*All-digital mobile from RV

Montreal’s Reference Video, together with Sony Canada, has launched what it calls the province’s first all-digital video remote unit. The 33.5-foot digital mobile houses two Sony BVP-900 Digital studio cameras, five Sony BVP-500 FIT Digital hand-held cameras with Sony camera control units and standard and wide lenses available.

The unit has Sony DVW-500 and DVW-A500 digital Betacam recorders, two slo-mo controllers and Sony BVW-75s available. The truck will also have digital effects, graphics and still-store capability with Sony DME 700 DVE, Chyron max character generator and Leitch still file as well as a Sony DVS-7250 digital switcher with 36 inputs. Audio features include Delta 24 Soundcraft audio console.

The truck is used mainly for variety shows where picture quality is important, as well as for sports and news applications. The unit represents an investment of about $3 million.

*MuchPresents @ MSN.com

CityInteractive, the new media division of CHUM Television, has teamed with Microsoft to launch MuchPresents, an online presentation of the music station’s ‘intimate and interactive’ sessions with popular musical acts.

CityInteractive will provide streamed video optimized for the new Windows Media Player and Microsoft’s recently released Internet Explorer 5.0 browser. MuchPresents will be shown Tuesday and Thursday at 9 p.m. on the msn.com Website in the WebEvents section.

The show will draw from MuchMusic’s resources to present the interview/performance pieces from artists like rem, Lenny Kravitz, Barenaked Ladies and so on. Video highlights from long-running chum music magazine show The New Music will also be featured on msn.com.

*New Action at DPS

Toronto-based Digital Processing Systems has released Video Action 6.3, the newest version of the company’s nonlinear editing software for the DPS Perception rt and RT3DX realtime nonlinear editing systems.

The software, bundled with Perception rt and RT3DX hardware, has the capacity for complex tasks such as applying color correction and slow motion to two streams of transitioning video while adding a tumbling graphic, all in realtime.

Some of the new features of Video Action 6.3 include multipass mixing, facilitating the creation of multilayered 2D and 3D effects using hardware-accelerated rendering, and render bank technology, providing editors the ability to play with rendered effects sequences, moving clips within the rendered sequence without having to re-render any of the effects.

The software upgrade also provides Playback Optimization, allowing realtime dual-stream playback with data rates up to 15MB/s per video stream with only two AV drives and Drag/Drop/Replace.

*HDTV spark from Sierra

Nevada’s Sierra Design Labs has announced the launch of a new hdtv spark for Discreet Logic systems. The hdtv spark allows realtime hd to be captured and played out from Sierra HD1.5Plus high-definition digital disc recorder, managing the up- and downloads into Discreet’s storage arrays for Fire, Inferno and Flame editing and compositing systems.

The spark was developed together with Discreet, and with the HD1.5Plus allows a direct route for hd video into and out of the systems.

With the spark, hdtv material is transferred from the component HD 1920×1080 signal to Discreet format rgb clip files for use in Fire, Flame and Inferno. A component level spark works within Discreet programs and a frame-store-level spark can be run as a background task from a command line.

The HD 5.1Plus supplies video interfaces for all the current dtv and hdtv resolutions including multiple streams of sdtv and progressive scan formats including 24 frame.

*New from SunUp

San Jose-based SunUp Digital Systems will introduce a version of its multichannel digital operating software for the broadcast tv market at this month’s nab show in Las Vegas. SunUp’s system is currently used in two-thirds of the world’s dth satellite services.

The company’s TCS Operating System for digital broadcast tv is being touted as a significant technology for broadcast tv’s digital transition and provides bandwidth management, work-flow synchronization and back-end reporting.

*Enhanced performance from SGI

Silicon Graphics has announced full support across its new lines for Intel’s Pentium III Xeon processors, which will drive sgi’s recently released 540 visual workstations. The SGI 540 will support up to four Intel Pentium III Xeon 500MHz processors and the 550MHz processors when they become available later this year.

sgi says the new processors will provide enhanced performance for the 540 workstation in the form of more than 70 new instructions, incorporating streaming single-instruction, multiple-data operations to optimize performance for 3D graphics, video and audio.

Configured with the new 500MHz processor, the sgi 540 is priced starting at $11,348 and the system is shipping in the second quarter of 1999.

*Avid expands NewsCutter line

With the NewsCutter Cuts Model, Avid Technology has added a new product to its NewsCutter line of digital editing gear for broadcast news production.

The Avid NewsCutter Cuts Model, a pared-down version of the NewsCutter Effects Model, is a dv-native digital non-linear editing system for broadcast news, designed to replace traditional two-tape deck editing suites.

The nt-based system is made for editing cuts-only news stories and includes motion effects and audio capabilities for advanced editing requirements. The NewsCutter Cuts Model is compatible with the Tektronix Profile Video Server and with the NewsCutter Effects Model.

The system is priced at about $49,000.