This is my 19th NAB. I don’t know if that’s something to be proud of, or if I should have figured this thing out well enough to know better by now.

Whatever the case, April finds me back in the familiar haunts of the Las Vegas Convention Center, eager to see what the major players will bring to the table in these fast developing digital days, while hoping that I’ll come across some unique, inventive souls that are turning out technology that will rock our world, whether that innovation is coming from Australia, China, or Santa Cruz, Calif.

Actually that last stop along the way is a reference to CustomFlix, the innovative on-demand DVD publishing company that’s come up with a sharp method for film and video makers to sell their work via the Web. (CustomFlix clients keep their data files on the company’s servers; DVDs are printed out as orders come in, so there’s no need to sink cash into upfront stock.) more…

In a Post Production World session he affectionately referred to as “Spot’s Toybox,” Douglas Spotted Eagle trotted out a table full of useful, often essential, production gear. Much of it was related to audio capture—an oft-overlooked task in video production—and much of it was quite affordable. After a parade of different types of mics, audio recording devices, boom poles, and more, Spot trotted out a fairly large camera rig. If you mentally removed all the accessories, you realized it was actually a small-format HD camcorder – the Sony HVR-Z1, to be precise. (read our review of the HVR-Z1 here)

Spot mentioned that the exact rig, which he dubbed the “Uber Camera,” had been used to shoot the TV series 24. So what all was attached to the small camcorder? Two Hoodman viewfinder accessories. A Bebob Twisty Tap that powers a wireless mic. A Chrosziel Matte box with french flag and side bars. A battery, and a 20W Coco light. more…

Dylan Tichenor, editor of Brokeback Mountain, participated in a discussion with Ken McGorry of Post for the keynote of NAB Post Production World 2006. Tichenor began as an apprentice, and then assistant and associate, editor for Robert Altman films in the early ’90s. Back then, as an apprentice editor, he worked on a KEM flatbed. The editor would cut frames off a reel of film, and hand them to Tichenor for him to tag and file. Often these would be requested for retrieval later – with both successful and unsuccessful outcomes.

“Editors today in the nonlinear world, for all its advantages, consciously have to let assistants into their process,” Tichenor says. “Because they’re in another room with their own computers and their telephones.” They wouldn’t come into his suite unless he invited them, which makes it more difficult to pass on the art and craft of editing. Another blessing and curse of the nonlinear process is that editors “can try 100 times as many things” as they could before. Of course, “Sometimes it’s better to have a little more time than the computer requires” in order to reconsider a cut. more…

Before Tichenor’s keynote, Chas Smith, general manager of Avid Video, gave a brief presentation on his company’s take on the evolution toward HD. (HD is present in about 12 percent of American homes, he reported.) His points were quite simple: Traditional I-frame-only 1080i video contains about 6X the pixels as NTSC. That means 6X the required storage for 1080i compared to 480i. HDV, which is compressed to allay that challenge (among others), presents problems for postproduction.

The long-GOP structure of HDV means that in the editing processing, a lot of cuts will begin on an incomplete non-I-frame. This requires re-encoding around the edit to create a new legalized GOP around that cut. This essentially introduces a second generation of the media. Also, rendering for output after, say, color correction requires another re-encode. Finally, horizontal sub-sampling (1440 pixels across vs. 1920) that’s common to HDV camcorders requires compression and decompression cycles during monitoring and compositing. more…

Well, I made it. I’m here at NAB 2006 and I’m attending Post Production World sessions all day. Co-produced by Future Media Concepts and NAB, PPW offers a wealth of classes in a whole bunch of disciplines related to professional video production. Some of the “tracks” available to Post Production World attendees are Digital Video Production, Audio for Video, and specific tracks for specific production tools (Adobe, Apple, and Avid).

New this year is the Podcasting track. Art Morrison led a session this morning entitled “Advanced Podcasting Production Techniques.” I have to admit, as audio is not my strong suit, a lot of it was over my head. It was heartening to learn, however, that due to the compressed nature of audio that’s delivered over the Internet (i.e., any podcast), many advanced audio concepts become somewhat moot, such as EQing. Essentially, though, producing professional podcasts is like producing audio for broadcast: it’s gotta be good. Morrison and his panelists discussed concepts necessary for achieving professional-sounding results, such as multi-band compression, dynamic range, and attack (the rate at which a compressor/limiter expands the sound). more…

To start off our NAB podcasting season, Senior Editor Dan Ochiva talks with Roy Stewart, vice president of Business Development for Digital Media Services, Ascent Media Group. Stewart states, “We find ourselves in a key role, helping our clients understand how to produce and distribute content when faced with the complexity of today‘s media environment. We make recommendations to them about what file types should be used, what they should be doing to build the right workflow for moving 2K elements around, QC‘ing them, and then ensuring that they‘re color correct when they get a film printed in Spain, Rome, or Thailand.”

Listen to Roy Stewart, biz dev VP at Ascent Media Group chat with reporter Dan Ochiva in our Ascent podcast, or to download to your desktop – right click and select “Save Target As”.

This year’s NAB is sure to be more informative than ever. And as it has been for more than a decade, it is our mission to provide you with the best, most current information there is to be known. So, for 2006 we’ve decided to podcast—Yes Podcast—daily from Vegas. Thanks so much to our friends at Adobe for sponsoring!

Every day of the show, follow the trails of our editors/reporters as we gain information on the newest technology showcased on the show floor, hear from top execs from the biggest names in the industry, and hear user experiences from some of the industry’s best. Not only will we have recaps of live interviews from NAB, we also have several pre-produced, exclusive interviews with some of the leading-edge manufacturers.

The rest of the podcasts start Sunday. Enjoy!

Welcome to our second annual NABlog, from the editors of Digital Content Producer and Millimeter. During this year’s National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, we’ll be covering the news from the show live, as it happens.

NAB is the biggest annual gathering of the tribes for the broadcast, film, video, and multimedia industries, with attendance always hovering around six figures. It’s also the best place to see brand-new gear— new cameras, editing software, and anything else that helps capture images from the real world, package them, and send them out to display screens.

So for us, the editors, NAB presents a wealth of opportunities to interact with the people and the companies that create and manufacture gear as well as those who produce programming. With this blog, we’re able to share our experiences and fresh knowledge—we’ll be posting several daily updates from press conferences, parties, booth visits, panel discussions, and off-the-cuff interactions with industry mavens.

New for the NABlog this year are audio podcasts. Check in daily for new MP3 segments. Technical Editor Dan Ochiva talks with manufacturers (such as Adobe, Ascent Media, and HP) about the companies’ plans for the NAB show and the future of digital content production. Contributing writer and product reviewer Jan Ozer will be filing daily reports from the show floor, with guest spots from senior editor Michael Goldman.

Whether you’re getting ready to fly to Las Vegas or you’re planning on checking in on NAB news remotely, NABlog has you covered. Check back with us starting Saturday night—we’ll be blogging continuously. Well, almost.