Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 24, 2006. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
What is special about Infinity is the possibility of recording different video formats – such as DVCAM, DVCPRO and various HD formats (720p, 1080i) – tapelessly on one camcorder and processing them seamlessly. An equally important feature is beyod that the extensive opening toward the IT sector, its standards and hardware. The Infinity camcorder presented thus has USB 2.0, FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. This allows the data to be transferred very quickly to an editing system or another data carrier.
With Infinity, whose concept Grass Valley first presented at IBC 2005, the manufacturer could achieve a major coup, since it is not trying to establish a proprietary standard but offers a bridge between the different format camps. This allows producers to work for the DVCPRO broadcaster in the morning and for the IMX broadcaster in the afternoon. To switch, it is enough to quickly change the preselection in the menu and then work can continue.
Alongside the camcorder, which is due to be available from May, Grass Valley also presented a Digital Media Recorder, which is due to arrive from July. Tapeless recording takes place either on Compact Flash cards or on the new Rev Pro media. They are an Iomega development that works like a hard disk and is expected to cost around 65 euros with a storage capacity of 35 GBytes.
To estabish its Infinity concept, Grass Valley also announced an “Open Alliance Partner”-initiative (OAP). Besides Telestream, CineForm and MainConcept, Avid and HP are also members of this group.
Further Links:
- Grass Valley Infinity
