Sony has announced that Avid Technology will support Sony's XDCAM professional optical disc system. Content captured on Sony's new tapeless cameras, to be shipped in March, will be compatible with Avid's native MPEG-IMX and DVCAM non-linear editing systems, including NewsCutter and Media Composer.
This interoperability will allow XDCAM users to transfer high-resolution A/V clips across IP networks at high speed, greatly accelerating and streamlining the process of acquiring AV material, according to Sony. Metadata compatibility will also be provided through Sony's and Avid's support of the Material eXchange Format (MXF) media file format.
"This new level of interoperability between Sony and Avid is the latest step toward the newsroom of the future, and will help our customers realize faster, easier and redundancy-free workflows," said David Schleifer, director of Avid Broadcast and Workgroups. The two companies will demonstrate their system interoperability at NAB2004 in April in Las Vegas. Avid has already announced that it will also support Panasonic's new tapeless P2 memory stick format.
Sony officials say they have received XDCAM orders from customers in the broadcast, corporate and education markets, among others, and estimates that more than 1,000 units of XDCAM will have been shipped by the end of March 2004 worldwide.
