NAB 2025 is in the books, and ’25 was just as much fun as all the rest. Between hanging out with old friends, meeting new people, enjoying some good food, and seeing some high-class entertainment, I learned a lot from those I met and the booths I visited. Yes, AI was all over the show, but I wasn’t focused on it. If it came up in conversation, so be it.
Post | Production World
The highlight of my NAB and the thing that brings me to town is Future Media Conference’s Post | Production World. There was a wide variety of classes across all the different tracks this year. It was great to see a lot of the rooms filled. While overall NAB attendance was down a bit this year, I hope that what we saw at the conference meant that it was overall a success. There’s still nothing like attending these things in person and getting to chat with fellow media creators after the classes and in the hallways.
A big focus this year was on business and freelancing. Since I’ve been doing this for a lot of years, I hope that some of my knowledge was worthwhile.
The Construction
The biggest thing I was surprised to see was all the construction going on at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The gigantic collection of buildings has been under construction for a while now so that wasn’t entirely new and this year saw the closure of the Central Hall. But as you walked up, it looked like half of the mammoth structure was getting work done, and you could even see right into the cavernous central hall. I was impressed with those working on the new roof. In a conversation with one of the kind folks working the stop sign, so we could cross the road, we determined that neither of us would be good up there on that roof helping.
While I spent most of my time teaching for Post|Production World in the Upper South Hall, I made a few specific stops down on the show floor.
iodyne
The first was at the iodyne booth, which has continued to grow in size every year. I had yet to hold an iodyne Pro Mini, and I wanted to see this revolutionary new SSD with my own eyes. These things are impressive and feel so much more meaty in your hand than every Samsung or SanDisk SSD you might purchase. They are meant to be well beyond “consumer-level” SSDs, and the thing that first jumps out is the E-Ink display. This will be a whole new way of deploying field drives for productions that can afford their cost. While they won’t be as cheap as the SSDs you buy off Amazon, seeing a company taking a chance on something different in a space with little innovation is great. The Pro Data was there too.
FSI
Wandering by the Flanders Scientific booth and catching up with FSI CEO Bram Desmet was great. It’s always a fun chat since we both live and work in the Southeast US. I didn’t expect new 55 and 65-inch OLED HDR reference monitors.
These displays are gorgeous and much bigger than what you might expect in a grading suite. Bram said these have been a common ask, and while they aren’t right for every color suite, they can be the centerpiece of the right grading suite. I’ve been in color grading rooms where you have way too many people crowding around a small monitor and/or a group watching a large, non-calibrated display. The XMP550 and XMP650 look to solve a unique issue at around $20,000 and $23,000 respectively. We also talked a bit about how tariffs might affect business, and kudos to Flanders for being upfront about the roller coaster ride, which is US tariffs.
Elgato and the Stream Deck +
I was walking by the Elgato/Corsair booth when I happened to see a rep standing over a Stream Deck +. Since my review of this control surface wasn’t the greatest, and in light of the recent announcement that Logitech was discontinuing the manufacture of Loupedeck hardware… I thought it was worth a chat. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Elgato is planning native support for Adobe’s apps in the near future. This is something, shockingly, they haven’t done, hence my less than enthusiastic review of the Stream Deck +. What that means is (hopefully) we can get those very nice Stream Deck + dials to control things in Adobe Premiere Pro, like motion parameters and lumetri color controls. It’s excellent hardware without good software integration for Adobe apps. I look forward to this making it a lot better.
Signiant and Kyno
The Signiant booth was also a good stop as I learned something about everyone’s favorite post-production tool, Kyno. According to Signiant CTO Ian Hamilton, an update to Kyno is coming! It will hopefully ship sometime this quarter and will include support for Apple Silicon. We’ve heard that before, but we had a great chat about the application, and I’m confident it’ll ship. This will be more of a maintenance update with support for some new codecs and formats added. Still, Apple Silicon support is important as, hopefully, it will increase overall speed. This release may be minor, but at least it’s something. Before you get your hopes up, I was told that there will not be any new features added with this update or in the future. The Kyno feature set is what it is and will stay that way. But Kyno is still available for sale and is still a handy post-production tool.
Peakto (and almost Shade)
Speaking of Kyno, part of NAB was looking for a Kyno replacement.
The closest I found was Peakto, from the French company Cyme. Peakto originated as a photography application, but Cyme has recently added video support and seems to be going all-in on video. Peakto is a very feature-rich tool, and they even told me they would like to make a Kyno replacement. I’m skeptical we’ll ever get the full Kyno feature set in Peakto, but I think we will get a helpful desktop digital asset manager with many features. One interesting thing is Peakto’s ability to “look into” an Adobe Premiere Pro project file and show you all the media in that project. I’m not sure of that usefulness yet, but it is interesting nonetheless. Peakto won some NAB awards as well.
