FAST Ivory
Next up was a press conference by FAST, where its new Ivory editor was on display. This is one nice system that according to FAST will be shipping in the next few weeks. It's all uncompressed, and with multiple accelerators, it proved itself to be quick-like-a-bunny. Best of all, like all of FAST's products, it runs on the awesome FAST Studio software. Also on display in the FAST whisper suite was our old friend Blue, the "every in, any out" editor that's been in the making since 1996. It seemed almost ready this time, but it still had a few crashing problems, so don't expect to see it in the next few months. As FAST officials confirmed, multi-format playback from the timeline is not as easy as it looks. In addition to that, shown for the first time was some unusual new technology developed by FAST that allows you to edit a segment on its purple/field notebook editing system, and then send it up to "the bird" with a miniature satellite uplink (called FAST Transmit) that folds up into the size of a notebook computer. FAST said this product was requested by various organizations with news crews sneaking into war zones. I think spies may also be interested, but they better have some time on their hands, because the thing is about as fast as a 56k modem. But you can strap four of them together for speed that's usable for short segments. Talk about connectivity!

Discreet
Down the aisle was the hippest "booth" I've seen yet, where high-end softwaremeister Discreet had its wares on display. The company is showing a new version of its powerful editing and compositing (but mostly editing) system, Smoke HD. Available in August, this new version will be able to input and output HD in real time. This should give the identically-priced ($260,000, depending on storage) Avid|DS a run for its money. Only problem is, it's not available now, while Avid|DS is. Discreet is waiting for SGI to ramp up volume production on a key component of the system, the Input/Output card. Sounds like that's what makes this whole thing go. If SGI does deliver, though, this promises to Smoke the competition, because Avid|DS is not capable of real time HD effects. Yet. And like almost everyone, Discreet was talking about a workflow environment, where all its machines are able to exchange files with each other via its scheme called Jobnet.

Avid Xpress DV 2.0

Avid
Right after that was a stop by the gigantic Avid area, where new versions of Symphony (version 3.5) and Media Composer (version 10.5) held court. The new product that really caught my eye, though, was Avid Xpress DV 2.0 running on a Dell Latitude notebook. Here's an editor that offers the same functionality of Avid's biggest systems and it costs only $1700 for the software. It's also Avid's first foray into Windows 2000. Its interface looks just like a Media Composer (see screen shot at left), and hey, it's quite a heady experience to edit on an Avid using a tiny notebook. Avid officials said you'll be able to get a turnkey Avid notebook editor for under $4K. Avid also showed me a new feature of DS that lets you import Photoshop files while keeping their layer information intact. If you use Photoshop, you'll know what I mean when I say, well, hallelujah! I use the layering feature in Photoshop all the time and it'll be a significant convenience to be able to move those layers around in DS. Avid also tipped us off that it'll be releasing a new version of Symphony, v. 4.0, before this year is out. Included in this new version will be a remarkable slow motion interpolation routine called Optical Flow, which can slow down shots without any jittering at all. I saw this in a demo, and believe me, it's smooth as a baby's butt.

MoviePack 4

AIST
A few aisles away was the AIST display, where the new version 4 of MoviePack was showing its stuff. Interface improvements were evident all over the editing software's screens, resulting in an editor that's even easier to use than the current version. And, if you don't like the way the interface looks, change it. The new skinning feature can make it look however you want -- even exactly like Mac OS X if you're so inclined. Expected to ship in the third quarter of this year, this is a great value in object-oriented editing on Windows 2000 that showgoers are able to get here on the show floor for $349 (the upgrade to 4.0 will be free for these buyers, but the retail price of the software is $750). One of the strengths of MoviePack is in its previewing and multiple layering features, showing you a constantly updated preview of your composites while you work. Best of all, these effects are open-GL accelerated, so as hardware capabilities increase, so will the speed of MoviePack. Another great improvement is its storyboarding feature, allowing you to do all your editing within it if you'd like. There are lots of high-end features in this package, at a decidedly low-end price.

DPS
Next up was a techno-demo of a new piece of monster hardware from dps. Called dpsQuattrus, the hardware is capable of four simultaneous video streams, six simultaneous graphics tracks and four channels of DVE on top of all that. No pricing has been officially set yet for this hot card, but rumors have the cost of admission being around $20K for boards and software. I saw this device at work, and it's for real. It reminded me of features of Quantel's Henry, but at a price that will be about $980,000 less. DPS plans to sell the new hardware to OEMs and also offer it as a board and software package. It's expected to use software based on dpsVelocity, but that software, still under development, will probably get a new name for this application. I expected a release date of somewhere far off into the future, but DPS says it'll be shipping by the end of this year. I think this represents another leap for digital video editing hardware. Can't wait to see it in its final form.

