Today I concentrated on mostly the post-production side of the industry in the upper and lower floors South Hall of the LVCC.   I'm sure I must have done six or seven miles walking, a good part due to being given wrong booth numbers or not being informed of changes. The sole of one of my shoes started to come apart and crack, so I had to head to a shoe store after the show before dinner.

As far as NLEs, Avid was promoting “Avid Anywhere,” its cloud-based service that gives users a number of options for collaboration for both Media Composer and Pro Tools. Media Central Platform allows for the use of third-party hardware and software.  Pro Tools allows for collaboration with other musicians all over the world right in the software. It also allows you to tag files for usage rights and even purchase. Avid Marketplace allows searching for elements, but you can also have a cloud-based storefront where you can market elements, services or develop your own application.
 
Adobe showed major updates of its CC suite of programs.  In many Premiere Pro and After Effects filters, there are now built-in track mattes, which can be extremely helpful.  The software can now play back one stream of Red 4K footage at full resolution using GPU debayer without need of a Red Rocket card for acceleration.
 
Another NLE that is slowly emerging from the shadows is Blackmagic Design's Davinci Resolve 11, with regular and lite (free) versions set for summer release.  Once considered by many as just a color-correction tool, the last few releases seem to be making it more and more like an end-to-end editor. The new update will see 70 new features, including JKL editing, dual-monitor support, audio cross fading, and collaborative editing that will allow multiple editors and colorists to work on the same timeline at once.
 
For NLE plug-ins, Boris FX's BCC9 is a major update, with several new filters like Chroma Key Studio that helps you with less than perfect green screen footage and a light group that includes really good artificial lights as well as a “laser writer” that carves titles with a “laser beam” that will be showing up in many productions. Several effects to stylize your footage to look like vintage 8mm film or two-strip color, among others, work really well. For the first time, BCC includes 23 new transitions, which will be found in the NLE's transition bin. A browser will allow you to preview your footage with the actual effect before applying it. It also has a history palette that keeps track of what you try, in case you want to go back to previous settings after trying another.
 
Red Giant also debuted their new Universe, a collection of really useful and creative effects. Some are free and some you are charged for.  Free filters are usually useless, but not here. I was shocked to see how many of the free filters, like Glo Fi, Masked Blur, Zoom Blur, and most others, were really useful, as were the premium standards like Toon It, and Knoll Light Factory.  This is definitely a universe worth exploring.
 
 
You need to put the NLE on something, and HP was showing some new add-ons to their Z family of workstations to help work with 4K footage. For internal storage, HP showed the Turbo Drive (pictured, above), which is a 256 or 512 GB SSD ($499 / $899) on a PCIe card that has 1 GB/sec throughput.  Multiple cards can be put in a RAID configuration for even faster speed.  For fast external storage you can add a Thunderbolt 2 card to attach to external thunderbolt drives, as well as other peripherals.  For viewing, HP has a new 27-inch Dreamcolor monitor that can be calibrated without a  computer for $1499 and, for the more budget-conscious, there is a new 24-inch Dreamcolor without the built in calibration for just $599.
 
Dell showed the Dell Data Center workstation meant for a server room (not  your office) to be used over a network for doing remote work. Using their secure VM ware, you can use one of their inexpensive mobile workstations with a Core i5 CPU while harnessing the power of the Xeon based workstation in the server room.
 
Storage wise, LaCie, recently acquired by major drive manufacturer Seagate, had some large external drives to show off for Thunderbolt connectivity.  The “5big” has up to 1050 MB/s  of  up to 30TB of storage for 4K editing.  It is hardware RAID 5/6 with hot swap, starting at $2499. They also showed the “8big Rack,” a 1RU enclosure eight-drive, Thunderbolt 2, RAID with up to 1330 MB/s and full component redundancy. This is expected later in the year; no pricing is available yet.
 
CalDigit also had some Thunderbolt 2 RAID set ups, the T4J and T4R, both of which are capable of handling up to 16 TB in four drive units, RAID 0,1 and JBOD, while the T4R is also capable of RAID 5.  CalDigit said their Thunderbolt units were were some of the first to work with HP's Thunderbolt enabled work stations.
 
Livestream showed three switcher units that can be used for live-switching live streamed programs.  The HD 51 includes five HDMI SDI inputs and control surface for $7999, HD510 includes five HDMI / SDI inputs, control surface and touch screen interface for $9999, and the HD1710 has 17 HDMI / SDI inputs and control surface for $29,999, with an optional expanded control surface for $6000.  You can mix and match different resolutions, do ISO recording, playback roll-ins and add graphics. They have a number of options for using their streaming service, starting with a free limited plan.
 
An interesting technology was being promoted by the HD Base T (HDBT) Alliance. This is a group of 100 companies including Samsung, LG, and other major display makers working on transmission of not only audio and 4K video but also power, over existing CAT-5 cable installs, to HDBT enabled monitors. Just one cable for audio, video and power? That is very interesting.
 
My day three report will look at camera support and other production tools.
 
Swag Report:   Swag of the day: boomerangs from Telstra. (I think they were an Australian satellite company.) The kids will love 'em! Most useful swag: sample roll of Tec Nec gaffer tape. No t-shirts today! How did that happen? What is the world coming to…?