Las Vegas, NV April 5-April 9

Published to clients: April 14, 2025 ID: TBW2070 Published to readers: April 15, 2025

Published to Email Whispers: July 16, 2025

Publicly Published with video edition: July 16, 2025

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): D. Doreen Galli

Abstract:

The Conference

NAB Show 2025 hosted 55,000 attendees with 26% from 160 countries and 5 of 3% being first timers. This is down from NAB24 when 61,000 attendees and 163 countries.

Data storage, data virtualization, identity and access management, networking, cloud computing, hybrid computing, AI vision and audio, metadata, compression and search were all popular technologies found within the solutions.

Cautions

This year’s NAB Show featured an alarming trend for those with corn allergies. Specifically numerous booths in every hall were popping corn throwing the corn protein into the air. Studies show up to 6% of the population potentially have such an allergy with some segments of the population measuring at 15%. Perhaps the LVCC should consider restricting such items in booths for future events.
Just because a storage solution holds your media and makes it easy to access does not mean it is secure and appropriate for the intellectual property for which it is used. Identity and access management must be a part of the storage solution.
While not unique to the Media industry, most data storage solutions have no method to keep track of all the various copies created of a given file therefore potentially leaving the door open for information leaks or data thefts.
Despite also catering to the growing creator economy, ad servers for social media could not be found at this event.

Conference Vibe

After over 40,000 steps, 20 flights of stairs, 8 Vegas Loop rides, 140 minutes of video content spanning education sessions, main sessions and exhibition highlights, our coverage in NAB Show 2025 closes. NAB Show 2025 hosted 55,000 attendees with 26% from 160 countries and 53% being first timers. This is down from NAB24 when 61,000 attendees gathered from 163 countries. The conference spanned the entire Las Vegas Convention Center sans Central Hall which in under construction leading to a somewhat bifurcated experience. Registration was available at all halls and major resorts on the strip. West Hall featured AI and Machine Learning, AdTech, Monitoring, Asset management, cloud computing, storage, streaming, radio, transmission and start-ups. West Hall featured eateries in the food court as well as in the exhibit hall. West Hall also hosted the recognition for all those support the NABPAC and ensuring freedom of the press remains a right. To get to North Hall one could take the Vegas Loop to Central Hall or take the interior connected bridge that crosses the street. North Hall featured TV and newsroom automation, audio production, cameras, digital signage, lighting and grips. North Hall had the food court outside of traditional Central Hall open despite Central Hall construction. From North Hall to get to South and South Lower Hall one could jot around the construction outside. Admittedly the construction did give a bit of a bifurcated conference feeling. South Hall lower featured production, post-production, acquisition, graphics, editing, creator lab and the post-production world. South Hall food court was also open for those needing food at this location in the event. If one wanted to return to West Hall, there was also a Vegas Loop stop at South Hall that one could take back to the Central Stop or directly to West Hall.

While at NAB Show, we conducted research for three forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.

Sessions

NAB has a full schedule of sessions and educational talks for attendees. Main stage in West Hall always has some of the biggest headliners. This year we were able to capture DJ Delilah’s story that she shared as she won her award. It was interesting that early in her career that her merit of achieving exceptional ratings with the audiences was rewarded with a layoff. Main stage also featured an interview with Stephen A. Smith who recently signed the largest contract for a sports commentator that wasn’t a pro-athlete.

We were also able to briefly capture two training sessions by the ever-engaging Luisa Winters. The first session taught drone pilots how to get the best shots to make amazing content. Wishing to learn more about drones and running a drone business? The answer is in our coverage of the commercial drone event, Conference Whispers: CUAV Expo. The second session by Luisa Winters was her event on additional methods to monetize YouTube. Unfortunately, what we captured seemed to be the same advice commonly found online.

Many vendors also had specialized stages such as this partner talk on the AWS Stage. This session focused on the AI content delivery workflow for a multimodal media stack. Finally, we captured the main stage event featuring the Bluemoon AI use case with Dell and NVIDIA on the topic of AI Advanced workflows. The big advice was to train your models locally.

Storage & Search

One of the largest problems found in media is where to put all the media! Media is not only voluminous, but it is the Intellectual Property that gives media companies value. The first problem is where to store it so those that need to work with it can. Strada agents allow one to share their hard drive with collaborators turning it into a private cloud. Studio Network Solutions, SNS, gave us an overview of the various methods it enables media professionals to share their media storage for collaboration. As a word of caution, just because a product is at a conference and organizations use it does not mean it is secure. Particularly, there was an alarming lack of identity and access control technology protecting many media storage solutions. For more research on this topic see Conference Whispers: Identiverse.

Some of the solutions exhibited adds in AI for additional capabilities. For example, Axle.ai works with your storage BUT adds AI and search capabilities so one can maximize monetization of their content. Likewise, Eon Media also focuses on adding value to raw media assets leveraging various forms of AI to create the metadata to enable such powerful searches. Interestingly, their solution also enables and facilitates the licensing of such content for the full digitization to monetization spectrum. There was an abundance of solutions that applied AI to your data in your storage as well. For example, Magnify immediately searches your live video including sports video adding critical metadata to the field to reduce production costs and increase content usability.

Workflows

The next largest group of technologies involves those that go beyond storage or storage and search into the production workflows. TBW Advisors LLC is excited to share that we were able to capture a demo of Latakoo, popular in end-to-end workflow in broadcasting. Furthermore, we had an exclusive interview with Latakoo’s Founders right before they found out they won Best in Show NAB25! This award recognizes their generative video coding to transcribe live video.

Dell had a large display sharing all their latest and greatest in hardware, software, and solutions including those with some of their biggest partners. Dell has always been known for their ability to understand what is required to scale out – something the crowd really seemed to appreciate at NAB. Simple and easy was the goal with the new capabilities highlighted by Ross. Where the solution leverages their components or an industry standard, just drag and drop into the workflow and you are set. As with

AI and Speech

While many different terms are used to describe the capabilities derived, the base functionality of many solutions involved artificial intelligence analysis of speech. From the video owner’s perspective, they often seek to have the video translated from one language to another. From the business’ perspective this is called localization. YellaUmbrella provides a pay-as-you-go translation capability for all your content. If you want the video to not only have its sound in another language but attempt to make it look like they are speaking it, also known as dubbing, DeepDub supports 130 languages and is one of the solutions you should evaluate. Another AI use case with speech is to provide in-room captioning for live events. This capability is critical for those seeking inclusive events and is available via MediaScribe.

Additional Media Technologies

Additional technologies we found include the critical capability of changing formats – Europe and USA do not use the same formats. Broadcast and streamers do not use the same formats. Cinnafilm is known for high quality media transformations. Cinnafilm’s flagship product, Pixelstrings can even make something 1080p to 4k! If the only transformation you are seeking is clipping it into shorts along with some intelligent search, Opus clips was in the creator’s lab. Another technology from the creator’s lab is the amazing ability to create a 3d augmented reality virtual background by AR Wall. Nominated for product of the year, AR Wall also offered a package with Sony for a huge screen to install for its realization. Keeping on the theme of virtual production, Riverside offers virtual podcast capabilities. Interestingly, all recording is executed locally in order to remove any network delay or contamination in the media. Last but not least, for all those editors and producers using these amazing products, there is KB Covers and Keyboards. Mac or windows or even laptops, editor or producer tools or even analytics, CRM or ERP tools – KB Covers and Keyboards vast array is likely to have a keyboard or cover to assist.

Next Year’s Conference

NAB Show 2026 conference will once again be held in Las Vegas, Nevada April 18-22, 2026.

^*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

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Tag: AI vision and audio