 NAB 2004
Let the Games Begin!
I lost track of how many NAB shows I have attended in the past 20 years but I honestly cannot remember a year that I have missed. Like all previous NAB shows, this year’s show featured lots of new products, new formats, and many new gadgets. Wandering through the endless display booths I could not help getting the feeling there was something different this year. The booth maps, brochures and product guides could not help me conceive what was different. Two or three days after returning home from the show, I realized what it was.
One of the NEW things at the show was not a product at all. What I noticed most was how competitive many of the companies have become. Yes, many banners read “we work with them” or “in partnership with”. But if you looked closely you could see some very obvious new partnerships forming and old partnerships falling apart.
Hardware vs software
The computer industry radically changed the video industry many years ago. One of those major changes was Non Linear Editing software. This year many hardware manufacturers are getting into the act. The first high profile company to go after Avid, Apple and Adobe’s NLE software is Sony. They have succeeded at the high end with a product called XPRI. At the low end, Sony finally got it right this year by purchasing one of the software developers, Sonic Foundry, and introduced it as Sony Pictures Software. On the surface this seems like a good idea. But we all know that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Comparing Apples to Adobe
 This year Adobe announced its new and improved NLE software Premier Pro. Guess which platform it does not play on… Apple. So why does Adobe think, all of a sudden, that the Apple operating System (OS X) doesn't cut it. Adobe’s new Photoshop CS works great on the Mac. I cannot help but wonder what Adobe would say about OS X if Apple had a hot application for still photography like they do for video editing.
Jump to April of this year and Apple’s FCP. Apple’s Final Cut Pro is one of the leading non-linear editing (NLE) software packages in use today. If you are a die-hard Bill Gates aficionado and see Apple and Steve Jobs as the evil empire you may not know Apple announced Final Cut Pro-High Definition (FCP-HD) at NAB. Apple has made it easy to upgrade to FCP-HD if you already have a current version of FCP 4. Simply run software update on your Macintosh and voila! Total cost for this new upgrade is ZERO. I plan to download my free upgrade this week. Once you have your FREE upgrade and want to use the higher resolution, all you have to do is import some HD images. I looked around the office to see what I could use. Even though I work for a Sony dealer, I don't have a vast library of HD material at my disposal. All I could find was ONE demo tape
Read the fine print
Remember earlier when I mentioned how Adobe’s new Premier Pro does not work with Apple. Why is it that software does not work with all hardware? Written in Apple FCP’s small print, if you upgrade to FCP-HD you have upgraded your version from 4 to 4.5. HDV is still 6 months away. Do you think when HDV becomes available in the marketplace Apple will change from FCP version 4.5 to 5 making HDV available? In the next 6 months many users of FCP will perceive that the only option for HD other than the High End HDCAM or HD-SR is Panasonic’s DVC-PRO HD. Is Apple saying that Panasonic has chosen a HD encoding formula that works well with Fire Wire and requires NO changes from Apple? Apple had one of the busier booths at the show. This wasn't because of any major hardware improvements or hardware compatibilities. Everyone was lined up to see what HD looked like on Final Cut Pro.
 So what is HDV?
Well this is a new format (yes another new format) that a number of companies have agreed upon. In fact HDV has been around for quite a while. JVC had a single chip HDV camera out approximately two years ago. HDV has since been improved upon and when it goes mainstream, late this year or early next year, you will see the HDV logo on Sony, Canon, Sharp, JVC and other cameras. With my information from the show, all of the small 3 chip cameras will be priced under $10K, possibly as low as $8K.
|
