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Asset Management 

& Distribution 

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THE MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONALS WORKING IN TELEVISION, FILM, AUDIO, VIDEO, MOTION GRAPHICS, IMAGING AND DESIGN 

CREATIVE COW MAGAZINE 

A CREATIVE COW LLC PUBLICATION 

PUBLISHERS: 

Ronald & Kathlyn Lindeboom 

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF/ 

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: 

Tim Wilson 

magazine@creativecow.net 

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: 

David Allison, 

Paul Stephen Carlin, Matt Downey, 

Ronald Lindeboom, John Pipes, 

Tim Wilson, Bob Zelin 

LAYOUT & DESIGN: 

Ronald Lindeboom, 

Tim Wilson, Stefani Rice 

CREATIVE COW ADVERTISING: 

Tim Matteson 

tmatteson@creativecow.net 

CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER: 

Abraham Chaffin 

abraham@creativecow.net 

CONTACT US: 

magazine@creativecow.net 

(805) 239-5645 voice 

(805) 239-0712 fax 

Creative COW Magazine is published bi-monthly by 

CreativeCOW LLC (Creative Communities of the World) at 

2205 Villa Lane, Paso Robles, CA 93446. (805) 239-5645. 

Postage paid at Hanover, New Hampshire. Subscription 

rates are $14.95 for six issues for USA addresses; international 

addresses are $24.95 for six issues. Creative COW 

is a registered trademark of Creative COW LLC. All rights 

are reserved. Magazine contents are copyright © 2009 by 

Creative COW Magazine. All rights are reserved. Right of 

reprint is granted only to non-commercial educational 

institutions such as high schools, colleges and universities. 

No other grants are given. 

The opinions of our writers do not always reflect those 

of the publisher and while we make every effort to be 

as accurate as possible, we cannot and do not assume 

responsibility for damages due to errors or omissions. 

LEGAL STATEMENT: All information in this magazine is 

offered without guarantee as to its accuracy and applicability 

in all circumstances. Please consult an attorney, 

business advisor, accountant or other professional to discuss 

your individual circumstances. Use of the information 

in this magazine is not intended to replace professional 

counsel. Use of this information is at your own risk 

and we assume no liability for its use. 

Creative COW 

CREATIVE COMMUNITIES OF THE WORLD 

® ® 

M A G A Z I N E 

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2010 

8 

22 

26 

34 

42 

46 

The 

Asset Management 

& Distribution 

Issue 

In This Issue: 

Tim Wilson’s Column ........................................ 6 

The Back Forty with Ron Lindeboom ....... 50 

Maximizing Assets to Maximize Impact 

A look behind the scenes into live events production on a 

massive scale 

Avoiding Digital Delivery Disasters with On-Air 

Broadcast Files 

A look at how Creative COW members are handling digital 

delivery issues in today’s production pipeline 

Understanding 35mm’s Evolution and Its Impact 

On Workflows 

In the world of 35mm, one size does not fit all 

World Class Aerials for The World Cup 

An Australian team created what many believe are the best 

aerials ever seen in a major sporting event, here’s their story. 

Shooting Footage Your Editor Will Respect 

A longtime editor and cinematographer shares his view from 

both sides of the production process 

Industry News 

A few newsworthy press announcements that have crossed 

our desks in the last month 

The Asset Management and Distribution Issue — Creative COW Magazine 

JEAN-JACQUES MANTELLO 

Filmmaker 

Vegas Pro 10: A new dimension 

New Vegas Pro 10 software brings the third dimension to video production; edit and produce 

stereoscopic 3D video in all leading formats! The preferred platform for creative professionals, 

Vegas Pro 10 offers new features designed to further its reach including comprehensive closed 

captioning, enhanced plug-in support, and robust audio improvements. 

Vegas Pro’s intuitive interface makes it easy to learn and use. Its array of professional effects and 

exible editing work ows lets you produce and create the way you want; its ability to ingest, edit 

and deliver content across varied formats , from tape to le based to DVD/Blu-ray, means you’ll 

always have ultimate control. Vegas Pro 10 also includes a full featured integrated 5.1 digital audio 

workstation, providing maximum functionality for scoring, sound design, and multitrack recording. 

“Vegas Pro 10 provides powerful features that are crucial for 3D editing,” said lmmaker Jean-Jacques 

Mantello, director of the acclaimed IMAX theatre lms “Dolphins and Whales 3D”, “Sharks 3D” and 

“Ocean Wonderland” distributed by 3D Entertainment Distribution. 

Vegas Pro 10 delivers more than ever before. It’s a feature-rich, multi-media production environment, 

offering new dimensions for both you and your audience to explore. 

Realize your vision in all its dimensions with new Vegas Pro 10. 

For more information, please visit: www.sonycreativesoftware.com/sea 

Copyright ©2010. Sony Creative Software Inc. All rights reserved. “SONY” and “make.believe” are trademarks of Sony Corporation. Proprietary image 

from “Dolphins and Whales 3D” directed by Jean-Jacques Mantello (3D Entertainment Films). IMAX is a registered trademark of IMAX Corporation.

I’m always 

going to 

place my bets 

on the people 

trying to 

get it right, 

rather than 

the people 

who say it 

shouldn’t be 

done at all. 

6 

“It would have been better with real piranhas.” 

Tim Wilson Grants Pass, Oregon, Editor-In-Chief/Associate Publisher, Creative COW Magazine 

Listen up. Good post is good post. Bad post is bad post. 

I mention this as a reminder to everyone saying that the only way to make a 3D 

movie is in the camera, that the “problem” with some 3D movies is that the 3D was added in 

post. It shouldn’t take a single second for you to remember that post, in itself, is not the problem. 

Quite the contrary. We can all name a dozen examples off the top of our heads where 

post was the only possible solution to a problem, or the only possible way to create a scene, or 

simply the best way to bring a creative vision to fruition. It adds flexibility. You can fix things 

there. 

I’ve been stopping strangers on the street, grabbing their lapels and yelling this in their 

face to little avail. But I digress. 

This particular rant was motivated by comments I heard regarding “Piranha 3D.” I confess 

that I missed it in theaters, so the only comment I have to make about it is that I eagerly await 

the Director’s Cut on Blu-ray. But there has been this idea that the after-the-factness of the 

3D for this and other recent pictures, is too artificial to ever overcome. You know it’s a movie, 

right? It’s all artificial. There were no real piranhas, either — but that kind of thing somehow 

never comes up. 

No, as you start to read between the lines, you see why: the problem isn’t 3D in post. It 

has simply become de rigeur, certainly among people who regularly say “de rigeur,” to be aggressively 

negative about 3D at all. 

There’s considerable furrowing of the brow among such folks that 3D is distracting, if not 

painful to watch, and that it will never be appropriate for mainstream movies, because that 

kind of artificiality gets in the way of the artificiality we approve of. For such scowlers, I have 

two pieces of advice. First, cut it out. Your face is going to stick that way. Second, consider the 

history of color in movies, which has taken a remarkably similar path. 

Early color cinematography required an expensive beam-splitting camera — stop me if 

you’ve heard this one before — and complicated projection schemes that failed more often 

than they succeeded. Technicolor founder H.T. Kalmus ironically lamented of the early days, “It 

was a terrible headache.” 

Douglas Fairbanks famously recounted the “overwhelming objections” to his strong support 

of color cinema: “The argument has been that it would tire and distract the eye, take attention 

from acting, and facial expression, blur and confuse the action. In short it has been felt 

that it would militate against the simplicity and directness which motion pictures derive from 

the unobtrusive black and white.” 

Ringing any bells? These things take time. Ten years after it was common in movie production, 

only 40% of American theaters could actually play sound. Even though it wouldn’t 

be pervasive for another dozen years, the first color telecast was the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day 

Parade (how could it have been anything else?) in 1954. That same year, barely over 50% of 

films were shot in color. 

I don’t have any particular moral to draw from this, except to recall that today’s vigorous 

objection invariably becomes tomorrow’s “Whatever, dude.” I’m always going to place my bets 

on the people trying to get it right, rather than the people saying it shouldn’t be done at all. 

What does that have to do with asset management and distribution, you ask? Nothing. 

