Avid and Sony collaborate on XDCAM support

Avid and Sony have announced a collaborative development relationship designed to provide comprehensive interoperability between Sony’s XDCAM Professional Disc camcorders and decks and Avid’s award-winning digital nonlinear editing and shared-storage solutions.
This alliance will provide support for XDCAM’s low-bandwidth MPEG-4 proxy A/V format in upcoming versions of the Avid Media Composer Adrenaline, NewsCutter Adrenaline FX, and NewsCutter XP editing systems – as well as the Avid Unity family of shared-storage solutions.
The capability is expected to be available in late 2004 and users of those systems will be able to import proxy A/V data at the maximum speeds afforded by IT-based protocols such as gigabit Ethernet and FireWire, edit the data in its native resolution, and subsequently re-link their compositions to the corresponding high-resolution media from the XDCAM system.
“Many of our broadcast customers are eager to move toward file-based production workflows that deliver virtually instant, random access to digital footage,” said David Krall, president and chief executive officer of Avid. “The Sony XDCAM system provides this capability and offers the additional benefit of proxy editing of low-bandwidth media. By incorporating this proxy A/V compatibility into our industry-leading editing and shared-storage solutions, we will be helping customers achieve a faster, more efficient newsroom workflow than is possible with traditional, tape-based capture formats.”
Shinji Hanatani, president of B&P, Professional Solutions Network Company, Sony Corporation, added: “Through close cooperation with leading providers like Avid, we are accelerating the development of tapeless, fully networked newsrooms that take advantage of our most advanced optical-disc technology and Avid’s legendary editing and shared-storage solutions."
Avid and Sony are demonstrating this capability in their respective booths at NAB.
Avid, www.avid.com.
Sony www.sony.com/professional
(SP)