By TJ Ryan
Last day at NAB and 2012 holds many meanings. My hotel room number ended with a 12, I had 12 hours of sleep since S
unday, 12 is my starting hand for just about every game of blackjack that I played, my daughter is 12 and I have 12 minutes to write this before my flight leaves. Guess I should have been playing roulette.
Today I looked at scheduling software and asset management software. Xytech, Studio Suite, and ScheduAll are the ones I like the best. For large scale facilities,
Xytech and ScheduAll are the ones to look at. If you are a small post company then I would recommend Studio Suite.
Altermedia's Studio Suite is a Filemaker Pro-based software the can run on a Mac. A five-seat version starts at under 5k about half the price of the competition.
What started as a rain drop is now an ocean of options. I am talking about Asset Management Software and Media Server solutions. The number of options for these are just too long to list but the important thing is more options means lower prices. It is the same thing that is happening with everything in the industry.
A few years back we had the actors strike, then writers strike, then the producers strike. That led to more reality TV and content that could be produced for less. Post solutions took the biggest hit because once they realized they could get something finished for $50k they will never pay the $200k again. Then the recession hit and manufactures had to drop prices.
DaVinci became a $1k software solution and the rest are following.
This NAB, Quantel introduced Pablo as a software solution as well. Red is making a 4k projector for $10k. What cost $2 million five years ago now costs $200K.
If you are a small company growing your artist this is great news. If you a large company carrying loans on millions worth of equipment it is a scary time. I fit into the small company profile so I leave NAB with a big smile on my face. Thanks for reading my blog. To check out what's going on in my world you can go to www.chophousepost.com. And if you need some advice on how to build your next space look for us at
www.digitalfactoryinc.com.