err.. my laptop renders MPG2 2x realtime... with up to 3 filters... (exclusign MB2, which mind you is only 2x realtime anyway with the use of the Nvidia Go7300 all off the V timeline... and its only a simple Dual Core 1.73 with 1 gb ram...

I can render close to real-time on my 5.5-year-old, 2.8 GHz, single thread, single-CPU P4. My ancient ATI Radeon 8500DV card captures and encodes TV broadcasts in real time (just did the entire Master's golf tournament for a friend). I'm sure the quality of a dedicated card would be better at real time than the 8500DV, but I doubt it would be much better than the Vegas/MainConcept encoder. So, it is interesting, but I am not sure it is compelling, unless it offers something other than real time, which perhaps it does.

I think the most impressive thing I saw was the the USC professor who hand a clip shot with the EX1 where the sole lighting was a single candle for part of the clip. He Scrubbed throught it and the image was very clean.

Adobe showed some "future thinking without committing to implementation". The cool thing for me as a documentary producer (whose first love is Vegas) was a voice recognition transcription feature in Premier Pro that creates a text file of captured interview dialog, and then lets you key word search and timeline locate the word or phrase you're looking for. I know some flavour of Avid already has this. And Sony broadcast apparently had something similar years ago in some portable editing solution (A Sony broadcast guy told me this, but don't ask me what it was). It would be nice if Vegas could beat Adobe to the finish line on this feature. But the pre-beta functionality Adobe was demoing suggests they're probably quite a ways along the development cycle.

Mark

OK, there was another hottie for me.

SmartSound is releasing a free upgrade in June to their Sonicfire Pro software that lets you more quickly find the "right sounding" track and then tweak it to move an individual beat to fall right where you want it.

I'm likely to still prefer the way Cinescore is integrated with Vegas, but I must admit, with SmartSound's greater range of music (I own 25 of their discs) and this new functionality, I'll be using it even more.

My dream solution would be to have all of my SmartSound content available to tweak within Cinescore/Vegas.

And sometimes, dreams come true. I won't let go of this one just yet.

Mark

OK, so I'm on a roll. I just figure that everything I saw in Vegas shouldn't stay there.

I walked up to the VASST booth to gently complain that I'd lost all but the multicam icons in Ultimate S 3 from the Vegas tool bar and I wanted them back.

The friendly and astute rep (DH if memory serves) smiled knowingly and said, but sir, you don't need them. I smiled back (while feeling a little annoyed inside) and a said, oh yes I do.

He then pointed to the screen beside him that showed the just-released Ultimate S 4.0 docked as a window within Vegas. My jaw dropped--imperceptibly mind you. I never want vendors to think I'm already sold on their latest and greatest!! ;>)

I walked away thinking, "Yup, sometimes my dreams do come true".

Thanks VASST.

Mark

I just realized I might be at risk of being banned from this forum when I noted that the thread is about the "hottest thing I saw a [sic] NAB from Sony" and here I am droning on about a lot of non-Sony stuff I saw. I am sorry about that.

But rather than deleting those three previous posts, I think I'll leave them there as friendly encouragement to Sony, which continues to be my favourite camera/software manufacturer.

It was great to see the strong SCS presence at the show.

Actually I was wrong, it was faster than realtime. I had to go back and check my notes. I think actually up to 4x faster than realtime.
Sorry I got it wrong first post.

Hows' this for irony...
I will be acquiring and using the new EX3, maybe 2, but I'll be using AJA/Cineform/Adobe tools to capture and edit the content. for the majority of work. (Capturing via the SDI at 10bit 4:2:2 converting to 4:4:4 via Cineform..).

Vegas will be still be quite useful for low paying jobs requiring no vfx, basic CC and quick turn around times when we use the SxS cards. Can't beat that combination in those situations. I'm sure the 64bit version will make that even quicker and better.