NAB Preview: PYXIS 12K, Strada Agents, Gaussian Splats and More

0:00In this episode of the Denoise podcast, we're going to talk about NAB predictions and what we already know. and open AIs move into open weight. Let's get into it.

0:12All right, welcome back to the podcast. Hey, Joey, you going to NAB? I'm going to NAB, getting ready to go tomorrow. We just had a team meeting with all our editors and stuff, so getting ready for the circus of a bunch of video coverage. Yeah, no, it sounds like it's going to be a really exciting year. Lots of new announcements. I'm sorry, I'll miss it. I know. But I'm sure we're going to catch up. Yes, we'll have a debrief after the fact. But Yeah. Bummed that he won't be there. We can't tag team around the show. So yeah, but there have already been a good handful of announcements and interesting products coming out.

0:40So I want to break down and talk about what we already know and what's kind of circulating around the internet. We're recording this Thursday. Yeah. I know Blackmagic is doing their big press live stream or usually the pre-recorded, but their big press announcement of all their new updates tomorrow morning, Friday morning. So by the time this comes out, that will probably have already played. So then if you're like, why don't you talk about all the new stuff that came out? That is why we're talking about this Thursday, but there was a leak today of a new update to the Pixis camera. They're releasing a 12K version.

1:06And I was wondering this, it looks like it is with their RGBW sensor. Oh, wow. Because I was wondering, I'm like, are they going to start putting that sensor into more of their smaller cameras? And it looks like that's very exciting. And as we talked about in the episode, breaking that down, the really cool thing about that is if you shoot different resolutions, it automatically can remap on the sensor and you don't have to deal with the crop issue. Yes, it doesn't do like the typical downsampling, right, where it punches into a section of the sensor. This, if you don't want to shoot 12k, which a lot of cases probably don't.

1:34So even if you're shooting 4k, it's not like you're forced to crop in a lot more, right, you can still get the wider field of view, which means you're still getting like a full frame lens response. And you're getting all of the photosensitivity of that entire sensor, yet, it's lightweight, because you're probably shooting 4k or something. Yeah. So yeah, that's exciting. I am curious. So this was sort of a leak from there because Blackmagic usually does a lot of outdoor signage around the convention center and around the hotel across the way. The downside of that is you have to put it up early and people will take photos of it.

2:04And this was how it was posted on Reddit. And they're putting the signage out. So it's just a picture of it. I am curious if it's going to be the same exact body or if it's going to address a few of the slightly annoying things on the Pixis, like it only has one mini XLR input, doesn't have any internal ND. So I wonder if they're going to bump anything up with the Pixis itself, or it's just a higher resolution version, same exact body. And then there's the URSA Cine 12K. I was just going to say, like, this is the sort of issue a lot of manufacturers have with product lines at different tiers. Like you don't want the tier at the bottom to start nabbing sales of the tier up top, which really makes more money.

2:42so i think they'll keep a really clean line between the pixas and the ursas like you want it you need more input like you need x y and z go get the ursa or if you're good with this get the yeah i'm wondering that what do you think pricing the pixas as it is now is 3 000 yeah we saw what was the ursa 12k they dropped the body only to like 6 000 7 000 i thought 7 000 yeah and i'm guessing this maybe four or forty five hundred i wouldn't be surprised if they offer this uh 3 ,000 and blow the red Komodo out of the water and drop the existing Pixis price down to like 2 ,000 or something. Correct. Yeah.

3:15It's like everybody at the 3 ,000, it's incredible. The world we live in$3 ,000 gets you a solid cinema camera. I mean, yeah, with the bread dropping their price. I mean, I've not seen anything like affordable cinema cameras, high quality like this. Yeah. I mean, do you remember like about a decade ago when we would have to shoot something? The hardest part was getting a camera with enough dynamic range with the correct lens mount and all those things and now those are all or that had video features you know we're talking about the 5d mark ii and it's like well it looks great oh but you can only record like a couple minutes at a time before you have to cut and it has like zero video features and you're sort of like hacking your way through it yeah i mean get something that looks cool we didn't transition to like the mirrorless world of dslrs and now we're in the world of like proper sensors made for cinema which is what the Pyxis and the Ursa sensors are.

