Canopus / Grass Valley – big things to come! Late last year Canopus was purchased by Thomson/Grass Valley, a global player in the broadcast video market. From the beginning it was clear to us that this was a technology-based acquisition. For years Canopus engineers have been pumping out hardware and software that delivered a level of performance, features and stability that was the best in our industry. Â · Canopus media converters are used at every level of video production, from home users up to cable networks like CNN and local television stations. Â · The Canopus DV CODEC and their new HQ HD CODEC have been recognized for their superior image quality and performance as well. Â · Canopus Edius video editing software has yet to achieve significant market penetration, although it has received very good reviews and users rave about it. Â · The Edius NX hardware was ahead of its time - delivering a level of real-time performance with DV, HDV and DVCPROHD footage that is beyond anything in its price range. Unfortunately what Canopus has lacked over the past few years is a marketing strategy that would leverage their technology and allow them to grab a significant NLE market share. If you are going to compete with the likes of Apple, Avid and Adobe you are going to have to do more than just build better products. You have to position them properly in the marketplace and price them at a level that will attract and keep customers. We had the chance to spend some time with the guys from Grass Valley who will be guiding and leading Canopus USA going forward. We were very impressed with their understanding of Canopus’ strengths and the commitment to dedicate the marketing resources required for re-launching these great products and achieving the market share they deserve.
Canopus Edius Pro 4 Canopus was showing the latest version of Edius, and you can tell from the features they added that they have been listening to their customers. Multi-cam editing, nested timelines, and new keyframable effects such as color correction make Edius a much more professional level NLE. EDIUS Pro 4 provides editors with realtime, mixed format HD/SD editing of HD, HDV, DV, MPEG-2, lossless and uncompressed SD video. The new Edius Speed Encoder accelerates rendering and encoding for HDV output. For the fast-paced environments of broadcast and post production facilities, Grass Valley also offers EDIUS Broadcast. EDIUS Broadcast features EDIUS Pro realtime video editing software, as well as support for industry-standard equipment and formats including: Panasonic DVCPRO P2; Panasonic DVCPRO 50 and DVCPRO HD; Panasonic VariCam; Sony XDCAM Professional Disc System.
Anyone ordering any of our Edius NX bundles will recieve a FREE upgrade to Edius Pro 4 when it ships. 
Grass Valley Rev Pro One of the more interesting new products we saw at the show was the Rev Pro. Basically this is an industrial strength version of the old ZIP drive, configured for video editing and production. The Rev Pro utilizes removable media – small cartridges about the size of a large post it and less than a 1/2 inch thick - packed with 35GB of storage. These cartridges are extremely rugged and they can withstand heat, cold, being dropped and even being run over by a car. Even more important, the Rev Pro drive ($499.95 for external FireWire or USB; $479.95 for internal ATAPI or SATA) provides up to 110 Mb/s sustained throughput – fast enough to edit HD footage directly from it. The Thomson broadcast division was showing a new line of Infinity cameras that record directly to Rev Pro media instead of tape. We’d love to see a version that could connect directly to any of the new HDV / HD camcorders that would allow you to record directly to Rev Pro media as well. We think that for now Rev Pro is a nice archiving solution for digital videographers. At $69.95 for each 35GB cartridge it’s the perfect solution for storing your DV and HDV footage. Not only will it last for over 30 years - you can go back and edit directly from it. This means you won’t have to worry about having to recapture it again years down the road.
Click here for more info and to order Rev Pro
Leave a comment