final (cut) Berlin User Group

Promotion, information, tips and tricks, also with a political twist…

Needless to say we were ther

A total of 700 users turned out.  Easily the largest gathering of FCP editors in Europe to date. The whole show was hosted with great aplomb from Michael Horton (founder of the LAFCPUG) from LA California with his amazing side kick.

Sponsor promotions, tips and tricks from the filed. Workflow’s and behind the scenes look at post production.

Kicking the show of representatives from different user groups. LA, Boston, Italy and of course Berlin Germany. Saying hello to the crowd.

Of immediate interest to FCP users Paul from Apple announced at the Super Meet, that there will be an FCP update that will allow native RED 4K footage to be edited on a 2K timeline! We are speculating that this update will be similar to the FCP update from 4 too 4.5. i.e. something like FCP 6.5!

Afterwards the program there was a Raffle with many happy winers. Including the author of this here article. Yes I won the Magic bullet Suite 2008! Many thanks to Beth at Magic Bullet.

Afterwards the program there was a Raffle with many happy winers. Including the author of this here article. Yes I won a copy of CineForm´s Prospect HD and the Magic bullet Suite 2008! Many thanks to Beth at Magic Bullet.

For some bizarre reason the show was even interrupted by a guy who ran up too stage screaming “fuck tv”

All in all a great show. A credit to Michael Horton, his team and generous sponsors. Not to mention the users who made fools of themselves during the prize award ceremony.

featuring a 10 years special on the making  Fields of fuel

The film was a real high light. Unfortunately this trailer doesn´t do it Justice. Amazing stuff. The director took questions and did a marvelous job pulling raffle tickets at the end of the show.

What’s was on the Agenda?

HARD DRIVES

Feeling paranoid about that cheep USB drive you bought at the electronic store around the corner? Haveing trouble mounting it or is it starting to make strange mechanical noises. Maybe it´s time to get you´re self some protection.

We couldn´t really test any of these drives so we´re awarding them points for their advertising slogans instead. Dito capture cards etc.

Sonnets fusion family members include what they claim is the industry’s fastest 4TB quad-interface desktop solution, the Fusion 400Q. With the drives configured as a RAID 0 they apparently get up to 220mbs. Which should be able to tackle every thing from 16 streams of miniDV to up too a single stream of uncompressed 10-bit NTSC video!

They have two further products of interest, Fusion D800RAID, and Fusion R800RAID Sonnet. D and R standing for desktop and rack mount respectively. These solutions are aimed at those wanting to work with HD. And yes even 2k, 2048   x 1556 @ 309MB/s! They are claiming speeds of up too 577MB/sec when striped as Raid 5.

The company have coined a really catchy phrase for this. They call it unadulterated speed! (Clemens 3 stars/Paul 3 stars)

Still not satisfied, want up to 4 raid systems then you have two options. The Sata x4p or the Sata e4p. And get up to 16-20 drives connected.

G-tech have an excellent reputation. Building solid, quality enclosures and offering a 3 year guarantee! There G Sata is billed as highest performance 2-drive storage solution with speeds up to 135MB/s.

Seriously paranoid. Try the safe option. Surprise, surprise it´s called G-Safe.

If speed is you´re priority then check G SPEED XL. With a High-Speed 4Gbit Fiber Channel or Ultra320 SCSI interface. These guys also have a cool advertising slogan claiming that if you use this baby configured as Raid 6, you´re safe even if two drives fail, “the ultimate in peace of mind!” (Clemens 3 stars/Paul 4 stars)

CalDigit had an impressive range of hard drives. From their HDPro which apparently does up too 200 Mbit/s. HD Element for up to 350Mbits/s.  They even have a HDOne which they claim does 400 Mbit/s when configured as RAID 5.

Nice thing about their Firewire desktop drive, the FireWire VR is that it allows you to swap drives without having to take a screw driver to the thing unlike many of the competition.

As with all of their Sata storage solutions it is possible to link them up via either a Calldigit Raid card or Call Digit Switch. The CalDigit Card supports different raid levels and multiple RAID volumes including JBOD.

The CalDigit people seem to be pitching for stability.  With an informative site explaining why there solutions are better, facts, numbers and diagrams abound! Their slogan “Peak Performance is not the gauge of video editing; STR (Sustainable Transfer Rate) is the gauge.” Not so catchy but seems to be some wisdom in there somewhere. (Clemens 5 stars/Paul 5 stars)

Skimming through the forums, CalDigit seems to be winning a lot of fans with Bang for Buck and 3 year guarantee.

