The following products were announced at or just before the NAB Show in Las Vegas this week:
- Adobe preceded NAB with Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC improvements. The big feature everyone is talking about is Content-Aware Fill for video (in After Effects CC). But Premiere got a number of new useful additions, including auto ducking, font improvements, lots of shape/mask/graphic/text changes, plus frame replacement when decode errors are detected. Mask Tracking is also in both the new Premiere and After Effects.
- Arri was a bit of the talk of the town with the launch of the ALEXA Mini LF, a 4.5K larger-than-Super 35 camera (twice the area) that adds yet another model into Arri's well-received ALEXA lineup. Arri's have pretty much taken over the Hollywood crowd. In this year's Oscar-nominated films, that included A Star is Born, Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, Cold War, Green Book, Never Look Away, and Roma, and that doesn't count the Arricam's, just ALEXA's. No price yet, but if you're reading this, it's more likely you'd be renting it.
- Atomos introduced the improved Shogun 7, which can record up to 60P 4K in Apple ProRes. The Shogun is also a multicam production friendly product, too, as it can record up to four 1080P/60 streams, or switch between four different live streams for on-set monitoring purposes. Dolby Vision is supported, and the display has a very bright 1500 nits of output, making it usable in bright light. US$1499 [advertiser link]. Atomos also introduced new Shinobi 5" monitors.
- Blackmagic Design announced Davinci Resolve 16, with tons of new features and performance tweaks. They also introduced 8K versions of HyperDeck, ATEM and Teranex. Of most interest to this site's readers would likely be the Pocket Camera Battery Grip, which adds two L-series batteries for two hours of battery life to the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K. US$245.
- Canon introduced Cinema lenses. Specifically, the new Sumire primes (14mm t/3.1, 20mm t/1.5, 24mm t/1.5, 35mm t/1.5, 50mm t/1.3, 85mm t/1.3, 135mm t/2.2) are all expensive (US$7000+) PL mount lenses, with full frame coverage, geared rings, and clear markings. (And yes, you can get Canon Cinema EOS cameras with a PL mount.)
- Canon also announced four new 4K camcorders, pushing the Vixia and XA line up a notch from former models. The model probably of most interest is the XA50, which uses a 1" sensor with Canon's dual-pixel focus. A 25.5-382.5mm (equivalent) f/2.8-4.5 IS zoom sits out front and you can record 8-bit 4:2:0 4K/30P or 1080P up to 60 fps internally, or 10-bit 4:2:2 externally. Dual powered XLR inputs. This is the current model of the video camera I've been using to record events. US$2199 [advertiser link].
- LaCie has brought RAID to USB 3.1 Type-C. The new 2big 2-Bay drives come in 4TB, 8TB, or 16TB capacities, using Seagate Enterprise-class hard drives running at 7200 rpm. If your computer is up to snuff, you'll get 440MBps transfer. The 16TB is US$699 [advertiser link].
- RODE introduced the new Wireless GO, a very small mated receiver and transmitter pair for wireless audio. The unique thing: the transmitter also has a built-in mike and can act as a lavalier mic on its own. US$199 [advertiser link].
