If nothing else, a week in Las Vegas for NAB will teach you to wear comfortable shoes. Luckily, the monorail was up and running this year, and I'm not ashamed to say I took it to the show a number of times? from the Las Vegas Hilton. Nice!
This issue features many highlights from NAB, but I was also curious to hear what some post pros thought. Oren Sarch, editor/partner at commercial house Convergence in New York was there to check out the latest in offline editing, as well as the HDV format. "It seems the big buzz word was HDV," recalls Sarch. "I was kind of happy to see [Avid] Xpress Pro on the laptop supporting HDV, and Adrenaline will be supporting it soon."
HDV, says Sarch, offers a lot of opportunities for HD production, especially for those just starting out. And while his facility's clients haven't yet expressed interest, Convergence is considering HDV for in-house productions.
Sarchs uses Xpress Pro, but is considering switching to Apple's Final Cut Studio package. He attended Apple's event and, like many, was impressed with Final Cut Pro 5's new multicam features. While he only occasionally works on music videos, he sees opportunities for using multicam on commercial projects.
Dusty Ebsen and Jim Baldree of Beantown Productions' LA location also attended NAB, and each found different products of interest. For audio pro Baldree, it was Source-Elements' Source-Connect software that caught his eye. The Pro Tools plug-in allows systems throughout the world to connect and perform realtime, direct-to-timeline recording using only T1, cable, or DSL Internet connections, eliminating the need for expensive ISDN lines, hardware, subscription fees and line charges.
Beantown has a New York location that the LA facility collaborates with, and Baldree says he is "always looking at tweaking a process and making it more efficient and faster."
Ebsen, on the other hand, was preparing for the LA studio's move to Hollywood, and had routing and storage on his mind, as well as HD.
"It was the year of HD," says Ebsen, who's been attending NAB for 20 years. "It was great to see formats like HDV, hybrids, P2 on solid state, and XDCAM. It's interesting that Sony went with 25Mbps [for XDCAM HDV] and Panasonic stayed with 50Mbps for SD."
Were you at the show? Tell us what you think.