OFF THE SHELF AND ON THE AIR AT KCBS/KCAL
Among the surprises at NAB 2007 were the many consumer and prosumer video products touted alongside vastly more expensive wares—the most attention-getting being Apple's Final Cut 2 Studio suite of production utilities and its companion, Final Cut Server.
To ready the software for the big leagues, Apple turned to CBS flagship KCBS and its sister station KCAL in Los Angeles. The stations took the bold step of migrating every promotion producer, graphic artist and editor to off-the-shelf Macs running the two Final Cut packages.
The new system debuted on the air the week after NAB, just a few days before the two stations dedicated their gleaming new high-def facility in Studio City.
Overseeing the transition was Marshall Hites, VP of creative services and promotion for both KCBS and KCAL. He and Design Director Otto Petersen spoke with TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Arthur Greenwald.
An edited transcript follows:
Coincidentally, I'm told I was the first producer to use the original Macintosh to draw an animation storyboard while at KDKA Pittsburgh 20 years ago. So it's amazing to see all you're able to do with consumer hardware.
HITES: Well, you know, our stations were creating graphics and animation using Macs back in 1997 and had very good success with the quality of the work. And many people looked askance at using consumer electronics to create professional work because we were all used to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on proprietary technology for production. Now along comes a $3,000 or $4,000 computer with maybe another $1,000 in software and we're doing very high level work.
And previously each piece of expensive equipment could do just a small part of the work.
HITES: Yes. Where before you had this proprietary box that performed one task, we have a much cheaper box that has a very open architecture. It's all software-based so the same Macintosh tower can do editing, graphics, animation or audio mixing. And it all uses essentially the same hardware framework with the various software applications and plug-ins.
How does the flexibility of these products impact your creative mission?
HITES: Well, first of all, they make it easier because we now have a completely interconnected and shared network on a Macintosh platform in our creative services area. Editors are using Final Cut Pro; designers are using Photoshop and After Effects to create graphics and animation. Others might use Pro Tools to do audio sweetening. All of these people might be working on the same television promo.
It used to be that all this work had to be done separately and sequentially. Now, everybody can open the same project at various times, make their contribution to the project and it doesn't have to happen in a specific order. That's a blessing to the work flow.
So far you've been talking mainly about the promotion work at KCAL and KCBS, but, of course, you also have to interface with the reporters for footage and so forth.
HITES: We do, indeed, and, in our new facility, we're able to pull them into our world and import their news footage into our work flow. Our news department uses a Grass Valley server and editing tools, so we use a protocol flipping device called Flip Factory. It translates the Grass Valley video codec for our Mac-based systems. It becomes one more piece of the puzzle, all organized digitally for our editor to build the spot.
That must save a ton of time.
HITES: Absolutely. The editor doesn't rely on "sneakernet." There's no more running downstairs for the news footage then over to graphics to grab the animation. No trips to the music library. All those assets are instantly available. It's a beautiful thing in terms of workflow.
Obviously the time you save
is substantial. Does that actually impact the bottom line? Does it give you
more resources?
HITES: What it does is give me more productivity. We're operating two television stations that do over 11 hours of local news. It's an enormous commitment to the market. Consequently, it's a huge commitment to promote all of those news programs, so we turn around an enormous amount of original material every day. We produce as many as 16 original topical news promos every single day. That's in addition to spots we do for sweeps or sports. We're the home of the Lakers and the Dodgers here.
We also do sales presentations for our account executives and a laundry list of other projects. All these products like Final Cut Server really increase our productivity, and that's what it's all about.
For those who don't know, what is Final Cut Server as opposed to Final Cut Studio?
HITES: Final Cut Studio is sort of like buying Microsoft Office but for video production. You get a lot of things in that creative bundle.
Comments (0) - Post a comment