Not everybody here at NAB is talking about 3D. But most, as a result of 3D, are talking about metadata.

Not everybody here at NAB is talking about 3D. But most, as a result of 3D, are talking about metadata. And, as everybody knows, metadata grows as it goes through the pipeline. Forward-thinking storage and archiving companies have been paying attention to this longer than most, solving at least part of the bottleneck by managing content on the back end. Now other companies, once caught up in their own proprietary cartwheels, are opening up and connecting the dots in order to manage it all better across any number of workflows.
Both Sony and Avid are showing similar SOA-based, open media management systems (Sony Media Backbone and Avid Integrated Media Enterprise) that connect their products and third-party software and hardware for seamless control of footage throughout its lifecycle, from ingest to the archive. On a much smaller scale, but no less ambitious, EditShare has a shared storage system with management and archiving tools built into it. Its XStream v6.0 bundles EditShare Flow and Ark to let Final Cut and Avid editors search, browse, view proxies and store masters to the archive right from within its UI. The XStream has always been an open system, and its still priced like other shared storage without all those extras.

Here’s a snapshot of some other just announced products worth watching:

• A 4/3-inch chip camcorder, the AF100 from Panasonic, that is going after Canon and RED territory. Expect to see even more entrants in this category in the months ahead.

• A $995 version of DaVinci Resolve for the Mac. Add another $30,000 for a TangentWave console and $20,000 for a Linux license, and you’ve got a relatively affordable color correction suite.

• The Foundry’s super-charged 3D texture painting technology, Mari, which was developed at WETA and lets you paint directly onto animated models

• Adobe CS5 and Avid Media Composer 5, both with speed and round-tripping improvements to make it easier to move in and out of whatever NLE or finishing system you want

•ARRI’s new Alexa camera, with its Super 35 CMOS Bayer sensor.

Keep an eye on our news and blog for more details, plus video straight from the show floor here.