Rejoice all ye slaves to editing studios and mixing machines, the days of being chained to the desk and lugging tapes around are about to end. Thomson Grass Valley's Turbo iDDR (intelligent digital disk recorder) cuts all the extra work and makes recordings, playouts and management of professional audio / video (ProAV) content easy and integrated.

This one-stop solution has been designed specifically for event, corporate, institutional and worship production, leveraging the digital storage, networking and clip-creation capabilities of Grass Valley line of video servers.

The product is being marketed by Tata Elxsi and is part of the Grass Valley ProLine, a range of products that provide a complete acquisition-to-production workflow for ProAV applications.

"We believe that IT-based devices, such as the Turbo iDDR and the innovative acquisition and production products we'll bring to the market later this year, will bring significant workflow efficiencies and open up even more creative freedom for customers," says Marc Valentin, president of the Grass Valley business within Thomson.

The modestly priced Turbo iDDR is smaller than a typical broadcast tape deck at three RU high, can hold 10 to 40 hours of storage and perform the work of up to three video tape recorders (VTRs). It can also capture and deliver complex content in multiple formats, including compressed high-definition video.

Commenting on its usefulness, Kayye Consulting head Gary Kayye says: "The Turbo iDDR delivers remarkable workflow benefits for professional presentations, allowing materials in multiple formats to be held in a single device, ready to be played out at a moment's notice."

Users can control all its features via a touch-screen interface or with a keyboard, monitor and mouse, and can operate and monitor the iDDR using popular control systems such as those from AMX and Crestron.

It is perfect for today's ProAV workflows and forms the heart of a tape-free presentation and media-delivery network. For mobile productions, it is similarly flexible — production personnel can load playback content during pre-production then carry it to a venue or transfer material to the iDDR using various transportable media devices.

"This product is a boon not only to advertising agencies, event management companies and broadcasters but this can complement corporate houses in the area of corporate communications and business / video presentation," adds Tata Elxsi general manager and head of system integration division MM Prasad. "The product also serves web server preparation and records video through broadband and then transcodes the clips into WMV at low bit rates for web streaming."

In the case of media centres, users can easily integrate the Turbo system with non-linear editors and off-the-shelf network-attached storage (NAS) systems using economical high-speed networking.

With the help of the iDDR, users can react to changes in an event's structure as they happen, playing video clips as soon as the speaker calls for them. Recordings can also be done while playing to capture an entire event and / or repeat key messages during a presentation.

With import and export capabilities, the Turbo iDDR supports Macintosh and PC-based content, including QuickTime files; Windows Media Video files, including WMV HD; and MPEG-2 and a number of still graphic formats. It also offers standard connectivity technologies, including DVI outputs and gigabit ethernet topologies.

The Turbo iDDR leverages computer- / video-centric components such as IEEE 1394 FireWire-based camcorders, VTRs and disk drives, and conventional removable media such as CD-ROM and DVD drives, USB memory sticks and external USB devices.

It also supports high-definition video via file transfers including HDV via FireWire (IEEE 1394), as well as standard definition (SD) video, and the ability to play SD and HD material seamlessly on the same channel. iDDR provides output channel visual consistency via selectable aspect-ratio conversion and scaling technology.

So the next time you want something that will take care of all the small, troublesome details while recording, just load up this nifty stand-alone box and sit back while the iDDR does all the work.