At first glance you can be forgiven for thinking not much changes in the Production Control Room. The basic shape of the creative team has remained the same for many years with the same basic creative roles – the team just scales to suit the size and nature of the production. Dig a little deeper and you will find the engineering team working very hard to implement new core technologies and more efficient workflows without disrupting the familiarity of the control interfaces used by the creative team.

Live production systems sit at the intersection of human skill and technological innovation. The muscle memory, skill and experience required to manipulate hardware and software control interfaces with the speed and creative intelligence required to keep pace, without any room for error, should never be underestimated. There has been much pundit speculation about the impact of new automation technologies, especially those leveraging AI, and how they might transform production. There have been some interesting pilot projects but most industry insiders we have spoken with recently agree, change is likely to be oriented around systems which help skilled operators automate more repetitive tasks, or automate aspects of their existing workflow but automated systems are not likely to displace human operators any time soon.

We do also keep seeing the acceleration of new technologies out pace expectation though so perhaps NAB will bring new revelations.

Vendor Focus

Here are some highlights from vendors that we will be visiting at the show. 

Ross Video (Booth SL 206) have a habit of keeping their key announcements under wraps until the last minute so time will tell whether we see any last-minute surprises. Any new product introductions will join a fairly comprehensive array of tools for the production control room already in the Ross portfolio. As you should expect from a mature and evolving portfolio, much of the Ross product innovation over the last year has delivered updates and new features for existing much loved products. Ross have been particularly active with new switcher products including Carbonite Code (their software based NDI switcher + audio mixer), new TouchDrive control surfaces, and enhancements to their family of graphics systems.

Blackmagic Design (Booth SL 216) will premiere the new ATEM 4 M/E Constellation 4K Plus, a large scale Ultra HD switcher with 80 standard converted 12G-SDI inputs and 48 independent 12G-SDI outputs. This new model is twice the size of their current largest 4 M/E model and it also includes 16 ATEM Advanced Chroma Keyers, 4 Ultra HD media players, 4 independent Ultra HD multi-views, 2 SuperSource processors and more.

This joins the recently released ATEM Switchers 9.6.2 update which adds support for VISCA over IP camera control on all ATEM Constellation models. Now customers can control up to 100 PTZ cameras via their network using the IP address of the camera. This update also adds audio output mapping for all Constellation HD models, as well as new multi-view and SuperSource features for HD and 4K models. Plus it provides support for 30 and 60 fps formats in all HD, Ultra HD and 8K standards for ATEM Constellation 8K.

Riedel Communications (Booth N 1821) have promised a day 1 new product release in the PCR arena at NAB. Riedel had a busy 2024 adding new updates to the company’s SimplyLive Production Suite. Their software-driven live production platform runs on COTS hardware that is an all-in-one system for a single location and/or can use low bandwidth proxy-based editing workflows to facilitate remote production and distributed teams by enabling software User Interfaces to be connected via a WAN. It is a modular software solution with a range of application layers including; ingest & asset sharing, live switching of cameras and video sources, cueing and scrubbing, slowmo replays, controlling audio, and adding graphics, all accessible via a single touchscreen interface.

Lawo (Stand 8.B90) continues to drive innovation in software-based media processing and at NAB Lawo will announce four new HOME Apps. The HOME App portfolio already includes 10 Apps which are designed to make broadcast workflows even more flexible and efficient. Running on standard server hardware and in the cloud, these apps enable broadcasters to streamline processing tasks without the need for dedicated hardware.

Other Show Floor Highlights

Neither of them are being very forthcoming about any new product release announcements they may have, but the other two big names in PCR technology will be at the show… if you are a GV or Sony fan you will probably be planning a visit and making a list of which bits of their enormous and often all-encompassing portfolio of relevant technology you want to get up close and personal with.

EVS continue their innovative and prolific expansion & evolution of their increasingly diverse product portfolio, which as ever sits at the heart of so many PCRs. At NAB they will show version 3.0 of XtraMotion® which has evolved into a suite of Gen-AI-assisted replay effects. Beyond super slow-motion through frame interpolation, it now also offers the Deblur effect for creating sharper images during camera movements, and a Cinematic effect for simulated shallow depth of field. Their leading LSM-VIA® replay system introduces a new Zoom feature, allowing operators to zoom into key actions quickly for game analysis with multiple regions of interest or for replay sequences with focus on moving objects and cameras.

The list of vendors bringing improvements to existing platforms or leveraging new technologies to bring entirely new offerings to the NAB Show floor is huge. Plan your itinerary carefully and don’t be shy in challenging vendors to answer your personal questions about your specific needs and challenges.

Other articles in this NAB 2025 'Show Focus' series:

The Broadcast Bridge will be at the NAB Show – in the West Hall on booth W 3932. Please come and see us and share your thoughts on what we do and what you would like to see from us in the coming year.