CARDS BREAK OUT BOXES ETC

A few surprises on the floor. The return of Bluefish too the Apple platform with their range of 2k/HD/SD video cards. They announced support for FCP and Leopard back in April. They had their SD solution working with FCP on the stand and also have an impresive range of cards. The cards have amazing names like 2k Lust, HD Fury and SD Greed. There logos are also seriously cool and get them a couple of points. Not quite sure about there sales slogan though “There is nothing beyond our capture” (Clemens 3 stars/Paul 2 stars)

Another surprise. The Mx02. we had of course heard of this. And were very intrigued by it. Basically cool for getting lots of broadcast quality signals into and out of our laptops. They also have a little box called a triple head2go which allows you to connect up to 3 additional external monitors to your laptop.

And as if this wasn´t enough they had there Mx02 running with both FCP and Avid! We should have asked at the stand but we are assuming that it is a in/out device only for Avid and doesn´t offer hardware acceleration. They still make the original Mx0 which is more suited for monitoring purposes only.

AJA Introduced software updates for the Io HD and Kona 3. So AJA´s top of the rang card will now support RED. Particularly interesting because Paul from Apple announced at the Super Meet, that there will be an FCP update that will allow native RED 4K footage to be edited on a 2K timeline! We are speculating that this update will be similar to the FCP update from 4 too 4.5. i.e. something like FCP 6.5!

Black Magic had a really sweet little USB video recorder that records direct to the H.264 file format as used by iPod™, iPhone™, Apple TV™ and YouTube™. At the high end they had a Broadcast video hub. That is what we call a product range! Cards, breakout boxes and funky little converters. Including a sync generator which as Michael Horton said at the Super meet every one needs on of these even if they don´t know why.

And last but by no means least, if any one still doesn´t get it that size doesn´t mean every thing then check out the Bonsai from Rosendahl. This is a family business, They immediately made us feel at home on there stand. Thanks for the excellent coffee.

So what does this thing do. It is basically a standalone synchronisable portable hard disk recorder. The unit records uncompressed 4:2:2 Pal or NTSC on a standard IDE drive!

Playback and recording capabilities comparable to a large studio recorder. Think about it. You´ve finished editing you´re 10 minute TV program on a budget system. Rather than going with a hard drive to a big fat editing system to play out to a DigiBeta recorder, go direct to the recorder and plug you´re beautiful little Bonsai directly into it! No adaptors breakout boxes required. i.e. you´re renting the Digi Beta recorder and not the complete online edit suite and recorder!

They are working on their prototype with ethernet capabilities for connectivity of more than one Bonsai device. Ideal for Multi-camera editing. Edit files whilst still transferring from the Bonsai to another drive with an FTP program. Even set markers in the future.

They also have a great slogan, “More Play, Less Work”

We got a demonstration. Which blew us away. Bravo.

(Clemens 5 stars/Paul 5 stars)

We are awarding this product the first ever final BUG award for outstanding achievement! Long live hand written Assembly code!

LINKS FOR PART TWO

hard drive facts links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
http://www.barefeats.com/
http://www.storagereview.com/

hard drive players

Sonnet family and firewire links
http://sonnettech.com/product/fusionfamily/index.html
http://sonnettech.com/product/fusion400quad.html

Fusion D800/R800

http://sonnettech.com/product/fusiond800raid.html
http://www.screenmag.tv/equipped.aspx?eid=2206

Multiple Sonnets, means more Mbits/s
http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4p.html
http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_e4p.html

G tech family range

http://g-technology.com/Products/Products.cfm

specific G tech members

http://g-technology.com/Products/G-SATA.cfm

http://g-technology.com/Products/G-SAFE.cfm

for those who need SD, HD and 2K

http://g-technology.com/Products/G-SPEED.cfm

The CalDigit, family starting price of $3999

http://www.caldigit.com/HDPro.asp
http://www.caldigit.com/HDPro.asp
http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_hdpro.html

HDOne starting price of $2,299
http://www.caldigit.com/HDOne/
http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_caldigit_hdone.html

FireWire VR
http://www.caldigit.com/FireWireVR.asp
http://lfhd.blogspot.com/2007/04/caldigit-s2vr-duo-reviewand-firewire-vr.html

another review this time over at creative cow
http://www.creativecow.net/articles/zelin_bob/cal_digit_s2vr/index.html

