Looking to improve image quality and speed production workloads, Abekas has added a new QuickTime MOV file-based media import feature for its ClipStoreMXc HD/SD digital disk recorder, offering users an easy way to ingest video clip into the ClipStoreMXc.
The ClipStoreMXc is deployed in dozens of professional HD mobile television trucks around the world, used to replay animated graphics transitions, show openings and sponsor promotions during live broadcasts.
Rose Mirakian-Wheeler, director for Boston Bruins Hockey for the New England Sports Network (NESN), said it used the QuickTime MOV file import feature in preparing content during this season’s NHL season. It helped improved NESN’s on-air look because the MOV files are relatively unprocessed and therefore have no visible loss of HD video quality.
NESN’s creative services department created MOV files from video content and transferred them onto a USB 2.0 hard drive. Upon arrival at a specific venue, the crew loaded prepared elements into the ClipstoreMXc. The process eliminated several steps in NESN’s initial preparation, including the rendering of elements to tape and to an EVS server, and the clipping, syncing and naming of the fill and matte for each element. Since the MOV files retain their original naming upon transfer, the QuickTime MOV file import feature streamlined the workflow and was much more efficient.
With this new import feature, broadcasters can render animated show openings, graphics transitions and on-air promos with full HD quality into QuickTime MOV files while in the studio. These QuickTime MOV files can contain HD digital video, up to eight tracks of digital audio for surround sound and a key track (alpha) — and they can be created with any available QuickTime codec to encode the QuickTime MOV files.
When transporting the rendered media to the remote broadcast truck, the QuickTime MOV files are simply copied to any Hi-Speed USB 2.0 portable disk drive. This portable USB drive filled with MOV files is inserted into the ClipStoreMXc, where users quickly and efficiently transfer the media into separate clips for replay.
ClipStoreMXc comes standard with more than two hours of recording capacity for HD and SD digital video, key, audio and time code — all housed within a compact 3RU chassis. A four-hour capacity model is also available. Ultra-high quality JPEG2000 wavelet compression technology at 200Mb/s is used to record the 10-bit HD video, while 10-bit SD video is recorded without any compression at all.
For more information, visit www.abekas.com.
