NAB - 16th to 21st April 2005

The plan is to update this page with pictures and stories throughout the week at NAB in Las Vegas. We arrive late on the 16th, ready for the big Apple press event on Sunday. Below are the events we're attending, so look out for us and please say hello.

Sunday 17th:

Arrived late last night.

Apple Event, 11am, Paris Las Vegas. This event was very well attended, and Apple managed to put on a very impressive display of the new Final Cut Studio. Starting with a tour of Tiger, especially the new search tool, Spotlight, they demoed FCP5, DVDSP4, Motion2 and the awesome looking Soundtrack Pro. I did a nice soundtrack in Soundtrack earlier in the year for a childrens' animated storybook, and found it a great application, but it didn't have much in the way of editing tools. Soundtrack Pro is like FCP is to iMovie. Fully non-destructive editing of audio, with a nice library of sounds and great filters and effects. The search and fix mode was enthusiastically demonstrated to remove some digital ticks, and every step along the way was dynamically registered in the waveform, and every step could be turned on or off or re-ordered.

The masses waiting to get into the Apple Event

FCP5 adds dynamic RT, which drops frames and resolution to ensure real time performance. This worked well. Biggest new feature was multicamera, working with up to 128 shots, viewing up to 16 at once. Editing of the multicamera edit seemed seamless. Both HDV and P2 DVCProHD can be edited native in FCP5. HDV is edited as long GOP MPEG2 without transcoding, although they didn't announce support for the new ProHD 24p from JVC, so we'll be looking at what LumiereHD are doing to plug that gap. The new P2 HDX 200 from Panasonic was shown, and it does have DV tape built in, which was quite surprising. However, what was even more surprising was variable frame rate recording in 720p mode, which makes it a "Baby Varicam".

The youngest FCP editor in attendance.

Motion 2 seemed more of an incremental upgrade with improve 3rd party plugin support with FXPlug (can someone at Apple send me the SDK so that I can develop some cool Motion plugins?) and basic 3d support. The 3d support looks awfully similar to the new 3d support in Shake.... Nothing much was said about Shake, other than there's a new version.

DVD Studio Pro 4 supports HD-DVD now, and the new DVD player application in Tiger will play an HD-DVD. They demonstrated with some very nice Eric Clapton footage that looked super with the new h.264 codec. Compressor also receives multi-machine processing, which should help with compression to HD-DVD.

There was a mention or 32bit rendering in Motion, and I didn't catch if this also applied to FCP. One thing with these events is that you only hear about what they tell you, and there's often more info online than what you see. Although you do get a superb presentation, it's very focused, and I wish they had not done anything on Tiger as they have really done it to death with both WWDC and MacWorld presentations. It would have been nice to have seen more about the new Shake 4, but it only got a very brief mention to do with integration with FCP.

A long time request for FCP was granted - multi-channel audio capture. This will allow up to 24 channels of audio to be brought in at once, and this should be useful indeed. Also, 24bit, 96khz audio is now supported, which is great for high end production work that needs "production headroom" over and above 16bit 48khz.

Avid Event, 7pm Hard Rock Cafe. We missed the Avid event, but met up with Noah Kadner, Mike Horton, Tom Wolsky and Ned Soltz. There was a lot of talk about the new Final Cut Studio, and the Panasonic HDX200, which is rumoured to be able to record to a hard drive direct as it has a hard drive controller in it - either USB2 or Firewire. Again, rumour has it someone was recording to an iPod!

Waiting for the Avid Event with Mike Horton of the LAFCPUG.

Monday 18th:

Monday is the first day the exhibit halls open, and there was a lot to see. Today there was one product in particular that blew me away with what it will do to cinematography, and that is the new MK V camera stabiliser. I saw their camera stabiliser system last year and was very impressed with not just the results, but the superb build quality. This year they are showing a new "head" for the system that features a mechanism that senses the "horizon" and keeps the camera level. Not only does this mean better shots all around, but that a user can move to low mode without reconfiguring the rig, back to high mode, or to use the arm horizontally to fly over tables etc. You must go and see this in action if you're attending NAB!

Jadoo have worked on their innovative fuel cell technology to improve it's ergonomics and applications. The briefcase power supply gives 1200watt hours of electricity!

Silicon Color were showing their Final Touch system of products for colour correction linked to Final Cut Pro through XML. SHowing real time HD colour correct with an Shake-like process tree for effects. This looks to be a really nice system, and their integration and understanding of colour makes this a product to go see in action.

Acoustilock were showing their rack cabinets that dramatically cut the noise generated by your gear without them over-heating. Great for Xserve, Xserve RAID and G5 users.

LumiereHD were showing how they integrate JVC's 24p ProHDV with Final Cut Pro.

DVX Users Event, 6pm Panasonic display. The DVXuser.com event had a great turnout. We were treated to a really good talk on P2 and the HVX200 camera, which should be on sale sometime Q4 2005. It looks to be a real treat for filmmakers.

Tuesday 19th:

Creative Cow Breakfast, Flamingo Hotel Buffet 7am.

FXscript Plugins for Final Cut Pro session "Third-Party Filters for Final Cut Pro", North Hall, 2pm. I'll be speaking at this session with Joe Maller and Klaus Eiperle. Things got busy today, hence no new pictures. I'll be putting them up when I get home and recover from NAB.

Promax Event, Stardust 6.30pm.

World Wide Final Cut Pro User Group event with the LAFCPUG, 6.30pm, Stardust. Win a complete set of filters in the famous raffle! This event was excellent as usual, with all the faces we know and love being larger than life and full of energy.