News

Thomson Streamlines File-Based Production With New FIRECODER Transcoding Cards (23/9/2008)

Speeds Workflow When Converting Between Digital Formats Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS), the worldwide leader in video solutions, is introducing two new high-quality transcoding engines that provide faster than real-time performance when converting files from one digital format to another.

Shown for the first time at IBC, the new Thomson Grass Valley(tm) FIRECODER Blu and FIRECODER Intra encoder boards are part of a growing family of advanced hardware codecs that address the industry's migration to file-based production workflows, where the development emphasis is now on managing files after they have been ingested.

Thomson is unique in supporting the entire media chain from high-definition content creation to multi-play services for home consumption. As broadcasters become broadercasters, Thomson is the right technology partner, as it will demonstrate at IBC 2008 in two booth locations - Hall 1, Stand D.11 and Hall 7, Stand F.31.

"As digital, tapeless video formats continue to be adopted by customers, it's clear that the real challenge for editors now is ensuring that the source material they use maintains the highest level of quality and precision while editing and delivering content," said Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of Thomson's Broadcast & Professional Solutions within the Systems division. "This new family of transcoding boards offers editors a range of faster than real-time, high quality hardware solutions that have been designed with the digital workflow in mind."

Leveraging Cell microprocessor architecture, the new FIRECODER Blu PCIe card transcodes AVCHD files to/from MPEG-2 at 4-5 times faster than real-time and converts AVI files to MPEG-2 or AVCHD at faster than real-time. Blu-ray/DVD writer/transcoding software is included, which means that FIRECODER Blu can be used with any Windows-based NLE or authoring software.

The FIRECODER Intra card is designed for large shared-storage production environments and offers superior transcoding for broadcasters using Panasonic's AVC-Intra compression scheme. The PCIe-style card features two built-in AVC-I encoders, which take the load off of the computer's CPU and handle the intensive processing internally.

Asynchronous Hybrid Synergetic Encode (patent pending) algorithms enable file transcode speeds of 2-3 times faster than real-time.

Pricing and Availability

FIRECODER Blu will ship in December 2008 for a suggested list price of $599 (US). FIRECODER Intra will also ship in December, at a list price of $8,000 (US).

www.thomsongrassvalley.com  

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