Pinnacle Brings Practical HD to the Marketplace

by Tony Fonseca

Published on Apr 16, 2004 12:00 AM
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Pinnacle Systems has long been a big name in the world of HD solutions. Recently the company announced plans to bring affordable HD solutions to the marketplace with their Practical HD system. At the 2004 NAB conference (National Association of Broadcasters), Pinnacle will be showing Liquid HD, an HD option for their Liquid editing program. This new addition allows users to work with everything from low quality HDV all the way up to fully uncompressed HD.

Liquid HD utilized Pinnacle’s innovative MPEG-2 IBP technology which allows for high quality editing without out the hefty system requirements normally associated with HD editing. Liquid HD will be a simple upgrade for most pre-existing Liquid users.

Pinnacle is also updating their CineWave HD solution for Final Cut Pro. New version 4.6 features enhanced real time HD performance and many other new features and improvements. The TARGA Cine engine has also been enhanced to provide for faster transfer speeds and better performance in conjunction with the CineWave system.

NAB 2004 will be a huge turning point for High Definition video. While HD is certainly not new, its relative affordability is. HD has most often been reserved for big budget productions such as feature films and broadcast specials. Cameras such as Sony’s CineAlta and Panasonic’s Varicam are in the price range of $65,000 to $120,000. Aside from the camera itself, the processing power and storage space required to edit HD has also been very expensive. The economics of HD have left the average shooter out of the loop.

As NAB 2004 approaches, so does a new day for HD. The introduction of HDV has significantly dropped the entry level price for HD acquisition and many companies are jumping on the bandwagon to offer HDV editing solutions. Ulead was the first to support HDV, and Adobe has recently announced a variety of solutions for their Premiere Pro application. Neither Apple nor Avid have come out to support HDV but this may change soon.