Well, it was a long and wonderful week at NAB. I worked on the show floor at the Apple booth. I had a primo spot on the corner of the massive booth, right in the center of all the traffic. Look, I made Apple.com!. (Photo courtesy of Apple.com).

At the Apple booth, I demo'd FxPlug Plug-ins for Motion and Final Cut Pro. I was using a lot of beta plug-ins on Motion 3, which is in beta. Oh, boy.... Motion 3! Now this product is something to get excited about! I've always been an After Effects evangelist, but Motion 3 is going to give AE a run for it's money. I don't think it will replace AE by any means, but let's just say that there is a new kid in town who can play previews real-time, intuitive 3D, mind-blowing tracking and matching (using Shake technology) and has an incredible number of plug-ins that are out or coming out soon for it. I have to admit that I've never really given Motion the chance it deserves, but it ROCKS. I admit, I love it. I'm a convert.

I plan to review some of the plug-ins that I demo'd in the next week or so. I am completely impressed with CHV-Electronics plug-ins. They play real-time and are extremely versatile. A lot of the developers stopped by my station throughout the week. I saw a lot of Christoph Vonhrein, of CHV. He demo'd his plug-ins and really was able to show me the cool things that they can do. They do some mind-boggling effects... with real-time previews. These are probably my favorite FxPlug plug-ins. I had so much fun with them.

The Noise Industries FxFactory also impresses me. Noise Industries took the 2007 Videography Vidy Awards at NAB. Yes, they're that good. If you're using Motion or Final Cut Pro, YOU NEED BOTH CHV plug-ins and FxFactory. It takes a lot to impress me... really it does. I'll get some samples up soon. I highly recommend both plug-in developers products. They're inexpensive and fast!

I showed Trapcode FxPlug betas of Shine, Starglow and 3D Stroke and on a beta of Motion 3. They are basically the same plug-in as their AE counterpart. They are CPU accelerated, as opposed to GPU accelerated like most FxPlug plug-ins, so they were running about 8 frames per second for previews on the dual Intel processor I was running (it had 8gb ram and an ATI Radeon 1900 card). Not real-time but pretty fast. They brought lots of oohs and aahs.Trapcode 3D Stroke in FxPlug is a little different than the AE version. There are no paths in FCP, so they have a work around. There are a ton of preset shapes, plus, Sean Safreed from Red Giant told me that the trick is to save an SVG file (vector file) and drop it into the FxPlug folder. It will then show up in the drop down menu. I didn't try this, of course, because I didn't have Illustrator installed, but it sounded pretty straight forward. The Trapcode plug-ins will ship in a month, when Final Cut Studio Ships.

Zaxwerks 3D Flag was running real-time previews in Motion 3 and people were really impressed with it. I've made curtains and clothes hanging on a clothesline with it. It's also inexpensive and has a good track record, so it's a great tool for the old Final Cut Studio arsenal.

On Wednesday morning of the show, Boris Yaminsky of Boris FX comes up to me and was asking me about their Boris Continuum Complete 5.0 FxPlug plug-ins, which I didn't have on my machine. He comes back 10 minutes later with a drive and gives me a personal 20 minute demo of some of their plug-ins. They're really pretty fast and ran well in Motion 3. They were not quite realtime, but ran about 10-12 frames per second in previews. Not too shabby. They have a really nice keyer. I didn't have the full set, only about 20 of the 180 or so plug-ins that will be shipping, but what I saw was very cool stuff indeed.

I showed DV Matte Blast from DvGarage, which Toolfarm doesn't sell, unfortuately. It's very fast... real-time! However, it doesn't have a lot of the bells and whistles of a more robust keyer. It does what it does well, but if you're looking for something with a light wrap, matte choker and so on, the Boris Continuum Complete Keyer was a really nice keyer. It got in nice and tight around hair and fingers on moving footage.

Another plug-in I didn't have was ToonIt! from Digital Anarchy. Marco from DA came over to my booth and installed it and gave me a quick tour and It totally gives the look of those Charles Schwab commercials. It does run really slowly, but it analyzes pixel by pixel so it's doing a lot of work. Also, it's still in beta, as is Motion 3. The look is perfect. They've got that nailed. I was using the ToonIt! Roto plug-in on some Ducati footage from Apple and it was impressive to say the least. Slow, but impressive. If you've tried to create this look on your own, it's not an easy task. I think ToonIt! is going to do very well in the plug-in marketplace.

Also, Marco from DA gave me a behind the scenes look at the Quartz Compositor and programming that goes into Plasma FX. That was really interesting. I had no idea what goes into the programming of plug-ins. I also had DA Plasma FX on my box, but unfortunately there was an old build installed, not to mention a beta of Motion 3 and things were not working as well as I would've liked.

The CHV, Noise Industries plug-ins and Zaxwerks 3D Flag are available now. The Boris, Red Giant, Trapcode, and Digital Anarchy plug-ins are shipping in a month or so.

Final Cut Server also took a few awards - Television Broadcast Top Innovation Award, Television Broadcast Top Innovation Award and the DV Black Diamond Award. I was so surprised to find out how many people are migrating from their Avids and are going to get Final Cut Server in their post houses.

They didn't show Shake there and several people asked me if Shake was EOL. Word on the street is that in 2008 a new version of Shake is going to blow all of our minds. Hold tight on that one.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended also won a Television Broadcast Top Innovation Award and a 2007 Videography Vidy Award and Adobe Soundbooth CS3 took a DV Black Diamond Award. Unfortunately, I didn't get to check out much of the Adobe stuff. I was at the Apple booth for the entire show. I did manage to see an hour long demo of the new features in AE CS3 and saw some great new features. The vanishing point feature looks really swell. The Beta of AE CS3 is now available here.

No, I didn't see the RED Camera, but there was so much buzz surrounding it. Everybody wants some.

I'll get some photos of the show, the parties and the people I met up this week. Our Podcast guys, Keith and Alan, did a knockout job and got interviews with Chris and Trish Meyer, Brian Maffitt, and so many other well known people in our little industry. They did the interviews at parties in the evening so everyone is relaxed and having fun. Keith played the Chris and Trish Meyer interview at the airport and it's a hoot. That Trish really dished it to Alan. I expect them to be up by Monday, after we've all had a chance to recover. Keith and Alan and I all flew out at 1am on the red eye last night. Alan and I were actually on the same flight. Anyway, I am totally looking forward to these podcasts from NAB.

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Labels: Boris, CHV, Digital Anarchy, Final Cut Pro, Motion, NAB, Noise Industries, Podcast, ToonIt, Trapcode, Zaxwerks