FreshDV has an interview with a developer from the Foundry, discussing a demo project they have to correct rolling shutter. It’s worth a viewing if you’re interested in the pros and cons of CMOS. I’ve had discussions with folks in the past about the sort of optical analysis necessary to correct rolling shutter in post, so it’s pretty cool to see it being done. Also interesting is his guess that within 2-3 years, rolling shutter won’t be an issue (in new cameras).
Monthly Archives: April 2009
AJA KI Pro brings direct to disk ProRes capture to the field
The AJA KI Pro is a DDR recorder which records from HD-SDI or HDMI directly to ProRes Quicktime files on a variety of media types.
This is a pretty amazing piece of hardware, small enough to travel with. This makes a pretty awesome complement to something like an XDCam EX.
Matrox launched MXO2 Mini and dedicated H.264 accelerator
Apparently it was a long winter in Canada, as Matrox has just announced two relatively awesome products.
The first is the Matrox MXO2 Mini, a stripped down version of their MXO2 PCI-E/expresscard capture box. The MXO2 provides input and output for HDMI, analog component, plus svideo and composite. So, for all the folks who want to capture the 4:2:2 HDMI output for their cheap consumer cameras, this box makes that a reality for less than $500. That’s a pretty amazing deal.
At the same time, Matrox has announced the CompressHD. It’s a PCI-Express card which offers hardware-accelerated H.264 encoding. Unlike other solutions, it appears to directly integrate into transcoding products like Compressor, so it can plug into existing workflows.
Priced at less than $500, the CompressHD could become a no-brainer addition to many edit suites, assuming it does what it claims. Matrox just jumped a few slots on my “must visit booths” list.
Another Prosumer AVC-HD cam from Panasonic
Panasonic has just announced the AG-HMC40, a small form factor “AVCCAM” camcorder. You get XLR inputs, 1080p recording, and a touch interface.
Think of it as a baby brother to the HMC-150, about which I hear many good things. I’ll definitely be checking it out at NAB tomorrow.
Sony capitulates to the collapse of capitalism
I’m a few days late in posting this, but it’s exciting none-the-less. Sony, recognizing that budgets aren’t likely to grow any time soon, has released a pair of low-end HD studio cameras, with one model breaking the $50,000 barrier.
The HXC-100 and HSC-300 are both triax-based “industrial” style cameras, which can accept existing large lens kits. They’re switchable between SD and HD, and support both 1080i and 720p.
Basically, these are no frills HD studio cameras, which have been lacking in the Sony line. We’ve used the D35, D50 and D55 cameras in our studios, and have been very happy with the quality and mostly happy with the reliability.
There’s very little additional information available about these cameras, but hopefully more will appear at NAB. The prices ($69k for the HSC-300, $45k for the HCX-100) are supposed for a “basic system,” though it’s not clear what that includes. I’m going to assume that it’s camera+CCU, sans lens.