Today, I attended the DV Expo 2007 in the Los Angeles Convention Center. The show was great, with lots of vendors there showing off many cool products.

The reasons I attended the show were the following:

1. To learn about new products that I can use where I work (my full time job).
2. To create partnerships and get new sponsors for my podcasts.
3. To video tape the show for the TDMD EXPOzed podcast.

LEARNING ABOUT PRODUCTS

To start out, I definitely learned a lot and found some great products that I will be recommending to my company.

MediaSilo, creates this neat online Digital Asset Management product that allows me to manage all my assets online, share my assets with other people, allow others to post comments and even annotate comments to flash videos at certain points in the time line, all starting at only $98 per month. That’s not a bad deal.

I got to meet the folks at KB Covers, makers of keyboard covers for applications. I got the Final Cut Pro one and I’m wondering how I used FCP before. It’s a great way to be reminded of keyboard shortcuts quickly.

Fli4Mac and Sorenson Squeeze were there, 2 great products (one for the Mac and the other, Squeeze, for both Mac and PC). I use both of them extensively.

Other vendors that were there included AJA Video, digital video interface makers, ARRI (the lighting guys… I have one of their kits…and I love it), Avid Technology (sorry, but to me, they are a dinosaur, FCP and Premiere Pro are taking over the market), Bogen (tripods), Canon had a huge booth as did Panasonic, JVC and Sony.

Overall, the show was great, however, it was not as busy as I thought it would be.

CREATING PARTNERSHIPS

I found some great people there that I have created some great partnerships with. I will be announcing those partnerships as soon as they are finalized, but just to give you a hint, there are many great features coming up in The Digital Media Dude (both site and podcasts ) with many more experts collaborating to bring more content to the site.

VIDEOTAPING

I video taped the entire show, so I will be publishing the TDMD EXPOzed podcast with all the videos in the next couple of days.

The expo also offered may classes (which I did not take this year) on different DV related topics such as color correction, post technology trends, multi-layered effects in Avid and FCP, Lighting for HD, Motion tips & tricks, digital documentary workshops, tracking Flash video views, Flash vs. Silverlight, Digital Moviemaking, HD post essentials, etc.

Well, that’s it, I really enjoyed this show. Now I’m looking forward to Mac World next.

Cheers!

- Marcelo

The Digital Media Dude