At their annual NAB press event, Avid ( www.avid.com) introduced DNxHD, a new encoding technology that allows users to work collaboratively with 10-bit uncompressed HD files with the same storage bandwidth and capacity requirements as SD files. In essence, a film project that might have taken up a terabyte of storage would now require 120GB of space. The company plans on incorporating DNxHD technology across its product line up and will also make it available for license free of charge through its Web site.
Avid also introduced an all-in-one production package designed for pros working with DV footage. The Avid Xpress Studio package includes the Xpress Pro NLE application, along with Avid FX for titles, Pro Tools LE for audio editing, Avid 3D for animation and Avid DVD by Sonic for DVD authoring. The package is priced at $3,995.