April 15 - 1:05am EDT   Blackmagic yesterday unveiled a new DeckLink HD Extreme at NAB 2008, an update to its PCI-based video capture card, adding support for HDMI and 3Gb per second SDI. The card allows users to switch between SD, HD, and 2K formatted video for capture and editing purposes. Users can also connect S-Video, PAL, NTSC, and analogue component video sources to the card. DeckLink HD Extreme is selling for $1000 from Blackmagic. [full story]

April 15 - 12:50am EDT   Blackmagic Design recently unveiled several new video interfaces at the NAB 2008 conference, the USB-based Video Recorder – available in consumer and professional versions – and a large scale 8U rack-mount SDI router. The Blackmagic Video Recorder offers consumers the ability to capture video directly to H.264 through component or S-Video onto their computer. The consumer USB Video Recorder sells for $120. [full story]

April 14 - 10:35pm EDT   Designed for mobile video markets, Maxell's Professional Media Products Division has introduced a light-weight, rugged and shock-resistant compact removable hard drive solution for field archive operations. Debuting at NAB in Las Vegas, the company calls it the first "Field Tough Media" solution of its kind. It leverages Maxell iVDR technology that connects directly through a bi-directional USB or eSATA adapter to a shoulder-mounted camcorder capable of delivering 10-bit, 4:2:2 master- quality video and native full HD video. In its current form factor, Maxell iVDR solution is capable of storing 160 GBof data and has a transfer rate of 540Mbps. [full story]

April 14 - 9:55pm EDT   FirmTek on Monday announced the SeriTek/SpyderHUB, which provides USB and FireWire host connection options plus hardware RAID, eSATA Mac OS boot capability and FireWire daisy chaining capability in an ultra-small external design. The ultra small, four-ounce device offers the ability to connect to external hard drives using any eSATA enclosure such as the SeriTek/2EN2, allowing users to attach and boot from up to two eSATA hard drives at a remote location. Supporting both desktop and notebook computers, it allows professionals to utilize eSATA enclosures from computers that do not support a Serial ATA host adapter. [full story]

April 14 - 9:35pm EDT   G-Technology on Monday added a new G-RAID Pro drive to its product line, increased the performance and quiet operation of its G-RAID drive, and added RAID 1 protection and eSATA connectivity to its G-RAID mini portable drive. The company's triple interface G-RAID Pro solution features FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connectivity and storage capacities up to 4TB to handle both the bandwidth and storage-intensive requirements of compressed HD formats. The on-board hardware RAID controller supports both RAID 0 and fail-safe RAID 5 operation with auto-rebuild functionality, and utilizes four hot-swappable 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s disk drive modules. [full story]

April 14 - 7:15pm EDT   Hewlett Packard, with some assistance from DreamWorks, is announcing a new technology dubbed "HP DreamColor" that the company says will be a "disruptive" force in the market place. MacNN spoke with Jim Zafarana is Vice President, Worldwide Marketing for Hewlett-Packard Company's Workstation Global Business Unit and Jeff Wood, Director Product Marketing at HP about the new technology, which will purportedly pave the way for displays with accurate, predictable color reproduction at a fraction of the cost of similarly capable monitors and finally offer a transition route to flat-panel displays for graphic design firms (like DreamWorks) that have thus far been stuck with ... [full story]

April 14 - 3:15pm EDT   Panasonic on Sunday revealed its newest AVCCAM professional camcorder, the AG-HMC150, at the NAB show in Vegas. The camera uses the industry's newest compression standard, AVCHD, to record video onto SD cards exclusively. Based on the standard-definition AG-DVX100, the HMC150 can record 1080 and 720 HD video at average speeds up to 21 Mbps. Four recording modes give users the flexibility to record up to 12 hours of 1440x1080-pixel HD video or three hours of 1920x1080 on a 32GB SD card. Resolution of 1280x720 can also be set, with the HMC150 supporting 1080/24p, 1080/60i and 720/60p HD formats. [full story]

