Coming soon: Katrina raw video shot by me

It's the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I covered the storm for KTAL in Shreveport, LA. I went to New Orleans with meteorologist Todd Warren and our own Lane Stone when she was the main anchor there. I still have some of the raw tapes laying around in a drawer full of tapes. I'm sifting through them to show you some of what I shot. Stay tuned for that. As soon as I find the stuff, I'll post some of the video.

Our New Digital Newsroom!

Over the weekend we "made the switch!"  Here are some pictures of our new cameras and edit systems, installed and ready to go!

Our JVC ProHD cameras record high-defintion video on tiny memory cards, not videotape.  We have about a dozen cameras total.

Most of our reporters will use the smaller, handheld cameras, while Goose and I (as well as the sports guys) have full-size, shoulder mount cameras (thankfully they only weigh half or less than the old tape-based cameras).  The picture quality of all of the cameras is absolutely amazing.

Smile! You're on tv!

This is one of our eight new edit stations. All of the video we shoot with the new cameras is edited using the latest Avid Newscutter software.  Until a few days ago, we had to "capture" the footage from our old videotape cameras in real time into our older Avid computers. That meant if you had 20 minutes of raw video, it took 20 minutes to capture before you could edit.  Now, we just take the memory cards out of the camera and insert them into the computer....the video files are instantly available for editing.

Each of the six general edit stations is located in secluded "edit bays," away from the noise of the newsroom.  Once we've finished editing a news story, it just takes a few mouse clicks to send the video file to one of the computer playback servers located across the building in Master Control.  During the live newscasts, the directors just pushes a button, and the stories are instantly on tv.
And note that while all of our video is shot and edited in 16:9 high definition, we will still air our newscasts in standard definition for the foreseeable future.  Before sending each story to the playback servers, we "downconvert" the video to 4:3 standard definition.

This is the KRBC Producer's edit station, located next to the producer's desk in the newsroom (KTAB has an identical setup).  Along with all the functionality of the standard editors, the producer computers are also hooked up to the station's Routing Switcher system, BetaSP and DVCPRO tape machines, DVD players, and the "video on demand" services from NBC, CBS, and CNN.  This allows us to record anything from anywhere, such as the "national" news stories you see on our newscasts.

It's Almost Here!

Back in the spring, I blogged about our plans to transition the KTAB/KRBC News Departments into a "Digital Newsroom" operation.

Well, the transition is almost complete!  By the end of this month, we will "go live" with our new tapeless JVC Professional camcorders (which record broadcast-quality HD video onto small memory cards), brand-new Avid Newscutter editing workstations, new ingest/playback servers, new edit suites...etc.  It's the whole nine yards!  (For those that don't know, Avid is the company that basically invented computerized, digital editing for the professional broadcast and cinematography markets.  Most major news operations worldwide, as well as most Hollywood movie studios, use Avid editing software.)

Ya'll might be wondering how this will affect what you see when you watch our newscasts.  In a nutshell, things won't change much for the viewing audience.  While stations in larger cities are producing local newscasts in High Definition, our newscasts will still be aired in "standard definition" for some time to come.  This is true of most smaller t.v. markets such as Abilene.  We've spent millions of dollars in the past few years upgrading our facilities for "digital television," including the ability to broadcast CBS and NBC network programming in HD, but it will take millions more to fully outfit our studios for complete local HD programming.  It will happen some day, just not in the very near future.

What our "Digital Newsroom" upgrade will provide, however, is much more efficiency in the way we deliver the news.  Our old, tape-based cameras are just that....old.  As are our current generation of editing computers/servers.  They break down a lot, and getting raw news footage from the camera to the editor is time-consuming.  If you shot 10 minutes of video at the press conference or car wreck, it takes 10 minutes for that video to "capture" to an edit computer.  That's not good if it's 5:55 and you're video is supposed to be the top story for the 6pm news!  With our new equipment, editing will be pretty much instantaneous.  Insert the SDHC memory card into the edit computer, and start editing right away!  You'll have the top story video ready in just a minute or two!  Not to mention, all of our equipment is new and under warranty.....so we won't have to worry about breakdowns for a while!

In many ways this is an evolutionary step for us, since we've already been "halfway" digital for the past 5 years.  Our current, very old cameras record the news on videotape in the field, just like it's been done for the past four decades.....we then "capture" that video in real time to our current, older Avid computer workstations.  Then the stories are digitally edited, and sent to a hard drive server system for playback during our newscasts.  We were, and still are, the only news stations in the Abilene market to eliminate videotape from the editing and playback processes.  Ironically, our competition has been doing the reverse of us for a number of years....shooting news in the field using tapeless cameras, but using conventional videotape for the editing and playback processes.

For the next couple of weeks, we're putting the final pieces together, making sure all the equipment is in and working properly, and LOTS of training!  Below is a picture of one of our new Avid Newscutter version 10 workstations.  Once we're "live," I'll post pictures of the complete operation!