Sometimes it's not only the big splashy award-winning products you see introduced at the annual NAB fest that catch your eye. Sometimes its just one new feature on a nonlinear edit system that seems so mind-bogglingly useful you just know the designers behind it had the experienced insight of true editors.
When I first saw the new look of software version 8.2 for Leitch's post production nonlinear edit systems, the interface had been changed so significantly that I anticipated hearing about a new, single digit software release. But it's a credit to the company that since 8.2 software is mostly concerned with improving the user interface, the folks at Leitch decided not to anoint it with a 9.0 designation.
"We only increment a full digit when our new software lets the system do something it couldn't before," explains Mike Nann, Technical Marketing Manager for the Post Production Product Line at Leitch Technology Corp. "For example, version 7 added Web streaming capabilities and version 8 enabled 32-bit video file support and alpha channel layering. 8.2 totally redesigns the way the user interacts with those capabilities."
MORE THAN A FACELIFT
Leitch's family of production NLE's (as distinguished from their NEWSFlash-II newsroom editing workstations) includes dpsVelocity providing two video streams from the dpsReality hardware. The multi-stream dpsVelocityQ debuted last September on the dpsQuattrus platform putting out four real time channels of video with up to six graphics streams and four channels of 3D DVE.
But in reality, V 8.2 is more than a pretty facelift. Prominent among the new enhancements is that nifty feature called EyeCon View that grabbed this editor's eye amidst the bustle of the Las Vegas Convention Center floor. With digicutting involving more and more complex layering these days, EyeCon View presents little picons that sit atop each layer in the timeline, continually displaying the video and its associated timecode that sits beneath the playhead's position. This makes it a cinch to identify specific frames on any video element and align them for proper compositing. EyeCon View even updates itself as you scrub through a project providing what amounts to little preview windows continually available for each individual layer. Simple. Elegant. And most importantly, highly useful.
To give credit where it's due, EyeCon View is the brainchild of Leitch's Director of Development for Post Production Products, Sam Lee.
But that is not all that's new in 8.2. "Many editors liked the structure of the user interface, but a bunch of them asked us to tone down the colors so our GUI didn't shine out like a beacon in a darkened edit suite," Nann laughs. "But there are really over 100 improvements in this new release, and 80 percent of them came from user feedback," Nann says. "These include support for Direct Show audio filters in the timeline, hot key-linked audio crossfades, a variety of new trim modes and an 'Align By Timecode' feature that repositions clips based on their timecode value."
Another trick editors will appreciate is that if an audio clip is detached from its associated video clip, no matter how far apart you put them on the timeline there will be a little pop-up window that tells you their sync offset displayed in either frames or time. As with EyeCon View, this feature reflects the developers' concern given to the practical challenges real world editors face.
8.2 also provides support for Windows Media 9, and Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) and OMF import and
export though a specially priced "Interoperability" option. On dpsVelocityQ you can even get multi-camera editing capabilities with faster than real time video from up to four iso camera recordings.
The success of these Leitch production NLE's recently earned them a major coup when Richmond, Va.-based Media General Broadcast Group (MGBG) purchased 25 systems to make dpsVelocity and dpsVelocityQ their standard editing and graphics platforms. As one of the top 25 largest broadcast groups in the United States, Media General's 26 television stations include NBC, CBS, ABC, WB and UPN affiliates, and their new Leitch NLE's will be used mostly for preparing effects-powered promos for individual stations to broadcast.
"We demo-ed several other nonlinear edit systems," says John Atteberry, Division Production Manager for Media General Broadcast Group (MPBG), "but found the Leitch editors offered better real time performance for the price thanks to its hardware-based architecture. We need edit systems that can quickly turn around daily marketing packages conformed to the needs of each member of our group and the 15 multi-stream dpsVelocityQ's we purchased are helping us maintain our schedule even with the inclusion of complex effects. Our 10 dpsVelocity systems are proving invaluable to our graphics artists since their two video streams let them combine computer generated clips with their dedicated key channels, both of which can be output simultaneously in real time."
Atteberry also found the proprietary dps Virtual Tape File System (VTFS) of the Velocity editors to be invaluable for as complex an operation as MGBG. Files stored on the Leitch NLEs receive a ".dps" suffix that can then be output simultaneously in 10 popular image file formats, including TGA, BMP, and TIF. "When our computer artists need a file they access the source and export it in whatever format their application requires," he says. "That way the artists don't have to concern themselves with translating the different formats during I/O. It becomes transparent to them."
ROCK-SOLID
The dps edit systems have always been popular with cost-conscious boutique editing enterprises. Matt Strauss was an early beta tester of V 8.2 at Burlington, Vt.-based Orange Rectangle Labs, where they design DVD menus. This recently included the whole series of "The Avengers" TV episodes authored by its partners, Resolution, Inc., for its digital release. Strauss also works on packages for Discovery, A&E and The History Channel, and has found his dpsVelocity and dpsVelocityQ systems perfectly suited for putting projects together in real time.
"People sometimes don't appreciate how complex DVD menus can be," Strauss says. "Some are almost like a trailer for the main program and with all the individual channels the dpsVelocityQ can handle, it lets us create composites that we once had to put together with outboard software such as After Effects."
It's the robustness of the hardware that gives these systems their edge. "The quality of the images is excellent," Straus admits, "and the new 8.2 software is rock solid."
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