DPReview: Highlight reel: top video trends from NAB 2016

NAB 2016

Last week Las Vegas once again hosted the annual National Association of Broadcasters Show. Although many of the products and technologies seen at NAB won’t be of direct interest our audience (think satellite trucks and news studios), the explosion of high quality, affordable tools aimed at filmmakers and videographers make it a good place to watch industry trends and new product categories. Perhaps more importantly, NAB can provide insight into what technologies we might expect to filter down to prosumer and consumer products in a few years time.

Take a look at a few trends and products from NAB 2016 that caught our eye.

Virtual Reality (VR)

VR was everywhere at NAB, with multiple conference sessions focused on VR technology, storytelling and distribution that were packed to standing room only, with everyone from independent filmmakers to Hollywood producers joining the discussion. Perhaps the best place to see the latest VR technologies in action was the dedicated Virtual and Augmented Reality Pavilion, which highlighted companies making tools for every segment of the VR production pipeline, including cameras, editing software, and viewing devices.

One of the top destinations at the pavilion was the VR Showcase sponsored by Kaleidoscope VR, a VR studio, and Jaunt, a maker of VR cinema cameras. With dozens of stations featuring headsets from Samsung, Oculus and HTC, visitors could experience cinematic VR experiences in person. These weren’t just your standard 'park a camera in an iconic spot and look around' videos, but actual films created with a VR audience in mind. More than a few people who were mildly excited about VR while standing in line exited the demo area sold on the future of VR.

We’re planning a follow-up report on VR technologies and our experience with VR at NAB in the next few days, so stay tuned.

Nokia OZO: Impressive VR for a price

The Nokia OZO includes eight cameras and eight microphones to create immersive VR footage. You can pick one up for a cool $60,000.

If you still equate the name Nokia with mobile phones, it’s time to change your thinking. The company has made a big push into VR, making a big splash at NAB with its $60,000 OZO 360-degree spherical VR camera. The OZO features 8 cameras, each with 195-degree field of view and global shutter, as well as the ability to capture stereo video for 3D effect. To add additional realism, the OZO also features 8 microphones in order to provide 360 sound, something that’s important for creating immersive VR experiences.

Although the quality of the footage from the OZO still isn’t up to the resolution and dynamic range standards we’re used to seeing in digital still cameras, the VR experience created by the OZO was impressive and compelling - certainly one of the best we’ve seen.

GoPro Omni

Not to be left out the the VR extravaganza, GoPro showed off its new Omni camera, a cube-shaped cage that holds six GoPro Hero 4 cameras. Although rigs holding multiple GoPro cameras aren’t new in the VR world, GoPro has embedded useful features to improve the experience of a multi-GoPro setup. Primarily, all cameras in the rig are synchronized and act as a single camera. This allows you to configure settings on a single primary camera which are then synchronized to the remaining cameras. Similarly, starting or stopping recording on the primary camera is synchronized as well, and all cameras are synchronized while shooting, meaning that even rolling shutter stays in sync in order to obtain better footage and insure a smooth post-production workflow. 

GoPro is selling the Omni for $1,499 (rig only) or $4,999 for the full kit.

4K? No thanks, I think I’ll take 8K instead.

Although many consumers are still learning about 4K video technology, the broadcast industry is already beginning to think about 8K video, with companies such as NHK, Canon, Panasonic, Ikegami and Planar showing off 8K cameras and displays.

To put this in a bit of context, none of these companies really expect 8K technology to come to your living room any time soon, though that’s likely to occur in some form by the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which seems to be a common target in the industry. However, there is significant interest in 8K content acquisition for the same reasons producers of HD content like to shoot in 4K: additional post-processing options and better HD quality footage. Display manufacturers are also excited about 8K for applications where size really does matter, such as large cinema screens, displays at amusement parks, and giant stadium screens.

Of course, once you've seen 8K, 4K is never quite the same...

8K Displays

It's almost impossible to see the pixels on Canon's prototype 8K reference display - even with a magnifying glass.

One of the most impressive examples of 8K technology was Canon’s prototype 8K reference display. To fully appreciate just how sharp this display is, consider that each frame of 8K video is a little over 35MP of resolution - the rough equivalent of a full resolution Nikon D810 image. Pack that into relatively small screen and for all practical purposes it looks like a backlit fine art print.

