Thomson Broadcast Solutions recently sold several of its Viper FilmStream cameras to film and video equipment rental companies Arri Media in the U.K. and Bexel in the United States.
The Viper FilmStream can be configured to output traditional HD video, 24P digital video and the unprocessed 10-bit log 4:4:4 RGB FilmStream signal. Its features are useful in shooting HD footage and post production.
The optical block contains three HDDPM Frame Transfer 9.2 megapixel CCDs for a total of 27.6 million pixels. This design lets the camera work in several progressive scan formats: 1080 at 24/25/30 frames per second and 720 lines at 50/60 frames per second. When set in the 720 mode at 60 frames per second, it offers slow-motion effects at different playback speeds during post-production. Post-production tools are able to utilize all of the photons captured by the camera's pixels across three images. Post-production operators can then change the visual and emotional impression in a picture in any way, because no information has been lost through video preprocessing and filtering.
