Panasonic's Professional Plug-in P2 electronic news gathering system may be on display at NAB2004 this year.
A working version of Panasonic’s DVCPro Professional Plug-in P2 electronic news gathering system may be on display at NAB2004 April 17-21 in Las Vegas, Nev. The system relies on removable solid-state memory cards instead of videotape as an acquisition medium.
Recently a delegation of U.S. broadcasters visited Japan, where Panasonic engineers showed what could best be described as a "pre-prototype" camcorder recording video on solid state memory cards.
According to its vice president technical liaison, Phil Livingston, Panasonic has spent the months since its major solid-state-recording announcement at IBC2003 working with a handful of broadcasters, including CBS, Fox and Raycom, and a number of companies with news editing and ingest products to develop its product.
Among their top priorities have been nuts-and-bolts issues like establishing a file-naming structure that is specific enough to be useful. "It's not very helpful if 14 files are running around with the name 'clip one,'" Livingston explained.
In a separate but related development, China Central Television (CCTV), the country's largest broadcaster, Panasonic and Dayang Technology Development, a professional broadcast equipment manufacturer in China, announced late last month that they have agreed to work together to develop a broadcast production system based on the DVCPRO Professional Plug-in solid state memory technology.
Using the solid-state memory and nonlinear editing technology to integrate newsgathering, editing, content delivery and archiving, the product of the collaboration will be used for news and documentaries produced for CCTV's "Economy Channel."
CCTV plans to modify its production workflow, expand its production model and improve media asset management as part of an upcoming move to new premises and its preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The collaboration will result in the P2 technology needed to meet CCTV's requirements.
For more information, please visit www.japancorp.net.
