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Production
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Tapeless Training
Air National Guard adopts P2 workflow
Jan 3, 2008
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by Master Sgt. Buck Kahler
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In August, the Air National Guard Training and Education Center's Television Branch (TEC-TV) in Knoxville, TN, received its first shipment of HD camcorders. With two Panasonic AG-HPX500s and two AG-HVX200s, TEC-TV's production department set out on its first HD shoot at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.
The Air Force's Commissioned Officer Training Program would be the proving ground for the new P2 card workflow. The students in the program, all professional doctors, lawyers, and chaplains, would be in for a shock when introduced to military life and discipline. The production crew was in for a few surprises as well.
Master Sgt. Mavi Smith, the producer for the project, wanted to capture a cinematic look and decided to shoot in 720p mode at 24 frames per second. To enhance the film-like imagery, she chose to use the F5 Scene File preset on the HPX500, which mimics the dynamic range of film stock.
However, the crew quickly discovered that tweaking the dynamic range of the camera also cuts down on the depth of field. While a shallow depth of field provides a more filmic image, the videographers found themselves struggling with the critical focus while shooting some of the project's action-packed sequences.
A newcomer to digital cinematography, Master Sgt. Matthew Hilborn found the F1 Scene File was better suited to low-light conditions. While shooting pre-dawn physical training exercises under halogen street lamps, he was better able to focus using the F1 Standard mode.
Hilborn was impressed by the camera's focus assist feature, but discovered it was difficult to use with fast-moving subject matter. The HPX500 packages came with Canon 20x HDgc lenses, with a wide 6mm angle of view that proved useful in classroom environments where the crew would normally have used a wide-angle adaptor.
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| The Air National Guard Training and Education Center's Television Branch got familiar with HD production during a shoot at Maxwell AFB. |
Smith's favorite features on the HPX500 were the color flip-out monitor and instant playback capability. "It was really motivating to go out and shoot and instantly be able to see that you got what you needed, right on the spot," she said. "It was also very useful to show the customer some of the footage right there."
With four P2 card slots and 16 GB cards, the team could shoot for more than an hour without having to offload the cards. To offload footage, they connected the camcorders via FireWire to a Mac PowerBook, which puts volumes on the desktop called "No Name" for each of the P2 cards in the camera.
Using HDLog from Imagine Products, Hilborn was able to rename the volumes before offloading them to the 500 GB LaCie external drive. He named each volume by creation date and volume number. This creates a folder named, for example, "20070915_1," which includes the year, month, day, and P2 volume. For safety's sake, the crew copied all the material to a second drive until it could be transferred to their 10 TB Apple XServe RAID array back in Knoxville.
After the students threw their hats in the air on graduation day, the TEC-TV team packed up their van for home base. Though the crew has had growing pains with the new workflow, Smith was looking forward to editing TEC-TV's first HD production.
She began logging several volumes of material using HDLog. But when she attempted to import the footage into Final Cut many of the clip names were scrambled. After several unsuccessful experiments with HDLog, Sergeant Smith decided to import the volumes into Final Cut Pro to log the footage and create usable Quicktimes.
The production team decided to keep the MXF volumes for archiving purposes -- but keeping both the raw MXF files and the QuickTime files made by Final Cut Pro doubled the space requirements on the RAID. "We have a Quantum tape backup system on order that we'll use for archiving," Smith said. "These files are huge and there's just not enough space on the RAID for everything." Archiving is critical because footage shot by Air Force production houses like TEC-TV is eventually shipped to the Defense Visual Information Center at March Air Reserve Base in California. From there, the footage is cataloged and sent to the National Archives.
The Commissioned Officers Training Program is now in post-production and will be distributed throughout the Air Force upon its completion. Though the TEC-TV team is still trying to get used to the fact that their show is just a file, not a tape, they are happy with the crisp, high-def imagery they captured with the new Panasonic cameras. The workflow, however, still needs more work.
Master Sgt. Buck Kahler is the video production manager for TEC-TV.
MORE INFO
Apple apple.com
Canon usa.canon.com
Imagine Products imagineproducts.com
LaCie lacie.com
Panasonic panasonic.com/broadcast
Quantum quantum.com
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