Sidebar: In Japan with Sony

Epochal Change at NAB '04
Graphics, Effects, and Animation
Editing
Storage and Networking
Sidebar: In Japan with Sony

Last month, in a pre-NAB tour of development labs and rarely seen
production areas such as a high-vacuum evaporated cobalt tape coating
facility, Sony outlined an upbeat, wide-ranging vision for its future,
albeit one beset by a difficult economic reality.

Yuji Ohmori, assistant manager, camera planning department Sony Broadcast & Professional, demonstrates the compact HDC-X300, which debuts at NAB 2004.

(In January, the company reported a 26 percent drop in third-quarter
profits, compared to a year earlier. While revenue at the company's
electronics operations increased, Sony's film and music operations
lagged.)

While the catch phrase “Ride the HD Wave” covers the
company's current marketing focus, Kozo Kaminaga, president of Sony
Broadcast & Professional, presented a portrait further down the
road to 2010, a “super broadband world” where common access
to high-speed networks proliferate for consumer and professional alike.
Running from 30Mbs to 100Mbs, these links enable HD resolution content
to move everywhere over a “ubiquitous value network.”

The Sony coinage Anycast, said Kaminaga, sums up that vision of a
fully networked future. That term isn't new; Sony introduced Anycast at
IBC 2002 as key to its business strategy. Anycast's first stage?
Integrate fragmented content islands so that — in the desired
future production and delivery world — content is available on
any technology platform at any time.

To follow the thinking behind the strategy, go back to 2001, when
Sony demonstrated a crucial piece of its game plan with the release of
its first IP (Internet protocol) enabled cameras and servers.

Placed into the product's “firmware,” IP protocol
provides each piece of gear with a specific Internet address. Mated
with an Ethernet link, this enables the hardware to communicate over
networks. But the problem then was the content; the video and audio was
“dumb” — you still had to digitize videotape, for
example, before moving on to the rest of the post process. And
metadata? Don't even bother asking.

This year, that changed as MXF (Material eXchange Format) became the
final, crucial part of Sony's metadata puzzle to debut. With XDCAM
camcorders and post gear incorporating MXF, the entire chain of
production and post can now be integrated. (Some 130 manufacturers now
implement MXF in their gear and software, which allows disparate gear
to share content.)

Expect to hear more from Sony on the benefits of integrated
production and post. “We're trying to move very rapidly to an
IT-based infrastructure,” said Hugo Gaggioni, vice president,
technology and product management for Sony Business Solutions &
Systems Company (BSSC). “Our plans for databasing and metadata
are crucial for all of our future editing products.”

The need to apply those technologies became more apparent when
Gaggioni quoted a study that determined some 45 percent of time spent
editing video actually was consumed with searching and browsing for the
material to be edited. Using an advanced metadata-based search function
— tightly integrated into the NLE — promises to cut that
lost time down.

By integrating production and post on a network, Sony expects to
lower the cost of ownership, but it will take more than just this file
transfer protocol. “MXF is just one of the “five
M's,” which include MPEG, metadata, MIB [management information
base], and migration [to a completely networked environment],”
said Ichiro Segawa, executive vice president, Sony Broadcast &
Professional. “This framework allows Sony to offer an open
production environment, where even competitors are welcome.”
Segawa noted that Sony's XDCAM system will now be compatible with
Avid's native MPEG IMX and DVCAM NLEs.

At the Atsugi R&D lab, announcements included a renewed push
into the NLE market with the reborn Xpri (it now runs on a laptop as
well as on high-speed networks); SXRD, a reflective crystal silicon
chip that will directly compete with TI's DLP and power Sony's push
into the consumer and pro projection markets; an enhanced, RGB CineAlta
HDCAM and higher bandwidth HDCAM SR; and GLV, another projection chip
technology that uses a unique “ribbon” chip along with
laser illumination. Other technology might take longer to move from the
lab, but includes an even higher speed 900Mbs-bandwidth camcorder, as
well as near-terabyte storage on a tape not much larger than a deck of
cards.
— D.O.