CNC Cologne News Corporation completes migration to Sony XDCAM HD

A wide range of TV productions, including the regional news magazine RTL WEST, as well as the corporate productions created by CNC, now benefit from a fully integrated XDCAM HD 422 workflow. “As one of the first service providers for TV broadcasters in Germany, we’ve been investing in XDCAM products for the last 10 years, making us pioneers of the format that is now used as standard for the production of news and TV shows,” said Christoph Langenbach, Chief Technical Officer, CNC. “It was therefore clear we wanted to be able to offer our customers Sony’s new PDW-850 XDCAM HD 422 camcorder as quickly as possible.”

The PDW-850 is the successor to the PDW-700 and was launched at NAB 2014. It boasts a completely re-developed 3 x 2/3-inch CCD sensor. The camera’s portability and low power consumption make it ideal for use in newsgathering as well as in the corporate media sector.

It’s also well suited for the reportage and docutainment formats CNC produces on behalf of the RTL Deutschland media group and for other TV broadcasters. These include magazine features for Punkt 12 (RTL) and the in-house production Trennungskinder (RTL II). In the field of docutainment, the cameras are currently used for Shopping Queen (VOX) and Frauentausch (RTL II). CNC produces both formats for Constantin Entertainment as a technical service provider and sub-contractor.

As a supplement to the seven PDW-850 models, CNC has also invested in four PMW-400K camcorders, each with 3 x 2/3-inch Exmor CMOS sensors providing high-quality Full HD images. The camcorder supports XAVC 10-bit HD 422 recordings, including XAVC IntraFrame 10-bit HD 422 recordings at 100 Mb/s as well as XAVC Long GOP 10-bit HD 422 recordings.

“CNC has produced exclusively in HD for the RTL Deutschland media group since the beginning of the year, in accordance with the group’s requirements,” said Langenbach. “In addition, we have fully migrated ENG technology and post production for the RTL WEST regional news magazine and national newsgathering for the RTL Deutschland media group to XDCAM HD 422. We are very pleased with the seamless workflow and will continue to invest in modern camera technology from Sony in the future.”