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It's here: Sony and Panasonic have both announced DVC (digital videocassette) camcorders for the US market; the first unit to ship will probably be Panasonic's PV-DV1000 (see this month's Product Scene for more details). Benefits of the DVC format include high picture resolution, lossless digital dubbing, small size and easy interface with future digital video applications. Price will be steep for consumer, but very inexpensive for professional camcorders.

The first DVC VCRs may be slow in coming--Sony has pushed back original year-end VCR release date until copy protection concerns are resolved. Sony is reportedly working on a system to interface DVC with multimedia PC applications.

Most major camcorder manufacturers (including JVC, GE, Hitachi and others) plan to produce DVC models in the near future. Expect a wide range of DVC products to hit the market within the next year.

On August 3, Sima announced three new videomaking products: the Video Ed/It Digital Mixer (under $700), which features digital chromakey, wipes, fades and clean transitions between video sources; the Voice-activated PC Ed/It II (under $100), which is an upgrade of their PC Ed/It DTV edit controller; and the PC Video Studio (under $200), which bundles a simple stand-alone encoder with Corel Draw on CD-ROM for creating titles and graphics on videotape. All products are now shipping.

Samsung has entered into an agreement with General Instruments to begin development of a new dual-mode video decoder chip. The new chip will be able to decode both MPEG-2 and DigiCipher-II compressed video, and will be used in a wide range of next-generation multimedia systems, including set-top boxes for cable and satellite television, video on demand, Video CD players and digital videodisc players.

Jon Clemens, president of the new consumer electronics research firm Sharp Laboratories of America, says digital video will be high on the list of Sharp's future priorities. "Video is tied to multimedia as well as to high-definition TV and other displays, so we will build a digital video department," Clemens said in a recent interview. The new research firm will engage in cooperative research with other companies, research labs, universities and research personnel.

Other news from Sharp: the people who brought you the ViewCam series of camcorders have developed a new compact LCD panel, the QA-1200. Designed for use with both computer and video sources, the QA-1200 boasts a 1.7 million color TFT LCD display, 640 by 480 resolution and a built-in speaker for multimedia applications. Suggested retail price of the QA-1200 is $3,995.

According to a recent market report, 1/2-inch videotape is still (and will continue to be) far and away the world's leading video storage format. The report predicts that the worldwide consumption of T-120 VHS videotapes will exceed 2.4 billion units this year, and remain above that number through 1999. The study also shows that pre-recorded VHS video programming will total 1.4 billion units this year, with continued growth expected through 1998; new optical disk formats are expected to have relatively little impact on VHS pre-recorded programs until 1999 or later.

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Entry Deadlines
The 14th annual Black Maria Film and Video Festival seeks inventive, incisive, socially responsive and otherwise provocative works of any style and genre. Entrants must submit their works on 1/2-inch videotape or 16mm film no later than November 10; be sure to include the $25 entry fee with your submission. For more info, write Black Maria Festival, c/o Dept. of Media Arts, Jersey City State College, 203 West Side Ave., Jersey City, NJ 07305; or call (201) 200-2043.

Attention video poets: submit your short poetry films and videopoems to the 20th annual Poetry Film/Video Festival, to be held in several sites around the San Francisco Bay area and for the first time at Charles University in Prague. Deadline is midnight, November 1, 1995. For an application, send an SASE to: The Poetry Film Workshop, Fort Mason Cultural Center Bldg. D., San Francisco, CA 94123; or request by E-mail at GAMuse@aol.com.