NAB DAY 3

NAB DAY 3

I read that show attendance this year is over 100k. An all time high. It definitely feels like a small city has sprouted inside this convention hall. This is my last day at the show and I've got a massive information hangover.

The dominant themes this year seem to be -

Small Solid State Recorders with built-in LCD monitor.

Indie priced digital cinema solutions.

4K cameras and displays.

and 3D. Everyone is getting into this game. I've seen so many new beamsplitter and side by side rigs, stereo monitoring solutions, and finishing systems. It's primed to take off. 

Got a lot of ground to cover today so will post some stuff tonight. 

NAB Show 2011 - On the Floor

NAB Show 2011 - On the Floor

I'm here at the show this year with Peter Clark from Attic Studios and like everyone else, we're just trying to wrap our brains around this massive quantity of new product. We spent 4 hours on the floor yesterday and only saw about a 1/4 of what's here. The sheer volume of new stuff is overwhelming to say the least. Seeing it all and really taking it in, catching up with colleagues, and then of course sharing thoughts on this site over the next few days is going to be a challenge. 

Yesterday we spent the afternoon cruising through booths and getting a lay of the land. Here's some stuff that grabbed me that I'm hoping to get more info on over the next few days -

Panasonic 3DP1 - ENG Style P2 3D Camcorder

Alexa M - Block Style Camera that looks to be purpose built for stereo acquistion. Will speak with Arri about this later today.

A very smudgy Gemini 444 Uncompressed Recorder. This thing weighs next to nothing and the quality of the dsiplay was much nicer than I was expecting.

Element Technica Atom Rig for EPIC

ET Electron Rig (more info to come)

Sony PMW-TD300 2x 1/2" 3MOS Chipsets

Sony SR-R1. This the deck that will work with any SDI source but not "Sony Raw" ala F65. It does HDCAM SR as well as uncompressed DPX sequences in both 10 and 12 bit. Awesome. 

HDCAM SR Memory Pack. 256GB will be $2000 so you can use your imagination as to how much 1TB will cost. Here's how the record times break down - 

1 TB:

2 hour of 880 mbps HDCAM SR

1 hour of Uncompressed DPX 

Sony SR-R3 Dockable Solid State Deck for F35 and F23

Sony SR-R4. This is the main recording interace for the F65 and is the only way to capture the 4k 16 bit Raw camera output.

As for 4k record times - 1TB data pack will hold approximately 1 hour of "lightly compressed" 4K Raw footage. 

Sony F65. This is the real deal. Deep engineering capabilities and tons of output configurations. Sony is shooting for a late fall release so they'll be in the field before we know it. Very exciting product. 

Sony 8K Sensor (4k output)

RED's booth -

If you're in need of a crazy NAB story or a regrettable decision - they're actually tattooing people at Red's booth. They have an artist there in front of the kitted out EPIC's so you can frame up some ECU's of people getting inked. The EPIC's are already starting to show up in the field so I've got nothing to convey that isn't already well know. I like the clean 1080p video output on the camera. Will make creating dailies much faster and eaiser. The interface is very fast and intuituve. There really isn't much to the camera. It captures nice BIG images and I'm sure it will be as ubiquitous as the RED One in only a matter of time. 

What is this?

What is this?

This image piped in from the REDUSER RSS (Google Reader rocks by the way). This is totally unconfirmed but it's a apparently a prototype Sony camera that looks a quite similar to the Panasonic AG-AF100. A single, large sensor in a camcorder with an interchangeable lens mount? It sure looks like it. 

Waiting for specs and more info... 

This is going to be an incredible show!