Sony Professional has announced the launch of the new NXCAM family brand representing the professional implementation of AVCHD technology. Designed to bring the benefits of seamless and easy-to-use production workflow to professionals and semi professionals, the NXCAM family will be the ideal solution in terms of image quality, usability and price.

AVCHD has been widely and rapidly adopted in the Sony consumer sector of the camcorder market and now, with further developments in non-linear editing tools and IT products, Sony will provide products for the entry-level professional videographer based on this file-based MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Long-GOP image compression.

"Sony has gained great momentum in the broadcast file-based camcorder market with the XDCAM EX range complementing developments with the existing HDV range migrating to a hybrid file-based/tape format," said Bill Drummond, senior product marketing manager, Sony Europe. "Building on this success, now is the right time to productise an entry-level memory based camcorder utilising the latest AVCHD technology with low-cost consumer memory cards. Coupled with the latest innovations in lens and sensor design, this will offer outstanding picture performance to professional markets such as event videography or corporate video production."

At Sony's forthcoming Power of Images event in London (25 & 26 November), Sony will demonstrate a prototype camcorder to showcase tentative product features. This will be a 3 x 1/3 inch Exmor CMOS camcorder with ClearVid array utilising the ‘G' series 20x zoom lens first seen on the HVR-Z5E. The camcorder will record AVCHD up to 24Mbps 1920x1080 high definition images with both interlace and progressive modes along with 720/50p and MPEG-2 SD for PAL recording. It will also feature 2 channel linear PCM audio capabilities.

It will use Memory Stick Pro Duo recording media along with an optional 128GB Flash Memory Unit for hybrid recording.

www.sonybiz.net