The Weather Channel Invests in Panasonic Camcorders for Electronic Field Production

The Weather Channel (Atlanta, GA) has recently purchased four AJ-PX5000G 2/3-inch 2.2M 3-MOS P2 HD AVC-ULTRA shoulder-mount camcorders for the production of long-form programming. These camcorders replace an earlier generation of P2 gear that the Weather Channel, a longtime Panasonic P2 customer, had used for EFP since the mid-2000s.

 According to Michael Smereski, Vice President/Broadcast Engineering for The Weather Channel, “Our original investment in P2 was driven by the fact that the format is rugged, solid state and involves no moving parts, all characteristics ideal for covering severe weather situations.”

“Regardless of our longevity with P2, we did solicit input from field operations and conducted a competitive camera demo,” he continues. “Their clear choice was the PX5000G, based on its full-sized camera feel, versatile audio and, especially, its sophisticated Wi-Fi and uplink device support with LiveU.”

Smereski said that the overall PX5000G feature set was considerably more advanced than the network’s 10-year old EFP gear, and that the camcorders presented no learning curve to the news photographers, who are all well-versed in P2 operations.

“We’re a LiveU house, so we anticipate integrating the PX5000G with LiveU’s Central cloud-based IP management platform,” he says. “We also plan to take advantage of the PX5000G’s ability to wirelessly transmit high-resolution proxies.”

The Weather Channel shoots segments in 1080i, and edits in Adobe Premiere Pro.