• Blogs
• Forums
• Tradeshows
• Partners
• White Papers
• Podcast Show Notes
• Events

Hotware

May 1, 2003 12:00 PM, by Dan Ochiva

Adobe Does DVD

Adobe considers its Encore DVD software to be one of its most significant product introductions ever.

Encore DVD certainly plays to the San Jose, Calif.-based company's strengths, as the software tightly integrates with three of Adobe's most important products: Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects.

According to Adobe, Encore's benefits fall into three areas: professional DVD authoring tools, streamlined workflow for DVD authoring, and creative DVD production. The authoring toolset employs the now-standardized Adobe interface, with its tabbed floating palettes, context-sensitive options bar, and the other familiar workspace items, along with a timeline interface. If you've got one or more of the other Adobe products, it's easy to move projects back and forth to create and change images. Workflow speeds up since the integrated transcoding automatically converts a variety of video and audio source files to MPEG-2 video and Dolby Digital audio. Encore addresses creativity, says Adobe, via the program's full integration with Photoshop. Users can start developing menus in either Photoshop or Encore, with Photoshop always available for a little tweaking as necessary. Encore runs on Windows XP. www.adobe.com

Cooke's HD Zoom

Renowned as a lens maker since it designed the Triplet lens in 1893, Cooke Optics also ranks among the earliest names in video lens design, dating back to the 1950s.

At NAB 2003, Leicester, England-based Cooke introduced its first Series 4 zoom for digital cinema, the 8mm-46mm T1.7 lens. This 13.2lb. lens, designed for 2/3in. HD cameras, features a 326-degree focus rotation with close focus of 13in. from the front of the lens and a novel cam-driven back focus.

Cooke color-corrected the optical back focus to match Sony's HD prism. Other features include calibrated focus scales positioned relative to the focal plane, easily interchangeable footage and metric focus rings, and two opposing focus, zoom, and iris scales positioned 170 degrees apart with viewing windows — just like Cooke's award-winning S4 35mm prime lenses.

The lens employs Cooke's unique ball-bearing action. The focus and zoom carriages are on precision ball-race mounted rollers, which make for an accurate, non-rotating movement, claims Cooke. This eliminates any spiral effect while zooming and focusing. The design also yields a smooth, low-torque adjustment. The non-pumping internal focus movement prevents unwanted travel as well as dust intake. The six-bladed iris, meanwhile, adjusts the light levels down to T16. Rotating the iris smaller than T16 completely closes off light. www.cookeoptics.com

3Dlabs Goes Wildcat

Over the past six months or so, Nvidia and ATI have drawn the most press as they battle back and forth for bragging rights to the fastest graphics card out there. But there's a third major player that we haven't heard from recently: 3Dlabs. What have they been up to?

We learned in March, as the Milpitas, Calif.-based company jumped back into the middle of the game with the release of the Wildcat VP990 Pro. The card builds around the 3Dlabs Visual Processing Unit (VPU), a programmable chip that follows the relatively recent trend of incorporating a large number of GPUs (graphics processing units) onto one chip. Here it's over 200 32-bit processors running at a claimed 200Gflops (200 billion floating-point operations per second).

Another important feature: 512MB of onboard, high-speed 256-bit graphics memory, said to be unique. Such large amounts of memory are needed for driving high-resolution displays. For example, the new high-res, 9Mpixel VP2290b monitor from ViewSonic easily absorbs over 100MB of graphics memory simply to drive the screen, and that's before any geometry or textures are stored and processed.

The VP990 runs on AGP 4X- or AGP 8X-based workstations that use Windows 2000/XP. Street price: $899. www.3dlabs.com

Barco Debuts Smaller DLP Projector

It's not overkill, says Kennesaw, Ga.-based Barco Digital Cinema. Postproduction companies need the D-Cine Premiere DP30 to screen their digital intermediate work, even if the device weighs in at 188lbs. and comes on a trolley incorporating a 12U×19in. rack.

Described as a cost-effective DLP Cinema projector, the DP30 proves its usefulness with an ability to manipulate the projected images' color space. According to the company, a colorist can download proprietary 3D Color Look Up Tables (CLUT), which allow matching the look and feel of film regardless of which film stock was originally used.

Like the large-venue Barco D-Cine Premiere DP50 projector, the DP30 incorporates all of the user setups available in its Communicator calibration and remote-control setup software. The RC567 touchscreen controls the DP30, working with the built-in security, subtitling, color, and contrast imaging control offered by Texas Instrument's DLP Cinema chipsets.

Resolution runs at 1280×1024 per red, green, and blue channel, with 45-bit color depth (15 bits per color). According to the company, this yields some 35 trillion color shades, or a color gamut 40% better than HDTV. Other features include a contrast ratio of 1350:1 and over 90% brightness uniformity for the total screen area. That meets or exceeds SMPTE screen brightness standards with projections up to 33ft. wide on a 1X gain screen. Conforming light output to SMPTE screen brightness standards on smaller screen sizes comes via optional CLO software. www.barco.com

Sorenson Squeezes Out Improved Video

Salt Lake City-based Sorenson Media updates its flagship video compression software with the Sorenson Squeeze 3 Compression Suite.

