One of my favorite things about a convention like NAB is the neat stuff you find when wandering around. We all hear about the big news from the likes of Avid, Adobe, Panasonic and Canon but some of the best stuff can be found in the smaller booths. LED lighting panels in particular just blew me away with their brightness and low power usage. Might not have any need for a particular item at the time, but these are some of the fun things I brought home the brochures for.
Squarebox Cat-DV. Ok, I already knew about these guys before NAB but if you are finally serious about managing your media assets in your production company, no matter how large or small you are, this is the product for you. Period. Please don’t ask me to go into details, just look at their website. Bob Zelin was very appreciative I pointed him in their direction and now he’s excited about installing this product for some of his clients too. It’s just a great GREAT product for managing both your in-house library and also on-going productions in the field. Weird name, but awesome product! http://www.squarebox.co.uk/
Anton Bauer. Yeah that battery company that’s been around for ages. (40 years to be exact) They have a series called the Elipz for handlhelds that are smaller and rounder than the traditional “bricks” we all know and love. No idea how long these have been around, but I’ve never seen them before. Very slick array of batteries and they also have some of their own LED lighting panels for the handhelds. http://www.antonbauer.com/Products/Lines/ElipZ
Film Chest. This company licenses films and films clips from the turn of the century to about 1970. A neat resource if you ever want to bring some actual movie clips into your project. Very reasonable prices too and great guys to chat with. www.filmchest.com
Lite Panels. Reasonably priced LED lighting panels, rings and camera lights. All sorts of sizes and the camera ring light is especially cool. These are big with music videos so you can get the light right on the subject while in an extreme closeup. Felt like pretty solid construction throughout. www.litepanels.com
Barber Tech. They also had LED lighting kits that were very reasonably priced. Interesting idea with small LED panels that can be combined to make a larger panel. They also have the “Mega Light” which only weighs 2 pounds and uses a total of 40 watts. Their entire package was very light and I could see this being really nice to travel with. www.barberTVP.com
Vocal Booth. Pretty much self explanatory, these are high quality vocal booths for both voice over work and music / vocal recording. Really cool rigs and a wide range of pricing and options. I’m considering one of these for our new facility instead of building one from scratch. www.vocalbooth.com
Cache-A. An LTO archive backup device that also has local hard drives to allow for the organization of archive materials before you move it off to the LTO tape. LTO has a 30 year shelf life for saving off all your digital files more or less permanently. The folks at Squarebox were using this as part of their Cat-DV demo and that’s how I came to see it. www.cache-a.com
Countryman Associates. These guys make killer microphones. Tiny, incredible quality and very reasonably priced. The one that I’m interested in is the EMW Omnidirectional lavalier mic. It’s completely waterproof. They were dunking it in a container of water and you could still listen to it with headphones. Great for weather report or outdoors / fishing types of shows. www.countryman.com
Lectrosonics. The guys at Countryman sent me over to Lectrosonic to see the waterproof wireless transmitter I can use with their waterproof mic. It’s the MM400C. The other thing I found there was a very simple wireless transmitter and receiver for a Producer in the field to listen to the camera audio while shooting is going on. This is critical for two new series we’re launching here. The Producer will be able to hear everything that is being recorded to take notes and such without being tethered to either camera. This uses the IFB RIA Wireless Receiver and the LMA Wireless Transmitter. www.lectrosonics.com
Nila. More very cool LED lighting technology. These are essentially small to medium sized bricks that can either be used alone or in groups of up to four lights interconnected together. The best thing about these? They’re nearly indestructible. While the President of the company was talking to me he started slamming the unit (while it was turned on) onto the desk. Startled me for sure. The lights never stopped working. Very cool and they have some larger models as well. Definitely more expensive than the other lights I mentioned, but well worth the money. www.nila.tv
CineBags. Same idea as PortaBrace but I have to say the bags felt much better constructed and felt like they would protect my camera gear better. Solid products and worth a look if you need some new bags for your gear. www.cinebags.com
Stardom. An interesting storage solution from a small company out of Taiwan. Basically you can use the exact same drive inside a Mac Pro, remove it and use it as a stand alone drive with a power supply and also plug it into a RAID array or external multi-drive array. Very clever idea and something worth watching as they further refine the idea. Thanks to Jon Schilling for pointing me towards their booth. www.stardom.com.tw
DoStudio. Well I already use their software for authoring BluRay discs but they’re already poised and ready for BluRay 3D authoring. Great great tool and if you’re serious about offering this service, even if you’re a very small company, this is the tool you want. www.netblender.com
Noise Industries. These guys have plug-ins for Final Cut Pro, After Effects and Motion and one of my favs at the SuperMeet was called Nodes. Super cool looks and just some of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Support independent plug-in developers! Buy some stuff at Noise Industries!! http://www.noiseindustries.com/
Well that’s everything I can remember. If I think of anything else, I’ll update this entry. Enjoy!
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