[Gary Hazen]

[Ryan Sereno] ” can I animate the composition resolution?”

No.

What’s your final output? DVD? HD File?

If your final output is for DVD you could set your comp at a standard def resolution(ex: D1 widescreen). You would have plenty of room for zooming in on the high res footage without losing quality.

[Gary Hazen]

[Krissy Carstens] ” He even mentioned to me that he wants his Sales rep to be the actress.”

Based on this information I would make a new proposition. Give him a fair price for a one day shoot and a couple days of editing. Treat the project as a pilot to see how it works out. The sales rep may be able to knock out 2 presentations in a day or 20. Whatever it turns out to be use that for a benchmark for estimating the full job (150 videos).

I wouldn’t bill them per video when using amateurs for on camera talent. Between the number of shooting days and the untold hours in the edit searching for a take that works you’ll burn up any marginal profit you expected.

[Gary Hazen]

You should take a look at Brightsign’s players. I had 8 of them in use on a show last year. They ran all day and all night for 20 days without a hitch.

https://www.brightsign.biz/products.php

[Gary Hazen]

[Andree Franks] “So what options and equipment (soft and hard) is out there to ingest solid state media to a video server?”

There’s no one option that is right for everybody. The right solution is dependent on the specific demands of your facility. What type of server do you have or plan to purchase?

A file server (ex: network attached storage) ?
A play out server ( ex.: Omneon, K2 or 360 System) ?
A server dedicated for a post production work group (ex.: Terablock, EditShare or Avud Unity) ?

Are you transcoding to work with a specific format for post (ex.: ProRes or DnxHD) ?

Ideally, if you have the money in the budget, you should sit down with a systems integrator and hash out a plan for your facility.

[Gary Hazen]

I agree with both you and Shane.

To your point, the quick learners get my attention as well. If they can pick up learning a new app quickly that’s an important skill set.

To rephrase Shane’s question, are the students capable or willing to do the boring stuff?

If you offered students the following choices of elective classes:
A) Non Linear Editing
B) Motion Graphics
C) Understanding video and audio signals
D) Audio Post Production
E) 3D Animation

How many students would sign up for class C?

Students can know “loads of programs” (A, B, D, and E), but if they don’t know how to prepare material for broadcast then they don’t know enough.

— begin rant
Unfortunately the schools don’t spend any time teaching the boring stuff. I once asked a professor if they taught the students how to read a scope and he said, “No we don’t have time for that, we teach em’ Media Composer and Final Cut – that’s about all the time we have.” The primary focus of a course on TV/Production should be on the fundamentals rather than a specific NLE. Editing platforms come and go, the fundamentals are constant.
— end rant

[Gary Hazen]

A scan converter converts the computer output to a video friendly size. For example, if your computer is outputting 1280 x 1024 a scan converter will scale the image to 720 x 486 so it can be inserted into a switcher or a record deck. In the video world we use up convertors and down converters to move back and forth between HD and SD. In the AV world you use a scan converter because of the nonstandard sizes and sources (VGA, etc.).

Here are a few scan converters:
https://www.extron.com/product/listbytype.aspx?subtype=1

Regarding the Justin’s question about incorporating slides with the recorded presentation, take a look at Microsoft Producer to see if it fits the bill. It’s a free add on for Microsoft PowerPoint.

https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=12033

Record the presenter.
Encode the video to a windows media file.
Import the wmv into Producer.
Import the PowerPoint presentation into Producer.
Play the presentation and add markers to indicate slide changes. Publish the presentation.

When the viewer launches the program the video of the presenter plays in the top left corner while the slides are shown full screen. The slides have not been rasterized – this means that the viewer can enlarge the screen if necessary to read fine text. Try reading the fine text from a slide that was captured on camera and then later encoded to a 320 x 240 file. There’s also an index on the left hand side that allows the viewer to jump to a specific portion of the presentation.

It’s a useful application thas has flown under the radar for years. It’s well worth the time to take it for a test drive.

[Gary Hazen]

[John Grote, Jr.] “there is no standard what so ever for electronic files and some only take Beta SP tapes.”

If you want to simplify the process you should use a spot delivery service as Craig noted. I’ve noticed a rise in the number of broadcasters that will only accept HD as a file, typically via DG Systems or Extreme Reach. With all the budget cutting the broadcasters rely heavily on automation. The file is delivered and routed to the playout server with little human intervention. If a spot is deliveried on tape it means that someone has to digitize and trim the spot – costing time and money. If a file is recieved from an unknown source (not a delivery service) then someone has to check the file to verify the format, frame rate, color space, etc. are all correct. Again, this costs the broadcasters money.

The engineers don’t want to be bothered with checking the h.264 file that just came in from a Boise post house. He would pass the job off to the tape op, but the station laid the kid off last month. In order to reduce these nusance jobs the engineer isn’t willing to share file specs. to just anyone. Engineers can be cranky and irritable, just look at Bob Zelin.

FWIW, last year the Cow started a new forum to address digital delivery delivery.
https://forums.creativecow.net/digitaldelivery
It started out focusing on spot delivery, but it has ended up being a catch all for all things digital. I wish the mods would change the name to digital ad delivery.

[Gary Hazen]

[Bob Bird] “I can see how my post could have come across as a little like an advert..”

A little like an advert???

Being a corporate shill isn’t your strong suit.

[Gary Hazen]

Sounds like somebody is stepping on your frequency.

Is there a spectrum analyser at the venue to see what frquencies are in play?

If you use the system at an alternative location (i.e.; not the arena) do the problems persist?

[Gary Hazen]

Sounds like DG Fastchannel specs I believe Telestream Episode has presets for DG.
Ping Craig Seeman over on the compression forum.
https://forums.creativecow.net/compressiontechniques