RED from NAB - Impression and more! (with Pics)
Well - I got to NAB on Thursday which happens to be the last day of the convention so presumably I missed the bulk of the crowd. For those of you who have never been - NAB is huge!
Of course Avid's and Apple's booths (more like cities) are easy to find. Avid is right in front of you when you walk in and Apple is conveniently to the right making as much counter noise as possible. But it was really really hard to find RED's booth! I must have walked 10 city blocks.
All I can say - whoever designed the showroom map should be shot. The booths aren't numbered in order - so there's no logical way to find anything. I basically had to study every square inch of the 5 foot map before I found the words RED.
But I found the booth:
There wasn't a lot of people there when I got there - there were more than the pic above but I though the above was more interesting to post. :) I did hear that on the first day or so that area was packed to the gills!
Read more by clicking below to read the full article.
Once you got inside you could take a look at the prototypes among other things and look at their schmancy brochure.
Above is what greeted you when you first walked into their booth. I asked a representative what it was and he said that it was a piece of "inspirational art" that inspired them when they designed the camera. I'm not joking.
Above is the working prototype for the camera. They said the case design is always changing and they are going through many many prototype case designs, as seen in the pics below:
All in all the RED seems pretty interesting. I'm really liking the idea that it will shoot 120fps. But my biggest concern is their storage medium and codec. I really really don't want to have to be tethered to a drive array when shooting. (they said that this would be necessary when shooting 4K) Hopefully they can get that worked out.
But it seems like so far it's mostly vaporware - hopefully for change sake they deliver. If only just to shake up the market! I'd be interested to see how much it gets used when it comes out. Hopefully it won't create too many post nightmares on my end. :) But the concept and idea is really neat. I wish them luck!
I then moved on upstairs to the Sony and Cannon cities - Sony's was even bigger than Avid's who definitely won the prize for the biggest city on the bottom floor of the convention.
They had these areas set up with models where you could shoot them with the many cameras they had on display. I thought it was pretty interesting. They also had tons of objects with different shapes and textures that you could test the cameras out on as well. It was the first time I've made it to Sony's area - usually I just stay down in Avid's and Apple's section because I'm a post-production nerd.
Above - Media Composer Software only in all it's glory running on a G5. It's fast - it's awesome. And at $295 for an academic version how can you go wrong.
Above: the Mojo with SDI support
Above: the breakout cables for SDI, AESEBU, sync, etc.
All in all it was a great show for Avid. Hopefully Media Composer Software only will turn the ship around for them in regards to FCP. Feedback at NAB was great - I was speaking to a lot of people from Avid and they said that they have been receiving a ton of positive feedback from people. A lot of people who had moved from Avid to Final Cut because of price are starting to think of coming back with this new version.
Arguing against Avid on price alone really is a moot point now - which is wonderful since Avid is such a powerful editing tool.
Apple had nothing to show that was new. I wanted to talk to them about my FCP DVCPROHD workflow but there actually wasn't too many people available. Maybe it was because it was towards the end of the show.
All in all, my trip to Vegas was great. Sorry for taking so long to post my thoughts. I can't wait until I get a copy of Media Composer Software only in June - and I'm looking forward to some real life impressions on the RED.
Of course Avid's and Apple's booths (more like cities) are easy to find. Avid is right in front of you when you walk in and Apple is conveniently to the right making as much counter noise as possible. But it was really really hard to find RED's booth! I must have walked 10 city blocks.
All I can say - whoever designed the showroom map should be shot. The booths aren't numbered in order - so there's no logical way to find anything. I basically had to study every square inch of the 5 foot map before I found the words RED.
But I found the booth:
There wasn't a lot of people there when I got there - there were more than the pic above but I though the above was more interesting to post. :) I did hear that on the first day or so that area was packed to the gills!
Read more by clicking below to read the full article.
Once you got inside you could take a look at the prototypes among other things and look at their schmancy brochure.
Above is what greeted you when you first walked into their booth. I asked a representative what it was and he said that it was a piece of "inspirational art" that inspired them when they designed the camera. I'm not joking.
Above is the working prototype for the camera. They said the case design is always changing and they are going through many many prototype case designs, as seen in the pics below:
All in all the RED seems pretty interesting. I'm really liking the idea that it will shoot 120fps. But my biggest concern is their storage medium and codec. I really really don't want to have to be tethered to a drive array when shooting. (they said that this would be necessary when shooting 4K) Hopefully they can get that worked out.
But it seems like so far it's mostly vaporware - hopefully for change sake they deliver. If only just to shake up the market! I'd be interested to see how much it gets used when it comes out. Hopefully it won't create too many post nightmares on my end. :) But the concept and idea is really neat. I wish them luck!
I then moved on upstairs to the Sony and Cannon cities - Sony's was even bigger than Avid's who definitely won the prize for the biggest city on the bottom floor of the convention.
They had these areas set up with models where you could shoot them with the many cameras they had on display. I thought it was pretty interesting. They also had tons of objects with different shapes and textures that you could test the cameras out on as well. It was the first time I've made it to Sony's area - usually I just stay down in Avid's and Apple's section because I'm a post-production nerd.
Above - Media Composer Software only in all it's glory running on a G5. It's fast - it's awesome. And at $295 for an academic version how can you go wrong.
Above: the Mojo with SDI support
Above: the breakout cables for SDI, AESEBU, sync, etc.
All in all it was a great show for Avid. Hopefully Media Composer Software only will turn the ship around for them in regards to FCP. Feedback at NAB was great - I was speaking to a lot of people from Avid and they said that they have been receiving a ton of positive feedback from people. A lot of people who had moved from Avid to Final Cut because of price are starting to think of coming back with this new version.
Arguing against Avid on price alone really is a moot point now - which is wonderful since Avid is such a powerful editing tool.
Apple had nothing to show that was new. I wanted to talk to them about my FCP DVCPROHD workflow but there actually wasn't too many people available. Maybe it was because it was towards the end of the show.
All in all, my trip to Vegas was great. Sorry for taking so long to post my thoughts. I can't wait until I get a copy of Media Composer Software only in June - and I'm looking forward to some real life impressions on the RED.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home