4:07Yeah. I am wondering about the price and I feel like it's going to be crazy that I'm going to probably have to ask companies this and bring in economic policy into NAB. But there are a bunch of tariffs that just went to effect in the US. And I'm wondering, is this going to affect pricing for these companies, especially something like someone like Blackmagic, they usually are pretty outspoken about their price and make it a big part of like their marketing campaign. Is that going to change like based on... Where are these things made? Probably not in America. I highly doubt that. I mean, they're also an Australian company.

4:37So it's probably Southeast Asia, like Thailand, Vietnam, I guess. I'm wondering for their sales in the US, is that whatever price they announce, is that going to stay the same? Is that going to change? And I'm kind of wondering that across the board for all the hardware companies with their pricing. I mean, that's a bigger question for the economy. Are the manufacturers that are going to get hit with the tariffs, are they going to absorb the cost, cut back in other ways, like sales and marketing, whatever department? or are they going to just pass that cost to the consumers and look 25 more expensive right or a combination of all of the above yeah yeah so didn't think i'm gonna have to become an economist going to nab but i feel like that's gonna like surprisingly play into the conversation i mean just to kind of play the devil's advocate who is american cinema manufacturing like as far as camera sensors go is as red making their sensors here probably not does anyone make their sensor here i don't know enough exactly manufacturer so i don't think i don't think so and that's the same issue with any kind of silicon right whether it's a cp or gpu like the wafers aren't made in america anymore and camera sensors are wafers so i think there is not a single camera manufacturer that is not going to be hit with tariffs in my opinion yeah where their cost of sales in the u.s are going to be affected yeah one last thing about the fix is i am excited that the way this news leaked feels like I've talked about how the excitement of like NAB pre-pandemic feels like it hasn't bounced back yet.

5:59But this was the kind of stuff that would happen from NAB or online around like pre-pandemic where like someone, some booth would be setting up their signage and someone would like sneak a photo and like post it online. And it'd be like, oh, look, Atomos is launching this new thing. And I feel like we haven't had that, you know, buzz and excitement around some like leaked photo. And so I'm excited to see that just anything is like leaked. And there's some like mystery and excitement before it's officially announced. It's really nice, right? Because it takes you back to when you were excited about new technology and there was leaps and bounds in each generation.

6:32I mean, to go from the old Pixis to a 12K with RGBW sensor and still offer it at whatever price, I'm sure it'll be super competitive. That's a big deal. So very excited about that. All right. Other product announcement, workflow-wise, and they've been talking about this for a couple of weeks. Strata is releasing a new app. They're calling it Strata Agents. And it's basically a piece of software you can load on your computer and it will make any hard drive you have plugged into your computer remotely accessible. And you can access the media files, stream the media files, download the media files without having to put them on a clouding intermediary.

7:07It's directly peer to peer. You can just play it, stream it. That's insane. Yeah. How safe or secure is it? That's like my first question. I mean, with their account access, I will ask him more details about the security. But I believe it's streaming with WebRTC. And it is, yeah, I don't know. I don't think there's any encryption that's happening when you're playing it. But it has the account authorization. But the actual connection, how it opens up. It's through your Shroud account, which has credentials. And then anyone, I mean, currently it's still like an alpha mode. They did send me a preview to download.

7:39I messed with it yesterday. And it worked. I mean, it's wild. It's like accessing a computer somewhere else. and I can just kind of browse. Like it only works with video files. Yeah. But I mean, I'm able to browse it and click and hit play. And it's just like playing back online on the computer remotely. They said they've tested it with a computer in Australia and playback was pretty seamless. When this comes out and if it works the way it's supposed to, and I mean, in my test, it worked. It will solve a lot of the issues that I had when I was getting a NAS and I was trying to like get the team onto it.

8:08And then I realized like, oh, once you go into the media asset manager route, nothing directly works with the server. you have to like upload a proxy to a cloud intermediary. Or if they want to download a file, the file has to go to a cloud service and then goes to the person. Like the Blackmagic Cloud thing. I think you had a video or a live stream. Yeah. How do you compare that solution, which I think is like really well polished and elegant versus something like this? Blackmagic Cloud is definitely more polished, camera to cloud. They definitely want the Apple route. So like if you are using Blackmagic Cameras and you're using Resolve and you're using Blackmagic Cloud, it is a very seamless experience.

8:41And I will find out more about that because our plan is to use that entire workflow for our NAB coverage. I'll see how it works. So you're really going to put it to the test. I'm going to put it to the test because we have tried Frame.io and Camera to Cloud solutions in the past. And usually the issue is, I've been using a variety of different manufacturers. The main issue we hit was like the internet at the convention center sucks and everyone knows this. And if we paid up for like the Teradek with the 5G, we just didn't have the budget for that. This year, I'm going to have like a phone I'm using as a hotspot to try to solve that issue.

