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NAB 2005

Mar 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By S. D. Katz, David Leitner, Dan Ochiva, and Bob Turner

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NAB 2005 — Digital Intermediate: Trends and Workflow

With today's rapid changes in media technology, NAB 2005 attendees will add broadband, IPTV, and other convergence technologies to the latest trends in DI, 2K, HD, and 24p.

Expect this NAB to be lively and bring some surprises. The show floor demonstrations will be driven by a steadily growing demand for HDTV, aided by a new generation of affordable HD production and post gear, powerful HDV camcorders and NLEs, plus a host of innovative graphics, animation, and DI products, as well as price-plummeting networking and storage gear. Don't forget the new generation of workstations, either. HP's potent xw9300 workstation, for example, combines the speedy new PCI Express bus with dual Nvidia Quadro FX cards courtesy of Nvidia's breakthrough SLI technology. SGI, meanwhile, hopes to win new customers with its Prism workstation, a $30,000 Linux rig “that can easily handle 4K” while employing off-the-shelf Itanium 2 processors, ATI's GPU chops, and SGI's own graphics secret sauce. The influence of computer technology will be more in evidence across the board and in some unexpected places, yielding some unique ideas and “aha” moments — if you're willing to look for them.

For every new DI, HD, and HDV product garnering attention, just as many manufacturers will emphasize upgrades, add-ons, or partnerships to deliver more value from their established products.

Either way, this NAB will not be spoon-fed to attendees — many companies have been closed-mouth leading up to the show, and if there is an over-arching marketing spin, it's not in evidence, at least not yet. Many of the new products will be at their most interesting when fit together with other products in that oft-cited quest for “workflow.”

A few examples: While the concept of workflow improvements regularly turned up in company brochures over the past few shows, companies including Grass Valley will now offer specifics. GV's new dMAX initiative, for example, calls for maximizing digital media assets by becoming a single-source integrator, delivering software, products, system integration, and support services, all in an effort to create that nirvana of optimized, end-to-end workflow.

FilmLight also has a plan. The UK-based company promises to demo a series of toolsets that address various workflows that incorporate “all formats from SD video to 4K film.” Discreet will push its data-centric approach to post at its booth by interconnecting its entire product line via Gigabit Ethernet, while debuting new tools and a new network architecture designed to optimize facility workflows, according to the company.

Look for the fruits of an HD collaboration among HP, Intel, Adobe, Microsoft, Matrox, and Blackmagic, and expect to see the once-pricey and still-quality Teranex format-conversion technology show up in an unexpected way.

If you want to take a break from the product mania, consider a couple of educational opportunities among many:

The Global Society of Asset Management's 3rd Annual DAM Pavilion can help you wade through MXF, AAF, and other acronym-prone metadata concepts. Discreet will offer training sessions for Smoke, Flame, and 3ds Max users and newbies. Da Vinci will take the curious on a tour of the Colorist Toolbox for one hour each day of the show. This year's NAB Post|Production World Conference will feature more than 230 training sessions covering the latest tools and techniques for video/film editing, special effects, audio/sound editing, web design, 3D animation, and DVD authoring. (See the insert on page 67 of this issue for more.) So expect to dig in and look for the technology and combinations that will make you more competitive, creative, or productive.

© 2009 Penton Media, Inc.