Sony has unveiled a number of new products and enhancements, including a firmware update for its Venice camera and FX9 full-frame camcorder; upgrades to its 4K HDR professional monitors; enhanced hybrid asset management that unifies its Ci cloud collaboration and management tools with NavigatorX; and a new Media Analytics Portal.
The firmware update for Venice will be released in November and adds the ability to import a new Advanced Rendering Transform (.art) file, including a new “Technicolor-look library,” a second user frame line and expanded high frame rate (HFR) capabilities.
FX Version 2.0 firmware, available in October, expands shooting capabilities and user operation with the addition of support for 4K 60p/50p recording via oversampling from a 5K cropped area of a 6K full-frame sensor and 16-bit RAW output.
NEWS AND LIVE PRODUCTION
The PXW-Z190 and PXW-Z280 4K handheld compact camcorders will be offered with RTMP/RTMPS FHD streaming capabilities supporting live streaming and content upload to video sharing sites and social media platforms in early 2021.
According to Norbert Paquet, head of product management at Sony Professional Solutions Europe, the PXW-Z190 and PXW-Z280 can be used with either 4G, 5G or WiFi, making them ideal for news and live production.
“The encoding is directly built into the camera,” he tells TVBEurope. “What we have is an interface where you can plug a USB 4G/5G or WiFi dongle directly to RJ 45 cable. That’s what we’ve been working on for future releases, to have the right protocols so that users can stream directly to Facebook or YouTube.
“Particularly if you’re a journalist, usually you might have to go back to a building with a WiFi connection to send back what you’ve filmed, but as this camera has 4G connectivity you can directly send your content back to the broadcast centre or anywhere that’s connected to the way to send your footage.
“It also allows editors to review the content immediately, so they could even be asking the cameraperson on location to film certain shots for B-roll while they’re out in the field. It’s enabling a better communication between the studio and the journalist who is on the ground filming the breaking news.”
THE ACCELERATION OF REMOTE PRODUCTION
In the current pandemic, more news operations – and some entertainment productions – are employing remote production at a faster pace than they had previously. Paquet believes the pandemic will accelerate the adoption and transition of remote production for live events.
“The IABM hosted a webinar at the end of March, where they asked European organisations what impact coronavirus was having in terms of technology investments. The two major areas that have increased in terms of focus and acceleration by more than 60 per cent are digitisation and remote production,” says Paquet.
“We see our customers saying, okay, we had to put this practice in place, it’s not 100 per cent practical in all aspects but we can make it work. I think once we see live sports and events return we’ll get a good idea of how much that transition can be adopted because there will still be the issue of connectivity.
“AT NAB we were going to showcase the latest advances Sony had made in terms of 5G connectivity, which is a big opportunity to unleash a lot of the connectivity issues we see when it comes to the last mile. We believe Sony has an unique position in the media industry, we know how our customers work, their workflows and of course the different solutions from acquisition, Cloud-based processing etc. and also through Sony Mobile. We have a unique position with the knowledge of the workflows and application of the media industry.”
