Jack Felis rundown

[Zack Birlew]

Hey guys, saw a lot of stuff today and much of it related to my future RED. I figured I would share some of my current findings.

1. First off, for those who want 3D with their RED or any camera for that matter, here's a fascinating company that makes this possible with 3D LCD's and some hardware that I'm going to look into (ie. the dual camera mount and 3D converter box):
www.spatialview.com

Pics:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/zack_birlew/detail?.dir=5ebc&.dnm=8c60scd.jpg&.src=ph

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/zack_birlew/detail?.dir=5ebc&.dnm=131ascd.jpg

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/zack_birlew/detail?.dir=5ebc&.dnm=dc6bscd.jpg

2. Redrockmicro didn't disappoint. The mattebox will be $500 and the new wireless follow focus will also be $500. Both looked very cool. Then the big surprise was the new flipping module (non-RED news) that will go for about $300-500.
www.redrockmicro.com

3. Most of you know about Indie-Dolly, well, I didn't know much, but after seeing it in person, it is absolutely perfect for the indie-budget filmmaker. Not only does it perform well, but the full kit including the dolly, tripod that supports up to 190 lbs., and curved/straight track costs about the same price as a higher end tripod alone. Smooth as silk.
www.indiedolly.com

4. Zacuto had a lot of little bits on display, I hadn't seen a lot of it before, there were just a ton of little nuts and bolts to, I guess, build your own Zacuto setup piece by piece. In case you don't like the RED rails (which I would think would be impossible).
www.zacuto.com

5. Apple showcased everything FCP Studio 2 and AJA showed off the new I/O HD box which still looks awesome.

In non-RED news...

6. Panasonic was jam-packed, I could hardly move through there. They said that they were the only ones to have a Redrockmicro M2 setup in their booth (besides the Redrockmicro booth itself). Along with this, they were handing out DVD's of the HVX+M2 film "Illegal", which I am getting ready to watch after I type this. I couldn't get a chance to see the new HPX500, but the 103" LCD was, like last year, hard to miss :gun:.

7. Sony showed off all their stuff, including the 4K projector. The XDCAM EX looked awesome, it had cards smaller than P2, it had "Cinealta" on the side of it, and it was about as big as the XLH1 or JVC HD200, but I didn't get a chance to sit through the presentation, there was too much to see!:biggrin: The V1U was on display and looked pretty snazzy itself over in the HDV section. But the big draw seemed to be the F23 Cinealta camera which did look good, but not 2K or 4K good like a lot of other cameras at the show.

8. The Phantom HD looks great, as well as a bunch of the other Phantom cameras did. One smaller model did 2K but I don't remember the model number.

9. The Reel-Stream guys were excited about the Hydra, it looked like a pretty darn good add-on for HVX users, especially since I was blown away by just the DVX Andromeda footage they had on display alone. The Hydra hadn't been plugged in yet, but I think they were going to later, but I'm not sure at all if they were going to show footage yet or not.

10. The Ultra High Definition presentation from Japan wasn't starting any time soon to when I would be around there, but they did have "4K" LCD panels on display (more like 3K really, they had like a 3000-something by 2000 something resolution). The "4K" displays were lost on me however because they had them set next to 1080P displays from Sharp and.... ahem..... I didn't see a difference at all. :whistling:

11. Tiffen showed off the DFX Suite which basically, I guess, is a strange attempt to kill a lot of their filter market. It is basically a software suite that emulates a lot of the looks their filters can provide, all digitally, even ND filters strange enough if I'm not mistaken.

12. Many companies were copying the "Felis-rig" *erm* I mean, the Fig Rig and DV Multi-rig Pro:tongue: and offered several hand grip and accessory mounted support systems for DV cameras.

