Throughout the Panasonic and Sony press events we were bombarded with 3D. Panasonic pushing the camera to couch while Sony approaches the concept as Lens to Lounge. Both companies showed examples of their partner’s work in 3D.

Panasonic are at the forefront of the affordable HD production race with the AG-3DA1 camera that is shipping in very limited supplies and has a waiting list. At $21,000 this dual lens, single body camcorder records to AVCCAM and has integrated convergence control.

Sony had many partners in 3D production at the high end but nothing yet in their affordable product lines, although the implication was that these will be coming in the future.

Between the two companies we were exposed to a lot of 3D examples. My thoughts are very subjective but I found that 3D worked well for gaming, sports, particularly the relatively slow-paced golfing footage for this week’s Master’s event. What I found, and my associated confirmed, is that the fast cut concert footage and entertainment features did not work so well because of the slight disorientation at every edit.

While the cuts we use in traditional editing are analogous to the way the Human Visual System works, there is no real-world analog to jumping from place to place, view-to-view in the real world. This leads to a momentary disorientation at each edit, which takes the viewer out of the experience.

The other problem we noted collectively was that we got tired of graphics being “thrown out” of the screen to the audience.

One more thing: 3D content creators STOP THROWING THINGS AT ME! Stop with the gratuitous “in your face” movements. Whenever you throw something like that – like a 3D Bono hand (U2 concert video) or a 3D Graphic or whatever – keep it close to the screen. When things come flying at you in real life you react. With 3D, I react and I don’t react positively to the program.

So, just stop it, OK?

Regardless of my impressions this is the year that 3D hit the mainstream at NAB. Will it still be prominent next year?

For 3D, mark me as skeptical

From my NAB BuZZ special report:

Two words I never thought I’d associate with Avid are Interoperability and Openness, and yet this has been the theme of Avid’s 2010 announcements.

Since the recent rebranding of the five Avid-owned companies as one Avid, the company is using the tag line We’re Avid, are you, and constantly pushed the idea that Avid was open and stood for interoperability.

Heading off their event announcements was the concept of an Integrated Media Enterprise with an open media catalog for metadata management. Metadata management means that media can be found when it’s needed using search functions. New is the ability to view metadata in a Media Composer timeline.

Integrated Media Enterprise is at the core of Avid’s “any media, any platform” editing solution across diverse locations. Also important is a new revision to Interplay: Interplay 2, which comes in two forms. Interplay Media Asset Management is based on Avid’s recent purchase of Blue Order. Featuring an open, modular achitecture and support for a unified media management.

The Original Interplay is now known as Interplay Production to pair with the Interplay Media Asset Manager.

In the editorial field, Media Composer 5 has been announced for a mid July ship date. This new version expands the Avid Media Architecture to support RED, Canon XF and QT media natively with instant access and no transcoding required. My personal favorite new feature for Media Composer is the end of Segment mode: I can drag and drop clips in a sequence just like I’d expect. Also new is support for AVC-50 and 100 throughout the entire Avid product line and real time audio filters in the timeline. [Updated] Although it was stated at the press conference these audio filters carry through to a ProTools session and all changes made in ProTools to filter settings are all carried back to Media Composer, this is Avid’s intention but until ProTools gets an update to support it, the workflow is not complete.

Rounding out the day’s announcements was the purchase of Euphonix by Avid to enhance their range of control surfaces so they can support more market needs.

Check out the Avid announcements at Avid.com

Although a long and tedious press meeting Sony had nothing of interest to me (or presumably my audience). They showed a lot of 3D (please put your glasses on, take them off for the next bit, put them on again, repeat endlessly) even though they only have one 3D capable camera (and you need two to get stereoscopy).

Everything has been previously announced but still, it’s important to waste the time of a couple of hundred journalists during their busy NAB schedule to just talk about what their customers are doing.

Panasonic’s 2010 announcements centered around the adoption of AVC-Intra and their affordable 3D camera, the AG-3DA1 with the most interesting announcement being their 4/3″ sensor AG-AF100.

Naturally Panasonic reminded us of their leadership in IT-based workflows and I was surprised to be reminded that it’s been 7 NABs since the release of the first P2-based camcorder. This year they focused on the adoption of AVC-Intra with new partners and their affordable AVCCAM format recording to SD media.

