Four Points Media station
managed by Nexstar
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| KUTV-TV Salt Lake City, a Four Points Media station managed by Nexstar |
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KUTV SALT LAKE CITY MOVES TO HD ENG
WITH JVC GY-HM700 PROHD CAMERAS
WAYNE, NJ
(April 6, 2009) — KUTV,
the CBS affiliate for Salt Lake City, has purchased 16 JVC ProHD GY-HM700
camcorders with Fujinon TH17x5BRM lenses to improve the on-air look and
workflow for 2News, its local news operation. A Four Points Media Group station
managed by Nexstar Broadcasting Group, KUTV purchased the new JVC ProHD camcorders
to replace its Panasonic DVCPRO tape-based units for ENG acquisition.
“The
picture quality from the JVC GY-HM700 is top notch, definitely broadcast
quality,” said Donovan Reese, KUTV director of engineering. “Price
was one of the initial reasons we looked at JVC ProHD, but picture quality was
one of the main reasons we chose JVC ProHD.”
Like many
other broadcasters, KUTV is taking a staggered approach to implementing local
HD news. 2News went HD in 2008, but only recently made the move to HD ENG. Its
new JVC ProHD camcorders were received in early December and were being used
exclusively by KUTV shooters in January.
“When
my photographers first got their hands on our GY-HM700 camcorders, they were a
little hesitant because they were used to our old, bulky equipment,” said
Reese. “However, very quickly it became apparent that JVC camcorders are
the real deal. They may be lighter than other camcorders, but they are built to
withstand the tough conditions of ENG work.”
Reese
estimated the move to JVC will reduce maintenance and repair expenses by 30
percent. “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. Reese said KUTV needed to stay away from proprietary media to keep
costs down. SDHC cards were inexpensive enough to allow Reese to allocate seven
16 GB cards to each camcorder, which provide more than enough storage for 2News
videographers.
KUTVs
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.
“It really is one of the smartest new features I’ve seen on a
camcorder since the introduction of nonlinear editing, and it was one of the
main selling points for us,” Reese said.
The new JVC
camcorders are also part of an overall station migration to a file-based
workflow. KUTV has already installed a 34 TB Omneon MediaGrid shared storage
system, and Reese said it will eventually move away from a physical archive to
a nearline storage and archive system.
ABOUT JVC
U.S.A.
Headquartered
in Wayne, New Jersey, JVC U.S.A. is a division of JVC Americas Corp., a
wholly-owned subsidiary of Victor Company of Japan Ltd. JVC distributes a
complete line of video and audio equipment for the consumer and professional
markets. For further product information, visit JVC’s Web site at
http://pro.jvc.com or call (800)526-5308.
# # #
Caption: KUTV
director of engineering Donovan Reese (left) and lead photographer Kurt Smith
show off one of the station’s JVC GY-HM700 ProHD camcorders.