Creative Group, a post-production facility based in New York City, is using the JVC SR-HD1500 Blu-ray and HDD combo recorder to produce HD dubs of projects for its clients.
Nick LaBorne, chief engineer, said the ability to produce Blu-ray dubs is important for screening purposes. Creative Group has three locations in the United States and one in China. The main facility in Times Square features 28 HD edit rooms and four surround-sound audio mixing suites, as well as transmission and distribution facilities, broadcast design services, and more. Its largest client is ESPN, but the company services a variety of broadcast, cable and industrial accounts.
With a built-in 500GB hard drive, the SR-HD1500 features FireWire (i.Link), composite/S-Video, USB, and SDHC card inputs, as well as HDMI and component output and a RS-232C terminal for external control. Creative Group, which uses HD-SDI with embedded audio throughout its facility, uses the SR-HD1500 Blu-ray and HDD combo decks in tandem with an Edirol VC-50HD HD-SDI video field converter.
According to Bruce Adams, operations supervisor, the deck is being used daily to produce a Blu-ray copy of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” The workflow is straightforward: The episode is copied from the HDCAM 1080i master tape to the SR-HD1500’s hard drive and then recorded to a Blu-ray disc.
Creative Group purchased two SR-HD1500 decks through Excel Media Systems in New York City last month, and is already considering investing in more units. The deck can create professional BDMV (with menu) or BDAV discs, and can author discs with auto-start or repeat playback functionality.
