NAB Wrap Up - Mobile DTV, 3D Cameras, Editing Tool Updates

The NAB Show (National Association of Broadcasters) wrapped up a few weeks ago, with an announced attendance of 88,044, up from 82,650 in 2009, and including 23,000 international attendees from 156 countries. Major themes at the show included momentum behind Mobile DTV, production equipment and tools for 3D TV, and broader support in editing tools for new HD camera formats. Mobile Digital DV Live broadcast TV is coming is coming to portable devices, via your local broadcast stations. As described by the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC), TV stations can simultaneously deliver the primary HD channel and multiple additional digital multicast channels to homes, plus now multiple mobile digital television channels to on the go viewers. Mobile DTV products demoed at NAB showed the range of possibilities for adding TV broadcast reception to mobile devices, including:

• a demo version of the Samsung Moment mobile phone, built on Google Android.
• Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Entertainment prototype netbooks with HD display.
• Portable DVD Players from LG Electronics.
• Tivizen Mobile DTV receivers from Valups, which receive over-the-air Mobile DTV and beam it via Wi-Fi for reception on products like the iPad, iPhone, and laptops.

3D TV 3D Cameras from companies including Sony and Panasonic provide the equipment needed to produce content for all those 3D TVs announced at CES. The conference sessions also included fascinating discussions by broadcasters on early experiences shooting major events in 3D.

• The Sony 3D Production System covers from cameras to recorders and processors, to monitors and projectors.
• The Panasonic AG3DA1 Full HD 3D Camcorder ($21K) uses SD media card recording.

Editing 3D Video Amazingly, you can edit 3D video today, even in your favorite editor. For example:

• Sony lists several third-party add-ins for Vegas Pro - CineForm Neo 3D, Medtron Make3D, and Pantarheon Bororo 3D.
• Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is already tightly integrated with CineForm (also available for Final Cut Pro).
• Sony has released a whitepaper on Editing Stereoscopic 3D in Vegas Pro 9, showing how to edit 3D directly in Vegas Pro using synchronized tracks.

Video Editing Tools NAB also saw updates to popular professional video editing tools.

• Adobe Creative Suite 5 updates some 14 core applications, with major performance enhancements from 64-bit processing and GPU acceleration, especially in Premiere Pro and After Effects, at $2599 for the Master Collection.
• The Sony Vegas Pro 9.0d update adds new closed captioning and PSD layer support, enhanced import support for memory and disk cameras, and numerous fixes and enhancements.
• Avid Media Composer v5 features expanded format support through Avid Media Access (AMA), including direct editing of RED R3D and QuickTime video formats, plus mouse-based editing through drag and drop in the timeline.
• Autodesk has brought its high-end Smoke software to the Mac for finishing work beyond Final Cut Pro -- plus applications including editorial, color correction, paint, cleanup, titling, and 3D compositing -- all in a single tool, for $14,995.

________ Doug Dixon is an independent technology consultant, editor, author, and speaker specializing in digital media.