The Digital Video Horizon – What’s Out There?
We got a lot of feedback from people wanting to see us cover digital video technologies some more, and that’s what we are planning to do. With that in mind, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, having recently come and gone, seemed like a good place to get the ball rolling so, we asked Wanda Meloni, Principal Analyst at M2 Research, to give us her take on the current state of the digital video market, look at a few of the products that impressed her at NAB, touch on a few technology trends and see what’s on the horizon.
The Current Market
The digital video (DV) market is growing at an incredible rate. The acceptance of digital video cameras has helped fuel the market at both the consumer and professional levels. M2 Research estimates there were roughly 4 million digital video cameras sold in 2000, with the number projected to double in the next 2 years. Subsequently, total sales of consumer-based video editing solutions have also been doubling since 1998. And at the mid-to-high range, video editing solutions have seen annual growth rates of 20%.
The DV market is really made up of a number of vertical markets including post production and film, broadcast and videographers, government, corporate, education, web design, game development. Together the post, film and broadcast markets still make up the bulk of the market with 52% of all video editing work falling in this category. However, new growth is coming from the web, corporate, government, and educational markets.
Source: Digital Media Market Study, M2 Research
Thanks to the advent of DV we now have so many more flavors of interactive content for consumers to choose from, for content creators to create for and content providers to distribute to. Think about it, we now have DVD, HDTV, streaming media, Interactive TV, and wireless as new technology platforms for digital content. We cruised the show floor at NAB 2001 this year to take a look at some of the tools and technologies currently impacting the DV market.
Apple
Perhaps the biggest “winner” at NABwas Apple, who without a doubt brought a certain buzz and excitement to an otherwise subdued event. Intel had tried to get some PR mileage out of making announcements about the Pentium 4 tied in with NAB, but frankly, it turned out to be hype that didn’t translate into show floor buzz.
Apple’s big announcement at NAB was their latest release of Final Cut Pro partnered with the latest real-time DV hardware from Pinnacle, Canopus and Matrox. Apple seems to have a killer combination. Real-time DV editing at prices starting under $5,000. An impressive showing, and by the swarms of folks mobbing the Apple booth it was evident that many people felt the same.
Aside from an impressive line up of hardware vendor support, Apple was also showing Final Cut Pro networked with storage area network (SAN) capabilities, thanks to their partnership with Transoft, Hewlett Packard’s storage provider subsidiary.
According to Apple, there have been over 150 million downloads of QuickTime 4. In its first week of being available, Apple claimed QuickTime 5 had been downloaded 1.5 million times, a good indication it is being well received. QuickTime 5 was released for handling video, sound, animation, graphics, text, music, and immersive scenes. The latest version of QuickTime also supports MPEG-1 content, Flash 4, advanced digital video codecs, and DLS and SoundFonts for audio.
Apple has already amassed a very comprehensive line up of digital camera manufacturers that are integrating QuickTime technology into their products. More than 75 camera models playback content using QuickTime, of which 25 also capture short video clips in the QuickTime format. The company is going gangbusters with Final Cut Pro now that they have the hardware to back it up. Apple still manages to have a hold on its core audience in the media industry.
Avid
Avid had been the dominant player in video editing solutions for many years with high-end products like Media Composer and Symphony. But they were late to get on the Windows bandwagon and a number of other companies such as Pinnacle Systems, Canopus and Discreet quickly saw an opportunity to move into that market space. Avid addressed the Windows market with its Avid Xpress, but like their other products this was a complete video editing system. With more and more users opting for flexible and integratable hardware and software solutions, Avid has come out with a professional software editing package that directly competes with Apple’s Final Cut Pro and Adobe’s Premiere – Avid Xpress DV 2.0. The product was actually available last year, but only as a bundle with IBM’s IntelliStation systems. Now Xpress DV is available as a stand-alone package and runs on desktop workstations as well as notebooks. The product is ideal for anyone working with DV, offline editing, and Web video delivery and is priced at $1,699
Avid Xpress DV 2.0 running on a standard notebook
The company also released the Avid Xpress DV PowerPack which includes Avid ePublisher Companion Edition, Knoll LightFactory AVX, Pinnacle Commotion DV 3.1, Sonic Solutions DVDit! SE, Image Stabilize AVX, and the DV Filmmaker’s Toolkit for $2,999
Canopus
Canopus is one of those companies that doesn’t have a lot of mindshare in the video market, but that has not stopped them from continuing to crank out some great products. At NAB the company introduced Xplode Professional, a 3D video effects package that works with Adobe Premiere, Ulead MediaStudio Pro and the Canopus Edit products. Xplode Professional retails for $399 and is able to provide near real-time effects thanks to the company’s Xplode engine.
Another new product from Canopus is Storm Rack, a rack-mount turnkey editing system which is based on the company’s DVStorm NLE. The product, which will ship in June for $6,999 has an impressive list of features including dual Pentium III, 30GB system hard drive, 60GB disk array, DVD/CD-RW drive, MPEG output for DVD and web streaming. In addition it includes a SoftMPG Encoder for creating MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 streams, Canopus’ StormEdit, Adobe Premiere 6.0, Xplode Professional, SpruceUp!, Sonic Foundry ACID Style, and Web Video Wizard.
