‘Twas The Night Before Supermeet – Thoughts from NAB

‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE SUPERMEET

I’m writing this at 9:50 PM from my hotel room at the 2011 NAB Show (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In less than 24 hours, we will know what the next version of Final Cut Pro will look like. If we are lucky, we may also learn the future of other software in the suite – Apple certainly has enough stage time to tell us.

What I am intrigued by is not what Final Cut Pro looks like – unlike most of the world, I’ve already seen it. What I am curious about is how much it has changed since Apple first revealed it.

When Apple presented the software to the group, they asked us to provide feedback. I provided a great deal, and I’m sure others did as well. I’m curious as to how Apple responded to what they heard.

I will be at the SuperMeet tomorrow, listening and taking notes. And, I’ll do a second NAB blog posting after the meeting about what I learned. But give me a few hours — initial reactions are not always accurate. I want to hear what Apple says, then allow myself some time to think about it.

Nonetheless, I’ve been reflecting about tomorrow night’s blog for almost two months. I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts and – even more importantly – getting your reactions.

Tomorrow night is going to be … a jaw-dropper!

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NABSHOWBUZZ.COM — LIVE FROM NAB!

My podcast – DigitalProductionBuzz.com – is at NAB, recording interviews and creating shows. Our first dozen interviews are online – we are posting interviews as fast as we get them recorded and edited. Then, we gather the highlights from our interviews and post a new BuZZ every night.

If you want to hear the newsmakers themselves, explaining what they are doing – in-depth interviews you can listen to quickly — take a listen to our NAB website: www.nabshowbuzz.com.

We haven’t done anything like this before and we are very interested in your reaction!

We hope to create about 20 interviews a day for the next three days, then create NAB Show Specials for the next week.

You’ll find everything posted here: www.nabshowbuzz.com.

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LARRY IS A TWIT!

Well, ah, maybe that’s overstating things a bit. Let’s not get carried away.

Still, Leo Laporte invited me to be his lead guest at the start of his NAB coverage this morning on TWIT.TV. I was on for 15 minutes.

Plus, I’m invited back for an hour-long discussion on media this Wednesday morning on MacBreak Weekly. It will start sometime between 10:45 AM and 11:00 AM – Las Vegas time – this Wednesday.

See you then!

P.S. Thanks, John Stealey, for the screen-shot!

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ARCHIVING UPDATE

I spoke with the president of The Tolis Group yesterday during our setup at NAB and discovered that they have an LTO-tape-based archiving solution, called BRU, for less than $4,000.

I told him that I could not find it easily on their website, at which point he and his webmaster and I are going to meet later this week to discuss this further.

However, I promised in my recent blog that if I discovered anyone with a reasonably-priced, LTO-based archiving solution that works on the Mac, I would mention it here.

BRU is highly-regarded and I’ve received many positive reviews of their gear from readers. Feel free to check it out for yourself.

The Tolis Group: www.tolisgroup.com

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ADOBE’S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Adobe announced new upgrades today – they are releasing CS 5.5. But what really caught my attention was their announcement that they were now allowing you to rent their software.

Suspecting this was yet another ploy to get our data in “the cloud,” I spoke with Scott Morris, senior marketing director for Adobe.

What he told me was that when you rent software, your data stays on your system. “This is not software as a service,” he said. Instead, you are buying the full-featured software and installing it as usual. However, when you activate the program, it contacts an Adobe server to find out if this is a purchase or a rental.

If it is a rental, then each time the application starts, it pings the Adobe server to see if the rental is still valid. If it is, the program launches. If it isn’t, the program doesn’t launch.

In all cases your data is safe. If you send your files to someone who has the full program, the files can be opened, modified, and saved. If you stop renting for a few months, then start renting again, your files open exactly as they were last saved.

To me, this is a very elegant solution for people that need the power that Adobe software provides, but can’t justify the upfront cost of the purchase price. What I REALLY like is that our data remains “our data;” it is not forced to be stored somewhere “on the cloud.”

Weblink: Adobe Systems – www.adobe.com

For more details, listen to the Scott Morris interview.

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AVID’S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Avid didn’t announce any new products – except for a technology demo of much tighter 3D integration within Media Composer which makes the process of handling 3D materials much more seamless.

However, what did catch my attention was that Avid announced a cross-grade for all Final Cut users to the latest version of Media Composer for only $999.

For more details, listen to the Maurice Patel interview.

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HD IS THE NEW SD

It seems the video world is moving to higher resolutions.

Both Blackmagic Design and AJA announced support for 4K resolution playout. RED showed their Epic camera shooting 5K images. And Sony announced a new F65 camera that shoots 8K.

Clearly, the lesson is buy stock in companies that make or sell storage. These file sizes are going to be massive… And when you add stereo 3D, all your file sizes double!

Just as a rough guide, a 4K file is 4 TIMES bigger than a 1080p file. An 8K file is four TIMES bigger than a 4K file.

For more details, listen to the Nick Rashby interview.

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THUNDERBOLT IS STARTING TO APPEAR

We are seeing previews of Thunderbolt support from a variety of vendors — AJA and Blackmagic Design for image capture and playback; and Promise, G-Technology, and LaCie for hard drives — there are probably others that I didn’t make note of.

Thunderbolt is in the very early stages of adoption – the real roll-out will occur this summer. But it promises to be everything we could want for speeding up data transfers and handling the massive file sizes we are about to experience.

Sigh… Just watch. Someday, not that far in the future, we’re gonna say: “Boy! I wish there was something seriously faster than Thunderbolt.” We are never satisfied…

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More later, I’ll write again after Supermeet.

Larry

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