Anyhow, wasn’t it just last week that I read about the rumor that Apple was going to announce Final Cut Studio 3.0 at NAB (what happened Apple?) Do we really have to wait until August at Siggraph??

This year’s NAB was, in my opinion, the best one yet. Yes, attendance was down, but almost all the major companies where there showing off their products (with the obvious exception of Apple and RED). I interviewed many vendors and almost all of them said that the flow of people were steady and the quality was great (compared to last year having lots of people just kicking the tires and not interested in purchasing anything)

There were plenty of get-togethers, meet-ups and parties to attend, with of course, the highlight being the ProMAX Digital Lounge at the Palazzo Hotel (can you tell I manage the marketing for ProMAX????)

All kidding aside, if you had time, you could have attended our Digital Lounge, our free Final Cut Pro Training, the Final Cur Pro SuperMeet, two Avid Parties, the AJA party, the RED User Group meetup, a Twitter Meetup, an Avid Focus Group, plus many other events happening around town during the 4 days at NAB.

If that wasn’t enough, you had a plethora of vendors and booths to check out, plus, if you paid for it, you had the Post Production World Conference classes you could have gone through.

I went to NAB for many reasons. The first reason is because I love it. It’s the one show I really enjoy attending yearly. The second reason was for ProMAX. I was there, along with the ProMAX team for our ProMAX Digital Lounge, which kicked some major you know what. It turned out great. You can read more about it here.

The final reason was because of EXPOzed. I cover all the major events and shows for Pixel Heads Network through the EXPOzed Show and this is my third year covering NAB. I got to interview many different vendors (not marketing speak…but real Q&A asking about their new products…covering the good, the bad and the ugly). Expect to see over 20 episodes of NAB coverage appearing some time next week at Pixel Heads Network.

Some of the vendors that I interviewed included:

• Adobe about Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 & Adobe Flash For Home
• AJA about their new KiPro
• Avid about Media Composer 3.5
• Broadcast Pix about their Live Production System
• Canon about their new Canon 5D MK II DSLR / HD Camera
• DigiEffects about their plug-ins for NLEs
• Digitronics about their cool $399 flying camera helicopter
• Focus Enhancements about their new FS5
• Imagine Products about their Sony EX Offload Utility
• Matrox about their MX02 Mini

plus many more…

Beyond that, the weather was great…Monday was really hot, but then it started cooling off a bit (not much). I stayed at the Montel Carlo hotel, which is not bad at all. The cab drivers were complaining a lot that attendance was down, but I think they were the only ones complaining.

Overall I have to give the NAB show an 8 (there’s always room for improvement no?). I can’t wait until next year’s event! Maybe RED will announce a 4K cell camera? Ha! That will be the day!

This year was my first year as part of the ProMAX team as their Director of Interactive Media and Marketing (I’m sure most of you heard about the acquisition of Pixel Heads Network by ProMAX, but if not, you can read about it here).

I was nervous and excited about seeing how our event, which we toned down a bit and renamed to the Digital Lounge, to reflect a more “casual and relaxed atmosphere” was going to turn out.

The event took place at the Palazzo Hotel Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday between 5 pm and 10 pm during NAB. We rented a gorgeous suite which also had a fairly large patio with a fire place for people to hang out. We offered free food, free drinks, lots of great networking opportunities, cool equipment to check out and speakers throughout the night inside the suite.

Everyone seemed to have enjoyed themselves, with comments ranging from “Wow…this suite is awesome.” to “Your speakers are fantastic” to “Thank you so much for doing this for us”.

We had people stay past 10 pm…which we, nicely, had to ask them to leave because the event was over…and no, they didn’t stay that late because of the free drinks since the bar was already closed… People were genuinely enjoying themselves and networking with each other.

Yes, part of the goal of this event was to gather leads and make new connections (aren’t we all in business do do that???), but, we also threw this event because we love what we do. We truly sleep, eat, drink, walk and talk video and wanted to share our excitement for video and the industry in general by putting together this event.

A believe I have, which was cemented during this event was that people love events where they are not sold to. Events where they can “hang out”, network and even learn (as they did by listening to our great speakers). And through these events, as a business, you earn your customer’s (or potential customer’s) respect and they in turn think of you as an expert in your field and hopefully and ultimately, end up purchasing your product and/or service.

We, at ProMAX, consider the Digital Lounge a success, but not a success because we got lots of leads (which we did), but a success because it shows people that you can be in business doing what you love surrounded by people that love the same thing you do and (hopefully) make money while you do that.

I, along with the ProMAX team, would like to personally thank everyone that attended the ProMAX Digital Lounge @ NAB and we hope to see you all again in 2010!

Oh, before I forget, you can check out some cool photographs from the event here!

So why is the SuperMeet so cool compared to the regular LAFCPUG meetups (or for that matter any other FCPUG meetup)?

Besides the fact that Michael Horton, the founder and organizer, is a super great host, you are surrounded by at least 100 million Final Cut Pro users / editors from all over the universe… (Ok…maybe not a 100 million from all over the universe, but definitely by at least a thousand from all over the US and other parts of the world.)

The ball room was huge, full of great vendors showcasing their FCP centric products and / or services. The stage, where all the presentations happened, was pretty amazing and it really looked like they put great effort into making it a production (versus just a bunch of presentations pulled together).

The event took place at the Rio Hotel in the Amazon Ballroom from 5pm to 11pm on Tuesday night…though I could only stay until 10pm…since I was dead tired from video taping all day long at NAB for the EXPOzed Show.

Everyone that attends the LAFCPUG with any regularity knows about the famous raffle that Michael Horton does at the end of every group meeting.

