I’m currently sitting in a hotel room in Odense, Denmark
whilst visiting the TV news station, TV2 Fyn. Yesterday I was in Holstebro, Denmark
to visit TV2 Midt Vest and the day before in Munich
for Creation Club, Germany.
9 days, 3 customers, 3 flights, 3 hotels, 1 hire car and thankfully a GPS to
find my way around. Last month I spent a great deal of time in Dubai at MBC, where again, thank goodness,
the car I was being transported in was fitted with a GPS/SatNav system as well.
For those of you who have ever visited, or read about Dubai,
you will know it is a constantly changing and developing landscape, whereas Denmark has a
long established infrastructure.
So, are there any similarities? Well, yes…
all four of these customers produce news, sport, trailers, commercials and
features. They shoot, edit, produce, transmit and archive video and audio,
albeit in different formats and resolutions. They all strive to be the best
they can be and to serve their audiences across multiple platforms. And, best
of all, they all use Avid products to create, publish and archive their
content.
All of these customers also made a move
from a familiar landscape of Media Manager on Unity to ISIS
with Interplay. Not as big a ‘leap’ as they initially made from tape to Avid,
but nonetheless they were moving into new territory, and needed a guide who had
been there before: enter the Avid Workflow Consultant, or the ‘Avid
GPS/SatNav’.
‘At
the next junction remember to delete unchecked-in avid assets folder contents.
These will quickly fill with rendered effects not used in checked-in final
sequences’
As you can hear, the GPS system keeps
reminding me of what to do/say along the way…
Instinct features heavily in the MBC
newsroom workflow, voice over is done at the desktop and the majority of the
editing is done by the journalists, who in the past would have used Media
Browse to prepare edits, which would be finalised by an editor using Avid
NewsCutter.
‘In 1
mile, keep left and remember to duplicate an Instinct sequence in the NewsCutter
bin before finishing it off’
Occasionally, Instinct edits are finished
off by NewsCutter operators if effects are required, duplicating the sequence
in the NewsCutter will break the link with the original iNews story and means
that if the journalist were to open their original story from inside Instinct
again, that they will not overwrite anything the editor has checked-in.
Yesterday, I had an editor capturing video
at a central ingest point to a NewsCutter bin. They, of course had to wait
until the 30 minute capture was finished until they could begin to edit. They
have 2 x NewsCutter Nitris DX systems that they use as capture devices.
‘At
the next junction, pin a folder in Interplay, and you can capture directly to
that folder and return to your NewsCutter and frame chase edit’
Pinning the folder and capturing to it,
allowed the editor to begin cutting from the ingested tape, as they would from
an AirSpeed ingest, frame chase editing. They finished the story earlier than
expected because of this and this allowed the news gallery a little more time
for a rehearsal before they went live with their new programme using an
Interplay workflow.
‘Turn
right and you have arrived at your destination’
Last night TV2 Fyn went on air with their
news programme using a full Interplay workflow. In a day or two we will be
deleting media from the ISIS that is no longer
needed for news using Interplay Access, so deletion and protection rules are
very important. What if a master clip that was captured yesterday is going to
be used again tomorrow? What are the rules, and who will protect the media?
These decisions need to be made by the customer, with the guidance of a
Workflow Consultant from Avid.
A joint decision was taken to permanently
reserve all projects that get checked-in to Interplay. Deletion is then done on
a project by project basis…
‘When
clicking delete at the next turn, you should never override a reservation, as
this will override all reservations for that clip’
If a newsroom journalist user creates a new
NewsCutter project and bin from the NRCS tool and drags a master clip in to the
bin from a project that is about to be deleted, and checks that bin in, it will
be automatically permanently reserve
the master clip again. Why? Well, the workflow for TV2 Fyn is that we have
created a site setting for each machine that ‘points’ every new project created
into a subfolder of ‘Projects’ called ‘Projekter’
(Danish for Projects). ‘Projekter’ is permanently reserved, which means
they have a similar workflow to the one they had with Media Manager, in that association with a project protects the
media, until the project is deleted.
We have also created a folder in Interplay
called ‘Trash’. When a NewsCutter project has been checked-in and is no longer
needed, the deletion cycle is 3 days here at TV2, then the project is cut and
pasted into the trash folder, where the reservation is removed from the folder
and the project folders and associated media is deleted.
Summing up, there are many considerations
when designing a workflow with a customer, and for me workflow is not just
about how the media gets from camera to screen to archive, that’s what I would
call ‘media flow’. Workflow is about people; journalists, editors, designers,
anchors, camera operators, librarians, viewers and advertisers. There are
always two sides to every project; is this a technology project that involves
people, or a people project that involves technology? My view is the latter. Technology
may drive the change, but managing that change involves a symbiotic effort
between the customer and Avid, this is why having been a customer and operator
of Avid products (as well as ‘other’ providers), the Professional Services
Workflow Teams can approach and work with customers and understand their needs
from a real-life newsroom perspective.
Article by Richard
Bentley, Avid Professional Services Consultant, EMEA.