Re: loose express card
 

Jim,
The facility I worked at in Peoria while in school (Bradley U) had one of those Flxible mobile production facilities. It had been donated by WBBM in Chicago to Bradley and had three cameras, about 10k feet of TV 81 and two RCA quad video recorders. We stripped it to use the machines and cameras in the studio. The video department later became WTVP, public TV in Peoria.

Re: loose express card
 

I love those pics and should look for more of them, it's fascinating to see how they did things back then, just to think that even today's live news trucks will be replaced with small pelican cases or maybe even backpacks or camera-packs in 2-3 years.

This live streaming stuff is just exploding and once someone makes something that works a bit better than what I am doing with wirecast and makes it in broadcast or near broadcast quality the live truck is history.

I work full time practically for two stations so my time to work on projects like this is limited unless I try and pull six weeks of no sleep and non-stop diet coke like you guys do but if windows7 doesn't free up enough resources to run wirecast perfectly smooth then I am going to have to build a high end purpose built gaming rig into a pelican case just to run wirecast and I'll do it and of course that case will be replaced in 2-3 years by a box that latches on to the back of my Sony XDcam and then that will be my "live truck".

As demand for this explodes from mainstream TV stations I am sure a few companies out there will develop the real thing.

I guess this can be compared to a record and tape collection vs and mp3 player, imagine how much space 10,000 songs would take up vs that on an mp3 player.

It's fun and exciting, at least success is fun when working on these projects but also so enjoyable reading about and seeing how they did the same things back then.

mark
mark

Re: loose express card
 

Mark,
NBC and Fox are both going the way of the "content producer". They are using the little Panasonic camera with memory stick media. An assignment is given and the shooter goes out and collects video including his/her own standup, then goes back to the car and edits on Final Cut, writes the dialog and then cuts that as well using their laptop. Then runs to a Starbucks or McD that has free wifi and uploads the story. The only people who like this idea are the management people. The shooters, reporters, editors and most importantly the audience doesn't seem happy with the new way of doing things. It has also cost a lot of jobs and the unions are all balking at it. Here in Chicago, Local News Service has begun where one shooter goes out and produces a piece without a reporter and then sends it to all the LNS subscribers. Those stations that subscribe ( and not all have) provide one crew per day and there is one assignment editor who parses out the crews. As you can imagine lot's of news is being missed because there is no one shooting the back story or the other behind the scenes video. No reporter means there is no professional to ask questions or put a slant on the story. It is an experiment but has already cost about 50 jobs in those member stations.

Re: loose express card
 

since we are here in broadcast world.......

Al, do you have any experience in editing AVCHD versus P2 ???

My impression (and these are very very generalized statements) is that AVCHD is very popular for ENG, has a more progressive compression scheme and is 'h' 'e' double toothpicks on editing systems when doing HD. Basically you need an Intel i7 with multiple SATA disk channels.

And P2 is less rough on editing in terms of processor requirements but is used for professional 'hollywood' productions because of other superior image charactistics. The main downside to P2 being the memory is very expensive and the files very large.

dreaming of
Panasonic AG-HMC150 AVCHD type
Panasonic AG-HVX200A P2 type

when we find our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.....
.

Re: loose express card
 

Up Here in Toronto ontario it's not that bad yet but stations and networks are hurt bad by the recession, one is in bankruptcy protection now so who knows what will happen.

You are right news is being missed when they go that route, for breaking news you need people listening to scanners to the police, fire, ems, etc provided they haven't gone encrypted yet and finding the news, then chasing it, you need people searching out good events in the community as well and sending people, one person doing all those things cannot do a quality job and the result is not something people care to watch and I know myself for example when I am doing the live operations using wirecast my shooting to disc/tape suffers because I am not able to concentrate as much on making good pictures, I enjoy the tech side of this new live technology but I have also noticed when I am live and shooting at the same time my shooting suffers. A few hairs on the top of my head have also tried to turn grey as well but I turned them back.

I have five scanners in my truck, I also program them (radioreference.com) and that alone is a heck of a lot of work, then listening because you never know when news will happen.

Today's newsroom managers have no clue about how quality work used to be produced, think we can fly and be everywhere in five minutes and do five things all at once.

They do this in news for some reason but not yet at least in the trades, I don't see one person doing the electrical, plumbing and drywalling on ajob site so why in news?

The other problem I am seeing in news is those who have some experience get no credit for it today, everyday might as well be my first day on the job.

It's a very unique business thats for sure.

On another note I have installed Windows 7 professional this weekend with excellent results, uses way less resources than vista and I haven't even tweaked it yet and freed up enough CPU that my Wirecast visibly ran better in a test I did today. All hardware and software just worked perfectly after the install and I am very happy.

m

Re: loose express card
 

Mark,
It's a well known fact that TV engineers hair turns while sleeping only. That is why it takes years for it to creep up. Ha!
(Said by someone who is looking at a 60 hour week.)

