One of Quantel’s brand new Neo for Pablo color control panels - as launched at NAB, and one of the very few examples in existence so far, was stolen from Quantel’s Burbank office last night.

Here’s Roger Thornton’s rather eloquent account of the situation and his request that we all keep our eyes out for someone trying to sell this panel to one of our businesses.

Here’s Roger:

Unless the theives have taken it purely as an objet de desire to look at and treasure, it won’t be any use to them because they would tend to need a Pablo to use it with, and also our V4 code to drive it. Same goes for anyone they might want to sell it on to of course… The thieves also omitted to leave a signed QCare support contract, so they’re totally sunk anyway! But in all seriousness, we really do need this Neo panel back as soon as possible so we don’t disappoint our customers - it was booked out for back-to-back demos. If you were able to put any kind of message out over the wires to alert the West Coast community (and maybe beyond) in case it’s offered to them, we would be very grateful. I’ve even heard talk of a reward….nks

Please keep your eyes open.

I call Thursday NAB’s “rump” day, a short, casual afternoon of thin crowds, when tired booth personnel slip away to visit competitors and otherwise view the show floor for themselves. It’s my favorite day.

For instance, I swung by RED’s tent and found no lines. I stepped immediately inside and like those before me, ogled the aluminum prototypes of the upcoming 5K Epic (the small boxy one) and 3K Scarlet (“3K for $3K”) rotating behind glass. more…

Every year at the NAB Show, our Pick Hit judges look for products that show significant technological innovation, while promising to have a positive, practical impact on the day-to-day professional lives of digital content producers. Following, in no particular order, are this year’s winners. Thank you to each of our judges, and congratulations to the winners of Digital Content Producer’s NAB 2008 Pick Hit awards. Read on at The Briefing Room

More 2008 NAB Show news from The Briefing Room

Serendipity on the show floor makes for impromptu sessions. Tuesday I ran into cinematographer Bill Bennett in front of the Sony F35 parked on a dolly in front of Brand Pro’s booth. Not much to say about the F35–35 means its newly developed single CCD is the size of a Super 35mm film frame–except that it’s as impressively thought out as last year’s F23 on which it’s based, and like its double first cousin, Panavision’s Genesis, did once, it sets a new highwater mark in 4:4:4 RGB high-end digital cinematography cameras.

Well, for $250,000 without lens, it ought to. A lot to pay in weak dollars for tighter depth-of-field and better dynamic range than the F23, plus 1-50 fps variable speed in 4:4:4 (compared to F23’s 1-30). But you do get every pixel you pay for. This is a full-on 1920×1080 RGB image—no Bayer interpolation of phantom R and B pixels here, no sir. Leave that to lowly CMOS cameras like the REDs, Silicon Imaging 2Ks and Minis, and Arri D21s (at NAB upgraded from D20 with new 2K RAW data output mode). more…

Monday’s dharma at NAB was about bigness and smallness, and I’m still thinking about it.

Yesterday Tim Robbins gave the keynote speech. Ever since FCC Chairman Newton Minow gave his famous “vast wasteland” speech at NAB in 1961, it seems NAB has played it safe. Past keynotes I’ve attended have featured Ronald Reagan (attacked on stage by an ice sculpture-wielding assailant, yards from where I was sitting), Barry Diller, Richard Parsons of Time-Warner, James Cameron and the like. Safe Republican choices, not likely to get former NAB CEO and good ol’ boy Eddie Fritts in any Washington hot water.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Convention Center this year.

How Tim Robbins got invited to give the keynote is anyone’s guess. But there he was, on stage, facing a large morning audience of radio and TV broadcasters, cable owners and mixed-media types. more…

Back from the show. I like taking a day or so after my last postings to look through everything I’ve collected, selecting some last items to include in a final wrapup. While that’s not a lot of time for deep reflection, I am at least far enough away from the hype of the moment to enable a bit of perspective.

At the NAB press office earlier this week I overheard an NAB official talk to the editor of one of the leading trade mags. He was asked about what he thought would be among the most exciting developments of the show. Instead, he begged off answering, stating that as far as he was concerned it was all just a rehash. He could find nothing new or interesting worth commenting on. more…

Media Excel was the last company that I saw at NAB, but last was certainly not least in this instance. The company’s real time encoders for mobile, web and IP TV, recently anointed by MTV and MobiTV, looked very, very impressive.

The company targets broadcasters and other very high volume streaming producers and builds their Hera real time encoding boxes using Texas Instruments DaVinci DSP (digital signal processor). The chip is programmable, so it will support later codec updates, and reportedly scary fast. more…

As streaming becomes more technologically advanced and complicated, it’s easy to forget that the most basic streaming video-related need for many organizations is to synchronize a video of a speaker with his or her PowerPoint slides. Though Accordent does many more things than this, they offer two of the best products I’ve seen for streaming PowerPoint with video.

The Accordent Capture Station is a computer/appliance you can take with you on site to stream the presentation live, and/or capture it for later streaming. You connect the presenter’s computer to the appliance via a VGA connector to capture the PowerPoint slides, and plug the video feed into an Osprey card. The Accordent software captures and synchronizes the stream, captures it to disk, and can push it out to a remote streaming server. more…

Video over cell phones is one of the hottest topics facing video producers, but most organizations lack the technical expertise and/or capital to make it happen. If you’d like to dip your toe in the water, check out the Mobile Video Managed Service from Vidiator.

Operationally, you upload your videos to the Vidiator site, who transcodes them and sends you a link to post on your web site. Or, you can create your own mobile-phone accessible web-site using Vidiator tools. In the booth, the company captured video from a web-cam, uploaded it to their service, and then transmitted it to a cell phone in the booth where it played with minimal latency and good quality.

I saw the Vidiator folks in a 10×10 booth in the Central Hall, which initially raised my eyebrows, but learned that they’re owned by Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, a $40 billion Hong Kong company. Hutchison developed the cellular streaming technology for in-house use, and is now taking it out of house via Vidiator. Both the service and technology felt mature and well thought out, and at $99/month for 10,000 minutes of cellular viewing, it’s certainly affordable.

Artbeats didn’t just bring three new collections to NAB–a gorgeous ultra slo-mo reel, new air-to-air (shot with Phantom) and energy aerials, and an Environmental Impact series.

The company also reinforced their intention to be a creative and technical resource for those using stock footage with an on-booth demo theater running continuous series of tutorials on topics including Steve Holmes on compositing fire effects in AE, DVD menus, lower third design, and using ProRes 422.

For those who aren’t at the show check out Artbeats free downloadable tutorials at artbeats.com.