Hitachi to deliver professional DVD-RAM camcorder

Hitachi Denshi America will begin shipping the industry’s first professional DVD-RAM camcorder system, the Z-3000/CR-D10 combo, by the end of this month. The tapeless camcorder breaks new ground as a computer-centric video field recording and production system.

The 5.7 lb. camcorder packages a Hitachi’s Z-3000 series digital signal processing 3-chip camera with a CR-D10 recorder and third-party nonlinear editing software for field applications. The CR-D10 records digital video from the Z-3000 camera directly as computer files onto the DVD-RAM or DVD-R disc.

The recorder, first shown at NAB2002, uses variable rate MPEG-2 compression and the recently released DVD Forum specification for Video Recording, DVD-VR. Computer operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s OS/X, Linux and Unix can read and write to DVD-RAM and are compatible with DVD-VR specifications. The new systems allow projects to be produced completely from a remote location, edited in the field and processed for transmission using as an example, the NLE PC’s TCP/IP protocol.


The 5.7 lb. camcorder packages a Hitachi’s Z-3000 series digital signal processing 3-chip camera with a CR-D10 recorder and third-party nonlinear editing software for field applications.

“The DVD-VR format is compatible with a wide array of computer systems,” said Jack Breitenbucher, vice president, Hitachi Denshi America’s Broadcast & Professional Division. “We foresee this recorder as ideal for professional videographers, small market TV stations, institutional, corporate and government video producers by providing a cost-effective, reliable, and lightweight field acquisition and editing system.”

Hitachi said it collaborated with Heuris on its DVD ConnexIT software to bring to market a plug-in for Adobe Premiere 6.5. The ConnexIT software reads video files from a DVD-RAM disc within Premiere for Windows. Additional NLEs supporting DVD-VR are Ulead’s Video Studio 6 SE and Aist’s extreme DV and MovieDV4.

The CR-D10 can record up to one hour of full-motion MPEG-2 video on a single 4.7Gb 8-cm DVD-RAM/ DVD-R disc. It can additionally be used as a stand-alone recorder that accepts audio and video from other sources.

With DVD-RAM technology, video can be edited in the camera, allowing users to re-order scenes. Customized playlists can be generated to include only marked clips for use in the NLE timeline at the time of file import. Metadata such as time, date, description, and duration can be manipulated right in the CR-D10 via its operation menu displayed on the LCD color screen. The recorded DVD media can also be removed from the recorder for conventional archiving of edited programs.

For more information visit www.hdal.com.

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