IBC takes the industry's temperature: this show focuses on themes like budget consciousness, upgrades and film restoration - IBC Report

Post, Oct, 2002 by Ken McGorry

AMSTERDAM -- "With the industry in its current condition, this is a good metaphor," quipped a European-accented person-in-black as he peered upward warily. We were at 5D's now notorious party/show featuring an outrageous Argentinean troupe of harness-wearing airborne performance artists. The performance gave us all a visceral depiction of the high-wire act that running a technology business today has become.

Still, many of the exhibitors at BC 2002 spoke of strong sales, or at least of holding their own against last year's numbers while creeping up on the competition as the compositor/color correction company 5D's Marc Dando did. But others grumbled of deserted "bowling alley" aisles off the beaten track of such highly populated exhibitions as Discreet's and Quantel's, Other large broadcast companies such as Sony and Panasonic offered large but slightly subdued presences at the show while Pinnacle Systems, stressing its networked media solutions, offered something new: Kim Fennell replaced long-time CEO Mark Sanders, who remains as Pinnacle's board chairman.

Most exhibitors used their budgets wisely Kaydara, traded in its big, two-story stand of yesteryear for more efficient spaces, and privately demo'ed Online 3.5, which integrates 3D characters with live action people.

And some, most notably Avid's European division, did not appear at BC at all. Avid's Graham Sharp had decided to trade the trade show experience for a city-to-city European tour.

While new technology inventions were somewhat rare at BC, there were some developments of interest to the post community. Media 100 CEO John Molinari made a splash with a third upgrade to his 10-bit, uncompressed 844/X NLE. Meanwhile, Quantel targeted mid-market post with the new QEdit Pro NLE, which comes in around $68,000. QEdit Pro runs on a PC with special Quantel PCI cards that provide 10-bit video output on 64-bit internal architecture.

Nearby, rival Discreet touted upgrades across its range of effects and editing systems and the promise of something new next year: Burn, a Linux-based background rendering software meant to turbo-charge Inferno, Flame, Flint, Fire and Smoke for high-rez HD, DTV and d-cinema work

Another compositing stalwart, 25-year-old Ultimatte, brought out a newly beefed-up version of its realtime 24p HD matte compositing system that CEO Lynne Suave describes as a bridge between production and post. Another film bridge, going in the digits-to-film direction, came from Celco with its introduction of Fury, which can output one frame of HD or 2K film per second. Fury can also output 4K and max resolutions.

Another BC theme was that film and video restoration has arrived as a business model, with da Vinci, Snell & Wilcox, Teranex and MTI showing sharpened tools.

An important factor; da Vinci president Mike Arbuthnot stresses, is that human history for the past 100 years is largely recorded on film. He says da Vinci is working to bring pricing down to the point where a more affordable version of his automated Revival can quickly produce hours of restored historical film or video for documentary or archival use. Teranex, with its new StarFilm Noise Reducer; also offers automated concealment of dirt, grain and noise in old footage for both SD and HD.

Snell & Wilcox's David Cunningham spoke fervently of his company's Archangel as the savior of a truly "Rotten video," a 25-year-old shoot of a Sex Pistols performance. And MTI's CEO, Bill Foulkes, was touting his DRS and IntelliDeck as two products that would bring the greatest of ease to repairing digital images -- even in HD.

Color correction company Pandora stressed the new ease with which they can handle not just high def but 2K and, next, 4K work Once attained, 4K would also prove a robust solution for archiving valuable footage. Pandora launched Phoenix, a system for digitally removing dust, scratches, dirt and color problems within the color correction workflow.

There was plenty of telecine talk in the air at IBC. The telecine assets of now-defunct ITK had just been acquired by Cintel the day before the show opened. And Cintel was also touting its new Grace product. While New Yorker John Dowdell again demonstrated Pandora on Thomson's Spirit Data- Cine, Thomson Grass Valley showed its Spirit 2 telecine only privately as a "technology demonstration," promising to introduce it in earnest at NAB 2003.

However; Thomson did have its new Viper 24p uncompressed HD camera on display and it drew crowds at their booth and at DVS's, Word was that Sony and Panasonic would be hustling to introduce their own variations of HD cameras offering non-compressed capture suitable for feature film work, (Word also was that George Lucas had already tested Viper for potential use on Episode 3.)

Uncompressed HD was a catch phrase for DVS, which offered the new HDXWay dual-channel server for realtime HD record and playout. AJA offered its new Kona HD video capture card meant for use on Apple's OS X platform with Final Cut Pro. DVS promises this can get a pro in the HD game for around $11,000.