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Germany sees major breakthrough for laptop field editors ZDF turns purple
by Reinhard Wagner “The new laptop field
editors arrived in Mainz at the end of last year. We have been using them now
since mid-January.” The idea behind the investment into future editing
systems is that reporters should use the editing laptops when investigating
new stories. The material is used both in news and features. “For the very
first time we have trained personnel, where some of them did not have any
prior experience in editing or computing on the new DV-editing systems,” Koob
adds. In conjunction with the
training department, Fast Multimedia, who delivered hardware and software,
trained ZDF reporters on the new equipment. The three-day session covered
software features, editing basics, hardware overview and
encoding/transmission techniques. “We did not expect such a huge amount of
acceptance of the new equipment,” Koob says. “The working conditions and ways
of shooting and investigating are new, and the reporters are dealing with it
all in a very professional manner. “Reporters who travel
without a cameraman, sound engineer or any other technician, always carry a
consumer DV camera with them, just in case, and for location purposes,” he
says. “When they believe they have shot a valuable scene or location, an
interview or event, they can then immediately edit on the spot. There is no
need for a crew to follow. After finishing the rough edit they can transmit
the signal via ISDN modem connection to our parent station in Mainz.” Reporters for the new
magazine at ZDF are equipped with AJ-AZ35 camcorders from Panasonic. These
camcorders are high-level consumer products with three CCD chips, which offer
a good price-performance ratio. FireWire cables are used to transmit video
material from the camcorder directly onto the Purple.Field. All reporters are
equipped with a headset with noise-cancelling microphone and a handheld
reporter microphone to perform voiceovers and commentary, or to record an M
& E version. Four audio track editing is standard on Purple.Field and
fulfils all needs for field audio mixing at ZDF. All 10 Fast field editing
systems (HP Omnibook 6000) are equipped with 256MB of RAM, a 700MHz Pentium
III CPU, an 18GB System HDD, a PCMCIA ISDN card, Purple.Field XL software
(current version V2.55) and MediaCleaner Wizard 4.0 from Terran Interactive
as soft encoder for MPEG/Realvideo streaming onto the internet. Sony’s
broadcast-certified software codecs, full support of DV, DVCAM and DVCPRO
formats, and Fast’s editing software enable the ZDF use of this solution. “For our new programme
format ZDF.reporter, we use Purple.Field only for pre-investigation,” says
Koob. “When the reporter shoots a valuable scene, the material can be either
edited or transmitted for preview purposes, or it is ingested onto our web
server for streaming video downloads. The last action is under the full
control of the reporter.”
“Our experience to date
confirms our decision to invest in Purple.Field. The hard- and software works
to our satisfaction. In addition, just in case, if one machine breaks down
there are always local manufacturer subsidiaries that support us. That was
also one of our main concerns before investing,” declares Koob. Meanwhile, Fast
Multimedia recently announced that Norwegian broadcasting corporation NRK has
decided to base future news editing on the Purple and Purple.Field systems.
At the same time, a recommendation has been made to all regional broadcasting
stations to use Purple and Purple.Field for news editing. The decision followed a
three-month internal testing phase with products from different
manufacturers. Excellent integration in the news environment, native support
of the DVCPRO format, preparation for future network environments as well as
the reliability of the system were cited as deciding factors. |
