LOS ANGELES - Endemol USA, the producer of reality shows such as
Deal or No Deal, Extreme
Makeover: Home Edition, Big
Brother and Fear Factor, used Sony’s XDCAM HD Professional Disc system as
the originating format for ABC’s short-lived series, The One: Making
a Music Star.
Endemol USA first used the Sony
optical workflow with the standard definition version of the XDCAM system on Extreme
Makeover: Home Edition. The decision to use
the HD version on The One was in
part a response to the network’s demand for more HD programming.
The company used Sony’s
PDW-F350 HD camcorders and PDW-F70 decks on the show, which tracked the lives
of contestants as they attend a music academy that turns aspiring singers into
music stars.
Brad Bishop, the executive in
charge of production for Endemol USA worked closely with Wexler Video and Chris
Thompson, its president and CEO, to select the XDCAM HD technology for the
show. The Burbank, CA-based equipment rental and sales company has been working
with XDCAM technology since it was introduced in 2004, and Wexler recently
purchased a large quantity of the new PDW-F350 XDCAM HD camcorders.
When Bishop asked Thompson how
to best meet ABC’s request that The One
be produced in HD while remaining within the bounds of SD production budgets,
he recommended the XDCAM HD system.
“This camcorder changes the
economics of professional-grade HD production, allowing our customers to meet
the growing demand from the networks for HD programming,” Thompson says. “A pro-sized
camera body with real HD lenses at its price opens the door to phenomenal
workflow gains.”
Key to the show’s production
plans was using the camcorder’s wireless capabilities. During the recording
process, the camcorder automatically generated a timecode accurate 2Mbps MPEG-4
proxy that was captured to the Sony Professional Disc optical media. In
addition, the high-resolution proxy material was transmitted via wireless
microwave links and used as a reference for making edit decision lists. Edits
were carried out without the need to ingest the high-resolution video.
XDCAM HD products record 1080i
video in three data recording rates: 25 Mbps, 35 Mbps and 18 Mbps. The system
records high-definition content to Sony’s existing Professional Disc single-layer
media using an HD MPEG-2 Long GOP video compression codec.
Based on blue-laser technology,
the XDCAM system’s Professional Disc media offers unique benefits in terms of
split-second random access to footage in the field or during the post process,
and multi-format flexibility and flexible record times.