4K Not On Top Of ENG Camera Wish Lists

TV engineers would like the next cameras they buy to do a whole bunch of nifty things, but shooting in 4K is not necessarily one of them.

“We have no distribution plans for 4K cameras,” said Michael Koetter, Turner Broadcasting’s SVP of media technology and development. He said shooting in 4K may be worthwhile for “high value” content like documentaries but it’s a “stretch” for news footage.

Koetter was one of three panelists who discussed what they are looking for in the next generation of ENG cameras Tuesday at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTechForum, a two-day conference in New York focusing on news technology. Frank Governale, CBS News’ VP of operations, and Sinclair Broadcast Group’s SVP of Engineering and Operations were the other two.

Despite the resolution of ultra high-def TV, panelists, who are considering replacements for their aging HD cameras, said they are far more concerned with buying cameras that can do different kind of shoots (breaking news and magazine-style).

“We’ve actually delayed some of our replacements because we are thinking so hard about this,” Koetter said. He said he is not swayed by the fact that “some say it’s not possible, we are never going to achieve this. We are talking to a lot of our partners that manufacture cameras to see if we can bridge this gap,” Koetter said.

Governale also said his hope is that the next generation of cameras will be able to handle different depths of field, making them versatile enough to use for both breaking news shots and the long-form content seen on magazines like 60 Minutes.

He said CBS camera crews, which shoot for both news and magazine shows, now have to rely on two, sometimes even three, cameras to get their jobs done.

“The problem is I can’t buy four or five cameras for every shoot and every interview,” Governale said.

He also said he wants replacement cameras that use the same file formats as the workflow systems currently in place to avoid a “nightmare.”

“It wouldn’t take me a day or a week or a year to migrate a division. It’s going to take me years,” he said.

Parks said that for Sinclair, which has 61 news-producing TV stations, having cameras that use IP transmission is key. He said having equipment like LiveU’s cellular bonded systems allow stations across the group to access stories from the field, regardless of which local news team is producing them.

“It’s about gathering relevant content. That’s important to us,” Parks said. “That ecosystem, that IP ecosystem, allows us to do that.”

Panelists said they also have to enforce maintaining uniform products within their own newsrooms.

Governale said he has done battle with producers who want to shoot footage in 24p versus the accepted 1080i, “which I totally refuse. We try to keep everything to our standards,” he said, adding that doing otherwise leads to problems with both the end product and workflow.

Koetter agreed. “I am more worried about 24p than I am about file formats. I get why people want it.  I like it. It looks cinematic,” he said. “But this is news.“

To listen to a recording of this panel session, click here.

To read more stories from the 2014 NewsTECHForum, click here.