NAB 2005

By David Em, Alex Pournelle

May 16, 2005

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The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) held its annual convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center April 16-21. Over a hundred thousand attendees gathered to see, touch, and learn about the latest moving-image tools and technologies, from cameras and massive disk storage arrays to lighting kits and foam-padded transport cases.

Five years ago, the show highlights were eighty thousand dollar analog cameras, recorders, and the like. Times have changed. Now companies like Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and HP provide the broadcast industry's infrastructure backbone, and NAB's become a showcase for high-end digital technology.

Traditionally, there have been four clearly defined tiers of film and television production: 1) high-end broadcast and theatrical, 2) electronic news gathering (ENG), 3) event, business, documentary, and independent videography, and at the low end, 4) consumer video. Until very recently, NAB mostly concerned itself with the top two levels, but this year the convergence of powerful desktop computers with cheap world-class software and inexpensive high-quality cameras has blurred the lines among all four categories.

HD Becomes Real

Three years ago, High Definition (HD) was exotic and expensive. Sony's CineAlta camera blew everyone away with its film-quality images. By the time you put a great lens and all the bells and whistles on it you were looking at a $200,000 camera package. This was all impressive (George Lucas shot the last Star Wars feature with one), but had little to do with the day to day world of broadcast.

Two years ago, Panasonic halved that cost with their VariCam (running DVCPRO-HD, the highest-res version of DVCPRO), but outside of theatrical motion pictures, there was still no large scale method to distribute the images. Last year, lower priced cameras, displays, and HD editing systems appeared, making HD production finally look real. Now it is. This year HD and its younger sibling HDV were everywhere, and so was the evidence that broadcasters and smaller video production shops are actively engaged in retooling their production flows to the new format.

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