HITACHI improves the image quality of all studio and productions cameras in 3 ways
HITACHI, Ltd., today announced that HITACHI’s entire camera line will have even better looking pictures this year, thanks to three new image processing functions. Says Sean Moran, VP of Sales for the Broadcast Division, “One of the most important things our customers tell us they want is the best possible picture quality, at the best value. By adding these new technologies to our entire camera line we can deliver improved images with no price premium.” The three new processing technologies are:
DNR – Dynamic Noise Reduction
HITACHI engineers have created a new video processing algorithm that typically increases camera signal-to-noise ratio by 2 dB. The Dynamic Noise Reduction (DNR) function analyzes the full HD video bandwidth and excludes sensors’ characteristic noise at all video levels without altering the picture content. What is unique about this new algorithm is that it operates with virtually zero delay, a critical specification for any digital camera system. With this technology, areas of an image that typically gather noise, such as shadows or dark areas, are reproduced more faithfully as the DNR processing intelligently balances video levels, color, and detail.
Auto-Chroma
This feature adds video legalization for extremely saturated colors. Modern TV cameras often reproduce police car lights or any L.E.D. lighting as significantly brighter than its surroundings. This can cause halos and color distortions that over-saturate the bright parts of the image and wash out the rest. The Auto-Chroma function limits dramatic swings in color gamut and eliminates color saturation distortion. The result is pictures that look the way they would look naturally.
RLAC
Real-time Lens Aberration Correction, or RLAC, improves on current technologies used to help cameras compensate for the natural aberrations contained in all broadcast lenses. For many years, cameras have compensated for lens imperfections by having static registration of the RGB channels. Competitive HDTV cameras nowadays use internal look up tables in the camera itself. These tables contain data about the lens’ performance under various Zoom, Focus and Iris positions. HITACHI’s new RLAC technology takes this process one step further. Instead of using previously stored, perhaps outdated lens correction data, the HITACHI camera reads data directly from the lens in real time, then makes the registration adjustments ‘on-the-fly.’ Since lens sourced data is more accurate than data pre-stored in a camera, more accurate color and image edge reproduction results.
Hitachi has always prided itself on having cameras that deliver top image quality. This year HITACHI NAB booth visitors will be able to see the improvements for themselves through a comparison of ‘before’ and ‘after’ images.
Visit us at NAB booth C4309.
