NAB rumors

What will be happening at NAB? Who knows, this is all I can guess at right now:

Canon
Canon will talk about their 4:2:2 MPEG2 camera, though whether they'll be showing it - or announcing a ship date and price - is anybodies guess. I'm guessing there will be an announcement, but it won't ship for another month or two. If they don't zero in on a date at NAB, then why do the preannounce stuff back in January? That makes little sense unless the real reason for the announcement back then was that they were trying to stop current Canon users from jumping to the Sony NXCAM. I'll let the Internet Conspiracy Theorists munch on that one for a while...

Canon DSLRs - there won't be any new camera (and no video camera using the DSLR chips either) but Canon will probably devote a bit of effort to promoting DSLR's at NAB. Just seems natural they would.


Avid
Avid may announce a new version, that's what someone has hinted. Look for better interoperability between Avid and other systems (like Final Cut?)


Adobe
Adobe will be showing CS5 of Premiere and After Effects and pushing the Mercury Playback engine a lot. It will be interesting to see what other features this release will have. Will Premiere get lost in the buzz for the iPod (and iPad?) authoring in Flash?


Apple
Apple doesn't do much at NAB because, well, they're Apple and they don't need no stinking badges! But if they have any answer to Adobe's Mercury Playback engine coming, they need to start talking about it soon. If even idiots like me are getting intrigued, you know there are a lot of other people looking at how long it takes to render or compress a movie to H.264 and wondering if Adobe has a solution for them.

If Canon does announce their new camera, Apple will probably be there demoing/announcing support for it as well.


Sony
When they announced the HXR-NX5U, they were kind of coy about the fact that it was the "first" in a series. Is it too soon to announce a second camera in the series? Maybe an AVCHD version of the HVR-HD1000U or HVR-S270U would arouse some interest? I have absolutely nothing to base this on, it's just what I'd expect them to do sometime in the next year.

Unless they want to dive into the world of HD DSLR before Canon totally owns it.


Nikon
Nikon doesn't seem to be aware of video, or what people do with it.


NVIDIA
Mercury Playback Engine, Mercury Playback Engine.  We bring 3D to life too!


HDV
This show will mark the end of HDV. Some companies will insist that it's still dominant, and announce new products that support the "most popular medium." They will be deluding themselves. HDV fell ill on January 6th, 2010, and died after a short illness on January 13th, 2010. The body will be buried in the coming year or two.


DSLR
This could be the year for DSLRs; except that it's the year for 3D, so too bad. Still, expect lots of rigs, follow-focus - what's the plural of follow focus? - loupes, lenses, HDMI monitors and flash cards that are just perfect for DSLR film making. Expect that the BBC will still not accept footage captured with DSLRs, and for everyone else not to care.

Zeiss has new lenses, and maybe the Red Rock Micro wireless remote will finally appear? I wouldn't bet money on that one, but I'm sure there will be lots of other things to spend your money on.


RED
Scarlet? Scarlet? Anyone?


3D
Did someone say 3D? This is going to be the show for 3D video. Every man and his dog will have something related to 3D. Show visitors are going to have headaches at the end of each day after watching unrelenting 3D demos.

There will be lots of TV sets and 3D blu-ray players and 3D authoring/content "stuff", and Panasonic will have their $20K 3D camera. Will anyone else jump in the pool? 

Sony doesn't currently offer a 3D camera, though they have worked with a number of companies that make rigs for stereo shooting. They have also shown pictures of a test camera, and even talked about a consumer 3D camera. Would they show a consumer 3D camera at NAB? Probably not, that's more a CES thing, but that boat sailed back in January and everyone wants to ride the 3D wave this year. I wouldn't be shocked if Sony made some kind of announcement, but I'm not expecting it.