There and Back Once More

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Opinion: Page (4) of 4 - 04/14/03

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There and Back Once More Highlights from the NAB 2003 convention from the Mac angle Blackmagic Design showed off its Mac OS X capture and editing boards--DeckLink Pro and DeckLink SP. While the old DeckLink board is no longer exclusive to the Mac platform, these new boards are exclusively available for Mac OS X, at least for the time being. I spoke with the company's founder, Grant Petty, who said he'd likely be able to provide me with additional details about how Blackmagic hardware will integrate with the forthcoming Final Cut Pro 4. We'll bring you more in the next few weeks. For more on Blackmagic, visit http://www.decklink.com.

Pinnacle Systems announced CineWave 4, a new version of the company's hardware system that brings support for Final Cut Pro 4. The new version adds a range of new real-time, online and offline editing features. CineWave 4 is built around Pinnacle's Targa Cine engine and adds new real-time video and audio capabilities for both standard-definition and high-definition projects. The new version is a software upgrade from earlier versions. According to Pinnacle, CineWave 4 will incorporate dozens of new features, including expanded real-time effects (including real-time, keyframable slow motion), enhanced HD support, film support and increased audio handling capabilities. It also gains new customizable codecs for user-defined chroma and gamma values. A future version (not necessarily version 4) is also expected to include new integration features for Steinberg's Nuendo (which is now owned by Pinnacle). This includes support for NTSC and HD video out while simultaneously editing and mixing in Nuendo 2, according to Andrew Baum, senior product manager for CineWave. We'll have more in a future report. For now, you can visit http://www.pinnaclesys.com.

I also saw Aurora Video Systems' new IgniterX, the next-generation technology in the company's line of video editing and capture systems. The company says the new version adds a number of new features and offers greater creative and technical control for film and video editing. IgniterX features multiple codec support for all major formats. It also introduces a new 10-bit codec called eXtreme, designed to provide "maximum accuracy over standard 10-bit codecs for easier and highest quality compositing and rendering." Other new features include real-time graphic overlays with alpha and gain; the ability to drop any uncompressed file into a timeline with out the need for rendering, uncluding multiple uncompressed formats in the same timeline; support for keyframing and nesting of all RT effects; and scalable architecture from IgniterX Lite to IgniterX Studio. IgniterX is available now for Mac OS X as a free update for current Igniter users. For more on this, visit http://www.auroravideosys.com.

As you can probably tell, there was quite a bit to see and do this time around at NAB. I haven't even covered half of what I saw, owing partly to the aforementioned loss of brain cells, partly to the fact that there's only so much time before I have to start covering next year's show. At any rate, the signs of a recovering industry are there. And, without a doubt, this year's show offered a wealth of new technologies that left me for the first time in a long time with a sense of optimism rather than foreboding about the future of the Macintosh as a platform for professional creative production.

Were you there? Do you have a different take? Post your thoughts in the Creative Mac user forum here.

Contact the author: Dave Nagel is the producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of several World Wide User Groups, including Synthetik Studio Artist, Adobe Photoshop, Mac OS, Adobe InDesign, Adobe LiveMotion, Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; and executive producer of the Digital Media Net family of publications. You can reach him at [email protected].

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Contact the author: David Nagel is the editor and producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of several World Wide User Groups, including Synthetik Studio Artist, Adobe Photoshop, Apple DVD Studio Pro, Mac OS, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Corel Painter, Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; and executive producer of the Digital Media Net family of publications. You can reach him at [email protected].

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