*EDIT*

13. How could I foget Canon? I went and all they had were the basic XLH1/A1/G1 cameras, as well as the new 6x Wide Angle HD lens, which was huge, and, lastly, the HV20. --*Changed my mind about the HV20, the model I looked at must have been messed with long before I got there, now I'm going to be a proud owner of an HV20*--One problem was after seeing 2K and 4K footage all day, the 1080i-based XL and XH cameras just looked... well... soft by comparison!

Then that's all I can remember that was any different. I still have to see JVC and go back to some of the other booths for a closer look at things.

[Manfred Lopez]

Thanks for this rundown. I was kind of hoping that someone would do this.

[Sanjin Jukic]

Thanks Jack for the report. Hope you'll continue.

[Alexis Hanawalt]

3. Most of you know about Indie-Dolly, well, I didn't know much, but after seeing it in person, it is absolutely perfect for the indie-budget filmmaker. Not only does it perform well, but the full kit including the dolly, tripod that supports up to 190 lbs., and curved/straight track costs about the same price as a higher end tripod alone. Smooth as silk.
www.indiedolly.com


Hey, Jack. Cool words about Indie Dolly. My sister was running the booth - she probably pushed you around a little. I'll tell her the dolly got props on the Red forum - very cool. It is a great product, by the way... I'm definately going with it for my Red package.

[Mark Thorpe]

Phew, going by the thread title I thought you'd had an incident with a drunk driver, or one of those taxi dudes Gibby warned us about!

:tongue:

[Sanjin Jukic]

Also I like the indie dolly babies.

[Kyle Spicer]

thanks Jack! Glad someone posted some different stuff going on at NAB as well! Please keep it up :)

[Zack Birlew]

Phew, going by the thread title I thought you'd had an incident with a drunk driver, or one of those taxi dudes Gibby warned us about!

:tongue:

ROFL!

Yeah, I'll definitely let you guys know more, not today so much though, I've got class all day long. However, the only NAB related thing I'll be going to is the DVXUser party tonight at the Mirage.

[Zack Birlew]

Correction

The 3D stereoscopic hardware (mount and converter box) are provided by Miracube.
www.miracube.net

Spatial View is the software.

[Zack Birlew]

Alright, sorry it took a bit, here's my experiences from yesterday and today.

1. JVC had quite possibly the best presentation out of all the HDV-level camera manufacturers. Not only did they have the HD200/250U's decked out with every kind of lense option you could think of (1/2" lense, 2/3" lense, P+S Technik Mini-35 with a Cooke S4, Redrockmicro M2 with Nikon still, and their new light lossless PL mount with a S16mm lense), they also had their new 17" and 24" 1920x1080 1080P production LCD's which looked a lot better, in my opinion, than Panasonic's production LCD's, a 3D setup to show how good the HD200-series is at stereoscopic 3D applications, a new "microwave" device that allows you to broadcast an HD connection over basic SD signals to your studio or ENG/news van from up to a mile away, and, honest to goodness, they had a magician doing magic tricks!!!:pirate: :pirate: :pirate: Three "Yar Har"'s for JVC and their awesome booth!!!

2. I re-visited the Panasonic booth to take a look at the HPX500 and I must say that they certainly did a lot of magic with it! It was one of the coolest cameras I've ever played with. Everything was laid out for you as far as buttons went, it was comfortable to use, and the image was like a much clearer version of the HVX200's already very pleasing image. It had a nice lense on it, but I didn't get a chance to see which one it was, time was running out on the last day of NAB!

3. Reflecmedia was awesome! The idea is to use this new grey background for chromakeying, it's made out of this reflective material, and through the use of either a heavy duty ring of green or blue LED lights on the front of the lense, it will make that grey screen appear green or blue. Best part? You don't need to light the screen at all!!! Just put the appropriate ring on the front of the camera, light your talent, and film! It works great too by the looks of it.