I just needed to get this off my chest. I can now invite you to read another remarkable set of 

stories from creative pros at the top of their game with a lighter heart, far less likely to accost 

random strangers in the street. 

n 


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Joyce Meyer Ministries (JMM) is an international nonprofit 

that delivers worldwide humanitarian aid and 

focuses on reaching people through media. Based just 

outside St Louis, we are a Christian ministry that is about 

helping people in a practical way, both through missions 

outreach around the world and also through Joyce Meyer’s 

teaching ministry. 

Our signature program, “Enjoying Everyday Life,” 

airs daily on more than 400 television stations worldwide 

in 39 different languages including ABC Family, The Discovery 

Channel, TBN, WGN, Daystar and many others. 

The ministry is not a traditional brick-and-mortar 

John Pipes 

Fention, Missouri USA 

Managing Assets to 

Automating workflow with Final Cut Server, and creative engineering that utilizes the latest 

technologies, allows these broadcasters to put their ministry’s resources where they matter most. 

John Pipes is the Senior Producer of Broadcasting for Joyce Meyer 

Ministries. He has worked on hundreds of television programs, commercials, 

music videos, corporate projects, and five feature films. Before 

joining JMM, he operated Home Run Films, a television production 

company catering to faith-based organizations. Still a hands-on 

cutter, he has edited on everything from CMX to FCP. He has been a 

Creative COW contributor since its inception in April, 2001. 

church with a congregation, so most JMM events are 

held in arena sized venues. Content for TV, web and DVD 

distribution is shot worldwide at our domestic conferences, 

international crusades or in our St. Louis studio. 

Our productions range from live multi-camera 

concert and speaking events to single camera film style 

documentaries of global humanitarian and missions 

outreach efforts that showcase our feeding centers, 

medical clinics, orphanages, hospitals and disaster relief 

initiatives. We also produce interview packages, video 

support for our events, partner campaigns, promotional 

materials and much more. By the time you read this, we 

8 The Asset Management and Distribution Issue — Creative COW Magazine 

Opposite (Title Image): A Joyce Meyer 

Ministries arena event. Above and right: 

Stage set-up for an open-air event, with 

some of the six cameras for live recording. 

will have recently wrapped up an open-air 

event in Kolkata (Calcutta) India, where we 

anticipate several hundred thousand people 

attending. 

We have a lot of production going on, 

which means a lot of data to manage. Effectively 

communicating what was shot, where it 

is, and how to get to it is incredibly important 

to our staff, so that the deadlines of a daily TV 

program are met. In the last two years, this 

process has gone through a big change for 

us, as we have transitioned from a standard 

definition tape-based workflow and Avid editing 

suites, to high definition production and 

postproduction workflow based on Sony’s 

XDCAM HD format, and Apple’s Final Cut Pro 

and Final Cut Server solutions. Now we have 

the ability to manage metadata, automate 

processes, and at least partially take advantage 

of a file-based workflow. 

I say “partially” take advantage of a filebased 

workflow, because the practical application 

is that ingesting from, and editing to, 

disc the old fashioned way as HD-SDI video is 

still the most reliable method for half-hour TV 

programs in our experience. 

Sony’s XDCAM HD format does give us 

the benefit of data where we can take ad- 

vantage of it, while maintaining a one-to-one relationship of what 

video we shot to what video we archive on a shelf in the vault. We 

need to keep our original media. 

We also just shoot too much material to make transferring 

footage and then erasing it from flash cards practical. The possibility 

of erasing a card before transfer occurs would be too great. 

XDCAM discs are also comparable in price to tape, so this has been 

a very good solution for our needs. 

This recent India production is a great example of how much 

media we generate. We packed 130 fifty gigabyte XDCAM HD discs 

for the trip. We’ll cover the festival with a six camera switched HD 

package. This multi-cam team will shoot four days of concert and 

speaking seminars, recording ISOs of each camera, along with a line 

Creative COW Magazine — The Asset Management and Distribution Issue 9

Above, Top: One of the ministry’s edit suites. Above, Miranda 

NVISION 128x128 router with dual NV9000 controllers. “When 

we moved to high-definition, we worked hard to reduce ambient 

noise. We extended everything with KVM cabling to get the 

CPU out of the room. The only things in each suite are a desk, 

a 30-inch Apple monitor, speakers, waveform/vectorscope, a 

keyboard and a mouse. Additionally, each suite has a software 

control panel for the router, so that any source or output is 

available in any suite with the press of a button. 

cut and back-up line cut. 

Simultaneously, two HD EFP crews 

will be in-country, documenting humanitarian 

needs and aid efforts. Examples of 

this would be how the ministry is helping 

women in the Mumbai red light district 

get out of the human trafficking and sex 

trade at our Prem Kiran Transformation 

Center. One of several human traffick- 

10 

ing shelters we support around the world, 

this Center provides safe housing, food and 

skills training so the women can become 

self-reliant and support their families. 

We also had crews at our AIDS hospital 

and orphanage in Chandrakal and in Kolkata 

where the EFP crews documented our 

“Wells of Life” freshwater well digging and 

free medical clinics. 

All of this media then becomes potential 

content for “Enjoying Everyday Life” 

where a typical daily program could have 

a combination of Joyce Meyer teaching, instudio 

content with guests, a package about 

ongoing humanitarian aid efforts, or an interview 

package about how a person’s life 

was helped by the ministry. 

EVENT RECORDING 

For conferences and festival events, we basically 

built a six camera HD TV truck, only 

not in a truck. Our broadcast engineer, Brian 

Laschober, partnered with Bill McKee of 

Broadcast Technical Services in Houston to 

create a multicam system that is rack mounted 

in flight packs so it can be shipped anywhere, 

like Kolkata. 

We use the new Sony HSC-300 triax 

cameras recording to Sony XDCAM HD 4:2:2 

at 50Mb 1080i. The flight packs are engineered 

as HD-SDI throughout and switched 

on a Ross Synergy switcher. We use Miranda 

multi-view and routing technology and Sony 

and Marshall monitoring. 

(Our studio in St. Louis mirrors this setup 

with a four camera switched system permanently 

installed.) 

In the course of a typical conference, 

much smaller than the upcoming one in 

India, we still go through 96 50GB XDCAM 

HD disks, with each of those disks holding 

roughly 90 minutes of 1080i footage. 

At these events, we also record 24 tracks 

of ISO audio, captured directly to disk using 

an iZ Technology RADAR digital recording 

system, and Tascam DA-98 tapes as backup. 

We temp mix onsite to the XDCAM discs, but 

always post the audio in Pro Tools before it 

goes to TV, radio, web, CDs, or DVDs. 

POST PRODUCTION 

Post production and asset management begins as all of this media gets 

labeled, bar coded and entered into our vault library system. The footage 

is then ingested to our shared storage by an assistant editor or an 

editor. 

We have about 64TB of usable space for video post on Xsan, another 

24TB for motion graphics and web on Xsan, and about six more terabytes 

for audio post on Studio Network Solutions SANmp. We quickly found 


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12 

THE CENTRAL MACHINE ROOM, BY BRIAN LASCHOBER, BROADCAST ENGINEER 

The main infrastructure 

of the central 

machine room (CMR) 

is a Miranda NVISION 

128x128 router with 

dual NV9000 controllers 

and 4 layers : HD 

and SD-SDI with embedded 

audio, timecode, 

and stereo analog 

audio. 

All router inputs 

and outputs go 

through patch panels, 

and we use these 

frequently. Machine 

control is wired to 

a CAT6 patch panel, 

which gives the editor 

freedom to use 

any deck from their 

location. 

All of our Mac Pros are in the CMR to reduce noise in the edit suites and to shorten the runs of fiber, 

network, machine control and SDI in/out of each system. The distance from the furthest edit suite to the 

CMR is pushing 200 feet, so we are using Gefen USB and DVI+ extenders. Every edit suite has Miranda 

virtual control panel software which allows editors to route to the inputs of their Kona 3 cards, VTRs and 

the HD, SD, and audio monitors in their edit suites. Every input and every output is routable. 

