New England’s Technology at NAB 2014

Again this year, New England will have good representation at the NAB Show, April 5 – 10th, held in the Las Vegas Convention Center. It is the world’s largest electronic media show covering filmed entertainment and the development, management and delivery of content across all mediums. With more than 93,000 attendees from 156 countries and 1,550+ Exhibitors, NAB Show is the ultimate marketplace for digital media and entertainment. From creation to consumption, across multiple platforms and countless nationalities, NAB Show is home to the solutions that transcend traditional broadcasting and embrace content delivery to new devices in new ways.

 

The show attracts New England’s huge industry leading companies as well as new companies who are new to the NAB show floor. This month in Tech Edge, we are going to explore the biggest and best of New England and preview what they will be up to at NAB 2014. 

 

Avid Technology

 

Avid Technology is one of the biggest providers of post-production and broadcast tools.  Their flagship products include Media Composer, Symphony, NewsCutter, ISIS, Interplay and Airspeed. These products can help you edit video, store, remotely upload and manage your video as well as sending it out to air for broadcast.  Avid will likely be touting their recent successes with the Academy Awards nominees using their products and another successful Olympics season.

 

Historically speaking, Avid has had some of the largest and loudest booths at NAB. Every year, they have a myriad of A-list editors, producers and content creators speaking in their booth.  Past speakers in the Avid booth have included Morgan Spurlock and Kevin Smith. They have also had people who edit the best of the best television (Game of Thrones, True Blood, Community and Frontline), film (XMEN. ARGO, ZERO DARK THIRY) and sports (St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants).  Although at this time Avid has not announced whom is speaking this year, you should expect exciting and informative guest speakers.

 

As for new product announcements, Avid always keeps their cards close to their chest. I would expect new versions of all the flagship products as well as announcements on compatibility on the new Mac Pro computers. They also tend to surprise people with new hardware offerings and 2014 shouldn’t be any different.  

 

You can find them at Avid NAB at booth number SU902 and get NAB updates at www.avid.com. 

 

Broadcast Pix

 

Broadcast Pix is a front-running company in the live production tools workspace. They have products that will enable you to a live video production. Their flagship products are Flint, Mica, Slate and Granite.  Those products are live production switchers and each model has its own unique features. Broadcast Pix has also come out with a bunch of new offerings as well.  The newest member of their hardware family is called ReVue which gives you HD slow motion capabilities that you can use alongside one of their live production switchers. 

 

One of the products they make that is truly unique is called Vox.  Vox helps people doing visual radio.  What the product does is switch cameras based on detecting if there is audio present.  So if your favorite radio show has an online stream of the video of the radio show, they could use Vox to eliminate the need for a technical director.  When each host talks, the audio is detected and Vox will switch the camera to the talent speaking at that time.  It is truly a one of a kind product and is just a small piece of what Broadcast Pix can do as a company. 

 

Broadcast Pix has also just released version 2 of their iPixPanel which enables users of Flint, Mica, Slate and Granite to control live production switching from your IPad.  The iPixPanel app will allow you to not only switch cameras, but to also add keys. It can control video on your clip server. 

Broadcast Pix, not only has a great national presence, but their international presence is huge as well.  Their customer base touches all over the world to people who cannot afford to compromise with quality or product reliability.  With the amount of new products Broadcast Pix has recently released, it will be surprising to see even more new products in their NAB booth, but they have been known to surprise before and could do it again. Their current offerings are great, they do incredible demonstrations and you can visit them at NAB in booth SL6325 and get your NAB updates at www.broadcastpix.com.

 

Facilis Technology

Facilis has emerged as one of the leading storage companies in the post industry.  Founded in 2003, they quickly became one of the more prominent media storage companies.  Their flagship product, TerraBlock, is one of the most diverse and flexible storage systems on the market.  They support every major editing software, on every major operating system, using every major raiding type, from every major connection type.   Facilis takes pride in their in-house end to end integration of every system they sell.  Their client list is deep and prestigious and includes just about every major broadcasting network.  

 

Coming into NAB, Facilis is riding high off a great release for TerraBlock 6.0.  TerraBlock is one of the only shared storage options that offers 4K, uncompressed HD, as well as all the other usual formats you would expect such as DNx and ProRez.  The user interface to their TerraBlock got a complete overhaul and looks spectacular.  They also added LTO6 support with their SyncBlock product which enables TerraBlock users to back up their TerraBlock media to a cost efficient LTO6 archive.   They have also added LDAP sync support which will make administering users much easier and features like that always keep your IT department happy.

 

I would expect that Facilis is going to be showing off some surprises this year.  Facilis will be at NAB at booth SL7610, be sure to check them out.  You can also get all their NAB updates at www.facilis.com

 

NAB is the best time of year for people in the technical side of our industry.  I’m sure there will be some surprises and in the next issue of Imagine, Tech Edge will explore some of the surprising news and announcements from the show floor. Hopefully, we will see you out there!

 

Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications. He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, ESPN, Pentagon, Powderhouse and many others. You can reach him at  Steve.McGrath@HBCommunications.com.