The winners of the RedShark Best in Show Awards for IBC2024 are...

We are delighted to announce the winners of the RedShark Best in Show Awards for IBC2024. Congratulations to...

If you’ve ever lost yourself in the unfathomable interstices inside the RAI building, you will know that it feels a bit like being a few levels out of your depth in the 1990s computer game Doom - except the graphics are better.

When we first started our awards, it seemed a bit presumptuous. After all, RedShark was new and could hardly claim to be an industry stalwart. So we decided to make a good impression by ditching the slightly sketchy feel of other awards, which typically demand that you pay for entry. That drastically limits the “gene pool” of potential winners and massively distorts the field. Worst of all, it meant that the very best products might not be eligible for an award at all.

For the first awards, we appointed a committee of judges, which seemed fair but turned out to be unworkable. Nobody could agree about anything (and even, on one occasion, whether a particular product was the best or the worst exhibit in the show).

As our status in the industry grew, we realised that, according to our own standards, we were the best judges for our awards. Duly liberated from any semblance of rules apart from decency, respect and fairness, we handed out the awards to companies that did something noteworthy.

Simple, but it works.

There are always deserving new products, and with AI permanently “in the room” we can expect big changes, but we can also anticipate caution across the industry as we all wait to see what the longer-term effects of AI might be. But amongst all that uncertainty, there are always some gems glistening amongst the crowded walkways.

Before we start, thanks, as ever, to everyone who wrote to us to nominate their products. To all those who didn’t get an award this year, it doesn’t mean you don’t have something exceptional. Far from it - it just means we have a finite number of awards. For the winners: we think you have something exceptionally exceptional. So, well done from all of us on the RedShark team!

In strict alphabetical order…

Adobe Premiere Pro 25

Adobe Premiere was launched in 1991, so it has plenty of users who are younger than their chosen NLE. What’s impressive about Adobe is its determination to keep up the pace of development of Premiere Pro and its wider ecosystem - from within the company and its vast range of third-party developers.

The software’s close links to products like After Effects and Audition make it easy to move projects between applications, not just because they’re from the same company but because deep integration and cross-compatibility are the foundation on which the company now builds its products.

With the upcoming launch of Premiere Pro 25, the feature that caught our attention above all others is the new automatic colour-matching facility.

Adobe explains it like this:

“Today’s cameras — from an 8K RED V-Raptor to the iPhone 15 Pro in your pocket — capture raw or log media that contains more colour and dynamic range data than any monitor can display. That means the vast colour information captured by these cameras needs to be moved into a colour space that our computers can work with and that Today’s monitors can actually display. Rather than simply map source files into a reduced colour space that causes data loss and image clipping, unique algorithms that intelligently tone map the data into a working colour space that preserves the highest possible amount of data and quality is critical to achieving the kind of professional results customers want.”

In practical terms, post production professionals no longer have to spend hours applying LUTs to incoming footage. Instead, the software automatically “normalises” footage from virtually any camera so that editors can start to work immediately and have a consistent colour base to work on - regardless of the material’s source.

Based around ACEScct, essentially a giant colour space that all other colour spaces can “fit” inside, Premiere Pro 25 automatically creates a level playing field between disparate footage so that the serious business of creative colour grading can take place without time wasted on preparation.

But the award is not just for this; it’s for the dedication and skill of the entire Adobe team, which has transformed Premiere Pro from a “multimedia” tool into a creative force that’s not afraid of anything and now ranks in the upper reaches of the video editing stratosphere.

Aputure STORM 1200x 

You can safely say that the first part of the LED lighting revolution is over. LEDs are everywhere, and the state of the art in professional video and filmmaking is already pretty advanced. You can buy cheap lights and expensive ones, and generally, you get what you pay for.

Now for the next chapter.

Aputure has created a fixture with an advanced new lighting engine and full weather protection while remaining affordable.

The Blair lighting engine creates an incredibly useful white light by not having any white light emitters. Instead, it uses five colours, mixing them (with full X/Y controls) to create a wide range of outputs at all temperatures.

The fixture obviously comes with all the modern control protocols and features one more important innovation. It can smoothly dim to an extreme 0.1% of its full output while retaining colour accuracy. That’s incredibly useful.

Whenever something is described as an “engine”, you know it’s going to be part of a range of products, and that’s exactly what Aputure intends with the Blair technology.

We think this is an important step for Aputure, as it will be for the industry.

ASUS - ProArt PA32UCDM

ASUS has carved itself a place in the professional post-production space by defining a new market: affordable monitors with outstanding performance and the versatility that today’s media production companies demand.

Before Asus ProArt came along, “computer” monitors were not seen as critical creative tools. They were built for a mass market where price was the primary concern. Asus ProArt not only set about making monitors that met the needs of professionals but also embraced industry trends that were moving towards the world of IT and away from the rarified, eye-wateringly expensive “specialist” market.

Several years on, there’s been no slowdown or dilution of this ethos, with important new products released regularly. A great example of this is the ProArt PA32UCDM: a 31.5” OLED monitor with 99% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut. With built-in hardware calibration, it’s dependably accurate even for the most critical work. Because it’s OLED, it’s ideal for HDR, with bottomlessly deep blacks and extraordinarily saturated colours.

But with ASUS ProArt, it’s not just about engineering talent. The company has gone out of its way to understand the needs of professionals. It works with film schools, facilities, and game companies to innovate and fine-tune its products. And it “gets” where the industry is going. It’s no longer all about high-end film shoots but virtual production, UGC (User Generated Content) and a necessary assumption that content can come from anywhere at any time: as likely to be from a games engine as from a camera. So ProArt monitors include a wide range of connectivity (the ProArt PA32UCDM even has Thunderbolt™ 4) to allow them to fit into any workflow - and be relevant for years into the future.

