Avid

Putting together Dish Nation, Twentieth Television’s new syndicated show that features morning DJs in five cities, is an unusual process. Each day, a team of 72 records 71.5 hours of high-def footage from 13 Sony EX3 cameras set up in the radio studios that gets edited and enhanced into a seamless 21-minute episode. Says the show’s EP, Stu Weiss: “Our workflow is one of a kind. We have implemented existing technology in unique ways that may not have been done before. Using the Avid AirSpeed 5000 … we’re able to bypass other ingesting processes and equipment that are normally used.”

It’s selling its struggling consumer business in a series of separate transactions that it says will let it focus on its media enterprise and post production. It also said it will keep its Pro Tools audio processing product line.

Its new Interplay Sphere gives users access to Avid’s Media Composer and NewsCutter video editing software, and through the Internet, can edit footage shot on location along with any media in the newsroom and then upload finished stories back to the newsroom to go to air. For all that’s going on at NAB 2012, click here.

At this year’s NAB Show, a number of vendors including Avid, Chyron, Orad, Vizrt and Pixel Power will be featuring graphic production and playout tools designed or updated to offer TV stations greater ability to share, revise and re-use content. Also in the mix are improved ability to incorporate social media functions, compatibility with third-party applications, virtual studio offerings and broader multichannel capabilities.

That’s good news for broadcasters as the rivalry has yielded numerous new features and capabilities that facilitate the production of news not just for conventional broadcast, but also now for the Web, mobile devices and social media.

Vendors of news production systems, editors, switchers, graphics and lighting will be showing new or upgraded products at the NAB — all with the promise that they will allow broadcasters to produce news more efficiently and distribute it more widely. Here are some of the latest developments from Avid, Grass Valley, Chryon, Sony, Panasonic, Ross Video, EVS, Litepanels and Videssence.

New camcorders, drives, software, ASI modules, lenses and laptops promise to advance the state of the art for newsgathering, editing and archiving at next month’s NAB Show.

Media Composer v5.5, NewsCutter v9.5 and Symphony v5.5, to be available later this quarter, are designed to offer third-party hardware support among other new features.

The company has released new software-only versions of its most popular products in an effort to compete with a number of Macintosh and PC-based vendors that offer less expensive NLE products based on off-the-shelf technology.