Heller Studios

Well folks it’s that time of year again! NAB time! Where film and broadcast companies show off all that new fancy equipment. The big show down in Las Vegas, has tons of new stuff coming, I’ll try to cover most of it, but it’s hard to cover it all.

First off the big stuff:

Adobe – Cinema 4D integration

The one of the biggest announcements for me, will be the newly integrated C4D, and AE. This new plugin, called Cineware, lets you render and composite full C4D files in AE. Also the lastest version of AE will come with a new version of C4D, called C4D lite. This new version shouldn’t be anything new, just a more complexed demo, as it seems. Cineware will work within AE as a plugin, and comes with the standard list of effects in AE. For more info on Cineware, check here.

The next big announcement is (CS7 or CS6.5, I’m not sure what the naming of the product will be).

Of course there are general improvements to the software, but some big stuff in AE specifically. There is also new Speedgrade improvements, and pretty much all of the CS, but I will not mention them here, as it is too much to put in a single post. For more info on the other CS apps check here.

Back to AE: Remember CS5, and the Roto Brush tool, which would roto footage for you? Well, I’ve since tried it, and I prefer to roto things myself, granted this does take, on average, like 4x more time, but it is much more accurate. One of the huge things I’m excited about, is rotoscoping things that are hard to roto on your own, like a tree line, or hair. These things are a major pain! Well now, you (hopefully) don’t have to worry about that. With the all new “Refine Edge Tool” this should take care of rotoscoping out normally very difficult things to roto. You can watch the promo video for it here; Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Of course there will still be issues, but all in all, I think it’ll work well.

Now, for all you folks running the creative cloud, this new release is great news! You don’t have to worry about paying for the latest and greatest at a full retail price. The price per month remains the same, and auto updates. If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is!

Cameras (not in depth):

Of course, with NAB 2013, there are always new cameras. I will not go into too much detail here.

For a semi-professional camera check out the new Black Magic lineup. It’s pretty cool. Also the new $995 camera from BM is sweet!

For low end – (prosumer) cameras, check out Canon’s new T5i, or the cheaper, and very slightly different, T4i. You can also pick up the older T3i refurbished for $374 for just the body, and $442 with a kit lens (18-55 zoom). For more info on these camera’s check here.

Also I recently discovered a prosumer camera from Panasonic. It’s called the Panasonic LUMIX GH3. Long name, but an awesome prosumer camera. It shoots at 1080p/60fps, where the prosumer Canon’s can only do 60fps in 720p.

Of course there is more stuff to come, like Bullet Proof from Red Giant Software and much more awesome software! For more info on Bullet Proof and to sign up for the beta, check here.

That’s a wrap on the NAB 2013! Hope anyone who attended via the internet or in reality had a great time!