Panasonic VariCam to Offer New Theft Deterrent Feature

| PERG News: May 2018 | 

Panasonic has taken a market-leading step of providing theft deterrent measures on their VariCam professional cine cameras. The industry has long hoped that manufacturers would use their ingenuity and resources to create a technological response to the epidemic of equipment theft. In the past four years, RENTAL GUARD has tracked over 304 theft reports for professional cine cameras—losses worth over $5,000,000. Panasonic is the first to pay attention not just to production demands but also to the needs of equipment owners to protect their investments. 

Panasonic’s approach was developed by their Global Chief Engineer for Cinema, Taka Mitsui who demonstrated them at the PERG General Membership meeting at NAB 2018. The camera will have two visible and indelible marks of ownership. During startup the camera displays a custom splash screen (CSS)—a digital name tag which is loaded into the camera by the owner and protected by password. Taka demonstrated the feature by showing the camera start up with the PERG logo displayed. 

Video 01: Password Protection - Wrong Password

Of course, the flash screen could be any logo, text, or graphics that the owner decides to load into the camera (jpeg, png or bmp image). It could be used to personalize the camera for customers, for example by displaying the name of the DP or show logo. The equipment’s owner designs the flash screen in a simple application, provided by Panasonic, and loads the logo via a firmware update file. Once it is loaded, the information is password protected. 

Video 02: Custom Splash Screen

The second part of Panasonic’s new feature is an Owner Information page within the camera’s menu system. With the camera running, the user selects the INFO button and scrolls to an Owner Information page that shows the name address and contact information of the equipment’s owner. Like the splash screen, this information cannot be changed except by entering the password. 

Video 03: Custom Owner Info

The firmware with Custom Splash Screen and Owner Info will be available in summer 2018 for VariCam Pure/VariCam35/VariCam LT and VariCam HS. 

By building theft-deterrent features into the design of the camera, Panasonic is leading the industry and throwing a wet blanket on the market for stolen gear.