Camcorders of the format D-9 and camcorder heads of the JVC

By Mihail Medvedev

JVC offers the wide range of the professional camcorders and their accessories. Conditionally JVC camcorders can be divided into two main categories: DV/MiniDV and D-9. Besides, JVC releases the camcorder camera heads as well.

Camcorders of the format D-9 (Digital S)

The format D-9 was created in 1995. Originally it has got the name Digital  S. Hereunder JVC wanted to emphasize compatibility of the new format with S-VHS. However this decision turned out to be one of the unchanciest in JVC history, at least for european market. From the beginning the only one phonetic vicinity to S-VHS have been created bad reputation for new format amongst users: it was perceived as home digital format. The situation took a turn for the better after EBU (European Broadcast Union) has valued Digital S as broadcasting format and has conferred him official name D-9.

When making D-9 JVC became the first producer of video equipment in the world, who used the algorithm DV in mode of the moderate compression (1:3.3) and digital flow 50 Mbit/sec. At quality of the picture, comparable or even exceeding rival standards, cost of the equipment D-9 vastly lower, then for equipment of other digital format of this class.

The leader of D-9 is the camcorder DY-90E which was already described in “625” journal (# 9, 2002). So in this paper the main attention is considered to it “younger sister” — to camcorder DY-70E. DY-70E looks like DY-90E, but several more simply and, naturally, cheaper. In this camcorder three 1/2" CCDs with frame-interline transfer are used. DY-70E differs the good color rendition and possibility of the functioning at luminosity before 1.5 lux. The sound is recording on two sound tracks. Build-in of a radio microphone signal receiver is provided also.

Camera heads to camcorders of KY-D29 series

KY-D29WE camera

The camera heads KY-D29WE (with aspect ratio picture 16:9) and KY-D29E (with aspect ratio picture 4:3) can be united with the most used on-camera video recorders such as JVC products (BR-D40E (D-9) and BR-DV10E(MiniDV)), so and outside producers, for instance Sony BVV-5 (Betacam SP). The camcorder is built on three 2/3" matrix with charge-coupled device and resolution 980×750 for KY-D29WE and 745×581 for KY-D29E. Horizontal resolutions are 850 and 700 TVL accordingly. Due to using in matrix of the special high-quality circuits of signal sampling, JVC Professional made possible to change the dynamic range before 600%. Either as in camcorder DY-90E, in KY-D29WE/E 14 bit digital signal processor is applied that promotes for increase of picture resolution and improves the color rendition. The majority of accessories for this camcorder is compatible with accessories for camcorder of KY-27 series.

Material provided by HLS Medientechnik