Not paranoid yet
http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_backup.html

Cards and Breakout boxes, etc links

Bluefish
http://www.bluefish444europe.com/products/

AJA
http://www.aja.com/

Black Magic
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/

Rosendahl starting at €1,790 with out tax
http://bonsaidrive.com/bonsai.html

*this is article is the work of Paul Murray and Clemns Seiz

Once again we have tried to be as accurate as possible in our reporting

FCP, INGESTION, AND CONVERGENCE IN AN INCREASINGLY DIVERSE WORLD

Heaven on earth for Information Architects. Much divergence, with bigger, faster and meaner, just about everything. The next frontier as dictated by Red, one year ago being 4k. Forcing manufacturers to scramble to come up with larger displays, faster computers and both faster and bigger hard drives. All becasue of these minor details, 4096×2304 somewhere between 220 Mbit/s and 290Mbit/s! And that is compressed! To put this in perspective, good old miniDV has a data rate of 3.75 Mbit/s.

Most of the usual suspects had impressive stands. A notable exception being Apple, who apparently don´t do trade shows any more. They literally run their own show and call it a Final Cut Pro world tour.

But walking past the countless stands FCP was every where. Many of the big players, Sony (Xpri NS, Vegas Pro,) Quantel (improved integration for iQ and eQ systems) and Autodesk (Fire & Smoke) were showing their systems working in harmony with FCP.

All very complicated stuff that we are not even going to pretend to understand but it has to do with editing the same material on a server in a cross edit system world! This seems to be a very clever move, maybe even helping Sony, Quantel and Autodesk too piggy back on some of FCPs success! And is somewhat different to the strategies of the likes of Avid.

MONITORS

True to our pioneer spirit, we were searching for the next generation monitor, preferably affordable and future proof with the ability to display 2k material! Which means at least 2048×1152. Problem is that most monitors have a max resolution of 1920 times 1200. No easy task.

First off at the Sony stand, we were able to do a very unscientific comparison looking at a Sony LMD 42 inch beside some old school Broadcast monitors. We had the impression that the “Old” monitors are still better, being smoother and with more depth. Old meaning with, Cathode Ray Tubes inside.

The Barco RHDM-2301, with integrated calibration, no doubt for people with even more money than the average Sony purchaser. Apparently these monitors calibrate themselves automatically which sounds about as amazing as an oven that cleans itself. We spent about 5 seconds on stand before running for cover.

We didn´t get to talk to Panasonic, as we forgot to organize tickets for an invitation only presentation!

We got to take a good look at the JVC, DT-V24L3D (Clemens 3 stars/Paul 4 stars) The monitor looked good and had nice histogram, audio levels and TC in picture options. Not comparable to Tektronix and other stand alone measurement tools. But nice to have as a reference and to impress clients!

There is also a calibration program which you can download on purchasing the monitor. However you still need to buy a probe for 150€ to complete software calibration.

We suspect that there was also a Eizo CG241W somewhere on the floor, which should be somewhat cheeper than the JVC. And even includes hardware calibration. However it doesn´t have those JVC tool bits and bobs, i.e. time code in picture etc.

We we´re also very intrigued by the CG301W because of it´s amazing resolution. It is the only monitor here in our list that breaks the HD barrier with 2560 × 1600 native resolution!!! As with it´s smaller 24 inch brother hardware calibration is included. Sadly we never found the Eizo stand.

COLOUR CORRECTION CONTROLLER

What with RED and the integration of color (formerly known as Final Touch) we now have an excuse to take a serious long look at the different controllers out there. Some of which would have been previously built into systems which would have cost as much as a small semidetached mansion. Examples being, Da Vinci, Filmlight, Speed Grade, Scratch and Lustre from Autodesk (incidentally cooperating with AJA these days!)

JL cooper (Clemens 3 star/Paul 4 stars) had a great stand with plenty of controllers all blinking and moving busily. They have been on the market for more than 10 years, making controllers for Avid amongst others. All in all this robust controller made a good impression and was easy to use.

Tangent, had no less than two controllers. There new entry level Tangent Wave (Clemens 2 stars/Paul 3 stars) and there CP200-BK (Clemens 5 stars/Paul 5 stars) In fairness with respect to the Wave we were probably playing with a prototype! Some fine tuning will hopefully bring this controller to the next level.

