Media 100 Inc. will demo a new Mac OS X-based HD/SD editing system at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) event, which will be held April 7-10 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dubbed Media 100 iHD and due before the end of the year, the system will incorporate new HDX Technology that features 10-bit uncompressed HD and SD I/O and real-time, broadcast-quality format conversion between HD and SD formats.
With HDX, Media 100 iHD is the first system of its kind to support resolution independent mixing and matching of HD and SD source material in the same timeline, plus 10-bit uncompressed native HD editing, according to Mike Savello, vice president of dual stream systems at Media 100. Final pricing hasn’t been set, but it’s expected to be around US$9,995 for Media 100 iHD software and hardware. Complete Media 100 iHD system configurations, including a workstation and high-speed media storage, are expected to start at approximately $20,000.
Media 100 iHD incorporates the Media 100 i software, a combination of hardware and software that turns a Power Mac G4 into a streaming media production system. Available in a variety of configurations, the Media 100i system is offered specifically to provide interactive streaming content for Web site production.
The HDX Technology that gives Media 100 iHD its HD/SD power includes a HDX PCI card supporting 10-bit uncompressed input and output of all the HD and SD digital television formats defined by SMPTE 292M and SMPTE 259M.
Broadcast format conversion enables Media 100 iHD to convert from any HD format to any HD format, from any SD format to any HD format, and from any HD format to any SD format, all in real-time. This means that users can master to any HD or SD format, regardless of the source format, according to Savello. Also, broadcast format conversion lets them mix and match HD and SD source material in a single timeline.
Starting with 10-bit quantization, HDX Technology employs high-precision digital signal processing throughout and employs real-time algorithms to offer real-time motion-adaptive de-interlacing with edge detection that reduces temporal artifacts when converting interlaced source material to progressive frames; real-time 3:2 pulldown processing that supports film-originated source material; and real-time cropping, scaling and letterboxing that allows users to convert between images of 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios.