BCTV to go hi-def and tapeless, (Sort of).
It has been a couple years since BCTV bought a new video camera and in the technology world that's a long time. With recent equipment funding from the city of Belfast, we are buying a new high definition video camera that records to memory cards. There has been a recent breakthrough in recording to memory cards that has made the technology very affordable. Our new camera records to standard SD cards. A 32 gig card can be purchased for about $100 and can record 6 hours of video. So what are the advantages of recording to a memory card? You don't have to buy tapes. You don't have "dirty heads" and ruined recordings. There are no moving parts to break. The camera uses a lot less power, so a battery lasts a long time. The camera is more rugged without the fragile tape transports. My favorite feature is that the memory card can be removed and plugged into a computer and the files can be transfered quickly. No more real time tape tranfers. This is useful for those of us who like to record a program with a couple cameras and then using the multi-cam feature of our editing software we can create a progam that looks like it was "switched" from a mobile production truck. I also find it helps turn around an event such as a high school football game quickly. I used to film a game on a Friday night, get back to the station at 9pm and download the 2 hour game in real time. Around 11:30 pm I would do the post production and be done around midnight. If I can download the memory cards in a few minutes, I might actually get the game edited by 10 pm. In the real world of the community producer, those two extra hours of sleep are appreciated.
I mentioned that the footage is hi-definition, and at present we really transmit only standard definition. By acquiring in high-def, we will be ready when the tranmission equipment is upgraded. Oh, the camera costs about $1000, so if we like it, we may buy a second one.