Live From NAB:  The Xtender!

Here’s a hint:  NAB 2009 is The Year Of The LED Light.  There are over a dozen different manufacturers here (and in the next few days I’ll tell you a bit about a whole bunch of them.)  But the problem with almost all of them is that they either screw to the top of your camera or slide into the shoe - and both of those places are dead-center on the axis of the lens.  This produces ugly, flat, boring lighting.  What you really want is to be able to get the light up and off to the side of the camera - and former news shooter Shawn Dennison has made it happen.

His product is called The Xtender, and it is magic.  Three joints on two lightweight-yet-sturdy arms make it possible to get that light around a foot in the air, or off to the right or left, or some combination of the two.  It’s a simple idea, elegantly executed, and reasonably priced to boot.  His website is www.xtender.tv - I recommend you give it a look!

5 Things I Learned at the Text in After Effects session

Trish Meyer presented a great session on Sunday afternoon about working with text in Adobe After Effects. Since I consider myself an After Effects hack who wants to know more I sat in. Among a number of things here’s 5 tips that I picked up:

1. There is an Auto-open check box up in the After Effects tool bar that when checked, will automatically open the character and text panels when you add text to a composition.

2. When you want to add new text to a comp you can have the cursor always begin in the middle of the screen by using the Layer menu > New > Text. No more fumbling with clicking in or around the center of the screen with this technique.

3. Do your initial creation and stylizing of your text in its final, readable state before you being animating or working on transitions.

4. A square keyframe icon in an After Effects timeline means it it is a HOLD type of keyframe that will hold the parameter constant until it get to the next keyframe ... so no animation after a square, hold keyframe.

5. AE’s text engine is based on Photoshop which is not itself animatible. If you use the “Range Selector” parameter under the Animate property for text then this is they key to being able to animate text with ease in After Effects. Using the Range Selector means you don’t have to animate individual letters or words. This was the basis of the session and text animation in AE can go a million different places using the Range Selector and all its parameters.

6. (okay, one more that many people already know) Adobe After Effects is such an amazing, full-featured software application that it never ceases to amaze me when I watch an experienced artist work on it.

NAB 2009 - Zeiss Compact Primes, Sony SRW-9000, etc.

An SRW-9000 at BandPro with a Zeiss DigiZoom.

Both BandPro and Sony had prototypes of the new SRW-9000 HDCAM-SR camcorder to show, as well as the new PDW-F800 XDCAM HD camcorder. But first, those Zeiss Compact Primes I was rabbiting on about…

NAB 2009 - SI-2K

BandPro’s Jim Hegadorn wields the Si-2K Mini

Today I was honored with a pre-show tour through BandPro‘s booth, where I saw many things, most of which I can’t discuss yet (more on them later tonight). What I can share is some images of the current Silicon Imaging‘s SI-2K digital cine cameras, like the ones used on “Slumdog Millionaire”.

NAB 2009 - Saturday Workshop

The calm before the storm: the Las Vegas Convention Center on Saturday evening.

NAB holds several pre-show conferences; I arrived midafternoon on Saturday and sat in on two presentations in the Director of Photography Workshop, one on Red, and one on the Arri D-21.

We’re Going to NAB

One of the benefits of our Coalition, is that with 25+ writers, we’ve got tons of people covering NAB from many different angles.

What’s tops on your list for coverage?  What do you really wish you could get your hands on at the show, or can we provide you an insider’s view.

Take advantage of comments below, or start up a forum and give our team of writers even more to focus on than they already have!

Just like last year, we’ll be covering NAB in-depth and have a separate channel dedicated to NAB 09.  Stay tuned…and tell us what you want to see covered.

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