For NTSC, we have the following video recorders: 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

24 PVW-2800 Betacam SP (analog component run thru AJA A/D and D/A converters) 

18 MSW-M2000 IMX (these were our SD house format) 

11 PDW-HD1500 XDCAM HD 4:2:2 

6 DSR-2000 DVCAM 

3 DVW-2000 Digital Betacam 

3 PDW-F1600 XDCAM HD 4:2:2 

2 PVR-LX1 DVD (SDI & AES input & output cards installed) 

1 HDW-1800 HDCAM 

1 PDW-F70 XDCAM HD 4:2:0 

1 AJ-HD1400 DVCPRO HD 

When we go to the PAL side, we are currently using two Snell & Wilcox CVR-550 standards converters, 

working through five PVW-2800P Betacam SP VTRs, one DVW-500P Digital Betacam, and five HDV 

decks that we’re using mostly to record PAL DVCAM. 

Last year we pulled out our last ¾”, VHS and SVHS VTRs. We had a handful of smaller stations that 

were still requesting these formats, but most of those stations are now airing direct from the DVDs we 

send them. 

Our CMR also houses CCUs, RCPs, switcher frame, monitor wall, DAs, intercom, and engineering 

equipment for our studio, as well as seven Xserves —three for Xsan Metadata controllers, one for Final 

Cut Server and three for rendering/Q-Master nodes —house and metadata network switches, and 16 

Mac Pros. 

The Xsan storage and fibre switches themselves are located in the JMM data center, which is a climate-controlled 

room with gas fire suppression on a different floor. The CMR and data center are connected 

by 144 strands of fibre. 


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Above: The Joyce Meyer Ministries studio. 

Below: In the Central Machine Room, shading cameras to match each 

other. 

that this is less than it sounds: we are constantly challenged 

by the need to manage it as we push its limits. 

Editorial is spread across 15 Final Cut Pro edit suites, 

two FCP ingest stations, and nine Pro Tools rooms. It’s 

a four-week cycle for a program editor to complete the 

six programs that air in a single week in all of the various 

versions. They edit the program to length, adding motion 

graphics and any other special content as directed 

by the producer, such as testimonials, studio interviews, 

or footage from one of our humanitarian aid efforts. 

In addition to our video and audio editors, our team 

of 50 broadcast professionals also includes two quality 

controllers, two motion graphics artists, six producers, 

two engineers, two cinematographers, a production 

assistant, three duplication specialists, a DVD producer, 

support staff, and a newly created digital content position 

for tagging metadata. 

Understandably, asset management is a huge initiative 

for us. It has been a big adjustment from tape logs 

and time code window burns to Final Cut Server, but one 

14 

that is welcome and needed. We’re 

currently creating a keyword searchable 

system using FCS and look forward 

to all the gains a digital content 

workflow can bring to the team. 

AUDIO AND VIDEO 

Footage shot in studio or at conference 

and festival events begins the post 

production process in audio editing 

and mixing. The multi track recordings 

are ingested to Pro Tools, mixed, EQ’d, 

etc. and then laid back to the original 

XDCAM line-cut discs recorded in the 

field, replacing the temp mixes. 

Once the audio is finished and 

laid back, the XDCAM discs are ingested 

to the Xsan, where we have 22 

fibre-attached clients. 

The assistant editor typically 

ingests the footage and begins the 

metadata tagging process with reel, 

clip name, and description information 

We ingest XDCAM media two 

ways — as data using Sony’s PDW-U1 

USB drives using XDCAM software 

through Log and Transfer, or as HD-SDI 

using conventional Log and Capture in 

FCP with AJA Kona 3 cards. 

What we are finding through our 

post-production workflow — after trial 

and error, I must say — is that we are 

ingesting via HD-SDI as ProRes 4:2:2 

through the AJA Kona 3 for long form 

projects, and via XDCAM clips in native 

format for short form projects. 

Regardless of ingest codec (Pro- 

Res or XDCAM), all sequences use the 

same codec for editorial, which is Apple’s ProRes 4:2:2. 

We started using ProRes HQ, but after extensive 

testing by our engineers, we have found no perceptible 

difference between this and standard ProRes, yet the 

space savings is significant, so standard ProRes is where 

we landed. This has been accepted by all of our stations 

and networks. 

As mentioned earlier, for shorter projects like promos, 

we ingest using native XDCAM codec with Sony’s 

PDW-U1 USB drive at 4:2:2, 50Mb, because of the increased 

speed of ingest: about two times real-time, but 

this is converted to ProRes in the sequence. 

ASSET MANAGEMENT 

Since making the transition to HD, we formed a digital 

content team to help improve our department’s asset 

management. This team is in the process of developing 

more advanced asset management tools for the entire 

staff. These tools include best practices for labeling, 


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Right: At the time JMM built the new HD post-production 

infrastructure, Apple had just discontinued their Xserve 

RAID solution. Coincidentally, this is what we had been 

looking hard at and, when it was no longer an option, 

it opened the door to us looking even harder at other 

storage providers. 

We actually wound up somewhere I didn’t think we 

would, but has since ended up being a good solution for 

us: EMC. Typically a high-end enterprise solution, EMC 

doesn’t have a large piece of the pie in the media space, 

but our CIO had very good success with them on the 

corporate side, and they made a very compelling case. 

For full redundancy, we had to go with the Studio 

Network Solutions fibre card, rather than the Apple fibre 

card. It’s the SNS Ellipse card that is allowing us to unlock 

the power of the EMC storage system. 

metadata tagging at the disc level, naming conventions on 

disc and in Final Cut Server, Xsan file structure organization, 

keyword searches, logging practices, and proof and approval 

workflows. 

As an example, unique disk names given at ingest become 

part of the metadata, identifying which camera the disc came 

from, what meeting it came from, along with the date, etc. 

We felt this initiative was so important that we created a 

new staff position we call the “Digital Content Coordinator,” 

whose main priority is to metadata tag content descriptions in 

Final Cut Server. 

This team also helps make sure that the media files on 

16 

Creative COW Magazine — The Asset Management and Distribution Issue 

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Xsan, the proxy files in Final Cut Server, and the Final Cut 

Pro project files relate to each other, all following agreed 

upon standard organizational and naming conventions. 

All the names for these bins and clips need to match 

for producers and editors to be able to spend less time 

searching for things. 

AUTOMATION WITH FINAL CUT SERVER 

Final Cut Server is a good organizational tool, but in addition 

to this, it has also significantly helped our post 

workflow with its ability to automate processes. 

Our digital content lead, Bryce Bagwill, has scripted 

several automation processes. One is for proxy files to be 

created as soon as an editor checks a project into FCS. 

All of the low-resolution compression rendering takes 

place on a cluster of three Xserves processing together 

using the Apple Qmaster system. Final Cut Server then 

automates notification to anyone who needs access to 

the footage, such as producers creating content, myself 

as senior producer, or executives who are reviewing and 

approving. 

We have 90 complete programs on our website at 

any given time, so web encoding is also a big part of 

what do every day. Final Cut Server also helps automate 

this process for our web encoder, so that we can schedule 

the heaviest rendering for nighttime. In addition to 

our Xserve rendering cluster, we can also call upon unused 

cores within the other Mac Pros that are in the central 

machine room, using that processing power at night 

Above: 16 Mac Pros in the Central Machine Room. Apple 

Final Cut Server takes advantage of unused cores at 

night to assist the Xserve rendering cluster. Below, 

some of the machine room wiring, including fibre and 

KVM cabling. 

while our editors aren’t working. 

Automations in FCS helps our proof and approval 

processes. Editors send low res proxies of projects in process 

to producers who can watch everything from a full 

half-hour program to a small promo segment, or even an 

individual clip. The team can leave comments or annotations, 

contribute photos, modify storyboards, pass along 

copies of scripts, or even web links. Final Cut Server automatically 

sends notifications to keep the team aware of 

the status of individual items within the workflow. 

Once programs or segments are complete, final 

approval can happen in various ways — using Final Cut 

Server, or via iDisk, or even old fashioned DVDs. But for 

me nothing is better than watching the segment or program 

in the edit suite with the editor and producer if at 

all possible. 

CLOSED CAPTIONING 

Another major improvement that Final Cut Server affords 

us is the automation of our closed captioning workflow. 

This may not sound like a very big deal, but when you 

post six programs per week, edited into nine different 

versions, the numbers add up fast. 

