WDJT-TV, the CBS affiliate for Milwaukee, has transitioned to local HD news production with 10 JVC GY-HM790 ProHD cameras in the field.
Owned by Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting Co., WDJT adopted a tapeless ENG workflow with Panasonic P2 cameras several years ago, but decided to upgrade to ProHD cameras for HD production and moved the Panasonic cameras to the studio. The station “flipped the switch” to local news in HD on Jan. 9, but it had been using its GY-HM790s in the field in SD mode since September, easing the transition from SD to HD.
With the move to HD, the station also installed Edius NLE systems. Each editing bay has a media card reader to import ENG footage easily and without transcoding. The move to inexpensive, non-proprietary SDHC cards for acquisition has resulted in significant cost savings.
WDJT uses a variety of Canon lenses on its GY-HM790s, including a 20X zoom with 2X to cover Green Bay Packers and Wisconsin Badgers football games. Station photographers and MMJ (multimedia journalists) news crews have been very pleased with the new cameras.
The compact, shoulder-mount GY-HM790 is ideal for ENG use, with a dual card slot design that records to low-cost, non-proprietary SDHC solid-state media cards in ready-to-edit file formats (.MOV and .MP4) for major NLE systems. For studio use, it offers an innovative modular design and a redesigned studio adapter sled. Its three, 1/3in progressive scan CCDs produce 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080 images, and its proprietary MPEG-2 encoder supports 1080i, 720p and even SD (480i) for operations that have not yet made the move to HD.