After showing nothing more than a PowerPoint presentation at NAB, Ikegami brought several working cameras and Flash media players as part of its GigaFlash (GF) series to the InterBee conference in Japan last month. It was the first time the industry had the opportunity to get its hands on it.
Alan Keil, vice president and director of engineering at Ikegami, was in Japan and said the tapeless ENG equipment was a hit with attendees. The next step is to get it into the beta testers’ hands early in 2008 and begin shipping production models by April (at the NAB convention in Las Vegas). No specific customers have been announced.
Three working cameras (GFCam, model HDS-V10) and two studio media recorders (GFStation, model GFS-V10) were at the Ikegami booth at InterBee. Next door, within the Toshiba booth, were two additional recorders/players. Both exhibit stands ran hourly presentations, which were well attended by industry professionals eager to see the gear in action.
The camera and recorder use Ikegami’s new GFPak, made up of standard flash memory (manufactured by Toshiba) in a proprietary form factor. Keil said users could open up the GFPak and expand the memory if necessary.
The GFPak uses a serial-ATA interface for recording, and will be available in 16, 32, and 64 GB versions. A 64 GB GFPak stores about 120 minutes using 50 Mbps long-GOP or about 60 minutes using 100 Mbps I-frame only (MPEG-2 compression). It also records SD at 32 Mbps.
Regarding its unique form factor — a GFPak is about half the size and thickness of a Betacam videotape cassette — Keil said Ikegami feels the size worked well for production in the field, in that it is not easily lost or misplaced like, perhaps, a standard Flash memory card might be. In addition to standard Flash memory, the GFPak includes shock-resistant mounts and weatherproofing to protect the recorded data. There’s also a mini USB connection on the GFPak to enable direct editing on various edit systems, which can save significant time.
The prices and features on the new camera and recorder are consistent with Ikegami’s original presentation. The GFCam, priced at $25,000, features three 2/3-inch CCD imagers recording at 4:2:2. There’s a Retro-Loop function and thumbnail display of images on an LCD screen on the side for the camcorder. As the camera records high-resolution image data, it simultaneously creates MPEG-4 proxy video and other metadata (including time code) that can be used for easy viewing and transmission back to a TV station via an IP connection.
The GFStation includes 128 GB (4 hours at 50 Mbps) of internal memory, support for 1080i and 720p, an upconverter/downconverter for playback and a color LCD screen for thumbnail display, jog/shuttle wheel and support for MXF files.
The series also includes a new field recorder, which was not shown. Keil said it’s undecided whether Ikegami will make the previously announced field recorder (GFStation Portable) available as a separate half-rack unit with an integrated LCD screen or change the housing to be more like a laptop computer with flip-up LCD. Stay tuned at NAB for more on this.
Of note, the company also showed a new HD wireless transmitter attached to the new GFCam (under glass), although it would seem that the GF series’ current compression and data rates of 50 and 100 Mbps are problematic for reliable RF transmission without latency.
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