The process begins when an editor drops a finished 

sequence onto a drop folder. Final Cut Server then compresses 

that sequence into a manageable size, and FTPs 

(is this a verb now?) it to our closed captioning provider, 

Aberdeen Captioning. Once they’ve done the work on 

their end, they send a closed captioning file back to us. 

Final Cut Server then notifies the editor that it is available, 

and ready for import. Automating this has saved a lot of 

money for us over previous tape-based workflows. 

Another interesting HD wrinkle has been how HD 

captioning gets to the XDCAM disc. Rather than the ana- 

log “Line 21” (EIA-608) transport, the CEA-708 standard 

embeds the captioning straight into the HD-SDI stream 

for recording, whether to tape, or in our case, back to XD- 

CAM disc. 

DUPLICATION AND DISTRIBUTION 

Once a program is mastered to disc, our in-house duplication 

department makes the air dubs and ships them 

out. It seems we send out tapes in every known format 

to meet all the different network and station requirements. 

With HD, this has only become more complicated. 

Currently only a handful of networks we work with accept 

high definition masters, and even in that small 

group, there are many different formats required. Because 

of this, Up/Down/Cross conversion of our media 

has become an important part of what our duplication 

team does. AJA FS-1 and Link HDC-925 up/down/cross 

converters play a vital role in the central machine room. 

Other than the handful of stations airing direct from 

DVD, everything we deliver is on tape. We are in preliminary 

discussions with a couple of networks on FTP distribution. 

However those talks are only in the investigative 

stages. Over 100 radio stations are already connecting to 

our FTP to download weekly programs which has been 

very successful. We have a high interest in doing this with 

television as well, and using Final Cut Server. 

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE 

At Joyce Meyer Ministries, everything we do is done in an 

atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork. In that spirit, 

as a broadcast team, we feel that we are only scratching 

the surface of what we can eventually build with digital 

asset management and a file-based workflow. 

Going forward, we recognize and understand the 

media we create will not only help to preserve the legacy 

of the ministry, but will also help build its future. As new 

technologies continue to emerge, we hope to discover 

even better ways to use a data centric workflow to enhance 

our media and broadcast team’s ability to collaborate, 

gain increased efficiencies and reduce cost. 

As a nonprofit, throughout the ministry, we are extremely 

conscious of stewardship issues and strive to 

maintain the highest quality, both creatively and technically, 

while also being good stewards of both donations 

and resources by keeping costs and expenses as low as 

possible. Any time we can increase efficiencies or reduce 

costs using technology automation means allows those 

critical resources to be used to feed, house or help one 

more person —and, for all of us at JMM, that is what it is 

all about. 

n 



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Editor’s Note: We add new forums at CreativeCOW.net as our 

members tell us they need them. Among the most frequent 

requests of late, and our newest forum: Digital Delivery. 

The transition from sending tapes to sending files to 

clients and networks is rapidly accelerating. Needless to say, 

there’s nothing even vaguely resembling standards for this. 

Rather than ask one person to provide a comprehensive 

overview, we have asked the irrepressible Bob Zelin, 

Contributing Editor, to introduce the lay of the land. To 

further illuminate, we offer a small slice of the many conversations 

already springing up in the new Digital Delivery 

forum. 

Most of those posts have been gently 

edited from their original online appearance 

for length, and for reading outside 

their original threads. 

Having dealt with videotape 

formats for all these years, I 

never thought about what happens 

to an HDCAM tape, or DigiBeta tape, Bob Zelin 

Avoiding Digital Delivery 

DISASTERS 

With Your On-Air Broadcast Files 

It used to be easy. A tape, an envelope, a finished delivery. Now there are many more 

ways for things to go wrong! Here are ways to keep your digital deliveries on track. 

once it leaves a facility. But I was recently asked to 

build a small TV station. It’s just video equipment, I 

thought. It would be the same stuff as always. Boy, 

was I wrong! Now I had to start understanding how 

to get these tapes — and the output of a video switcher 

that was creating a daily news show — onto an on-air 

broadcast server. 

All of a sudden, MPEG-2 became very important, 

as most professional on-air servers use this format. So 

instead of being concerned about getting the best image 

quality from a Final Cut Pro or an Avid system, 

all that matters now is, how the heck 

do I get anything — and I mean anything 

— into the specific flavor of 

MPEG-2 that this particular on-air 

server wants to see? 

Faced with all of this new 

equipment, which included a Broadcast 

Pix video switcher, and several 

Grass Valley editing systems, the 

only end result that mattered was 

that stinking on-air playback server. 


So, I started to ask around, what is everyone 

else doing? How are files being delivered? 

It turned out that many of the “big 

boys” were using products like Telestream 

FlipFactory to take any sort of file format 

and convert it to MPEG-2. I spoke with my 

local cable company about their requirements 

for digital delivery, and they, too, 

used FlipFactory, along with another product 

from Telestream called AdManager to 

automate this process. 

All of a sudden, I started to understand 

why people bought Sony IMX VTRs that 

were native MPEG-2 file format. All of a 

sudden, I understood why products from 

Telestream, Anystream or Digital Rapids 

were so important — because there 

need to be quick, easy, and efficient ways 

to transcode from the input files to the required 

file formats. 

File conversion was only half the battle. 

Speed is the other concern. Normal broadband 

Internet connections may seem fast 

when you are looking at YouTube, but are a 

joke when you are trying to send a 2 GB file 

to or from an FTP server on the web. 

To send files from one place to another, 

I purchased a little product called Pogoplug, 

a very inexpensive FTP (File Transfer Protocol) 

appliance that you plug a USB2 drive 

into — and now you have your own FTP 

site on the web. That’s it. I did a little test 

with a text file, and it all seemed so easy. 

Then we tried to do a real test: send a 

200MB MPEG-2 file across the internet. All 

of a sudden, reality kicked in. It took about 

30 minutes to accomplish this. We tried 

similar techniques, like Dropbox, which is 

a free service, and YouSendIt, free for files 

up to 100MB, and $9.99/month for files up 

to 2GB. But the reality was that if you had 

to send an entire show, like a two or three 

gig file, it was going to take a long time. 

You soon see that Internet connection services like T1 are 

not that wonderful when you are sending or receiving massive 

files. We have a dedicated DS-3 line from the phone company 

that is used to receive a live TV network feed in H.264 from Miami 

to Orlando. DS-3 is 45Mb/sec — perfect, but guess what — 

it’s $3000 a month. Not only is this not realistic for most small 

companies, it’s not even realistic for this station for “secondary” 

feeds, like receiving completed shows or commercials. 

For now, commercials and graphics will use a slow, cheap 

FTP internet service, but TV shows must still be delivered via 

Federal Express. 

There ain’t no free lunch. Not yet — not to my knowledge. 

Until “the rest of us,” without expensive MPEG VTRs, know 

how to deliver the exact file format that these stations and cable 

companies want, it’s still going to be a long wait. 

— Bob Zelin 

Re: Following up re: digital delivery 

Rich Rubasch 6:34:26 pm 

Here are some options to consider. 

Internal FTP site. We set up a Buffalo Technology TeraStation 

NAS server to hold about 1 TB of SD promos for BBC and American 

Public Television. It is local at our facility, so getting files to it is a 

snap. From the outside, we allow anonymous access via any web 

browser and set it up to be accessed via port 9000 or FTP port 21 

with simple web redirects: they type in our web url with a directory 

name and it takes them to the file list. 

So far it has been working swimmingly. We only had to increase 

our internet upload speeds at the shop to 4 Mb to meet the 

bandwidth requirements. 

Station’s FTP site. I have FTP folders on two network and one 

cable provider’s sites. I upload files to their directories with files to 

their specs (HD or SD) and they retrieve them. This system is ok, but 

not bulletproof. I have to make sure they got the file and have to 

make sure they QC the darn thing. 

DG Fastchannel. It’s DG FastChannel for me. 

This digital delivery service is actually much less work than using 

the direct via FTP method. Preparing four different timelines 

and then encoding four different files and then naming each one 

differently, keep track of them all and upload 

to four different FTP sites, then track with the 

station that they got them and that they play 

on their server — bah, humbug! 

