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Vegas to solve a hospitals problems?
So here is the challenge I’ve been given by a medical unit.
I haven’t been to see their set up, but so far I have worked out that things aren’t going well.
Aprox 2000 clients on the books at any one time – each needs an up to date video of their appointments, and all those that went before. The unit also needs a copy of everything shot for each client.
The unit sees about 20 per week. Currently they are based on re-writable DVD (ouch!)
Appointments last about 15-20 minutes, over the course of their appointments a client builds up around 2 hours of footage.
So they see a client, video the appointment, capture the tape, capture the archive DVD of all previous appointments with the client – drop the new footage on the end of the archived footage – then burn then new and up to date complete record of all the appointments onto DVD (over the old burn).
They are currently clunking along on some kind of Pinnacle set up (almost certainly being used ineffectively) the re-write DVD burns are going through at about real time – 1 hour footage = 1 hour burn. A less than perfect situation. Especially as they burn 2 copies, one for the archive and one to go out to the client.
The archive of appointments is valuable as it will be used in future research and is used to understand each clients progress over 2 or more years.
At the moment this is taking all the hours of a medical professional – just to keep this record and analysis archive running………………….
I think I’m going to point them towards a RAID hard drive footage store (archive burn to DVD once client is no longer taking appointments), and a Vegas / Architect. Shiny new boxes all round…………….
Each client gets a media folder on the raid with all the captured footage, and a .veg project – easy to call it back up and add an appointment and burn a new disk. (ditching re-writables)
The edit machine and RAID will have to live free of any network connections, but I don’t see that being a problem – in fact it probably keeps them in better shape long term.
Any obvious problem that any of you fine experts can see with this?
Or any better ways round the issues?
Maybe some back up and transfer capability with USB/firewire drives?
Thanks
OTGav
P.S. I did think about pointing them to outsource the work (to me) – transfer of footage seemed to be the blocking point for them, but we haven’t talked about it yet properly. They are medico’s not a video post house, seemed like they could get rid of the head ache completely – capture footage, FTP to me, 2 x DVD’s in the mail…………
The Brit in Brisbane
The Pomme in Production – Brisbane Australia. -
4 Replies
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Interesting operation. I would start by capturing direct to disk. You can use a program like On Location (formerly DV Rack) or you could buy a hard disk recording unit for the camera. This eliminates capture entirely.
Forget about adding the session to previous sessions as one movie. Why bother? Keep each session as it’s own movie on the DVD and you NEVER have to re-render ANYTHING. You don’t even need Vegas, just DVD Architect. If you keep each DVD project on a RAID, you just drop the new session directly onto project folder (which is now instantly captured). Then open the existing project in DVD Architect and drop the new captured file onto the menu and render. On a Quad-core system the DV to MPEG2 conversion for 15-minute session should take about 5 minutes (~3x faster than real-time).
This works because DVD Architect is smart enough to re-use the rest of the video that was already on the disc without re-rendering it. Then burn 2 copies from the DVD folders. I agree using regular DVD’s (not rewritable) will give you much faster burn rates and time is money.
Using just a hard disc recorder and DVD Architect you could hand the patient their DVD before they leave (they would have maybe a 15 minute wait). All original recording footage is archived on the RAID in the project folder. So in the time it use to take to capture the tape, you could be handing the customer a finished DVD!
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Nice idea using the Architect project instead of Vegas as the “on going project file” for the client.
2 DVD burners in the same machine – then run both at the same time?
I suspect that their cameras aren’t up to much – could probably persuade them to go for something that shoots straight to HD / cards – will have to investigate cameras recording mpeg 2 to cards or a drive.
Anyway thanks for the input – very helpful.
The Brit in Brisbane
The Pomme in Production – Brisbane Australia. -
Cameras that record MPEG2 to a hard drive is probably an excellent idea! That eliminates the AVI to MPEG conversion entirely. That would drop right into DVD Architect and burn very quickly.
I think that’s the ticket. I was considering something like a Focus FS-4 portable recorder but you could pick up an MPEG HDD camera for less money and burn right to DVD.
Since you can’t buy DVD Architect without buying Vegas and they don’t have a need for Vegas, you might want to just get them Vegas Movie Studio. That will be a whole lot cheaper and you still get DVD Architect Studio which is more than enough for their needs.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
They have a small ammount of edit work they need to acomplish – trimming clips for presentations etc. You’re right, Studio will do all that and more for them.
Now to find an Mepg2 camera and drive that does the job, pointers are welcome as usual.
Thanks for all the advice.
The Brit in Brisbane
The Pomme in Production – Brisbane Australia.
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