#396 - The Best of NAB 2024
Before we dive into the best things to come out of NAB this year, I need to cover a few Cut/daily family admin things.
An Apology and a Lesson
In last week's issue of Cut/daily, which featured an in-depth interview with two of the editors of Shōgun, there was a massive spoiler for the finale in the concluding question, so apologies that this wasn't flagged with a spoiler alert and sorry if this dampened your enjoyment of the series!
Thanks to the constructive feedback from one helpful Cut/daily reader, this won't happen again, and I'll be sure to add spoiler alerts in future.
Reply to any Cut/daily email, and your thoughts will land in my inbox.
Thanks and Future Insights
Huge thanks to the hundreds of you who answered my recent one-click questionnaire on which NLE you use and to all those who answered the follow-up question on what you'd like to learn more about.
Expect to see more Cut/daily insights on Avid and these topics as a result!
- Leveraging AI workflows in video editing
- Temp VFX in Avid Media Composer
- Fairlight audio mixing
- Music editing
- Workflow optimisation
- Editorial rhythm
- Crafting documentary edits
Also expect more one-click questions - an easy way for me to learn more about you and for you to shape the future of Cut/daily!
The Best of NAB 2024
NAB is always a tent-pole week for most of the post-production industry, with major updates and announcements flying left and right.
But, having personally spent all of that week fly-fishing, riding horses and shooting guns at The Ranch at Rock Creek in Montana (I would highly recommend a visit if you can!), this issue's headlines on the most interesting things to come out of NAB this year is as much a catch up for me as it is hopefully for you.
Avid & AI - Avid previewed some of their AI-based workflow improvements through their AvidADA engine, which includes AI-powered shot recommendations based on transcribed audio. In their example, a journalist records a voiceover of a news story and the AI recommends footage from their MAM to cut into it.
ICYMI - PhraseFind AI and ScriptSync AI in Media Composer already came out at the end of last year. You can browse every new feature in the history of Media Composer in this massive changelog.
Avid Media Composer 2024.2 is the latest version.
DaVinci Resolve 19 & Two New Panels
As always, BMD dominated the show, both by booth size and the sheer volume of updates. Here are the ones that caught my eye:
- The new Replay Editor ($495/£405 (a supercharged Speed Editor)
- The new micro colour panel for ‘iPad & general use’ ($509/£415)
- New Film Look creator in the Color page
- Text-based timeline editing
- IntelliTrack AI point tracker for tracking and stabilization
- Multi Poly tool for easier rotoscoping of complex objects.
- Music Remixer FX to remix voice, drums, bass, guitar and other sources.
- Dialogue Separator FX to separate dialogue, background or ambience.
- Ducker track FX for auto level management of beds against dialogue.
The new micro color panel replaces the original micro panel and, according to colorist Patrick Inhofer, has “double the buttons, six times the actions, and new trackball encoders and buttons — all at a nearly 50% price reduction.”
It will also be available in localised versions with native language buttons and given how much Grant likes the new panel, we can probably expect similar hardware updates to the other Resolve panels in the future.
Here are a few more ways to digest all that's new!
- 2 hours with CEO Grant Petty on the official live stream
- DaVinci Resolve 19 New Features Guide (84 page PDF)
- Little Things Not To Miss in Resolve 19
- New Color page features in DaVinci Resolve
Adobe Premiere Pro - New AI Tools Coming Soon
There are some really useful new features coming to Adobe Premiere Pro, which were 'teased' at NAB and are shipping later this year. These include:
- Add frames you don't have - extend a shot with generative AI
- Add objects - Text prompt to video within a selection
- Remove objects - logos, text etc with roto/tracking built-in
- Replace objects - swap costumes, props and much more
- Content Credentials - know if AI was used in a video edit
- Leverage third-party video models - Pika, Sora and Runway
- Add shots - Text prompt to b-roll with the above models
Several of these can already be done using Swiss-army-AI-tools like Runway.ml but that involves roundtripping, while these will all be performed in the timeline.
Premiere Pro was also updated in March (2024.3) with GPU-accelerated speech-to-text, improved markers, colour labels and caption styling.
Final Cut Pro - There was no update.
Strada in Beta
Strada.tech won three Best in Show awards from CineD, NABShow and ProductionHub and are continuing to roll out their public beta.
I haven't had a chance to test it out myself just yet, but if you have a compelling use case to try it out on, they might let you skip the queue!
If you've no idea what Strada is or why it's likely a central part of your future Post-Production workflow, check out these previous issues of Cut/daily:
Frame.io v4
As an early and constant user of Frame.io I've come to depend on it for client feedback and asset sharing on almost every single project I've cut over the past 9 years, since it launched in 2015.
Version 4 is a long time in coming but it is finally here (in beta) and to me, the best new features are the introduction and leveraging of metadata, comment #tags, comment filtering and the system wide customisation that enables you to make Frame.io v4 function the way you like.
LucidLink - Fresh off a $75 million series C fundraising round, LucidLink is one of my 'must-watch and must-use' post-production tools. Lucid allows you to instantly stream your media from anywhere in the world, thanks to its block-based delivery system supported by a local cache.
This means you only download the blocks you need to play back the frames you want to see - all without first having to download the entire file. One of my favourite shows, The Bear, used it for their remote workflow.
According to Mike McCarthy from PostPerspective, LucidLink announced “upcoming support for iOS and Android access to cloud files as well as browser-based uploads and downloads for systems that don’t have their full client installed.” It also updated its integration for Adobe After Effects.
Riverside - My favourite video call and interview platform introduced the ability to use your Phone as a web camera, giving you a 4K recordable stream.
This gives you the potential to make all of those horribly framed, badly lit video interviews look much better, especially when all your client needs to do is download a free app on their phone. (Well, and then frame and light it nicely)
They don't even need a Riverside account to do so, but you should get one!
Save 20% with the exclusive discount code: "jonnyelwyn" on any annual or monthly subscription plan.
Other updates include a new Mac OS desktop app and better AI-driven show notes.
So remember, there are lots of fun new tools out there and cut daily.
Cut/daily Complete Access
Get lifetime access to the complete Cut/daily archive of over 390 Post-Production insights, exclusive discounts and referral offers!