NAB 2012

I'm writing this on my iPad who knows how many feet in the air somewhere over the Midwest on my way home from NAB 2012. At our meeting this coming Tuesday, April 24th we'll be talking about some of the announcements, surprises, parties, and events that made up this years NAB conference. I wanted to do a couple quick shout-outs though here on the blog.

I was extremely privileged to attend this year as a guest and ambassador for Imagine Products. I worked in their booth all week, talking to attendees about the excellent range of products they offer. I met some very nice people that stopped in from all over the world - China, Sweden, Germany, Korea, the Congo, Australia and the UK to name of a few of the more international locations. I had a blast hanging out with Dan, Mark, and Michael from Imagine, and a fellow Imagine Products user who was there with us, Mike from Washington D.C. 

I was one of the very first people outside of Imagine to get to see and use their brand new software - PreRollPost. Most of my time in the booth was spent demoing it. Some of the comments I received were, "the best thing I saw at NAB", "highlight of the show - can't wait until it's shipping", "Are you kidding!? That price is for everything?!", "Can I give you my money today?" So what was everyone so excited about? PreRollPost is the software component of Imagine Products new affordable LTO archive solution. If you are archiving to hard drives and sticking them on a shelf, you definitely need to check this out. The price of $2999 includes a Quantum LTO-5 tape drive, SAS card, and the software that is very easy to use. Other complete LTO solutions start around $6000, go up quickly from there, and the software that goes with them is, shall we say, not exactly user friendly. 

You'll get a chance to see it in action at our May meeting, as Dan Montgomery will be our guest presenter and showing it off. I hope you can join us to see it for yourself.

I want to give a shout-out to G-Technology. I was at their booth every day at 11 and 3 trying to win a raffle for one of their drives. No, I never won, but I did collect some pretty cool schwag. We featured their drives in the Imagine Products booth. Everyone I talked with at G-Tech were extremely friendly. Look forward to hearing more about them at future meetings. They were also generous as they let me have one of the drives from the booth to give away at our meeting next week. Thank you Pete, Mark, and everyone at G-Tech!

I also want to thank our sponsors, and hopefully some future sponsors, that I got to talk to in the short time I had to cruise around the show floor - AJA, GenArts, Blackmagic Design, Artbeats, CrumplePop, Pond 5, Zacuto, Kessler, Red Giant, Re:Vision Effects, Nikon, Mark Spencer & Steve Martin at Ripple Training, and GoPro.

Thank you all!

The New iPad

Apple announced the new iPad today, featuring a 2048 x 1536 retina display that should make your 1080p and 2k videos look amazing! Pricing remains the same, while the iPad 2 stays around in a 16GB and wifi only configuration for $399. Apple's iPad page has all the details.

The Verge has early hands-on report of the new iPad.

If you want to update or purchase any of the new software, it all requires iOS 5.1, so head to iTunes or the Settings app and update that first. Then come back here to buy the apps (support our group and use the links here... thanks!)

Rather than rehashing what has already been said, you can read Macworld's articles on iPhoto and the updates to the other apps. You can read their article on the new Apple TV as well.

iLife iOS Apps:

iPhoto
iMovie
Garageband

iWork iOS Apps:

Pages
Numbers
Keynote 

Canon Announces 5D Mark III

Canon announced the long awaited successor to the revolutionary 5D Mark II today - the 5D Mark III. The 22.3 megapixel camera is more evoltionary than revolutionary, which is really not a surprise. It was going to be hard for Canon to make a huge splash with this camera after it's predecessor and the recent unveiling of the C300. They did address a number of issues with the Mark II: they've added a headphone jack, exposure and audio levels can be adjusted while recording, the video signal out the HDMI is not downsampled to 480p (doesn't sound like it is a clean signal however), recording time has been extended to a 29 minute 59 second duration, and there is a promise of decreased moire. For still shooters the autofocus mechanism has been totally overhauled with the same one used by the 1D X and has in-camera HDR with a full view viewfinder and faster continuous shot taking (up to 6 frames per second). They've changed lots of other smaller features as well. For a full run down and a spec comparison between the Mark III, the Mark II, and the Nikon D800, as usual, DPReview is the best place to go.

Amazon, Adorama, and B&H are taking pre-orders now, with body only costing $3,499 (a $1,000 price increase over the Mark II). Interestingly, Canon is going to keep the Mark II in the camera lineup for at least 6 months and will be dropping it's price soon by $200-$300.

New Website Feature

I wanted to point out a new feature of the website to you in case you hadn't noticed it already. Right over there to the your left, in the Navigation area, is a new link titled "Apps You Need". This goes to a new page here on the site full of links to Mac OS apps, iOS apps, iBooks, and printed books that you as a video professional may find useful. Each item links to it's respective store (Mac Apps Store, iTunes Store, iBookstore, Amazon, or the company's website in a few cases). By using these links to purchase the items, you help keep our group going. We get a very small percentage back on each purchase, but it it doesn't cost you anything extra.

So when you're ready to purchase FCP X (and you know you want to!), just click on the link here on our website. We've even made it easy for you with the pro apps - we have big icons with the links just a little below the Navigation area.

Thanks for helping support our group!

February Meeting Follow-up

Is Final Cut Pro X finally ready for everyone with the 10.0.3 release? That's what we were trying to access at our meeting tonight. Apple filled this small incremental point release with huge new features - in at least 2 cases, with Multicam and Keying - best in class features at that. More people are considering Final Cut Pro X now thanks to these updates. This month we dove in to explore them so people could see for themselves if it was time to give Final Cut Pro X a try.

A special thank you to Mikey Bouchereau (and his wife and business partner Leslie), long time member, first time attendee, for handling the Multicam and broadcast monitor support features. He was awesome! He also did an impromptu "Getting Started With X" after fielding some questions about the best way to get started in FCP X for those that feel a little lost or intimidated by the new nomenclature and UI. I've got several emails and tweets already from people impressed with his presentation. I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of him in the future! In the meantime, you can follow him on Twitter using @mikeybouchereau.

I covered the other 10.0.3 updates, such as the advanced controls in the Keyer effect, new keyframing behavior, relinking media, color board updates, and scope improvements. The updated XML format allowed the release of a new tool from Intelligent Assistance, 7toX, that allows you to bring Final Cut Pro 7 projects in to FCP X. We were going to demo that tonight, but the conversation, questions, and curiosity around FCP X was so good, we just rolled with that and ran out of time. We'll revisit it at next month's meeting.

We had a really good crowd on hand for tonight's meeting, and I think the new improvements, and Mikey's demoing of FCP  X, had several people excited to give FCP X a shot.