Archive of the NLEs Category

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.) more

There was something of a Yogi Berra moment at the Hard Rock Cafe on Sunday when Avid’s new executive VP and then the new CEO took the stage to pledge that this time we’re going to get it right.

Oh no, I thought, not another set of promises about working well with others and thinking outside the box. Well, we got those promises again. And yes there were some snickers around the floor of Hard Rock’s music venue (Avid’s traditional space over their years at NAB) at inappropriate times from the hundreds in the audience of users along with a smattering of press.

After all, neither CEO Gary Greenfield nor Kirk Arnold, executive vp and gm of Avid Video, have any video industry experience. (Give Avid’s board credit though–both of these very recent hires have solid reps for turning around high tech companies.) more

Just visited with Maximum Throughput, or Max T to the fans of this savvy Montreal-based company. Well-regarded for its Sledgehammer high-speed NAS (network attached storage) gear, Max T is moving to offer server-based editing. Its MAXedit Server, configured to allow many seats of workgroup editing right out of the box, is joined by the real winner for me: MAXedit Web Edition, a web-based editing service due to launch in the 3rd quarter of this year.

“Unlike some Flash-based web editing offerings, MAXedit is totally secure,” says Maher Khatib, vp of engineering at Max T. Their web-based product, just as speedy in offering real-time playback of resolutions up to HD over standard Internet connections, uses Java instead, which was developed by Sun Microsystems as a secure server-based media format. more

It was a busy NAB. Of course any show is busy, with hundreds of vendors and thousands of products to consider. But even compared to the usual convention (this is my 20th NAB. Yikes!), NAB 2007 had significant new products to consider, with cameras, storage arrays, and NLE gear just three examples of product areas with significant churn. One prime motivator behind all the new technology seems to be the commoditization of formally high-end–read expensive to manipulate–technology. Now, innovative entrepreneurs living just about anywhere have a chance to introduce potentially significant products, right up there with the established players. With so much to cover, I can just offer a final quick look- in no particular order- of some of the more intriguing products I came across, both new and significantly upgraded. (Be sure to check out NAB wrap-ups in upcoming issues of Digital Content Producer and Millimeter): more

Sunday morning started with a magic bus ride. Rolling down city streets, through underpasses, along Interstate 15 at 70 mph, and finally pulling into an underground casino parking lot, a handful of journalists including yours truly got a preview from Samsung of a proposed enhancement to ATSC that enables perfect mobile reception of digital TV, particularly to handheld devices.

What‘s the big deal? In a word, YouTube. Even the most benighted of computer illiterati grew acquainted with the pleasures of Flash files over the past year. (Thanks in large part to Paris Hilton, but that‘s another story.) The idea that it‘s fun to watch videos in a small window a few inches from your nose instead of from across the living room floor has now entered the public‘s consciousness. Apple‘s video iPod is another manifestation of this shift in TV viewing habits, as will be the larger, sharper iPhone when it debuts in June. more

Teamworking in post is all the rage. You can‘t read far though the slew of pre-show press releases to learn that playing well with others will be a big part of the news at NAB 07

Quantel does its part with the launch of Genetic Engineering at their Sunday press conference. No need to worry about stem cells piling up on your NLE though: the Brit company is talking about overturning the traditional way of looking at SANs (storage area networks), allowing Q users to hook together any of its products–whether eQ, iQ, or Pablo–and getting access to the same clips at the same time without copying, reformatting, or moving the media. more