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Field Video Setup — Newbie Questions
Let me start by saying that my experience in video production is nil (I am a web nerd), but I am hard working and plan to learn as I go. (I would love to take one of you pros with me, but that’s a non-starter.)
My work requires that I deploy to international disaster situations, and I am trying to get together a really lean, light system that will allow me to do rough field edits (think b-roll) of video from the disasters to then send back to my home office in the states and/or directly to media outlets for broadcast use. Eventually, I’d like to be able to do live shots from the disaster.
We will use handheld HD cameras, laptops, and plan take a BGAN, allowing us to get files back and forth when in remote locations. When we are able, I will push video out through broadband. I know I will need a monopod and a mic.
I am lost after that. Software: Do I need to go Premire Pro or Sony Vegas? Or???
What else do I need to consider or purchase? I am not looking to become CNN, but I am hoping that the footage will be used by newscasters. We also hope to use the footage for in-house videos (don’t worry, we’ll send the raw footage to a pro).
And then how the heck do I upload files to a news network? We’re gonna be YouTube-ing, but I know they’d rather have better quality video if it’s available.
I know. I need so much help, and I hope I have come to the right place.
RG
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3 Replies
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Associated Press has and sells exactly what you need: a laptop with specially configured software that will send thru BGAN, POTS dial-up, wifi or or broadband, whatever is handy. Moreover, you can command the software to choose to compress by time or by quality. As in, “I have to get the entire package fed in less than one hour”, then the compression adapts to feed the entire chunk in that set time limit, scaling quality and frame rate as needed.
Or if you want to tell it “time’s not important but quality is”, it will scale up the quality and lengthen the transmission time.
Most cool of all, while this is all done as an FTP process, in a traditional FTP, if you get interrupted in the last minute of a one-hour send, you have nothing to show on the other end. With AP’s system, if you get cut off, the receiving side of the FTP can play everything you sent right up to the point it was cut off… and can resume from that spot onwards if you can re-establish the connection.
Yes, you can cobble soemthing like this together on your own, I’m working on one like tjat myself, but if you can afford it, this AP system is the way to go.
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If money were no object, I’d be all over the AP system. I assume you are referring to SNAPFeed, that is an add on to their ENPS system.
I am gonna touch base with then to see what they have to help us. The other thing we were looking at is Streambox, but That’s pretty pricy as well.
Thank for you advice. I fear that I am gonna have to put this system together piece meal.
RG -
What I was working on in that regard was to shoot DVCpro25, feed it into a laptop and use Quicktime pro to convert it to H.264 during ingest. Then FTP the h.264 file to my base, 200 miles North, and have them re-convert it to something that would play on an FCP timeline, to then feed that into our satellite dish for an SD broadcast. I work in 15-minute package lengths, and it took only a handful of minutes for my mac pro tower to crunch that file, about ten to re-convert it. The reconvert shows a little bit of temporal artifacting when I play off my timeline, however, Apple preview (QT) looks pristine… so I’m now working out if there’s a way to play that off outside of FCP, using our AJA IO. As of now, not. But there’s still time to come up with some othre tricks and work-arounds. If I could just throw money at the problem, heck yes, i’d order Snapfeed in a , well, snap:-)
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