Eric Girard prepares to shoot with one of the Ikegami HDK-77EC cameras.
BOSTON
With a demanding production schedule that includes Division I football, along with both men's and women's hockey and basketball, the new high-definition video control room at Boston College's Conte Forum and Alumni Stadium stays very busy.
WANTED TO GO TAPELESS AND HD
We worked very closely with systems integrator, Little Bay Broadcast, which is based in Madbury, N.H., in designing a facility that could provide an ef-ficient tapeless HD workflow that would allow Boston College Athletics to televise and stream all of the sports activities going on here. The facility was also designed to facilitate feeding live HD video to our giant-screen display boards in Conte Forum .
In addition to tapeless HD workflow efficiency, high-quality HD video acquisition was also a requirement—this is why we chose Ikegami. We purchased an Ikegami GFCam HDS-V10 Flash RAM HD camcorder, along with two Ikegami HDK-77EC native multiformat HD CMOS field cameras. All of these capture superior high-definition video that we use in a several ways.
The two Ikegami HDK-77EC field cameras are used for principal coverage in televising sporting events. The cameras capture video in either 1080i or 720p HD, which is a very convenient feature. Both of the cameras are equipped with nine-inch Ikegami LCD color viewfinders, along with long range Canon 40x telephoto HD zoom lenses with Canon's image stabilization feature. We control the HDK-77ECs with Ikegami CCU-890M camera control units and operate with SMPTE fiber.
Our Ikegami GFCam HDS-V10 Flash RAM HD camcorder is used as a portable ENG-style camera for shooting games, and is connected to the new con-trol room with a Telecast Fiber Systems fiber optic extension. It's also used as a standalone tapeless camcorder when we need to record interviews with coaches and players. These interviews are streamed via the Internet. The GFCam is a broadcast-quality three-CCD HD camcorder that uses GFPak Flash RAM media, which can be used over and over again, so you don't have to keep buying more tape. The camera also has such features as Retro Loop to ensure that you'll never miss a shot because the camera operator wasn't ready or the tape cassette ran out. There's also a time-lapse recording feature available.
MANY BENEFITS WITH TAPELESS OPERATION
We've found that being tapeless is a great convenience, as it allows us to instantly input and edit high-definition video, rather than having to deal with all of the rewinding and fast-forwarding of multiple tapes to find the shots that we needed in putting together a program. Operating in a tapeless envi-ronment also helps us organize our archiving system.
Along with the cameras, we also equipped our facility with two Ikegami HD LCD monitors—the HLM-2400 and the HLM-2450W. With Ikegami, we're confident that we have the best equipment available for producing college sports television in high definition, in terms of quality and flexibility. Our new HD capabilities here at the Boston College Athletics facility are unique among colleges in this region.
Eric Girard is Assistant Director of Multimedia Services at Boston College Athletics. He may be contacted atgirarder@bc.edu.
For additional information, contact Ikegami at 201-368-9171 or visitwww.ikegami.com.
