NAB is about a month out, and the usual pre-show speculation is ramping up across every editing and camera forum I follow. Rather than guessing at specific announcements, I want to write down what I'm actually hoping shows up, because it's mostly boring workflow fixes rather than flashy new features, and that's a deliberate distinction.
Interoperability, not more features
Every major editing app keeps adding features I genuinely don't need while the actual friction in my workflow, moving a project between DaVinci Resolve and Premiere without losing metadata or color decisions, hasn't meaningfully improved in years. A real, reliable interchange format that survives a round trip between the major apps would matter more to my actual daily work than another AI-powered feature I'll use twice and forget.
AI features I'd actually use versus ones I'd ignore
Smarter, more reliable auto-transcription and searchable footage logging, finding a specific moment across hours of raw footage by describing it in plain language, is the AI feature I'd genuinely use constantly if it got more reliable. Generative fill and object removal inside an editing timeline, which gets a lot of keynote attention, matters much less to my actual day-to-day work than the boring search and organization problem that eats real hours on every single project.
- Reliable cross-app interchange: more valuable than most new features combined
- Better footage search and logging: the AI feature with real daily impact
- Flashy generative editing demos: usually less useful than the keynote implies
Realistic expectations
NAB keynotes reliably oversell what actually ships reliably a few months later, and I've learned to mentally discount announcement-day claims by a fair margin until independent testing confirms they hold up outside a controlled demo. I'll write up whatever actually gets announced once the dust settles, with the same skepticism I try to apply to every trade show announcement regardless of how impressive the stage demo looks.