Discreet
One company that continues to show leadership in the DV market is Discreet. You have to give the company credit, they are like a finely tuned machine. When they roll out a new product they level no rock unturned, from featuring early users, to lots of partnership agreements, and of course, solid channel sales that give the company immediate distribution into the market.
Combustion has been no exception. The company’s compositing package, Combustion has been on the market for exactly a year. The product is being bundled with almost every possible compatible hardware and software partner imaginable and is getting great reviews from users and press alike. Priced at $2,995, Combustion had a great showing at NAB.
Discreet also used NAB to showcase heatwave, the company’s new workflow solution. Heatwave is basically an infrastructure solution that brings together a number of Discreet’s infrastructure products such as jobnet and backdraft as well as their standard video and graphics tools. Additionally, it incorporates a host of third party applications from various networks and supports multiple OS’ and platforms.
Aside from heatwave, the Discreet is very focused on pushing 3D graphics onto the web. 3D Studio Max is the leading 3D animation package used by animators and seems to be the modeling package of choice at the moment for 3D web content. At NAB Discreet was showcasing the recently announced collaboration the company has with Macromedia. There is now a 3D Studio Max Exporter for Macromedia Director Shockwave Studio.
Media 100
Media 100 has done a great job of modifying its product offering over the past 12 months. Instead of being completely streaming-centric, the company is looking beyond streaming to providing development tools that assist the overall workflow, from data acquisition, editing, designing effects and delivering multiple broadcast mediums.
And the company’s product line reflects this shift, with announcements such as Cleaner XL. Cleaner XL is based on a new acceleration board, the Media 100 CrystalICE which helps speed up the encoding process, and is priced at $5,995.
Media 100 launched two new hardware-accelerated boards, the Media 100 ICE and ICE Ultra, both based on the BlueICE 166 boards for acceleration of Adobe After Effects 5, with pricing starting at $3,750. Further software support is scheduled in a few months.
Media 100 also made several technology announcements of where it’s headed in the future. The company demonstrated its new automated enterprise stream technology for high volume streaming based on its Cleaner technology. Separately, they announced their support of MPEG-4 and have partnered with PacketVideo and DiamondBack Vision to explore new MPEG-4 encoding capabilities.
Newtek
Newtek, if you remember from several years back, gained early recognition in the video editing space for a great product called the VideoToaster. The Toaster, as it has come to be known, had a great impact on the early video editing market because it was a relatively inexpensive solution that ran on the Amiga. As a result, it gave independent videographers access to a solution they could use to create good quality video at a relatively low cost. With the death of the Amiga and more competition coming into the space, Newtek struggled for many years to regain its footing in the digital video space. In 2000 they released the VideoToaster for NT, and while it supported uncompressed video and was reasonably priced it did not really get Newtek back in the game.
Now the company has the Video Toaster 2, the product that Newtek believes more closely resembles the original. This new version supports live switching, real-time editing of compressed and uncompressed video, as well as advanced streaming capabilities.
The new Video Toaster 2 interface
Newtek has incorporated some interesting features into Video Toaster 2, such as ToasterEdit for real-time feedback, dual streaming capabilities for edited productions and live events, and the company’s proprietary Cross Keyer technology which lets users paint right in the vectorscope window to select a multiple range of chroma key colors. In addition, Video Toaster 2 comes with a number of software bundles included such as LightWave Express for 3D animation, Aura 2 for video paint and compositing, and insync’s Speed Razor editing system. Priced at $4,995, Video Toaster 2 is scheduled for release in July. We should know by the end of this year if Newtek has a winner.
Matrox
A solid performer in the video market, Matrox has several new products including the new RTMac, a real-time editing card for use with Apple’s Power Mac G4 and Final Cut Pro 2. RTMac includes the company’s “flex 3D” technology. The product is already shipping for $999. Matrox’s other product announcement was for the new RT2500, a single PCI -bus card that provides three-layer real-time editing with 3D effects. Priced also at $999 , it comes with a number of software bundles including Adobe Premiere, Inscriber Title Express, Sonic Foundry Acid Music, Sonic Solutions DVDit!LE, and Ligos LSX MPEG LE for MPEG-1 output.
Matrox also released their DigiSuite Max, a new editing platform that includes real-time effects layering as well as real-time MPEG-2 encoding for DVD authoring, and multiple output choices such as native DV, DV50, or MPEG-2. The product is scheduled to ship this summer and is priced between $5,995 and $7,995.
Pinnacle Systems
Pinnacle Systems is doing a great job of bridging the gap between multiple media formats. From digital video editing, to streaming, DVD, and HDTV the company is building complementary products that are also cost effective.
