Post Production in a Multi-format Environment

The introduction of broadcast digital television (DTV) was, at one time, seen as an opportunity to rationalise video formats. The reality is quite different with a rapid divergence as the united States' ATSC offers 18 formats to cover both standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD), and yet more are supported by Europe's DVB. At the same time multi-media is expanding both as an area for source material and for finished work. Post production needs to move away from single-format facilities as requirements for multi-format operation is already increasing. A 'format-independent' solution is described which allows efficient operation with any mix of input formats and able to output any format with high quality. Attention is given to retaining the speed, accuracy and immediacy which is a feature of today's professional facilities -even while handling the greater demands of HD. Another route, using 24 frames-per-second is also examined.