NAB 2019 – Trends, Transformations and Jargon

Ever since it pivoted from being a mere association for broadcasters and journalists, the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters convention) is all about the verbiage, trends and hot topics.

Here are

Keywords, jargon and acronyms and trending topics from NAB 2019

“ML” (Machine Learning_ is everywhere. Some argue that “AI” is a hype word and ML is no longer a promise or projection but is here, is everywhere, and dropped like a megaton bomb. Also heard on that same panel – “narrow” vs “broad” AI where narrow is to solve specific problems, usually in pipelines, taking data and solving for more robust, expedient and optimized solutions that take the human drudgery out of the equation.

Overheard at a panel featuring members of AWS and PBS – the biggest challenge for ML and computer vision will not be tagging everything but how to filter out the noise generated by those tags and then assign them with the correct taxonomy.

Also AWS – Amazon’s Cloud services are everywhere – powering seemingly everything that hasn’t been somehow snatched up by Google or Akamai.

“5G” was the buzzword darling of the year, with all the old faithfuls PUMPED about the promise of 10x t he fricken data rate EVERYWHERE. However those most invested tempered the mania with the caveat that the rest of the Network would have to catchup to the firehose, and that the upfront investment will need to be substantial to get rolling, and so we aren’t talking next year. Meanwhile there are alternative technologies that will challenge this approach.

SVT-AV1 is the new open source video streaming/encoding codec being developed by Intel to show off their Xeon processors, and Netflix is leaning in hard to test it. According to the keynote given by Intel, this new format is as good looking as x.264 at half the data rate.

eSports were the featured topic this year, with their own pavilion in the fairweather North Hall (where the VR and indie game pavilions have been in previous years). They also commanded an entire track of panels and talks and several keynotes and panels in the main theatre. This is where I posited that the future may see the “Twitch” effect – of realtime user-donation/crowdfunded feeds transitioning away from platform specificity to a ubiquitous mechanic added to almost any feed. This of course, would have profound ethical and economic implications. I called it the “esportsifying of media,” though for the time being the eSports crowds seems more fixated on the cult of brands and personality.

My friend Peter also showed me the new DJI Osmo Pocket 3-Axis Gimbal Stabilized Handheld Camera – best known for their drone/camera configurations – the form factor of a square Cuban Cigar, it shoots 4k video, has a robotic swivel mount for its diminutive camera that features fast glass, and has an internal gimbal/stabilizer. The results are very impressive, handling low and highlights with aplomb and the gyro is amazing.

There was almost zero VR at the show this year but it also appears that NAB thinks 360 video is VR, so that isn’t saying much. That said, the introduction to 360 video production session by Michael Wohl was excellent. I did get to test out the new HP Reverb a “Windows Mixed Reality” tethered headset with better visual specs. Images looked nice, though I wish we would see greater strides in new product releases than these incremental 1.5 updates. I’m looking at you, Oculus Rift S. Unfortunately the Reverb doesn’t have IPD adjustment, but its light and breezy, and also MSRP is $599 – eep.

Mistika VR has also iterated nicely and is now the de facto post production tool now that Kolor’s Autopano Giga is defunct and no longer being updated. R.I.P. and thanks for the transitional solutions you did afford us. To this effect – GoPro was also notably absent, meanwhile Insta360 had its largest booth to date.

Augmented Reality was peppered throughout the show, however, mostly in the form of realtime set replacement for news broadcast, and also for computer vision – autonomous vehicle HUDs and retail shopping. Volume Capture took a little more ground in the conversation while Lightfield was not seen anywhere, a huge drop after being the main attraction in 2017 when Lytro showcased its refigerator-sized capture camera.

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