Archive of the Vegas Musings Category

This is the 2009 Reel Impressions Cinematography showcase which premiered at the 2009 NAB Show in Las Vegas on a 24 ft. movie screen, projected in HD.

Reel Impressions is a joint partnership between the NAB Show and Reel-Exchange.com.

This is the 2009 Reel Impressions Editing, VFX, and Animation showcase which premiered at the 2009 NAB Show in Las Vegas on a 24 ft. movie screen, projected in HD.

Reel Impressions is a joint partnership between the NAB Show and Reel-Exchange.com.

Watch the 2009 Reel Impressions Student showcase which premiered at the 2009 NAB Show in Las Vegas on a 24 ft. movie screen, projected in HD.

Reel Impressions is a partnership between the NAB Show and Reel-Exchange.com.

This year Reel-Exchange member, and Reel Impressions participant, Westley Gathright posted video blogs on his first experience attending the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Westley patrolled the exhibit halls and attended some of the sessions and provided his POV via videos captured with a Flip camera then posted to YouTube.

more

Best swag of the show: Automatic Duck’s key fob/beer opener. Photo by Wes Plate. Watch them get made. Really, you should watch it.

It’s Automatic Duck’s 8th NAB—lots of us remember their debut. It seemed impossible that there could be a business plan in fighting the War on Tedium. But that’s what Wes and his dad Harry did, and they’ve delivered one plug in after another to tackle the yucky conversion tasks and minor but soul-draining shortcomings of mainstream editing products. For this year’s NAB, they reached back to their early days (2001) to resurrect the spirit of Media Copy 1.0 that worked with OMF files and “languished and died because it didn’t support all the file formats,” Wes recalls. more

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

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

In these challenging times, it’s hard not to look at somewhat random events as barometers for the future. The stock market is up, so things must be improving (right? right?), and home prices have stabilized in Timbuktu, so that must be good. What about NAB?

You know the NAB crowds are down when it doesn’t take a hour to grab a cab at McCarren Airport, and when the daily NAB press doesn’t tout record breaking attendance figures as they have every year in the past. Still, perhaps I’m just whistling past the graveyard, but this NAB has a much nicer feel in many ways. more

I don’t want to appear jaded, but at this point, if a nonlinear editor is still in the game, it’s obviously extraordinarily functional, which makes updates somewhat predictable and incremental. More formats, more filters, some interface tweaks, that kind of thing.

At the risk of increasing my hate mail by 300%, I’ll use the Sony Vegas 9 upgrade as an example. The new version includes enhanced format support (native XDCAM and AVCHD editing, as well as support for the RED ONE .r3d format), support for 4K workflows and gigapixel image sizes, six new video effects, additional customizable layouts and new keyboard shortcuts, and “improved audio-waveform drawing during recording.” more

As the editor of millimeter’s sister publication Sound & Video Contractor, it was informative to see quite a few professional AV technologies, applications, and players on the NAB show floor as I wandered around today. Digital Signage and various display manufacturers might well be expected, but what is interesting is that a handful of other hardware manufacturing types from the AV world are finding NAB a useful introduction to their own big summer show: InfoComm.

Case in point would be Kramer Electronics, which is displaying new switcher/scaler technology at NAB that is right in the wheelhouse of any AV man, and Kramer’s sister company, Sierra Video, as well. Kramer/Sierra are essentially showing most of the same new technologies they will have on display this summer at InfoComm in Orlando. more