Las Vegas: ‘Let’s not be disoriented by the thunder and the buzz.’

National Association of Broadcasters president Eddie Fritts’ advice to broadcasters dealing with a whirlwind of change would have been germane to those walking the unspeakably vast floors at NAB 96 or the streets of host city Las Vegas. Amid the multilingual din, as 90,000-plus industry types wandered ga-ga through displays that weren’t as much booths as small city states, one could discern the sound of whistles of astonishment and deals being made. Even Al Gore was excited.

The all-industry opening of the four-day event began Monday morning, April 15, with a rousing video-delivered edition of The Star Spangled Banner and a snappy nab theme song and video montage.

Keynote speaker, News Corporation chairman and all-around media magnate Rupert Murdoch, reminded broadcasters of the gravity of their responsibility to American society, and in no uncertain terms reminded everyone of the necessity of committing financially to digital technology. ‘We cannot allow our free, over-the-air tv to become a second-class medium,’ said Murdoch.

Emphasizing the painful necessity of investing in digital, Murdoch estimated the digital transition would cost individual stations about $2 million to $3 million and networks about $100 million. Murdoch called high-definition tv an inherently defensive strategy to allow broadcasters to maintain viewership.

Murdoch also urged broadcasters to make greater commitments to the tv audience (‘Listening to the public does not mean appealing to the lowest common denominator’), to programming (‘Nobody’s going to watch bowling on high-definition tv’), and to public service (‘Fox’s all-news service launches April 28there is a need for different news and better news’).

u.s. vice-president Gore, speaking at the tvb’s Marketing Conference on day two of nab, said he was glad to be in Vegas, citing the warm climate, then launched into a 15-minute routine of self-deprecating acknowledgment of his status as a man of wood.

With heaps of security measures in place and the eagle eyes of the Secret Service sweeping the crowd (memories of nab include the rushing of the stage by some nab-crazed nut bar during an address by former president Ronald Reagan), Gore spoke of a telecommunications future as wondrous as his first youthful gazes at the first tv sets in his hometown of Carthage, Tennessee.

To an audience of regional u.s. broadcasters, Gore stressed the importance of emphasizing local tv and quality programming for children and the benefits of the transition to digital broadcasting. Gore recommended ‘family right to know’ initiatives whereby broadcasters would place programming files on the Web for increased parental access, a mandatory three hours per week of kids’ programming, and the identification of educational programming in tv listings.

For broadcasters ‘awash in an alphabet soup of competition,’ Gore stressed the benefits to spot tv broadcasters of investing in digital technology.

Meanwhile, on the floors of the Las Vegas Convention Centre and the Sands Expo, and at events throughout the city, virtual-set and film-scanning technologies captured a good measure of attention and the server fervor of 1995 continued unabated.

Kim Davidson, co-owner of Toronto’s Side Effects Software, attests to the explosion of exhibits reflecting the technological trends. Davidson says there’s more of everything and this year’s nab reflected an increasing demand for products which can handle uncompressed data.

‘This year there’s a lot more in every category,’ said Davidson from his station at the Side Effects display in the sprawling Silicon Graphics booth. Davidson added that the next few years will likely see a culling out of some of the entrants into the booming arena.

The Silicon Graphics booth, a wall-to-wall humanity hub, showcased the 3D animation capabilities of the impact workstations running with software from Side Effects, Alias/Wavefront, XAOS Tools and EarthWatch Communications. The main sgi demo, an extravaganza of comedy and displays of performance animation technology.

At the sgi press conference at the Internet Pavilion in Multimedia World at the Sands Expo Center, Toronto-based Alias/Wavefront launched Web Animator, a software package for professional Web site creation for creating images, movies and 3D interactive worlds for the Web. ‘Scrolling through pages of clip-art images doesn’t cut it anymore,’ says John Morch, Alias/Wavefront product manager.

Web Animator is a combination of other Alias/Wavefront products including Power Animator Version 7.0, Alias Animator Version 7.0 and Wavefront Compositor Lite, along with Virtual Reality Modelling Language (vrml) tools for creating 3D worlds and converting them for Web use.

Alias/Wavefront also announced the launch of ator, which bridges technology from Alias/Wavefront’s Power Animator and RenderMan from Pixar, responsible for Disney’s Toy Story.

Amid the throngs, huge human logjams were common around the demonstrations of virtual sets.

In addition to winning the unofficial coolest booth award for its stark bilevel showcase wrought in unfinished wood, metal and wire, Montreal-based Discreet Logic attracted perhaps the biggest crowds in this category with the Vapour virtual set system, which allows realtime rendering of 3D sets and combination with live footage.

The demonstration featured one of the ubiquitous perky demo gals in front of a blue screen while monitors displayed her in an array of cg environments. Discreet’s Joe Alonso says Vapour has attracted interest from numerous international broadcasters.

Significant crowds also gathered around the colorful booth of Montreal’s Toon Boom Technologies, where the company’s Tic Tac Toon animation software was being demonstrated.

Toon Boom president Jacques Bilodeau says the booth and the software generated a good deal more attention than he anticipated. In addition to drawing lots of interest from Asian attendees, he was close to closing a handful of sales.

The Avid press conference heralded the formation of a number of alliances with computer systems and entertainment companies, reflecting the increasing convergence of computer and broadcast technologies.

In a deal with Hewlett Packard, Avid, which introduced disc-based technology at nab in 1992, plans to develop an open version of its AirPlay playback system to control Hewlett Packard’s MediaStream broadcast server.

Avid also announced that l.a.’s Lucasfilm chose Avid as a primary partner in the development and post-production process for George Lucas’ Star Wars ‘Prequel’ trilogy project, which begins production in 1997.

Lucasfilm will use Avid’s Film Compositor, Audio Vision, ProTools, Matador, Media Server and atm networking technology to create a completely digital post-production environment for the post process, which will become a component of the digital studio being developed by Lucasfilm.

In a strategic alliance between Panasonic and Avid, Panasonic will support the industry standard Open Media Format (omf) for its dvcpro and Avid endorses dvcpro as a format for news gathering with existing Avid systems.

Things were cooking at Quantel, which takes the people’s choice award for personnel outfits – natty checked vests over crisp white collarless shirts. Quantel launched the new speedier Henry vb visual effects system at nab, and Quantel’s Dwain Schenck says a Henry system can now be had at $600,000 rather than the roughly $900,000 previous starting point.

Schenck says the show was wildly successful and deals have been closed for four Editbox non-linear online editing systems as well as a Clipbox video server with l.a.’s 4MC.

Philips Spirit Data Cine film scanning device was also turning a large number of technology-savvy heads. The Data Cine allows each film frame to be scanned and converted into a dig data file of about 2,000 by 2,000 pixels, and can accomplish scanning and conversions as well as color correction and image manipulation in almost realtime.

At the Canadian Broadcaster Hospitality Suite, people wandered to and fro talking of the dvcpro.

Rob Engman, director of marketing for Toronto’s The Edit Sweet, says the Panasonic Broadcast and Television Systems’ dvcpro digital acquisition product generated a gargantuan buzz in the industry, both for its capabilities and for the number of technology partnerships that have sprung up around the product.