Ikegami Makes Solid Commitment

Ikegami and Toshiba's new tapeless acquisition system, GFCAM, is ready to ship next month. The initial components of the system - the HDS-V10 nonlinear camcorder, GFStation recorder and GFStation Portable - all use new solid-state removable media, the GFPAK.

The GFPAK is a proprietary format, using Flash memory. "We chose that because we are working with Toshiba directly [which has invested in Ikegami], which is one of the biggest suppliers of Flash memory," explained Sam Shimura, project manager, GF Project.

It will initially offer 16GB, 32GB and 64GB GFPAKs. The 32GB GF Pack will be about EUR600, reasonable by proprietary standards, but expensive compared to Compact Flash cards. However, GF has a big advantage over CF in that it uses a Serial ATA interface [used by many fast hard drives], giving it a throughput of 1.5Gbps, considerably faster than rival systems.

"It is proprietary flash memory, but you just need a standard USB cable to plug into the memory pack. It doesn't need any adaptor," added Mark Capstick, general manager, Ikegami Electronics UK. "It's a more open, generic format, using the MXF file format with MPEG-2 encoding, than EditCam, which uses Avid's DNxHD coding. Although it will still work with Avid, it will more easily ingest into other manufacturer's servers," he explained.

Shimura sees GF as having its biggest impact in news (which is where its first European order, from a German broadcaster, will be used), but as the cameras can record at high quality (HD at 50 or 100Mbps), he sees opportunities for its use for more general programming for HD broadcasters.

The HD/SD multiformat camcorder will feature: 2/3-inch 2,300,000-pixel AIT CCDs with a newly developed circuit; MPEG-2 4:2:2@HL codec to record full resolution HD images; S/N ratio of -58dB; light sensitivity of F11 / 2000 lux; recording of proxy AV data; and metadata management via USB.

Source: TVB Europe