NAB, the “broadcasting” industry show, remains the event of the year for visual gear lust fantasies. We kicked off this week with new gear from Edirol, but that was just the beginning. Contributor Anton Marini (”vade”) weeds through the rest of the announcements for us, and finds some very tasty-looking equipment if you’re interested in getting HD video into your computer in real-time, or recording HD-resolution computer performances. The combination of this hardware with our faster-than-ever computers means that HD VJing and visualism is now more accessible than ever. -Ed.

NAB ‘09 is winding down, and there have been a slew of announcements of new products and upgrades that run the gamut of super high-end real-time 4K playback systems to.. well, not so high-end. I’ve tried to pick through the details and find the announcements that may help change the game for visualists in 2009/2010, for both high-end professional VJs and hobbyists alike.

The key word this year is HDMI.

AJA Ki-Pro

The Aja Ki-Pro is a field recorder. That’s a fancy way of saying it’s a stand-alone device that records audio and video to a hard drive. While Ki Pro is aimed more at higher-end production and post-production markets, it does allow visualists with the budget to do one thing we’ve all been wanting: Record your performances in HD, without compromise.

Edirol has announced a new field converter and updates to their field recorder line. The idea: manage SD and HD content on the road, live, recording and converting to whatever you need. I can imagine this could provide some serious power for the pro, gigging visualist.

The new VC-50HD provides bi-directional conversion between SD/HD-SDI to and from DV and HDV and MPEG-2. That means you can capture video easily in HD or HDV, backup videos, archive live performances, record to Blu-ray – whatever.

The F-1 field recorder, now updated to version 2.0, is even tastier. It does for video recording what Edirol’s well-liked mobile audio recorders to for sound. You can now capture video at selected periods, automatically deleting old files as you hit capacity, record loops, mark time, and record directly onto removable hard drives in HDV or DV. FireWire and such are onboard, plus two channels of balanced audio. I can see just racking this sucker up in a live concert situation and rocking out. You can even remote control it via LAN, review clips on the unit, adjust RGB directly … replace “field” with “touring” and I think you’ll see what I mean, especially with the added recording features. There’s even a solid state option.

The units aren’t cheap, of course, but if you can’t budget for them now, you can file them away as gear-to-ask-for-money-to-buy on the right gig.

I’m a little incredulous that I haven’t posted about La Blogotheque before. The French crew have been putting out their intimate live music podcasts or “Take Away Shows” since 2006. Their philosophy is obviously something I’m super keen on:

Every week, we invite an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an elevator, and we film the whole session. Of course, what makes the beauty of it is all the little incidents, hesitations, and crazy stuff happening unexpectingly. Besides, we do not edit the videos so they look perfectly flawless, instead we keep the raw sound of the surroundings. Our goal is to try and capture instants, film the music just like it happens, without preparation, without tricks. Spontaneity is the keyword.

They’re about to film their 100th episode, and in 3 years they’ve worked with some absolutely fantastic artists, putting out work with real humanity and emotion.

The latest? Oh, just Tom Jones.

Tom Jones - Green Green Grass of Home - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Each show has lovely explanatory notes, beautiful embedded HD video from Vimeo, and they also allow high quality download of all their videos. Great for projection at parties, or a quiet night in with some great music.

Speaking of extra heads, I recently completed a music video - Fail With Me - with collaborator Edward Guglielmino, for the album Late At Night.

Edward Guglielmino - Fail With Me from Jaymis on Vimeo.

A continuation of the Quick, Single-Shot philosophy I espoused and we discussed 6 months ago.

I think this integration is where the future of the music industry lies. Previously the model was to save up money and art, to take it somewhere secret for a long time, then eventually release a monolithic product - an album or a live show - and hope people identify with that. I feel the future of music and video is smaller, incremental works. Gathering fans steadily, through free, easily accessible releases in whatever media and networks are available, rather than holding out for the giant fanfare of an album or tour, which has a single shot at success.

Which is why I shot the Bridge Sessions with Edward Guglielmino. We spent a couple of hours - considerably less time than I wasted last year discussing CD packaging options or album revenue shares, and created something which lets people identify what we’re doing, to become fans, and to join our journey as artists. Because it’s a piece of art, some people will love it, some will think it’s boring, or terrible. If it was an album we’d spent a year making, those latter reactions would be a tragedy, but we only spent a couple of hours, which means we have another chance to turn those people into fans next week.

Since then we have released another 5 videos. 4 of which were documenting live performance, and this one a “studio” piece, for the studio album.

CDMotion’s contributors haven’t come up with a wish list this year. Maybe that’s because we’re most wishing for time to work on all the projects we’ve got planned! (No material goods needed – unless it’s a Time Freezing Machine or Brain Accelerator!)

But there are a couple of really fantastic visual gift guides out there.

MAKE: Blog: Video makers gift guide

KipKay writes up this great guide, packed with gift ideas and DIY projects from the pages of MAKE, like hacking a single-use camera and sending it up on a model rocket. Never use boring footage in your live visual sets again!

TUAW: Gift guide for amateur video producers

Sure, it has “amateur” in the title. But replace “visualist,” and you have some fantastic ideas for gathering footage. (Hint: if you’re not on the Mac, the one Mac-only item here, Final Cut Express, can be neatly replaced on Windows with a version of the wonderful Sony Vegas, which I loved enough to basically give up on my Mac as my main editing machine and move to a PC. Really.)

And yeah, I totally want a MinoHD. With a USB jack and serviceable HD footage, this is exactly what you want for capturing some last-minute footage. I love that you can even add a custom image on the thing.

Oh, wait. I said I wanted time and nothing material. I probably lied.

On a sad (and non-digital) note, the wonderful Super 8 / Super 16 magazine smallformat reaches the end of its run. That means a very excellent idea is this Berlin-based magazine.

smallformat

Got other items on your wish list? (Hey, my birthday is January 13, so I think of that a bit as an additional holiday… maybe there are other Capricorns out there.)

On the music site, see also our last-minute gift guide round-up, holiday season discounts (thank you, global recession?), and of course the new print-on-demand / free PDF CDM Winter ‘08 Guide!