The 40th annual NAB show took place in Las Vegas, Nevada and Mac Business Solutions was there. There is so much to share: new software, hardware and workflow enhancing solutions. Here are a few of the highlights:
Final Cut X Sneak Peek
The FCPUG (Final Cut Pro Users Group) Supermeet took place on April 12th. All of the Final Cut Pro users from across the world got together to meet, talk tech, share and most importantly, have the opportunity to view the new Final Cut Pro. Apple was the surprise special guest to the event, providing a sneak peek at the new Final Cut Pro X software that will be released later this year. There were many new features to the app, but some of the major improvements are immediate editing while ingesting, mixed format editing, shot detection, renderless workflow, metadata insertion and face detection on imported clips.
New AJA products announced
The AJA company is known for their saying “we solve problems and help people.” This is definitely the case year after year. This year, the company announced new products that enable an ease of production workflow. The FS2 expands on the powerful FS1 unit, which provides up/down cross conversion of video signals. Some of the newly added features are HDMI input and output, fiber input and output, knob based menu navigation, 32 channel audio mapping and Dolby E audio encoding. The widely acclaimed Kona 3G video input/output card received a major upgrade to enable output of 4K video resolutions.
The upgrade is free to current owners of the 3G Kona card. A new technology codenamed “Phaser” was announced, based around the highly- portable Io Express device. The unit will feature Thunderbolt, which is high-speed I/O technology that brings together high-speed data transfer and high-definition (HD) display on to a single cable. A shipping date for the product has not been announced, but we expect it to be available soon.
Adobe Creative Suite 5.5
Adobe announced the 5.5 release of Creative Suite software. In this release, Developers and designers can now export digital content to smart phone mobile applications such as iOS, BlackBerry and Android. Publishers can output to the ePub format and include image animations for output to a variety of tablet devices. On the video and audio production end, roundtripping has been simplified between applications and a boosted video editing performance. This update is expected to ship in June.
NVIDIA announced that their new graphics processors are optimized for use with Adobe Creative Suite 5.5. This enable users to operate within a 4K production workflow with real-time processing and playback of material.
Avid
The AVID company, along with their recent release of Media Composer 5.5 non-linear editing, announced an offer for Final Cut Pro users to switch to their software for $995.
BlackMagic updates its product line
The Blackmagic Design company had a number of new hardware devices that were introduced. The Hyperdeck Studio is an uncompressed recorder that records to Solid State Drives. The unit has a full color LCD screen VTR type shuttle/jog control with timecode and transport information. The Hyperdeck Shuttle is the little brother to the studio model, which also records to Solid State Drive directly from your camera’s HDMI or SDI inputs.
The ATEM Camera converter was also announced. It’s a compact converter that allows HDMI or SDI input, which then runs optical fiber cable back to your switcher. This is an ideal solution for mobile video production as the units enables talkback and tally functionality. The UltraStudio 3d is a portable I/O box that enables dual stream support for full resolution capture and play back of the left eye and for the right eye for 3D HD streams. The two streams are recorded into two separate media files. This and all above items from BlackMagic Design begin shipping in May. Learn More...
LTO-5 Tape Backup from Cache-A
Cache-A introduced the LTO-5 product line featuring the new Prime-Cache5, Power-Cache and new LTFS (linear tape file system) software. Both hardware enable reliable archiving of media to data tape based drives at high transfer speeds. The Pro-Cache is an appliance server which provides high-performance archiving. The Prime Cache is a cost-effective compact desktop solution that provides reliable archiving of media as well.
New Switchable G-RAID mini from G-Technologies
G-Technology introduced the new G-RAID mini, now featuring both RAID 0 and fail-safe RAID 1 operation, a high-speed quad interface and storage capacities up to 1TB. It is the ideal portable storage solution for safe-guarding content downloaded from professional tapeless video cameras. The unit is firewire bus powered and connects via eSata as well.
G-Technology is providing Hitachi 3TB hard drives in the the G- DRIVE, G-SAFE and G-RAID storage units. The G-SPEED eS Pro XL and G-SPEED FC XL -- will be soon available with 3TB drives, enabling up to 36TB or 48TB capacities. The inclusion of Thunderbolt Technology was announced as well. Specific Thunderbolt products haven't been announced, but they're on the way.
Thunderbolt added to the Matrox MXO2
Matrox announced an upgrade to the Matrox MXO2 family to now feature Thunderbolt technology. The unit can now output to range of streaming solutions from Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder, Telestream Wirecast, or QuickTime Broadcaster. Buliding upon the success of the Convert DVI, the Matrox Convert DVI Plus was announced featuring enhancements including better region-of-interest support and background color selection capability.
Premium features such as a flicker reduction filter, customizable presets with user-assignable hotkeys, password protection and SD pixel aspect ratio compensation are also included in the new unit.
New Fibre Channel + Thunderbolt Interface from PROMISE
PROMISE Technology introduced the SANLink adapter, merging Fibre Channel and Thunderbolt interfaces to provide a incredibly high- speed connectivity for users.
The SANLink is a single cable solution that will enable faster access to resources through any computer with a Thunderbolt interface. The is great for large groups that require rapid and reliable connectivity through the 10GBps connection that Thunderbolt provides.