To drive home just how much resolution this display has, Canon even tethered a magnifying glass to it so you could look at the pixels up close. While it’s possible to see them you have to look really hard - certainly much closer than you ever would in real world conditions.

8K Prints

Prints in Canon's 8K print gallery were stunning and looked as good as what we would expect from even the best still cameras.

A benefit of 8K video that should interest still photographers is creating still images from video frames. Keep in mind that with 8K video each individual frame is a 35MP still image, meaning as long as you use settings to avoid motion blur it’s possible to make some spectacular prints.

Canon illustrated the potential value of this application with an 8K print gallery, exhibiting prints made from individual frames of 8K video. As one would expect when working from a 35MP starting image, the results were spectacular, with vivid colors and sharp edges. If this is the future, bring it on.

Atomos Shogun Flame and Ninja Flame

The new Atomos Shogun Flame (top) and the original Shogun (bottom). The new Flame includes an HDR screen and AtomHDR technology, which allows videographers to see a live approximation of what graded footage will look like when shooting in Log.

Atomos has become a favorite of video shooters thanks to excellent off-camera displays and recorders. At NAB the company announced its newest line of ‘Flame’ products, which add significant new features to its Shogun and Ninja recorders.

The biggest improvement most users will notice are the displays: the screens are now 10-bit HDR displays that are up to four times brighter than previous models, meaning they can even be used outdoors without a hood. Atomos has also introduced a technology called AtomHDR to help videographers that shoot in Log format. Log video typically looks very flat until it’s color graded, making it challenging to visualize the final look of the video in the field while shooting. AtomHDR allows you to record in Log while displaying accurate contrast and colors on-screen, giving a good approximation of what graded footage will look like.

The Shogun Flame lists for $1,695, and the Ninja Flame (which lacks some features such as SDI and XLR inputs) lists for $1,295.

Blackmagic Video Assist 4K

Videographers also flocked to the Blackmagicdesign booth to try out the Blackmagic Video Assist 4K, an updated version of its Video Assist monitor and recorder. The Video Assist 4K is built around a 7-inch display and includes HDMI and SDI plugs, dual SD card slots for continuous UHD recording, LANC connection for remote control, and XLR microphone inputs. Footage can be recorded in 10-bit 4:2:2 video in either ProRes or DNxHD for easy downstream editing.

The Video Assist 4K lists for $895.

Sennheiser Microphones

The Sennheiser MKE 440.

Cameras tend to get a lot of attention, but videographers know that sound can be just as important as a good picture when capturing video.

Last year, at NAB 2015, Sennheiser introduced the ClipMic digital and MKE 2 digital, lavalier microphones that plug directly into the Lighting port of an iOS device to record high quality sound, turning iPhones into great off-camera recorders. This year, the company followed up with additional Lightning-compatible microphones: The HandMic digital, a handheld microphone designed for mobile journalism, and the MK 4 digital, a studio microphone.

Sennheiser also introduced the MKE 440 stereo microphone for DSLRs. Designed to mount on a camera’s hot shoe, the MKE 400 provides high quality stereo recording as opposed to the mono recording provided by most DSLR microphones, and should prove useful where recording an immersive soundscape with an on-camera mic is important.

Lytro Cinema Camera

The Lytro Cinema camera promises to change the way films are made, though at the moment it's about the length of a VW minibus.

Lytro was the clear winner of the ‘Well, that was bigger than we expected…’ award at NAB. 

The company, which recently announced its exit from the consumer photography business, literally pulled the cover off its new prototype Cinema camera to a standing room only crowd. Featuring a 755MP imaging sensor that appears to be about a foot wide, the Cinema camera has the potential to change the way some films are shot. 

Lytro’s Jon Karafin gave a live demo illustrating the camera’s unique ability to alter creative choices in post-processing, such as plane of focus, depth of field and depth-based keying. And because all of the computational work is done by thousands of CPUs in Google’s cloud, he was able to run the entire demo off a laptop computer.

The prototype camera is huge (about the same length as a VW minibus, to our eye), but company representatives told us that smaller versions will follow. You can read our analysis of the Lytro announcement here.

from Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) http://ift.tt/1XSzu8c
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