Last year Blackmagic Design brought in its showstopper: DaVinci Resolve on the Mac for $1,000. No one expects that type of repeat performance at this year's NAB Show, but as the early tips come trickling in, this year is still shaping up to be pretty awesome.

Editing and Effects Software
The big software releases of 2010 included DaVinci Resolve, Autodesk Smoke for Mac OS X, Avid Media Composer 5, Avid Pro Tools 9, Avid DS 10.5, Grass Valley EDIUS 6 and Adobe CS5. This year Avid is first out of the gate, with a March release of Media Composer 5.5, plus the corresponding Symphony and NewsCutter versions. AJA Video’s popular Io Express joins the Matrox MXO2 Mini as a qualified third-party hardware solution. Unlike the MXO2 Mini, Io Express will support direct Avid ingest and deck control. The EuCon protocol has been added so that Mac-based Media Composers can take advantage of three of the Avid Artist (formerly Euphonix) panels: Artist Transport, Artist Mix and Artist Control. A powerful new tool in Media Composer v5.5 is PhraseFind, an optional dialogue search module powered by Nexidia. It’s similar to AV3 Software’s get, except that PhraseFind operates from inside the Media Composer interface.

Along with new user features, Avid Media Composer 5.5 adds native AMA support for Sony’s HDCAM SR Lite codec. You can directly access the media and metadata when it’s delivered as files rather than tape. Nitris DX owners will also be able to add a new AVC-Intra hardware module for real-time, multi-stream playback of all AVC-Intra codecs. Finally, it’s noteworthy that this will be the last Media Composer version to support Adrenaline hardware and 32-bit operating systems. read more...