What’s nice about DG is that I only need 

to encode one file and send it to many stations. 

Using Telestream Episode to encode to 

their unique MPEG-2 specifications, I can get 

a spot from my editing timeline to 20 or more 

stations in less than 1/2 hour. I charge $30-40 

for each station, so you do the math. 

DG FastChannel gives me most peace of 

mind. Clients love getting the order from DG 

stating that everything has been delivered. It 

is like a FedEx tracking number. 

The quality is fine and their service has 

improved over time. Big plus: stations love 

them. 

Photo courtesy of Kamyar Adl 



Chris Blair 5:29:21 pm 

Last year we uploaded hundreds of 

media files to a client in the Middle 

East, including the contents of DVDs 

that were anywhere from 1-2GB. We 

tried several digital delivery services, 

and we found that the upload speed 

was almost wholly dependent on 

our connection speed. They were no 

faster (in our experience) than using 

straight FTP software and connecting 

to a server somewhere. 

We use a professional level FTP 

software application (in our case 

CuteFTP Pro). We encode the spots 

to the specs of the particular station 

or cable system (usually MPEG-2 or 

QuickTime H.264, but also a few other 

formats/codecs). Then we log onto 

the station or cable system using FTP 

addresses, user names and passwords 

they provide. Next, we just drag and 

drop the file to the specific directory 

they’ve given us (which can be 

navigated to automatically by the FTP 

software). 

Now if all that sounds simple, 

IT’S NOT. We end up going round and 

round with stations and cable systems 

about finding the files, even though 

they’re uploaded to the SAME place 

time after time. 

I will say that account execs LOVE 

this process because they literally 

don’t have to do anything — except 

call and email you looking for their 

files, even though they’ve been uploaded 

to the same directory, on the 

same server, for the 35th time this 

year. 

Delivery questions to ponder 

Michael Klinger 9:21:14 am 

Over those years, we’ve become 

steadily more ambitious 

with uploads and downloads. 

At first, it was just a few files 

from a voice record, then more 

and more and more, pushing 

our luck along the way. We 

are now routinely moving finished 

or reference QuickTime 

or other media around as large 

as 4GB. 

Even so, many variables 

are out of our control, including 

maybe the most difficult: 

the client’s perception of what 

is a realistic experience to deliver 

this way. 

Case in point: A couple of nights ago, we uploaded a 4 gig file to 

London from Los Angeles. It had to be done in one of the short list of required 

high-quality file types (including uncompressed). Based on their 

list and relative quality consideration we chose the least of the evils, 

and went with ProRes HD 1080. 

Like others here have experienced, it had to be loaded to their site 

and the company receiving the file wasn’t willing to come and get it 

from ours. Even though we have a decent connection and the receiving 

end had a decent connection, we weren’t getting even 1/10th of 

our potential upload speed. It ended up as a 7+ hour upload — even 

though there was no other activity in our office at the time. 

No harm done, I suppose in the middle of the night with no tight 

deadline, but of course, my client didn’t anticipate this. Their only point 

of reference is what it is like to load a YouTube video and they want to 

know what is wrong with us, why would it take 7 hours? 

Re: speed of free “FTP” sites 

Erik Freid 7:21:27 am 

There are companies like Media Silo that host a UDP server on the cloud 

that send data faster than FTP, via a Java applet that opens in a browser. 

First, understand the difference between UDP and FTP. FTP basically 

sends out a small packet of data, waits for verification from the server, 

then sends more. It is relatively slow to do, and there is a file size limitation 

of around 2GB -- unless the ftp server is running 64-bit, and then you 

can be pretty stable to 4GB before it fails. 

UDP is faster because it sends out larger packets to the other side, 

and does not verify packet receipt. It just sends and sends. Companies 

like Aspera, FileCatalyst, etc., use a secondary TCP stream (from the hardware 

server to another server, or from the Java applet running in the 

browser) to verify delivery, which does not slow down the transfer. 

All that said, you cannot go faster than your bandwidth. FTP maxes 

out at about 1.5 Mbit/s, regardless if you have more bandwidth. Depending 

on the controls set on the software and license purchased, UDP can 

go up to 50-100 Mbit/s. 

I have seen a transfer freeze an entire network because it took up all 

the available bandwidth. Everyone complained that their internet was 

unusably slow, but they were getting 80 Mb/s on the UDP transfer: 1GB 

every two minutes. 

Most of the new systems let you set a “speed limit” on the transfer to 

avoid this flooding of the gates, so to speak. 


Mark Grossardt 7:25:24 am 

We’ve only just begun using Extreme 

Reach, and so far, I’ve been impressed. 

They were founded by the guys who 

started DG FastChannel, so I get the impression 

that ER is the new and improved 

version of DG. They take a high quality 

MPEG-2 or ProRes HQ master file, and 

encode it specifically for each station’s 

playback server, so that automated reencoding 

by the stations shouldn’t be an 

issue. 

(Incidentally, the ProRes HQ file is a 

much more accurate representation of 

the spot sitting on my NLE timeline than 

the MPEG-2 format for either ER or DG). 

The list of stations using ER is large 

and growing, though not quite as ubiquitous 

as DG’s. If a station isn’t partnered 

with them yet, they can also dump the 

spot to Beta SP and have it delivered, 

much like DG also does. 

Lest I start to sound like an ER honk, 

I’m really hoping that ER’s HD delivery 

prices start coming down, as the price is 

still about 10x that of SD delivery. That’s 

enough to make me want to actually call 

up each station to request their HD formatting 

specs/FTP address info — and 

we all know how much fun that conversation 

can be. 

I once had a guy tell me I could just 

email a flash file. Seriously. 

Re: Automation 

Chris Blair 5:29:21 pm 

The problem you’re likely going to run 

into with stations and cable systems is 

that most of their systems are automated. 

People are not involved, and trying 

to convince a station to give your file 

special treatment will be difficult, if not 

impossible. 

We can’t even get stations to implement 

Telestream provided fixes for a field 

reversal issue, which is just a tiny, simple 

plug-in that Telestream will provide and 

help setup for the station. 

The reason? It would mean setting 

up a special watch folder for these problem 

files, which the stations and cable 

systems refuse to do. And believe me, 

we’ve asked. 

In fact, we got Telestream to figure 

out the problem by sending them several 

of the files stations were having problems 

with. Within an hour, they emailed 

back and said that there was nothing 

wrong with our encoded files, but that some of their presets for playout 

servers did indeed reverse the fields -- usually a 720x480 to 720x486 

conversion issue or vice-versa. 

They said it was an easy fix, but the station would need to set up 

that special watch folder, since the plug-in wouldn’t need to run on 

“non-problem” files. The stations refused, saying they couldn’t do that, 

because their engineers and IT people wouldn’t allow changes to the 

system -- despite the fact that it fixed a glaring problem with the quality 

of their spot playback! 

Re: Delivery questions to ponder 

Michael Klinger 12:41:13 pm 

When you build a business model around providing services with scarce 

equipment, best to think ahead to its eventual obsolescence and give 

thought to what the replacement revenue streams will be. 

For a long format hi-def project delivered to a network, we currently 

get about $500 for a 60 minute HDCAM-SR master. Our clients 

usually pay their own shipping. Subtract about 100 bucks for the stock, 

and that leaves $400 for the “labor” and profit per tape. We do these all 

day long. 

There are other functions that add more value and a larger price/ 

profit on some masters, such as Dolby E encoding, and closed caption 

authoring and encoding. Nevertheless, the pure operation of putting 

the deck into record bills out $200 to $300 per hour, an amount that 

will help to re-coup the $100,000 cost of the equipment in a reasonable 

time period. 

At some point, I no longer have to buy $100k decks, but I also no 

longer have the revenue and profit of offering a service on a relatively 

scarce piece of equipment. So I contend that there is a lot to consider in 

order to adapt a business model in coming years, following the needs, 

trends, and profit centers: adapting from offering the services of scarce 

equipment, to adjusting it to a cheaper, better delivery model that represents 

a viable business. 

I look forward to this evolution. 

n 

And that’s just the beginning. In addition to the Digital Delivery forum, 

you can find these issues being discussed in forums for Telestream Episode, 

Compression Techniques, Broadcast Video, Business & Marketing, Adobe 

After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, and more. Just click the Search button on 

any of the terms in this article, and you may be amazed by what you find! 



