Del Holford
Forum Replies Created
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We’re funded by the county and do a tremendous amount of local programming, both from our studio and from the edit suites. I will probably do 4 documentaries this year and a couple informational programs plus finishing 20 half hour studio shows for a series in HD. I work in fire – mainly in HD. In smoke the other editor has done one documentary so far and a lot of the promotional and interstitial work.
We purchased these systems because we had a mandate to go HD back in 2000. We went from analog to digital at that time. The only HD editing system back then (selling at NAB) was fire. Avid and Quantel weren’t there and FCP wasn’t heard of yet. We bought Discreet edit for offline. smoke does SD (and by fiber network occasionally does some HD work to help me out) and fire does HD and occasionally SD. I do a lot of pre-production elements (like opens, funders, roll-ins) for the studio programs as well. Our studio has 4 GVG LDK-6000 Mk II cameras through a Philips DD-35 Seraph switcher (now know as the GVG Kalypso or X-TenDD). We use a Sony HDW-700A in the field.
Now we are seriously looking for capital funding to keep all of our systems up to date. Software versions are not a problem but storage solutions and hardware going end of life present their challenges.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
Oh the memories 🙂
About 14 years ago I edited a documentary that included the slave embarkation point in Sierra Leone in West Africa. Beautiful ocean, good shots of slave holding pens, none of which lasted for more than 2 seconds. If it lasted longer it was panning and you could hear the cameraman talking and the natz were wasted. The producer was shooting also on a Sony Hi8 and he got better shots by accident than the “professional” cameraman on a BetaSP camera. I’ve done 14 documentaries with that producer and he now knows to tell the cameraman to lock it down, roll tape, walk away for a full minute and keep his mouth closed. Experience helps.Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
I agree. You can play out of your VHS deck into DVD recorders that cost about $80. I work at a public television station and we have four DVD recorders we got last year at Best Buy (open box sale) for $99 each. We use them for recording our local programs for guests, for funder’s credit (the PBS commercial) verification by the client, and for burning timecode windows for independent producers to look at recorded material to make a paper edit before coming to an edit suite. Sometimes the finishing of the DVD takes longer than the recording, but it’s pretty painless. You can still charge a client for the service without tying up your G5.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
While FCC rules generally apply to transmitted video, the implementation of those rules may help your video project look cleaner on a DVD or video presentation. The rules are there to keep chroma from being oversaturated and smearing; to keep extended blacks from running the transmitter at 100% power for too long; to keep white levels from causing a buzz on the older analog TVs; etc. So while some rules don’t apply (you don’t have to worry too much about transmitter power) they can be guidelines to help make your project more pleasing to the end user.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
I would agree that the best thing you can do is hire someone who has done it. I work at a community licensed public television station and we have just two engineers. When it came time to transition from analog to digital and had to buy new equipment and install it, two engineers already had plenty to do and then had to help with designing the new facility. We bid out the integration/installation and had several good companies competing. On our own we wouldn’t have had the time or the skill to make the transition. All of our people are very talented and often freelance for sports production but to create something we knew too little about and didn’t have the time to research, we went with consultants who got the job done. There were some compromises for budget reasons, but overall we are pleased with the results. Everyone had input in the process and got mostly what they wanted, though a few $$ more wouldn’t hurt.
You may know production and studio design and you may not need Walters/Storyk to create your new facility. On the other hand, a local/regional design/consulting group would help create and maximize a budget for whatever you plan to do and give you additional manpower to do it. Also, your funding agency will thing you are pretty sharp to use professional consulting and don’t claim to know it all.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
A little more specificity might be helpful. What is your definition of “cartoon effect”? Do you want balloon captions for text? Do you want to warp a character in the photo? You question is a bit too general.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
At the risk of sounding like a geek, may I suggest the wonderful Adobe Help pulldown, which is like the instruction manual but with the ability to search for things you want help with. The full Acrobat might be the place to start, rather than Photoshop, as you are editing a file native to that program. Best of luck and keep asking questions.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
You need an HD recorder to record the file in HD. Then the playback will depend on which burner you use – HD DVD or BluRay. Several major players (LG leading the way) are making them compatible for both in the new models coming out.
Slightly less troublesome would be to record your video on a regular DVD anamorphically and then use a DVD player with the ability to line double the video to the monitor and to stretch the squeezed video out to full 16:9. My son has an LCD 37″ monitor and he uses his XBox360 to upconvert DVDs to the monitor. Not quite as good as true HD but a lot less expensive currently.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
The best format for broadcast video currently is HD at 1080p downconverted to 1080i or 720p. This can be at 25 fps or 29.97 fps depending on the national standard where you reside. Output to D5 or HDCamSR and you have nearly uncompressed video for broadcast playback. Then transmission takes over and reduces bandwidth by extreme compression.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
Scott Selby’s book that came with version 7 had a cheap and easy way to create an extrusion. You can use whatever font you want. Unfortunately someone borrowed the book so I can’t give you a page number or the exact title of that book.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television