NAB News:JVC is demonstrating its 4K imaging capabilities by creating the world’s first compact, handheld 4K camcorder, writes Adrian Pennington. The prototype on display at NAB is not intended to become a commercial product but to act as a showcase for JVC’s new camera processor, Falconbrid.
Falconbrid is claimed to be the world’s first large-scale integration (LSI) chip for high-speed processing of HD video. It will be an integral part of future camcorders from JVC. At NAB the chip is integrated into a GYM 100 camcorder with 4K images compressed to 2K shot on the model also displayed.
“There would be no demand for a handheld camcorder capable of 4K imaging at this stage. but we wanted to demonstrate the power of a chip that is so small it could be engineered to work in a very small camera,” explained JVC’s John Kelly.
The chip enables processing, encoding, and recording of 4K2K images at 144Mbps and the power to record two 1920×1080 images from left and right cameras simultaneously using MPEG-4 MVC for HD 3D production. Falconbrid is already in use in JVC’s GS-TD1 full HD 3D consumer camcorder launched at CES.
Panasonic meanwhile has no 4K demonstrations on its stand but its research teams are developing cameras based on advanced versions of its AVC Ultra compression system.
According to Adrian Clarke, the firm’s general manager for UK and Ireland: “We start from the concept of engineering the best possible codec and building cameras around that rather than designing a camera in the hope the codec will be suitable. If you get the codec right you will get the camera right.
“We plan to develop on the AVC Ultra codec, which builds on our established AVC Intra codec. There will be several versions including for 4:2:2, HD, 2K and 4K 4:4:4.”
