In Broadcast - April 2013 - 38

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 18 - APRIL 2013

N E W S

InGEAR

Camp Digital Hits The Road With AJA Ki Pro
One mobile production company treks all over the US to create television series, specials, DVD, concert
and award show productions for the music and entertainment industries…

C

38

amp Digital provides highquality production resources
from mobile units that take up a
smaller footprint than traditional
mobile rigs. Offering scalable
services to meet client needs,
Camp Digital can run an entire
show – including crew, creative
and directorial, handing over a
ﬁnished product at the end – or
just provide gear alone. Based in
Nashville, the company was cofounded by four entertainment
production veterans, including Tom
Gregory, Vice President of Business
Development, ﬁve years ago and
has used AJA products since its
inception.
“We were one of the earliest
adopters of the AJA Ki Pro recorders
in Nashville,” says Gregory. “We
believed so much in the product
that we actually held an open house
at our facility and invited producers
and directors from around town to
come out for a demonstration of
the original Ki Pro. That day was a
turning point for us and convinced
a number of people that the Ki Pro
was a very viable alternative to tape.
They are ideal for mobile production,
where space and weight in the truck
are big concerns.”
Leveraging a powerful and
compact workflow housed
in custom-built, fully capable
production studios, Camp Digital
trucks can pack the punch of a 53foot trailer, with smaller real estate
demands and at a more economical
price point. Their original truck,
dubbed Journey HD, deployed eight
Ki Pros as an alternative to HD Cam
or traditional tape and has run so
smoothly, that when they outﬁtted
their newest truck, Thunderbolt
HD in January 2012, Camp Digital
installed sixteen of AJA’s newest

Camp Digital ordered 16 AJA Ki Pro units for their latest Thunderbolt HD truck

Ki Pro Racks.
“The Ki Pros have been great for
us so when we heard about the
Ki Pro Rack and that we would
now be able to better service our
clients who were posting in Avid
as well as our Final Cut clients, we
immediately ordered 16 for the new
truck,” Gregory said. “We installed
them as soon as we could get our
hands on them and they have been
bulletproof.”
Camp Digital’s newest trailer also
includes multiple Sony HDC 1500
cameras, 128 audio inputs with Avid
Pro Tools multi-track capability with
full one-to-one redundancy. On a
typical shoot with 8-12 cameras,
the Ki Pros will be used to ISO
every camera, line record, take a
redundant line record, backup select

cameras, playback resources to
feed screens and roll in packages
that may be used in the context of
a live programme.
Recently, Camp Digital used the
truck to cover the 2012 National
Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in
Washington, DC with the President
and the First Family, which was also
streamed live on the Internet. Ki Pros
were used to ISO record and to roll in
vignettes and background packages
on the National Park Service within
the context of the live show. Once
captured, footage was sent directly
into post and quickly turned around
for broadcast on local PBS afﬁliates
across the country.
In addition to the Ki Pro family,
Camp Digital also use AJA’s
universal FS1 and FS2 converters

and frame synchronisers on each
truck and they have saved the day
on several productions when a client
might bring interstitial footage in an
odd format that needs an up, down
or cross convert. Additionally, they
have a number of Hi5 and HD5DA
Mini-Converters for up and down
conversion and converting analogue
to SD or vice versa, and ten sets of
FiDO SDI/Optical ﬁbre converters
for long cable runs, which is often
a demand of live event production.
“Last summer we worked on a
music competition show called ‘The
Next’ for one of the CBS networks,
which took us to Orlando, Baltimore,
New York, Chicago, Dallas and Los
Angeles over the course of six weeks.
Many of the venues were small
theatres that lacked nearby parking
so we had extremely long cable runs
to the trucks. Since we use AJA’s
FiDOs, we never had any signal
issues,” says Gregory. “We also
captured a show with country artist
Luke Bryan in the middle of a farm
ﬁeld outside Athens, GA. Thanks
to our inventory of AJA devices we
were able to send and receive video
feeds all over the compound as well
as facilitate a ﬁve-hour park/power/
ESU for a 12-camera concert special.
When you are under that type of
compressed timeframe, knowing
you have what you need to get the
job done is a comforting feeling.”
“The beauty of AJA products
is they allow a variety of format
compatibility,” Gregory concluded.
“It seems there’s no set standard for
frame rate or resolution, especially
among our entertainment clients.
They all want some variation. With
our AJA gear, we have the freedom
to operate in any frame rate and
resolution our clients want.”

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In Broadcast - April 2013

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