The update provides a single interface to process, encode, and deliver video for the Web, CD, DVD, or other devices. Squeeze 3 also improves the video editing workflow, as the tweaked algorithms speed up the encoding process. Delivery formats include QuickTime, Flash, and MPEG-4. In addition, the Windows version of the Squeeze 3 suite includes video output support for RealMedia and Windows Media content.

The company says that while most compression applications require in-depth knowledge about how each feature affects video size, Sorenson Squeeze 3 Compression Suite's drag-and-drop interface makes intelligent compression of audio and video media as simple as selecting a preset.

That's a good approach. Employing presets continues to grow more common across a range of programs, including 3D and compositing apps. It's a real time saver for newbies or veterans: By editing the presets, users still get complete access to fully adjustable advanced settings.

The Squeeze 3 Suite features tools for MPEG-4 Visual Simple Profile and Visual Advanced Simple Profile; audio and video filters; support for one-pass and two-pass variable bit rate (VBR) compression; batch processing through Watch Folders; adjustable cropping; and DV capture. www.sorenson.com.

---

South Melbourne, Australia-based Digital Voodoo's HD|Vengeance card features two 10-bit HD SDI outputs and one HD SDI input. The card also includes an SD SDI downconverter to allow users to view HD and SD pictures simultaneously, selectable between the key channel and video channel. www.digitalvoodoo.net

---

Teranex Upconverts and Reduces Noise

Teranex wants to move to the next level, according to Randy Thomas, director of corporate strategy for the Orlando, Fla.-based company. Founded in 1998 as a Lockheed Martin spinoff, Teranex recently installed a new executive management team, one that, says Thomas, wants the company to be the price/performance leader in the standards and format conversion market.

Volare makes good on that price/performance angle. At under $20,000, the 2 RU box upconverts SD to HD and tosses in noise reduction to boot. Its realtime color-space conversion capability creates an accurate HD representation of the SD source colorimetry, says the company. Meanwhile, a realtime unsharp mask filter enhances image details without increasing noise. The 32-tap scaling (interpolation) is said to deliver cleaner edges, smoother curves, and lower noise when upconverting. Other features include PixelMotion (de-interlaces on a pixel-by-pixel basis), inverse telecine, proc amp, variable aspect ratio control, and algorithms for scene-change detection. Volare also includes analog and digital interfaces and dual hot-swappable power supplies. As with all of Teranex's products, the Volare is programmable, which means it's easily updated as requirements change. www.teranex.com

Celco Recorder Touted for Speed

Deadlines for film releases often require delivery yesterday. Celco touts its Fury film recorder, though not a time machine, as 3X faster than the speediest laser recorder sold.

How fast is that? According to the Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.-based company, the Fury can output one frame per second, or about 60 minutes of hi-res 35mm film per day. For 4K 65mm 15-perf IMAX output, Celco rates the Fury at five seconds per frame. Post Logic Studios, out of Hollywood and Santa Monica, recently purchased a Fury for its productivity, stating that it would take five laser recorders to match the Fury's output.

The Fury's one-second speed covers both high-definition and 2K images printing onto Kodak 5245 camera negative stock. It's less than 2 seconds per frame to record a 2K image with full Cineon density range onto Kodak intermediate 2242 film stock. Film formats supported include 16mm, 35mm, and 65mm 5, 8, 10, and 15-perf (IMAX format). Other features include an LCD touchscreen interface and an automatic bit depth compensation to better handle 8-, 10-, 12-, or 16-bit-per-channel files. The Fury employs a logarithmic or linear color space mode, uniquely without look-up tables, which eliminates some complex calibration procedures. www.celco.com

Extron Electronics' IPL T S2 enables users to control, monitor, and access almost any A/V device from any computer connected to a LAN or even the Internet. The Anaheim, Calif.-based company says the compact Ethernet-to-serial interface uses its unique IP Link technology along with 1.5MB of flash memory for storing HTML files, JavaScript, Flash animation, and graphics. www.extron.com

Laird's Petite DV Switcher

Laird Telemedia began in the video olden days of 1971, and the Mount Marion, N.Y.-based company remains in the thick of it with a recent spate of practical DV product introductions.

Take the LTM-DV4X1 FireCut. This 4×1 IEEE 1394 DV vertical interval switcher — the “first-ever” cuts-only switcher for DV — is a simple and cost-effective digital production tool. The FireCut connects up to four devices at the same time. According to the company, the device delivers seamless DV vertical interval switching without the delays caused by reinitialization. The devices used do not have to be synchronous sources or be genlocked.

Up to two FireCut units can be mounted in a 1 RU space. Other features include a GPI trigger, an RS-232 port, and 12V DC operation. Designed for IEEE 1394 video devices only, the LTM-DV4X1 doesn't work with computer gear such as hard drives, printers, or scanners. The FireCut has a new, lower list price of $995. www.lairdtelemedia.com

Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
© 2012 NewBay Media, LLC.