(click thumbnail)Matt McEwenQ. What kind of products or services does your company offer for broadcasters?
We offer a complete broadcast solution — from acquisition in the field to management in the studio, to delivery over the airwaves. Our line of Direct To Edit (DTE) recorders helped spark the tapeless acquisition revolution. With our different DTE technology solutions, you can record DV, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD or HDV streams directly to disk via FireWire. Most importantly, DTE lets you take native video formats directly from the shoot to a nonlinear editing system, without any additional conversion steps, for unparalleled speed and efficiency. And we all know in the deadline-driven broadcast industry, every second counts.
Our media asset management line has been developed specifically with video professionals in mind — helping them streamline acquisition, storage and retrieval of digital media. Broadcasters can reduce the time and costs associated with content production; and make better use of their existing assets.
We’ve also got a line of ultra-portable SD/HD-SDI digital video switchers for various live broadcast and postproduction needs, as well as file conversion solutions that allow you to take footage from any source (even video that’s recorded on older tape formats), and easily convert it to digital video for nonlinear editing.
Q. What’s new that you will you show at the NAB Show and that TV broadcasters should look for there?
At NAB this year we’re going to be announcing some exciting products, partnerships and technologies across our product line. First, we’ll be unveiling the brand new, ultra-portable FS-5 DTE recorder. We’ve incorporated some key improvements in the design — including a 50% weight reduction compared with our popular FS-4, a scroll wheel for easier navigation, a new low-power design without a fan and UDF disk drive technology. But beyond that, the FS-5 introduces the ground-breaking ability to wirelessly add metadata at the point of acquisition. That means you can add key information — interviewee, location, shoot and more — from a laptop, smartphone or other WiFi device while recording. As soon as you’re done with a shoot, the clips will already be labeled and described for easy import and identification for editing and management.
And in addition to the FS-5, we’re also going to be announcing new PX media servers, including solutions optimized for Sony’s XDCAM-EX, and the MM-1 Universal Media Manager, a powerful application that makes it easy to create and distribute media for retail television, as well as private corporate, hospitality and government networks.
Q. How is your new product offering different from what’s available on the market?
Focus is offering a unique solution based around native file formats and descriptive metadata that gives broadcasters an end-to-end solution for the HD workflow — from acquisition to management and delivery. Our products are developed by media professionals for media professionals, so they feature the functionality and reliability needed for the demanding broadcast industry. As shown with DTE technology and wireless metadata capabilities, we’re continually looking for new ways to speed up and enhance the production and post-production workflow — whether it’s our DTE technology, or file conversion, or wireless metadata capabilities.
Q. Where are you based, and how many employees do you have? Anything else we should know about your company?
There are 130 employees worldwide. We’re headquartered in Campbell, Calif. with offices in Boston, Mass.; Rasidorf, Germany; Taipei, Taiwan; Tokyo, Japan; and Gyeonggi-do, Korea.
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