NAB Diary: Monday
I spent the day walking the south hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center looking for that hidden gem. While I don’t think I found it yet, I did uncover some interesting finds.
I began my day at Pinnacle systems talking about CineWave for Final Cut Pro 4.0 and the new Liquid Chrome system. The new enhancements that have been included in the CineWave system are great. Very fast speeds, some built in features that allow you to mix media, do pan and scan for 4:3 monitor systems, and even a portable HD unit. That’s right, a portable, battery powered, full HD NLE CineWave field editing system. It’s called CineWave 2 Go and basically takes all of the power of the CineWave card and puts it in a small briefcase sized travel container complete with removable hard drives. All you have to do is connect your laptop to the unit and you are working on HD footage in any location in the world. I’ll try to have a story in the near future about a team that is actually editing HD footage in the desert under 140 degree heat, and the unit still works great.[an error occurred while processing this directive]
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| Portable HD editing based on the Cinewave card. |
On the sad side, I was a little disappointed to hear that the StreamGenie was being discontinued as a product. Pinnacle will still support current units, but for now, there are no plans for a new StreamGenie system. There was not a definite reason given, but in light of recent streaming trends and economy, I think that the market just can’t handle the unit. When the streaming industry springs back to life, I’m sure the unit will be looked at again as a revenue generator for Pinnacle Systems.
Digital Anarchy gave me a one on one look of the new Text Anarchy 2.0. If you haven’t read Jim Tierney’s tutorial on the DMN sites, you should check it out. I like this plug-in because it gives you so much creative control over treating text in both After Effects and Final Cut Pro. I asked Jim if all of the features in the AE version transferred over to the FCP version, and basically the answer is no. If you are a follower of After Effects and Final Cut Pro, you know that Apple isn’t using the current AE architecture that would allow seamless integration of 3rd party AE plug-ins in Final Cut Pro. It is my hope that Apple would make this concession with Adobe so many of the great plug-ins out there would work in Final Cut Pro without a loss of functionality. Still, I do most of my motion graphics work in After Effects, so I’m not too upset that Text Anarchy 2.0 doesn’t have all the features in Final Cut Pro.
Next I visited NewTek and took a look at VT3. That is the official name – VT3, not Video Toaster 3.0. Seams as though a study was done and the words Video Toaster had a slight negative connotation to many new comers. Regardless of what they want to name it, VT3 still has even more power than it’s predecessor. If you are not familiar with VT2.0, then you should know that there is a breakout box that will allow for 24 channels of composite video, or 8 channels of Y/C or YUV. That same box is part of the VT3 system (for $1000 more), and this year NewTek showed off their small external switcher (another $1000). This frees up the keyboard so other things could be done during a live show (like working on CG).
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| The optional 8 channel switcher for the VT3. |
I posed the question wondering if you could edit using the VT3 NLE software and switch a show at the same time. It is not only possible, I saw it being done. They have even improved the edit system so you can work with both PAL and NTSC footage at the same time and even layer the two formats on top of one another without needing to render, and without a loss in quality.
Now let’s say that don’t want to spend the $1000 for the external breakout box, but did have several DV cameras you want to switch with instead. The improved DV handling capabilities of VT3, allows you to connect up to six DV cameras to a 1394 card (with the proper number of ports), and be able to control all of them with the unit.
To fully round out VT3, Aura and LightWave 3D are both bundled with the software to give you really powerful unit. The total cost for the entire system displayed at the show was around $10,000. That’s not bad considering everything you will get. The unit I saw was still a beta unit, and it did crash once during the demo, but I was told that the bugs would be worked out before shipping. Chuck Baker of NewTek said VT3 will ship in Q2 of this year (hmmm… April, May, JUNE?)
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| The complete VT3 system with all the bells and whistles will run you around $10k. Not a bad price for all the things it does. |
One of the quirky things about the VT3 press demo, was that it was done in the middle of the NewTek booth, with tons of fan-boys walking around and looking over my shoulder as the demo went on. At one point they even started popping with questions. I didn’t mind this at all because they were super enthused to see the system working, and if they are enthused, then sales are sure to follow.
Source: Digital Media Online, Inc.
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