At NAB 2013, K-Tek unveiled their new Nautilus mic suspension system and Zeppelin prototype that will solve key issues for the field sound engineer.

For over 15 years, K-Tek has been a trusted manufacturer of boom poles, suspension systems, and other audio support accessories in the media industry. Their products are still put to use today on many popular entertainment and news productions all over the world.

Unwanted noise is often caused by environmental situations or mishandling equipment, that is then detected by the microphone.  To prevent this, products like these help reduce handling noise and/or wind, without affecting the pickup of your subject. 

The Nautilus is a unique suspension system both structurally and aesthetically.  Each of the suspension rings can unlock and be adjusted up and down its rail to accommodate a wide range of microphones, from shorter hypercardioids to full size shotgun models. It can even support long gun mics like Sennheiser?s 18-inch MKH 8070 model, just by adding another Nautilus ring onto the rail.

Another very important feature that sound engineers look for in mic suspension is isolation from handling noise.  Because of its shape, the Nautilus is capable of movement on all three axis – forward & back, left & right, up & down.  Suspension systems usually create one or two pressure points on the mic, which can transfer handling noise from a boom pole, affecting sound quality. Microphones will also clip onto the Nautilus at two points, but its round shape helps spread out the stress evenly, reducing this effect.

At first glance, the Nautilus rings seem to be made of ordinary plastic material.  But after aggressively bending and twisting each ring far beyond what could happen in the field, it?s clear that these were far from that. While the exact composition of the material is a ?secret formula?, K-Tek created a fine balance between strength and flexibility to ensure enough isolation while keeping the microphone secure.

The model shown on the convention floor still has some minor tweaks that need to be addressed, but the final production model should be available sometime in mid-Spring. Pricing is yet to be determined, but should be in the same range as their other suspension models. 

K-Tek also showed us a new Zeppelin windscreen prototype, aimed to release sometime this Summer.  This windscreen is more compact than other systems by Rycote or other manufacturers, and also incorporates the new Nautilus suspension system inside.

The new Zeppelin will tackle problems that other popular systems may have.  First, they wanted something that would not require as much assembly and disassembly whenever accessing the suspension chamber.  They also didn?t want to use any glue, because of possible breakdown of materials over time, which can cause unwanted noise and eventually needing replacement altogether. 

All of the ?ribs? on the Zeppelin system are made of a glass-filled nylon, and are held together by tension, with a locking ring at the tip securing it all.  This reduces structure noise while providing a heavy duty protection for the mic. If one of these ribs were to break, K-Tek can send a replacement part that can easily be swapped out. 

To access the chamber, all you need to do is unscrew one knob holding the front end of the Zeppelin, and slide the front half off to the side. The front half does not completely detach from the rail system, which easily slides back into place when you?re done switching microphones. The back half is secure by default, but can be removed when routing cable through its base and into the chamber, which on film sets only needs to be done at the beginning and end of day.  So for professionals that have certain mic choices for each environment, the K-Tek Zeppelin will save them crucial time in swapping them out.

These upcoming Nautilus systems will address key issues with currently available solutions, while providing recordists with the flexibility of having a single setup that accomodates for a wide variety of equipment.

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At NAB 2013, Sennheiser showed us their MKE 600 Shotgun mic, designed for entry-level videographers and sound technicians alike. 

Coming from the roots of the popular ME66 mic / K6 module series, the MKE 600 combines the best of both to deliver natural sound for photojournalists that need an easy solution.  Unlike K6 module mics, which have interchangeable heads, the MKE 600 is a one-piece build with a permanent microphone element and similar battery compartment door.  It has a supercardioid/lobar pickup pattern like most shotgun microphones of its class, and a switchable low-cut filter to help remove excess wind or handling noise. This mic is also shorter than the ME66, having an optimal pickup range of 4-6 feet from the subject. 

The MKE 600 is powered by either a single AA battery, or by 48V phantom power.  This helps especially when a camera cannot provide phantom power, such as popular DSLRs.  They also include a windscreen and MZS 600 shock mount, which seamlessly mounts the mic onto any hot shoe.

With its durable metal construction, powering flexibility, low cut option, and a $399 price tag, the Sennheiser MKE 600 brings a solid entry-level shotgun microphone to the lone videographer, filmmaker, or photojournalist on a tight budget.

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5 GHz 16-core CPU? Check. NVIDIA workstation GPU with 5000 cores? Check. And tons of RAM to coordinate it all. But can your SSD storage keep up with this powerhouse? Fusion-io knows it can with their ioFX storage acceleration cards.

The ioFX is a PCI-E NAND flash memory expansion device that balances out the graphics processing workstation, making sure that each of the system’s cores is fed quick enough resources without any bottlenecking. This new model has a whopping 1.6 TB capacity, four times bigger than their 420 GB model introduced last year, complemented by a 1.4 GBps read and 1.1 GBps write speeds.

NVIDIA?s booth at this year?s NAB Show already demonstrates the raw power of this device, driving four 4K displays in real time off of a single ioFX card. Several partners have already joined Fusion-io in both systems integration and SDK development.  Most notably, HP will soon offer these ioFX cards in their Z820, Z620, and Z420 workstation systems.  

The ioFX cards are fully streamlined with NVIDIA?s CUDA-enabled GPU?s, using commands such through their SDK to stream data right off the device itself, bypassing the need to go between storage controller, and memory sources. The ioFX can be used as an extension of the OS, so that the NAND flash can be used as a memory tier.  The OS treats the ioFX as a memory allocation device, but is also seen by the OS as a storage device, emulating storage tasks directly to graphics processing. This means that any application that can already uses GPU resources can transfer high bandwidth data at a much quicker rate. 