Relax, and Quit Bluffing 

Understanding 35mm’s Evolution, 

and Its Impact On Workflows 

Paul Stephen Carlin delves into 35mm film framing and aspect ratio, with 

the idea that “Once you under-stand the history of 35mm’s evolution, 

you have a good foundation for learning about the future.” 

I have been bluffing for most of my career. 

(Please don’t tell any of my employers!) 

When I got my first big break as a linear on-line editor 

in 1995, I was asked, “Do you know how to use the CMX 

Omni?” I bluffed. While I had seen many great things at 

NAB in Las Vegas, I can’t say I had much experience using 

them. 

What I did have was the thirst for knowledge, the 

motivation and the confidence to pull it off. I quickly 

adapted, applied all of my previous experience to my 

Paul Stephen Carlin 

Burbank, California USA 

new job, and soon became very proficient. I remember 

thinking at the time, “Hey, this isn’t so hard after all.” 

Applying my knowledge of the fundamentals combined 

with a bit of hit-the-ground learning proved to 

be invaluable at the time, and has kept me going to this 

day. 

Recently I had the privilege to finish the 3D trailers 

for “Avatar.” Did I have extensive knowledge of a stereoscopic 

digital intermediate workflow? Had I completed 

numerous 2K trailers before? No, and no. But I did my 

Paul is a freelance Autodesk Smoke artist with numerous digital intermediate 

credits to his name, including the feature films “Soul to Keep” and “Bunraku,” 

and the trailers for “Avatar” and “Knight and Day.” He stays busy in all aspects of 

the industry, from commercials (look for the new Starbucks-flavored Via ads) to 

long-form. Paul is an Autodesk Certified Instructor, and his curiosity keeps him 

up to speed on desktop software as well. He never stops learning. 


homework and hit the ground running — 

and never looked back. 

The key to success is to never stop learning. 

Life is about growing and learning — only 

to realize you know nothing at all. Many of us 

tend to focus on one particular aspect of the 

industry. We become specialists in what we 

know. I have found that having knowledge 

of the inner workings of other parts of the 

industry proves to be invaluable, no matter 

what I’m working on. 

In this article, I want to cover the basics 

of 35mm film framing and aspect ratios, and 

some of the differences between the acquisition 

and distribution film formats. 

Why should you learn about 35mm film, 

when it is clearly on its way to oblivion? Because 

everything we use today is based on 

something we did yesterday. Once you understand 

the history of 35mm’s evolution, 

you have a good foundation for learning 

about the future. 

35MM FILM 

Ever since George Eastman mass-produced 

the first flexible transparent motion picture 

film stock in 1889, and Thomas Edison standardized 

the 35mm format in 1892, not much 

has changed in the world of film stock. There 

were others with ideas about frame sizes and 

aspect ratios, but the first round of format 

wars for motion picture film ended in 1909 

with the standardization of a 35mm gauge 

(width), with 4 perforations per frame along 

both edges and a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. 

A 1.33:1 (spoken as “one point three three 

to one,” or simply “one three three”) aspect 

ratio means that one side of the image is 1.33 

times longer than the other. This same screen 

aspect ratio was later adopted by television, 

known there as 4:3 (four by three). 

So how did we go from this to where we 

are today, with our 16:9 televisions and widescreen 

movies? 

FRAME SIZES AND ASPECT RATIOS 

In the original Edison standard, the film was 

35mm wide from edge to edge, with an image 

area of 24.89 mm by 18.67 mm, surrounded 

by four sprockets on each side. This is called 

full aperture, or what was later referred to as 

silent gate — the width of the frame in silent 

movies. 

When sound was introduced, room had 

to be made for the optical audio tracks. The 

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 

decided to reduce and move the image area 

to the right. The resultant aspect ratio became 

1.37:1, and is called the Academy ratio. 

After the phenomenal success of Cin- 

Above: Panavision was started in 1953, by Robert Gottschalk, to 

build anamorphic lenses for the motion picture industry. This is the 

company’s latest G Series prime lenses. Note the unique cylindrical 

glass element on the front of the lens. The anamorphic element can 

also be located in the middle or rear of the lens. 

Below: A comparison of the anamorphic scope image area vs. super 

35 center cut. The anamorphic lens squeezes a 2.39:1 image into 

the Academy frame, while the super 35 center cut image is simply a 

2.39:1 image in the middle of the full aperture frame. Anamorphic 

uses the entire vertical height, while Super 35 uses the area normally 

reserved for optical audio to improve the size of the image area. 

Read on for an explanation of all these terms! 

erama in 1952, which involved three separate 35mm projectors to 

create a 2.59:1 aspect ratio, studios began looking into other, possibly 

more economical, ways to capitalize on widescreen images, 

and differentiate themselves from the ever-encroaching television 

screens. 

(Studios also experimented with 3D, but we all know that 

turned out to be nothing but a fad!) 

In 1953, 20th Century Fox introduced CinemaScope, an anamorphic 

widescreen format with a 2.66 aspect ratio. This was 

achieved by placing an anamorphic lens in front of both the camera 

and the projector to horizontally squeeze and correspondingly 

un-squeeze the image at a ratio of 2:1. 

This means that the full aperture image of 1.33 was multiplied 


y two, creating a 2.66 aspect ratio. This 

allows you to use the entire aperture to 

record an image twice as wide as the 

standard 1.33:1 (4:3) image. 

Sound was recorded onto a separate 

magnetic coated film stock, which 

proved too costly in the long run. Fox 

eventually moved the image over to the 

Academy framing to make room for audio 

tracks, and the aspect ratio became 

2.35:1. 

Around the same time, other studios 

were trying to compete by using 

various other widescreen aspect ratios. 

Paramount cropped the top and bottom 

off of the 1.37:1 Academy frame to make 

a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. This is called soft 

matting, and was simply a black piece of 

metal in the projector — called an aperture 

mask —to block light from hitting 

the screen. 

MGM and Disney experimented 

with a 1.75:1 aspect ratio — very close to 

the 1.78:1 HD that we use today — while 

Universal and Columbia Pictures were 

experimenting with 1.85:1. 

For non-anamorphic widescreen, 

1.85:1 became the standard, and is still 

in use today. It is called Academy Flat 

because it is shot with spherical lenses, 

creating a flat, non-squeezed image 

on the film. Theaters in Europe, hit by 

economic hard times, were not able to 

adopt the 1.85 aspect ratio so quickly, 

and held onto the 1.66 aspect ratio for a 

long time. 

28 

Above: A framing chart is used to indicate what the camera operator 

was using to frame the shots. In this example, you can see a 1.85:1 

aspect ratio inside a full aperture scan. The arrows point to the edges 

of the soft matte. 

All of these non-anamorphic widescreen formats were still using the 

Academy 1.37:1 frame, and simply ignoring the part of the image that 

would be cropped in the theater by the projector. The camera operator 

would use guides in ground glass to know how to frame a shot in the 

viewfinder. A framing chart was shot with the camera to indicate to everyone 

else what the correct framing is. The framing chart is included at 

the head of every reel sent to theaters, and tells the projectionist where 

to crop the image. This procedure is still done to this day. 

Until the 1980s, prints sent to the theaters were nothing but copies 

of the original camera negative (copies of copies of copies), with the 

optical audio tracks added in printing. This meant that the film was shot 

in-camera to the Academy image area, leaving room for optical audio 

tracks. 

With improvements in optical printing (and eventually the advent 

of the digital intermediate process) came the idea that you could use the 


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original silent gate, or Full aperture, to shoot the image in-camera, then 

optically reduce it later to the Academy aperture when making prints. 

This camera origination format is called Super 35, and it added 32% 

to the available image area when compared to the Academy aperture. It 

also broke the direct link between acquisition and distribution formats. 

For the first time, cameras shot one format, and projectors showed another. 

A large motivation behind this was the cost of anamorphic lenses. 

It is much cheaper to shoot a soft-matted 2.35 image onto a Super 35 

negative than it is to shoot using anamorphic lenses. You can still send 

anamorphic prints to the theaters, albeit with a reduction in image quality. 

