Now that I've made the move from the modern zen-like Aria hotel to the cheaper-and-everything-is-putty-colored-including-the-people Bally's, I've got a moment to spend some time with you, dear readers. One thing I've learned in the past three days: socialize, blog, sleep. Pick two. Last night, blog lost.
Let's see… what else did I do yesterday? Oh yeah. I saw a bunch of stuff on the exhibit floor, ate a crappy overpriced lunch, saw some more stuff that would bore you to tears, but gets people like me all wiggly and excited.
I want to put in a good word for Scopebox, a terrific software video scope from Divergent Media. It's been around for a while but just keeps getting better and better. They've announced they're adding a ton of new features for release this summer, but they're still selling it for only $99. It should be selling for at least three times that. Being a small company, the guys at the Divergent Media booth really listened to my feature requests when I stopped by.
"I'd like a customizable gamut limit setting"
"We'll add that our list"
"How about visible alarms in the waveform?"
"We can explore that"
"I'd like it to take pictures of the monkeys flying out of my butt."
"Security!"
Check out Scopebox at divergentmedia.com
When marketing attacks.
Olympus has taken an — um — unusual approach to demonstrating their high-speed camera. I was on the exhibit floor and heard what sounded like a waterfall of little balls falling on a hard surface. Everyone in that corner of the convention floor was looking in the same direction. I walked over to see what they were seeing.
Picture in your mind a four-foot round booth made of glass—a shower stall essentially. Inside the booth are two attractive women dressed business-casual. This being Vegas, I'll go out on a limb and guess they don't work for the Olympus R&D department. Inexplicably, the two women are being showered with thousands of tiny multi-colored hard objects coming out of a hole in the top of the booth, while a high speed Olympus camera films them. Apparently, being beneath this cascade of colors is the height of party fun because the two women are dancing and smiling and having what seems to be a fantastic time. This is clearly the new foam dance. Two screens on either side of the booth display the super slo-mo footage of these women as they covert under the pouring of beads. The things are bouncing off their faces, going down their shirts and hair is everywhere as swing their heads side to side. Eventually, the flow of beads slows to a stop.
The two women get out of the booth and start handing out packets of the same balls they'd been being pelted with. "Jelly Belly?" "Don't forget your jelly bellies." That's right. They were partying in the Jelly Belly jelly bean Chamber of Humiliation. As they were handing out the jelly beans, you could tell the Olympus employees were embarrassed at the spectacle, the two women were forcing the smiles on their faces and there was some poor schmuck in the booth sweeping up all the jelly beans to reload for the next show. It was sad and funny and bizarre. I don't know what WTF means, but WTF?
Imagine the meeting of the Olympus marketing department two weeks before NAB. "I love it! Shower stall. Booth babes. Jelly Bellies. We're gonna sell a million of these — what did you call them, Stan?… cameras, got it. Amirite? Body shots!"
What else? Oh. Apple introduced a new version of Final Cut called Final Cut Pro X. You can read about it here Final Cut Pro X Announcement and see it here
Final Cut Pro X Sneak Peek .
Lots of people will be talking about this ad naseum on the interwebs so I don't have anything to add here, except to say that what they showed was for the most part really cool. What they didn't show or talk about is what everyone will be talking about over the next few weeks. Last night's unveiling was clearly labeled a sneak peek and the software is still being worked on. But they only have two months before release, so we'll see.
That's all for now, kiddie-winkles. Back tomorrow.