Montreal: A leader in the digital offline editing market, Lightworks is introducing its v.i.p. system to compete in the online editing and post-production sector, says OLE Canada president Mark Pounds, exclusive Canadian distributor of the system.

The v.i.p., built by u.s. broadcast engineering and post-production manufacturer Tektronix, will be marketed as a complement/ replacement for the traditional digital or analog tape-to-tape suite, and is a direct product development of Tektronix’s mid-1995 takeover of the smaller British editing systems company.

v.i.p. will be officially launched in Amsterdam Sept. 12-16 at the International Broadcast Convention and will be available in Canada by year’s end.

Pounds says the broadcast-quality v.i.p. system can be integrated with existing online systems, combining Lightworks’ film-friendly interface with the boosted capacity of the latest generation Tektronix Profile disc recorder.

The unit features up to four independent channels of video and 16 channels of sound. ‘Essentially, it replaces four digital Betacams,’ says Pounds.

‘The v.i.p. has four input (and output) channels. But instead of going to one vtr and one recorder you can put in four cassettes simultaneously and simultaneously record four channels into the machine. And when you’re done (recording), you are done (auto-conforming).’

One of six existing v.i.p. Beta systems will be demonstrated by ole at a customer site in the weeks ahead, adds Pounds.

FAME, The DAD

ole has another product launch set – this time at Showbiz Expo, running Sept. 7-8 in Toronto.

The Fairlight fame digital mixing/editing system combines a 24-track disc recorder and amek mixing console surface.

Pounds says high-end commercials and tv are the most suitable applications, with the unit price in the $250,000 range.

‘The other thing we have (that’s new) from Fairlight is a dubber known as ‘The dad’ (Digital Audio Dubber).’

The unit will be pitched as a replacement for traditional outsized 48-track, magnetic-tape machines observed in film-mixing studios.

In other audio developments, Pounds says o.l