Sony Meeting
If NAB is Christmas for video-geeks, then Sunday was certainly Christmas Eve, with lots of sugar plums dancing in all our heads. Sunday's first stop was the Sony meeting at Bally's, which turned out to be the slickest event of the day. Equipped with HD studio cameras and huge HD screens all around, the Japanese giant put on a great show, telling us about its own version of world domination, which Sony characterizes as "Anycast." Get your footage in whatever format, edit it however you want and then put it back out there in any resolution or even on the Web. Sounds like what FAST was saying a few years back -- "Every In, Any Out." It's a great idea, though, in this age of multiple formats, many of which any self-respecting broadcaster must be able to handle. For us digi-vid editors, the big star was the new Xpri editing system, which combines uncompressed SD/HD performance with the ability to edit real time native MPEG IMX 50Mbps and HDCAM. Two models are available, in either SD or HD trim.

George Lucas raves about Sony HD digital film gear at NAB on Sunday.

The show got even more interesting when talk turned to digital film. Of course, the name George Lucas was bandied about when Sony mentioned its stellar efforts in the digital film arena. But then the crowd gasped as George Lucas himself strolled out on stage to endorse Sony's digital film products. Said Lucas, "I will probably never, ever shoot another film ... on film." Heavy endorsement, indeed. He went on, "I've been editing digitally for 15 years. It's inconceivable that I would go back to editing on a Moviola. The advantages of digital enormously outweigh the disadvantages." He's proud of the crisp on-screen look of his newest all-digital project, Star Wars, Episode II. "I think Episode II will look every bit as good as Episode I, which as good as anything I've ever done," said Lucas. Then, he delivered the crowning blow to his film colleagues: "Film editing is trying to catch up with what video has been doing for years."

Kaydara
Next stop was Kaydara, which has been steadily improving its Filmbox, now at version 3.0, to the point of being almost a digital video editing system. Billed as an end-to-end real time production toolkit, the box lets 3D animators view their characters in real time along with background video elements and any other video or graphic information.

Kadara's Filmbox running on Mac OS X

Filmbox comes in three flavors, Animation, Motioncapture and Online, of which Online is the most interesting for the digital video editing crowd. Its strength is combining live video with 3D characters, with everything you need to mix animations with live video for broadcast. If you have kids, maybe you've seen this in action on Nickelodeon. We were all impressed with Kaydara's speed in putting together an OS X version of Filmbox, which you can see pictured at right. Nice, and surely only the first in a long line of OS X software to be released in the coming months.

Panasonic
The NAB press herd was next loaded into busses and moved along to the Panasonic event, where the company was also touting its digital film equipment. As a Panasonic suit droned on and on about various Panasonic model numbers, everybody was itching to see some of this highly refined gear in action. Panasonic ultimately did not disappoint. They led the press corps into a small room where they had set up the finest digital projector I've ever seen. Is it me, or is it getting more and more difficult to tell the difference between film and video? Panasonic officials told me the main thing they concentrated on with this version of the HD projector is "getting the blacks right." Where in the past, digital cinema's blackest blacks were more a dark shade of gray, this new unit showed us only the blackest of blacks. Problem solved. I wanted to take one home with me.

Avid CEO David Krall explains Avid's "Big Picture"

Avid Meeting
Then there was Avid big annual press event, held at the hip Hard Rock Hotel. After the crowd was stuffed with crabmeat encircled by exotic mushroom-like stuff and then liquored up into a relaxed stupor, CEO David Krall explained what Avid means when they mention the words Make, Manage and Move Media. With its recent acquisition of Pluto, the video server company, Avid has assembled a complete set of video tools that can connect an entire facility together. Not a word was said about the Mac, though, so your humble narrator asked, "What are your plans for OS X?", to which both Avid suits on stage replied that they weren't tellin'. Avid did confirm, however, that it actually does have a plan for OS X. They just weren't going to tell me anything about it. They summed up the non-answer with, ""Being first isn't always being the smartest." Let's hope everybody doesn't feel that way.

Conclusion
So it was a great NAB, with innovation in evidence all around. It was quite a contrast from last year's event, too, where the battle cry was "Streaming Video Everywhere" and "We're an Internet Company". This year, nobody wants to be called an Internet Company any more than they'd want to be called a liar, coward or scalawag. The current catchphrase, "collaborative workflow," was in evidence everywhere we went, and I think that bodes well for an industry still hanging on the edge of HD. Surely, HD is on the way, but it seems that nobody is in any big hurry. But when it does hit, content creators will be ready, with huge amounts of networked storage on line and systems that allow everybody to have access to everything, all the time. This kind of power should come in handy. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to recuperate from this NAB adventure by sleeping for about a week. Nighty-night.

Charlie White has been writing about new media and digital video since it was the laughingstock of the television industry. A technology journalist and columnist for the past eight years, White is also an Emmy-winning producer, video editor and shot-calling PBS TV director. Talk back -- Send Chazz a note at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com.