Holophone was displaying a pair of new surround sound mics that looked more like alien spacecraft than microphones. The H3-D pictured here is the follow-up to the $6K H2. But dang, these things aren't cheap. The company's managed to get the price point down to a more palatable $1600 by using its own microphones inside this bulbous enclosure.
But those prices are no big deal to the pro broadcasters who'll be using the things—they're primarily designed to be used for recording crowds at sporting events and concerts. They're described by their makers as the easiest way to capture surround sound.
The yet-to-be-released H4 Super Mini is designed to be used as a camera-mounted mic, runs for five hours on four AA batteries, and comes with an analog-to-digital converter. Pricing for that one should be around $2600. – Charlie White and Curtis Joe Walker
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H3-D Product Page [Holophone]
NAB's North Hall was home to all of the microphone manufacturers, and a few of them had vintage-looking mics with modern dynamic internals, standard XLR connectors and no phantom power required. Check out that Heil Deco Series Heritage Mic pictured here, a PR20 dynamic mic housed in an "Elvis Style" body. Neat stuff.
Combine one of these with an XLR/USB setup (like the LightSnake) and you'll be podcasting in style for about $200-$250. – Charlie White and Curtis Joe Walker
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Product Page [Heil Sound]
At NAB Gefen displayed a couple of long-overdue technologies for transmitting HDMI over longer distances, one wireless and one using coaxial cable. The first method is wireless using a frequency band between 3.3ghz to 3.5ghz, transmitting HDMI video over a distance of about 60 feet. We actually saw it transmitting over a distance of about 10 feet, but the video looked clean without any visible artifacts. Booth reps said that the maximum rez is 1080i, but the company's working on a 1080p version that may use a pair of transmitters to pump the higher resolution through the air. That's vapor so far, though—Gefen didn't have that 1080p version at the booth.
How did that second device, pumping HDMI over coax work?
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For awhile, Gizmodo had been wondering if the $17K Red On 4K camcorder was genuine or just another piece of vaporware. Which is why we're glad to see the camera at NAB 07 in front of our faces, with support from Apple, Peter Jackson, and others. We had a chance to talk with Red One "Leader of the Rebellion" Ted Schilowitz, allowing him to calm our worries about the historically problematic shipping dates and 4k support that may or may not be available at launch.
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Here it is, the Red One 4K camcorder, tucked away in its crimson booth at NAB. In addition to showing the camcorder, the company also announced a smaller camcorder it will call “Mini Red” shipping at an unspecified date, a line of 4K projectors, and a not-quite-complete digital cinema camera that’s still in Beta, yet “nearly ready.” More details later—take a gander at these pics, hot from the show floor.
Getting our hands on the camera, we noticed it’s not as heavy as we thought it would be due to the carbon fiber construction of its rail mounting system. It’s small, about the size of a normal prosumer video camera with a fixed lens. Hang a lens up front on the Red One, and it’s a bit bigger, but still surprisingly small. The grips were quite knarly, like off-road tires or hand grips on a BMX bike. It’s extremely configurable.
Speaking of lenses, Red will offer a 5-lens prime kit for $19,975 available in Fall 2007, consisting of 15mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm lenses, and all have an f/1.9 aperture except for that 15mm lens, which will be f/2.8. There will also be an $6500 18mm – 50mm f/2.8, available this summer, according to Red. Finally, there’s an f/2.8 300mm for $4950. – Charlie White
Red at NAB [Studio Daily]
Panasonic is talking the talk and showing the results with its P2 HD cards at NAB, and also rolled out a solid-state HD camcorder to go with them, the HPX500. This mutha tops Panasonic's hugely successful HVX200 camcorder introduced a couple of years ago, the pro-level HD shooter that also uses those P2 flash-based memory cards. The difference is that the HBX500 has interchangeable lenses, letting you get all film-like with specialized lenses for unique looks. It uses four of those 16GB P2 cards instead of tape, giving you 64 minutes of DVCPro HD footage at a time.
The camcorder has three 2/3" progressive-scan CCDs, and can handle 32 different types of HD and standard-def formats, plus it can handle variable frame rates of every type. This is a $14,000 camcorder, but this kind of flexibility and quality is amazing for that price. Panny says we'll be seeing the HPX500 on the streets next month. – Charlie White
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Although our gut reaction to seeing the words “new” and “memory card specification” in the same sentence is a hearty “WTF mate?!”, the SxS format seems to be different, and perhaps justified. Sony and SanDisk are teaming up to produce the SxS cards to be compatible with ExpressCard slots and be used in pro camcorders—like the ones we’re seeing at NAB this week—and are useful for people who really need quick access and transfer speeds.
How fast? How about 800 Mbps? Plus it’s going to be nice and thin at only 5mm, so it will fit into the sleeker pro cams that are all the rage these days. The first camcorder from Sony to support this format will be the XDCAM EX series, which are available later this year. – Jason Chen
SanDisk and Sony Announce SxS(TM) Memory Card Specificaation for Professional Camcorders [Japan Corp via Digitimes via Tracy and Matt]
Sony finally followed Panasonic’s lead by introducing a prosumer-level camera that records to a flash drive. But not just any flash drive, the XDCAM EX records high-def video directly to two ExpressCards. That’s good news for MacBook Pro owners as they’ll be able to pop the card into that snug slot and edit away.
Budding Spielbergs will marvel at the camera’s small size that can capture video at 1080i, 1080p, or 720p at variable frame rates. This means you can do graceful slow motion shots, or crank the speed way down to get some fast frenetic action. So when is this coolCam shipping, and at what price?
Sony’s PR guy told us the camera would ship later this year, probably in the fall, with a price somewhere in the neighborhood of $8000. Of course all of this is speculation at the moment, but the company’s Z1U camera retailed at that price when it was introduced three years ago. Sony was quick to point out the EX was not a replacement for the Z1U or the V1U but instead an intermediate camera between those two and the high-end HDC-950.
With its small size and solid state technology, just imagine how great the skateboard videos and shots of guys getting hit in the nuts will look on YouTube in high definition. –Stephen Schleicher
Today at the Panasonic event at NAB, the company let it be known that by the end of the year it will be shipping 32GB cards for its HPX500. Yeah it is a $14,000 dollar camera you don’t care about, but the announcement of the 32-gig card is a great road map to where the solid state technology is headed.
The 32GB cards will sell for around $1800, causing the current 16GB cards to drop to $900, the 8GB will fall to $700, and the 4GB cards will hover around $600. When laptop manufacturers adopt flash memory for their internal hard drives, $1800 is going to seem like an insane price to have for these cards that will allow you to record two hours of DVCPro video.
Take the jump for the really confusing price structure map delivered as only Panasonic can do it.
If you’re interested in high-end video production, you’ll want to take a look at Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2. It’s chock full o’ apps, included a smooth new update to Final Cut Pro, now in version 6, Its main coolness is its ability to crunch HDTV video down to manageable sizes, made possible by ProRes 422, a codec for compressing video that Apple claims to be able to do the video equivalent of stuffing a basketball through a garden hose.
We watched a lengthy demo of the new software, and found it to be a remarkable polyglot, able to handle all kinds of footage all in one big bucket, something that’s really important to broadcasters and filmmakers these days. When there are dozens of varieties of HDTV and regular TV to deal with, this is not a new feature, but welcome by Final Cut users.
Check out a few of our pics in the gallery below, and read more about Final Cut Studio 2 on the next page. galleryPost('apple_finalcut', 8, 'Apple Press Event');
