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Author Topic: NAB 2006 and the Super HD 7K Demo by NHK Ian Price Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1714 From: Denver, CO Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-25-2006 07:21 PM                     Live from Suite 400 of the El Cortez hotel on Fremont St, Las Vegas. This is where you end up when all the other people book hotel rooms on the strip. I am firmly entrenched in the 1970s, but the upgrade to a suite has taken the edge off. I hate Disney World, Disney Land, Universal Studio tour and all those other fake reality experiences. I think when you go on vacation you should exercise you mind, body and spirit. So what do I do for vacation? Why go to NAB of course. I had no plan or addenda in attending this trade show, I just wanted to see all the toys for boys. First impressions is that it's overwhelming, spread over 4-exhibit halls and I couldn't understand the organization. But after spending 6-hours there, I think got it figured out. There are things you shoot video with like Cameras, tripods, dollys, cranes, helicopters and production trucks. There are magical ways to manipulate video once you have shot it. And then send it off in to the ether. With tools like Avid, Final Cut Studio and the like. There are the mundane tools of the trade like wire. Then many people seem to like to get together in semi-organized ways and talk about the cool things that they can do. These are the seminars. I just have a guest pass so I haven't been attending any of these. But they did devote all of Sunday to Digital Cinema. From what I gather on the web, it was the usual blather about how it is better than film and we must all comply, blah blah blah... And here way off in one lost corner is Radio and Audio. So the first thing that caught my eye was a lipstick size video camera that does HD. www.iconixvideo.com I work for Mountainfilm and people are always videoing themselves jumping off of buildings, airplanes, cliffs and the like. Mostly with palm size camcorders duct taped to their helmets. I'm just thinking that this camera would make a more elegant solution. The next item that caught my eye was the supacam. This is a cheesy small hand held video, still camera with an MP3 player that they have been selling direct through trade shows using all of Ron Popil's tried and tested methods. All this and only $299! www.supacam.com Panasonic brought their 103” Plasma TV. It's 1080p and weighs 500lbs. They say they have figured out everything except how to safely ship it to the stores and customers. Only $26,000, heck sign me up for 3. There weren't many video projector manufactures at the show. This being aimed mostly at the broadcast and post production crowd. But Christie, Barco, Sony and Sanyo were there. And if you discount Sony's 4K, Christie had the best images. Then there was the NHK Super HD 7K Demo. I'm not sure what there selling, but they have a line of very large prototype cameras and obviously some way to project the image. They were not talking about the projector. It appeared to be stacked video projectors, each displaying a different color. The screen was about 35' wide and they put about 50 people in the room. I sat in the front row about ½ screen hight away from the screen. Unfortunately they also had one of those awful Bose sound systems that they just love for trade shows. The content was the usual mixture of languid nature shots set to music with a few nice frenetic city shots thrown in. Then only thing missing was the pretty girl. There was also a few plays from the New York Nicks Basketball team. My first thoughts were hey that's very nice video. Even thought I was sitting as close as I was, it were as if you were sitting very close to a dozen 60” video screens. So that was about the pixel density. I couldn't see individual pixels, but I could tell they were there. The guy next to me said that he saw video compression problems, but I tend not to see those. I was talking to another person who stated that NHK has no interest in the Cinema market, they aren't trying to be like film, so there was lots of video noise, edge enhancement, ringing and an 8 bit video color pallet. The final shot was a cool shot of Las Vegas off of the convention center roof live. So final thoughts, it looks just like video only bigger. Next door NHK also had a video 3D demo that was very nice with Sumo Wrestlers and shots from the Athens Olympics. I'm not sure I would enjoy sitting down for 2-hours of 3D but for 5-minutes it was quite captivating. Now hopefully Paul Mayer will chime in here and tell us his impressions of the NHK Super HD 7K Demo. I'll just rest my dogs and get ready to see it all again tomorrow. [ 04-26-2006, 01:49 AM: Message edited by: Ian Price ]  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 04-25-2006 09:52 PM                        103" plasma? Man, my 1989 Sega Genesis would look kick ass on that! I'll need 9 of them to tile them into one big 309" screen, though.  |  IP: Logged Paul Mayer Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under! Posts: 3836 From: Albuquerque, NM Registered: Feb 2000 posted 04-25-2006 11:19 PM                        I'm pooped and my feet hurt (must be getting old). The NAB exhibits are really something to see, taking up the entire 3 million square feet of the Las Vegas Convention Center plus a fair amount of the outside space too. Even though I've worked the show many times as a hired gun TD or VC I'm still awed every time I go. It is indeed the greatest toy shop in the world. Almost makes me wish I was still in the cutthroat world of freelance video production. But then I remember just how mean-spirited that world usually is and I become happy to just look at and play with the toys for a day. Went straight to the NHK UHDV demo. Waited a half-hour in the line then sat down in the last row, which was probably about 30' from the screen. Some of the specs: 4320-scanning line system, 7680x4320 pixels (32 million pixels), 16:9 AR, 60 fps, 22.2 channel sound, 3.5 TB of data (about 750 DVDs worth) for 15 minutes of show, served at 24 Gb/s over 16 parallel SDI channels. OK, so there was some noise in the blacks, but I didn't see any of the other compression or detail enhancement errors that Ian or the other guy mentioned. And I'm a stickler about using too much edge enhancement. Perhaps I am just more willing to be impressed here. Yes, it didn't look like film but that's very easy to do with today's DSP cameras. Sony's cameras have been able to do that for years - plug in the right memory stick and you can emulate the D Log E curve of any popular motion picture film stock. The cameras used for this demo were Ikegamis equipped with four 8M imagers - 2 for green and 1 each for red and blue. The paraded component video waveform displays on the camera CCUs outside the theater looked weird to me with four components. The projectors were nothing special, just a pair of JVC D-ILA machines, one projecting cyan and the other projecting magenta. Beautiful overlay job. Absolutely perfect. What struck me most about the format was how good it looked on wide shots, in this case the soccer and basketball crowds, and the New York City skyline looking south from Time Warner Center. You could get lost in all the information being presented to you in those shots. The last shots of the basketball sequence where pretty wide, about what you'd see if you were in the mid-level seats. And yet you could still see all of the action on the court - I didn't feel any need at all for longer lenses or zoomed shots. I liked what I saw. The sound was definitely another story. 22.2 channels just seems like a waste to me, mouse milking as it were. The set up: 10 speakers in the "middle layer" - 3 screen, 2 on each side, and 1 in the rear; 9 speakers in the "upper layer" - 3 above the screen, 2 on each side, 1 in the rear, 1 directly overhead; 3 speakers in the "lower layer" below the screen; plus 2 LFEs. I've never been a Bose fan and this system didn't change my opinion at all. It was basically an overgrown home theater system with lots of little speakers. But can you imagine mixing to 22.2? Or having to set up that many stems? I had enough trouble keeping after 5.1. Not that we'll ever have to. NHK is just showing off the technology, especially for the capture, storage, manipulation, and distribution of such massive amounts of data, and is pitching this format to museums and other large venue exhibition spaces. As Ian mentioned, this isn't really meant for cinema application. The 3D HDTV next door was fun, with a samurai shooting arrows at you for one of the opening shots. NHK had it running on a fairly large screen plus a bunch of consumer flat screen displays. You could walk around with your 3D polarized glasses on and look at any of them. Was hoping someone would be showing the new SED displays. Didn't see any, but then I didn't have enough time to really check. SED is supposed to be the technology that will kill plasma starting next year. I don't think I'd plunk down a lot of money for a plasma display at this point. Never liked the look of it anyway. Went over to the Sony booth to look at their 4K SXRD again. Same booth and location, but the show this year is definitely pitched towards TV people, not cinema. They only showed a few clips originated on film, most memorably the Hadj and crystal mosque scenes from Baraka. Stopped by the Christie booth too. Good looking stuff there, especially the two-projector blended image 'scope pictures. Wish I had the money to sign up for some of the training seminars. The Final Cut Pro and Studio training sessions were huge! On the way out I stopped by my former employer PanAmSat. Guess they've gone through an almost complete personnel changeover - didn't recognize any names from when I was there. PAS has been bought out by Intelsat - the Long Beach OCC facility I used to work at went from 150 people down to 20 with all but the DirecTV birds now being flown from Washington, DC. So PAS is now mostly out of the space operations business, concentrating instead on selling and implementing international satellite links and backbones. Oh well, there never was much money in space operations. And now I gotta finish writing a speech for Japanese class, which I kinda sorta skipped today. Sensei's gonna kill me Thursday.