Edit on the fly
Ed Eberle
01/30/99
Video Systems
Copyright 1999 by PRIMEDIA Intertec, a PRIMEDIA Company. All rights reserved.
The two worlds of TV post-production are vastly different. One world is lushly appointed all-digital editing suites you easily could call home, while the world dusts off some apocalyptic unpleasantness. It's the world of flame*, fire*, and ICE, complimentary lunches, arcane specialization, effects wizardry, and just plain post-production magic.
Although time is still (very big) money in that post-production environment, creativity is, in fact, the true coin of the realm. And in that world there's always enough time - and coin - to get that commercial spot, TV show, or product-launch program just right.
The other post-production world thrives on breaking news, sports, and the ability to press technology and staff to the limit to get material on air, while it's still current or, better yet, while it's still happening. That world has a more rough-and-tumble atmosphere. More hard edges, thinner carpets, and a relative theory of time (with hats off to Albert Einstein) that says if you are five minutes late, you might just as well be five years late. Late equals useless in this world where time is the coin of the realm and the meter is always running.
To serve this world, manufacturers have designed, developed, and put into action a number of advanced nonlinear editing products that are targeted specifically to this fast-paced, shoot-to-air environment. Beginning about five years ago, manufacturers, such as Avid, Sony, and Panasonic, among others, began to see the need for advanced editing products that were more tailored to newsrooms and other specialized production facilities where bells and whistles took a back seat to the need for speed.
The products featured in this article represent a sampling of products available on the market, with one exception - the DNF Editor from DNF Industries, at press time, was in beta testing. Finding an editor that fits your specific needs, and budget constraints, should not be a difficult task.
News editors, they're FANtastic No die-hard sports fan wants to miss the big play. Seven days a week, night or day, in cities and towns across the country, the drumbeat of professional sports plays out and legions of dedicated fans are watching every play, every replay, and ingesting an extra jolt of adrenaline-laced excitement watching pre-game, wrap-up shows, and the late local newscast.
Recording and re-editing more than 8,000 sporting events a year, the PHoenix Communications Group plays a big role in satisfying those fans. As one of the nation's leading facilities specializing in the production and transmission of TV sports programming, PHoenix Communications Group relies on fast editing turnaround to feed sports highlight packages to its TV network clients.
PHoenix Communications Group operates its office and technical facilities from a production and Earth station site adjacent to the New Jersey Meadowlands Sports Complex. The company feeds to the NBC News Channel, which then supplies more than 190 NBC affiliates nationwide with sports highlights for local newscasts each day.
Currently home to four Panasonic newsBYTE DVCPRO-based fast transfer video editing workstations, PHoenix Communications Group depends on the systems' speed and flexibility to get the job done 20 hours a day seven days a week.
The newsBYTE nonlinear editing system incorporates editing and graphics software that simplifies and accelerates story editing in the news production environment. With a four times faster disk transfer rate, newsByte allows users to edit and air stories in substantially less time than ever before.
"The four-times transfer function of newsBYTE has brought evolutionary change to our business," says Tim Roberts, PHoenix Communications Group vice president and news director. "Our staff is recording and logging games while editors are building sets of two-minute game-highlight packages. Speed in turnaround is the single most important factor in delivering our product.
"Before newsBYTE," he recalls, "we had more redundancies in our editorial workflow, and no real graphics capability. Now, our switch to DVCPRO has improved the quality of what we get off the satellite, and newsBYTE's nonlinear capabilities afford us a tremendous increase in speed and the ability to achieve better production values because of its built-in effects package and compatibility with off-the-shelf tools like Adobe."
Developed for broadcast post-production applications, the PC-based tower system's internal disk array can store up to 70 minutes of DVCPRO video and two hours of audio. With optional SCSI arrays, total digital video storage is more than three hours. newsBYTE's built-in switcher provides real-time special effects, such as wipes, zooms, pushes, and dissolves, all during editing. The "Record to Video" function transfers an edited sequence, with effects, onto the internal tape drive at four times normal speed. The Panasonic newsBYTE system is currently available at a suggested list price of $65,000.
