Apex In High-Resolution Storage
The arrival of the HDCAM™ format heralded a new era in
movie-making, commercial production, and high-end
television production applications. A dramatic breakthrough
in this field was achieved with the Sony multi-frame rate
camcorder, the HDW-F900, and its companion VTR the
HDW-F500. Both products bore the CineAlta™ name –
signifying system elements that uniquely explore new
horizons in these application areas.
CineAlta products are Sony’s response and commitment to the
ITU 709 global standard, specifically intended for
international high-definition (HD) program origination.
Globally, HD programming is becoming far more
mainstream, and the HDCAM format has become the most
popular format supporting it. That popularity has escalated
demands for even higher quality and greater storage capacity –
enough to support extremely high-quality digital production,
high-resolution film transfer work, sophisticated graphics
recording, and multi-channel audio mastering.
Responding to the requests for more headroom in digital
recordings by many prominent content producers, Sony has
introduced a new state-of-the-art format that provides a
platform enabling greater storage capacity, higher data-transfer
rates, and more audio channels than current HDCAM models.
This new format is the HDCAM-SR format. The HDCAM-SR
format has a capacity several times greater than conventional
tape formats, and it has been conceived from the very
beginning as a format suitable for pristine-quality digital field
acquisition.
Sony has now expanded the CineAlta product line to include
the SRW-5000 HD Digital Videocassette Recorder, which
employs the HDCAM-SR format. Like the flagship
HDW-F500, the SRW-5000 acquires each picture frame
according to the industry-standard Common Image Format
(CIF), which specifies a sampling structure of 1920 x 1080
active pixels (H x V). The SRW-5000 fits perfectly into
existing workflows, and as a full-fledged studio machine,
incorporates all of the editing capabilities and features that
production teams demand for the execution of their projects.
The SRW-5000, which in its standard configuration records
in 4:2:2 format, can be combined with current HDC series
studio cameras to form a system that is ideal for high-end
studio/OB production applications. With optional RGB
processor boards installed, it can also be combined with its
counterpart camera, the HDC-F950, to form a full-bandwidth
4:4:4 (RGB) image-capturing system. What’s more, the
SRW-5000 supports multi-frame-rate recording on the
all-new HDCAM-SR format, and delivers a host of invaluable
features such as integrated up-conversion, down-conversion,
2-3 pull-down, and legacy playback of HDCAM and Digital
BETACAM™ tapes. For today’s digital content mastering
applications and for future content delivery methods, the
SRW-5000 comes with 12 channels of digital sound. Such
creative benefits along with the system’s functionality,
flexibility, durability, and maintainability will alleviate total
cost of ownership concerns. The SRW-5000 is an asset
today, and will remain so into the future.
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