Media 100's "Pegasus" - 844/X

A Creative COW Product Review

Philip Hodgetts philip@intelligentassistance Intelligent Assistance, Los Angeles, California USA

Article Focus: In this article, Philip Hodgetts takes a look at Media100's new focus and dirction and reviews their newest offering: the Pegasus 844/X.

It's not often that an entirely new market segment is created.  Avid created the high end non-linear editing market, Media 100 did it a few years later bringing finished 'Broadcast' quality to the desktop and Apple have popularized high quality editing tools with Final Cut Pro.

It's rare indeed that any innovator succeeds a second time - "a soufflé does not rise twice". And yet, on February 25^th, Media 100 Inc once again established a new benchmark with the formal announcement of their much-rumored "Pegasus".  Introduced in terms of "blazingly fast" and "content design" it takes a little while to get a full understanding of exactly what 4 years Research and Development and $30 million has created.

This new Product range is a new technology, a new market segment and a new price point for the performance.  844/X is only the first product to be rolled out that is based on the "Genesis Engine" - Media 100's new hardware heart - and the new code base that underpins this product line to create a carefully crafted melding of hardware and software. So far 2 Patents have been issued and 5 more are pending.

Media 100's new offering is initially being targeted at the short form, heavily composited interstitual/intro/outro market previously served by very much more expensive, proprietary platform products from discreet and Quantel.  The level of real time performance provided by those proprietary hardware simply cannot be reproduced in software. Before Pegasus the choices were slow and cheap (and powerful) or fast and expensive (and powerful). Media 100 have changed the equation with a proprietary hardware engine that sits in off-the-shelf personal computers.

Genesis Engine™

The heart of the new generation of Media 100 products is the Genesis Engine™ - 3 PCI cards with 7 custom designed integrated circuits developed by Media 100 specifically for the purpose. 3 different Application Specific Integrated Circuit chips - each named after the engineer who designed them - are used to provide the extreme hardware grunt that is required to do real time compositing of uncompressed video.

Even on the most modern Personal Computer hosts, the Genesis Engine™ is pushing the limit of the PCI bus and the combination of number of cards and PCI bus requirements pushed the development to the Windows platform. The best tool for the purpose and there are insufficient slots for a full system on Macintosh and the PCI bus speed is substantially slower than Genesis Engine™ requires for 4 streams of uncompressed video, plus 4 real time animated alpha channels.

Although slightly over-simplified, one board handles In/Out and device control; the middle board handles the 4 video streams for all real-time effects with one custom ASIC for each stream and the 3^rd card handles the combining and mixing of the 6 inputs. The six inputs are the 4 real time streams, a 10 Mpixel graphics buffer (not implemented on version 1) and a proprietary expansion connector for unspecified future add-ons that takes the combined output and brings the results back. This board has a custom ASIC for the combining that does all After Effects style Transfer (Composite) mode blending in real time.

Capabilities in brief

The Genesis Engine™ and all-new software code, provide serious real time features:

Software interface

Naturally the functionality of any hardware is entirely dependent on the software and fortunately, Media 100 have put the same level of attention to detail into the software as the hardware.

Immediately familiar to anyone who ever used a Non-linear editor or After Effects the interface is timeline based.  In fact, 844/X is a full editing interface as well as being a powerful compositing tool. Media 100 are currently only "positioning" it as a short-form compositing tool because the current version only works with uncompressed media - kind of a drag if you're working in long form.  However, there is provision in both hardware and software for MPEG 2 compression for offline quality (and MPEG 2 output) in a future release.

The software is very intelligently designed. Every question I had, every concern I expressed got the "right" answer. It's very fully featured for a version 1 product and there is a 2 year plan in place to expand and extend the software interface, although as always, never buy a product for what it might become, but because it provides value at the time you buy it. Expansion plans are nice, and it is good to see how the product might develop over time.

844/X and its siblings will evolve into a highly competent editing and compositing tool for short and long form editing using MPEG 2 for offline quality. Even at this stage it has all the editing tools in place and even to the extent of controllable bias curves on transitions.  To do that it will need media management tools improved beyond what they are now, although they are already more than adequate for a short form compositing tool.

