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[Monday at NAB]
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Thomson Touts Media ‘Eco-System’
Product Lines Emphasize Distribution Across Multiple Platforms
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by Tom Butts,
~ April 14, 2008
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TV TECHNOLOGY
At the NAB Show this year, Thomson Grass Valley is focusing its efforts on giving broadcasters the capabilities to look beyond the DTV transition to a landscape that includes multiple content distribution schemes.
“We’ll be showing a number of solutions to help broadcasters and media companies look at how they’re going to produce and distribute their content beyond the traditional means,” said Jeff Rosica, senior vice president of Thomson’s Broadcast and Professional Solutions Division.
The idea of taking broadcast content out of the home to follow consumers wherever they are should be a priority for NAB attendees interested in growing their business, Rosica believes.
“When you can get to people on the go, in the office or while traveling, that is growth,” he said. “No matter how anyone wants to pontificate about it, that’s going to be growth of consumption of content and it’s going to mean business opportunities for people who pursue it.”
This concept of a media “eco-system,” as the company explains it, shows up in the range of product introductions and enhancements that will be shown at the Thomson booth at the show. For example, the company’s Ignite SD and HD integrated production system now sports new operational efficiencies, including a new “IQ” software that adds more automation capabilities to accelerate the process of entering production data and managing resources.
Several new digital audio options also are being introduced as well as facial tracking technology for the Ignite System’s complementary robotic camera systems. A new version, Ignite Lite, allows existing users of Thomson Grass Valley Kayak switchers to take advantage of Ignite’s automated production capabilities. A new Aurora Craft editing system also is being demonstrated at the Thomson booth.
Tailored towards shared storage environments and collaborative workflows familiar to Edius users, Aurora Craft allows large news departments and media production companies to expand their editing and content creation capabilities incrementally or all at once, while continuing to work on the same platform.
It offers tapeless workgroups quality of service and bandwidth protection against bottlenecks while giving each user unfettered deterministic access to materials. It is available exclusively in tandem with the Thomson Grass Valley K2 media server system. Aurora Craft will be available by this summer.
IT-CENTRIC ARCHITECTURE
ContentShare, Thomson’s workflow management system introduced at NAB2007, has been upgraded to include a new IT-centric architecture using industry-standard computer technology to support a wide range of administrative and trafficking activities including the handling of individual programs, an entire day’s worth of scheduling for multiplatform repurposed content and the management of technical resources.
It tracks the entire content lifecycle from ingest to play-out and instructs traditional broadcast and IT-centric systems on when and how to process and distribute such clips. It can also add digital watermarks as well as encryption techniques. ContentShare2 is available now.
Also new at the show is Version 4.6 of Edius Broadcast, which has enhanced its support for all leading tapeless acquisition formats. In addition to new functionality based on the JPEG 2000 compression format used in the Thomson Grass Valley Infinity platform, the workflow for Sony’s XDCAM has also been upgraded to add support for XDCAM EX solid-state camcorders. Edius Broadcast is also the first NLE to offer Sony’s Simple Access Mode (SAM), whereby low-resolution video can be used in conjunction with high-resolution audio. The new release also adds integration with the Thomson Grass Valley K2 media server platform, via MXF, to provide a seamless workflow across networked editing and production workstations.
For the professional videography and prosumer market, Thomson Grass Valley is introducing the ADVC-HD50, which allows users with HDMI-enabled camcorders to convert HDMI HD video and audio to the HDV format and outputs the signal via FireWire for use in any HDV-compatible nonlinear editor. It’s available in April for both PC and the Mac for $999.
BEHIND THE LENS
The Thomson Grass Valley LDK 8000 SportCam, launched at IBC2007, will mark its U.S. debut at the show. The multiformat HD camera provides 2x slow-motion capability in addition to operating as a standard HD camera. It’s aimed at the sports event coverage market. The LDK 8000 line itself offers new features, including software that enhances the color correction capabilities of the camera, and a new flat-panel viewfinder.
The company also is showing the LDK 4000 mk II single-format high-definition camera, which provides native images in either 1080i or 720p. It features 14-bit A/D processing and uses three 9.2-million pixel HD-DPM+ CCDs. The company is also expected to announce new Infinity customer wins, on top of the recently announced deployment of 18 Infinity camcorders to Las Vegas NBC affiliate KVBC for its high-definition news production. Expect an announcement that the company will enhance the capacity of the Infinity line, according to Thomson executives. With the Infinity camcorder now shipping, Rosica expressed satisfaction with early customer feedback.
“People are amazed at the picture performance that they’re getting for a $20K camcorder,” he said. “From a picture quality perspective, we really are competing with cameras at twice its price point.”
Thomson Grass Valley officials will also be touting several recent customer successes, including the installation of a complete HD production system at the new Newseum located just across from the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Spotlighting the history of newsgathering, the Newseum boasts two production studios, two control rooms, five edit suites and a multiformat HD news production infrastructure that includes Thomson Grass Valley Kalypso switchers, LDK 6000 WorldCam HD cameras, a K2 media system and a variety of Thomson Grass Valley routing and control systems.
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