IBC IN 500 WORDS OR LESS

IBC ‘08 in Amsterdam was very busy but in a relaxed way; it’s like NAB on Xanax, and I like it! Could have done without the fish sandwiches being offered at the RAI convention center — head and all — but other than that, a country that serves cheese for breakfast and lunch is my kinda place.

Companies getting into or enhancing stereoscopic offerings were all the rage at the show. Quantel talked up its partnership with 3ality and its co-development of the SIP2100 stereo image processor. da Vinci unveiled a new version of its Resolve R-series digital enhancement suite designed for stereo 3D processing. Spain’s SGO was there showing how its Mistika product can color correct both eyes at the same time, and others, like Iridas, The Foundry and Autodesk also showed product and emphasized their commitment to stereo 3D.

Eyeon was at the show with its new Generation product and updates to its Fusion system. Imagineering was talking about its Mocha for After Effects, which is being bundled with CS4. Codex was showing its Lab, which they describe as digital-film-lab-in-a-box. XDT discussed the new addition to its Catapult family of products, called the Catapult Bridge, which allows NFS and CIFS client access to frame sequences stored on any Catapult system. Filmlight had the AatonK film recorder at its stand. FilmLight will handle sales, marketing, service and support for AatonK, while Aaton will manufacture the system.

Thomson’s Spirit has two new features, including the OptiPin optical pin registration, and an improved grain reducer.

And now that the Red camera SDK is available, companies being able to work with RedCode were ubiquitous. Just a few include da Vinci, Quantel, Autodesk, Digital Vision, Thomson Grass Valley, Avid and Adobe.

“We screened 4k footage from Red-shot movies, commercials, TV shows and music videos on one of world’s largest screens at the IBC Big Screen Theater,” reports Red’s Ted Schilowitz. “In addition there were many companies in the DI space demonstrating their first round of adoption of the Red SDK, allowing them to open up and work with RedCode footage in its native form. This is a big step for Red as so many projects are being shot now of all budget levels and those productions all have different requirements for dailies creation, editorial, color grading and finishing.”

Many companies were also talking about what Signiant’s Tony Lapolito calls going “from tripod to iPod,” including Adobe, which has been talking about this kind of workflow for years.

So IBC ‘08 was more about trends and enhancing workflows than ground-breaking new technology. So many products…So little time.