The Government Video Update : Customers

International Video Evidence Symposium and Training Conference

ejose — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:11:00 GMT

LEVA, the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association, is holding their annual conference October 22nd through the 24th at the Florida Hotel & Conference Center in Orlando, Florida.

This International Video Evidence Symposium and Training Conference is always a great opportunity to explore the science of Forensic Video Analysis and to also pick up some new video production skills.

If you'd like to know a bit more about LEVA, check out this video, featuring John Walsh of America's Most Wanted.

Avid has been a proud sponsor of LEVA since 1994 and we'll be there again this year, along with Ocean Systems and their dTective Forensic Video Analysis software.

Hope to see you in Orlando!

Government HD Technologies Seminar in Norfolk

ejose — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:38:00 GMT

The Avid Government Solutions team is hosting a 2-hour seminar in Norfolk, Virginia, at the Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008, from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm.

The seminar will focus on new HD technologies for government video professionals.

The latest HD and file-based video formats offer more than just better images. They enable powerful workflows that allow you to work faster than ever before - on a laptop in the field, or in robust media production networks.

High-definition Blu-ray and HD podcasting are also changing the way media is distributed. Join us for a 2-hour seminar and explore these new technologies:

- HDV: Low-cost high-definition acquisition and editing

- Sony XDCAM: File-based media acquisition on optical disks

- Sony XDCAM EX and Panasonic P2: File-based media acquisition on memory cards

- Blu-ray authoring- HD encoding for Web delivery- Real-time HD editing technologies

- Media production networks and asset management

You'll also have the opportunity to see Media Composer Nitris DX.

Government video professionals can register for this New Video Technologies Seminar online. Space is limited, so sign up soon. We look forward to seeing you in Norfolk!

UPDATE: Sorry, I guess it would help if I include the link! You can register here.

Government Video Doesn't Always Have To Be Serious

ejose — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:37:00 GMT

A team of Avid customers at the Idaho State Police have been working with Avid systems since the mid 1990s. They have the ability to take the most mundane subjects (vehicle inspections and the handling of hazardous materials) and turn them into very entertaining videos. They spoof Jerry Springer, home shopping channels, red carpet interviews and more. You can see a highlight reel from the Idaho State Police Multimedia Group on their website. Today, the Idaho State Police work on 2 Macintosh-based Media Composers with a Unity MediaNetwork providing the shared storage.

Remembering Military Communicators Who've Paid the Ultimate Price

ejose — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

I recently had the honor of attending the 2008 Defense Communicators of Excellence Awards. The annual competition, hosted at the Defense Information School (DINFOS) at Fort Meade, Maryland, honors the best military journalists, graphic artists, photographers, videographers and broadcast journalists.

At the end of this year's ceremony, they played a video honoring Department of Defense communicators who've paid the ultimate price for freedom. More than 100 communicators have died in action since DINFOS was founded in 1946, including 9 who have died in the War on Terror.

As we celebrate Memorial Day with our families, it's important to take a moment to remember why we really observe this holiday – to remember those brave men and women who have died defending our freedom.

This video, produced by the Defense Information School, remembers the heroes who have lived and died for their craft.

View Video Examples from Avid Government Editors

ejose — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:13:00 GMT

I was browsing through the Avid Community Videos this morning and found some great video postings from Avid Government Customers.

Michael, a combat videographer from Shaw AFB posted this video of the Air Force Threat Management Group Training at Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Jeff Pierce from the 9th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida has posted a video of the 9th Judicial Circuit Court's high-tech courtroom.
Larry Rubin, the Senior Editor at the Pentagon Channel posted a video commemorating the anniversary of D-Day last year.

If you're an Avid editor in the Government, post your videos to the Avid Community and then send me comment so I can highlight your video here on the Government Video Update.

HHS Invests in New Facility to Meet Expanded Mission

ejose — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:34:00 GMT

The US Department of Health and Human Services recently completed a major upgrade of its television facility, resulting in an end-to-end file-based workflow. The upgrade is the topic of the cover story in the January issue of Government Video Magazine.

Chad Heupel, the HHS-TV Chief Engineer, says as part of the new facility, video ingest and editing is done on six Avid Media Composer Adrenaline systems.

"We have them divided into two ingest areas," Heupel said. "Each ingest area has an Adrenaline system and is equipped to handle whatever format people might bring in, such as VHS, DVD, Beta SP, DigiBeta, DVCAM, DVCPRO, and XDCAM, which is our primary shooting format at HHS. The video is ingested at 1:1 onto the Unity Network and is edited in one of our four Avid Adrenaline suites. With the ingest stations and Avid suites, we have the ability to have six Avids working on projects at once, which gives us tremendous editing capabilities in times of emergency."

You can read the complete story here.

DoD Honors Top Videographers and Broadcasters

ejose — Tue, 15 May 2007 01:58:00 GMT

The Department of Defense recognized its top photographers, journalists, videographers and broadcasters at Fort Meade, MD on Friday, May 11th.

The annual DoD Communicators of Excellence Awards ceremony was appropriately held at the Defense Information School (DINFOS), where each of the award winners began their careers as military communicators.

TSgt Gary W. Burdett was named Military Videographer of the Year. Burdett is a combat videographer with 1st Combat Camera Squadron, 21st Expeditionary Mobility Task Force, Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina.

Burdett not only received the military's top honor for a videographer, he also scooped up 2nd and 3rd place awards in the Combat Documentary category, a 3rd place Documentary award, and a 1st place Field Production award.

