“Apple rocked NAB with major announcements and cheering crowds in a packed 2,000-plus press conference where they announced strategic alliances with Panasonic, Thomson Grass Valley and BBC Technology and new products including Final Cut Pro HD, Motion, Xsan, DVD Studio Pro 3 and Shake 3.5 as well as more powerful new PowerBook G4s,” Post Magazine reports.
“‘We really want to nail HD to the wall,’ said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of applications marketing to the enthusiastic crowd. Apple’s latest upgrade to their popular editing application now includes native support for uncompressed DVCPRO HD and allows previewing of SD and HD footage directly on an Apple Cinema Display,” Post Magazine reports.
“Apple hopes that the incorporation of Panasonic’s VariCam native DV-HD codec into Final Cut Pro HD will revolutionize the HD production pipeline. ‘The VariCam has taken the industry by storm,’ said Stuart English, vice president of marketing for Panasonic Broadcast USA. ‘Outside of Hollywood the VariCam has virtually taken over Super 16 production,’ he continued. English proudly held up to the crowd the world’s smallest HD FireWire capable recorder the AJ-HD1200A DVCPRO HD VTR. The crowd cheered when English revealed the price point of $25,000 for the compact deck,’ Post Magazine reports.
“Strategic partner Thomson is integrating Final Cut Pro HD software into their popular Grass Valley Digital news production pipeline by incorporation of their Grass Valley Broadcast Plug-In and Grass Valley Professional Plug-In software modules and connectivity to their Grass Valley Open SAN system. The Apple and Thompson team up is targeting the fast paced world of TV news production a potential 400 million dollar market,” Post Magazine reports. “BBC Technology is integrating Final Cut Pro HD into their Colledia production system with the ultimate goal of becoming a fully tapeless facility in the future, said Paul Cheesbrough head of Technology for production, BBC. Cheesbrough cited Final Cut Pro HD’s support of open standards such as XML and AAF as crucial to this decision. This workflow, he said, will enable greater creativity, the efficient sharing of content across multiple platforms and reduce costs.”
Full article here.