I saw a number of products this year at IBC2013 which I think are pretty special and worthy of some particular attention here.
First up is Avid’s Interplay Sphere. Interplay Sphere enables a remote workflow, allowing Media Composer editors to work remotely whilst mixing media assets from the remote central storage system with local media assets, all in real time. Remote assets can be searched for and located with an interplay browser. Once located these remote assets can be used, in proxy form, in the editor’s timeline whilst being seamlessly mixed with local high resolution media assets. When the edit is finished there are two options for conform. The local high resolution media assets can be transferred to the remote central storage location, via file transfer or hard disk shipment, or the other option is to pull down, via file transfer, the required remote high resolution assets for integration in the local timeline. It’s a bit hard to fully explain in a few sentences but it’s pretty slick and seriously worth a look if you have a demanding remote workflow requirement.
Another highlight from the show is also Avid related. It’s Cantemo Portal’s new Avid MediaComposer integration. Cantemo Portal is an extremely powerful MAM (Media Asset Management) system with very tight integration with Final Cut Pro, Final Cut X, Adobe Premier and now Media Composer. Once again I really liked this workflow and think you will to. See the video here.
Also worth a special mention is a new product from AJA.
It’s the TruZoom and it’s probably the hardest to do justice to here.
Essentially the TruZoom can be utilised in a number of ways but basically it’s an extremely high quality 4k record and playback device and more importantly a scalar that takes 4K images in and allows you to select up to two ROI’s (Region of Interest) and output these in real-time via SDI in HD quality. You can key-frame the ROI’s and play these back on a timeline. One application, highlighted below, is to use this scaling and key framing as a high quality slow motion replay with pan and zoom capabilities. Other applications include taking the one locked off 4K camera and outputting two independent HD ROI’s and hence turning the one 4K camera into two HD cameras complete with pan and zoom capabilities. As I mentioned prior, it’s pretty hard to convey the power of the TruZoom in a few lines so if you are totally confused and/or interested please pick up the phone and give us a call or drop us an email at [email protected] and we’ll try and do a better job of explaining the features, benefits and possible workflows.
Of course there were plenty of other great product announcements from IBC, but these were the three that wowed me this year. Looking forward to coming back next year.