(All photos courtesy of Phil Loeb, who attended the NAB Show)
This past week was the National Association of Broadcasters’ (NAB) annual spring conference in Las Vegas. Over six days, over 100,000 attendees descended on the Las Vegas Convention Center to witness the latest and greatest technology innovations in the media space and get a preview of the exciting things to come.
The NAB Show exhibits area covers 3 main halls of the convention center with vendors showing off everything from the latest in gear like cameras, lenses, cases, tripods, dolly rigs, and lighting. It’s also a great opportunity to get hands-on demos with the latest in post-production software, plugins, conversion and signal processing hardware, and even high-displays to get the most confidence in the work being shot or delivered. Storage vendors display the latest in high speed and high capacity storage from media used in acquisition to direct attached storage and networked attached storage appliances and archive devices. Even at higher levels, it was clear new display technologies from projectors, video walls, and live streaming. There’s a lot going on at NAB and really, it’s only possible to scratch the surface of all of the offerings but really there’s something for everyone.
Some of the highlights from a quick day on the exhibits floor:
Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design was a major presence at NAB. The biggest announcement from them was the release of DaVinci Resolve 14 which expands more of their work into turning Resolve into more than just a powerful color correction tool. Resolve now has Fairlight integration providing a powerful audio editing, mixing, sweetening, and finishing toolkit built in. They’ve also added the ability to more closely work with Fusion, the free motion graphics and compositing software they’ve added to their repertoire. It also now includes the ability to work collaboratively in shared environments and with shared storage to boot.
On the hardware side, Blackmagic Design had their line of color correction panels from the small and portable DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel to the high-end DaVinci Resolve Advanced panel (shown below) allowing for more creative flexibility in the finishing workflow.
They were also out in full force with the lineup of high-end yet cost-affordable cameras. The highlight was the Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K which adds a lot of features needed in higher end cinema cameras but at a budget-friendly price. Most impressively, they showed the camera outfitted for different working scenarios from stripped down one man band operations all the way up to full on broadcast studio rigs.
Digital Anarchy
A favorite part of the exhibits floor is always finding surprises and Digital Anarchy had a pretty impressive demo of a product they’re putting into public beta in the next couple of weeks. It’s called Transcriptive and it basically leverages the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to transcribe video. Digital Anarchy is claiming a 96% accuracy rate and it works fully within the Adobe Premiere suite and will allow for quick and accurate transcriptions of interviews. It also makes it super easy to build out captions and subtitles for work. Definitely something to keep an eye out when it hits public beta in early May.
Sony
Sony was also a major player on the scene with their popular line of CineAlta cameras like the F65, F55, and F5 but also showing off some of the great cameras in their mirrorless line like the A7S II and the recently announced A9. In addition to cameras, Sony exhibited great production monitors and post-production reference monitors with an ability to display high dynamic range content.
Canon
Canon had an impressive setup this year showing off not just cameras but also new on-set monitoring and projection equipment, a space the brand entered in only the last couple of years, with a lot of flexibility, ease of use, and great color reproduction. There was a demo for the new Canon 5D Mark IV firmware featuring an update to allow for C-Log which is another powerful tool to complement other fantastic Canon cameras like the C700 and C300 Mark II. If all that weren’t enough, Canon also offered hands-on time with some of its EF glass as well as its Digisuper Studio Box Lenses. To boot, there was a 360 video display in a Canon dome theater showing video acquired on a Radiant Images Sense 9 Canon which uses 9 C300 Mark IIs to impressive effect with up to 12K of spherical resolution.
Adobe
Hot on the heels of a new update to Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, After Effects, and other applications, Adobe was on hand to show off some of the new features and also highlight some of the great work being done with the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of applications from editing a film natively at 6K resolution to providing the post production backbone to some the world’s fastest growing and high volume outlets. Adobe’s continued updates and additional features for their software offerings reflect a strong commitment to staying ahead of the curve in the content creation space while still being a cost-effective tool for an individual or an organization.
ARRI
ARRI was showing an updated Alexa model dubbed Alexa SXT W model which builds an HD Video transmitter and Wi-Fi into the Alexa SXT body. ARRI’s booth space was full of cameras equipped with a variety of different ARRI manufactured lenses. Most impressive was the large format Alexa 65 which was used in a variety of recent films including Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Ghost in the Shell, and Live By Night and had one of the cleanest most beautiful images I had ever seen in person come straight out of a camera. ARRI also had a theater on hand to demo some of the feature work being done in HDR with the various cameras in the Alexa line. Another really exciting development was the ARRI Look Library being built into the camera software which will give more flexibility to make creative look choices no matter what stage of production. ARRI Media has also included an iOS app which gives an overview of the library.
Avid
Avid had the biggest announcement of NAB which was the announcement of Media Composer First. Launching in June 2017 for free, Media Composer First will give first-time editors and people new to Media Composer and Avid in general a chance to really play and understand how Media Composer works. Media Composer is a bit daunting but is one of the most widely used tools at the professional level and this will be a great way for Avid to get people up to speed on it in a practical way.
Lenses
So. Many. Lenses. Cinema lenses were a big draw at NAB. Sigma was showing off its new Cine Full-Frame lenses at 14mm T2 and 135mm T2 to complement their existing cinema lenses. The lenses are available in Sony E-Mount, PL Mount, and Canon EF mount and they definitely have a beautiful look for the price especially when dealing with high-resolution shooting.
Leica also had their Thalia line for large format sensors. All lenses are in PL mount and had a really nice, smooth bokeh and a very dreamy look akin to a vintage lens but having all of the functionality and clarity of a contemporary lens.
Leica also had their Cine Macrolux diopters pointed at a watch and provided some really great imagery for macro photography. On the demo with the watch it provided a nice sharp field of view with smooth fall off and separation of background elements.
Displays
HDR. 4K UHD. Rec. 2020. Wide gamut color. What’s the point of a great camera or editing software if your video isn’t being displayed with the latest technology? With HDR becoming a prominent deliverable on top of 4K UHD for outlets like Netflix and Amazon, it’s important to have confidence in the accuracy of the image being displayed. EIZO was showing off the ColorEdge Prominence CG3145 coming sometime later this year which has around 1000 nits of brightness and excels at reproducing very bright and very dark areas in a scene without creating artifacts. HP also had their DreamColor Z31x Studio Display which also looked impressive on display and also came with built in KVM support allowing for easy switching between multiple machines – great for smaller operations or operations where space might be limited.
In short, it’s difficult for one recap to encompass all the cool things on hand at NAB Show 2017. With more time, there definitely would have been some fun to be had with drones and the cool 360 capture and VR tools at the bleeding edge of video tech. Still, whether you live in production, post-production, or both, there are a lot of useful things to see at this annual event. NAB Show is a great opportunity to get hands-on time with the latest gear and get a sense of where trends are going.
This post is not sponsored by any of the brands mentioned in this blog post. We're just writing about these amazing feats of technology out of the kindness of our hearts.
