The Thomson Grass Valley Infinity Digital Media Camcorder (DMC) now includes MPEG-2 HD Long GOP as a codec choice. The addition of MPEG-2 Long GOP creates a low bit rate recording choice to complement the existing high-quality, high bit rates within the Infinity DMC. This allows Infinity users to choose among a range of HD choices from 18 Mb/sec up to 100 Mb/sec — all in the same camcorder, which can all be recorded to the same piece of media.

Thomson has now added a Long GOP MPEG-2 codec with user selectable bit rates of 18Mb/s, 25Mb/s, 35Mb/s and 50Mb/s. The MPEG-2 Long GOP choice gives users additional file-based workflow options that are compatible with industry NLEs and expands the options for recording and transmission.

These codec choices along with format choices that include 1080p, 1080i, 720p, PAL, and NTSC can be recorded to a choice of affordable media including REV PRO, CompactFlash and external USB drives.

Material shot using the MPEG-2 HD Long GOP codec can be edited natively in the Thomson Grass Valley EDIUS and Aurora nonlinear editing systems. For those using Avid editors, MOG Solutions have created the Toboggan plug-in — which simply and quickly rewraps the Infinity MXF files into Avid-ready MXF files. Toboggan can be configured as a watch folder to automatically perform batch rewrapping as a background task in Avid.

Where Avid workstations are deployed in an Avid Interplay or Avid MediaManager environment, Toboggan is also able to check in the media for use in Avid NLEs. The HD MPEG-2 Long GOP video and audio essence are unchanged in the process thus creating a faster than real-time solution.

Apple Final Cut Pro editing is supported with the addition of a Telestream Flip4Mac Infinity Component. This component is a plug-in that simply and quickly rewraps Infinity MXF files and places them into the project bin ready for editing. The file transfer happens faster than real-time and preserves the original image quality.

Related article: Thomson adds cine-style options to Infinity DMC