Style and profile Avid's NewsCutter, a Mac-/JPEG-based NLE introduced in 1993, is currently the number one nonlinear digital news-specific editing tool in the country, according to Avid's David Cobasco. The typical news production workgroup has three specific needs, he says. The first is to acquire the footage; the second is to produce or put together the news; and the third need is transmitting the news. "Avid wants to create a fully integrated television newsroom," he says. "And now that we've formed a partnership with Tektronix utilizing their strengths in acquisition, distribution, and transmission, the NewsCutter becomes the centerpiece of that integrated solution."
This latest version of NewsCutter, the Avid NewsCutter DV, is a Windows NT-based NLE system designed specifically as an affordable user-friendly technology for the PC-driven news-production environment. A particularly important element in that environment is the Tektronix Profile video server, which allows the newsroom to become a fully networked video environment. The NewsCutter/Profile integration was demonstrated for the first time at the 1998 IBC convention in Amsterdam and offers users a complete DVCPRO editing-to-playback solution.
The NewsCutter is DVCPRO native, which means news journalists can shoot and record onto that format, pour the footage directly into the NewsCutter, and then move these picture bits directly through the Profile server system and distribute them to different editorsor producers at individual workstations.
Editors or producers can cut these same visuals into news pieces, promos, features, or teasers simultaneously and, when completed, re-direct them to the Profile server for broadcast to air.
"Nothing is permanent in nonlinear - that's the beauty of it," says Kevin Hardfield, a photojournalist and producer at KCNC, a CBS-owned and -operated station in Denver. "When our news director has to make a story fit and it has to be shorter or longer, it gets done. Or if a reporter wants to change the VO, we can do it quickly, in just a couple of keystrokes without ripping the story apart."
KCNC/Denver is currently host to two Mac-based NewsCutters and is test driving two PC-based units. Hardfield, who began working on the NewsCutter a few months after delivery in 1994 describes the technology as "very user friendly and intuitive." After thumbing through the manual, Hardfield was editing in no time. "For the price [$49,000], reliability, high-quality special effects package, and Avid support, NewsCutter also makes sense for small production and post-production companies as well," Hardfield says.
"The newsroom is a time factory," says Cobasco, "where the old saying, 'Time waits for no one,' is a moment-to-moment reality. We believe that Avid's experience in providing revolutionary digital editing products to the marketplace will be key to completely transforming the news environment of the future."
All-day, all-night viewing One major factor driving the digital revolution in the newsroom is the 24-hour news cycle. For consumers of broadcast, cable, and Internet news, the lights no longer go out after 11 p.m. News, sports, and information has become a 24-hours-a-day business, and as the world gets smaller, the global audience grows. Targeted specialized broadcasts and local market news operations also play an increasing role and the pressures to get the story on the air in those environments is just as intense as it is at the major networks.
"Newsrooms need instant access to shared footage during acquisition, playback and in storage. That access not only saves time and money but improves workflow, and eliminates file transfers; making media available for use by anyone, editors or producers, immediately for specific purposes at any point in the process," says Oliver Carmona, marketing manager for Leitch's ASC Division.
ASC/Leitch's NEWSFlash is a full-featured nonlinear editing solution designed for the broadcast news production environment. NEWSFlash features 2:1 compression, a complete real-time effects package, and operates on the Windows NT platform. In addition ASC's unique shared storage technology makes NEWSFlash the only server storage architecture that gives all editors true simultaneous random access to fibre-channel RAID storage. A key NEWS-Flash feature is its ability to share digital storage with an on-air video storage system. This ability allows multiple users to have instant access simultaneously, through the ASC VR 300 server system, eliminating the need to transfer or spool to tape.
New York 1 (NY1) News is a 24-hours-a-day, DVCPRO-based news operation that serves an audience of more than two million New York viewers.
"We don't have to re-invent the wheel here everyday. That's not what television news is all about," says Jeff Polikoff director of operations and engineering for NY1. "TV news is about the fire downtown, the train wreck, the lost kid, the latest labor strike, and the politics of the day. At NY1, we don't have the luxury of mulling over the nuance of every edit. We want shoot it, cut it, air it, and get the information out to our viewers. That's our job. But," he adds, "we still want to produce product with high production values. NEWSFlash allows us to be more creative when we have to, and still do our usual run-and-gun edits for straight news."