9:11We'll see how it goes. So your original question, comparing it to Blackmagic Cloud, it's different because Blackmagic Cloud, you still have to put the media on the cloud storage and then it downloads a local copy to whatever editor has access to that footage. This, you plug it, you stream it. You get access to the actual file. Yeah, you're basically turning your hard drive into a cloud accessible. Cloud drive. Cloud drive. Yeah. Like your own personal cloud without having to actually use a cloud service. And it's not just like. And then there's subscriptions and none of, you know, all of that advantages that come with having your storage.

9:41How would they make money from this? I mean, they have a subscription service right now. I don't know what they're pricing or how they're going to price this in. It's still early. I mean, I think they're previewing it. I think the official rollout that they have planned is in June. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it worked when I tested it. The playback was really smooth. So I'm excited to see how this goes. And it's pretty innovative with what they're doing at Estrada. It is. I've never heard of anything like it. And of course, production is so decentralized now. We cover tax incentives of where everything's going.

10:08this is like hand in hand with all of that yeah if you could just plug in the drive on a main computer and then like you know how your team can access it from your stage in ireland to the team in la yeah i mean i think that next stage would be like when you can start doing stuff with this media like running your like basically like running transcription running ai analysis doing string out edits in the cloud using this media on the hard drive right and then being able to whatever workflow, like download an XML file or download just the media clips that you need to your computer. So a lot of possibilities here and just cool that they're going the route of where you don't have to have a cloud involved because that starts getting pricey.

10:46Like an overarching cloud service. A cloud service where you have to like, you have your files locally, but then you got to copy them or upload them to a cloud service. And then you have duplicates of files. How do you manage all that? And yeah, it gets messy and expensive. Yes. Agreed. All right. Adobe announced a bunch of updates and features yesterday. I saw that. One that was most interesting in Premiere is smart search. Okay. Context search. I thought generative extend was also really interesting. Okay, well, maybe I'm like being picky on that one because they talked about that last year and it's been out in the beta.

11:17So I'm like, that's not new. It's official. It's officially in their official product release. Yeah, but the fact that they've rolled it out on the public release, two millions of Premiere users, that's a big deal. Yes. This is generative AI at scale in the hands of consumers. And something that is like a very practical application of it. Absolutely. Generative extent, if you're not familiar with it, it is basically like a common issue you run into as an editor is like, I want to add a transition or I need to, you know, extend this clip and they cut too soon. There are a couple of tricks you can do as an editor to try to fix that.

11:51But their solution is you just drag the handle out and it uses their Firefly model to generate. Yeah. Look at the video that you have before and then generate the extra frames that you need. I mean, the first question everybody's going to ask is how good is it? I don't know. I've never, I've not tested it. I've seen. Yeah. I'm trying to think if I've seen people test it. I've seen some videos online. I think in some cases it's absolutely usable, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that this is something that I see a lot of editors using day one. I mean, it's a case where you're like, I need a couple extra frames to like hold for this dissolve that I'm trying to do.

12:23And there weren't enough frames for it. That's like probably the most common case. And if it's going to dissolve anyway, you're not going to see final quality and all that. Yeah. I mean, my solution for that has always been like, well, just slow the clip down, which is, you know, buy a couple extra frames. And yeah, that's your solution. So that is cool. The one they announced that is new is basically, I don't know what model they are using, if it's their own model, but it can analyze your footage and you can start searching based on context. You can search your footage, you know, oh, the plate or like, you know, the medium shot of a person.

12:49So that's smarter contextual search of your media inside Premiere. That's video based, not audio based. Video based. That's, you mentioned that that is really important. That's really important. Yeah. And that's something that not a lot have been tackling. 12 Labs is a company we've interviewed a few times and they have a dedicated model to understanding video. Yeah. But I think this is the challenge and this is the benefit where it's like as a user, as an editor, you want these tools like to be in the one app that you use all the time. So it gets really complicated when it's like, well, I have to get out of Premiere.

13:18Yeah. Or even if I think they do have an extension or something where it's like you can bring it in, but they never work as well as like it's built into the app and it just works. Yeah, and that gives Adobe users so much more reason to continue their Creative Cloud subscription or whatever they're paying for. They're like, this tool just keeps getting better and better. A very, another very practical use of AI. I feel like maybe Adobe went a little too hard on generative and that kind of scared a lot of the user base. Yeah. And this is a much more like day-to-day practical, like you need, you have a lot of footage, you need to sort through it or you need to find the shots.

