This was my first trip to NAB and it was a great experience. I learned a lot and picked up a bunch of new tips and trick from the classes and then there were the toys… The show floor was massive. On the post side there were a lot of large and shared storage options. A few people had some Thunderbolt interface stuff up for demo (I/O boxes, drive arrays) but nobody was shipping before this summer. Looks like the interface is going to take off soon and it has a lot of promise.
One cool gadget I feel I should mention is the Atomos Samurai and Ninja. These are cool little full color touchscreen external recording devices for your camera. The interface is simple and useful. The touchscreen doubles as a full color monitor. You can use any 2.5 inch drive in their chassis and it records direct to Apple’s ProRes.
Let me say that again, ANY DRIVE YOU WANT. SSD for a non-spinning solution for run-n-gun? Ok. 1TB laptop hard drive for FOURTEEN HOURS OF RECORD TIME? Sure.
The Samurai takes HD-SDI in and the Ninja HDMI and they are about $1500 and $1000, respectively. But that price gets you a nice Pelican-type case, batteries, charger, and more. I saw boxes that were displays only that cost more.
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