Vegas Just Fading Away?
 

In the past several years, there was a lot of activity about Vegas during CES. I heard and saw nothing this year. Admittedly, I had to leave CES on Tuesday, but I saw nothing on a Vegas get together...VASST, Vegas Editors...nothing. I missed seeing Edward Troxel, Spot and others and I regret that. The enthusiasm I once enjoyed seems to be fading away...perhaps..

Guy, I think you are not remembering correctly.
I don't believe Edward has ever been to a CES (Edward?)
We've never, ever held any kind of Vegas presence at CES, other than occupying a very small kiosk in the MONSTER Sony room; for 3 years VASST has staffed this, or worked with Sony on it.
I did teach classes on editing and sound at CES two years back, and last year taught one small, private Vegas class that had 3 people. This year we had editing classes, but no audio classes. VASST again was a big part of the CES training conference just as we have been in years past.

NAB tho...Very different story. Vegas users party with over 600 in attendance, DVInfo.net is a sponsor. VASST had the NAB Bookstore and small booth presences there, we had 4 guys in the NAB booth, similar in previous years, Vegas classes...

NAB is where Vegas shines. CES is for Vegas Movie Studio, and it was mentioned in the Sony Keynote address this year, same as last year. Vegas Movie Studio occupied two sides of it's own kiosk in the Sony booth this year, biggest CES presence it has ever had. Cinescore and the new photo app were also highly featured.

Been to NAB the last couple of years but never been to CES.

Kinda what I thought. I'd be sad to be at CES having you there, and us not connecting at least for a few minutes or a cup of coffee.

NAB is going to be a blast this year, particularly if it's anything like CES. Lotsa good stuff happening this year in particular.

At CES there were some real advances in flat panels - 120 Hz processing is especially cool for us 24 fps movie fans. But for consumer camcorders, I was not impressed.

Remember the Panasonic GS400? It had 3ccds, a ring for focus and zoom, plus zebras. They replaced it with the GS500 and lost the zoom ring and zebras. Now the HD cameras lack direct access to most all of the pro features. Looking around the show floor there didn't seem to exist any GS400 equivalent.

As I see it, you jump from the top consumer camcorders at about $1k to the bottom prosumer SD cameras at, well, lots more.

I was hoping to find a gap filler. With the move toward HD, I doubt I'll find a gap filler at NAB either.

The bottom line is that we're shooting for the web. I'm realizing that I'd rather have a good low-noise 16x9, 24p SD camera than an HD camera with higher noise, higher cost, and higher storage/processing costs.

Looks like I'll be saving my camera money for another year...

Ah, yes. I was thinking NAB. Ugh, must be getting older or something...