Twofour54, the media content creation community in Abu Dhabi, has become the world’s first customer of the V3i single bodied, dual lens camcorder. Frontniche, which has exclusive rights to sell the Korean manufacturer’s ortho-sterescopic product in EMEA, sold two units to Twofour54 for use in 3D sports broadcasts. The reseller has also been out to Abu Dhabi to train a number of its operators. Frontniche continues to develop the camera in concert with BSkyB and its 3D outside broadcaster supplier Telegenic. Trials have taken in a number of Premiership football matches with the latest at Chelsea vs Manchester City on March 20th. “Sky are pushing the design to their specifications,” says Frontniche managing director Stephen Bone. “They prefer to use two operators to man the camera – a cameraman to concentrate on zoom and focus and a 3D operator concentrating on convergence.” The latest enhancement to the V3i is a transport system, devised with MBC Ltd, to enable the remote operation of the camera over a single SMPTE hybrid cable. “The system links two transceivers to allow you to have bi-directional HD video as well as numerous embedded audio channels, full wire talk back and RSS 422 data or RS 232 for remote control of the camera,” explains Bone. “Perhaps most significantly it uses 240v which means you don’t need a power unit on the camera. The advantage of such a camera for Sky is that it takes just 5 minutes rather than several hours to set up and calibrate, claims Stone and at only 17kg it is considerably more flexible than existing dual camera rigs. “It’s a medium to long range device so you can converge down to 3 metres because of its 18x zoom,” Bone adds.
