Editcam is a professional digital
camera
A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with ...
system manufactured by
Ikegami and first introduced in 1995, available both as professional
camcorders
A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swap ...
and modular dock recorders. It is the first ever tapeless field acquisition device and has evolved into a range of
SD and
HD cameras. As a portable camera system, it can record digital video data direct to a
hard disk drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with mag ...
(HDD).
The editcam's most distinguishing feature is the recording medium: The ''FieldPak'', which is a cartridge that contains an IDE hard disk with up to 120 GB of storage, or its compatible companion, the ''RAMPak'', a
flash memory
Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use ...
module with up to 16 GB. A 120 GB capacity FieldPak translates to some 9 hours of DV25 video. Both, unlike tape-based formats, allow random access to the video data, and both standalone
Video cassette recorder
A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the recordin ...
(VCR) replacement players and
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
adaptor racks are available for the Paks. This made the Editcam a pioneer in the field of non-linear acquisition, but the earliest incarnations of the Editcam were plagued with high power consumption and weight and sold only about 50 units
/sup>. These problems were addressed with the Editcam II in 1999.
The latest generation of the Editcam system, Editcam3, can record in the formats Avid Technology, Avid JFIF
The JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF) is an image file format standard published as ITU-T Recommendation T.871 and ISO/IEC 10918-5. It defines supplementary specifications for the container format that contains the image data encoded with the JP ...
, DV and optionally MPEG IMX
Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself.
All ...
and DVCPRO50
DV refers to a family of codecs and videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly ...
. HDTV
High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...
variants are now also available, which record in the Avid DNxHD format. Introduced at NAB 2005, the Editcam HD allows for video capture at 145 Mbit/s. Employing CMOS sensors, the camera record files natively in 1080i or 720P and at several bitrates. One of its most notable products is the HDN-X10 Editcam HD camera, which was adopted by the American Idol production company in its bid to save drive space.
References
External links
Ikegami's Editcam homepage
Editcam Microsite
Audiovisual introductions in 1995
Video storage
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