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HD at Altitude: VelocityHD

Leitch takes you higher with new real time HD editing system

By Charlie White

At a press event held aboard the USS Intrepid, Leitch introduced its newest product, VelocityHD. Vowing that hardware still matters, the company demonstrated a powerful new hardware card called Altitude that is capable of playing back multiple streams of uncompressed HD footage, with a starting price of under $10K. That, along with its highly evolved Velocity software, looks like it could be a winning combination. Here's a first look.

The new Altitude hardware powers Leitch's VelocityHD high definition editing system.

"High-def, as a segment of professional video products has gone over the last twelve to eighteen months from a very small portion of our total revenue to where it's a significant contributor to our total revenue," said Leitchs new president and CEO Tim Thorsteinson, formerly CEO of Grass Valley Group, now known as Thomson/Grass Valley. "We are committed to the postproduction market," vowed Thorsteinson. And to prove it, the company showed, in a tightly choreographed demonstration, VelocityHD, its new fully-integrated  hardware and software editing package for HDTV.

At first glance the new product represents a tremendous leap for the company and for the HDTV editing marketplace. Coupled with an updated version of Velocity, the company's already-mature and extremely usable software, the system performed without a hitch in the half-hour demonstration. It should be noted, though, that the equipment and its operator were out of view of the audience during the demo, although the company officials hosting the demo proved that the demonstration was indeed live. The remote location of the demo system, located in the back of the auditorium in the projection booth, was out of sight because, according to Leitch, the Intrepid aircraft carrier didn't have HDTV cabling installed in such a way that the signal could be shown on the Barco-projected big screen if it were in the auditorium with the audience. No matter, because it was obvious to this reporter that we were witnessing a live demonstration.

Perhaps the most impressive part of the demonstration was that so much power is possible at such a low price. "The big change is, price points on the products have come down to the point where the additional cost of going high definition over standard definition is very low today," explained Thorsteinson. "The componentry is cheaper, and so theres not much of a premium for going high-def," he added.

A culmination of an extensive development project, according to Leitch, VelocityHD provides guaranteed HD real time performance, the extent of which depends on the hardware combination used. Despite its headline-grabbing price of under $10K, the cost of a system that can edit uncompressed HD in real time will run considerably more, and that's not including the host workstation and another significant expense, fast and vast storage. "I can say on-the-record that the deluxe board/software bundle (not turnkey) will be $17,499," Leitchs Technical Marketing Manager for Professional Post Production Mike Nann told Digital Media Net. "That includes the Altitude hardware, Velocity software, A 3DX 3D effects module, dual-channel SCSI daughtercard, and rack-mountable active breakout box (which also offers even more digital audio I/O connections than are on the "ponytail" cable that comes with the base model, as well as a USB-RS422 converter for deck control)."
 
The company will also provide the system in a turnkey configuration, and announced plans to supply the Altitude hardware to the OEM market. Pricing for the turnkey system hasn't been set, according to Nann. "Turnkey pricing won't be available until after we've finished certifying various system components," Nann said. "Of course one of the core elements of that price will be storage, since dual-stream uncompressed HD will take a lot of space and throughput. We'll also offer lower-cost storage solutions for those who plan to use only compressed HD."