The timeline and tools are a hybrid between an editing tool and a compositing tool, with Source/Record monitors on the editing side and an optional 'output' monitor for composited effects in addition to the always on, full quality video output of real time effects.

The effects that are real time on the Genesis Engine™ cover about 80% of all compositing needs. For the other 20% the 844/X software takes plug-ins that conform with the After Effects API. In fact, Media 100 ships a huge range of plug-ins, those that they own from the ICE and Final Effects purchases (nearly 100 in all) and have qualified them for the new interface.  After Effects plug-ins are rendered by the host (where a powerful dual processor host is an advantage) and the rendered result is sent to the Genesis Engine™. All paremters in the After Effects plug-ins appear in the curves editor for precise manipulation of interpolation between keyframes.

Filter settings, for one or more filters, can be saved as a Filter Stack and stored in a Bin for reapplication - create once and reapply repeatedly in the Boris model.

This new Media 100 fully supports nested Compositions (pre-compositions), which update automatically in all instances. Grouping is supported and group linkages in any composition timeline show graphically with linked lines when any one clip is selected. Grouped tracks do not need to be on adjacent tracks.

Media 100 expects that the software will continue to develop over the next 10 years and it will be some time yet before all the power of the Genesis Engine™ is supported within the software.

Rendering

Rendering is the bane of the graphic designer's life. Fortunately it's an area that has been well addressed in this new product. The Genesis Engine™ is used for all rendering, except for After Effects Plugins. Media 100 uses the most sophisticated recursive "Intelligent Rendering" of any application I've seen.

The Genesis Engine™ renders each bank of 4 tracks in real time.  The first 4 tracks are always real time. In fact any 4 tracks can be solo'd (Visual Voicing as Media 100 calls it) an play in real time without affecting any renders already done.  Beyond the first 4 tracks each 4 tracks are rendered in real time.  To work with 5-8 tracks requires a 1 x real time render of the bottom 4 before the next 4 play in real time. If the render is not done, the top 4 tracks in any composition will run in real time.

Making a change to any track causes, at most, a single group re-render is always a real-time render. Render files are intelligently caches and automatically deleted when no longer current.

Every way I looked at it, this has to be one of the most intelligent rendering systems I've seen.  Nested compositions render once and are retained until something in the nest changes and triggers a single render of the nest.

Most significantly, the way this Media 100 is designed to deal with the render requirements of more than 4 tracks fits harmoniously with the way motion graphics designers work. 

I'll admit, when first I heard that it was "only" 4 tracks (plus alpha) of real-time I thought it would be a serious limitation. In practice, because of the intelligence of the rendering, I can't see how it would affect productivity at all.  Rendering, when required, is blindingly fast and totally predictable for the Genesis Engine™ effects.  20 layers will render in exactly 5 times real time.  100 layers in exactly 25 times real time.  In practice, therefore, 100 layers of a 10 second composite will completely render in 250 seconds or less than 4.2 minutes. Make a change to the bottom layer and the whole 100 layer finished effect is available after 10 seconds.

Where After Effects filters are applied to a layer, they are rendered once, ahead of the Genesis Engine™ and the rendered file becomes the source for the compositing and effects engine.  This file is cached until you make a change to the filter settings.

Alpha Channel Support

The '8' in 844/X is representative of the 8 real time streams that are used. For each video or title track, there is a real time alpha channel. Genesis Engine™ fully supports animated alpha channels from the alpha channel of the file itself, from the graphics component or from a specific alpha channel file.

Alpha channels can be extracted (using the real-time keying functions of the Genesis Engine™) from any video Clip and applied as the real time alpha to another video Clip, or the alpha channel can be drawn in the vector pain tool.

While currently a very simple masking tool, the vector paint area is planned to grow into a more complete pain, mask and rotoscope tool over the life of the new Media 100 tools.  Right now it is a competent masking tool but not in the class of Commotion, RED or combustion* for hand-drawn masking.  However, it is simple to use, and more than adequate for basic masking jobs right now.

Input, output and device control

All device control is handled by a hardware V-Lan daughter board seamlessly integrated with the Media 100 software.  As soon as a deck is qualified with the Industry-standard VLAN, Media 100 has access to it. In fact, one of the remarkable points to this software is how much Media 100 have simply used industry standard API's and existing algorithms where it made sense: VLAN, After Effects plug-ins; MPEG 2 for compression etc.  Far more compatibility but not like the old Media 100.

