KATV, the ABC affiliate serving the Little Rock-Pine Bluff, AR, market, is delivering local HD news to its viewers using more than 20 JVC ProHD cameras.
The station has purchased 15 GY-HM790Us, five GY-HD250Us and two GY-HM750U cameras for studio and ENG use.
There are now three television stations in the Little Rock market using JVC ProHD cameras. Newport Television-owned FOX affiliate KLRT and Nexstar Broadcasting Group's NBC affiliate KARK also use ProHD cameras for field and studio operations.
KATV is owned by Allbritton Communications Company, which is based in Arlington, VA, and recently standardized on JVC ProHD cameras at six of its stations. The new cameras are part of an overall transition to local HD news production for all Allbritton stations.
Between its two studios, KATV is using eight GY-HM790U cameras, which are connected via fiber-optic cable instead of triax. Jim Church, Allbritton director of technology, said the fiber system is working well, with "great flexibility and no more wire-tied cable bundles."
KATV went live with its JVC studio cameras in August and has been using ProHD camcorders in the field since last spring. Church said JVC's native file recording for Adobe Premiere Pro was well-suited to the station group, because Allbritton already was using the nonlinear editing software. With no wasted time ingesting or transcoding footage, the new cameras provide a more efficient workflow than the tape-based camcorders they replaced.
The GY-HM750U delivers 1920 x 1080 images in a small, lightweight form factor. It records at selectable data rates up to 35Mb/s and can record HD footage in 720p, 1080p and 1080i, as well as SD footage (480i).