Once the playground of the broadcast television and radio corporations, the NAB show has melded to include any level of media developer. If you are a backyard film maker, make documentaries, or professional storyteller, NAB would have offered something for you. The show, taking up almost every exhibition space at the vacuous Las Vegas Convention Center, had specific areas dedicated to radio distribution, satellite broadcasting, and the tools to define and refine the media. Stalwart companies like JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Apple Computer, AVID, Adobe Systems, Sachtler, and Sennheiser had very large booths and many announcements.

2003 will be remembered as the year HD became accessible in the low end, and much improved in the high end. Sony, in an effort to corner and define a market released a new recording disc based camcorder and VTR, capable of nonlinear access, high speed transfer, and improved longevity as compared to traditional tape based systems like miniDV or HDCAM. Leave it to Sony to have the ability only to record to their proprietary formats of DVCAM and IMX. Sony's announcement does reflect on the path of most electronic capture camcorders, leaving behind the linear tape and going to disc based system or in the next revision solid state recording to Memory Stick or Secure Media Cards.

JVC was the only company to feature more affordable HD production equipment using their DVHS line of VTR's and a new 720p30 camcorder. This new camcorder, capable of recording ATSC compliant MPEG2 streams on a standard miniDV tape, breaks through the $40K barrier on HD, offered at only a $4K entry fee. The video produced is much improved over NTSC based 480p30 camcorders, like the Panasonic DVX100. Actually, the DVX100 and JY-HD10U are the only under $5K camcorders able to record a progressive image. The next price is somewhere in the $20K+ market, but more near the $60K price point.

For us, Apple had the best product introductions with a complete video delivery suite of applications starting with video editing and basic compositing with Final Cut Pro 4, advanced audio editing with Logic Audio 6, DVD authoring and MPEG2 transcoding with DVD Studio Pro 2, Shake 3, and the coolest hardware to get your work done on. Such a following has gathering around the applications, user groups throughout the world have formed and meet regularly around Final Cut Pro and its sister applications. Bundled along with Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 2 is Compressor, the evolution of the Spruce Technologies acquisition almost two year ago. Apple combined all the technical knowledge of the Spruce hardware, and will deliver the most capable MPEG2 trancoder on the market, making hardware encoding a thing of the past. Along with the MPEG2 engine, another standalone bundled application, Soundtrack, codeveloped by Emagic, now part of Apple too. Final Cut Pro seamlessly integrates all these toolsets Apple bought out over the years and will deliver the good in June 2003. DVD Studio Pro 2 is expected in August 2003, and it too capitalized on the previous DVD Maestro, and marches onward.

All software media companies are trying to develop seamless software workflows like AVID that produces both audio and video editors, and now Adobe is jumping in with Premiere 6.5, After Effects 5.5, and new Encore DVD. Adobe might be late to the party, but their Wintel only software has legs and will combine well in the Adobe dominated print applications like Illustrator and Photoshop. In the coming months, all will see if software will rival hardware solutions in real time editing, DVD encoding, and ease of use. HD is here. Now we all wait for the reviews and life experience with these new tools.

Links:
NAB archived webcasts
Mokey Rotoscoping Software
Reflecmedia chroma key generator
Final Cut Pro User Group Network
Panasonic HD camcorders and VTR information
Apple Computer Pro Applications
Blu-Ray Disc information
Sony HD camcorder and VTR information