MTV Australia Awards Winner Edited With Thomson Software

A captivating new video called 'Earth Hour', designed to help the fight against global warming, has been recognised with a 2008 MTV Australia 'Good Karma' Award. The video was produced for the New South Wales government and edited with the latest version of Grass Valley EDIUS editing software from Thomson on a PC workstation.
The 2008 MTV Australia awards were presented live on air on April 26 and streamed live online at: www.mtv.com.au. The 2.5-minute video was nominated for the Good Karma award from among four other entries and was chosen as the clear winner based on votes from the general public and MTV Australia viewers.
The 'Earth Hour' video was shot and edited in standard definition by Anton Strauss, owner of Antons Video Productions, who has produced many videos for the New South Wales government on the EDIUS SP package. The video, which is now available online for viewing at: www.nsw.gov.au has also appeared on the government's own digital television channel that airs in New South Wales on Digital Channel 45.
'Earth Hour' began as a Sydney initiative, but was observed by many Australian cities on March 31, 2007. The goal was to reduce electrical consumption and help the fight against global warming by requesting that businesses and individuals switch off their lights and other unnecessary electrical devices from 7:30pm to 8:30pm on that day.
The idea quickly snowballed and went international, with cities in New Zealand, the US, Canada, Thailand, Denmark, Fiji, the Philippines, Ireland and Israel also participating in their own Earth Hours.
To create the award-winning video, Strauss set up his camera for several hours throughout the day on March 31. At one point, he devised a time-lapse sequence and another scene as the sun set (manually adjusting the camera iris to adjust for the decreasing light) and the city of Sydney went dark. To create the time-lapse in EDIUS - just before the lights of the city were turned off - Strauss took two hours of skyline footage and boats quickly travelling in the harbour and sped up the footage 2500% or 25x real time, then went back to normal speed to show the dark city.
Strauss has been a loyal EDIUS software user for five years (since version 2.0) and has recently begun cutting high-definition projects for his growing list of corporate clients.
EDIUS is a fast effective, multi-format editing platform for all types of HD, SD and MPEG projects with the freedom to mix video standards and formats on a single timeline, all in real-time.
The latest version (4.6) of the EDIUS software includes powerful new functionality based on the JPEG 2000 codec used in the Thomson Grass Valley Infinity Digital Media Camcorder (DMC) allowing multi-layer editing of EFP-quality high definition content, even on a laptop computer.
(KMcA/JM)