However, improvements in film stock and film processing were making 

this argument less relevant. 

James Cameron was a proponent of Super 35 early on and used it 

to shoot many of his films, including Titanic. In fact, the undersea footage 

was shot Super 35, 2-perf 2.35 to keep the size of the roll of film to a 

minimum in the small ROV (remote operated vehicle). 

30 

SIDEBAR: VistaVision was Paramount Pictures’ answer to 

CinemaScope in 1954. It takes the 35mm film negative and 

runs it horizontally, using 8 perforations per frame (called 

Lazy 8), shooting with non-anamorphic spherical lenses. It 

didn’t survive as a mainstream format, but is still used for 

visual effects work on occasion (“Star Wars,” “Inception”). 

35mm single lens reflex cameras (SLRs) adopted this sideways 

8-perf double image as well. 

When a DSLR camera says that their sensor is full frame 

(like the Canon 1D Mark II or Canon EOS 5D Mark II), this 

means that the sensor (36mm x 24mm) is roughly twice the 

size of the 35mm motion picture frame (24.9mm x 18.7mm), 

and very similar to VistaVision (36mm x 18.3mm). The size of 

the image sensor greatly affects the angle of view and depth 

of field…, which means that a full frame DSLR has very different 

characteristics than a full frame motion picture sensor 

(like a RED One camera). 

Above: A single frame of VistaVision. 

It should be noted that there are 

many artistic advantages of anamorphic 

lenses, including very cool lens flares 

(think J.J. Abram’s Star Trek) and improved 

depth, as well as an increase in 

the spatial resolution of the image (52% 

more exposed film area). However, the 

decision to shoot Super 35 2.35 flat using 

spherical lenses is almost always a financial 

one. Spherical lenses are cheaper, 

much easier to work with, and have a 

greater selection to choose from. 

PERFORATIONS 

If you look at the image area used by a 

Super 35 2.35 flat image, you will notice 

that a tremendous amount of the full 

aperture frame is not used. Nearly half 

of the image is masked off and not seen 

in the theater. How can we make up for 

all this wasted film? Instead of placing an 

image every four perforations (sprocket 

holes), why not used only three “perfs,” 

or even just two? 

This is exactly what happened with 

a simple modification of the film camera 

to only pull the film down 3-perfs instead 

of 4-perfs. Today, it is common to 

shoot Super 35 3-perf, as this gives you 

33% more shooting time per roll (25% 

cost savings in film and processing), and 

still allows you to shoot 2.35, 1.85 and 

1.78 (HD) aspect ratios. 

Once again, money is a major motivating 

factor in this decision. 

PROTECTED FRAMING 

Another advantage of shooting Super 

35 with soft matting is the ability to release 

a film with many different aspect 

ratios. “Avatar” was released to theaters 

in four different aspect ratios: 1.43:1 

(IMAX film), 1.78:1 (IMAX digital), and 

1.85 Flat or 2.35 Anamorphic, depending 

on the capabilities of the theater. 

This is achieved by shooting protected 

framing. Your viewfinder (and on-set 

monitors) will have indicators for the 

different aspect ratios, allowing you to 

frame the shot correctly. 

(I should mention that “Avatar,” like 

most current 3D stereoscopic films, was 

shot digitally at 1.78:1 HD 1080p and not 

on Super 35 film.) 

If you compose the image to fit 

smack in the middle of the frame vertically, 

this is called common center or 

center cut framing. However, framing 

for multiple aspect ratios using common 

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SIDEBAR: DISTRIBUTION FORMATS 

The concept that you expose the entire full aperture frame, 

but only extract a portion of it for the release prints may be a 

stretch for videographers who are so used to what-you-see-iswhat-you-get 

framing. But it is important to remember that 

the shooting format of film is now completely separate from 

the format it is projected in a theater. The digital intermediate 

process has completely solidified this by allowing you to create 

numerous deliverables at many different aspect ratios and 

frame sizes, starting with a single frame of a single size. 

No matter how a film is projected, whether by a film print 

or a digital projector, all the same issues with framing and aspect 

ratios remain the same. 

ficult, given the fact that composition is usually driven 

by the amount of “head room” given to the actors. It is 

much more aesthetically pleasing to use what is called 

common top framing. This groups all the different soft 

mattes near the top of the frame. 

Another example of protected framing is what you 

see anytime you watch HD television networks. They 

are shooting 16:9 protected for 4:3, or sometimes 14:9, 

which gets letterboxed for 4:3 audiences. The result is 

that all action needs to fit inside the 4:3 safe region, inside 

the 16:9 frame. Graphic elements like lower thirds 

and scoreboards end up all crowded into the center of 

the frame. 

Two-shots that would otherwise be framed properly 

are now strangely wide, so that the audience watching 

the 4:3 center cut doesn’t get chopped off heads. This 

gives you a 16:9 frame with strangely ill-composed and 

vacant sides (wings), but again, it is all about multiple 

distribution channels. 

With one broadcast, you can (somewhat) satisfy the 

HD 16:9 audience and the 4:3 audience at 

the same time. Some networks compromise 

by allowing a wider 14:9 protected 

frame inside a 16:9 image. They then chop 

off the 14:9 sides and letterbox this for 

the 4:3 audience. The letterbox area is reduced, 

and the 16:9 framing is much better 

composed. 

When Super 35 is scanned for digital 

intermediate, the entire frame is usually 

included (a full aperture scan). This means 

that matte boxes, boom mics, dolly tracks 

and other set materials end up inside the 

1.33 frame, but are cropped out later. 

This allows film editors the option of 

re-framing the shot vertically as they have 

additional image to work with. It also provides 

additional image for visual effects work such as 3D 

camera tracking. 

FLAT AND SCOPE 

Today, with the exception of specialty formats like IMAX, 

there are two types of film prints sent to theaters: Academy 

Flat and Anamorphic Scope. There is also a plethora 

of digital projection formats commonly referred to as 

DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative), but they still adhere to the 

same aspect ratios as film formats. 

Academy Flat usually has an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 

(1.66:1 and 1.75:1 are obsolete), while Anamorphic Scope 

has a 2.39 aspect ratio when projected on screen. When 

a theatrical trailer is released, it will be formatted to fit 

both Scope and Flat to match the feature presentation, 

so that the projectionist doesn’t need to switch lenses 

between the two. 

Because the frames are so close together on anamorphic 

scope film, it was decided in the 70s to reduce 

the height of the frame, giving more room to better hide 

the splices. Then, in 1993, SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture 

Television Engineers) tweaked the standard again, 

to make it the same width as Academy Flat, and the aspect 

ratio became 2.39:1. The standard today is officially 

2.39:1, although this is sometimes rounded off to 2.40:1. 

There are even more factors to consider after a movie’s 

run in theaters, with cuts for DVD and Blu-ray, cable, 

airlines, iTunes and more. Home video releases, due to 

taller aspect ratios, may even show more of the vertical 

image than you would have seen in the theater, taking 

advantage of the soft matted areas of the original camera 

negative. 

In the end, there are many ways to see a film today, 

all of them with different screen dimensions, aspect ratios 

and so on. Where you see the film makes all the difference 

as to what aspect ratio you see. My 5-year old kid 

watches movies on my iPhone and he is perfectly happy 

with that. 

As mentioned earlier, “Avatar” was presented in the 

format that best fit the screen of the particular theater 

you saw the movie. James Cameron was said to prefer 

the taller screens (1.43 and 1.78) for the stereoscopic presentations, 

and the 2.35 scope version for the 2D presentations. 

Directors today are not always shooting for one 

aspect ratio. They may be shooting with 2.35 in mind, 

but protecting for 1.85 or even 1.78. These pressures to 

frame for different aspect ratios are driven by the needs 

to create different deliverables for different markets and 

applications. 

The most dramatic example of this is Pan and Scan, 

which was outlawed by the Geneva Convention in 1949. 

Well, okay…maybe it wasn’t, but it should have been. 

This inhumane process simply chops off the sides of the 

widescreen image to fit a 4:3 TV screen, trying to capture 

the action by moving the image from side-to-side. 

With the obsolescence of 4:3 televisions, this practice has 

been all but abandoned. 