April 14 - 3:00pm EDT   GridIron Software on Monday announced that GridIron Flow software is now undergoing beta testing with a select group of creative professionals and is being demonstrated this week on both Mac OS X and Windows at the NAB (booth SL6220). According to the company, Flow is billed as "a revolutionary new approach to workflow management for creative pros that dramatically simplifies the design process for print, web, film, and video projects." The software transparently tracks work from idea to end result and manages all assets and applications with any modifications to existing workflows. Expected to ship later this summer starting at $350, Flow automatically tracks projects ... [full story]

April 14 - 2:20pm EDT   RED today launched into the NAB pro video expo by debuting cameras at opposite ends of its signature RED One. The Scarlet is RED's first true handheld camera and incorporates a new, 2/3-inch version of the trademark Mysterium X sensor that still produces greater-than-1080p images. At 3K, the horizontal resolution is sharp enough to eclipse the best HD viewable on Blu-ray or other newer formats. While smaller than the Red Ray, it still offers an 8X zoom lens and shooting at up to 120 frames per second depending on the resolution; 180 FPS shots are available for short bursts. [full story]

April 14 - 8:15am EDT   HP this morning has marked the launch of NAB with two systems targeted at AV editors or most anyone who depends on very high end performance. A new version of the xw8600 uses Intel's latest 3.2GHz quad-core Xeon to handle very processor-intensive tasks such as media encoding; up to two each can fit in a single system to make it the most individually powerful desktop at HP, the company says. Systems built on the new chip vary in price but lift the price by about $2,460 both through the faster design as well as the requirement of using 4GB of 800MHz memory. [full story]

April 14 - 12:55am EDT   At NAB Adobe also announced native support for the Sony XDCAM EX camera format in its Premiere Pro CS3 video editing and production software. Premiere Pro delivers a file-based workflow without transcoding or rewrapping, providing a software-only, tapeless High Definition (HD) workflow—from capture to output. Adobe will demonstrating the Sony XDCAM EX editing workflow during The 2008 NAB conference at booth SL3220. [full story]

April 14 - 12:35am EDT   At NAB in Las Vegas, Adobe on Monday launched a new effort for an industry-wide open file format for digital cinema files, initiative to define an industry-wide open file format for digital cinema files to streamline workflows an ensure easy archiving and exchange. Built on the company's Digital Negative Specification (DNG) file format for photos, Adobe said it plans to work with a broad coalition of leading camera manufacturers, including Panavision, Silicon Imaging, Dalsa, Weisscam, and ARRI—along with software vendors, including Iridas and The Foundry, and codec provider CineForm—to define the requirements for an open, publicly documented file format that it plans ... [full story]

April 7 - 7:25pm EDT   SmartSound has announced the release Sonicfire Pro 5, a new music library solution. Shipping in June, Sonicfire Pro 5 features new music timing controls and searching features. The tool allows users to choose a beat from a score and move it to a spot in the Timeline without changing the rhythm or tempo of the music. Sonicfire can also suggest music that is the best fit and provide customization tools to make it precisely match the timing of scenes. [full story]

February 25 - 3:05pm EST   Glue Tools today announced that it will release Cineon/DPX Pro for Final Cut 3.0 at NAB 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The latest release of Cineon/DPX for Final Cut Pro includes Cineon and DPX Sequence Presets along with a full Cineon or DPX Codec, completely eliminating the need to render sequences in Final Cut Pro's timeline. "No More Red Render Bar!" the company states. "Your imagery can be directly loaded into Final Cut Pro or Compressor, without needing to be compressed into an intermediate codec or movie format." The company is already accepting pre-orders for Cineon/DPX for Final Cut 3.0 at $400 per license. The update requires Final Cut Studio 2 and QuickTime 7.3.1. ... [full story]

February 18 - 2:55pm EST   The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) today urged the the Federal Communications Commission to block satellite radio providers Sirius and XM from offering local broadcasting, hoping to claim an edge for terrestrial radio in the event that the proposed merger between Sirius and XM is completed. A recent filing by NAB to the FCC points out that both Sirius and XM have an alleged record of ‘misbehavior’ in adopting the FCC’s rules and should be prevented from taking this abuse to local stations: both Sirius and XM have admitted to unauthorized or misused antennas and repeaters, according to the NAB's claims. [full story]