Holdan @ NAB22 – Day One Report

After an absence of three years, the NAB Show is back with a rash of signature product launches. It’s probably no coincidence that the past 36 months have seen little in the way of innovation in the broadcast and professional video industry, apart from a slew of mirrorless cameras. The unstoppable force that is the engineer needs the immovable object – the trade show – to get the creative juices flowing it would seem.

So, where to start? Well, how about alphabetically?

Atomos, inventors of practical, high quality field monitor-recorders are moving to the cloud with the introduction of Atomos CONNECT for Ninja V/V+ (£325 + VAT) and Shogun CONNECT 7” (£1,099 + VAT). The former, not to be confused with their HDMI to USB converter for streaming, which has the same name, is an add-on module for NINJA V and NINJA V+ that connects your camera to the cloud for both streaming and collaboration. Shogun CONNECT 7” has the same unit built in.

Unlike other streaming solutions, for either product you don’t need a computer to encode the stream, so you can stream direct to the platform of choice, for example Facebook Live, YouTube etc. Also, thanks to a partnership announced at NAB22 with Adobe, both are recognized as a Frame.io Camera to Cloud device. This makes the new dual record feature – the ability to record a proxy H.265 file alongside a full resolution Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHR/HD file – incredibly powerful, as it gives many thousands more filmmakers access to cloud-based workflows.

Atomos also announced an enhanced version of the popular Sumo production monitor. Sumo 19 SE comes with a new P3 Quantum dot colour panel, offering better picture clarity. The Sumo 19 SE replaces the preceding model with immediate effect.

Over on the BirdDog booth, there are not only some new PTZ updates, but some interesting new diversifications from the recently AUSDAQ-listed, Melbourne-based company.

Nominated for Product of the Year at NAB22, CORE is an NDI encoder/decoder with a difference – it’s incorporated into a monitor! Available in two screen sizes – 5” and 7” – each converts any SDI or HDMI signal live into NDI®, NDI® | HX2, NDI® | HX3, SRT, H.264, HEVC/H.265, RTMP, or RTSP in up to 4Kp60. Oh, and they’ve both got a full range of video analysis tools too, including vector scopes, waveform and RGB parade.

BirdDog OG4 is the world’s first NDI® openGear card, with four independently configurable 12G SDI inputs and outputs. Full Dashboard support is included along with SFP+ port for 10GbE and Fiber connectivity.

While OG4 is unreservedly a broadcast product, BirdDog Pod looks more towards the AV market. it’s an NDI® to USB webcam converter that automatically detects NDI sources to connect to Zoom, Teams, Meet or any conferencing or software application that supports a USB webcam input.

BirdDog has also announced a range of new software applications, including Camera Director, a multicam automation tool, Central 2.0, next generation browser-based routing control, an Adobe plug-in for BirdDog’s Cloud Connect, Mac and Server versions of NDI® Multiview, and DYNO, a visual tool for testing network speed, performance, and stability for a single NDI® stream or multiple streams.

Last but not least, there are two new PTZ cameras. P110 & P120 offer four output options including NDI®, SDI, HDMI for live production work, and UVC USB for connecting to Zoom & Teams. They output multiple flavours of NDI® including Full NDI®, NDI® | HX2 and HX3, and support NDI® 5 natively. There’s also an OLED display to show the IP address, 360° mohawk tally, filter thread, and free Auto-Tracking available. BirdDog say both cameras will ship end of May.

Battery manufacturer Core SWX has been busy too. New for NAB22 are a range of batteries that support Atomos monitor-recorders. Two new NPF style batteries, the NANO-F and the NPF-ATOM50 fit Atomos 5-inch and 7-inch devices respectively. To satisfy the power needs of the NEON reference monitors Core has announced the new CSX-NB19 battery module.

Core has also launched a range of B-Mount battery and charging solutions, 2 new PowerBase Edge models, Cube Plus, a lightweight onboard power supply available in V-Mount and Gold Mount, Helix Max dual voltage battery packs and Mach4 Micro Chargers, also available in in V-Mount and Gold Mount. 

Originally intended for launch at NAB last year before it was cancelled, Datavideo finally unveiled the Showcast 100, the company’s first 4K switcher. With 4 HDMI inputs and outputs, this compact touch panel switcher is as versatile as it is portable. The Showcast 100 can switch video, overlay text and graphics, control cameras, live stream, record, and mix audio all from a single unit. The incorporation of a touchscreen panel makes it intuitive and easy to operate, even for the live events novice.