Challenge
In the increasingly competitive news industry, time to air is crucial. With the pressure to grow market share and foster a loyal viewing audience, local news stations are looking to new technology and workflow solutions to help them be first with breaking news stories and quickly and cost-effectively deliver a wide range of premium content.

For WDAY and WDAZ, ABC affiliates based in Fargo and Grand Forks, North Dakota, a tape-based workflow created added work in getting the final products to air—not to mention the burden of purchasing, managing, and archiving tapes. As Jeff Nelson, news director at WDAY, explained, “We were spending approximately $16,000 a year on tape at WDAY. And storing all this tape was taking up considerable space at the station. We wanted to find a better way to handle our production and postproduction workflow.”

Solution
To improve their workflow, WDAY and WDAZ selected the FS-4 Portable DTE Recorder from Focus Enhancements, and rolled out 35 units across the two stations. Based on Focus Direct To Edit® technology, the FS-4 records DV and HDV streams directly to disk via FireWire. Videographers can record in edit-ready QuickTime, Avid DV-OMF, and other native NLE formats—eliminating the time-consuming steps of capturing tape and converting footage. By eliminating these intermediate steps, the FS-4 takes users from acquisition to editing with unparalleled speed and efficiency. read more...