Senior Airman Richard Gonzales received the Defense Department's top honor for a broadcaster, the Thomas Jefferson Broadcast Journalist of the Year award. Gonzales is the assignments editor at Detachment 9, Air Force News Agency, Bitburg Annex, Germany.

Both Gonzales and Burdett received award statuettes, as well as gifts from commercial vendors. Each of them received a copy of Media Composer software from Avid. They use Avid software at work - now they can use it at home too.

Air Force Broadcasting took home quite a few of the top honors in the broadcast category, including Radio Entertainment Program, Radio Spot Production, Radio Information Program, Television News Report, Television Sports Report, Local Television Newscast and Regional Television Newscast. "Today's Air Force", produced by the Air Force News Agency in San Antonio, TX was recognized as the Outstanding Flagship Television Program.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and former military journalist Clarence Page delivered the keynote address at the ceremony. He talked about the advent of technology over the 30+ years since he became a journalist, stating that these days everyone seems to be a citizen journalist with their own blog. He emphasized however, that "all this new technology is nothing… without somebody to provide the content: the words, the pictures, the voice, the story.”

That's precisely what the winners of this competition, and the hundreds of other military photographers, journalists, videographers and broadcasters do every day.

Defense Link has posted a news story about the awards ceremony. The Defense Information School has posted complete lists of winners for the Military Videographer, Graphic Artist and Photographer of the Year competitions. They have a separate site listing the journalists who received Thomas Jefferson Awards.

I haven't been able to find any streaming video clips of the award winning videos online. If they show up, I'll post an update.

Navy Visual News Service in Metadata Newsletter

ejose — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:53:00 GMT

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.

New Forensic Video Analysis Training Lab

ejose — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:14:00 GMT

When you think of Avid, you think of the creative work done in film and video. You probably don't think of Avid tools being used to catch criminals. Across the United States, thousands of law enforcement agencies use Avid systems, combined with dTective software from Ocean Systems, to analyze CCTV video, leading to guilty pleas or convictions.

The Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association (LEVA), the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the University of Indianapolis have joined forces to create the country's first forensic video processing training facility.

In the photo above, LEVA instructor Grant Fredericks teaches a class in the new lab.

You can read more about the new lab here.

To learn more about dTective, powered by Avid systems, check out the these video clips.

Avid NAB Show Reel: Where's the Government Footage?

ejose — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:53:00 GMT

Every year at NAB, Avid unveils a new customer show reel, highlighting the amazing work Avid editors are doing around the world. It's also a great reminder of how prevalent Avid is in the film and video industries. Did you know that last fall, 92 of 93 prime time shows in the US were edited on Avid – or that every single film nominated for an Academy Award this year used an Avid product?

There's one thing missing in the 2007 reel... government footage! Come on, I know you produce some amazing work. I've seen it. And with thousands of Avid government editors, surely we can come up with a few clips!

If you have a completed video you'd like to share with the world, send a copy to Avid for the 2008 customer reel.

If you can't wait that long to share your work, you can upload it today to the new Avid Video Exchange. Let me know when you upload a clip, and I'll link to it from this blog.

You can check out the 2007 Avid Customer Reel here.

Pro Bowl Linebacker Donnie Edwards Salutes the US Air Force

ejose — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:22:00 GMT

James Jones just posted a video he cut a couple of years ago to the Avid Video Exchange. It's a promo for the Air Force training exercise "Guardian Challenge", featuring Pro Bowl Linebacker Donnie Edwards.

James completed the video on Media Composer Adrenaline.

Nice job James!

You can see it here.

Music Video Dedicated to the U.S. Military

ejose — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Avid has a new Video Exchange, where customers can post their completed videos.

I was poking around today and found a clip from Michael Norris. It's a music video for a song he wrote 10 years ago entitled "Who Were They". Michael revised the song after 9/11 as a tribute to America's military servicemembers. The music video was created with Avid Liquid.

It's a nice reminder that your service and sacrifice are appreciated.

Given Michael's Semper Fi signature, he may be an ex-Marine (I know, "once a Marine, always a Marine).

You can find Michael's video here.

The Pentagon Channel Podcasts

ejose — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:46:00 GMT

The Pentagon Channel is one of Avid's largest government customers. They've grown tremendously over the past two years and now provide 24-hour television programming, available by satellite and cable television for the 2.6 million military members around the world.

Individual Pentagon Channel news stories are available online.

You can also subscribe to several terrific Pentagon Channel Podcasts.

You can subscribe to the podcasts by right-clicking on the following links and copying the URLs into your podcasting software, such as iTunes, iPodder, jPodder or iPodderX.

Around the Services in Brief: From the Pentagon Channel NewsCenter - a 5-minute version of Around the Services, reduced in size for headline updates.

ATS Reloaded: This show revisits the best of the week, and keeps you up-to-date on information that's important to you.

Recon: An original Pentagon Channel series, Recon is a monthly half-hour informational television program providing an in-depth look at a variety of topics from real world operations, missions, military events, history and other subjects highlighting the accomplishments of US military men and women.

Briefings: Predominately features briefings from the DoD briefing studio on a wide range of topics, spanning individual services, combatant commands and other issues. Also includes weekly and daily briefings from Iraq, as needed.

Freedom Journal Iraq: A daily news program produced by American Forces Network Iraq. The program focuses on military missions, operations and US military forces in Iraq.

If you're currently stationed at a military installation somewhere in the world that's unable to receive the Pentagon Channel via satellite or cable, they'll even provide a free receiver and dish.

If you'd like to learn more about the Pentagon Chanel, you can hear a keynote address from Brian Natwick, the General Manager of the Pentagon Channel, at the 2007 Avid Government Training Symposium in June.