Thomson showcased its digital media camcorder with Grass Valley's Infinity brand, a product aimed at revolutionizing ENG and EFP workflows. The next-generation acquisition system offers agility in HD and SD, selection of compression formats, support for multiple types of removable media, and immediacy in its integration into IT-centric workflows.
The Infinity offers selectable high-definition and standard-definition video formats (SD and HD, 1080i50/60, 720p50/60, 625i50 and 525i60), and 14-bit digital signal processing. Users can encode video such as DV25 (compatible with DVCam and DVCPRO), MPEG-2 for SD or HD, or the JPEG 2000 intraframe compression scheme.
The Infinity camera also offers USB and FireWire ports to connect standard IT peripherals and a Gigabit Ethernet port for transferring files to a storage and post-production network, while the camera continues to record.
To meet the migration needs of broadcasters –from video-focused to information technology-focused infrastructures--, the camera features SDI, HD-SDI and analog composite video I/O interfaces. The camera supports Iomega REV PRO discs and CompactFlash media. The REV PRO disc, the proven professional extension for Iomega's REV format, was developed in conjunction with Grass Valley to deliver professional video performance to consumer-grade media and equipment. A REV PRO disc can store more than two hours of SD or about 45 minutes of high-quality HD video. The camera also offers professional-grade CompactFlash card slots; both REV disks and Compact Flash cards are standard items widely available worldwide in the IT industry, as opposed to closed formats with corresponding high prices.
The price of Grass Valley's Infinity digital media camcorder will be less than $20,000 and shipments are expected during the first quarter of 2006. Grass Valley also launched the Infinity Recorder at IBC 2005, a VTR-like device capable of reading, writing and sharing on network on standard REV PRO and Compact Flash media. Other products will be added to the Infinity family in the coming months.
