By Oliver Peters, April 24, 2007
Returning attendees at this year's NAB convention and exhibition will find the landscape rearranged from previous years. Exhibits have been moved along thematic lines, such as production, post, acquisition, etc. Those who are interested primarily in postproduction gear will find nearly all pertinent vendors in the lower portion of the South Hall, with a few scattered around the rest of the complex, including the North Hall--historically the site of pro audio and radio exhibits.
I predict that the biggest splash will be made by Adobe. During 2007, Adobe will release 22 new or updated products. This is the largest release in the history of software. The crown jewel for video professionals will be the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium software bundle. It's a mouthful, but it will be the most complete suite covering acquisition to delivery. Adobe CS3 will include Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Encore, Flash Pro, Soundbooth, Ultra and On Location. The best part is that this suite will be fully cross-platform, running on PCs and Mac Intel computers. On Location and Ultra are products added through the acquisition of Serious Magic and were formerly known as DV Rack. Not only did Adobe buy the company, but Serious Magic founder Mark Randall came along with the deal and is now the chief strategist for Adobe Dynamic Media Systems (everything except print). Before Serious Magic, Randall co-founded NewTek and Play. This suite will be the centerpiece of Adobe's demos, designed to emphasize its commitment to the Mac and content creation professionals.
Although I think Adobe may well upstage Apple with this suite, there are plenty of rumors swirling around Apple. This year Apple can be found a bit farther down in the South Hall, but with an even larger booth. As always, there are rumors of a new and improved Final Cut Studio. Although I think it's likely that there will be a Final Cut Pro 6, I doubt it will fully integrate Shake, FinalTouch and Artbox. The latter two applications entered the Apple portfolio through the acquisition of Silicon Color and Proximity Group late last year. There simply hasn't been enough time to integrate these two advanced apps into Final Cut Pro. On the other hand, we might see them in some sort of bundle. Nevertheless, I would expect to see optimized versions running as standalone applications at Apple. FinalTouch is an advanced color corrector that works as a color grading solution for Final Cut Pro. Artbox handles media asset management chores that might position it well as an adjunct to an Apple Xsan shared storage environment, not unlike Avid's Interplay engine.
This year Avid finds itself across from Quantel--no slouch when it comes to attention-grabbing exhibits. Even though Avid will occupy a huge booth, the early information I'm getting is that Avid will concentrate on the message of reliable products that dominate content creation. The company has a new management team in place that wants to focus on "getting it right," so some product roll-outs have been delayed. I would expect to see the release of Avid Media Composer (software-only version) 2.7. This has been in beta testing and will be the first Avid product for the Intel-based Macs. Expect large demos focusing on the Interplay nonlinear workflow engine. Avid now has a year of Interplay under its belt, so customers should see a fully developed product and media management tool that will most likely form the underpinning of Avid products from here on out.
On the other hand, Quantel should have an exciting year. The company will come to NAB with Marco, its first software-based editor (announced at IBC) as well as new versions of Newsbox HD and the Pablo color corrector for eQ and iQ. Still under wraps is a shared storage system capable of dealing with multiple streams of 4K film data. This system is in testing at a Los Angeles facility and is expected to make an appearance at NAB. Another new unit is a system that opens Quantel storage up to other applications. For instance, it might offer a da Vinci colorist the ability to access and grade layers within a Quantel timeline rather than a single flattened video stream. Neither item is a shipping product yet, so expect some announcements at NAB.
Rounding out our "A" companies is Autodesk Media & Entertainment. Autodesk has officially dropped "Discreet" from the names of its products and has completed the transition to PC workstations running Linux or Windows and away from SGI hardware. The core editing and effects products, Autodesk Flame
and Autodesk Smoke, for the first time sport an I/O card from AJA Video. There will be a big push on products optimized for HD finishing, such as the lower-cost Autodesk Lustre HD, an advanced color grading system that can work with files up to 2K but is designed for SD and HD output only. For graphics and effects, Autodesk will demonstrate Autodesk Toxik, a collaborative visual effects environment, Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya. The latter is on version 8.5, which supports Intel-based Macs.
Speaking of AJA Video, its boards are now used with a wide range of editing applications, including Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid DS Nitris, Media 100, Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas, Autodesk Flame and Autodesk Smoke. Highlighted again this year will be the Kona 3
and Xena 2K boards, which handle up to 2K data in real time
. In addition, AJA Video manufactures a line of miniature converters for SDI and HD-SDI. New will be the HI5, which adds support for HDMI displays.