We think ASUS ProArt deserve this award because it has redefined professional monitoring. It’s as simple as that.

Blackmagic Cinema Cameras

Blackmagic never does things by halves, constantly innovating in technology and value to the end user. This award is not for a single camera but for a singular effort to bring cinematic cameras to a wider-than-ever pool of users while reaching heights of technological achievement that are occasionally staggering.

Based on statistics alone, Blackmagic’s new URSA Cine 17K 65 deserves an award, and probably another one for merely existing.

But, beyond the numbers (another one being that it’s the most expensive BMD camera ever at $29,995), it’s hard to disagree that this is a high-end device worthy of practically any film set. Of course, no one’s going to watch 17K media - how would you? But it’s not the resolution so much as what you do with it. With such a vast visual playing field, almost any sensible degree of cropping will still look fantastic (even the ludicrous but necessary 9x16 versions). The sensor itself is essentially the physical front-end to BMD’s own codec, which means that workflows will be manageable while retaining the maximum quality for whatever level of production you’re working on.

To complete the range, we have the PYXIS 6K, a boxy but immensely practical cinema camera in an ideal form factor for almost any kind of project—just pick your accessories. Then there’s the URSA Cine 12K, which, in addition to sharing a similar advanced workflow to the URSA Cine 17K 65, probably offers the best value per pixel in a serious cinema camera.

Essentially, we’ve given this award to Blackmagic Design for pushing further than they had to - and than we ever thought they could - while still making affordable, desirable cinema cameras.

Canon EOS C80

It’s a tough time for camera makers. The problem is that we’ve become normalised to exponential progress. Every day, we read about advances in AI that would have seemed like science fiction yesterday. But the basic laws of physics, the laws of how “stuff” behaves, are not exponential and apply as strongly as ever to the fundamentals of camera design. Ultimately, it all comes down to sensor and lens technology, backed up by increasingly powerful (and nuanced) electronics, to deliver Today’s breathtakingly good pictures.

Against this backdrop, Canon has done a remarkable job with the new C80, which gives us significantly better performance for the same price as its predecessor, launched four years ago - before a period of significant global inflation.

The new camera has three headline features: a full-frame Back-Side Illuminated sensor, increased resolution to 6K, and three base ISOs. It also has Dual-pixel CMOS AF II autofocus and a very useful 16-stops dynamic range. The lens mount is RF but easily adaptable to PL and EF.

Base ISOs are 800 / 3200 and 12800, and there are the usual Canon codecs. The 6K sensor enables oversampled 4K 4:2:2 10-bit MP4/MXF.

So, to be clear, we’re not hailing record-breaking resolutions or anything that’s never been done before—except that this is a remarkable camera for the price, all wrapped in Canon’s decades of digital imaging experience and expertise. In its own way, this is a breakthrough.

Sennheiser Spectera Bidirectional Wireless Audio System

It’s always strangely satisfying when we give an award to a product you can’t actually see. Sennheiser’s new Spectera wireless audio system is exciting and groundbreaking at the same time. Audio is the often-neglected part of any video production, but - as we have all found out the hard way - it is also one of the most important.

One way to increase the likelihood of something going wrong in audio is to film it live (like a stadium gig). Even more risky is to do it wirelessly. While we’ve never heard Adele’s glorious tones interrupted by a Las Vegas taxi company, there’s always the risk of something undesirable seeping into the audio.

But wireless audio has moved on a long way. It is now digital and extremely robust in almost any location. Taking all of this a big step further, Sennheiser’s new Spectera Wireless Audio Ecosystem builds on the company’s expertise. It brings us 64 channels (32 if used bidirectionally) and all the infrastructure to manage and interface with it.

In case you’re wondering, the “bidirectional” bit is not so the performers can hear the audience singing badly; it’s for in-ear monitoring and talkback from producers. In-ear, monitoring is what’s replaced those wedge-shaped stage monitor speakers so that musicians can hear themselves, often with their own individual mix. And with no stage monitors, the sound can’t leak into the mics.

Spectera is an elegant way to deal with the immensely complex communications needed for modern live performances. The system has low latency and extremely high audio quality. This type of wireless technology is far more sophisticated than you would imagine. The science goes back a long way, but the current state of the art is mind-bogglingly clever.

There’s much more to it than this. We get the impression that it’s a system that will keep growing, and we can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

Highly Commended...

It has been a busy old show and our Best in Show IBC Awards reflect that, writes Andy Stout. We received an impressive number of award submissions in from all around the industry and, indeed, all around the world, but we only had six trophies to give out. 

While those award winners represent what we thought to be the best of the best, there are plenty of other products and services out there that are well worth a mention. Our judging team saw some excellent technology being debuted in the Halls of the RAI and was also impressed by many of the submissions we received.

What is encouraging to see is the large spread of companies involved. Some of following in the Highly Commended category represent some of the largest tech companies in the world, while others reflect the efforts of tiny startups that have yet to actually launch on the market as yet. Innovation, it seems, is everywhere.

Highly commended are:

AWS - MediaLive Anywhere

ARRI - SkyPanel S60 Pro

Blue Lucy - New AI-assistant

HNR - HNR Deliver 

Prismatic - Automated content generation

Projective - Strawberry Skies

SmallHD - Ultra 10

Sound Devices - A20-SuperNexus receiver

Vinten - VEGA control system and Versine 360 fluid head

Vizrt - TriCaster Vizion

Zero Density - Lino