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You may have noticed last year, I didn’t do my annual thoughts on the National Association of Broadcasters convention. To be honest, my interest level at the time was low. I attended the show, but didn’t really see anything that motivated me to write about it. I was depressed and being lazy. My goal is to never let that happen again. Although, judging by when I last made a post on the site… yeesh… I only update it about once a year anyway.
One of the big differences I noticed about this year’s show was that everything was scaled back. Adobe, JVC, Panasonic and the rest all had noticeably smaller exhibits. A sign of the economy? Or perhaps the need for the extravagant pavilion just isn’t there these days. There also appeared to be less people. I say ‘appeared’ because I don’t know for sure if there were physically less bodies there; but it sure felt like it.
According to NAB, their heydays were the late nineties when attendance reached around 115,000, well over the average of about 90,000 visitors. They added, this year was likely to be smaller than previous years as well.
The show itself has been shifting direction. Broadcast-related companies only make up about a quarter of the total exhibitors. Most are now online related with some motion picture stuff sprinkled in. So with that, as well as slightly smaller crowds to fight through and littler booths to trot across, there were a few items that caught my eye.
First, an observation. Canon has become the Apple of the production world. The 5D Mark II is like the iPhone now… everyone’s got one. Even the iPhone itself is getting attention by video accessory manufacturers like Phocus, who makes sleeves the phone fits into which lines its lens up with some threads so that you can attach additional lenses over the top of the built in camera. My NAB buddies and I spoke to the designer himself who hinted that multiple colors may be coming someday so you can personalize it just as you would with any cell phone case. I also had a conversation with a certain well-known DP and instructor who works with movie gear providers like Arri and Chimera. I won’t reveal his name because I didn’t tell him his thoughts might end up on a blog post. He said he’s noticed the Canon trend as well. He said a lot of photographers, especially younger ones, think they’re automatically filmmakers because their DLSR shoots video. Their stuff has shallow depth of field and is 24 frames/second but it looks like garbage. So he’s now teaching those types of people how to actually shoot video and says he’s telling new photographers they need to learn how to if they want to be successful.
There also seems to be this group of people who will buy Canon products no matter the cost, quality or usefulness. This seems familiar to me. Oh yeah, sounds like Apple customers. Look at the new Canon C500 Cinema EOS camera. It’s priced around $30,000, shoots 4K 10-bit RAW images. For about $25,000 you can buy a Red One Mysterium-X, which shoots 4.5K and has 12-bit RAW capability. Then spend that extra $5,000 on a nice prime lens. I don’t quite get Canon’s pricing logic. But I do know there will be a ton of folks who will scoop one up for the mere fact that it’s Canon. Full disclosure, I’m currently working with — but don’t personally own — a 5D Mk II, a 7D and the T2i helping a friend with various productions.
Once we realized nudging through the drooling crowd at Canon was going to be harder than we thought, we moved along to other interesting things. As I’ve said in previous NAB articles, I love finding items that are super useful! Whether it’s a simple little tool, or a vital piece of equipment you’ll drop some hefty change on, if it makes the job easier and more enjoyable, I wanna hear about it. Case in point: the company called, Atomos. They make a camera-mountable hard disk video recorder called the Ninja. Now, we all remember that other on-camera DTE recorder that was a big hit with firewire-compatible cameras a few years back. The newly introduced Ninja-2 jump kicks that product in its tiny little screen. The Ninja-2 has an 800×480 touchscreen which not only displays timecode data and other menu items, but it also serves as a color hi-res monitor for viewing your camera’s output. It features HDMI in and out as well as LANC control allowing recording to be triggered with the camera’s record button. It records in 10-bit uncompressed Apple ProRes or Avid’s DNxHD and you can mark in and out points using the touchscreen and export the metadata to your favorite NLE. Best of all, the drive is removable! The Ninja 2 works with standard 2.5 inch disk drives, whether mechanical or solid-state. For a street price of about $1,000 you get both video storage and a high quality monitor.
