New AVC-Ultra plugins for Media Composer

Panasonic announced last week the new products it would be presenting at NAB 2013, among which we can find its new AVC-Ultra plugins for the Avid Media Composer editing system.

As they have been doing since 2004, Avid and Panasonic have collaborated on improvements to the work and evolution of the P2 solid-state format. This latest software development will facilitate workflow and integration with the AVC-Ultra family of codecs in both the Windows and Mac versions of Avid.

• AVC-Ultra offers Full HD recording at master quality and/or low bit rate, at 10-bit and 4:2:2, satisfying needs from mastering to broadcast.

• With AVC-Proxy, thanks to parallel encoding with higher bandwidth production formats, fast and efficient editing is achieved, achieving bit-rates from 3.5 megabytes to 800 kilobits per second.

• For a fully integrated production, allowing capture, editing, transmission and mastering natively and always with the same codec, the ideal of this family would be AVC-Intra.

• And finally we have AVC-LongG, which has been specially designed for those applications where file size is very relevant. It offers 10-bit recording, with 4:2:2 sampling in much smaller file sizes (compared to MPEG-2), facilitating the reduction of storage costs and transfer times while maintaining image quality.

These are the Panasonic plugins that will be released throughout the year:

• AJ-PS001: activates the Re-Link function with the AVC-Proxy codec, allowing native import and editing. Sequences edited in this way are then linked to the corresponding high-resolution clips automatically. This workflow can be a very good solution for the creation of news, long-form documentaries or content-rich TV programs.

It will be available from June this year for a price of $199.

• AJ-PS002: enables export and import of AVC-Intra 100/50 clips from a P2 card or a specific folder on the hard disk. It also supports extended clips and includes DV import and export to DVCPRO HD.

It will be available from June this year for a price of $149.

• AJ-PS003: includes a selection of file sizes up to 50Mbps for AVC-LongG exports.

It will be available from October this year for a price of $149.

• AJ-PS004: enables AVC-LongG import, allowing these P2 clips to be imported and edited natively in the timeline, thus integrating AVC-Ultra camcorders, such as the recent AJ-PX5000G, and the Media Composer system.

It will be available from October of this year for a price of $99.

The software for these four plugins will be available for download from Panasonic’ s website from June, and will come with a free 30-day trial.