Those boys and girls who trot out with their own video equipment for the UK Channel 1 cable television channel, setting the camera up on a tripod and leaving it on automatic while they trot round the front to deliver a piece to camera, will find life a whole lot less arduous if they can persuade their employers to equip them with a new digital video system for professional news gathering and editing to be launched in Japan in November by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd. The system uses quarter inch digital tape, yielding a cassette that is six times lighter than existing half-inch analogue cassettes, while the recording time is twice as long. The new video camera will be priced at $20,000, with video editing equipment at $25,000. In 1996 Matsushita pla ns to start marketing portable video tape recorders, compact video cameras and laptop-size video-editing equipment to the new format. And Matsushita has also launched a digital camcorder to the new Standard Definition format adhered to by Sony Corp in the story above. The NV-DJ1 is available in Japan on September 1 at $2,7500, and in North America by year-end. The camera has a photo-shot function so users with appropriate equipment can print still pictures from the recorded video images.
