Digital Video - NAB Show Special - March 14, 2008 - (Page 28)

NAB EDITING CUTTING CREWS WHILE TWO BIG NLE PLAYERS HAVE BOWED OUT OF NAB, THERE ARE STILL PLENTY OF OTHER NEW EDITING OPTIONS. BY OLIVER PETERS T he biggest news leading into the NAB Show is about who is not going to have a booth. Two anchor vendors — Apple and Avid — decided that their money would be better spent in ways other than fronting a huge booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Apple has already targeted alternate ways to get the Pro Apps message out, such as hosting large training events in Los Angeles for the Motion Picture Editors Guild. You can expect to see Avid expand its reach through regional road shows during the coming year. Both companies are mum for now and promise to start letting out the marketing message in the weeks leading up to NAB. Although neither will have a booth, that doesn’t mean they won’t have a presence, like presentations at user events such as the LAFCPUG SuperMeet. The scuttlebutt is that Avid will have various demos at the Renaissance Hotel adjacent to the South Hall. So don’t cancel your reservations — there’s still be plenty to see in Vegas. Quantel’s Pablo 3D Thomson Grass Valley Edius For the second year in a row, AVID comes to town with a new executive team, led by a new CEO and a new video division head. The past year and a half has been spent fixing bugs and making the core products rock solid. New versions of Media Composer, Symphony and others are in beta testing, so the general expectation is that Avid will announce some new features and thin out the lower-end products. Even a new hardware option is being rumored. Anticipated features include Apple OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Microsoft Vista support and new XML import and export functionality. One big announcement made in February is that SMPTE has ratified the VC-3 codec, which is based on Avid’s DNxHD compressed HD video codec. There are more than 30 Avid partners that have licensed DNxHD, so all of their products, along with Avid DNxHD media, will be interoperable with VC-3. APPLE hasn’t let much leak out about possible alternative exposure, but it’s a fair guess that you’ll see a lot of Final Cut Pro workstations around the floor, especially in places like Red Digital Cinema’s booth. One of the big disap- pointments last year was that Apple missed the target date to release Final Cut Server. It appears to have been a casualty of Leopard development and was held back in order to make sure the final version of the product was truly trouble-free. Apple has since held various Final Cut Server presentations at shows such as last fall’s Government Video Expo, so I expect to see an announcement that Final Cut Server is shipping at last. I don’t really expect a major change in Final Cut Studio, since that happened last year, but true native editing support of Red One media is anticipated by many customers. If you’re looking for the traditional booth from a high-end NLE supplier, then look no further than Autodesk Media www.dv.com http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video NAB Show Special 4/14/08

Digital Video NAB Show Special 4/14/08 Contents Nab' 08 Cheat Sheet Expert Opinions It Starts at Capture Lens Crafters Cutting Crews High-Key Developments Saving Graces Tech Time Machine

Digital Video NAB Show Special 4/14/08

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