Re: loose express card
 

I should be fine then, did a 90 hour week last week and just found five minutes to go on here now so hopefully no new grey this week. It gotten so bad with the hours lately that there is no time to work on projects anymore, I keep buying parts here and there and now I am literally tripping over stuff that I bought back in the spring and haven't installed or used yet, there's cables and software and parts all over the place some of which I've bought twice because I forgot I already bought it!

Re: loose express card
 

Just be sure to bank your earnings for later. Hard times are here and you never know what will take place. Some of our freelancers will see only one or two days this month.

Re: loose express card
 

Yes and good advice, I'm paying down debt right now as who knows what will happen come spring, I'm contract so I don't get paid extra for all these extra hours but in this economy complaining is not an option.

What worries me and not just for the television industry but others as well is that when recovery happens any jobs will be part-time/on call and we'll all be working not at one or two jobs but three or four. It's also an employers market right now and for the next few years.

That's why I'm trying to push this live web truck/wirecast stuff as the days of million dollar sat trucks are not guaranteed I am hoping I can advance with this new technology but to get on full time I might have to go back to school and upgrade my skills and qualifications.

The hours are getting longer and I know my only chance of a "vacation" this year will be "if" I am covering the Waterloo and GTR regionals this season. Trying to get good news on TV is also becoming a real challenge, if there is a big go green push this year at competition then I have a good chance at it though with one station.

mark



mark

Re: loose express card
 

Mark,
To show how bad things have become, the AP reported that NBC is being purchased (at least in part) by Comcast.

Cable takeover marks new era for NBC, TV industry
The Associated Press
Eight decades after pioneering the concept of broadcasting, NBC is on the verge of a startling move that illustrates broadcast television's decline.

Cable TV operator Comcast Corp. is expected to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal, perhaps as early as this week, bringing the network of Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Tom Brokaw under the corporate control of the company that owns the Golf Channel and E! Entertainment Television.

"This is highly symbolic," said Tim Brooks, who had worked at NBC for 20 years and now writes books on television history.

Starting Sunday, Vivendi SA has an option to sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal. Majority owner General Electric Co. is expected to buy it and then sell a 51 percent stake of the entire NBC Universal unit to Comcast, which serves about a quarter of the nation's subscription TV households.

Broadcast people, the folks who remember when television was ABC, CBS, NBC and little else, used to look down upon cable.

The idea of broadcast TV was implied in the name; the networks tried to reach the broadest possible audience. For cable it's important to do something specific and do it well, and the audience doesn't need to be as large.

NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker recognizes this. Cable properties such as USA, SyFy, CNBC and The Weather Channel mean more to NBC Universal's bottom line than staggering NBC, fourth place in the ratings.

And those cable properties â more than the flagship "Peacock" network â were the draw for Comcast. By owning more content, Comcast further hedges its bets as mainly a distributor of shows in case viewers ditch their cable TV subscriptions and migrate to the Internet, mobile devices or a platform that has yet to emerge. The company could charge for the shows or sell ads wherever the viewers are.

In a sense, NBC would become a pioneer again, as it seeks to stay relevant amid intensifying audience fragmentation.

NBC was established as the nation's first radio network in 1926. Its parent company, the Radio Corporation of America, made radios and realized the best way to get people to buy the product was to make sure there were interesting things to listen to.

"Without NBC, there wouldn't be broadcasting as we know it," said Walter J. Podrazik, a consulting curator at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

NBC was the leading radio network, so powerful in those days it had two networks: NBC-Red and NBC-Blue. It was forced by the Federal Communications Commission in the early 1940s to divest itself of one network. NBC-Blue eventually became ABC. In fact, all three original broadcast networks can be traced back to NBC. One of its original owners, Westinghouse Electric Co., bought CBS in 1995.

Some of NBC's radio profits were funneled into researching the new television technology. NBC began television broadcasts in 1939 by covering the opening of the New York World's Fair.

Re: loose express card
 

In Canada right now the big CRTC (FCC) hearings are going on in Ottawa regarding fee for carriage, the conventional over the air broadcasters want a percentage of the fees from the cable subscribers and are saying that ad's don't come close to paying the bills any more. Even radio which ten years ago used to be a license to print money has been decimated.

One thing I know for sure is I am going to have to upgrade my skills fast for this business or something else, The way it's going they want one person to do five things and maintain the same quality of ten years or more ago when each task was done be one person.

This media business though is a unique breed of cat and so are some of the people in it.

Right now though I think and maybe I will be wrong but I think this whole idea of live via the web, transmitting broadcast grade video via the web is the next generation live truck, not a million dollar sat truck but something almost as effective for a fraction of the cost.

Building it has a few technical challenges as this is still fairly new but what I am finding is selling the idea is near impossible, I've seen bosses that are firmly stuck in the 80's, in the tape era and don't want to hear anything about being able to feed video from the middle of nowhere using a laptop and saving a ton of money. Not that there is anything wrong with the 80`s, the music was good.

