I have mixed feelings about nostalgia columns but I’m still going to write one because as we go to press I’m leaving for my 30th NAB Show. Also NAB is 100 years old; I’m not sure how they did those first 60 years without me.
By the time you read this, we’ll all be back at our desks. If I saw you at the show I might have asked what your first memory of NAB was. Mine is Cintel, a company that made an amazing contraption (nostalgic word). It was called telecine, kind of the mainframe of imaging. It was dazzling and it supercharged my love for technology and engineering. Cintel was founded in the 20s by John Logie Baird, a Scot whose bust stands in the harbor at Helensburg near Glasgow where I have been many times to visit my in-laws. But I digress (that’s a feature of nostalgia columns).
By the time you read this, we’ll all be back at our desks. If I saw you at the show I might have asked what your first memory of NAB was. Mine is Cintel, a company that made an amazing contraption (nostalgic word). It was called telecine, kind of the mainframe of imaging. It was dazzling and it supercharged my love for technology and engineering. Cintel was founded in the 20s by John Logie Baird, a Scot whose bust stands in the harbor at Helensburg near Glasgow where I have been many times to visit my in-laws. But I digress (that’s a feature of nostalgia columns).
The other new-to-me company at NAB my first year was called, for some reason, Avid (I’m sure there’s a reason; feel free to enlighten me). My editor wanted me to see them to find out if they were “for real.” I remember him saying to me at the time, “Spielberg doesn’t want to use it, so I don’t know if they’ll make it.
Since then, the NAB montage in my head is a vivid combination of codecs, startups, groups of pictures (GOP), arguments about compression, late night jam sessions, shootouts, connectors, colleagues (David Leitner), nodal architecture, and people’s kids now grown. And some icons now passed.
But most of all NAB to me is engineering. At my first NAB, HD was still “emerging” even though it was technically 20 years old. People were standing in front of very bright pictures of fruit and flowers arguing about how big pores would ruin news presenters’ careers, and how HD would be the end of depth of field. To a newbie it was all enormous—not just because it sprawled into multiple halls (remember the Venetian years?). It was a non-stop firehose of irresistible information that gave us a lot to do and learn in the remarkable transition to digital. It turned out ok for Avid.
The invention and engineering still continue but more incrementally. At least so far. I still try to attend every year as if it was my first. What will I see next week, these 30 years on?
