Panasonic at NAB

Studio Daily has the info on Panasonic at NAB this year. It seems Panasonic has some big plans, but not much to actually show this year at NAB. They are taking the slow route to 2K and 4K with new AVC Ultra Master Quality Codecs and an eventual AG-HPX600 camera for less than $16,000, but with no set release date.

For AVC they will be releasing a 200 class and a CCLass 444 for 2k and 4k (SOund like ProRES rivals).

They also introduced the replacement for P2 a cheaper SD card sized Micro P2, with adapters for some older cameras with paid firmware upgrades.

Sounds like some interesting stuff, and they make great cameras, but mostly vaporware this year, maybe we will see prototypes next year at NAB. It will be exciting when they have actual 4K Varicam’s out, but until then.

Honestly the Black Magic excites me more, as it is much more within my budget range!

Lightworks official Release Soon

CreativeCow has the news from NAB on the official full release of the pro editing suite Lightworks for Window, Mac and Linux for free, with a $60 per year Pro version.

A new Lightworks Web site will be released on May 28th.

New features include:

  • Very wide format support including AVCHD, H.264, AVC-Intra, DNxHD
  • ProRes, Red R3D, DPX, XDCAM HD 50, XDCAM EX, DVD, BluRay, 4K support (DNxHD available for a single additional payment)
  • Support for all popular camcorder and DSLR video
  • Native real-time title generator
  • Improved interoperability – including AAF with Avid and Editshare Flow
  • Major improvements to Drag-and-Drop in the timeline
  • Trimming enhancements
  • Automatic Edit backups
  • Better Import and Export windows: more options, easier to use
  • Shared Projects
  • Stereoscopic workflow

The Free and Paid versions will be released May 28th, 2012, and is only $30 a year for education users, and a you get a free community membership with a pro membership.

Looking forward to trying out this powerful NLE.

Blackmagic Cinema Camera

BMD-Digi-Camera

FCP.CO has the news on a new Blackmagic Cinema Camera. It is $2995 with 13 stops of dynamic range, a large 2.5K sensor and Canon EF mount lenses. And it comes with a full version of DaVinci Resolve and Ultrascope. It records to SSD in 12 Bit Log as well as CinemaDNG, ProRES and DNxHD, and has a large touch screen for entering Metadata. Check it out at Blackmagic Designs Web site.
BMD-Camera-Back
From what I see the biggest problem seems to be the lack of XLR audio inputs and only 1.4” instead. Certainly not as good. Makes this a good run and gun B-Roll camera, but you would want something with XLR for sync sound. Actually been reading more and it is the same sound as it would be with XLR.

Seems people’s biggest complaint is going the Apple rout and having a non-removable battery that takes 3 hours to recharge. This certainly makes it more of a get a shot here and there camera, though it seems that it can actually take many different voltage power, so you can power it from many different batteries and it will be fine, so it is not like this is a huge problem, but you will have to have some sort of mount and extra batteries for any serious shooting.
BMD-Camera-side

Blackmagic Announces DaVinci Resolve 9

Creative Cow has the announcement of a completely overhauled user interface, that will be available in July and free of charge for all Resolve customers, or $994 full price as it is now.. New features include automatic 3D eye matching, mutli-layer timelines, xml support and more camera and file support. It also includes Log grading, audio playback with 16 tracks per clip, automatic audio sync, clip data burn ins and batch rendering for dailies.