If I stay in this business or am lucky enough to stay in this business I think that's what I want to pursue, I want to be on the leading edge of the next generation live truck, then again once they figure out how easy it is they will just add that task to the camera operator and before you know it we'll be doing five things at once :)

I haven't given up yet.

mark

Re: loose express card
 

Mark,
This is a real double edged sword. The cable operators won't pay and the broadcasters won't have viewers without cable. Some of the stations here in town estimate at least 70% of their audience is on cable. One has even suggested they may shut down their transmitter and just feed the cables.
Broadcasting on the internet is still going to be a problem with throughput. There just isn't enough bandwidth to handle that much data to that many customers. With the current economy, we are seeing a shift back to over the air. Cable rates have skyrocketed in the past few years with a monthly bill approaching or exceeding $100 US. Many cable providers are trying to add in billables by tacking on internet and phone to the same cable. The lunacy of this is when your cable goes out, so does the phone, the internet and your link with local news.
What might be a possibility is that the transmitter becomes a source of data for your DVR/video server. It just broadcasts a data stream all day which you then select a service from. As drives and solid state storage come down in price, anything is possible. Who would have thought 10 years ago that a terabyte drive would be available for under two hundred dollars. We are retiring video servers that have 18 GB drives because you can't find any new ones.
The multiple jobs by one individual comes in part from the economy and part from our viewers. We have found that viewers have become more tolerant of technical problems, bad video, poor camera work and downright disgusting editing. Since the viewers don't seem to care neither does management. I know it is hard to be good at everything but "I can do that" will get you more jobs than the other guy. It's hard but that is the life we have chosen. When I tell people I normally start at 6AM but am really on call 24/7 they look at me like I am from a different planet. Why would I put up with that kind of work environment? I could wonder about their job in the same way. I can't make everything bright and wonderful but I will continue doing the best I can and making a difference when an opportunity arises.

Re: loose express card
 

I think also the tolerance for lower video and technical quality comes from YouTube as well, they have how many millions of "viewers" and we have how few? When we had the propane explosion in Toronto last year most of the video the TV stations used was youtube video and since the police would not allow any acsess for media cameras that home video looked really good!

We have in Toronto area now clsoe to 24 Digital over the air HD channels that you can pick up with an antenna apparently and the quality is way better than what cable and satellite can offer so yes I can see a switch back to over the air and I might do it myself soon.

What I am doing on weekends with wirecast and live severe weather the station loves it yet the quality is not perfect and I still haven't figured out why the video hangs up for a couple of seconds every now and then but they are thrilled with it back at the station.

The hardest part of this adjustment has been getting my head around the fact that it is now ok for each shot not to be perfectly steady and on tripod and perfect white balance etc. Ten years ago every "mistake" would be pointed out to me and now I could hand them a blank tape and never hear anything bad. It's really been a challenge to adjust to the new look of TV news, just have to keep that youtube video in mind.

mark

Re: loose express card
 

Well this is kind of interesting, I shoot on contract for two Toronto area stations and at one we've been using technology for quite awhile, ftp'ing video from the road and it's been quite efficient. The other station as I mentioned before still stuck in the 80's until recently, up here Telus (Telus.ca) launched thier new 3.5G network in Ontario and let's jet say after the old fashioned live trucks failed three times in one week they decided to let me show them and what better timing with this new network, totally wide open un-throttled upload as well and I am sending let's say 5 min of broadcast video down to the station in 4 min, and our live stuff now looks ten times better and people are starting to "prefer" this new way not to mention we are saving a fortune on satellite costs and other feed point costs.

Just to be able to send back you're video or story from anywhere and 10 minutes to air is awesome but I also feel sad that we didn't' have this technology ten years ago, I think of all those frantic runs down the highway to try and get tape back, pulling into the parking lot with heavy smoke coming off my brakes and now we I can send video from the scene in minutes.

Of course now I am working harder than ever and doing more shoots becuase I don't have to drive back to the station anymore!, there are only two of us equipped right now and of course when it's a deadline dash guess who gets rushed to the scene?

Next projects for me are to build a fully self-sufficient live truck out of a pelican 1610 case, lower level will be a layer of gel cells and upper later an Asus G51 and in general to put the kit together and have it working with as much simplicity as possible because there is no time to get technical at 20 minutes to air, this stuff has to power up, connect and work fast!.

Of course now that they like this so much I am throttling back the amount of information I give them on exactly what I am using, believe me in the last three weeks things have changed quite a bit, been telling them for a couple of years now but after a week of showing them (at my expense BTW) suddenly when the video magically really does appear at the station they suddenly "believe".

Every live truck operator should learn this stuff and campaign to have it as an option on their trucks as by doing so it means some job security.

I think though the days of $500,00 and million dollar trucks are winding down and the new truck will be in Pelican 1610 cases.

mark

Re: loose express card
 

Mark,
I just saw something advertised in the latest QST Amateur Radio magazine that you might be interested in. It is a battery boost regulator and will provide 12-15 volts at up to 40 amps with battery voltage down to 9 volts. I don't have the magazine with me so I can't remember who the manufacturer is. Maybe someone can look it up for you or I will try to remember to check when I get home tonight. It seems to be just the right protection when you need a few more minutes to upload the story.
Things continue to change around here. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop on the Comcast purchase of NBC.