Well, this year, at the Super Meet, he had over $100,000 in raffle prizes. Yeah…you read right….$100,000 dollars NOT pesos (If you put your pinky right next to your lip as you say it, it is more powerful…trust me). But since I didn’t stay until the end, I didn’t get to win anything…oh well!

Let’s talk about presentations, and man, they had a variety of them. However, the one that stood out the most for me was the one titled Playing for Change: Peace through Music by Jonathan Walls.

This was a killer presentation about a bunch of musicians from all over the world playing together (while listening to each other’s part’s via headphones) from their location in their part of the world.

The music was amazing, the video was great and it was just a great feeling overall.

Bruce Nazarian spoke about creating a Master Blu-ray disc using the new BlueStreak Premaster software.

Craig Yanagi from JVC was there showing off the new GY-HM700 and giving away one free GY-HM100…yes…he raffled one of those away! Whomever won that one…was definitely lucky that night!

Larry Jordan was showing us how to use the new SmartSound plug in for Final Cut Pro. It’s really pretty cool!

There was a presentation on Syncing 5 P2 cameras with a variety of sounds sources all seamlessly using MXF4Mac and SequenceLiner, though, honestly, I didn’t get it…but I think this was more me then him.

The Wounded Marines Careers Foundation made an appearance. If you don’t know much about them, you should check them out. These are the guys (and gals) that fight for us and our freedom and then come home wounded. The Wounded Marines Careers Foundation in San Diego helps them recover and provides production and post training for them to find a new career.

There were many other presentations which you can find out more about at the FCPUG Super Meet web site.

Anyhow…to close off this blog entry, I highly encourage anyone reading this article to attend a SuperMeet once in their lifetime. No, it won’t change your life…but it will definitely make you feel good during the time you attend!

But of course, with the good comes the not so good as we no longer have a tape to go back to if our data is lost.

One of the most popular questions of late has to be “How do I backup my media in a tapeless workflow?”

In the field, this can be a daunting task, as I don’t believe many would be willing to use a P2 card only once in the same way that tape was used before (mainly because of the cost of a P2 card).

So how do you archive in the field to make sure you don’t lose your precious media you just shot?

There are a few options that we are going to explore in this article, but having said that, I must also add that we need to discuss the backup and archival process because anytime that you are thinking of moving to a tapeless workflow, you have to think of archiving, all the issues surrounding it and how is that cost represented in your budget.

Now let’s get to the heart of the subject.

One good way to protect against a catastrophic event is to put your data in as many places as you can. For example; I usually carry a couple of portable hard drives, the 2.5″ kind, like the Glyph PortaGig.

I will copy all the data from the recording media through my laptop to both drives simultaneously. This gives me peace of mind in that if one drive fails, I still have a backup.

We have at that point eliminated the intermediary as for most of us, our footage ended up on a hard drive at some point anyway. Another way to backup is to Blu-Ray disc.

This method is growing in popularity as prices on drives and media have dropped, and will continue to as the format becomes more mainstream. The discs can hold up to 50GB in the current build and look to possibly expand up to 200GB in the near future. This is the more robust option as the disc itself can be utilized as a shelfable master/archive format and, when kept in a cool humidity free room, will maintain integrity over long periods of time.

External Blu-Ray burners are a good option for travel and the discs can easily be mailed off to the editors for post deadlines. This can be done at the end of each days shoot.

Another option for archiving is the LTO type tape. This method has a larger initial investment, but can pay off in the long run as it is a stable and robust format.

This archival solution can be automated via software and deployed across a network or SAN in order to make incremental or full backups of a large media pool or local storage. LTO tapes are relatively inexpensive and can be stored for long periods of time with no degradation. The tape drives themselves come in a variety of forms from single slot drives, to full auto loading multiple slot archive libraries. This method, although not necessarily portable, can give you the peace of mind that your data is secure.

The tapeless world is just beginning and there will definitely be lots of speed bumps along the way, but if you pick a good backup and archival method and follow it religiously, worrying about how secure your footage is will be one less thing on your plate.

The new version 5.1.2 includes:

• Bug Fixes
• Enhancements to the installer
• UI updates to the job batch, browser and settings editor
• Fixes for various formats including H.264, GXF, 3GPP, DNxHD, HDV, VC-1, MPEG4, etc.
• Episode Pro for Mac includes MXF import components for XDCAM, Infinity, Editcam & Image Server.

For more information about all the changes, check out the release notes below:

• Windows Release Notes
• Mac Release Notes

You can download the update here.

You can get more information about Episode here.

I was there covering it for the EXPOzed Show and got some fantastic interviews with great folks from Revision3, YouTube, Electric Farm Entertainment and even the very well known Felicia Day, of The Guild fame. These videos will be posted sometime next week at EXPOzed Show

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to take notes during the presentations, however, I did meet a really nice and very smart person in the audience, Debra Koehler.

Debrah is an Executive Producer for High Noon Entertainment. We had a wonderful talk about the future of video on the web and she had some great insight. I noticed that she was taking lots of notes during the presentations so I asked her if she was willing to share her notes to post in our blog. She was very cool and agreed to let me repost her notes on the PHN blog without hesitation.

Thank you very much Debra for your great notes! Debra, however, has asked me to disclose that she didn’t know her notes were going to end up in a blog, so they are not as organized as she would have love them to be.

No worries Debra! They are still great with lots of information in them.

You can find out more about Debrah Koehler, her talents and learn about her extensive video career at www.DebraKoehler.com.

Now get her FOTV notes in PDF format. Lots of cool info there!

1. Tell us about your nomination.

1. Tell us about your nomination.

1. Tell us about your nomination.

1. Tell us about your nomination.