Victory Studios (formerly American Production Services) was the first post house in the U.S. to offer high-definition editing with the Sony HDCAM format and today provides a full range of HD services, including camera and studio rentals, color correction and film transfer, motion graphics and animationand full-service audio with 5.1 surround mixing.

Q: What HD editing system do you use most often?
A: We specialize in Sony 1080 (HDCAM) and have had great success with both workflow and reliability. We also edit in 720 and HDV formats. The majority of the time, I edit on Avid DS Nitris, but Victory Studios also has Avid Symphony Nitris, Avid Adrenaline HD and Avid Media Composer systems, as well as Final Cut Pro HD and both SD and HD linear edit systems. The DS Nitris is generally used either as a compositing tool or as an HD conforming system (or both).

Speaking from the experience of working as a freelancer throughout the U.S. and as a staff editor in LA and Seattle, the DS Nitris was the first stable system that could actually handle a 1080 HD workflow. That stability still makes it a standout system today.

Q: Why not move to a more affordable HDV camera, as opposed to the XDCAM HD camcorder?
A: It goes back to wanting to move away from videotape. There are so many things that can go wrong with tape-dropouts, failing tape heads and whatever. I could have gone with the Panasonic P2 solid-state camera, but I sometimes have to record an hour of continuous footage. That gets expensive with P2 cards. The XDCAM camcorder allows me to record 90 minutes in HDV mode.