I planned to look up another Kyno-like tool with Shade. It’s a modern, AI-focused DAM that I’ve played around with a bit. I bookmarked them in the NAB app to look them up, but after wandering around to find their booth, I learned they didn’t have a booth but rather a private meeting room. I should have booked that meeting when their mass email asked me about it.
LucidLink, Suite Studios, Amove and Strada
Another big product category at NAB this year is real-time streaming cloud storage. I’m not sure exactly what term to use, but several vendors are showing off some pretty cool technology. LucidLink has been at the top of the heap for years now, but some competition is beginning to nip at their heels.
LucidLink recently had a significant update to version 3.0. This is a big update with the new interface and a new way of interacting with your file spaces. You no longer have to install any extensions deep into Mac OS, and onboarding a user is easier than it used to be. You create an account; you now have a single LucidLink sign-on. Performance is as good as ever, and a roadmap includes things like quick-access web links and a full-featured mobile app among others.
Suite Studios was another cloud storage provider that promised instant access to your files stored in the cloud without downloading or syncing locally. If that sounds like a LucidLink, you’re correct. Having more than one vendor in any product category is always good. Suite Studios is also easy to install and has an elegant app to interact with your files.
That brings me to Amove and their new product, CLICK. Amove also offers streaming cloud storage and various product integrations. While you can have a basic “bucket” in the cloud to store your files, they offer a unique option to connect other cloud storage providers and stream that to collaborators. Imagine connecting Dropbox, Google Drive, or Frame.io and then streaming that to others. I also saw one system on the show floor streaming media from a locally attached SSD to another system, all with CLICK. A lot is going on there, and the price is around $10/month, so check out all that Amove CLICK has to offer.
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I also checked out Strada because I wanted to see what their “be your own cloud” was all about. Strada doesn’t offer cloud-based storage but rather connects several of their services to existing services you might already have. You can also connect Strada to existing systems and connected hard drives, giving you access to all these online services as well as physical media without a cloud subscription. It’s quite unique, and I can see it being really useful in some workflows. It’s a flat monthly fee, and I forgot what they told me. I don’t see that fee on the Strada website (which is a little bit odd), but it certainly wasn’t overly expensive. Scroll down and see what they’ve got planned for the future. There’s a lot of possibilities here.
Avid and Quickture
I sat in on a roundtable at the Avid booth about called “the future of post-production.” There wasn’t anything revolutionary beyond a lot of what Avid has already talked about with Media Composer updates, updates to their server products, and what they’re doing in the cloud. There was a mention that Avid knows the need to attract younger editors. They’ve been told that by some of their most loyal users. So perhaps we’ll see some interface design updates coming in the future to make entry to Media Composer a bit more attractive to new users.
I really wanted to see a demo of Quickture, and I got to check it out right before the show closed. Quickture is a panel that runs in the Media Composer interface and uses AI to analyze content, summarize stories, give you story beats suggestions, and actually build rough cuts right within Media Composer. They aren’t the only company using AI to generate rough cuts, but it’s undoubtedly one of the most advanced. Quickture built by editors and it’s sure to cause quite a stir in Hollywood for those working on unscripted television. They also support Adobe Premiere Pro, but Quickture isn’t cheap. While they also don’t have a price on their website, I believe the Avid demo artist says it will cost several hundred dollars per month once it rolls out. They’ve got a pretty strong security statement, so it looks like they mean business when working on Hollywood productions.
Time Codes app
In my multicam class at Post|Production World, I talked extensively about Time Code and some of the affordable Time Code Generators, like Tentacle Sync and UltraSync. After the class was over, an attendee approached me and showed me an iOS app called LiveTimecode Notes that I never knew existed. It’s from the folks at editingtools.io, and is designed for taking live timecode notes during a shoot.
Filmfabriek Super 8 film transfer
Finally, I wandered several times by the Filmfabriek booth. And each time I stopped to look at this cool little Super 8 film transfer machine in action, transferring good old Super 8 mm film. While I haven’t shot Super 8 in decades, I know enthusiasts are still out there, and it feels like it’s next-level when it comes to working with Super 8 and being able to transfer your own film. This was a tiny booth with two gentlemen always working hard as there was always a crowd around. While I’m sure there are other transfer options, I’d look at this thing if I ever got back into Super 8.
V-U2 at The Sphere
The best non-food entertainment of the week was watching the U2 immersive concert film at the Sphere.
This wasn’t like most concert films, and as someone who’s edited many live multi-cam concert shows, I was curious to see how it worked. Very few cameras were used during the shoot. It’s less like a concert film than almost viewing the concert itself. The resolution of the sphere is incredible. The high frame rate makes it literally look like you’re watching the real thing. I sent a clip to my family at home, joking that I got to see U2 live, and they had no idea what they were viewing was me filming the sphere with my phone. It’s not a cheap ticket, but if you’re even a passing U2 fan and interested in exactly what the Sphere can do, it’s an incredible viewing experience. And I didn’t even mention the audio quality.
