NAB 2006 Predictions

[Blub06]

A few years ago Monty Python had a skit about a British invention that was sure to overwhelm the Germans in WWII. It was a joke that could kill from 400 feet. Several teams of Brits worked on just one part of the joke so as not to be exposed to the total thing.

I predict that Panasonic will announce a 16gig P2 card in a manner not too different from the joke that could kill from 400 feet, I think they will call it the fainting room. You enter to see a small stage with a LV show girl standing ready to put on a show. The room is filled with lush leather furniture, everyone sits and the girl walks from stage right to left holding a large card which announces the new 16gig P2 card, as she gets to stage left she turns and heads back to the other side of the stage and turns the card over to reveal the price of the new 16 gigP2 card at which point everyone in the room faints.

Highly recommended for insomniacs.

Chris

[Toke]

[JeremyG] “I’m hoping for FCP v11 (why go to 6 when this one goes to 11?)”

Spinal Cut Pro? (Or even Spinal Tap Pro?)

I see no reason why panny wouldn’t announce 16GB p2, which will be shipped in 31st Dec in microscopic quantities. If I remember correctly, they did same thing with some other product 😉

So I’m still waiting for that 2005 announced product to Europe, so I guess nab2006 will tell what I could have in 2007…

[Lawrence Bansbach]

[Steve Freebairn] “I think that a DVCPro200 codec will be released for the Varicam”

While that’s possible, why not just use HD D5? It can record true 1,920 x 1,080 at 8 bits (using 4:1 DCT intraframe compression) or 10 bits (using 5:1 compression) at 4:2:2 chroma sampling. It supports 1080i and legacy 1035i at both 60-Hz and 59.94-Hz field rates, 720p24/25/30/50/60, and 1080p24/25/30. I suppose that Panasonic could extend it to support 4:4:4 chroma sampling and variable frame rates. HD D5, however, has, I believe, a data rate of 250 Mbps, not 200 Mbps.

[Toke]

[Lawrence Bansbach] “While that’s possible, why not just use HD D5?”

That’s even older codec than dv. Why stick with legacy codecs? This is afterall about tapeless workflow at least before the master and archiving. I expect some new codec from this millenium…

[Lawrence Bansbach]

[toke lahti] “That’s even older codec than dv. Why stick with legacy codecs? This is afterall about tapeless workflow at least before the master and archiving. I expect some new codec from this millenium…”

True, but it’s an extant, mature codec, and like DVCProHD it needn’t be tape based. Unless I’m mistaken, Panasonic developed it and, if it wishes, may extend it with 4:4:4 chroma sampling and variable frame rates. If Panasonic can come up with a better codec — one that it doesn’t have to license — by NAB 2006, great. It seems that Panasonic has, up to this point, thrown its weight behind DCT-based codecs. Conceivably it could develop some codec based on the MPEG-4 Studio Profile. But the computing horsepower (ie, encoding/decoding chips) necessary to do so probably wouldn’t be cheap enough to implement for the $15,000 to $30,000 range within which the new HD offerings seem to be falling.

[Toke]

[Lawrence Bansbach] “Conceivably it could develop some codec based on the MPEG-4 Studio Profile. But the computing horsepower (ie, encoding/decoding chips) necessary to do so probably wouldn’t be cheap enough to implement for the $15,000 to $30,000 range within which the new HD offerings seem to be falling.”

Looking at Infinity, at least jpeg2000 can be quite affordable codec.
And good thing about jpeg2000 is its scalability.
It wouldn’t be very expensive these days to add feature that you could dial in the compression ratio you want…