Sony DNE-50 Editor

Model Details

Portable editor offers graphical, time line editing capabilities with the Betacam SX Hybrid Recorders.Picture-based, nonlinear editing can be accomplished on-line, taking advantage of the "picture stamps" created with the Good-Shot marker during acquisitionAdding optional MO drive, the DNE-50 can be used for off-line editing of up to 40 minutes of material.

Features:

Compact Editing Package
Familiar, User-Friendly Interface
GUI Feature For Picture-Based Editing
Extended EDL
The DNE-50 is a compact, portable editing controller that can be used on location or anywhere in the field. Sony developed a unique combination of docking station and notebook PC. The docking station is equipped with a Jog/Shuttle dial and other basic features essential for precision editing. This notebook PC provides a simple graphical user interface with picture "drag and drop" control over non-linear editing operations.
The DNE-50 supports the Extended EDL system, which includes a pictorial representation of each edit IN/OUT point. Extended EDL is compatible with current Standard EDL, so EDL output from the DNE-50 can be read and used by editing controllers installed in existing systems. The EDL created by the DNE-50 are saved on 3.5-inch floppy disks.
The Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the DNE-50 was carefully designed for fast, picture-based and time line editing with full functionality. For ease of operation, design and layout of the GUI is uniform on all the Sony DNE-Series News Editors: the DNE-50, DNE-700 and the DNE-1000.
For quick selection of scenes during editing operations, segments downloaded onto the hard disk drive of the DNW-A100/A50/A45 Betacam SX Hybrid Recorders are displayed on-screen as "rushes" by the DNE-50's graphical user interface. Rushes including picture stamps, Good Shot marks, or REC Start/Stop Marks recorded on Betacam SX camcorders are highlighted, and tedious searching through recorded material can be minimized. Source material can be viewed directly on the PC screen; disk and tape control can be executed from the Jog/Shuttle dial, function keys, and by using the computer mouse. In tape shuttle mode at up to 20 times normal speed, tape contents can be displayed on the PC display as picture stamps every five seconds. Edit points can be selected and downloaded onto the hard drive at up to 4 times real-time. This allows an editor to save valuable time by quickly reviewing the contents of a tape before editing begins. The Graphical User Interface of the DNE-50 offers several important advantages for quicker editing. Previously selected source rushes appear on screen in order. Rushes can be played back, and IN/OUT points can be accurately chosen using the computer mouse or Jog/Shuttle dial, providing a familiar VTR-like operating feel. In the OUTPUT program, edited rushes can be displayed in edited order -- and can be changed easily by drag-and-drop procedure.
Operating time: Approx. 2h with one BP-L60
Power Consumption: 15W
Operating temperature: +5°C to +40°C (+41°F to 104°F)
Size: 300mm(W) x 82mm(H) x 370mm(D)

By Glen Dickson WPIX(Tv), Tribune Broadcasting's WB affiliate in New York, will be rolling out a next -generation SNG truck this winter. The all - digital vehicle will be the first to use Sony's new digital SNG technology, capable of transmitting two digital streams at once or one feed at twice the speed of real time. The truck, being developed through a collaboration of truck integrator Wolf Coach, Sony and Tribune engineering staff, will cost roughly $500,000 (including receiving gear at wplx) and is scheduled for completion in January. A mock -up of the unit will be on display at World Media Expo in Los Angeles in October. wPIX's first SNG unit will pack a lot of capabilities into a small unit, says Wolf Coach President Richard Wolf. "It's a new look at SNG and ENG technology all in one package," he says. "We're hitting all the bases -it will have the digital Sony equipment and also analog capability, as well as terrestrial microwave capability, depending on who WPIX is trying to feed. And at under 11 feet high and 20 feet long, it still can negotiate the canyons of New York." The truck will have a 1.8 -meter Vertex satellite dish, a NuComm microwave antenna, and an LNR Communications modulator /upconverter assembly for analog satellite transmission. Signal distribution will be all serial 601 digital, managed by a Leitch digital routing system and digital -toanalog converters. "This is the first time we've done completely digital CCIR 601 distribution within an SNG truck," Wolf says. "You can hit it with a digital signal and stay digital throughout, and you can also take analog signals and

encode them to digital." For digital uplinks, the vehicle will rely on Sony's DSM -Tl /Rl digital satellite modulator, with a Sony demodulating unit back at wPlx. The digital modulator, which debuted at NAB '96, is capable of transmitting one feed at twice the speed of real time or two feeds in real time off a 36 mhz transponder. The high -speed transport is made possible by Sony's DNW -A100 highspeed Betacam SX recorder /player, a hybrid tape /disk unit. The DNW -A100 will be linked to a Sony DNE -50 laptop edit controller for mobile nonlinear editing. The new WPIX truck also will be able to support SDI (serial digital interface) streams from standard digital cameras and send out a dual digital stream -one SDI path, one SDDI (serial digital data interface, Sony's transport protocol for SX gear). Frank Geraty, WPIX vice president of engineering, says that multistream capability makes the truck the "perfect tech-

