Sweetwater Continues Commitment To Grass Valley HD Technology

Sweetwater Digital Video Productions, located in Van Nuys, California, has continued to advance its fleet of state-of-the-art production trucks with the latest high-definition technology and systems from Grass Valley.
The company has purchased a new Grass Valley Kayenne Video Production Centre for its premiere HD mobile production truck, Cobalt. The fully loaded 4.5
M/E Kayenne, which replaces a Grass Valley Kalypso HD switcher, represents the first Kayenne currently available in the Hollywood/Los Angeles area.
As part of the large equipment order recently signed, Sweetwater has also purchased a new Grass Valley Trinix NXT video router as well as GeckoFlex HD signal conversion equipment to add to the many Grass Valley routers and GeckoFlex modules already deployed among its fleet. Sweetwater has also upgraded an existing Kalypso DUO switcher to HD to support the production of a national late night TV programme that has recently converted to HD operations and the company has also purchased a new Grass Valley K2 summit HD production client and Grass Valley Dyno replay controller to handle variable speed replays and other effects for an upcoming national prime time show where the Kalypso HD switcher formerly installed in Cobalt will be put into action.
Joe Shakelford, Senior Vice President of Operations at Sweetwater Digital Video Productions, said: "The Kayenne switcher gives us more power and flexibility in our Cobalt truck, which our clients will really appreciate and put to good use. The Kalypso has been a standard in live production in the LA market and we cannot wait to introduce one of the first, if not the first, Kayenne in our Cobalt truck. All of the new equipment we've bought helps move our productions into new directions and allows us to offer services to a wider clientele."
Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of Grass Valley, said: "Sweetwater's continued investment in Grass Valley technology clearly illustrates our success in developing products that customers need to grow their business. The new Kayenne is bringing excitement back to a wide variety of productions and, when paired with the new K2 Summit client and K2 Dyno controller, broadcasters and production companies now have a complete HD production system that's capable of the best production values the industry has ever seen."
The new Grass Valley Kayenne series of video production switchers offer a wide range of configurable mainframes that can include from 1.5 to 4.5 mix/effects (M/Es). Each switcher also features a newly designed panel with colour-coded RGB buttons and a menu navigation system optimised for touchscreen use. Source and function name displays use organic LEDs with high contrast and 178 degree viewing angles. The Kayenne user interface provides a new "toolkit" for operators that include delegation of multiple functions to source button rows, 999 macros and 1000 E-MEM registers. All Kayenne frame and panel modules, including the redundant power supplies, are hot-swappable to minimise any impact on production downtime.
As the latest addition to the popular Grass Valley family of K2 HD servers, the new K2 Summit production client includes HD slo-mo capability, bi-directional operation and space efficiency (2 RU).
These and other features make it ideal for live news and sports applications, where extremely fast, frame-accurate operation is critical. Used together with the new Grass Valley Dyno live slow-motion controller, Summit provides a much less expensive solution from other replay systems on the market today.
Yet it still offers all of functionality of multichannel and playout - including slow-motion features and instant replay capability.
(KMcA/BMcC)