A new AVCCAM shoulder mounted camera has been announced for delivery later this year: the AG-HM80. Featuring full raster 3 Mpixel sensors with recording to AVCCAM or SD DV the camera has interchangeable lenses, optical image stabilizing, a manual focus ring and user assignable controls. Naturally 24P native recording at 1080 and 720 image sizes is supported along with typical video frame rates and it features Dynamic Range stretch for better control of mixed light situations and Cine-like gamma.  With a full range of inputs and outputs including HDMI, USB 2, composite, component and 1294 for the DV signal, the HM80 includes a 2 year warranty in it’s recommended price of just $2895.

However, the most interesting announcement was the large sensor AG-AF100 expected to ship later this year. Featuring a 4/3″, 12.1 Mpixel sensor, support for professional audio I/O, the AF100 records to all four AVVCAM modes to SD/SDHD or the new SDXC cards in dual slots. While the price was not announced it is expected to carry an MSRP of around $6000 and a street price a bit lower.

Along with the camera announcements were a new P2 studio deck, the AJ-HPD2500 and a 3D production monitor due September 2010.

It’s only a rumor going around Twitter over the last hour or two but it would be awesome! Resolve is the high end software daVinci system. Last year daVince (pre Blackmagic Design purchase) were showing Resolve on a laptop so it’s not impossible.

Frankly, I’ll believe it when it’s announced tomorrow morning at the Blackmagic press event. More then.

Well, it turns out I was right yesterday – the Supermeet Agenda did reveal a little of Avid’s Media Composer 5 announcement: native QuickTime/H.264 workflows for Canon 5D and 7D cameras, but that was only a fraction of what was announced.

Native QuickTime media support

Anything QuickTime Player can play, Media Composer can use as a source. This includes ProRes, Cineform and the H.264 mov files that the Canon cameras produce with no transcoding, rewrapping, or logging and transferring required! That is great news for the post industry because it will simplify workflows between platforms. It will also seriously simplify moving between Final Cut Pro and Media Composer (along with Automatic Duck to convert the project).

Native RED .r3d support via AMA

The Avid Media Architecture, introduced a few years back for native access to source media, has been enhanced to give native support to RED .r3d media, without needing to process through Metafuze. Now, all media is scaled to HD size, but since few people are really working at higher than HD sizes, this won’t be a significant limitation in a Media Composer workflow. In one jump, Media Composer leaps from being the platform with the least-native RED support to one of the best.

Drag and Drop editing

So one of my (purely personal) primary objections to the Media Composer interface – the need to go into segment mode to simply drag a clip – has been eliminated. Now drag and drop audio and video files wherever you want to rearrange sequences. Ditto on grabbing the in or out point of a clip to trim it. What can I say: “At last?” But still good.

External monitoring with Matrox MXO2 Mini

No need to buy a (relatively) expensive Mojo if all you want to do is monitor! (Where was this 2 months ago when I spec’d some Media Composer systems for a client! They would have saved some $18K). Now, it’s a high quality monitor only solution (no capture with the MXO2) but it is the first time that Avid have overtly used third-party hardware for anything. (Avid OEM’s hardware from AJA for their DS systems but it’s not promoted widely)

Full 4:4:4: HD-RGB processing

Internal processing now has support for full colorpsace through color correction, keying and effects work. This will particularly appeal to those finishing in house with Media Composer. Add in a Nitris DX system and you can digitize, process, monitor and output in HD-RGB using the two HD SDI connectors needed to handle the high-bandwidth resolutions. (So, while you can work and process in Media Composer without loss due to colorspace decimation and output to file-based workflows, output to tape will, apparently, require a Nitrix DX-based system to access the dual HD-SDI connectors required for bandwidth this high.)

I’m liking this new management at Avid. Media Composer 4 was a great release and this followup – just a year later – has really set the bar higher for the industry as a whole. These are the type of features an editor will really appreciate.

That’s just Media Composer. I’ll be at the Avid Press event later today to learn more about Media Composer 5 and the new “cloud-based” editing I wrote about a couple of days ago.

Read more about the editorial features and more at http://www.avid.com/US/products/Media-Composer-Software/features