NAB Recap

So NAB 2007 is winding down, time to recap the show highlights from the Videomaker perspective. Be sure to tune into our upcoming Vidcast and our YouTube channel, for video and interviews from the show floor.

Adobe’s big news was of course the announcement of CS3 Production Premium to be shipped this summer. I’ll be heading down to Adobe HQ in two weeks to get a hands on a beta version over a few days and I’ll give you my impressions of the new workflow and software.

AJA turned heads with it’s new I/O HD, a capture device that has hardware encoding support for Apple’s new Pro Res 422 codec.

Apple announced two new products: Final Cut Studio 2, and Final Cut Server. FC Studio 2 is a major upgrade of all the final cut apps (except DVD Studio Pro), and saw the addition of the new color correcting application: Color (aptly named). Final Cut server is a media asset management solution for organization and easy workflow for approvals and collaboration between departments.

Avid was touting it’s new release of Media Composer and Avid Express Pro, both now running on Intel based Macs as well as on the PC. Also in the line up was Liquid Chrome XE an all in one production solution that allows optional hardware support from AJA.

Black Magic came to the show to promote its new Intensity Pro HDMI I/O card with analogue support, as well as a new flagship capture device the MultiBridge Eclipse, with support for 3Gb/s SDI allowing 2k resolution support.

Bogen/Manfrotto/Kata was there along with their new 503 HDV head, as well as the extremely clever 561B Monopod with tilt and pan support. Kata is showcased their new line of camera gloves for specific camcorder models.

Canon’s popular line of HDV camcorders remains unchanged this year, with some new lens choices for 1/3″ cameras.

JVC Pro’s GY series also remained unchanged, but very popular as well. New technology announcements included a clever microwave transmitting solution for the GY series that required no re-encoding. JVC also came out with some interesting DV/DVCAM to DVD decks from their pro division, which are great for making dailies and duplication.

Lowell brought their new Rifa-lite kits to show, that had adapters allowing you to use different wattage lamps and even flourescent fixtures in the same soft box.

Matrox came to NAB to showcase their new products. Most remarkable was the MXO the HD capture and monitoring solution for the Mac. They added some new calibration features to the device.

Maxell was there showing off their new technologies. Holographic Storage, the next big thing that’s going to let you say good bye to your spinning disks forever, was at the forefront. Still pricey at this time, but in the near future, prices will drop and capacities will increase. Perfect for all those hours of HD video you’ll have stored up by then.

ProDAD the European Plug-in provider, was launching its VitaScene series of Plug-ins for the US market.

Panasonic Broadcast was showing their AG-HSC 1U small format, 3 chip AVCHD camcorder. It records to a SD card, but the unit also comes with an external 40GB portable hard drive to store up all your data for long days in the field.

RED, Everyone was talking about the immanent launch of RED 1, the 4k Digital Cinema solution. The highest quality at the lowest price of all the professional cinema cameras out there. The body itself lists for $17,500, and some nice lenses and accessories could easily push that over $40K. This puts it out of most consumers price range, but fear not, RED also annouced they were working on a little brother version of the RED 1, but no specific details about it were forthcoming.

Sony’s big announcement was for the upcoming XDCAM EX format and prototype camcorder. It had three 1/2″ sensors, recorded mpeg2 streams to the new ExpressCard format. Run times were quoted as being four hours with 2 32GB cards. expected to retail for about $8,000.

Tiffen was showing off a new arm for the Stedicam Merlin, as well as software suite of plugins called DFX that replicate the look of Tiffen’s famous filter sets in post production.

Varizoom brought along their DV Media Rig shoulder mounted camera support system, allowing great balance and stability for your small format camera.

Be sure to check out the video of our NAB coverage on next weeks vidcast.

JB