Not to be outdone, Blackmagic Design will be showing its Intensity card for the first time in the U.S. Intensity is a low-cost HD capture card that accepts an HDMI signal. Some of the newest prosumer HDV camcorders offer an HDMI port that outputs uncompressed high-definition video prior to the encoding step inside the camcorder. The Intensity card can accept such a signal, making it the lowest-cost solution for getting uncompressed HD into a computer. HDMI capabilities have also been added to the DeckLink HD Studio card.
Matrox has provided the missing link for real-time, multi-stream video effects with Adobe Premiere Pro (Axio cards) and video playback from Apple Final Cut Pro on a laptop (MXO). New features at NAB 2007 for the Matrox RT.X2 card include real-time HDV 1080p editing (23.98, 25, 29.97fps) and 24F/30F (Canon) support. Microsoft Vista will also be supported. Matrox will be showing the Matrox DSX family of OEM development components. The DSX platforms are designed to exploit Matrox's "Power of X" and "Flex" technologies to enable developers to leverage CPU and GPU power for NLEs, servers, still stores, character generators, etc.
If you're shopping for shared storage solutions, Facilis Technology and EditShare are returning with expanded features. The Facilis Technology TerraBlock storage network adds Linux support and expanded virtual volumes. Now up to 24 drives may be accessed behind a single volume without any external software. EditShare will introduce EditShare Field, a turnkey solution in a ruggedized chassis designed for mobile, news and location editing. EditShare offers file level sharing, Gigabit Ethernet and Avid project sharing.
There is plenty of news from software vendors, as well. Boris FX will demonstrate a host of enhanced products in its Media 100 and Boris FX lines. Media 100 sports numerous versions, from the software-only Media 100 Producer to the Media 100 HD Suite that runs with an AJA Kona 3 card. On the effects front, look for Boris Red 4.1, Boris Blue 2.0 and Boris Continuum Complete. Boris Red 4.1 has undergone a total overhaul after a two-year R&D effort. It runs on all platforms and inside a host of NLEs, and it takes full advantage of the GPU horsepower of modern PCs and Macs.
Red Giant Software
will be there, too, demonstrating its roster of effects plug-ins, including Trapcode, Instant HD Pro, Knoll Light Factory and Magic Bullet. Each of these offerings has been enhanced, and the Magic Bullet lineup now includes the highly regarded Colorista color-correction plug-in.
As you walk the floor, look for Noise Industries, which offers the FxFactory (Apple Final Cut Studio) and
Factory Tools (Avid AVX) plug-ins. Noise Industries has been working with development partners to create new FxPacks that add greater functionality to the toolset. FxFactory is one of the first packages for Apple's FxPlug architecture for both Final Cut Pro and Motion, and both FxFactory and Factory Tools take advantage of Apple's Core Image technology.
NAB is often about the new players on the scene. One such company is Signiant, a spin-off from Nortel. Signiant is taking eight years of IT development and applying it to the entertainment market. The sales effort is headed by industry veteran Tom Ohanian, who serves as vice president of product management. Signiant will offer software modules to manage, secure and automate the movement of large amounts of data among partners. Targeted customers include news operations, movie studios and online portals. Signiant's products are software-based and include three modules: a centralized manager, media agents and media exchange (for uploading and downloading).
Another newcomer is New Media, a company that will offer the first product to come out of the BBC's development of Dirac, a high-quality HD video codec. Dirac can be used to compress 1080/50p and 60p content and move it through 1080i and SD infrastructures. New Media is developing codec hardware to be used at either end of a transmission or routing pipeline.
Then there's Colorspace, another company developing its own digital cinematography camera. On the way to this goal, the company has developed a field recorder called ICON that will be launched at NAB. ICON records DPX files and offers support for 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 color spaces. It comes in a portable onboard form factor and uses hot-swappable media packs.
New recording technologies will also come from Panasonic, Sony and JVC. Panasonic has announced 16GB P2 cards for NAB and expects to offer 32GB P2 cards by the end of the year. Last year, Panasonic announced a real-time 2K video recorder for early 2007; a prototype of that recorder was shown recently at the Hollywood Post Alliance's Technology Retreat. This recorder is an updated D5-HD with an external adapter to deal with the I/O of 2K content.
JVC is also working to expand the market share of its ProHD series of HDV products. New in the lineup is an external hard drive recorder that can record native 24p files as QuickTime movies and a JVC-engineered film lens adapter for the GY-HD200U and GY-HD250U camcorders. For its part, Sony has expanded deck offerings for the XDCAM HD and HDV formats.
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