The future is finally here, and it’s clear – high-definition kind of clear. Stations including Citytv Toronto, Sportsnet and TSN are already broadcasting in HD, and shows are being prepped for life in the HD age, all of which means producers need the HD tools to do the job – even if they are, as of now, only chugging off the assembly line.

At Toronto rental house and post facility Sim Video, president Rob Sim has seen demand for HD explode. In 2001, the company’s L.A. office supplied fewer than 10 shows capturing in HD, but it did 17 in 2002 and 53 in 2003. While the uptake is not as pronounced in Canada, Sim says demand for HD has grown since last June, as Canucks begin future-proofing. He points to Nanalan as an example: produced for CBC Kids by Lenz Entertainment, the series has been shot in HD with Sim gear, even though it is broadcast in standard NTSC.

The Canadian community is slowly coming around, adds Bert Silva, president of post systems dealer Solutions in Computing in Toronto.

‘They might not necessarily be ready to move whole-hog into the HD pipeline, but they want to get a system in to start to move their thought process in that direction,’ he says.

Although Canadian producers may have just begun forays into the format, the systems themselves have been around long enough to be battle-tested. Sim currently rents out 15 24p Sony HDW-F900 and two Panasonic AJ-HDC27F cameras. Clients mostly show up for the more-established Sony brand, says Sim, but the Panasonic camera offers more flexibility as it can be set between one to 60 progressive frames, while the Sony is limited to 24p, 25p, 30p or 50i and 60i (25 frame interlaced and 30 interlaced).

Silva’s HD mainstay tends to be Pinnacle’s HD-capable CineWave post-production system for the Mac. Although the system has been serving clients for years, Pinnacle recently announced some major upgrades. Says Silva: ‘[Pinnacle] revised their board to be able to do a lot more realtime capabilities in HD and to work with the new PCIX 133 MHz bus feeds.’

Silva says he also gets lots of interest in AJA’s Kona 2 (billed as the ‘ultimate video capture card’), the Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD (an HDTV SDI Card) and DeckLink HD Pro (a 12-bit HDTV SDI Dual Link 4:4:4 and NTSC/PAL capture and playback card with analog video monitoring).

Silva, like Sim, attended the National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas in April, where HD was the prevalent theme. Silva was particularly impressed with Blackmagic’s new HDLink, which allows for true HD on an LCD panel display. (It will begin to ship in a few weeks.) Also of interest to Silva was Apple’s Final Cut Pro 4.5 editing software, which has been dubbed ‘Final Cut Pro HD’, even though previous versions of FCP could also handle HD. But it’s a moniker, says Silva, that proves HD has hit the big time.

Sylvain Plourde, president of Montreal software reseller 3vis technologies, also took note of FCP HD at NAB, but found the new Sony Vegas 5 (which allows editing and finishing on the PC platform) and Apple Motion (for realtime motion graphics design) particularly appealing. And, he notes, ‘for US$300, Motion is really going to be an [Adobe] After Effects killer, or not to far from it.’

Unfortunately for Plourde, he also thinks it could affect a part of his business as well, as first-time users are more likely to download the program directly from Apple (or use pirate copies). But Plourde says larger, established companies will still look for support.

‘I think there is software out there that still requires expertise,’ he observes. ‘Even if [Alias] Maya went down in price, it is the same piece of software it was three years ago, and it is still as [challenging] to use.

‘The only thing now is that you have to be careful where you invest your time, since the margins are smaller. Unfortunately, you can’t develop the same type of relationship with everyone that you used to.’

Rob Sim’s attention was caught at NAB by the new Arri D20 prototype.

‘It has the same chassis as [an ARRI] film camera, an optical viewfinder as opposed to electronic, a mechanical shutter, and it will take 35mm lenses,’ he says. The D20 or something equivalent would be welcome to Sim, who currently must spend $15,000 to $20,000 on modifying existing HD camera systems to make them ‘film-friendly.’

Sim also continues to be impressed with the progress of Waterloo, ON-based Dalsa’s Origin digital cinema system, the roots of which the manufacturer claims lie in motion picture imaging rather than the traditional videocam. Dalsa showed the camera at NAB for the second time, and it is slated to become commercially available Nov. 1. The company is striving to develop the practical 4K camera (an eight mega-pixel imager) that it hopes will make images that look better than film. (By comparison, the current Sony cameras are about 1.9K.) Sim feels the system is still cumbersome, however, and needs more development time.

-www.sicinc.com

-www.simvideo.com

-www.3vis.ca