As soon as the application makes a storage command, it?s converted to a memory command, sent to send to the ioFX, which sends a memory address back, and feed back to the software, all before touching storage. When dealing with SSD?s in RAID, these same commands need to go through storage controllers, RAID controllers, then each individual SSD chip before it?s converted from memory to storage, and back again. Because the ioFX can be used for its memory allocation or storage capabilities, users will benefit from ultra low latency.  The typical response time of a command sent to an SSD is 1 ms.  With these new ioFX cards we?re looking at 0.06 ms, which means around 20 files delivered in the time it takes for one file on an SSD.

What about all the SSD?s you?ve invested in?  Sure, combining SSD?s will increase bandwidth, but only up to a certain point. When there?s more controllers and chips to query, latency will also increase, which ultimately results in dropped frames at very high resolution content in real time. Dual SSD?s give you double speed, two more may give you 80% more, and another two will give you 60% more performance.  ioFX can break through this barrier because it?s a memory device with minimal storage infrastructure at its core, which means multiple cards give you exponential growth while still keeping latency at bay.  Four of these 1.6 TB models will feed up to 6 GBps of bandwidth between your GPU and your apps. 

NVIDIA tested the ioFX devices inside a system running three K5000 devices feeding 9 monitors in a grid, creating a 6K display. When running displays in a mosaic mode, all GPU?s need to be fed all the data at the same time. So these data copies are fed to system memory, and then to each GPU individually.  Using the ioFX device as storage, and pinning its resources at the same address as the GPU?s, they could send the same copy of data to all GPU?s simultaneously.

Having an intelligent way for data to travel from large capacities into memory is very beneficial, especially at Ultra HD resolutions and high frame rates.  The Hobbit?s stereoscopic 4K 48 FPS footage is 24 times more data than a standard 2K movie.  Avatar 2 is said to be delivered at 4K stereoscopic 60 FPS, which will increase this need even further.  Fusion-io believes that the ioFX is the answer to making sure no high resolution content is left behind, in the most demanding environments.

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We’ve seen the GRID at many events since CES 2013, and how it will change the gaming industry. Now NVIDIA wants to tailor this architecture towards another industry: film post-production.

The NVIDIA GRID was designed for putting GPU’s into the cloud, handling loads of computing tasks off of these TESLA-fueled datacenters.  NVIDIA saw that this platform could gear resources towards graphics generation tasks, which led to the birth of the VCA (Visual Computing Appliance) platform.  The GRID VCA contains dual CPU’s, RAM, and storage units like any other server, but can also hold up to 16 GRID K2 boards (K5000 class GPU’s) all inside one 4U form factor. Each virtual machine can be assigned to one or more GPU’s, however multiple VM’s cannot run off an individual K2 unit. Underneath the main components are two 10GbE ports which are plugged into both the storage units and a network switch, where the streams are remoted off to clients within the office.

To connect to the VCA, an editor simply logs in via an installed GRID Client, and creates a session with one of the VM’s running off of it.  The stream is then presented though H.264 compression in the client window, and they can immediately get to work. Besides the client application itself, nothing is stored locally in the client system, which can also run on platform. For example, we were shown a client running Autodesk 3DS Max on Windows 7, from a Macbook Pro. Another system nearby ran The Foundry’s Nuke compositing software on Ubuntu, but the editor was also checking up on another artist’s work on Adobe After Effects, which doesn’t run on Linux, off of the GRID Client. This is probably not a likely scenario, but the point is that users could have access to applications that their OS couldn’t support. These are just two ways that a small post-production facility could easily bring K5000 class performance to any system in the office, all managed at one point at the datacenter.

Remote access and virtualization are not new concepts by any means, but the GRID VCA is tailored specifically as small business processing solution over a LAN network, for the best performance. When asked about possibly accessing the VCA from outside the office, they found that WAN may be possible, but like any other remote access, the client could run into latency issues through all the gateways, VPN points, and other hardware handshakes- all resulting in dropped frames and degradation. 

Another potential advantage of the GRID VCA is an added layer of security for content management.  Post-production companies may hire contractors to complete certain tasks, all whom usually bring their own system to the office.  The contractor can easily be added to the VCA network, and all they need to install is the GRID Client. They can log into the VM, complete their work, and at the end of the day log off without any data or assets saved locally onto their system.  Larger companies who have much more endpoint clients can also integrate GRID architecture into their existing enterprise-grade solutions, such as servers running VM Ware or Citrix remoting infrastructure. This can bring the best possible low-latency GPU computing onto a thin client device, while keeping all the authentication features of a full-fledged virtual network.

But all of this doesn’t mean that local GPU’s in your own rig will vanish anytime soon. The GRID may not be the right setup for all members within the office. For example, colorists need to view their work at the highest image quality and color accuracy to give the finished film the final "look" audiences will experience. The demo Da Vinci Resolve desk ran a Mac Pro with a K5000 underneath, with a triple GeForce GTX 680 setup in an expansion chassis alongside, grading raw Sony F55 4K footage at 24 FPS onto two 4K displays – all in real time. All of this raw GPU power could also be found on the GRID VCA, but for tasks that require strict quality control, a compressed stream is not ideal. That being said, whoever’s on this system can still pull up info from the GRID if needed.

As digital cinema advances, the need for stronger hardware becomes more demanding. Being able to share these resources with the whole team ultimately gives artists more creativity, without having to wait for each frame of their story to render.

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