844/X has provision for direct to MPEG 2 output for DVD and digital television purposes and will ultimately use MPEG 2 for long form media compression, but instead of re-inventing or developing their own MPEG 2 technology, Media 100 will use chipsets developed by IBM.

The new Media 100 844/X features comprehensive input control with digital signal processing on SDI input and 8 audio channels in parallel for both input and output. Audio editing is at the sample level of accuracy.

Like older Media 100 products, media is in QuickTime format and uses a proprietary QuickTime codec. QuickTime media prepared in other applications can be used immediately in 844/X and exported media can be used in any QuickTime aware application. In typical Media 100 fashion, this very common capability is branded as InstantMedia™.

The video output hardware is available, through an open VOUT API for other applications to use. For example an After Effects RAM preview could be routed to the Genesis Engine™ for display

EDL input is supported now and AAF is planned within the future development of the software.

Finally, the software communicates with the hardware in 'bursts' of "Very Long Instruction Words" or 32 'words' each 64 bits long.  For digital hardware/software communication this is a very large command that can be repeated at very frequent intervals. Internal communication within the Genesis Engine™ is at 240 MB/second and already Media 100 are pushing the edge of fast PCI bus performance.

In a larger facility, Media 100's 844/X will integrate with an extremely accurate Genlock - accurate enough for a Station Master Clock.

The future?

While my strong recommendation is always that you should buy any software/computer hardware product for what it can do now and discount future plans of the manufacturer, it is nice to know that Media 100 have plans in hand for further development of the software, and there are features on the hardware that have not yet been unlocked.

On the software side, the next 2 years development are already mapped out (including, I was pleased to hear, provision for the inevitable debug of new software as it rolls out in the field) but that Media 100 were also open to be influenced in prioritizing new features based on customer feedback. Perhaps hyperbola, but I was told that there was "10 years" of development in the software and that the hardware was sufficiently advanced that it would take many years to catch up.

Even with the acceleration of Moore's Law we've seen over the last couple of years, Media 100's hardware "grunt" will keep it comfortably ahead of processor based rendering, for composited effects, for some time into the future. Certainly, far enough into the future to get a good return on the investment in technology and software design.

What does it all mean?

844/X is a major departure for Media 100: new product, new market and new direction. In fact, the launch of the new product marked a complete relaunch of the company with a new logo, new focus and major marketing campaign.

In its first incarnation Media 100 was focused on democratizing video editing with a simple interface and high quality video.  844/X is a huge departure from that in some ways, but in many others is not.

Unlike the first generation of Media 100, Genesis Engine™ products are not designed for 'everyman' but like the earlier products, they are designed to tip the industry on its ear.  In bringing new levels of price/performance unmatched by anyone else, Media 100 will empower a whole new generation of Content Designers - part editor, part motion graphics designer - who will use 844/X to kick-start new types of businesses.

Existing Media 100 owners will also get a 'kick-start' from the re-branding. Rather than push the 844/X, Media 100 are relaunching the Media 100 brand which should benefit the overall 'branding' of Media 100 products be they 'i', 'Finish' or 844/X.

In fact, my biggest disappointment after previewing the new Media 100 is that I can't justify, in my current business, the approximately $60,000 investment in a configured system - including the Compaq W8000 host processor, 360 GB of Ultra-SCSI Disk Array (enough for about 3 hours of uncompressed 10 bit footage). 

Eight years ago I made the best business decision I ever did and invested (more than I could afford at the time) in my first Media 100 system.  That purchase transformed my small post production and motion graphics business.  I see this new direction fuelling the businesses of those investing in this next generation of Media 100 optimized for the graphic design challenges of the new century.  Those who choose to embrace and benefit from new technology lead the next generation.

My opinion: a winner from Media 100. I went in with a laundry list of 'deal breaker' questions and on each one, Media 100 passed with flying colors.  If you think your business would have benefited from the speed and design flexibility of a high end discreet or Quantel box, for a fraction of the investment, you owe it to yourself to check out Media 100's 844/X.

---Philip Hodgetts

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