Univision Television Group goes HD with GFCAM

The Univision Television Group, the Spanish-language media company in the United States, will transition its owned-and-operated stations nationwide to in-studio HD production with Ikegami Electronics GFCAM tapeless HD camcorders and media players. The Univision Television Group owns and operates 24 Univision Network television stations and one non-Univision television station.

The stations will use the GFCAM cameras on robotic pedestals, jibs and in handheld applications. Ikegami’s GFCAM is a three 2/3in CCD ENG camcorder available in native 1080i or 720p versions. GFCAM records to consumer Compact Flash media contained in GFPAK cartridges. Special adapters also allow CF cards to be used directly.

GFCAM records HD images in MXF-compliant MPEG-2 (50Mb/s long-GOP or 100Mb/s I-Frame only) files at frame rates of 60i, 24p, 25p and 30p utilizing a programmable codec. Today, a 128GB GFPAK can hold four hours of full-resolution 1920 x 1080/4:2.2 HD video at 50Mb/s MPEG-2.

Designed as an ENG camera, GFCAM can also be converted into a full-featured HD studio or field camera by attaching Ikegami’s FE-C100A SMPTE fiber camera adaptor, which transmits HD-SDI video, intercom, control status and two channels of audio up to 1.2 miles. The FE-B100A base station transmits return HD-SDI or prompter video, intercom, genlock and control signals to the GFCAM’s camera head, further expanding the system’s capabilities.

GFCAM is part of Ikegami’s GF series tapeless production products, which also includes the GFSTATION (GFS-V10) Flash memory studio deck, GFSTATION PORTABLE half-rack-wide portable player/recorder and the GFPLAYER desktop playback unit.