The Tangent, CP200-BK, was seriously intuitive. Even we were able to deal with this thing. It reminded us a little of Stennbeck times having, a very fine mechanical feel. Apparently it uses technology from the Satellite industry. Yes this technology has it´s price but we felt that it was justified. Also expandable with controls for devices, for programs etc. Guaranteed to shock and awe clients.

Even though this company doesn´t have a controller for color as such….. We both decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and award them 5 points. Euphonix (Clemens 5 stars/Paul 5 stars) The sales rep gets 3 points alone for telling us that he would kill us if we let it slip that his company we´re working on an alternative to Tangent and JL.

CAMERAS

Lots of people shooting for 2k and 4k. But still a long way to go. Because one year on Red was the only manufacturer offering a 4k camera at the IBC. We had heard of a 4k camera called “Evolution” from Dalsa, a Canadian company but we couldn´t find them on either the map or the floor. So maybe they were not there.

The F35 CineAlta Camera, camera from Sony looked very impressive indeed. Clemens got to try out some of it´s remote functionality.

There was an Arri, the ARRIFLEX D-21. Which is theoretically capable of doing up too 4k but is initially set up for 2k! The argumentation is that they are building a portable solution which works with uncompressed RAW data. For which there are currently no practical solutions! Meaning size and reliability still need much work in order to enter the comfort zone. That big box on the right hand side in the photo directly above is the storage unit used for 2k.

If you´re looking for speed how about the Phantom HD with 2048 x 1080 @ 1000 frames-per-second! Also happens to do 2K.

Red gets 6 stars from a maximum of 5 stars, for breaking all the rules. (Clemens 6 stars/Paul 6 stars) We really liked their slogan “Digital Cinema Since Yesterday.”

RED, showed some prototypes of there new cameras. Apart from the Red One they are trying to bring out a 3k hand held camera for under 3000$. Which is seriosly crazy. Think about it a pocket camera which shoots 3072×1728 pixels for Soccer Moms.

There was also an event, where it was possible to see Red material projected with a 4k projector. The material has a look and feel that is totally different. Seeing is believing!

Also interesting although no where near 2k was the Sony HVR-Z5U camcorder which offers progressive scan shooting at 1080/24P and 30P, DVCAM™ recording, time-code support and two XLR balanced audio inputs. It´s possible to record to the videotape used in the camcorder or to Compact-Flash cards. So those little miniDV tapes will still be around for a while.

LINKS FOR PART 1

fcp, convergence and digital cinema links

FCP studio, updates every 2 weeks

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/

and here is an impressive list of professional systems which are cooperating with fcp.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/solutions/delivery.html

still don´t know what RED is…..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema_Camera_Company

some background information about the current digital film landscape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_film

Monitor links

Sony listing at $9,300.00
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-LMD4250WHD/

Barco should be available this year
http://www.barco.com/corporate/en/products/product.asp?element=4442&lid=EN

JVC, DT-V24L3D listing at €3,800
http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101632&feature_id=01

Eizo     €1,600 and € 3,700 respectively
http://www.eizo.com/products/graphics/cg241w/index.asp
http://www.eizo.com/products/graphics/cg301w/index.asp

Colour correction controllers links

So what is this thing called Da Vinci?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Systems

ECLIPSEcx from JLP cooper at $6999.95
http://www.jlcooper.com/pages/eclipse.html

Wave and CP200 from Tangent, wave is still not out but CP 200 costs €4,400
http://www.tangentdevices.co.uk/products_wave.asp
http://www.tangentdevices.co.uk/products_cp_200.asp

Euhonix, definetly don´t manufacture controllers for color as of writing
http://euphonix.com/artist/index.php

Camera links, 4k, 2k & HDV

Dalsa
http://www.dalsa.com/dc/4K_products/evolution.asp

Sony HVRZ5U costs $4,950.00
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-F35/
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-HVRZ5U/

ARRI
http://www.arri.de/entry/products/D-21.htm

Phantom HD
http://www.abelcine.com/articles/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=122&Itemid=32

RED body only $15,500
http://www.red.com/

*this is article is the work of Paul Murray and Clemns Seiz

we have tried to be as accurate as possible in our reporting

understand that we are humans and thus are capable of committing human error!

this is not meant to be the definitive guide for spending lots of money

check every thing and then double check it

because if you´re not paranoid there is something wrong with you