Studio production recording
Dec 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By David Austerberry
Video servers are ousting the VTR, speeding turnaround and lowering costs.
The mainstay of television programming is the studio production — game shows, magazine shows and talent shows — all based on a multicamera shoot, with a live mix during the production. This mix, plus individual isolated (iso) feeds from the cameras, is recorded for subsequent editing into the final package.
Traditionally, show production involved a complex workflow dictated by the linear nature of tape. Typically three or four VTRs recorded the output of the production switcher and the direct camera feeds. The tape was copied to browse media for shot logging and selection. The same tapes were then ingested for the online edit. And there's no doubt the editor had access to some handwritten notes from a production assistant (PA) to help identify the good and bad takes.
The newsroom example
In the production area at Belgian broadcaster RTL-TVI, operators use a remote controller for an EVS server.
Most broadcasters have rebuilt their newsrooms with an architecture based on video servers to replace the earlier tape-based production. One of the primary drivers for the change was to accelerate their workflows. While a story is breaking, there is no longer the wait for multiple copies of a source tape to be dubbed. Instead, servers allow the journalists to view incoming feeds within a few seconds of the record starting. And with server architecture, the old problem of several journalists and editors all wanting access to the same tape at the same time disappears. The multiple read access to files inherently supports collaboration and parallel workflows.
News has been the area with the most pressing demand for collaborative nonlinear workflows, but many broadcasters are finding that the same technology can be used for everything from multicamera episodic shows to live studio productions like reality and game shows.
Many studio operations, including multicamera shoots, and live shows are now finding they can also benefit when they free themselves from the constraints imposed by tape. Producers look to innovate show formats and to accelerate the speed of production. If post production occurs during production, the show can be turned around faster. If highlights can be cut while a live show is on-air, the close can be enriched with reviews of key moments earlier in the show. Shorter production cycles can also lead to cost-savings.
The key to this shift, just like the newsroom, is to eschew the videotape recorder and in its place adopt the video server. (See Figure 1.)
Acquisition with the video server
The linear workflow becomes transformed with server-based capture. During the studio recording, the production assistant can log takes and scenes with the software control application that is also managing the servers. The metadata can then be embedded into the clips.
Figure 1. Comparison of tape and server production architectures
Proxies are created as required from the broadcast-resolution clips as a background transcode operation. This means that the entire production crew gets instant access to material as required, which is not possible with videotape.
If the production server acquires using the same codec as the editor, a stage of concatenation is avoided. Ingest becomes a simple file transfer to the NLE. In fast turnaround applications, clips can even be streamed directly to the NLE as they are captured. The editor sees the PA's notes directly in the bins and timeline, inherently linked as metadata.
To summarize, the benefits of the production server include:
Play while record;
Multiple, concurrent read access;
Faster-than-real-time network transfers to third-party equipment;
Lower operating costs than VTRs; and
Support for proxy (offline) workflows.
The first newsroom server systems only had to support the lower data rates of SD, typically DV25. With newsgathering migrating to HD, the data rates are increasing. For studio production, the requirement is for a higher picture quality than news with the attendant higher data rates. A studio server should typically support one of the editing codecs, DNxHD or ProRes, both with data rates over 200Mb/s for high-quality recordings, as well as the MPEG and DV formats.
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