NAB 2011: Post Production World

Well, my very first NAB Show has come and gone, and in a nutshell, I had a blast.  Walking the exhibit floor was obviously important, but my main focus for the week was to immerse myself in the Post Production World classes.  My coworker, Kevin McGowan, and I arrived in Vegas on Friday night, and stayed through Thursday night.  We figured that we would make the most of our first trip to the NAB Show.  It was a tiring week, but well worth the trip, money and effort.

I ended up taking 15 PPW classes during the week, and listened to two of the PPW keynote lectures.  Not only did I learn piles of new info about many facets of video post production, but it was very motivating being around such stellar instructors as Abba Shapiro, Jeff Greenberg, Philip Hodgetts and Luisa Winters.  Heck, even the motivation to start this blog came from a class with Philip Hodgetts!  These folks could absolutely hold my attention for a three hour class with great teaching and technical skills.  They also really opened my mind up to leaning about aspects of post production that I hadn't previously thought about diving into.  Jeff Greenberg actually has me excited to order a 450 page book about video compression!  I'm pretty pumped about post production right now.

I'm going to make every attempt I can to attend the PPW classes again in the future.  With the upcoming Final Cut Pro X release, the PPW FCP classes will be packed in 2012!

For those of you that are thinking of taking PPW classes, here's a list of things to remember:

1)  Bring a sweater...it's freaking cold in those rooms.
2)  Do your research before you go.  Pour through all the class descriptions and choose what class you will take, as well as a couple of alternates.  You can also leave a class and walk to another if you quickly determine it's just not for you.
3)  Take notes during the classes, but also create a "to do" list.  I have a huge list of software to download, websites to look up, podcasts and blogs to subscribe to, and books to buy....all suggested by the PPW instructors.
4)  Don't skip the PPW keynotes.  Both of them were very interesting lectures to listen to from Hollywood editors.
5)  Please don't ask those super specific questions about why your hard drive is making a clicking sound, or why Premiere crashes each time your cat walks across your keyboard.  It really slows down the entire class, but most of the instructors were great in diffusing those questions and pushing forward.
6)  Use the Creative Cow NAB Expo forum to ask questions while you're doing your pre-show research.
7)  You don't have to stick to a specific track.  As you can see below, I jumped all over between Final Cut, Adobe, and many other tracks.

If you're wondering, here's the list of PPW classes (with instructors) that I took:

Boot Camp:  Getting Started with Video Compression - Jeff Greenberg
From Expert to Master: Advanced Techniques for Final Cut Pro - Jeff Greenberg and Abba Shapiro
Color Correction with Final Cut Pro - Abba Shapiro
Live Streaming Solutions - Alex Lindsay
Optimizing Performance for Adobe Production Premium - Todd Kopriva
Great Shot Composition Every Time - Douglas Spotted Eagle
Cutting Edge Compression Techniques - Jeff Greenberg
Documentary Production Techniques - Hicks/Balog
Lightweight Lighting Solutions for Mobile Productions - James Ball
Getting Started with After Effects - Luisa Winters
Dynamic Noise Reduction and Audio Clean-up - Jeffery Fisher
The New Now: How to Grow Your Production or Post Production Business - Philip Hodgetts
Advanced Techniques for Premiere Pro - Luisa Winters
Mastering the Adobe Media Encoder - Ian Robinson
Color Correction Using Premiere Pro & After Effects - Luisa Winters

 Image:  PPW 4/10/11 keynote address: Chad Beck (editor of Inside Job)

NAB 2011: SuperMeet and the Final Cut Pro X announcement

I was one of the lucky people to attend the 2011 Final Cut Pro User Group SuperMeet event on the Tuesday of the NAB Show.  We were expecting to hear Kevin Smith and a handful of other video production professionals speak, but a week before the event, it was announced that a "special guest" had bumped all the speakers with a "special announcement."  It was obvious that it would be Apple making an announcement about the new Final Cut Pro X.  The event sold out, they had to add more seats, and all of a sudden this was the hottest ticket to have at NAB.

As we were entering the Bally's Event Center, there were even people in the hallway asking if anyone had extra tickets to sell.  You would think it was a Justin Beiber concert.  After getting our lanyards and badges, we milled around the SuperMeet exhibit floor for about an hour.  Quite a few vendors had booths set up and it was easier to speak to them here rather on the noisy, crowded NAB exhibit floor.  We bought $10 of extra raffle tickets, hopped on line (it was more a large mob of people) and waited for the theater to open.

Right around 7pm the lights dimmed, the Apple logo appeared on the projection screen, and all of us video nerds cheered.

Apple's Peter Steinauer and Randy Ubillos walked us through a Keynote presentation listing all the new features, and a decent demo of the software.  It was all just a preview the left many unanswered questions, but it really looks like an exciting piece of software.  For those that are calling it iMovie Pro, I disagree.  Wait until you use it, rather than judge it on appearance alone.  I won't list all of the new features, since others like Gary Adcock have already done a good job of reporting that news.  Some of the obvious improvements are the new 64-bit architecture, improved AVCHD and DSLR footage support, improved media organization, and time saving color correction and audio cleanup features.  The new interface looks very nice, and will take a little time to get used to.  Video and audio tracks are handled differently in this new version.  I'm sure after getting acclimated, these improvements will really speed up the editing process.

Many subjects were not addressed in the Keynote presentation or the demo:  what changes are being made to other Final Cut Studio programs, how will the new track system affect exports to other programs, will old FCP plug-ins still work, etc.  The Apple portion of the event wrapped with the announcement of a June delivery date, and $299 price tag.  Makes Adobe's $400 upgrade price for Production Premium CS5.5 seem a bit excessive, considering it's not even a "full" upgrade.  I love CS5, but I'll save my money for FCP X.

After Apple's presentation and demo, FCP User Group LA and Boston leaders Michael Horton and Daniel Bérubé introduced many of the leaders of the FCP User Groups in the US and around the world.  Many more chapters than I knew about.  It's always inspiring to be around so many enthusiastic media professionals, especially from all over the globe.

The evening ended with SuperMeet's world famous raffle, but unfortunately my coworker and I left empty handed.  Michael, Daniel, Abba Shapiro and Jeff Greenberg hosted and thousands of dollars in prizes were handed out.  We were really hoping for the hour sit down with PPW instructors Abba Shapiro and Jeff Greenberg, but no luck.  One lucky woman left that night with a $30,000 DiVinci Resolve control surface.

All that being said, the evening was a blast.  I'm looking forward to the Boston SuperMeet in October and I can't wait to get my hands on the new Final Cut Pro X.