A new software based standards converter set to be launched at NAB by Digital Vision will enable post facilities and broadcasters to deliver high quality masters in any format.

Available initially as a software option to Film Master and Nucoda HD or SD, the thus-far un-named product will allow standards conversion to become part of the software mastering process rather than an operation performed on ingest or delivery, saving time and reducing infrastructure cost.

It will be unveiled for the first time at NAB in Las Vegas.

Digital Vision president and chief operating officer Simon Cuff told Broadcast: "Until now if you wanted to do high-quality standards conversion you had to go with a hardware product. This is higher quality than any hardware standards converter out there but it's actually reasonably fast - real-time HD, quarter speed HD. That allows you to convert anything to anything."

Cuff said that he expected there to be quite a big demand from both the post and broadcast markets.

"Look at channels like Discovery, they've got 70 simultaneous channels at anyone time all using different formats," he said. "Our product line fits more into post than broadcast as its more about the creative side than the automation side but we're also looking to partner with some broadcast companies in order to get the technology into automation infrastructures."

Cuff noted that the Olympics in Beijing is driving the demand for standards conversion. Especially as different continent are adopting a different HD transmission and camera system standards.

He said "The Chinese Olympics are driving demand for our hardware standards converter that is already out there. Because there will be so many events going on simultaneously we've got lots of broadcasters coming to us and saying 'well I need like need ten or twelve at any one time as I might have that many different feeds coming from the Olympics.'"

The software standards converter will fit in the mastering department of facilities and broadcasters. It will also allow content owners with a lot of archive to re-purpose "digitally automatically."

"There are people wanting to get all their shows from digibeta or betacam and put them onto a VoD service or pay-per-view and they want to do this in a cost effective manner," he said.

The product's name, pricing and availability will be announced at NAB. Broadcast understands that it will have a retail list price, excluding workstations, of somewhere around $50,000.

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