Archive by Michael Goldman

Brad Winnett of Isilon Systems was so happy to tout the company’s emergence into the digital intermediate marketplace as a scaleable NAS-based storage solution for such facilities that he brought in old pal, Dean Lyon, of da Vinci Systems, to join our chat this morning. (See my post earlier this week about what Dean told me da Vinci was up to at NAB 2009.)

Both men made the point that postproduction houses need to fundamentally restructure their technology, and their thinking, when it comes to the file-based world they have now, irrevokably, entered. Thus, such previously “mundane” or “expensive” propositions like file-based data protection procedures and tools are now central to their business. more

While we’ve handed the buzzword crown this year to “3D,” let’s not forget about old friend “workflow.” Solutions and improvements abounded this year at NAB, and the Vision Research people are no exception. They are addressing the issue as it relates to their popular high-speed digital camera technology.

The guys at Vision Research showed me their new 10gigabit Ethernet Phantom CineStation—a docking station for its hot swappable CineMag memory magazines designed to speed up the transfer of data from the magazine to the people who need it—both the transfer and the download of the data. When you consider, according to Vision Research, that the Phantom HD system gobbles up about four megabytes of memory for each frame shot, just a few seconds of material can suck up internal camera memory quickly. more

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Few people have more NAB experience than Band Pro Film and Digital Chief Technology Officer Michael Bravin—he’s been attending NAB for over 30 years. During that time, Bravin has witnessed, and participated in, the rise of an entire new industry—the digital cinematography industry that Band Pro specializes in. As he did in 2008, Bravin sat down again this week with me at the Band Pro NAB booth to discuss the state of digital cinematography in 2009, and its role at NAB this year, particularly in light of the current economic downturn and reduced NAB attendance. Bravin has interesting thoughts about what new trends and opportunities will emerge from these conditions that industry-watchers should consider.

Arri marketing chief Franz Wieser was caught in my optimism detector this afternoon. Chatting a short time ago, Franz told me he was surprised by how solid traffic to the Arri booth has been since Monday, and that orders in certain categories were underway. Given the dire economic atmosphere, not everyone can say that. But Franz did say what many others have been telling me the last two days–namely, that fewer NAB attendees does not translate into less active NAB attendees. Important people with cash to spend wisely were at the Arri booth, and dozens of others, and they were talking serious business, and not merely kicking tires.

In particular, and this was another theme I heard from a few other manufacturers, Franz told me that attendance at the show, and business interest, out of Latin America has been extremely strong, and he points to that region as a rising giant in the media world, and eager to grow. more

Got a nice demo today of the leaps and bounds being taken by The Foundry’s new and upcoming versions of its Nuke compositing software (version 5.2 was unveiled this week at NAB, and 6.0 will come out later this year). Lots of improvements worth checking out.

But when the demo was over, Foundry guys gave me a little lesson in the context of product development work. They revealed they have come up with an impressive little, for lack of a better name right now, plug-in called Rolling Shutter which, as the name implies, is designed to help filmmakers address and smooth out artifacts that can occasionally pop out of bits of footage shot with CMOS-chip-based digital cameras. In a technology demo, the tool clearly eased blur and quiver in test frames impacted by the rolling shutter technology that is part of CMOS design. (It’s all very complicated, but as I understand it, the rolling shutter exposes different portions of the frame at different periods in time, and certain anomolies can crop up in frames or between frames under particular circumstances in such footage.) more

The most succinct spin I’ve heard over the last couple of days about how best to analyze the dichotomy between the clearly smaller flow of attendees to NAB this year and the show’s potential for productivity came late this morning from audio veteran Norman Levenstein, sales and product development director for Azden Corporation (manufacturer of wireless microphone technologies). Norman said there is no point in pretending numbers aren’t, or won’t be, down this year at NAB.

“However, the people who are here this year, want to be here, and that means they are more serious about business,” he pointed out. more

Maybe it’s because he’s Canadian, but Dave Ross, CEO of Ottawa-based Ross Video, appears entirely immune from recession fear or NAB shrinkage concerns. In fact, his company’s busy booth (SU1807) is chock full of new product, expansion beyond the company’s core live broadcast production switchers, acquisition announcements, news of the hiring of additional sales staff, and, according to Ross, good profit estimates. He jokes that the company, started decades ago by his father, Canadian broadcast veteran John Ross, is “an overnight success after 35 years.”

But, more seriously, he suggests Ross has strategically tried to “grow ourselves out of the Recession,” and counsels that companies need to build “recession products before a recession hits—make a range of products, so that people will need something out of that range in both good times and lean times.” more

An ebullient Dean Lyon, Marketing Director for da Vinci Systems, spent a part of the late afternoon Tuesday touring me through the company’s philosophy regarding how best to survive the current economic disorder. Judging from the spate of initiatives we discussed, that philosophy appears to be “full speed ahead.” Or, to be technically correct and in keeping with the official theme of the da Vinci booth, coined by Lyon, the approach could also be called “visualize the future.”

After making sure I enjoyed a quick visit in one corner of the booth to “The Museum of Every Panel da Vinci has ever built” (”A Japanese guy tried to buy one of the original panels yesterday,” Lyon chuckled), which included an ancient SGI O2 box that Lyon insists “two guys were spotted weeping over,” Dean got down to business. more

Maxell continues its immersion into the world of tapeless field recording with its massive iVDR push at NAB this year. Company executive and iVDR guru Rich D’Ambrise today walked me through the advances in Maxell’s iVDR strategy compared to a year ago, when the rugged field media device was first shown around. Today, iVDR-Xtreme is now available and shipping, and in addition to that, the company is diving into all sorts of other iVDRish arenas.

Among those areas, at the Maxell booth, you can now see work in progress related to iVDR for FireWire, iVDR smart adapters for cameras that do not have host mode capability, iVDR for field viewing, and iVDR desktop drives, not to mention iVDR consumer products, some of which are already available in Japan. more

As usual, Autodesk is busy at NAB with new products—most notably, Flare 2010, which the company calls “a creative companion” to Flame and Inferno, designed to perform a mix of advanced tasks and support tasks that can be handled by junior level artists who collaborate with senior-level Flame and Inferno colleagues.

But the company’s real innovation at the show may be its steadfast focus on looking for ways to drive business to its users by offering them solutions for new and evolving workflows those customers will be getting themselves involved with in the coming weeks and months. Bruno Sargeant, a broadcast market manager for Autodesk, told me today that the company is working closely to develop not only new tools, but techniques in collaboration with artists in various market segments that can them port over to other market segments. more