nical companion" to wPlx's rebuilt production plant, which was upgraded to serial component digital in December 1995 with a new Sony DVS -7000 digital switcher and DNW -500 cameras. "We're upgrading the whole plant to deal with the SX format and nonlinear editing as a long -term goal," Geraty says. "This truck is the first shot." According to Ira Goldstone, Tribune's vice president/ director of engineering, Tribune chose the Sony component digital MPEG -2 route (4:2:2 Main Profile @ Main Level, encoded at 18 mbps, with the SDDI transport protocol) over composite 4:2:0 MPEG -2 systems because of concatenation issues. "We didn't want to concatenate compression schemes," says Goldstone. "This way we have one compression scheme rather than concatenated artifacts from different systems. The key is SDI in the plant. If you maintain everything in the component domain, that gives you the best possible quality today and the best future capability for DTV. The fewer times you encode and decode, the better off you are." For now, Tribune will use the Sony digital SNG modulator only to get feeds back to wPIx; from there, they will be demodulated and sent to other Tribune stations over Vyvx fiber. Once all the testing is completed and WPIX has "stabilized" on the SX format, Tribune may roll out the Sony digital SNG gear and SX equipment at oher stations across the country. Goldstone says that Tribune is considering using a combination of SX, Sony DVCAM, and Panasonic's DVCPRO format in its stations and is looking at file servers that can store both DVCPRO files and SX files. He also hints that Sony is backing off the "total systems" strategy it trumpeted at NAB. "We told them we wouldn't go with them if it was a total Sony solution," he says.

By Glen Dickson Alter presenting its concept of "the digital facility of the future" at last year's NAB, Sony will be showing some components of that future at this year's convention. Sony will be exhibiting a number of products, from acquisition to transmission, that will ship in fall 1996, says Chris Golson, Sony vice president of broadcast marketing. Golson says that Sony's NAB '96 offerings will be heavy on the software side, as the hardware giant seeks to sell complete digital systems to broadcasters. Perhaps the most important standard for Sony's facility of the future -compression -has been determined. Golson says Sony has picked the MPEG -2 4:2:2 studio profile compression algorithm and is specifying an encoding rate of 18 megabits per second for the entire plant -for Digital SX camcorders. VTRs, hard drives, local storage. buffers and servers. Eighteen megabits per second will guarantee better -than - Betacam SP quality from acquisition to the transmission point, says Golson: "You need a continuous compression scheme to maintain high quality without worrying about decompression /recompression issues." Sony also will display a number of nonlinear editing products at the show, along with hybrid disk recorders that can digitize a tape at four times faster than real time. One new "hybrid" editor, the DNE -300 news editor, is designed to work with either analog VTRs or these new hard disk recorders via the RS 422 disk and tape control protocol. "The RS 422 protocol allows an editing system to manipulate hard drives as though they were VTRs," says Golson. "So the DNE -300 can treat a hard drive

or a tape machine as if they were transparent. You can start digitizing while jog- shuttling at faster than real time; then when you want to look at a scene, you stop shuttling and it digitizes in real time." For field use, the portable DNE -50 offers offline editing in a laptop module. Golson calls it the "journalist in a box." The system is designed to take video out of a Digital SX camcorder, record it at 2 megabits per second on a 3.5 -inch magneto- optical drive and allow reporters, producers or news directors to do audio, script and offline video editing to compose an EDL (edit decision list) that can then be modemed back to the studio. Unlike Sony's studio editors, the DNE -50 will use JPEG compression, with each MO disk capable of holding 40 minutes of video.

Sony also will introduce a digital SNG system at NAB. The DSM -T1/R 1, a digital satellite modulator /demodulator, is designed to be a high -speed transmission link from the field to the studio. It will transport one uncompressed digital channel of video at twice the speed of real time (or two channels in real time), says Golson. An important Sony news component that won't be in deliverable form at NAB is the Sony /Oracle newsroom computer system introduced last year. Sony and Oracle are still working to develop the system, which will feature multimedia journalist workstations that offer script writing, text research, and cuts -only audio and video editing. Golson says the product will be demonstrated again at NAB, and that the two companies hope to have it ready for delivery by December. Nonetheless, Sony will introduce a news archiving system at NAB that will store thumbnail images which can be retrieved into the Sony /Oracle newsroom computer system.

That will be coupled with a digital linear tape system. The half - inch data tape, called Ake - bono, is based on the Digital Betacam transport system, says Colson. Another line of products due for fall delivery are three commercial and program playback automation systems: the STAS -100, which links BZA - 810 transmission software to a Flexicart; the STAS -L100, which connects BZA -8100 software to the LMS cache; and the STAS -110, which will link the BZA -8100 software to a three -channel playback server. Sony already has sold the STASL100 combination to a few beta sites, such as KPTV(TV) Portland, Ore. (BROADCASTING & CABLE, Jan. 8, 1995). Golson says that Sony also will show the "daily server," a central receptacle for video; an on -air buffering system; a central server for play -toair, and local servers to network editing systems, all with software written by Sony. There are no model numbers for these products. Sony won't be selling servers as stand -alone products (like the Tektronix Profile), but instead as part of larger newsroom or commercial playback systems, say Golson. "We don't sell hardware for other people to write software to," he says.