Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. is making turn-around DVD creation a snap for post-production house Visual Image and its customers with its new Pro DVD-Video Recorder, the PRV-9000. With DVD increasingly the medium of choice for the business world and households, Visual Image, a post-production house in Hollywood, Calif., was constantly being asked to create DVDs quickly. Until now, the post-production facility could not provide quick turnaround service. With Pioneer's PRV-9000 Pro DVD-Video recorder Visual Image now has the capability to create DVDs quickly and affordably, much to the delight of their customers.

"Producers, directors, commercial photographers, advertising agencies and even general consumers really want to be able to receive a DVD to give to clients as a demo and/or take home," said Steve Goodwin, XXX of Visual Image. "Thanks to Pioneer's PRV-9000 we can now tell our clients 'You don't have to tape it anymore - you can DVD it!' With the PRV-9000 we are able to create cost effective and high quality DVD discs so most customers take us up on the offer."

Visual Image can easily and quickly create high quality DVD-Video discs using Pioneer's stand-alone self-contained desktop unit. The PRV-9000 will record on DVD-R (write-once) and DVD-RW (re-writable) discs with the press of a single button in real time. The PRV-9000 offers DV (IEEE-1394), S-Video and Composite video inputs, allowing Visual Image to choose from multiple recording sources. This versatility allows Visual Image to record content from sources including Avid Media Composer (via connection to a digital to analog converter for direct recording onto the PRV-9000), Digital Betacam deck, Betacam SP deck, Mini DV deck, DV Camera and 1", 3/4", and 1/2" VHS decks.

With a wide range of clients to satisfy, Visual Image needed to assure that clients go home with discs compatible for playback on nearly any DVD-Video player or properly-equipped computer on the market. To find out, Visual Image tested the playback compatibility of DVD-R discs created using Pioneer's PRV-9000 on a number of different models and brands of DVD-Video players. The company chose the PRV-9000 after finding that nearly all brands and models tested played the DVD-R discs created on the Pioneer recorder.

"Pioneer's Business Solutions Division continues to develop DVD devices that address the needs of professionals," said Linda Toleno, vice president of industrial video sales and marketing for the Business Solutions Division of Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. "The PRV-9000 answers those needs for companies like Visual Image and their clients. The need to quickly deliver high quality DVD-Video discs without any technical obstacles or lengthy editing processes was there and the new PRV-9000 recorder met it head on."

Pioneer's PRV-9000 Pro DVD-Video player allows Visual Image clients including the Telluride Film Festival, directors, advertising agencies and others to deliver DVD demo discs, promotional materials, rough cut reels and more to clients quickly and cost effectively. Clients can opt to have more than one title on each DVD, an easy choice with the PRV-9000 that allows Visual Image to create titles any time a new recording session is started. When played on a DVD-Video player, users can then access the specific titles that they need quickly.

Visual Image is also using Pioneer's DVD-R, for general use, (MSRP $5.99) and DVD-RW (MSRP $9.99) media for the recordings. The post-production house tested a number of recordable discs and chose Pioneer after testing for recording and picture quality. In addition, Pioneer DVD media has a long life span, which insures valuable content will stay intact for many years to come.