NEVADA CITY, CA - Thomson and its Grass Valley (www.grassvalley.com) brand introduced its new Infinity series, which includes an IT-based multi-format camcorder and digital media recorder. The ENG/EFP product line is designed to allow users to choose the format and media they are most comfortable with. Users can select between the DV, MPEG2 HD & SD, and the JPEG2000 compression formats for acquisition and between IT, CompactFlash and the Rev Pro spinning disc storage formats.
The company had 10 working camcorders at the show and announced partnerships with a number of companies that will support the Infinity concept. The Open Alliance Partner (OAP) initiative will consist of companies that share Grass Valley’s belief in support for true, openness and format flexibility.
The Infinity camcorder is the first to incorporate non-proprietary, removable, solid-state flash memory card recording and playback media. SanDisk is the inventor of the CompactFlash card and two CompactFlash cards slots are incorporated into the new camcorder. SanDisk’s high-performance Extreme III CompactFlash cards currently offer 8GB of capacity with read/write speeds of 20 megabytes per second (160 megabits per second). Anton/Bauer is the factory-preferred battery system for the new Infinity camcorder. Grass Valley will be offering the Infinity camcorder with the gold Mount Professional battery Snap-On by Anton/Bauer.
HP will certify Grass Valley’s off-the shelf, removable Rev Pro drives as an option to their workstations, and reference the Rev Pro drives for its OEM partners. Grass Valley’s NewsEdit system will be available on the HP xw9300 workstation and the Edius turnkey workstation will be offered on HP’s xw4300 and xw8200 workstations. Four versions will be offered that leverage HP workstations, Edius software & hardware, and Rev Pro devices. These systems range from low-cost HDV editing systems to fully-featured HD-SDI edit systems.
Avid is participating in the OAP initiative and will work with Grass Valley to create a tightly-integrated workflow between the Infinity series of products and its own editing systems.
Apple, like Avid and HP, is also a charter member of the OAP program and will integrate Rev Pro into its solutions. Additional partners on-board include CineForm, MainConcept, MOG Solutions and Telestream.