Data Management, Stereoscopic Editing and the Farmer’s Wife
Last week, John and I attended the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) convention in Vegas. As much as we try to follow industry technology trends throughout the year, NAB is a great place to see new things up close and get your hands on the latest video and digital film gear. I was there for only two days packing in as many flyers, pens, trinkets, stickers and, oh yeah, knowledge I could into my swag bag. Here is some information on a few of my favorite technology “toys” and observations from the show.
The most major trend I observed at the show was stereoscopic editing and finishing in 3D. So what is stereoscopic editing? It is editing video for 3D presentation on the big and small screen. Creating a film in 3D was previously a very complicated process and now you can edit this footage easily with Avid and almost every other editing system out there. With the increased horsepower of today’s computers, this amazing technology is finally affordable for more than just the big studios. It seemed like every booth was showing 3D options with software and hardware systems. With movies like James Cameron’s 3D feature film “Avatar” opening soon, the popularity of 3D is expanding past the realm of concerts and cartoons and into feature narrative films.
Another trend I observed was the sudden death of video tape and the warm embrace of file based workflows. This is the essential practice of organizing and protecting your data files shot on all the modern video and digital film cameras out today from companies like Panasonic, Sony, and of course Red.
One of the most versatile systems that we saw was called Content Agent from Root 6 Technology.With one button you can create files for web distribution, DVD, and for editing at multiple resolutions. In the recent past, this required multiple pieces of software or hardware systems. Root 6 also allows for organizing and logging these various files all in one smart and concise interface. Very cool.
One final product that caught my attention was a facility management software package called Farmer’s Wife. Their booth has a giant picture of a 1930’s era country woman scooping lard out of a bucket. It definitely set the tone for this company’s fun and functional software. It features intuitive ways to manage scheduling for editors, producers and composers. And it links employee time-tracking and billing into a very comprehensive piece of software for managing the day to day operation of a facility like ours.
NAB 2009 was definitely an important conference for us. It was a fantastic opportunity to see new technology that will help us to continue making excellent media in the future.
Last 5 posts by Kent Esmeier
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Tags: NAB, trade shows
