Soho Editors Take On IBC2014...

As IBC in Amsterdam closed its doors for another year, it was interesting to see what had come out of the five days at the show, writes Simon Hall, Training Centre Manager, Soho Editors.

Firstly, 4K is now everywhere. More and more people are shooting with the larger format, with more and more cameras being capable of filming it. This means a reduction in cost and more cameras on the market – take a look at JVC's new GY-LS300 compact 4K camcorder as an indication of where the market is going. All of this is encouraging as, unlike stereoscopic filming which is still fiddly and expensive, meaning not many people are able to produce it, 4K looks like it will be an accessible format for many.
Blackmagic Design have been producing affordable 4K cinema cameras for a while and introduced the new PL lens mount for the standard cinema camera, and IBC gave many people their first close up look of the URSA. But for Soho Editors the interest was at the other end of the pipeline.
Firstly, updates to DaVinci Resolve in version 11.1 meant that Blackmagic had added even more editing capability in its grading software. It is now a fully functioning NLE, and although it lacks one or two audio plugins and exports, it is certainly now fast becoming a rival to the main three nonlinear editors on the market. Couple this with the outstanding grading functions and more support for plug ins such as Boris Continuum Complete as well as its ability to handle practically every codec around and Resolve looks to strengthen its position as an Online editor. And say it quietly, the light version is free, and it will do ninety percent of what the full version does.
Many editors are now becoming interested in Resolve, too, as many more are being asked to grade their edits. Indeed, Soho Editors were inundated with training requests at the show.
The other big news to come from the Aussie heavy hitter was one that not many people saw coming. The purchase of software company Eyeon and its high end compositing and finishing software Fusion means that Blackmagic have now have the ability to offer a finishing package as well as just grading.
Looking at what Blackmagic did when they bought DaVinci, you would expect a cleaned up interface and lower price point, and hopefully a tie in with Resolve. If all of that were to come about, then Blackmagic would have a post production bundle of an editor, grader and finisher, which would be an impressive package that may not break the bank. It's going to be an interesting 12 months for the company.

Adobe unveiled more updates for their CC 2014 suite. An interesting and much needed update is the media and project management tool. It's not too unfair to say that Premiere's consolidation has needed work for a while. When you compare it with Avid Media Composer and the now seriously old Final Cut Pro 7, both of which have a proper consolidate and transcode option, Premiere has always been a little light in this area as transcoding has never been an option.
The announcement at IBC that Premiere can now consolidate and transcode, as well as having an improved multi project workflow, means Premiere is starting to tick a lot of boxes for broadcasters now. Other little interesting items were the render and replace, which speeds up performance by flattening embedded After Effects compositions into video clips. Another interesting addition to the Adobe package was an update to SpeedGrade, which includes an enhanced looks workflow and interestingly a curve toolset that pays more than a little nod to DaVinci Resolve's curve grader, which is no bad thing.

Avid's offering at IBC was a little more muted. Despite the appearance of film director Robert Rodriguez and the guys behind the post of Star Wars Episode VII, which was very interesting, releases were a little thin on the ground with Avid still extolling the virtues of Avid Everywhere and Media Composer 8, neither of which are really new. Avid did announce Avid Resolution Independence, which allows of 2K/4K/UHD editing. While this is great for Avid users, it is still something the likes of Apple and Adobe have been able to do for a number of years. Still, it is good to see that despite the issues Avid have had over the last eighteen months they are still pulling IBC crowds as much as they always did.

So what about the future? The introduction of some new rec2020 monitors from the likes of Canon and Dolby have produced some of the finest colour in monitors ever seen.
For those unfamiliar with rec2020, it's the new designated colour space for UHDTV, 4K and 8K displays, replacing the rec709 currently used by current displays. The performance of the displays could be seen as Canon showed the two colour spaces side by side, with clips being professionally graded. Even after extensive grading the rec709 picture still looked raw when compared to the 2020 space. The monitors are still hugely expensive but with more manufacturers getting in on the act more affordable systems are likely to be around soon.

The question over 4K still remains though, certainly in the U.K. If broadcasters cannot even transmit 1080p, what chance have they got with 4K? Indeed, broadcasters have been falling behind even the video streaming services such as Netflix. Well the IBC future zone may have presented an answer. Japan's NTT showed a robust IP transmission system for 4K and the BBC R&D team presented a vector based system which would allow vectors for a picture to be sent with the TV's GPU rendering the frames in real time. This system could mean very little data for huge pictures. Certainly one for the future but an interesting concept nonetheless.

So IBC2014 threw up some interesting stories, a few surprises and a real indication of where the industry is heading. And looking at the attendance, the broadcast industry seems to be thriving once more, which can only be a good thing.

Read the article in BFV online.

(IT/JP)