Apple & Panasonic Announce FireWire In Professional Tape Decks, Support For 24 FPS Mini-DV Camcorder

by , 3:00 PM EDT, April 8th, 2002

Apple and Panasonic have jointly announced two important announcements at NAB for the Mac platform as a DV editing platform. First up is built in FireWire in two of Panasonic's professional tape decks, the DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO HD. Panasonic also announced the AG-DVX100 24P mini-DV camcorder, which the company is touting as the first mini-DV camcorder capable of shooting at 24 frames per second. Apple's part of that announcement is that support for the new camera will be added to a "future release" of Final Cut Pro. From the two companies:

Panasonic and Apple® today announced at NAB they are collaborating on two important technologies for the professional video industry: the addition of FireWire® to upcoming Panasonic DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO HD tape decks; and support for Panasonic's new AG-DVX100 24P mini-DV camcorder in a future version of Final Cut Pro®, Apple's professional non-linear editing application.

"Panasonic's DVCPRO and High Definition tools are leading the industry in technology innovation, and we're pleased that we share a similar vision for the professional video market with one of the most innovative hardware and software companies in the world," said Stuart English, vice president of Marketing, Panasonic Broadcast. "We are delighted to have Apple add support for our revolutionary new 24 frames-per-second DV camcorder to their immensely popular Final Cut Pro software, and we look forward to bringing FireWire to our next-generation VTRs."

FireWire, also known as industry standard IEEE 1394, is an Apple-invented technology that provides high-speed serial input/output for connecting devices such as digital camcorders to desktop and portable computers. Panasonic will be adding FireWire to upcoming DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO HD VTRs, making them the world's first tape decks to support full ITU-601 digital 4:2:2 quality video at 50Mbps, and High Definition video at 100Mbps data rates over FireWire. The addition of FireWire to the VTRs eliminates the need to add a specialized PCI capture card in the computer, as well as the need to decompress the video prior to transfer.

Panasonic's new AG-DVX100 24P mini-DV camcorder was announced today at NAB, and Apple has committed to supporting it in a future version of Final Cut Pro. This integration will allow video professionals to acquire, digitally transfer via high speed FireWire, and edit content in Final Cut Pro at the camcorder's native 24 frames-per-second, 480-line progressive-scan resolution.

The AG-DVX100 is the world's first mini-DV format camcorder to capture 24-frames-per-second digital video, which more closely approximates the look of film. The AG-DVX100 is equipped with three newly-developed 1/3-inch, 410,000-pixel progressive-scan CCDs that allow the camcorder to capture high-sensitivity images in both standard 60-field-per-second interlace scan (NTSC) and 24-frames-per-second progressive scan.

There are as yet no specifics on when these developments will be released to the marketplace.

The Mac Observer Spin:

There is more of interest in this press release than the cool new developments for the DV world. Note that Apple and Panasonic Broadcast (the specific division of Panasonic involved in this announcement) were working together. More specifically, both companies are giving something to each other, and that shows us that Apple is growing in importance to this industry. This is not only important to growing the Mac platform, it is very important to Apple's bottom line. There is a lot of money in the film and broadcast markets, and Apple is steadily improving its position, and its share of the money, in those markets.

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