This post is an article that appeared in the 1st Quarter, 2007 edition of the Metadata Newsletter, a publication of the National Association of Naval Photography, District of Washington Chapter. The article was written by MC1 Shawn Eklund. Used by permission.
Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Dustin Gates compiles video
from the fleet into one continuous timeline for civilian media agencies.
U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Shawn P. Eklund
National Geographic, Fox News, The Discovery Channel, all have one thing in common, they want Navy video, and they want it yesterday.
These three media companies are just to name a few companies in general that are looking for timely high quality video in a one stop shop. The one stop shop is the responsibility of Navy Visual News Service; the name kind of says it all.
When you make mention of NVNS most MCs think of the historical success the Navy New Stand has had in pushing imagery to the world. So it’s a natural desire of the fleet to think video should work the same way.
According to Damon Moritz, NVNS video program manager, this idea has led to a pervasive thought that video goes to a black hole.
"This thought stems from a lack of video from the fleet being posted to Navy.mil, the Navy’s Web site,” said Moritz. “Mass Communication Specialists (MCs) see images being posted and there is a sense of completion, satisfaction and pride.”
MC3 Kristopher Wilson, an MC stationed aboard USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), explains how NewsStand motivates MCs to pick up the camera and put their best image forward. “We’ve kind of turned getting images posted on the Navy News Stand into a bit of a friendly competition, he said… It motivates them to try harder and get more photos posted, which, in effect, fosters a desire to become better photographers.”
Christopher Madden, NVNS director, explains that this competition has led to the acquisition of some of the best imagery on the web.
“NVNS receives world class still imagery daily, and we are constantly in awe of the talent and skill exhibited by the MC’s in the field. It’s fair to say we have workflow process down to a science both in the fleet, and here at Visual News, ensuring the Navy’s story is properly represented to the American people and the world.”
Madden is quick to point out that exploiting video in the same way that stills would be very difficult and mostly unmanageable to the intended audience. “There are costs associated with storage, streaming media and bandwidth. So, video is marketed in a completely different way. Instead of hosting all video on the News Stand the video is acquired and stored in a manner that allows broadcast media, documentary producers, to deliver a product on the evening news or in the latest Discovery Channel production.”
Moritz knows that video, while always in need is not always seen by the videographer when it is used by the media. “Just because it’s not on the News Stand does not mean it’s not being used, in actuality high quality video is in great demand and the American public sees this video almost daily.”
NVNS’ mission is to provide visual information products to the media and other external markets. During the month of December, NVNS received more than 130 video files. Of this, 85 were b-roll files, 45 were NMCN/DNU stories and 11 “other” video files. While these numbers might seem impressive it needs to be understood that these are largely 2-5 minute clips. Many are redundant and simply show aircraft launches and recoveries of the same aircraft on the same ship.
Generally, stories sent from the fleet are not retained for long periods. Civilian media outlets also insist that video be provided without editorial content and must be as current as possible.
“What we’re seeing is that there is a fleetwide tendency to do either b-roll or a story for Navy Marine Corps News, but not both,” said Moritz. “Almost daily we find a story that we wish we had b-roll from to support ongoing media requests or documentary requests.”
“Internal stories are great,” explained Moritz. “They help to inform Sailors and Marines, but we can’t forget that there are 300 million Americans that need to see what our people are doing on the world’s stage. Prime cut video and b-roll from the fleet and field is essential when telling the Navy’s story to a worldwide audience.
The media insists on receiving uncontrolled VI products with complete caption information.”
On occasion NVNS will retain a story, especially if no other video has been provided and the subject is of significant interest to the media.
The video is marked as being a story or package and the content is explained to the media. Most video sent to NVNS arrives in electronic format. This is a process that began with guidance from NMC Chief Videographer Jeff Cordia several years ago. With Cordia’s help, the fleet learned to export video files from an editing application and send them via FTP, a Web server or even e-mail.
This process works well and has really taken off.
Receiving the video files is the first step in processing video from the Fleet. Files are transmitted to NVNS directly through DigiDelivery or FTP. They also arrive from the NMC and JCCC through FFT or FTP.
Once a file arrives, NVNS logs it in and tracks not only the file, but where it came from and what the office staff did with it. While the process is working, NVNS personnel said the Navy is no where near a refined system.
“Files arrive in a myriad of formats, codecs and through a variety of systems,” said Moritz. While it is rare that files are unusable due to an issue with a codec it does occur.
The fleet recently made the switch from tape to video file transmission. As a result image quality has dropped off. Tape quality video is no longer available and customers how increasingly want high-definition (HD) video, and are forced to settle for a file. Moritz believes there is an answer to this problem. “Fleet videographers need to send a video file now and then follow-up with a box of tapes later. This will ensure that the media is satisfied today and history is satisfied tomorrow. With HDV cameras populating the fleet we may be able to start offering HD material to documentary customers. We’re ready to handle it today”
NVNS has transformed its handling of video products during the last three years. The change has taken the office from a chaotic single Avid Express edit suite that could only handle tape to a network of four Avid Media Composer Adrenaline edit suites and two laptop Media Composer editors capable of dealing with standard- and high-definition video tape and file-based video.