Back in the infancy of the computer industry, circa 1965, a young Mr. Gordon Moore (a co-founder of Intel) had a most prescient thought in an article he authored for Electronics Magazine — the number of transistors on a silicon chip will double approximately every two years, ad infinitum. Since that moment, his prediction has entered the vernacular as “Moore’s Law,” and it’s been pretty darn accurate to date. It’s also been a very good representation of the cycle of change in which we operate today in the video and entertainment industries. The keyword is “change.”
When IBM first started building PCs, there were roughly 2000 transistors on a CPU chip, and a machine that boasted a speed of one million instructions per second (MIPS) was akin to science fiction. At this writing, we’re pushing chip densities of 1.7 billion transistors and CPU speeds that are measured in teraflops (trillions of calculations per second) — as the lonely “MIPS” term itself becomes a victim of Moore’s cycle of change.
Without that raw computing power, most of the processes we take for granted in today’s video workflow would not be possible; shooting high-definition video, non-linear editing, authoring a DVD, converting file formats for streaming media — all require unimaginable numbers of calculations instantly. Take away that power, and every graphic in every football game would be rendered useless — or at least, darn slow. (I’m picturing the TD telling the director, “Hold on a minute, the switcher is still thinking about wiping to the replay.”)
Format Proliferation and Evolution
Moore’s Law has an interesting parallel in the video industry — namely, the rapid increase in the number of video formats and resolutions that we have to deal with in the video workflow and, increasingly, in the home video realm. As an editor, videographer and part-time slo-mo guy, I’ve been in the midst of this evolution since composite analog video was king, audio was stereo, and life was simple. And then “change” set in. Analog component, composite digital, component digital, M-II, D1, D2, Betacam, Digital Betacam, SDI, DV, DVC, DVC-PRO, HDV, HDSDI … and lest we forget, the march from CGA (320×200) to QXGA (2048×1536) and beyond — and this list just skims the surface. Some formats vanished; some flourished and remain in wide use today, but it has not slowed down.
The format snowball continues to gather momentum, and for us in the video biz, the keyword (again) is “change.” Edit suites are re-tooling for non-linear HDV workflows, mobile production vans are re-wiring for HD broadcasts, HD DLP panels are being installed in home theatres, and TV stations (my hat goes off to you…) are making the expensive transition from analog to digital and preparing for the shutdown of terrestrial analog broadcasting in 2009.
Format Wars
Way back then, we witnessed the battle between Sony’s Betamax and Matsushita’s VHS format. Today, we’re witnessing the first sparring matches between the Blu-Ray and HD DVD formats (and Blu-Ray may win simply because it has a cooler name…).
Over the years, the reasons for this change in the video industry, this dramatic evolution, are two-fold. First, there’s money to be made in standardization and acceptance, because every legacy (and upstart) video manufacturer wants their format to be the one. Secondly, you just can’t keep video engineers from making things faster, better, cheaper, smaller, higher-rez and especially (insert your own hyperbole here).
The Challenge of Keeping Current
So how do you cope with this cycle of change? Tacit acceptance is not enough. Without question, you are going to be working with new formats sooner than you think. If you don’t do your homework, the client just might have a better handle on it than you. Today’s video professional requires a thorough working knowledge of each new format and codec that makes its way into widespread production.
With the Internet at our fingertips (another remarkable result of Moore’s Law), it’s fairly easy to stay current. Learn, read, inquire or take a video engineer to lunch. Discover the resolution and frame rate of each new format, how it interfaces with the gear that you already own, and how you can convert (and connect) to it. Discover the compatibilities, the caveats and the new peripherals that most certainly will be required.
Visit the various manufacturers’ Web sites, and dive into the spec sheets. Visit industry resource sites such as www.smpte.org and www. vesa.org, each of which provides a wealth of information on standards, tools, connectors and more. Learn the difference between 1080i and 1080p, and between DV and HDV. Find out what HDCP means and how it relates to DVI and HDMI connectors (so that you can explain to your next client exactly why you can’t project his Blu-Ray disk). Yep, we were all star-struck at the beginning of the digital video age, but (if you don’t already know), it ain’t seamless.
By way of anecdote, my parting recommendation is pretty easy.
A wonderful memory from my early job-hunting days was when I went for an interview at a small cable TV station in the San Francisco Bay area. When I arrived on site, the station was on fire (I kid you not), and all the employees were mingling outside, watching the spectacle. After some searching and asking around, I finally located the gentleman who invited me. I stammered, “Does this mean that…?” And he interrupted me quickly and said, “Yes — deal with it.”
Perhaps the video industry needs its own law. After all, why should Mr. Moore be the sole harbinger of technological change? Let’s call it Berliner’s Law, and it goes something like this: There will always be another video format. Deal with it.
Paul Berliner is president of Berliner Productions in Davis, Calif. E-mail him at pberliner@plsn.com.
