We saw hints of it last year, when Apple and Avid pulled out of NAB, but now comes news MacWorld San Francisco looks to be dying a rapid death, and one can assume that many other big tech-industry trade shows aren’t far behind. So far, we know that Adobe and Belkin have pulled out of MWSF. They’re traditionally two of the biggest exhibitors. MWSF continues to extend their early registration times as well.

Obviously, we’re in a recession and the world is falling apart, but I’m guessing these are the sorts of things folks won’t reverse course on even when the economy gets better. As NAB approaches, it’ll be interesting to see who else pulls out. Fun!

I just found out about a new project from TechSmith (of Camtasia fame) called the Jing Project, which combines a free screencasting (and still-image capture) application with an online hosting service.

The screencasts are recorded directly to flash, and the interface, while not very HIG-y, is pretty simple. Capturing isn’t as smooth as Screenflow, but hey, it’s free. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

Very slick!

If it’s one thing Germans love, it’s data. In that vein, Slashcam has launched an amazing online database of camera specs and reviews. Check it out at http://camcorder-test.slashcam.com, helpfully provided in English for those that don’t sprechen sie deutsch. Here’s hoping they can keep it up to date.

One of the downsides of the way Final Cut Studio handles many modern formats (wrapping from m2t/mxf/mp4 to quicktime) is that the files are difficult to play on Windows, even with Quicktime player. Because Apple hasn’t made things like its HDV component available for windows, you were out of luck.

Calibrated Software comes to the rescue with a set of decode-only codecs for OSX and Windows, which allow you to play back DVCProHD, XDCam (HD/EX), HDV and more. They’re very reasonably priced, and seem like a great solution for folks who need to share content from FCS with PC users, or even with other Mac users lacking the FCS quicktime components.