13:48Although I will say Adobe, I haven't looked into it too much. there was a little bit of heat around their end user agreement around. Yeah. In the promo videos, they did specifically say, we don't train on your videos. Right. Yeah. I think they wanted to clarify that because there wasn't like vaguely worded language in the end user agreement that someone noticed. And then that kind of caused a stir. Yeah. I think initially when they rolled out some of the first AI features from Adobe rolled out in Photoshop. And when that got rolled out in the agreement, it was something to the effect of paraphrasing.

14:21Like, hey, we may use your artwork to generate more stuff. Right. And this is like... Maybe it was just vaguely language. Because in the promo video, it said, we only use your video for generative extent to understand what we have to generate, but that we're not training a model. I would also be surprised if they even did that because their whole foundation of Firefly has been like, they're one of the only models where it's like, we have trained on licensed data. We know everything it's trained on. We have permission to train on it. It's commercially usable. I think they back it by like a million dollar guarantee.

14:51or something. So they have been like hardcore have been like, yes, it is a commercially safe model. Like we know what went into it. And their business depends on it. Yeah. And then Frame.io launched an update with transcription. Oh, let me show Frame.io. Yeah. I even saw this announcement. I was in Frame and then this little thing popped up and it's like, would you like to transcribe your video? And I was like, what? That is another useful because it's like keeping everything in the same tool. That has been another round trip process for us of like, we need a transcript to this. So we go take it to another tool.

15:18And then there's even there's no way they never had transcript support even to search. So yeah, it's nice to just see that they're extending that out. What I would love to see in Frame.io though, that they still have not launched in version 4, and it's been a year now, API. There is still no API access in version 4. So I hope that comes like soon. The flip side is it's so strong on a browser. Like there is no other tool I can think of, you know, even like SyncSketch or ShotGrid that is as good as Frame.io, as clean, as easy to use on a browser, on a phone. It just works. It's just a seamless experience.

15:50I mean, Adobe's move to acquire frame IO was so brilliant, you know? And did you hear Joey that they are in talks with Figma right now? Weren't they trying to, and then it fell through? Yeah. So I think there was like a monopoly thing. Yeah. And that just got cleared. So I think they're good to go. I said they are going to move forward. Yeah. Okay. So Figma. Figma was eating their lunch with like. Oh, Canva was eating their lunch with. Canva is the competitor to Adobe Express. Figma is the industry standard tool for any kind of UI design. like graphic design like app app web-based yeah like mobile apps and stuff yeah uh you can very quickly put animations together in figma it's all web-based and stuff yeah very cool tool and so that is moving forward because i remember that was wasn't like a 20 billion dollar deal something like that yeah yeah i feel like shifting more web-based tools too is another kind of future brand like i feel for like for that to work especially with something with premiere is that you can have the same project the same experience and not have this is the web version of Premiere and you can cut here, but then it has absolutely nothing to do with your desktop app.

16:55Yeah. It's like, I would want something where it's like, they mimic each other where it's like, okay, I could have the producer or someone if they need to do some like descript like experience of like, make an assembly cut, but that it sinks and is represented back in the desktop version where the professional editor is going to be doing the finishing version control. Yeah, something where it's not like, is it even like Photoshop Express or Photoshop, Adobe Express. Adobe Express, yeah, where it's like the web version and it sort of has some cloud syncing with Photoshop, but not a lot. Adobe Express is, in my opinion, just like an attempt at Canva, where Canva clearly shines on how sophisticated it is as a browser-based tool.

17:35But Adobe Express is nothing compared to the power you have on Photoshop. So you're absolutely right. I think that bridge needs to be just more sort of intertwined. Yeah. The other thing I think they can do more of too is connecting Adobe and Frame more because comparing it to the Blackmagic experience where now we're working in a Blackmagic cloud project and it integrates directly with Blackmagic storage and Resolve and the media just syncs. Adobe sort of has the Teams, which is like a cloud-based collaborative project, but it just handles the project files. It doesn't do anything with the media.

