also features dual ExpressCard/34 slots (same form factor as SxS), and on top is a larger slot for a cartridge-mounted 2.5in. SATA drive (250GB or 500GB), which technically makes Ki Pro a digital disk recorder too. I/O includes HD-SDI, HDMI, analog, audio, and timecode. The $4,000 Ki''s claim to fame at NAB was its capture from virtually any camera direct to ExpressCard/34 or SATA drives in the form of Apple ProRes 422

QuickTime files—a significant shortcut that eliminates Log and Capture, Log and Transfer, and transcoding when importing to Final Cut Pro. Connected by its built-in FireWire 800 port, the SATA cartridge simply appears on the Mac OS X desktop, its ProRes files ready to go.

Steadicam meets Segway.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

What all this means—given the availability of affordable HDMI-to-SDI converters from Convergent Design (HD-Connect MI, $575) and Blackmagic Design (HDMI to SDI mini converter, $495, introduced at last year''s NAB)—is that just about any recent HD camera or camcorder, from consumer on up, using HD-SDI or HDMI can send uncompressed HD to advanced or visually lossless, high-bit-rate codecs for capture to cheap, convenient flash memory. Nonlinear and file-based. Surely a new era dawns.

Where does this leave P2, the granddaddy of flash recording? Panasonic announced a fast PCI Express five-slot docking station, AJ-PCD35, for lightning transfers (1Gbps from multiple 64GB cards). The really big P2 news at NAB, however, wasn''t cool new pocket recorders but P2 cards themselves. Traditional tape suppliers Fujifilm and Maxell are now branding P2 cards. (Do they really fabricate memory?)

Related Links

NAB Show 2009 Through My Ears, Eyes, and Sore Feet, Part 1 I spent four days at NAB last month, and this month I''ll describe what I learned in the key areas that I follow... NAB Show 2009 Through My Ears, Eyes and Sore Feet, Part 2 I''m back with some thoughts on the streaming side of the house, where some interesting trends are coming together. ... Review: Panasonic AG-HPX300 This is not a $30,000 camera. You might want to repeat that to yourself as you consider Panasonic's latest P2 offering. At a street price of less than $10,000, the AG-HPX300 camcorder...

A new, more affordable P2 card also arrived, called E-series by Panasonic to distinguish it from its original series, which is now called A-series. A-series P2 is based on single-level cell (SLC) flash, which stores one bit per memory cell. It''s fast and durable, and it consumes minimal power. E-series P2 is based on multilevel cell (MLC) flash, which stores three or more bits per cell and is less expensive to make. However, it''s slower, has a shorter life, and consumes more power.

In August, Panasonic will offer a 64GB E-series P2 card for $998, compared to $2,600 for a 64GB A-series card. A 32GB E-series card, likewise, will be $625, compared to $1,650 for a 32GB A-series card. However, while A-series P2 cards will likely outlast their owners, E-series are good for only about five years of daily use. Panasonic says a warning will appear in P2 devices when a particular E-series card has reached the end of its life.

Make no mistake, each trend noted above is gaining traction fast. (Camcorder-mounted hard-disk recorders seem so 2006.) The same goes equally for LED lighting at NAB, 3D camera systems, and 3D flatscreen displays—plasma at Panasonic and LCD everywhere else—or, for that matter, 4K displays. (The CRT at NAB is herewith declared officially extinct.)

To also explore these trends more deeply, I would need to write several more reviews. Meanwhile, many of these items are profiled in short clips on YouTube and Vimeo. Another growing trend.