Now that we’ve got a monitor for our overly popular 5D Mark II, we need a shoulder mount. That’s where a Turkish company called Edelkrone comes in. They offer a number of rigs to help hold your DSLR more steady. These rigs are solid. They’re made of metal, feature metal knobs and can be ‘built-out’ to fit your needs. One of my favorite products they have is the Pocket Rig. It’s about the size of a BeachTek audio adapter and offers fold out 15-mm rails for mounting a follow focus and matte box. It folds up and fits neatly in your pocket or can remain mounted on your camera. My only complain with it is that there’s no threading on the bottom for a tripod plate. So it has to be removed if you plan on putting your camera on sticks.
My other favorite gizmo of there’s is a simple $160 hand strap. It screws into the bottom of the DSLR body and is completely adjustable. The hand grip is shaped and fits your paw just like those found on broadcast camera lenses. It makes it a thousand times more comfortable to hold your camera and would be handy even when doing stills.
The Modula 9+ is the top-of-the-line shoulder system. It features adjustable… well… everything. It’s like a Transformer. Things fold out here while others slide forward there. It’s most distinguishing feature though is the follow focus knob located just above the handles at chest height. This is not a knob on a whip; this is a knob built into the handle which controls the follow focus gear about a foot above it. Speaking of the focus… it also has a marked dial that allows you to set your start and stop points for your focus pull. And they have hard stop clips you can attach to lenses with those wretched infinite-turn rings.
In the post-production world of the other hall at the convention center a banner above Adobe’s more ‘petite’ booth caught my eye. It read, “The Future Of Post-Production.” A pretty bland and common slogan. But you know what? It actually might be true. Apple was once again absent (as they likely will be for all future shows).
After the uprising surrounding Final Cut Pro X, the other NLE’s jumped on the chance offering deep discounts to those wanting to ‘make the switch.’ And it seems to be working for Adobe. No other software suite compares when it comes to integration and price. Yeah, Adobe releases a new CS every year right after you buy the previous one… but you can’t beat the features and spectrum of codecs supported by Premiere Pro… not to mention its titler — still the best in the industry in my opinion. Apple’s lack of exhibition at NAB is continued proof that they are moving away from professional video production. The fan boys don’t wanna hear it, but it’s true. FCP X is NOT a professional program, Apple IS phasing out their desktop workstations and they DO want you to edit with your fingers on an iPad. Switch now while the discounts are good. Besides, the Creative Suite runs on Mac, so you can stay on OS X. And, Premiere Pro is closer in interface and functionality to Final Cut 7 than Vegas, Avid or Edius.
Lastly, product news outweighing all of the above. Which company had the best candy bowl. I made it a mission to snag a piece from any offering I came across. Some companies offered only one kind of candy, like white Life Savers. Others went with mixed options that included butterscotch, Jolly Ranchers and bite-sized chocolates. One booth, whose name I neglected to check, had candy imported from London! It was a large exhibitor as the bowl was located at a reception desk and I was informed of the candy’s origins by the lady behind it. The casino chip candy tasted of watermelon and became chewy after a few minutes. Other bowls were disappointing offering only flavors I don’t like or in one instance mint candy shatter to bits in its wrapper. The most creative utilization of candy must goto Vizrt, the company giving Chyron a run for its money in the broadcast graphics arena.
They made their candy into a marketing tool offering mints in a business card container with all their contact info on the front side. Unfortunately, the mints are those strong kind that burn your tongue and clear your sinuses. Not a fan of those. Still, they’re marketing creativity has the coolness of a minty fresh mouth.
There you have it, my thoughts on NAB 2012. There were a number of new products amongst those returning from years prior. I will say the highlight of my visit came Wednesday afternoon where by chance I happened to glimpse from the corner of my eye two TV and radio personalities I’ve been a fan of since I was kid. I couldn’t resist saying hello to Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase of the CROOK AND CHASE COUNTRY COUNTDOWN radio show and LORIANNE CROOK’S CELEBRITY KITCHEN program on the RDF-TV network. I’m not a country music fan, but I did enjoy their TV talk show back in the day when it aired on TNN, which is now known as Spike TV. It was such a pleasure to meet them and they were very kind and chatted with me for several minutes.
They were there to promote the return of The Nashville Network via digital sub-channels across the US. If you’re a country music fan, look for it sometime this summer. Read more about it here. I never expected to ever meet them in person, let alone at NAB. It made my day! If only I’d had a 5D, I could’ve snapped a picture… or taken a video!

Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) stars in this short action film shot entirely on a cell phone! That’s right. This was filmed on a Nokia N8 Smartphone, which is capable of capturing 720p HD video!!!

I want one of these for Christmas! What a clever idea… and they’re really detailed too. Had me fooled for a moment. CANON MUGS offers a series of coffee mugs and thermoses that look exactly like some of the lenses you’d have for your DSLR camera.
And yikes! The prices on some of them almost match the real lenses too!

Perhaps he doesn’t realizing he’s still on camera, but this news anchor moves away from the desk during the closing credits of the newscast to reveal he’s not wearing any pants.

EMBED-News Anchor Caught Without Pants – Watch more free videos

This is for those having a hard time deciding which digital camera to buy… a Canon 7D or a Barbie Video Girl. I know it’s a toss up for me. This comparison video by Brandon Bloch may help.

Canon 7D vs. Barbie Video Girl from Brandon Bloch on Vimeo.

If you’re a regular listener to my Internet radio show, Who Asked You? you’re probably aware that we’ve taken a strong moral stance against the site known as Twitter for its complete and utter uselessness.
But like all in the entertainment industry we have to keep up with the times and the trends in order to take full advantage of every oppertunity to get our name out there. So I signed us up. We’ll use it to promote new episodes of the show, as well as humor folks with day-to-day updates and ramblings between shows. You can follow us @whoaskedyoushow, click the little blue ‘T’ in the upper right hand corner of your screen or hit the button below.

This is a really neat little project a few guys put together using a DSLR, a printed-on-paper protractor and an RV trip across the country. This almost feels like a cell phone commercial. Great job!

This is becoming something of a tradition on my website, talking about what I saw, liked and hated at the NAB show each year I go. I have a lack of friends who share my interest in broadcast and video technology, so I don’t really have anyone to yack to about it except the random visitor who stumbles across my little corner of the web.

So what did I see, like and hate at this year’s show? A few things would be my answer. I typically follow the same path each year visiting the usuals and randomly stopping off in between them at the smaller exhibits that catch my eye.

A friend of mine, Wendy, tagged along with me to this year’s show hoping to learn a few things about the industry. I may have put her in some sort of coma with all my techno-babble as we strolled down the spongy-carpet aisles. But she was a good sport none-the-less. I applaud her for putting up with me. On our way into the show we talked to a young guy with an Australian accent who happened to be walking at the same speed as us across the gigantic Las Vegas Convention Center Gold Lot. It was his first time attending the show. He and Wendy both asked me what was big this year. My short answer to them was “3D”. That spawned a whole other conversation that lasted all the way to the escalators inside that lead to the main hall where we parted ways. None of us could understand why 3D is such a big deal.

Of course, I understand Hollywood’s perspective on it. Being able to charge 5 to 6 bucks more per ticket to a 3D movie makes perfect financial sense. Especially when doing it in 3D only adds about 10% to a film’s production budget. But it seems like they’re going way overboard with it. Shooting stuff in 3D that doesn’t really need to be. And broadcast isn’t far behind.

For instance, my first stop at NAB every year is Panasonic. I’m a Pana-fan and they’re convenient location near the entrance is a huge factor in my booth-visiting order. I was pretty disappointed though when I got there and all they were talking about was the AG-3DA1, their new 3D video camera for $21,000. The AG-HMC150, which was hugely showcased last year was almost nonexistent. It was on a dark shelf off in the corner. Everything was 3D1A this and 3D work flow that. It was stupid. There I said it…. the way the industry is acting over 3D is stupid. Every normal, non-industry person I’ve talked to where 3D has come up in conversation said they really don’t care about watching a concert or football telecast in 3D. And they certainly don’t want to sit at home with goofy looking goggles on in front of their television.

I don’t mind a movie like Avatar or Alice in Wonderland being 3D… but I DO mind paying extra for it on top of the already ridiculous ticket prices at the box office. Hollywood is going a little crazy with 3D. They think since Avatar was hugely successful, all movies in 3D will be too. Just like CGI, 3D DOES NOT make a movie good. It can’t replace the lack of enticing plots and lovable characters. Yet, Hollywood has an entire roster of cookie cutter Marvel movies and other CG saturated garbage that is getting shot in 3D or is going through a 3D conversion in post-production. One film, a creature feature called “The Cabin In The Woods” has been delayed an entire year just so they can tweak the script and shooting style for 3D. Is it THAT important? No… it is not. And lets not ignore a recent study that showed a laundry list of ailments that could result from viewing 3D images like headaches, blurred vision and nausea among other things. Besides the occasional action-packed movie in 3D, I couldn’t care less about this new fad. And that may be the wrong word to use here because I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon.

