Ada's real-time features make it highly suited for computers and television. Ada's Calendar package and Delay statement allow easy and portable control of timing. Juggling all these without any tasking leads to complex, fragile designs.
Ada tasks simplify the design, and they are portable.
Using modern video compression chips and very fast multi-gigabyte disks, it is possible to copy tapes to disk, edit them with the random access speed of a disk, and then copy the result back to video tape. Such hardware is still beyond the reach of most small video houses, not to mention consumers. Once captured, the tape can be edited at disk speeds to produce an edit decision list, which is simply a list of the shots the user wants on the edited tape, in the order he wants them. Each shot has a short description and a starting and ending position on the original master tape. The CRT during editing shows two TV sets, two remote control pads, and two pads of yellow ruled paper.