Crawford Communications Expands its Use of Accom Products with Addition of WSD/HD
Accom®, announced today that Crawford Post-Production a service area of Crawford Communications, Inc. purchased WSD®/HD (Work Station Disk/High Definition) Digital Disk Recorders for their new HD (High Definition) Hybrid Suite in Atlanta, Georgia.
WSD/HD is a high or standard definition, 10-bit uncompressed video, digital disk recorder that represents a breakthrough in price performance in HD recording technology.
Crawford, one of the leaders in the electronic media services industry, has effectively quadrupled its HD capacity and throughput. The company runs several shifts per day in both of its HD suites in order to handle the various demands of commercial, corporate and broadcast HD work.
The HD Hybrid Suite is centered around an Accom Axial® 3000 editor combined with two WSD/HD Digital Disk Recorders as well as a range of other HD equipment.
According to Ron Heidt, Senior Editor/Technical Director for Crawford Post-Production, "The fact that the WSD/HD interfaced nicely with the Accom Axial, is QuickTime™ native and has good file protection, was a big plus. The Axial has some non-linear editing capabilities through its RAVE™ (Random Access Video Editing) option. We decided to hook it up with the WSD/HD disk recorders because it gives us a lot of disk space which we felt we needed for HD post-production, and at a very affordable price."
With more than a decade of experience as the industry leader in digital disk recorder (DDR) technology, Accom's new WSD/HD is once again setting the standard for use in HD applications. WSD/HD easily transfers video to and from high definition or standard video tape recorders as well as graphics or animation workstations. It supports full bandwidth, standard definition serial digital recording and playback in addition to all of the standard high definition production formats including 24P – all uncompressed.
"The WSD/HD allows me to get my material loaded onto my disks in the order that they are in, on the source tapes. Once that happens, it lets me very quickly get them from the tapes to the disks so that while I'm conforming the program I have immediate instant access to everything," commented Heidt. "If I have 50 tapes in an hour show, I can get all of the material from those 50 tapes onto my two WSD/HDs. I have it set up in a particular mode, so that I can automatically set up for dissolves and stuff like that. So having Scene A on one WSD/HD and Scene B on the second WSD/HD really speeds up the whole process," continued Heidt. Another neat thing about the WSD/HD in the production path is, if I have a client who has an animation that they've rendered in a 3D program, After Effects or similar, they can render it using the QuickTime™ Codec for the WSD/HD. I can then transfer the file over to my WSD/HD and they don't have to worry about getting their file to tape," he said.
The multiple-format, QuickTime native WSD/HD, is the ideal DDR for graphics or animation workstation support, Telecine transfer and cache (storage), multi-standard cache for video editing, High Definition live-to-air playout and scientific visualization.
"With the WSD/HD you never run the risk of inadvertently erasing files of different formats that the one you are currently working with. On the WSD/HD, I can make a file and that's the only file that's active. If I want to work on another file, it could be another 60i file (I could have two 60i files), I know I am never going to touch that one file because it's totally different ? no matter how much I record. I also like the fact that the WSD/HD's interface is QuickTime native. After Effects, Commotion and other similar software programs like those, can do QuickTime files, so it is easy access over the network to get to those files. Overall, the WSD/HD has greatly improved the speed of our output in a very cost effective way, concluded Heidt.
About Accom
Accom is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Accom designs, manufactures, sells, and supports a complete line of digital video production, disk recording, and editing tools for use in the worldwide professional television marketplace — encompassing the production, post production, broadcasting, and computer video markets.
Accom, Inc., 1490 O'Brien Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025. Tel: 650-328-3818; Fax: 650-327-2511.