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1# - Itw Jean-Pierre Beauviala, Aäton CEO Aäton Penelope and its futur digital mag
Right now, we're working on the replacement of the current 35mm mag
by a digital mag with a Dalsa sensor.
- At what resolution ? - A very high resolution : more than 5K...
- Really ?
- Yeah, just over 5K...
Note : the sensor will be 5K but the recorded video flow will be uncompressed 4K
… with a great dynamic range
and a beautiful matter, compared to current video images.
- What dynamic range do you plan on ?
- More than 12 stops. (...) 12 is pretty good.
Some tricks in post make it possible to reach 14,
but 12 is a great starting point,
knowing that film stock is 15.
- And what will be the recording solution ? We're talking about uncompressed 4K, right ?
- Uncompressed, yes.
You'll have an HD output, of course, for the monitoring control
and the recorder will be built-in the mag, operating on removable SSD hard disks.
- In RAID 5 ?
- No, RAID 0. - Ok.
- It's very difficult to handle such a flow.
Today, we're getting at the limit of SSD, but one year from now,
when the mag will be released, it's gonna be just fine.
An exemple : uncompressed 4K 10bit 444 @ 24im/sec is a 750MB/sec bandwidth…
Also, SSD hard disks reach their highest point at 300MB/sec.
So, you need several of them to handle a 4K video flow.
- Will it propose higher frame rates than 24im/sec ?
- Yes, we're planning to get at 40-50im/sec but we don't know yet.
If we reach 50, we'll be thrilled.
- Ok. So, it's gonna be a removable SSD hard disk that you plug by the rear of the mag ?
- Exactly, almost hot-swappable, I would say.
- Great !
- What is very exciting about this mag is that,
first of all, it's very ergonomic,
second, it has a very low consumption,
with two batteries, you can shoot up to 6 or 7 hours !
That's pretty remarkable, compared to the energy consumption of others cameras.
And third, since we make our own OS, the mag boot instantly.
Unlike the Silicon or the RED…
Does the Alexa boot instantly ?
- I don't know, it should be tested.
- Whatever, with Penelope, you turn it on and it's ready, like a film camera.
- Excellent. Why are you running for 4K ? Just for the record.
Because, in any case, you need to oversample even if you get less in theaters.
It's like what's happening now with film copies, mainly shot in 2K.
Compared to a 4K shoot, like we did it on last Depardon's feature,
the difference is less phenomenal than emotional,
deeply emotional.
A negative film is 6 or 7K.
If you put it in a 2K/HD washing machine, you lose the feeling,
you lose the flesh.
- Some say the market is not ready for 4K. Too much bottlenecks.
- Well, first, there's no 4K projectors in theaters.
Second, for the current hard disks,
even with a few triks that reduce the flow,
4K is a gigantic bandwidth to deal with!
So, it's hard to record it on the set.
It's easier to manipulate in post with regular worksations' hard disks.
But, at the end of the day, you have to deal with TeraBytes!
But, it's on its way. Next year...
This mag will be released in one or two years.
And two years from now, this won't be a problem anymore.
That's why we choose the uncompressed way.
We're also thinking about a solution for the set,
a kind of box where you could unload the 4K disks,
and encode them in Avid/HD/whatever datas for the edit room,
in order to conform the final work to 4K only at the very end of the workflow.
- What will be the data file format ?
- We chose DPX, pure and simple.
We thought about DNG but…
May be some another format will become a real standard,
a better standard we could contribute to,
but, right now, DPX is the best we could find.
- It's an open standard...
- Yes, you just need to add the useful chunks.
That's what we did with sound:
the Broadcast Wave Format,
meaning all the professional sound recorded in the world,
that's an Aäton concept at the very beginning!
- Well, create standards is your trademark, isn't it ?
- We never prided ourselves on this because we weren't entirely in the sound business yet
we were just developing Indaw, but we prepared the market for the Cantar
by doing this universal format.
At that time, you had a lot of different formats.
We just took the Wave, we put in it relevant chunks for professional sound work,
the EBU heard about it and branded it as BWF.
And nobody knows Aäton is at the very beginning of that story !
Well, now is a new story and DPX is already a good format.
The whole point is to get along between camera makers and postproduction providers
about the chunks we both need to set up an efficient workflow.
Nothing unreachable.
- When will we see a prototype ?
- If everything goes well, you'll see our first images the 15th of next April at the NAB.
We're beginning to get beautiful images.
And the mag will probably be shown there too,
an ergonomic device wich is a little bit shorter, like that.
May be at the NAB, will see.
- With the built-in recording solution ?
- Yes, of course, it already works !
We've got all the components, now is the time for adjustments,
and adjustments take a lot of time.
Assembling took us four months, so...
- A date of release ?
- Well, if we are lucky, next year, same date.
- Thank you, Jean-Pierre. - Thank you. �