The NEWSFlash/ASC VR 300 server combination "makes us the only NLE system using fibre-disk storage," reports Carmona. "NEWSFlash unifies the news production process from acquisition, to editing, to on-air playback -integrating storage seamlessly, so as soon as you begin acquisition, you can distribute the material to your editors." The NEWSFlash system, which officially launched at IBC in 1998 is priced (without Fibre Channel) at $49,500.
"NEWSFlash has provide us with a flexibility that has changed our work environment," says Carmona. "We don't have an island mentality around here, where news material is on one machine, and another user can't access it until that one is finished.
"In the digital networked news environment that we've created at NY1, material can be used in any of our nine edit bays and worked on for any number of purposes."
No bells and whistles needed For no-frills, cuts-only edits at a price any newsroom can afford, DNF Industries introduced its two-machine, cuts-only editing system at NAB '98.
Designed for fast news-style editing, the DNF Editor enables each edit function to be completed quickly and accurately. The unit, priced at $2,900, features a backlit, four-line display that shows IN, OUT, and Duration, and commands are entered via a numeric keypad.
"Basically the DNF [Editor] is a traditional style editor designed specifically for what it does - cuts only, single-event edits. It's simple, inexpensive, and news editors, [who are] the guys in the trenches, helped design it," says DNF president Dan Fogel. "It's a simple little box and a useful tool to have in any local or network operation to get last-minute pieces together when other technology is tied up and you don't need any effects." The DNF Editor currently is being beta tested in a number of sites throughout the country and Europe.
Getting on the air The Sony news solution, the DNE-1000 Nonlinear Editing Workstation, combined with the MAV-1000 server utilizes MPEG -2 4:2:2 Profile@Main level compression to produce high-quality programming for broadcast news, magazine programs, and documentaries in the Betamax SX format. Dedicated DNE-1000 news features include the ability to be used as a standalone editing workstation, or in a networked environment, for either simple cuts only edits or more complex A/B roll editing. The Sony DNE-1000 is selling for $121,000.
At WKRN TV, the ABC affiliate in Nashville, Tennessee, the DNE-1000 is being used in the standalone configuration, and in the year since its introduction, it has had quite an impact, according to Mark Inglis, WKRN producer of Creative Services. "The DNE-1000 allows my promotion producers to work hands-on with topical material to build news teasers and other promotional material."
Many modern stations demand that personnel wear multiple hats and have a working understanding of the tools and technologies that get the news on the air. "The unit is designed specifically with photographers and producers in mind," Inglis says. "It's easy-to-use and -to-learn. For producers editing pieces on their own, they can get in and out with a finished, good looking piece in no time at all," he says. "And because it's all digital nonlinear, if they want to make changes, they can go back in and do it again, without a loss of quality and in a fraction of time it might have taken in the analog world."
The unit has the ability to edit voiceover, disguise identities of video and audio sources for investigative work, and it can display script information on screen. In addition, the DNE-1000 is switchable, and can edit in the 4:3 and 16:9 environments. It provides four-channel audio, and an optional real-time effects package includes 300 3D and 2D effects patterns as well as 32 original backgrounds.
"At WKRN, our producers or editors can add effects like dissolves or page peels, all in a drag-and-drop environment," says Hardfield. "We can add all sorts of 2D and 3D graphics, and not worry about render time. It's all done in real-time [with] no waiting. Adding high-end effects and transitions between shots, while we edit, not only speeds up the process of producing news and promos, but putting those options to work for us increases our overall production values as well," Hardfield reports.
Changing times The news environment has always looked to the linear aspects of story-telling as the guide to editing. A story has a beginning, middle, and end. It's no different in the nonlinear world. The who, what, when, where, and why of a story are still the questions that newsrooms around the country are answering everyday. Breaking with those linear traditions, at least in the post-production environment, can be rough at times. Not everyone said the transition to digital production and post environments would be easy. The newsroom especially has been the domain of linear analog for quite sometime.
But new nonlinear products are changing the landscape of the modern news production. And while some analog dogs are skittish about learning digital nonlinear tricks, once they do they never look back.
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