Anyway, back to NAB 2010. After not really liking the 3D orgy happening at Panasonic, Wendy and I moved on. We moved from here to there. Playing with cameras at Canon, zooming in on empty New Castle bottles and Folgers containers on their dark ally set then wondering briskly through JVC where their new solid state GY-HM700 series cameras were on parade… meh… too expensive and I’m not liking the mostly Final Cut-favored recording formats.

Eventually we ended up at Sony. As always, Sony’s pavilion was like a chaotic broadcast-themed night club. While being bombarded with colored lights you spend half your time their choking on bad cologne fumes waiting your turn to see the new CineAlta or XDCam. I was asked by a friend/colleague to check out the Sony PMW-EX3 and send him my thoughts. Strangely Sony was using their only display EX3 to film their own booth. So it really wasn’t on display. The EX3 is one of Sony’s solid state cameras using SxS memory sticks. Just like P2 from Panasonic, the SxS sticks are pretty expensive. But I did see a cool alternative from Hoodman. They’ve got a SxS adapter that features a SDHC memory card slot in it. So instead of spending over $500 on a single 16 GB SxS memory stick you can spend $140 on the Hoodman adapter and 16 GB SDHC card combo. That’s the kind of stuff I like finding at NAB. Cool innovative gadgets that save you money! Like the P+S Technik 16Digital SR Mag I talked about in a previous post.

Also on display at the show was Chinese-based, HDAVS. It’s really exciting to run across NEW companies exhibiting at the show. Here’s a whole line of cameras you’ve never seen before. They featured several HD cameras for broadcast with 2/3 inch imagers that record to portable hard drives similar to Ikegami’s GFCams. The image quality from their cameras was impeccable! They had a very Ikegami-esk look to their video. Clean and smooth with vibrant colors… at least, on the flower bouquet they had set up. I really like the body design of these cameras. Very streamlined. They also feature a LCD screen on the rear that doesn’t fold out, but was crisp and displayed all the camera’s current settings and audio information.

And speaking of Chinese companies. E-Image was present with their line of professional tripods this year. I remember running across them 2 years ago at the show and being really impressed with the quality of their fluid heads. Even more impressive were their prices! A similarly featured tripod to those from Vinten or Miller that costs $1,500 you can get from E-Image for about $800. And the color schemes on their heads, black with copper accents, were pretty polished and distinctive. According to their onsite salesman I spoke with, they’re in the early stages of securing US distributors. But he says you can deal with them directly to make a purchase if you don’t want to wait. However, this is also what they told me 2 years ago when I spoke with them the first time, so it would seem they may be having a hard time finding resellers here in America. And the price I mentioned above was from 2 years ago. They may be different now.

NewTek once again blew me away with another rendition of their Tricaster. For anyone who doesn’t know what this is. Simply put, it’s a TV control room in a box. Kiki Stockhammer, the video production world’s “Seven of Nine” was on hand to demo their newest Tricaster, the TCXD850. What an amazing machine. The virtual set technology NewTek utilizes in the Tricasters is astounding. The ability to film your talent in a broom closet with minimal lighting in front of a green piece of cloth and have it come out of the Tricaster looking like they’re in some huge CNN style studio with real time surface reflections and customizable monitors on the walls is just… plain… awesome! And from what NewTek told me, they’re offering incredible incentives for those who own Video Toaster 4 and 5 cards to trade them in toward the purchase of a Tricaster. According to one of their sales reps they’ll give you as much as $10,000 toward the purchase of a Tricaster if you trade in your VT5 card right now! They also have great deals for VT4 owners as well.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a NAB show without Adobe showing off another patch…. err… I mean CS software suite. I, like many Adobe users, am annoyed with how quickly these CS’s are coming out. By the time you’ve saved enough to upgrade to the latest one, a month later, another comes out. And I have to say. CS4 should have been a free download for CS3. It was nothing more than patches and bug fixes in my opinion. With that said, CS5 truly is a whole new version of software…. mmmostly for Premiere Pro. Our favorite video editing program has gone a bit neglected the last couple of CS’s. But not this time! Adobe has taken out the 4-cylinder engine and dropped in a V8! Their new Mercury Playback Engine gives Premiere Pro an astounding 200% boost in playback and rendering performance according to some recent benchmarks. And all of the programs are now 64-bit native. Bad news for those of us who are still working in 32-bit XP land. I’ll make the jump someday when I have $8,000 to drop on Windows 7 64-bit, CS5, a faster processor with more cores, a beefy new Nvidia card and a ton more RAM. Until then it’s just me and my trusty AMD dual-core and Nvidia Quadro FX1500. Dinosaurs, I know. After Effects received a few new tools in this upgrade including one called the “Roto Brush”. It quickly and accurately performs rotoscoping for you just by simply drawing a crude outline around the foreground object. And Photoshop also got some handy new tools. One in particular that I really liked is “Refine Edge.” One of the more time consuming parts of cutting someone or something out of an image is getting around nooks, crannies and hair. Especially if it’s frizzy or spiky. Even then, you end up with artifacts, or the original background color bleeds through. Not anymore! Now you can use the Refine Edge tool to brush around those intricate edges and Photoshop interpolates the information and gives you flawless hair lines… even if you cut someone out of a white background and placed them on a black one!

