NAB 2012 Report

First day at NAB. Spent most of the day at Sony. The good news is SCS has released a long awaited professional blu ray authoring software that will be much more complete than Vegas Pro Blu ray burn. It can generate 3D menus and produces the standards as required by the BDA for 3D disks. Since the codec licenses are quite expensive at this level, the authoring bundle is available at several price points and you can buy at a level to suit your authoring needs.

The product is called Dostudio and Is made originally by Netblender, Inc. which was recently acquired by SCS. The price point will start at $2995 and go up to $19995 depending on your needs. This gives SCS customers a middle price point between Blu Print that starts at $50000 and DVDA which is bundled with Vegas Pro.

Obviously out of reach for most consumer users in this forum. guess we are lucky to at least have a 3D lite to create basic menus in Power Director Ultra.


3D camcorders: Nothing new from Sony, JVC, Panasonic.


3D auto stereo camcorder monitors. Still quite expensive, from Marshall, has one selling for $7500 now. it sure looks great and has excellent ghost free high definition resolution screen. For $200 extra, you can add a built in collection of scopes. It allows for left eye, right eye inputs and will pair the two on the fly. It is this tool that will allow us using twin 2D camcorders in wide stereo base to monitor the 3D pairing while shooting. Too rich for my budget today but one rep said we may be 2 years out from this technology under $500.

Reminder- NAB is for high end Broadcast and Professional video equipment so we don't expect to see consumer level products at this trade show.

First day was crazy and specific questions were hard but I will be returning on Wednesday with my list.

DoStudio is considerably more than Vegas but the top end DoStudio includes a bundle with Vegas pro. As far as I'm concerned, it is as out of reach as blueprint.

From what I learned the price problem is not Sony but rather the insane license fees on these codecs and closed architecture disk constructs. I sure am happy we have PD10 to make a really nice looking amateur 3D BD.

Some of the bundles of DoStudio will be designed for full authoring for replication of 3D BD. The packages are not yet final and details would be inappropriate at this time. As soon as Sony posts the various packages you can see. What's in each. They did have a slide of it but I didn't take notes.


Wolfgang- I had quite a discussion with several Sony people on the future of DVDA And it's future as related to 3D BD menus and basic authoring using DVD style but with z axis manipulation and MVC codec. Obviously, Sony policy is not to spread rumors but it seems to me after the discussions that there is nothing presently in the planning stages. For now they are focusing resources on the DoStudio release. I examples the Cyberlink product and said what they have is plenty for a consumer market and suggested to Rob Aubey who is the key man for all things 3D blu ray that he take a closer look at the Power Director Ultra and see what they are able to do for that price point. His response was " I get it and believe me I'm with you, but we are focusing on DoStudio at this time.". He gave me the impression that development of What would work in DVDA is not impossible, just not in current development. I think the best we can do for now is to keep the idea of what we would like to see on top of his mind.

Actually in order to do 3D BD you will need a bundle of codecs and features in Dostudio that will put you at $15000 according to my discussion. It is clearly not a solution for the consumer any more than BluPrint. I'm an optimist on this and while I got the impression they aren't doing it soon, it will become incorporated at some point in the future if those desiring it continue to bring it to their attention. this is what Rob said is needed.

I've done what I can for now. Others need to contact Sony too and let them know there is a market for this. At least I was promised that they would discuss this for future priority.

Not this year, at least in the pro market. But 3D was everywhere in displays, and large rigs for motion picture industry, live pairing switchers, all stuff for broadcast and movie making for Hollywood, so I would say 3D is entering the next phase where it is being considered just another tool for directors to tell the story What I saw at all the camcorder makers is a general emphasis on 4k units and lots of DSLR. Also, new high speed camcorders for high frame rate. I know in the pro world this is a much larger market. So it isn't as though the makers are not doing anything new, just nothing new in the 3D arena.

I would say if you were waiting on the Panasonic to see what Sony and JVC were doing, better go with the Panasonic. FWIW- the z10000 was not getting any attention at NAB. I had lots of time to hold it and get a few for how it handled but unfortunately, my earlier assessment for my personal needs was just confirmed. It is too big for what I desire in my kit. Also,I discovered another negative which was it is extremely front heavy from the handle. This could make the unit tiring on long hand holding shots which I do lots of. I believe I could compensate for this by adding weight back at the battery. I'll defer to existing owners for any further comment on this.

I did not see anything about Edius. I probably missed it. I did look at adobe and spent a good 3 hours in their presentations on CS6. Basically they were making a big deal on features that we have had for a long time in Vegas so I was not impressed. Photoshop, however was very nice on the new features and I will look into upgrading for photoshop later this year.

I won, I won! Total loot for this trip was two seats of Vegas Pro, a seat of Vasst Production Assistant, and I picked up a little camera light for the TD10.

I saw two suitcase size collapsible jib rigs for small under 5 pound cameras that interests me. Price is around $250.


That's about it. I'm getting ready for the next leg of the trip which will be upstate to shoot another day at Valley of Fire and then on to Bryce Canyon, UT.

Trevor, you're never going to see profile 5 or full BDA licensed support in a low end product due to license costs that each seat of authoring will require until the license is lowered. The PD10 tools has no major license . Even the DTS encoder was given to Cyberlink gratis just to get their DTS out into the public. DTS exec told me that at CES. We consumers benefit. If you absolutely must have the higher end menus, Sony has now provided a way for it with a package that costs $20000 rather than $70000. Like anything else you have to figure out how to pay for it. If it is an impossible price, then Sony will learn and the product will fail. Not the first time that Sony has failed marketing of new products.

That system has been on the market for a number of years. Was originally made for small women shooters who were complaining about the weight of a typical 25 pound betacam.

The secret to working with heavy cameras for long periods is to have the camera properly balanced even if it weighs more to make it balanced. Like a steadicam, wearing the harness is quite restrictive to bending over to pick something up.