Cinewave is Pinnacle’s software/hardware solution that works on Apple’s PowerMac G4. The product includes Final Cut Pro, Commotion Pro, Knoll Light Factory and the TARGA Cine Engine. Aside from supporting any delivery format from DV, uncompressed 601, PAL, NTSC, 1080i, 1080p, 720p, 4:3, 16:9 and Web, Cinewave now also delivers real-time special effects with uncompressed standard definition. Pricing for the Cinewave solution starts at $6,495.
Video-Editing Workstations
There were fewer workstation vendors at NAB this year and those companies that were there really toned down their presence. PC vendors have been hit hard in the last twelve months both in terms of the slowdown in overall PC sales and the drop in stock prices. Perhaps in part as a result of these harder times, many vendors decided to cut spending on marketing activities, and tradeshows are always the first thing to go.
These types of budget decisions are made at the corporate level, and while overall PC sales are down the workstation market is doing a little better.
Compaq
Compaq for example released their latest solutions for DV editing solutions that support some of the latest released DV editing software. The company has created two reasonably priced systems. The first is its native DV option kit that works with Compaq’s Workstations and Deskpro PCs. The complete kit is priced at $1,700 and includes Adobe Premiere 6.0, IEEE-1394 interface, 30GB.
The second DV solution has Compaq’s Desktop EN qualified with Avid Xpress DV and starts at $3,800. This DV editing solution includes Avid Xpress DV, Sonic Solutions DVDit!, Media CleanerEZ, Matrox G450 graphics card, and streaming/DV output support.
Sun
Another workstation vendor who is starting to appear in the digital content creation (DCC) space is Sun Microsystems. They tried to enter this market several years ago, but it was a little premature. They didn’t have all the hardware components in place to support this market and as a result weren’t able to get a lot of independent software vendors (ISVs) to support the platform. That was then, this is now. The industry has progressed and so has Sun. They’ve got most of their hardware components in place, they certainly have the storage and server requirements, and they have a better understanding of the market. At NAB they even announced a new bundle with Creative where Sun plans to offer two new sound cards for all of Sun’s PCI-equipped workstations and servers.
MPEG-4
The other dominate theme at this year’s NAB was the growing support for MPEG-4. Many editing and streaming technology vendors are showing momentum and taking MPEG-4 to heart. MPEG-4 is fast becoming the looked-upon standard for delivering data rich content over the Internet. Because MPEG-4 is so scalable and can bring in data from multiple sources, content providers are very interested in the broadband applications such as delivering Internet-enhanced television broadcasting into the home. MPEG-4 , due to its compression capabilities, is being targeted for handheld wireless devices including cell phones and PDAs. Some of the early developers of MPEG-4 solutions include Ligos, PacketVideo, en-Vue, envivio, and DiamondBack Vision.
OpenML
Another budding technology standard that is gaining momentum is OpenML being developed by a consortium of companies, called the Khronos Group. The Khronos Special Interest Group itself is made up of a number of brand name vendors including 3Dlabs, ATI, Compaq, Discreet Logic, Intel, HP, IBM and Sun to name a few. The creation of the group was to bring together industry leaders to help create a standard for creating digital media content and playback.
At NAB the Khronos Group announced the completion of the OpenML specification. Up until now OpenML has not be a widely known or discussed specification, but now that the specification is available we should expect to see more coverage. The OpenML software environment enables easier integration of multiple forms of digital content including video, audio and 3D graphics simultaneously. One important point to note about OpenML is while it is enriches the graphics, video and audio of new products such as TV set top boxes it works for portable devices as well. So, where MEPG-4 provides the streaming video component, OpenML can be viewed as the glue that would bring together all the components from video to rich 3D graphics and rich audio.
Match Moving
One exciting new area creating a stir in the DCC space both from a 3D perspective as well as for video editing, is called match moving tools. Match moving tools combine 3D objects with video and incorporate 3D tracking technologies, thereby allowing any form of 3D object to be placed in a video scene. While such a thing exists already for films, most of the high-end production facilities had to create expensive internal development tools to accomplish this. Now, with the help of boujou from 2D3, a company out of the UK and MatchMover from Realviz of France, videographers can now create the same effects. While the products are still relatively expensive, at $10,000 and $5,000 respectively, we should expect to see more of these sorts of tools in the future.
The Horizon
The digital media market in general is an extremely exciting market and will stay that way for at least the next five years. Last year was the year of streaming media. Now, companies realize that streaming itself is just an output mode for distribution, just as HDTV, SDTV, and DVD are. This year seems to be the year of the “integrated workflow”. This proved to be no exception at NAB, with the majority of companies showcasing enhanced-workflow features and solutions. Companies are starting to focus more on the big picture and what part of that continuum they fall into.
The tools are robust and prices are dropping making for a strong indicator for future growth (better quality and more access). With the focus on easing workflow bottlenecks, there is also growing emphasis on the use of SANs (storage area networks) to store all this digital content we are now creating, digital media asset management solutions to keep track of it all, and secured broadband access to distribute it.
If NAB 2001 is any indication of what is on the horizon, there is a whole lot more to come. Suffice it to say that the number of companies entering this market with new, innovative digital video and graphics products is growing every year. With prices continuing to come down, DV is having an enormous impact on the media industry.