Finally, I think I missed the memo, but I’m glad Blackmagic Design was there to inform me. There’s a 3.0 version of USB? I must be totally out of the loop. Blackmagic was showing a bunch of new breakout boxes that use USB 3.0 to capture uncompressed HD files. Taking advantage of the speed increase over 2.0 (10 times faster) you can now capture, HD video via USB using an $850 box from these guys. And then work with said files in realtime. Even adding effects, transitions and titles to clips doesn’t effect playback. I’ve always been impressed with Blackmagic’s hardware and pricing. This just adds icing to the cake.

So there you go, that was my NAB 2010. Many of the smaller production folk are doing good just to get things done in HD, let alone the 3D they’re cramming down our throats. I for one ignored most of that and spent my time looking for innovative tools that save me time and most importantly, money! No hard feelings Panasonic, I’m sure your 3D camera — which is basically a HMC150 with two lenses strapped to the front — will be a big hit. I’m still planning to get a HMC150 and edit with both eyes, not just the left. Thanks for reading. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to start saving for CS5, a new 3D capable HDTV, reading all the trade mags I swiped on the way out and… now I want some cake.

Just a heads-up to let you all know that I’m sitting in as a guest co-host on this month’s F.I.L.M. Army. It’s a monthly podcast produced by Evan Pederson and the gang over at fancypantsgangsters.com.

They do several shows covering a bunch of topics like games, music, movies and more. The F.I.L.M. Army is about movies, Hollywood, coming attractions, DVD’s, etc. This month the show is about “remakes”. No shortage of material there! We talk specifically about 3 remakes coming out this year. We’ve got details about the plots, cast and directors of the films.

I had a blast, these guys are funny. I think you’ll enjoy the show.

Every once in a while I read something, or run across a new film/video production product that just strikes me differently than usual. I’m always excited to read about new gear, but something caught my eye the other day in TV Technology’s NAB Preview edition that is just awesome in so many ways.

It’s called the P+S Technik 16Digital SR Mag. And it’s kind of blown my mind. What a GREAT idea the P+S folks have. It’s basically a magazine for a 16mm movie camera, the Arri SR16 to be exact, that’s actually a digital recorder. Here’s how it works. It’s the size of a standard film magazine for the Arri camera. But where the film would normally be exposed there’s a digital sensor instead. The mag features removable hard drives, it can shoot in HD and 2K Raw resolutions, it has outputs for video assist and can be operated using the controls on the Arri SR16′s head.

What a cool idea! I’m in no way a “film” guy. I’ve never shot anything on film, other than still pictures, but this just strikes me as really neat! What a great way for die-hard film camera users to go digital without having to get rid of their older SR16 rigs. Cameras that they’re comfortable using and have thousands invested in lenses and accessories for can be converted to state-of-the-art digital just by attaching this unit and can easily go back to film when needed. The Arri SR16 (the camera this digital magazine works with) is a pretty popular and widely used 16mm camera. It’s been around for decades! To be able to turn one of these older cameras into a modern day digital cinema camera is just amazing. And green too! Not to say everyone is filling land fills with $15,000 Arri SR cameras that aren’t digital, but to be able to repurpose them to compete with Sony’s CineAlta and Panasonic’s Varicams and so on is just plain cool.

I think the only downside to the 16Digital is it shoots 30 frames per second in 2K mode. Not clear what frame rates you can use when shooting in HD resolution, but with NAB 2010 around the corner I’m sure everyone interested will be able to find out! Not to mention, this could be just the beginning to a “digital magazine” movement. We could see other companies producing similar units for other film cameras. Maybe even versions for 35mm.