Canopus EDIUS Pro 3 Transforms Workflow for KRON 4 News

Canopus Corporation’s EDIUS Pro 3 professional realtime video editing software has transformed the workflow at KRON 4 in San Francisco, allowing the station to bring breaking news to air within minutes. KRON 4 is an independent station with one of the largest news departments on the West Coast, producing over eight hours of broadcast news each weekday.

The Canopus EDIUS Pro 3 editing system helps KRON 4 produce this considerable amount of content quickly by interfacing directly to BitCentral's Precis End-to-End Play-to-Air system to create an entirely tapeless ingest, edit and playback solution. BitCentral's Precis system, with EDIUS Pro 3, gives broadcast outlets the ability to immediately upgrade to a file based, ingest to air, news workflow by providing a station's news team with the best tools possible to quickly deliver high quality news to its market.

For shooting the news, KRON 4 is using Panasonic AJ-SPX800 DVCPRO P2 and Sony HVRZ1U camcorders. These camcorders combined with EDIUS Pro 3 provide KRON 4 staff with unparalleled productivity gains. With the Sony camcorder, EDIUS Pro 3 and a laptop, KRON 4 staff has the flexibility to edit in the field and get content to air promptly. EDIUS Pro 3 supports mixed format, real time editing of a wide range of industry standard DV and HD file types, including Panasonic's P2 MXF (Material eXchange Format) format, which gives editors direct access to footage from the Panasonic P2 card, eliminating the time-consuming task of capturing footage from tape. This immediate access to footage speeds up workflow and lets the professionals at KRON 4 go directly from shooting to editing.

"The P2 camera with EDIUS Pro 3 is a dream," said Craig Porter, chief engineer for KRON 4. "EDIUS Pro 3 works seamlessly with the P2 format, making the entire process - shooting, editing, and play-to-air - amazingly fast."

EDIUS Pro 3 provides native editing and realtime processing of uncompressed SD, HD, HDV, DV, MPEG-2, and MPEG-1 formats. EDIUS Pro 3 lets professionals mix video content in multiple formats and work with unlimited video, audio and effects layers, while providing realtime high-quality, on-screen display.

"EDIUS Pro 3 just works," continued Porter. "With EDIUS Pro 3 and our high speed network, editing tasks can be handled on any PC in the building. And EDIUS doesn't care what you put in the timeline - be it MPEG, HDV or SD. We don't have to be concerned with differing formats or bother with transcoding - whatever we need to edit, EDIUS Pro lets us do it."

In addition to the advantages a mixed-format editing environment brings to the workflow, EDIUS Pro 3's streamlined feature set and user interface provides editors with a high-performance, efficient editing experience.

"EDIUS Pro 3 has a well-organized interface and seamless workflow that users can learn quickly. It's remarkable how quickly we can get individuals editing--even those without an editing background. I've had people up and running on EDIUS Pro 3 within two hours," continued Porter.

EDIUS Pro 3 delivers increased quality and realtime performance through the company's variable-bitrate Canopus HQ codec. DIUS Pro 3 includes professional features, such as realtime batch capture from 1080i and 720p HDV cameras and decks, advanced audio tools and precise color correction controls, designed to help editors create the highest quality productions. EDIUS Pro 3 is also included with Canopus's line of EDIUS hardware and software editing solutions, including the new EDIUS NX for HDV.