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 04-26-2006 12:05 AM                        Let me know if Canon announces any new cameras that exceed the XL2.  |  IP: Logged Paul Mayer Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under! Posts: 3836 From: Albuquerque, NM Registered: Feb 2000 posted 04-26-2006 12:48 AM                        I take it you know about their XL H1... Not a bad little toy for $9k.  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 04-27-2006 09:42 AM                        quote: Paul Mayer Yes, it didn't look like film but that's very easy to do with today's DSP cameras. Sony's cameras have been able to do that for years - plug in the right memory stick and you can emulate the D Log E curve of any popular motion picture film stock. I have yet to see any digital camera that matches the tone scale and latitude of color negative film. The inability to handle highlight detail is the usual give-away. Scenes that include fire or lots of detailed highlights (e.g., clouds in a blue sky, light coming through lace curtains, bridal gowns, etc.) challenge the limited latitude of today's digital sensors.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 04-27-2006 01:18 PM                        I did not know about the XL H1 Paul, thanks. What sucks ass about those HDV cameras is that they only record at 1440x1080. That's not good enough. I want 1920x1080 PROGRESSIVE! I don't care if they have to come up with a new tape format to do it, either. My fear is that HDV will become the consumer standard. I hate it when they half-ass things like that. What are they afraid of?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 04-27-2006 07:13 PM                     Joe, you just need to get Panasonic's AG-HVX200 camera. It costs $3000 less than Canon's HDV-based model. And it shoots in full rez 720 and 1080 HD formats. It even shoots in 1080p in both 24fps and 30fps.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 04-27-2006 07:43 PM                        Is it HDV? I'll buy 3!  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 04-27-2006 09:49 PM                     Nope. No HDV on that unit. The Panasonic model records on MiniDV, DVC-PRO and 16GB RAM-based "P2" cards.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 04-27-2006 10:24 PM                        How does it record HD? On the weird-ass cards? How the hell do I get the data to my Mac? I demand answers. I also demand that you buy me one for letting you talk to me.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 04-27-2006 11:11 PM                     Oh sure, I'll buy you one...when I hit the lottery! The AG-HVX200 will record HD on both the P2 cards and DVCPRO tape. I'm not sure how it would manage doing that on MiniDV. DVCPRO-HD runs at something like 100Mb/s. I imagine you would need some kind of add on card or capture device to get the video from the tape to hard discs. The P2 cards can mount just like a hard disc. But they only hold several minutes of 1080p HD. I'd like to have a HD camera. But the huge amount of money you need in a powerful enough computer, external RAID setup and capture/accelerator cards pretty much put that off limits from my wallet for at least a couple or so years.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 04-28-2006 12:25 AM                        That would be incredibly awesome if I could have like 25 P2 cards (at a reasonable price, of course). The problem with HD is that I can buy stuff to shoot it. I can easily edit it on my fancy-schmancy and very trendy Mac. I can watch it on my HDTV (assuming the camera has component or HDMI out). But I can't deliver the material for others to watch unless I downscale it to wimpy-ass DVD. And I'll be damned if I hook my camera up to my TV every time I want to watch something. I'll probably be damned anyway.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-28-2006 12:56 PM                        You could always distribute your HD content on HDCAM tape or on 35mm (or 16mm or 70mm) film. These aren't really options for distribution to Joe Public, but they are entirely viable distribution media for television broadcast or theatrical exhibition. Not that Joe Public has an HD-capable set or goes to the movies, anyway, though.  |  IP: Logged Ron Lacheur Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 650 From: British Columbia, Canada Registered: Feb 2002 posted 04-30-2006 09:39 PM                     Just finished a shoot with the HVX200...the P2 cards are really pcmcia style cards that apparently are plug and play with any laptop. We weren't using them, as the rest of the show was shot on DV.  |  IP: Logged

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