4. I also went by and saw the Litepanel booth. They had some big new LED light displays there. Expensive as heck though but would definitely pay for themselves in electricity savings. I could imagine setting up a whole room with these lights to get a full bubble-esque array with tons of lighting possibilities, especially combined with the Reflecmedia setup. However, as I said, they're expensive as heck so this is mostly a dream for now but at least the technology is there and prices are sure to plummet over time.

5. I saw the Ultra High Definition presentation. As I mentioned before, they had 4K displays next to 1080P displays in front of the tent, about 50" I think. Well, those didn't show much of a benefit at all because unless you're sitting directly in front of the 4K display to actually see pinpoint details, then you may as well stick with 1080P displays for regular HDTV viewing. As a production monitor, I could see where a 4K display would make a ton of sense, otherwise you're just getting a little 10% clearer picture from 5-10 feet away. What made up for all this though was the Ultra High Definition projection which was basically at 8K. The footage was so clear on the big screen where you could see it that it was practically 3D! The camera used to film it was 8K actually, but it was definitely no RED. The camera was a big box that had one of their nice little 7" or 10" 4K LCD displays showing the footage. I couldn't tell how big the screen was and NAB was closing after the show, so I didn't have too much time to ask questions :sad:. In conclusion on this, I think that there's going to be a limit before we should start getting into 3D territory and 8K projection is it. It would be very easy to get a great 3D effect out of the 8K footage shown today, heck it was naturally close to that effect anyway. The UHD setup also used a big 22.4 (I think, could have been 22.3) surround sound that was really nice, if a bit excessive. One problem I could see is that the 8K footage could cause motion sickness or headaches because I even felt a little bit of eye strain after just a few minutes of it. I don't know if I was sitting too close to the screen, I did try to get in the back row to get the full effect, but even then it was a little funny. It didn't help that the footage was 60P either. 24P would have been much easier on the eyes I think. But there's time for them to refine it by next year, everything is apparently is in the prototype stages at the moment.

6. VFGadgets.com had some cool stuff, particularly the Holophone H4 Mini 5.1 surround sound microphone. It seems to be the perfect effects microphone or perhaps general purpose microphone if you can handle it well enough. It can encode Dolby 5.1 surround sound over two XLR connectors that can be decoded in post, like Final Cut Pro, to each individual channel to map the 5.1 to your liking. Also, it can be boom mounted so you don't have to worry about the camera operator breathing heavy or anything and getting that in the recording. A single microphone input allows you to map the center channel to whatever microphone you want to use, mostly for the main sound such as dialogue and then you can get the other 4 channels for the ambience. Unfortunately, the show closed before I could scramble over to the North Hall to see if there was a booth for the Holophone people to check out the H2 Pro or the H3-D, so I don't know how those will work (ie. wether you need a series of mixers or can map to two XLR's like the H4 Mini).

Then that was about it really, nothing else too exciting. I spent most of Wednesday revisiting booths I had seen on Monday for a closer look and there wasn't a whole lot of new stuff at many of the booths I went to, like Genarts (Sapphire plug-ins) or Smartsound (who were showing off Sonicfire Pro 4). Anyway, cool show this year and I can't wait to see how next year turns out!

[Alexander Nikishin]

6. Panasonic was jam-packed, I could hardly move through there. They said that they were the only ones to have a Redrockmicro M2 setup in their booth (besides the Redrockmicro booth itself). Along with this, they were handing out DVD's of the HVX+M2 film "Illegal", which I am getting ready to watch after I type this. I couldn't get a chance to see the new HPX500, but the 103" LCD was, like last year, hard to miss :gun:.

I was the camera op. for Illegal. :biggrin:

[Tom Lowe]

Thanks, dude. That indie dolly looks sweet!

[Zack Birlew]

I was the camera op. for Illegal. :biggrin:

You know, I thought that "Illegal" sounded awfully familiar!:biggrin: I just couldn't put my finger on it until I got home and looked it up. Congratulations man! Unfortunately I still haven't had the chance to watch it, something came up before I could see it after my first post, but I'll definitely watch it tonight for sure.