KUTV, the CBS affiliate for Salt Lake City, has transitioned to HD ENG with its recent purchase of 16 JVC ProHD GY-HM700 camcorders with Fujinon TH17x5BRM lenses.
A Four Points Media Group station managed by Nexstar Broadcasting Group, KUTV has replaced its Panasonic DVCPRO tape-based units with the new JVC ProHD solid-state recording camcorders for ENG acquisition.
Like many other broadcasters, KUTV is taking a staggered approach to implementing local HD news. KUTV went HD in 2008, but only recently made the move to HD ENG. The station received its new JVC ProHD camcorders in early December 2009 and began using the cameras exclusively in January 2010.
The move to the new camcorders will reduce maintenance and repair expenses by 30 percent, according to an estimate from Donovan Reese, KUTV director of engineering. “Not only have we eliminated the high costs associated with maintaining our older equipment,” he said, “but there are no moving parts for recording on the new GY-HM700 camcorders. That means no tape head issues on cameras or playback decks.”
With its dual-card-slot design, the GY-HM700 records to non-proprietary SDHC solid-state media cards. Staying away from proprietary media has helped KUTV keep costs down. SDHC cards were inexpensive enough to allow Reese to allocate seven 16GB cards to each camcorder, which provide enough storage for the station’s videographers.
KUTV’s newsroom is built around Apple Final Cut Pro edit suites, so the GY-HM700’s ability to record native MOV files allows station personnel to begin editing immediately, without waiting to ingest or transcode footage.
The new JVC camcorders are also part of an overall station migration to a file-based workflow. KUTV has already installed a 34TB Omneon MediaGrid shared-storage system, and Reese said it will eventually move away from a physical archive to a nearline storage and archive system.
See JVC at NAB Show Booth C4314.
