Greetings from Las Vegas at the NAB + BEA 2012 conference!

Every April, thousands of video professionals from all areas of the industry attend the National Association of Broadcasters annual conference, the NAB show.  The conference highlights what new technologies are coming to market, trends in the industry, as well as technical education about specific products and software.  Co-located with the NAB Show is the Broadcast Education Association conference.  The BEA is a professional association for professors, industry professionals, and graduate students who are interested in teaching and research related to electronic media and multimedia enterprises.

This is Day 4 and last full day of the conference.  By now, Mike Curtis and I have seen almost all of the highlights on the floor that interest NUIT.  This year, the main concerns for our group are software, storage solutions (Both production and archival), and as always camera systems. The big software news over the last year in the film/video industry is the introduction of Final Cut Pro X. There is a lot of information out there on what people think of FCPX.Most editors feel that Apple is abandoning the Pro market, but over the course of the weekend i’ve definitely started to hear rumblings along the lines of, “Maybe Apple does know what it’s doing.”  I sat in on a session entitled “To Final Cut Pro X or not to Final Cut Pro X,” that really illuminated the challenges of not only switching platforms from Final Cut Pro 7 to Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, or Final Cut Pro X.  I look forward to advising this decision in the future with NUIT for our group.  It’s really amazing all of the viable options out there, not to mention at reasonable prices.

I could go on for hours about all of the cameras I saw at NAB this week.  A couple of announcements were made at the conference, including the unveiling of the Canon 1D-C 4k Cinema Camera($15,000), and Black Magic Design’s 2.5k Cinema Camera ($3000!)  Field monitor and EVF maker, SmallHD (we own their DP6-SDI monitor, and I love it!) unveiled prototypes for their DP7 monitor including an OLED and a super bright (You can view it in sunlight with no problems) LCD screens.

Lots of great gear, software demos, networking, and information that I feel truly helps us keep up with technology, as well as get to know the people who are making all of this wonderful technology a reality.  Here are some other images from my phone!