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NAB: It’s a 4K World by Paul Kalbach
Black Magic's spanking new URSA machine. photo: courtesy Black Magic Design
SO ANOTHER YEAR HAS GONE BY SINCE
my last pilgrimage to the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB) to get my Red fix and see what other new toys (I mean TOOLS) there are to play with.
Red Camera
Red Digital Cinema launched the 4K revolution at NAB 2006. With just a brochure specifying the 4k camera they were going to build, they began taking deposits. Some people screamed “scam”, “impossible!” Arri said that HD was “good enough”.
I put down a deposit on my first Red camera at NAB 2007 and waited a year for delivery, until just after NAB 2008. After joining the Epic X upgrade program, it was another one and a half years to take delivery of the Red Epic.
At NAB 2013, I placed an order to upgrade my Epic to the new Red Dragon 6k sensor. One year later, I am told that my turn to send my camera in for upgrade is coming “any day now”. That’s what is bad about Red; the frustrating wait. Really long lines for a great product.
The wait for them to continue improving Dragon has been worth it though. The 6K Dragon footage with 16 ½ stops of dynamic range that I have seen is astounding. At NAB 2014, Red had built a theater to show off the new Dragon. Not just a tent with a screen, but a big THEATER with 15-perf 70 mm film running through an IMAX projector to show the 6K film scan from the Dragon footage.
RedRay Player allows you to bring a 4K theater into your home, business or full-on theater. photo: courtesy of Red
RedRay Player
As I write this article, my RedRay Player that I ordered about a year and half ago is being shipped to me. While not exactly an IMAX projector, it does output an incredible image to a 4K display or projector that has a very small data rate, thanks to its’ extremely efficient RRencode plugin.
Actually, Red had started to ship RedRay Players in December 2012, but then abruptly stopped. When I was talking to Jarred Land, the President of Red, this year at NAB, he told me that they had to stop shipping to wait for Odemax to get it together.
Odemax was to supposed be a 4K distribution platform using RedRay Players. Independent filmmakers could have their own Odemax Film Channel to distribute their films to individuals or even theater chains. I had envisioned that there could be a blossoming of independent art film houses growing out of small storefronts using this distribution model.
Unfortunately Odemax never did get it together. Their website is still there but they don’t return e-mails. Jarred went on to say that they couldn’t wait for Odemax any longer, so they have resumed shipping RedRay Players. Hopefully, some other company will pick up the concept where Odemax left off.
Red also announced several new products including the 4K Broadcast Module: “Live uncompressed YCbCr 4:2:2 video feed. Up to 4K and 60 FPS via Quad 3G-SDI BNC ports for timecode and genlock.”
The DJI Ronin gimbal operated in “slim-mode.” photo: P. Kalbach
4K Takes Over
NAB 2014 was 4K, 4K, 4K everywhere. 4K cameras, monitors, switchers, recorders, all kinds of hardware and software for a 4K pipeline…you name it, it was there in 4K.
“House of Cards” (shot on Red Epic) is now being streamed in 4K by Netflix. Even AJA, who has never made a camera before, was showing off their new Cion 4K camera. The Cion is an affordable shoulder mounted camera that shoots to Apple ProRes 422 and 444 at up to 4K 60fps or outputs AJA Raw at up to 4K 120fps.
At NAB 2013 Blackmagic Design showed their Production Camera 4K which just started shipping recently. This year at NAB they showed two new 4K cameras: Blackmagic Studio Camera and Blackmagic URSA.
The URSA has so many features stacked onto it, one can only guess how they can sell this stuff so cheap. Black magic also showed a beta version of the DaVinci Resolve 11 which adds enough editing features to make it a full-fledged NLE within the grading app. This is similar to what Autodesk did when they released Smoke 2013.
I’ve heard Sony claim that they invented 4K, but I have to say I really think that Red spearheaded the 4K revolution. Sony showed add-ons to their F5/F55 cameras, while Panasonic showed their GH-4 (priced under $1,700), and previewed their high-end 4K Varicam (still under development with no price announced). It’s interesting that the new Varicam is a modular system, similar to the building-blocks approach of Red.
Year of the Gimbal
2014 was also the “Year of the Gimbal” at NAB. At NAB 2013, Freefly Systems created a lot of buzz with release of the MōVI; a handheld 3-axis digital stabilized camera gimbal. Being first out of the gate to bring such a device to market, the MōVI created quite a reputation for itself.
Kalbach flying a Red camera with MōVI mounted on Steadicam’s new 3-section arm. photo: Claudia Crask
The problem with it is its’ price; $15,000 for a model capable of flying a Red Epic. Over the following year, a multitude of companies rushed to bring their version of the MōVI to market. There were gimbals everywhere at NAB 2014: small ones capable of only flying a GoPro; medium ones for flying a DSLR; and big ones capable of flying a Red Epic.
I tried out every gimbal I ran across on the show floor, some from Kickstarter projects, on up to rigs from well-established companies. Some of the rigs struck me as being prototypes not ready for market, some too heavy, some too expensive, some too twitchy and bitchy, etc.
The rig I was the most impressed with is the DJI Ronin; capable of flying a Red Epic (max payload of 16 lbs.) with a price projected to be under $5,000. I could move the camera to wherever I wanted it; from skimming the floor, to lifting as high as I could reach with rig in "inverted-mode" (camera on top rather than under-slung), to letting it hang in “slim-mode” to move through narrow passages, and it never complained.
A gimbal that I did NOT run across at NAB is the Letus Helix (http://letushelix.com). I only found out about it after leaving Las Vegas and am really sorry to have missed trying it out.
The Helix takes an entirely different design approach compared to any other gimbal I’ve seen. Instead of the camera platform being under-slung (which requires setting the rig down on a stand when not in use), the Helix has a flat bottom design with the camera balanced around the optical center of the lens.
It is a modular system available in 1-axis, 2-axis, and 3-axis configurations, with the 3-axis configuration estimated to cost $3,800.
The new AJA Cion, a 4K camera from a company that started making input/output cards and never made a camera before. photo: courtesy P. Kalbach
I definitely see it as a competitor to the Ronin, even though I feel the Ronin will be more flexible in various situations such as mounting on a jib. I can’t wait to use one of these rigs with my RedZephyrCam!
A few months ago, Laney College in Oakland asked me to develop a class in 4K Digital Cinema Production using the Red workflow, which is currently going through the administration approval process to begin next year. I saw a 4K monitor while shopping for groceries at Costco today.
Hmmm, I really need one of those for my RedRay.
Paul Kalbach is a cinematographer, editor and filmmaker who runs Artichoke Productions in Oakland. He has a stage and enough gear to outfit a feature production and can be reached . Posted on Apr 25, 2014 - 03:35 AM