IBC, the International Broadcasting Convention, was held in Amsterdam this week. Many media and technology vendors make new product announcements and releases at the conference, so I like to track those developments, at least the ones that are relevant to my work. Last week’s Adobe releases were early IBC announcements, but there were numerous other interesting developments over the course of the week.
Canon announced a new addition to their Cinema EOS lineup, in the form of the C80, a 6K Full Frame camera with an RF ‘mirror-less’ lens mount. From one perspective, it upgrades the existing C70 with a much larger sensor, higher resolution, 12G SDI output, and a number of other improvements. Another way to look at it, is as a smaller form-factor implementation of the C400 sensor, at a lower price point, around $5500. Either way, it is bringing larger sensors and capabilities to lower price points, which is always welcomed. Canon also announced a new 28-70mm zoom RF lens , for full frame mirrorless cameras, which they claim will become their new ‘standard’ zoom lens, for $1100.
AJA released a couple of new products, the most interesting of which from my perspective, is the KONA IP25, for outputting ST2110 IP-Video over 25GbE networking. The intention is to make it easier for existing AJA customers to make the jump from SDI output to IP-Video. This is not the first time AJA has created a product like this, but when the first KONA IP came out in 2016, the market wasn’t really ready for it. Eight years later, there is a much larger IP-Video ecosystem for it to fit into. The new KONA IP25 doesn’t have SDI and HDMI monitoring outputs like the original did, but with Dual 25GbE SFP ports, it has much more bandwidth, allowing two streams of uncompressed UHD in and out simultaneously. 
I still contend that the KONA IP cards don’t do anything that can’t be accomplished in software with a regular NIC, but the software involved in the ST2110 standard is very complicated, this makes it much easier for developers to add IP-Video support to products that already support SDI output. But at $7K, this is not a cheap way to add IP Video to your workstation. AJA also released an OpenGear version of their popular ColorBox, for larger installations in racks.
In another IP Video related development, NVidia announced the availability of Holoscan for Media, which is a framework for real-time video processing on GPU based datacenter systems. This sits at the juncture between AI image analysis and computer vision, and IP Video transmission. It promises to aid in the development of IP video tools, by offloading some of the complex aspects like PTP and NMOS onto their framework.
Blackmagic Design is showing off a working version of their upcoming 17K 65mm camera, which will cost $30K. They also have a new 5″ HDR touchscreen monitor, optimized for the new PYXIS 6K camera they announced an NAB, which should finally be available soon. For regular people, they have released Blackmagic Camera 1.3, which adds support for new features and more phones. 
This free app has been very popular with cell phone shooters, because it offers more control over the integrated camera sensors, and support things like sync timecode, audio level adjustments, and other functions not available in the default camera apps. This app combined with DaVinci Resolve offers a pretty impressive mobile production software workflow, essentially for free.
