Edit systems control the final output of the production chain, and this year there were plenty of advances in NLE technology from companies who exhibited at NAB.

Adobe Software Systems announced native support for the Sony XDCAM EX camera format in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 editing software. This augments its previously announced support of the Panasonic P2 format. They were also excited to announce that Adobe Flash Media Encoder 2.5 software now allows users to capture and stream live content in H.264 with Adobe Flash Media Server and Adobe Flash Player.

Autodesk presented what they referred to as the “2009 releases” of their Inferno, Flame and Flint visual effects software systems with new creative tools such as high quality blur and glow, enhancements to the 3D tracking toolset and expanded format support including Panasonic’s P2 and common professional QuickTime codecs. Their new Smoke NLE software has been given significant effects enhancements, including a new tree-based compositing workflow called Batch FX which is designed to provide increased visual effects capabilities by marrying the Smoke system’s editorial timeline with the powerful 3D compositing environment.

Although not an editing system, CineForm brought out a major enhancement to other NLE’s with its new Prospect 4K and Neo 4K. Both quadruple the image resolution for an online compressed digital intermediate (DI) workflow pioneered by CineForm up to 4K (4096 x 4096) pixels. These new products enable digital cinema resolution editing on a desktop NLE without resorting to proxies.

The latest version, 4.6, of the EDIUS Broadcast software from Thomson Grass Valley includes powerful new functionality based on the JPEG 2000 codec used in the Thomson Infinity Digital Media Camcorder, allowing multi-layer editing of EFP-quality high definition content, even on a laptop computer. The workflow for Sony’s XDCAM has also been enhanced to support their new EX range of camcorders, and EDIUS was the first software-based NLE to be able to edit the new AVC-Intra natively.

EditShare unveiled their new product line, Complete Collaboration, which includes Flow, Storage Series, and Ark. EditShare Flow is a collaborative file-based workflow for editing workgroups, which allows for source material to be ingested quickly producing files that Avid or Final Cut editors can easily access. Store Series works for post, broadcast and DI workflows, allowing for media sharing and storage for multi-user editing environments. Finally, Ark Disk Storage fully integrates back up, mirroring and archiving solutions with EditShare’s other features, giving users a convenient place to backup and archive material from the main EditShare server.

Matrox brought out a nifty morsel of hardware called Matrox MXO2, a backpack-sized I/O box for Apple’s Final Cut Studio and Adobe Production Premium on Macs. Capable of running for hours on a field battery, the compact Matrox MXO2 provides broadcast-quality input/output, monitoring and up/down/cross conversion with native support for XDCAM, XDCAM EX and P2 media.

Maximum Throughput introduced a pretty clever idea. MAXedit Web Edition is a hosted, subscription-based online editing service that video professionals can access on demand from any location via the Web. Your video can stay on the server at Maximum Throughput while you access their editing software application from anywhere with Internet connectivity.

Quantel has given Final Cut Pro editors an easy interface for their massive processing systems by giving them the ability to input FCP EDL’s. Quantel’s main message this year, however, was stereoscopic 3-D postproduction. Not only did they give all their systems 3-D capabilities up to 1080P and beyond with a new Quattro software release along with the ability to edit high definition AVC-Intra natively, they even figured out a way to ingest HD from a Sony SRW-5800 deck at twice real time.

A demonstration of a complete re-write of Sony Vegas editing software into a new 64-bit version by Sony Creative Software puts this innovative NLE offering ahead of the curve when dealing with the increased processing needs of new video formats. Version 8.0 of Vegas, released before the show, was not yet in 64-bit, but it did include features for editing material shot in multi-camera environments, support for tapeless workflows, a new ProType titler and enhanced scripting capabilities. When the upcoming 64-bit version of Vegas is released, this will be just one more example of a worthy editing system being able to garner more of the spotlight it deserves when some of the more noisy players have left the exhibition floor.

Let’s hope all of them, and all of you, come back next year.