By now you’ve probably caught up on all big announcements from NAB 2009. If not, then hop over to Videography or DV for the NAB coverage supplied by my colleagues and me during our blogs and wrap-up stories for the magazine. In this post I’d like to focus on 10 relatively inexpensive items that will improve your productivity.
AJA Video – The AJA Ki Pro was the hit of the show for many, but don’t forget the Io Express. The new little brother of the IoHD follows on the heels of the older IoLA and IoLD, except that it now handles HD. Io Express connects via PCIe instead of FireWire and is ideal for laptop monitoring and mastering.
Automatic Duck – The Duck is known for timeline translation, but has brought back a popular application from the past. Media Copy 2.0 reads an Avid AAF or OMF 2.0 file or a Final Cut Pro XML file, figures out which media files are used by that sequence then copies the media to a location you specify. This is a great way to consolidate media and helps out where FCP’s own Media Manager is deficient.
Blackmagic Design – Lots of buzz about their UltraScope waveform monitor, but check out their DVI Extender. I’m not a big fan of the Gefen extenders so I’m glad to see BMD’s product, which uses standard BNC connectors and SDI cables to extend computer monitor signals. The DVI Extenders can also be used for DVI-to-SDI video conversion at HD and SD resolutions.
Boris FX – Boris Continuum Complete 6 – Always a winner, BCC continues improving and covers nearly every host system on the market. BCC6 for After Effects is out and BCC6 for FxPlug (FCP & Motion) is in beta and will hit the market soon. New effects include extruded 3D text using the Boris Blue engine and reflections. The FxPlug version will have a few extra twists, such as an interactive preset preview browser.
Chemical Wedding – Location crews will welcome the Helios Sun Calculator, which is available through the iTunes Store as an iPhone application. This convenient tool provides accurate information about the path of the sun and how that may influence the planning of a shoot.
CoreMelt – This has been a popular set of effects filters and transitions available in Noise Industries’ FxFactory toolset. New this year are the V2 filter sets that run independent of the FxFactory filter management tool. CoreMelt V2 packs can be purchased either as a complete collection for FCP or After Effects, or as individual modules. For example, if you only want color correction filters or only glow filters, then those can be purchased without buying the whole collection. I especially like their color correction filters, which use intuitive sliders and feature a heads-up-display for grading curves.
Euphonix – I love control surfaces and if you hate to mix in FCP, Pro Tools or Logic with the mouse, then the Euphonix Artist Series is for you. These modular panels include MC Mix, MC Control and the new MC Transport. You can mix-and-match modules depending on whether you just want fader control or more panels with programmable hot keys.
Matrox – They are one of three strong hardware suppliers for FCP and Premiere Pro editors. MXO2 has become quite popular, so take a look at the new MXO2 Mini, if you’d like something even more portable. It can ingest and output HD via HDMI or analog connections plus analog-only for NTSC and PAL. It is a cost-effective monitoring and conversion unit for the laptop user. Even better, Minis will include the MAX encoding option. For an additional cost, MXO2 Minis can be purchased with onboard, hardware-accelerated H.264 encoding, adding more functionality to the unit. This means all three MXO2 products with MAX can be used to accelerate any H.264 files using Compressor. The NAB demos provided considerably faster-than-real-time performance.
Noise Industries – You’ve got to love FxFactory. The 2.0.7 update is available as a free download and every release adds a few more free effects plug-ins. FxFactory filters are supplied by Noise Industries as well as other development partners like iDustrial Revolution. iDustrial just released its own update to their really cool Volumetrix filter set. If you do a lot with type also check out Motype. A new partnership has been announced with Boinx for a series of tile and shatter filters.
Singular Software – PluralEyes was the simplest, yet most amazing FCP companion at the show. It’s essential if you do a lot of multicam editing in FCP. PluralEyes automatically synchronizes multiple sources without the use of timecode. If you shoot a concert with pro-consumer camcorders, there is no longer any need to hand-sync each clip. Instead, PluralEyes will analyze the audio tracks and line up the various sources in sync with each other based solely on the alignment of the audio.
Check out DV and Videography writers’ commentary during the show at DV’s (Almost) Live from NAB blog: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
© 2009 Oliver Peters
