When a company with a product line as big and deep as Autodesk makes its NAB presentation, you’ll forgive them for thinking like an auto company and describing the updated apps as their 2009 product lineup.

Trevor Boyer has already posted notes about Autodesk’s Sunday press conference. While each of the major products announced have plenty of notable and usable improvements, I’ll vote for lower price points and ability to work with compressed media as the most significant moves that herald future trends. Smoke 2009’s $64,000 tab for a turnkey hardware/software finishing machine–storage included–is a great breakthrough. For the first time, (fiscal) hope is offered to those many mid-level shops which blanch when faced with six-figure offerings from Autodesk, Quantel, et.al. (At present, this was described as an introductory price available through July 21, 2008. It’s a little unclear what happens after that; maybe if enough new buyers are attracted, the price will hold.)

Acknowledging broadcast production by allowing the import of Panasonic P2 MXF files shows that Autodesk doesn’t want to turn its back on this quickly growing market. Likewise the ability to integrate with third party software and gear that employ common pro Quicktime codecs keeps Inferno 2009, Flame 2009, Flint 2009, and Smoke 2009 relevant to a new generation that widely deploy Mac-based products.

(Not as big a deal, but useful: WiretapCentral, which lets you browse clip libraries and encode files through a network-connected Web browser.)

But for pure creative fun, I enjoyed hanging out at the booth and watching the Smoke demo artist show how intuitive and powerful Batch FX–the app’s new tree-based compositing workflow in 2K–could be as she worked on an ESPN demo. Tying together Smoke’s editorial timeline with a 3D compositing interface makes a lot of sense. The straight ahead speed and linearity of Smoke’s timeline somehow tames the excess that a pure 3-D environment can engender–you know there’s a goal you have to get to with a timeline, so adding and creating 3-D elements to integrate with that goal delivers the richness of the added dimension without the potential to lose yourself in complex 3-D space.

Part of the fun also came with the sheer interactivity delivered by the latest Nvidia card stuck in her demo workstation. At the show, Autodesk announced it would be offering Nvidia’s Quadro FX 5600 SDI graphics in all of its new effects and finishing products, as well as Autodesk Backdraft Conform 2009.