In 1996, when Casablanca made its debut, the marketplace for video editing products was revolutionised drastically and long-term. Casablanca made it possible for any dedicated videographer to enter the world of digital editing ­ at a high quality and with an ingeniously easy user concept.

 

Since then, many new Casablanca models and options have been released. The system has established itself firmly in the video scene which would simply no longer be the same without it. Casablanca users have organised themselves in clubs, they meet at the traditional, annual MacroSystem conventions in spring or at the Photokina/IFA in autumn. A considerable portion of all video editors swear by Casablanca.

There has been once disadvantage though:
Editing with Casablanca was easier and often better then the competition but it came at a price. The system, developed and produced completely in Germany, has been somewhat more expensive than many competing PC products.

The brand new CLARO model puts an end to this. The price has been reduced to €999 (recommended European retail price) ­ and that’s including a DV port and DVD writer! Despite this, CLARO is clearly a German manufactured Casablanca system. SMART EDIT 4 runs flawlessly fast, all options are available *) and even the demo mode (for unlicensed software options) works just like on the `bigger´ Casablancas. And there’ even one particular highlight: Casablanca CLARO comes with an integrated card reader which supports all relevant storage cards used by digital photo cameras.

Moreover, with CLARO it is possible to edit completely on a VGA monitor. To date, using a high-resolution, flicker-free monitor was only possible in combination with a TV monitor. CLARO supports either TV or VGA. (Of course, the VGA screen used can be a flatscreen LCV monitor.)

There’s one limitation however: As Firewire (MiniDV) is the standard today, CLARO has no connections for analogue video sources ­ the unit is a true digital video specialist. If you need to make use of analogue video sources, simply do this via the analogue inputs of your existing DV equipment. Many current DV recorders and camcorders can be used as a converter (CVBS or YC to DV (iLink, FireWire)).

CLARO is shipped with a 120 GB hard-drive and 256 MB RAM.