In Broadcast June 2012 - 68

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 9 - JUNE 2012

InFORM

Ultimate Arm Grabs AJA Ki Pro
Shooting action footage from moving vehicles is an art, and it’s one that George Peters, Lev Yevstratov and Joseph Bednar have been helping cinematographers master for nearly a decade.
The three founded Adventure Equipment in Newbury Park, California to enable productions to capture stable images without having to make concessions regarding terrain, weather or speed. The company developed The Ultimate Arm, a gyro-stabilised camera crane that they mount on their camera cars. It absorbs vibrations before they reach the image so operators get smooth shots and stable images, even with long lenses, off-road terrain and high speeds. To monitor HD video captured with The Ultimate Arm inside its ﬂeet of vehicles, Adventure Equipment uses AJA Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini digital recorders. The company shoots a lot of action car sequences, and recently used The Ultimate Arm equipped with AJA Ki Pro on The Avengers, Battleship, The Hangover, RIPD, Ganster Squad, and Cowboys 68 and Aliens, as well as a host of commercials and music videos. There are typically four people in each vehicle, the driver, the camera operator who controls the camera with a joystick, the crane operator and a technician. There are also four HD monitors. “That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for anything else,” said Peters. “In our business, size is really important, especially when you’re doing 3D and there’s more gear. Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini are a perfect ﬁt – they’re compact, they’re extremely reliable, and they record in very high quality.” When the company ﬁrst launched The Ultimate Arm in production, they equipped their vehicles with monitors that had built-in recorders, but they were limited to SD video and had reliability issues. “The signal is the most important thing. If that breaks up and you lose the

The Ultimate Arm

image when you’re shooting a huge action star, there’s nothing worse.” When AJA introduced the Ki Pro family, Adventure Equipment jumped on board. “AJA’s product reliability is legendary and the Ki Pros have shown us why. Through all of the jostling of off-road vehicles

and severe weather of all kinds they’ve been rock solid. We even had a shoot where something happened with the camera and the crew didn’t get it, but we had recorded it on Ki Pro so it saved them – and us.” ■

InTECH

Combining COFDM Wireless Camera Solutions With 4G
John Payne IV, VP Technology, Integrated Microwave Technologies, LLC discusses today’s mobile broadcast environment
With the major wireless providers’ growing 4G wireless network capabilities, today’s ENG operators are exploring alternative fieldreporting methods. methods These e new 4G cap pabilities allow broadcasters to co over live breaking ne from locations ews that would have t been too costly or difﬁcult to reach w with traditional m methods. They a also offer an economical option for added ﬂexibility and reach for
Nucomm Connect Live John Payne, IMT

breaking news and real-time reporting. However, while 4G is a viable option, traditional COFDM transmission remains a necessity, as video quality is still at the cornerstone of today’s ENG operations. Integrated Microwave Technologies, LLC (IMT) has created a solution for this rapidly developing industry trend with its Nucomm Connect Live. Connect Live combines the ultimate in COFDM wireless camera and 4G technology to produce a versatile live-news HD wireless camera system. The Connect Live is essentially two products in one – with its dual COFDM and 4G capabilities – it is suited for live and outside broadcast as well as news bureau applications.

In COFDM mode, the transmitter covers the entire BAS 2-GHz frequency band. The Connect Live is also available in the 5.8-GHz non-licenced band for additional unlicenced applications. For day-to-day news story coverage, the 4G link can be used to transport HD video back to the studio in near real-time. Depending on a user’s needs, latency versus video quality can be quickly tuned between three preset modes (interview, balanced and high quality) via the unit’s intuitive touch LCD display. The Connect Live features a boot up time of less than 30 seconds, allowing for rapid deployment in the ﬁeld. In addition, the Connect Live supports multiple formats, including 480i, 576i, 720p and 1080i, and can

be conﬁgured to accept composite, HD-SDI and SD-SDI signals. The Connect Decoder is the companion receiver decoder capable of receiving the COFDM or video from the public Internet. Automatic changeover is performed. When combined with the Messenger Studio Server, users can harness all the power of rapid ﬁle transfers between the Connect Live wireless camera transmitter and the studio. The unit’s low-proﬁle design and light form factor (weighing in at nearly one pound) makes it suitable for in-the-ﬁeld reporting. Connect Live also features Anton/Bauer’s Gold Mount system as well as IDX mounts, providing a seamless connection from the unit to any external AC/DC power source. ■

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In Broadcast June 2012

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