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Extending its digital cinematography and post-production leadership, Thomson today announced the Grass Valley brand Venom FlashPak solid-state recording system for the popular Grass Valley Viper FilmStream Digital Cinematography Camera.
With one of the broadest lines of digital post-production technologies available, Thomson provides turnkey workflows for filmmakers and commercial production professionals. Today, creative leaders are looking to capitalize on those workflows to drive additional revenue. Only Thomson offers a fully integrated, resolution-independent, end-to-end digital approach that lets them choose the right production path for their projects.
The Venom FlashPak system supports this approach by capturing the uncompressed output of the Viper camera in a lightweight, solid-state system that is compact, dockable, and rugged. The combination of the Viper camera and the Venom system easily comports itself to modern movie-making workflows.
?Whether it?s major-release films such as DreamWorks? Collateral, commercials for Nike, HP, Lexus or television series such as The 4400 for USA Networks, the Viper FilmStream camera has been accepted as the best solution for digital cinematography,? said Marc Valentin, executive vice president of Thomson Broadcast & Media Solutions. ?We expect that popularity to grow with the addition of the Venom FlashPak.?
New dMAX initiative targets digital workflows
In addition to the Venom solid-state recorder, Thomson today also launched the Grass Valley dMAX (digital Media Asset Maximization)initiative to help media leaders worldwide capitalize on their investment in digital content creation.
Through the initiative, Thomson will offer a single-supplier integration partner for digital workflow success: one that can deliver software and middleware frameworks, critical applications, best-in-class products, and expert system integration and support services to create complete, optimized, end-to-end workflows.
Today, no company touches more points of today?s digital production workflows?or has more experience integrating them?than Thomson. Through the dMAX initiative it expects workflow-based design and integration to be a high-growth component of its overall success.
Thomson?s FilmStream workflow, which includes the Spirit 4K, Specter Telecine, Bones, and LUTher lines in addition to the Viper FilmStream Digital Cinematography camera, delivers unmatched creative freedom and flexibility in pure digital quality from acquisition to post production.
Venom FlashPak: lightweight, portable, dockable system
The easy-to-mount Venom FlashPak system creates a complete portable solution for digital cinematography and high-quality HD content origination. When shooting with the Viper camera in FilmStream mode?the highest standard for digital cinematography?each Venom system has a 10-minute capacity; shooting in 4:2:2 HD extends this capacity even further, to 18 minutes. As a solid-state recorder it has no moving parts, making it durable and rugged for production work.
The dockable Venom FlashPak system can also output to a range of devices. Equipped with a Bluetooth interface, it also allows a production assistant to sit on a set and wirelessly create and edit metadata which is recorded and permanently associated with the content. This is an elegant replacement for the conventional paper notes associated with film shoots, which can all too easily become separated from the content to which they refer.
On a typical movie shoot there might be two or three Venom FlashPak systems in use: one in the camera, one ready to replace it, and one writing to the transport medium to be delivered to the post house.
In addition to the Viper camera, the Venom FlashPak system supports the Grass Valley LDK 6000 mk II WorldCam camera. The LDK 6000 is already the market leader in HD production cameras: the addition of the Venom FlashPak system with its 18-minute HD capacity makes it an ideal camcorder for field production for applications, including television episodic and drama series and commercial work.
Pricing and Availability
Pricing for the Grass Valley Venom FlashPak system starts at ?45,000. It is scheduled to be available in July, in time for the 2005 summer production schedules.
About the Viper FilmStream Camera
The Grass Valley Viper FilmStream Camera System is the only digital cinematography camera designed from the ground up to capture every detail needed for brilliant, uncompromised, uncompressed output. With three 9.2 million pixel Frame Transfer CCDs capturing the full 1920X1080 resolution, the camera system delivers an RGB 4:4:4 10-bit log signal uncompromised by electronic camera signal processing?to dockable a field recorder.
About Thomson - Partner to the Media & Entertainment Industries
Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS) provides technology, systems and services to help its Media & Entertainment clients ? content creators, content distributors and users of its technology ? realize their business goals and optimize their performance in a rapidly changing technology environment. The Group intends to become the preferred partner to the Media & Entertainment Industries through its Technicolor, Grass Valley, RCA and Thomson brands.
For more information: www.thomson.net.
Thomson's Systems and Equipment division develops video and film technologies, products and services sold to all major Hollywood studios, all major television, satellite, and cable broadcasters under the Technicolor and Grass Valley brand-names for the delivery of analog and digital entertainment. The division also includes Thomson's Broadband Access Products Business, which develops technologies and products for broadband and telecommunication networks to deliver digital entertainment and data to consumers and businesses.
For information about Grass Valley products from Thomson please visit www.thomsongrassvalley.com.
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