Major corporate acquisitions, streamlined workflows and more affordable systems were the dominant trends at this year’s National Association of Broadcaster’s (NAB) meeting in Las Vegas, from 24 â€" 28 April, 2006. Danny Chan talks to some exhibitors about their key developments and finds out what’s in it for Asia.One of the telling signs that the digital era has come of age, can be gleaned from the fact that we have stopped using terms like ‘futuristic’, and replaced them with words like ‘new media’ to suggest the immediacy with which technology is unfolding around us. That is perhaps the reason that the theme for this year’s NAB is “Immediate Future”, which reflects the pace at which technology has been shaping the very landscape of media. It also brings to mind the rapid changes that have been taking place in our industry of late, in terms of format transitions (SD to HD), operational workflows (DI/ tape to file-based), and more announcements of corporate acquisitions.

Staged against this fast-moving backdrop, NAB 2006 became the de facto platform for discussing these changing times. More importantly, the exhibition-cum-conference offered its participants a bird’s eye view on how these recent implementations and innovations complemented and interacted with each other.

When two become one

With recent acquisitions of Canopus and Thales Broadcast and Multimedia, the Grass Valley business within Thomson is not only helping broadcasters cope with their transition into new forms of channel delivery, but working with the post-production people as well.

Reflecting on how his company has been taking a pro-active stance to keep up with the new delivery formats, Ray Baldock, chief technical officer, Grass Valley, says: “From our point of view, there’s been a lot of talk in this show about IPTV and mobility. Our strategy has been to serve our customers by helping them make these transitions. Through the acquisition of Thales, we are now equipping ourselves with a full gamut of products ranging from acquisition products right through to the content delivery â€" and delivery not just over the air but also for IPTV and mobility. With these changes, Grass Valley is now really an end-to-end provider of the whole delivery channel.”

Grass Valley took out a separate booth at NAB to showcase its film scanning, digital intermediate and editing solutions. It was one of four pavilions under the Thomson brand at NAB: the Film and Video Professional’s Pavilion, located at the Lower South Hall.

“The post production industry needs to move to digital intermediate workflows quickly and without disruption, and our products are an important contribution to that transition,” says Marc Valentin, president, Grass Valley.

“Our post customers have specific needs when they come to NAB â€" detailed demonstrations, and to talk with product specialists on building future workflows â€" so we have decided to take our offering to them and build a dedicated booth in the post production area of the convention.”

Another company that made a recent acquisition is Miranda Technologies. The manufacturer of hardware and software for the television broadcast industry announced over the NAB week that it has entered into an agreement to acquire privately-held VertigoXmedia, inc. and its broadcast division. VertigoXmedia is a producer of graphics automation software and systems.

“The demand for live graphics preparation, management and presentation is rapidly increasing as broadcasters strive to create captivating graphics across multiple platforms such as high definition and standard definition television, the web and MobileTV,” says Strath Goodship, president and CEO, Miranda Technologies.

Also making headway is Avid Technology’s takeover of Sundance Digital and Pinnacle Systems. Sundance Digital develops automation and device control software for broadcast video servers and other broadcast station equipment. Pinnacle Systems, now a consumer division of Avid, is a supplier of video creation and distribution tools. Touching on the synergy between the products offered by the companies, Chris Albano, vice president, Asia Pacific, Avid Technology, shares:

“I think what you can see from our acquisitions is that we’re complementing our existing product line and really expanding the whole end-to-end solution. Sundance’s acquisition represents good support for us in terms of automation. With their automation capabilities, between Pinnacle and our playout products, and the rest of the end-to-end Avid solutions, we are able to present a compelling and robust solution for our customers.”

A traditional NAB supporter, Avid Technologies made several major product announcements during the show, including the launch of Avid® Interplayâ„¢ â€" a nonlinear workflow engine that fuses integrated asset management, workflow automation, and security control into a single system. Created with broadcast and post teams in mind, this newly available system connects users to a shared-data and media backbone and smoothly manages the flow of projects from inception to completion using security and revision control. It streamlines workflows through searching, archiving, viewing, logging, automatic transcoding, dual-resolution encoding, and intelligent tracking of multi-resolution proxy files.

Avid also showed that it has not forgotten the budget-conscious independent editors, by launching the software version of its Media Composer NLE product, priced at US$4,995 upwards. On the Media Composer’s new price points and upgrades, Albano quips: “The best editing tool in the business just got even better, and the response has been great.”

Asian markets going strong

Asked about the region he oversees, Albano asserts optimistically: “We’re a very bullish kind of region. If you look at the macro economics, all the GDPs in the countries are growing at terrific rates, compared to the rest of the world. If you look at Japan, it’s definitely on the rebound. China is exploding. And all of that bodes very well for the entire region.”

Echoing Albano’s views on boomtown Asia, Maurice Patel, senior manager, product marketing, Autodesk media and entertainment division, says: “I think Japan is one of our biggest markets with a steady growth, and China and India are boom markets. We also see very strong growth in Korea, especially in terms of HD and HDTV. Overall, when we look at the Asian market, we see very dynamic growth.”

No stranger to corporate acquisitions, Autodesk carved a credible presence in the entertainment business after buying out Discreet, and recently reinforced its portfolio by purchasing animation software supplier Alias.

Autodesk’s NAB 2006 theme was “Creating the Whole Picture”. At its booth, the company showcased its expanded suite of content creation solutions for the film and television markets, including Autodesk Maya 3D animation software and Autodesk MotionBuilder character animation software.

“This is the first major film and broadcast show that we are showing our complete 3D pipeline, resulting from our recent acquisition of Alias,” discloses David Feder, senior director, worldwide marketing, Autodesk media and entertainment division,

Key rollouts for Autodesk included new products like the Autodesk Toxik 2007, a digital compositing software created for long-form filmmakers, that incorporates a ‘paint system’ that allows interactive high-resolution digital painting. Also, the Discreet Inferno visual effects system now operates on the Linux operating system, and offers higher performance as compared to its previous SGI platform.

The Creatives Rule!

With more interactive and affordable products, governed by better workflow and management systems, NAB 2006 â€" as the premier launching pad of these products â€"signaled a return of power into the hands of the creative people.

Grant Petty is founder and CEO of Blackmagic Design, a company that in his own words is “dedicated to allowing the highest quality video to be affordable to everyone, so the post production and television industry can become a truly creative industry.” Determined to put money where the mouth is, Blackmagic Design is one of few hardware suppliers that also runs a post production house. Straddling the creative and product development entities ensure that Blackmagic’s R&D engineers do not design their wares in isolation of the users’ feedback, which can be generated internally.

Adamant about putting the creative power where it belongs, Petty reasons passionately: “Well, technical people are nice, they’re useful and they’re great but this is a creative industry!

“I mean what people watch at home is content. They don’t watch a bunch of wires coming out of a wall, but they watch content. Content is king and the guys who create the content rule, and should rule!”

If NAB 2006 is anything to go by, the days of a technician or engineer running a creative department, or overlooking an editing console, may indeed be numbered. Before that happens, much depends on the collective resolve of the manufacturers to introduce more changes to the status quo, and drive the prices down even further. That would take a concerted effort and involve everyone, running across the board from the creative to the technical and business people.

One thing is almost certain; you can always depend on NAB as a platform for transforming these thoughts and ideas into real action.

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