18:09So they're like, well, then, you know, use a third party solution like LucidLink and put your proxies there. Yeah. But we tried it and it was just not a very seamless experience. And I'm sure they're working on it. And they own a cloud. Right. I mean, they have frame. It's like they have their own cloud service. It's like you could do this. You can put the two together. Yeah. Yeah. The other one was an update from Celtics. So are you familiar with Celtics? No. I would have never known how to pronounce this, by the way. They were one of the first sort of web-based screenwriting programs. Okay. I remember they've been around for a while and they sort of were web-based, kind of trying to compete with like Final Draft and the other screenwriting programs.

18:44They were bought a while ago by Backlight, which is the company that owns Iconic and a couple other media tools. And I'm excited to see updates because I haven't really seen much updates with them, but I'm excited to see those progress there. One thing that they're launching that looks cool is a screenplay plugin for Premiere that will... Tell me more about that. It seems like it is a similar feature to Avid's Script Sync, where Avid has this built-in feature where you can import the script and it'll sort of match it with your shots and kind of help you pick takes and build out your first assembly cut.

19:15Okay. It seems like it is a similar feature to that, but with Celtics and with Premiere. And so you can connect your Celtic script inside Premiere and help find your shots and do your initial rough cut. Yeah. I mean, I've never done feature film editing. I'm sure it's very daunting. I'm sure you have. Not a feature. But like really long, big projects. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the longest editing projects I've done is probably 15 minutes. Right. So imagine editing like a 90 minute thing. You would need tools like this. It helps speed it up. Yeah. Especially if you're doing something episodic, you have a script, you're doing a vertical soap opera.

19:49Yes. By the way, one of our podcast listeners from Philippines messaged me and said that they're doing some vertical dramas over there and I asked him to send me some. So he will. All right. I want to see. I want to check that out. Yeah. So yeah, that was another update. I thought that was cool and worth mentioning because it, yeah, Celtics has been interesting and I'm glad to see that there's still a new product. Very cool. Moving into virtual production. Yeah. What's Moses up to? Moses. So one of their updates is they have a smaller version of their star tracker coming out. That's their camera tracker.

20:18Yeah. I saw a picture of it. It looks like small, much smaller. Like the star tracker is small. Yeah. So smaller than the star tracker. This one smaller i don't know if they're targeting more of the creator space with just having something to maybe not necessarily do in camera visual effects or real-time tracking but something to put on your camera to just track the 3d space accurately to use it later in post if you're running with like a sony fx3 or a7r you just pop it on top it's as small as those cameras yeah and then you can get your camera data and you can use it later something similar to a use case you might use lightcraft 4 uh as your phone i mean it might do real time as well yeah just be smaller also they're probably competing more down market so where htc vibe mars is yeah like uh you know that's a pretty solid camera tracking system for i think a couple grand yeah yeah the whole kit's five grand yeah yeah so i think yeah an emosa system is probably double that like a star tracker yeah so i'm wondering yeah is this gonna be in the 10k range is are they gonna loosen up on the subscription fees, which, yeah, these higher end trackers charge continual fees for.

21:25I'm excited. I mean, any kind of technical advancement, miniaturization, streamlining of technology in the virtual production space benefits everybody. Yeah. I mean, I don't think seeing two new trackers was on my card this time in between this and the Ocellus from Sony. Yes. You know, two new trackers in the market. Yeah. The other thing that they announced, and I feel like this is going to be, I'm trying to think of like, you know, what trends or what other things are we going to see at NAB? And AI has always been a hot topic, but I still don't think we're going to see anything that's like revolutionary.

21:53I think that's not at NAB. It's all on Twitter. The new the AI updates. Well, that's what I was telling you. I think last episode you're like, is runway dropping this in front of NAB? I was like, runway has no idea what NAB is. Those are two different things. I think the big theme here to me feels like refinement. Refinement, workflow integration. Yeah. I see a lot of AI updates, but it's like on the enterprise level of smart dynamic ads or upscaling your broadcast stream or your older broadcast streams like so that they're, you know, from HD to 4K using AI uprezzing. The manufacturers are smart.

22:29They're following the money. The money is no longer in like a classic film and TV shoot per se, because the market has just been weak for the last couple of years. So where is the money? Broadcast, VP outside of film and TV. So corporate. house of worship. And that's why I'm wondering if like having it as a smaller and just like a camera tracker and not necessarily like, oh, you want to build it into a soundstage, right? Real time, LED wall, ICV effects, but you just want highly accurate like camera tracking. If that's the route they're going. Yeah. You look at a consumer oriented company like DJI, right?