San Diego's ABC affiliate, KGTV, is transitioning to a one-person digital correspondent news crew operation, and as part of the transition is upgrading to Panasonic AG-HVX200 DVCPRO HD P2 camcorders.

The station will purchase 16 camcorders and five AJ-PCD20 5-slot P2 drives.

"Our main objective is to get more coverage in the field," said Michael Walborn, KGTV's assistant chief engineer. "Moving to a video journalist style of reporting enables our teams to cover more ground. A two-person crew can only be at one place at a time. Instead of having two people on a given scene, you can split up the crew and capture more stories or get different angles of the same story, such as different interviews or B-roll shots."

Walborn added that one of the factors in selecting the Panasonic camcorder was its small size and low profile.

Each video journalist is provided with an HVX300, three 8 GB P2 cards and an Apple MacBook Pro laptop computer. Captured footage is edited with Final Cut Pro and converted to a QuickTime movie file for transport to the station's Grass Valley News edit system.