Or has it? The process can also be applied to a 2.35 

or 1.85 master to make it fit into a 16:9 Television screen. 

That’s exactly what you need to do if you take a movie 

framed for 1.85 and make a 2.35 version and make a 2.35 

trailer for it. So, you see, pan and scan to a certain degree 

will always be around. 

Since the widescreen format wars were first “settled” 

over 100 years ago, it turns out that nothing stays 

settled for long — which is why the only way to avoid 

bluffing is to keep learning. 

n 

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The world’s most popular and prestigious sporting event added aerial coverage for the first time in 

its illustrious history — and they turned to partners Helifilms and Helimedia to make it all possible 

World-Class Aerials 

for The World Cup 

34 The Divergence Issue — Creative COW Magazine 

The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the most-watched 

television event in history: broadcast to over 70 

countries, averaging 400 million people for each match, 

with over 700 million watching the closing ceremony 

alone. 

This year was the first time the World Cup included 

helicopter footage, and it was shot exclusively with our 

Cineflex V14s. Our helicopter coverage was live for the 

opening and closing ceremonies, 2.5 hours of pre-match 

coverage, the kick-off of all matches, and during game 

play of the final between Spain and the Netherlands. 

Helifilms Australia was established in 1989, as a specialized 

aerial film production company. We own and operate 

six gyrostabilized camera systems — five Cineflex 

V14s, and one Cineflex MSII with daylight as well as infrared 

cameras — across our offices in the US, UK, Australia 

and South Africa. 

As this was the first time FIFA had used aerial footage 

in a World Cup, we had to demonstrate the creative 

capabilities of the camera system, and the skills of our 

Matt Downey 

Melbourne, Australia 

Matt joined Helifilms in 2006, finding his baptism-by-fire earned while 

working on Melbourne’s Commonwelath Games. Since giving up global 

roaming to settle in Australia, he has worked on feature films, live sports 

broadcasting, television and commercials. He production managed the 

AFI-nominated and Melbourne International Film Festival award-winning 

short film “End of Town.” Most recently, through Renegade Films, he also 

co-produced “Jerrycan,” winner of the Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film 

Festival, and an Australian Film Institute award for best short film. 

Above: The fireworks display at the World Cup Closing Ceremony. 

specialized aerial DPs to the match directors. They wanted 

to see how they could incorporate this new perspective 

into FIFA’s “narrative” of a football game and the 10 

cityscapes surrounding each stadium. 

We worked on the bid with our partner company, 

Helimedia, who are based in South Africa. In the lead-up 

to the World Cup, we supplied the aerial footage for the 

Confederations Cup in South Africa in 2009, which is run 

and televised as a test event for the World Cup. 

We then handpicked our specialized crews from 

around the world for the World Cup coverage: film pilots, 

aerial DPs, producers, directors, aerial coordinators, engineers 

and production assistants. The aerial unit crew was 

a total of 31 people, and then an RF unit of 11, organized 

into six teams. (The RF company supplied, integrated and 

managed the radio frequency technology on-board the 

helicopters and at the receive points at each stadium. 

This enabled us to downlink the footage live from the air 

to the ground-based broadcast units.) 

In recent years, we have managed the complete aer- 

Creative COW Magazine — The Asset Management and Digital Distribution Issue 35

Above: Freestyle footballer on Lions Head, shot for FIFA Feature Film, Cape 

Town. 

Below: The stadium at Rustenberg, flying South Korea, FIFA and New Zealand 

flags. 

ial units for the 2004 Athens Olympics, 2006 Melbourne 

Commonwealth Games and 2006 Doha Asian Games. 

Additionally, we have been involved with the aerial coverage 

for feature films such as “District 9,” and TVCs and 

documentaries such as the BBC’s “Frozen Planet,” “Human 

Planet,” “Planet Earth” and “South Pacific” TV series. 

This event was quite different from all of them, in 

that our six aerial units were simultaneously dispersed 

across the entire country. Aerial Unit Commander Jerry 

Grayson and Aerial Producer Sara Hine had three days 

of initial briefings with the entire aerial unit en masse in 

Johannesburg, before the teams were sent to their respective 

cities: Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Port 

Elisabeth, Rustenburg, Polokwane, Pretoria, Bloemfontein 

and Nelspruit. 

Each aerial unit worked on different schedules and 

for different directors, so their daily requirements could 

vary greatly. Rather than the entire group having daily 

briefings together, each team had daily briefings by 

mobile and email. Edited footage would also be shared 

36 

so we could see the way in 

which each team would shoot 

their stadiums and cities, to 

maintain consistency between 

the teams. 

PREPARATIONS 

Well in advance of the World 

Cup even beginning, we had 

developed flight plans and 

daily schedules for each of 

the 64 matches, in order that 

the security forces controlling 

the airspace over each of the 

stadia were aware of our daily 

shot list and flight path. 

For the opening and closing 

ceremonies, we liaised 

with the ceremonies production 

department, the South 

African Air Force and the Police 

Air Wing to manage the 

myriad of aerial assets that 

were within the stadium’s airspace. 

We also coordinated 

with the Ceremonies producers 

and directors on the safest 

and best film positions during 

the ceremonies, which 

involved an intricate firework 

show and elaborate fighter 

and acrobatic jet displays. 

Prior to each match, we 

carried out reconnaissance 

flights over each city and 

environs to understand each 

stadium’s specific shooting 

requirements, RF boundaries, 

and to find spots for landing and refueling. 

Tests flights were also important to gauge changing 

atmospheric conditions which would affect the helicopter’s 

flight paths or clarity of the shot, due to cloud/precipitation 

or high winds, smoke from bush burn-off, etc. 

After our test flights we would refuel, make any necessary 

flight changes, and then again get airborne for the 

team bus departures. 

SHOOTING 

We were tasked with visually linking the stadium and the 

surrounding fanfare within each city in order to give the 

audience geographical context. During the lead-up to the 

matches we shot a variety of establishing shots for each 

stadium, including the city or rural surroundings, football 

fan parks, and wildlife: wild rhinos, elephants, giraffes, lions, 

etc. We also shot each team’s buses departing and 

arriving from the hotel to the stadium. 

The aerial footage we captured was incorporated 

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into the 31-camera live world feed from HBS (Host 

Broadcasting Services). Broadcasters from around 

the world then purchased this general “overview” 

feed. 

However, larger broadcasting companies (BBC, 

ESPN, etc.) could have their own director and production 

crews onsite, taking an isolated aerial feed 

Above: One of our Cineflex gyrostabilized V14 

cameras, with 42x lens as described in more 

detail above. The aerial coordinator, working 

with with the technical director in the control 

room, liaised with the aerial DP in the helicopter, 

guiding colors to match the other broadcast 

cameras. Below: The main gallery at Soccer 

City, Johannesburg where I was based as the 

aerial coordinator with the French broadcast 

production team. 

38 

to cut within their own coverage, focusing on their national 

teams.. 

Our live coverage started 90 minutes before kick-off. It 

was transmitted via an HD downlink microwave system (supplied 

by a company called Riedel) on board the helicopter to 

each stadium’s broadcast compound. 

From there, it was transmitted to the International Broadcast 

Centre in Johannesburg, and beyond by satellite around 

the world. 

Before the live channel was open, we often also shot 

what would become establishing shots for an extended 

broadcast feed. In this case, we would use an AJA Ki Pro to 

record ProRes 422 HQ to solid-state hard drives. For FIFA’s 

historical purposes, and for our own quality control, we also 

recorded on HDCAM, uncompressed HD 4:2:2, using a Sony 

HDW-S280 recorder. 

Prior to our daily RF test flight, we would ingest this footage 

at the stadium broadcast compound for the slow motion 

and multi-feeds producers. They would then cut this into their 

daily extended broadcasts and highlights packages. 

THE GEAR 

The Cineflex Camera Systems we use are made by Axsys 

Technologies, a division of the defense/intelligence system 

manufacturer General Dynamics. The Cineflex V14 is the integration 

of a Sony 1500 HD camera, housed within a fully 

digital, 5-axis gyrostabilized gimbal. It includes the stabilization 

control motors, gyros, processors, electronics, zoom lens 

and CCD block adaptor at around 14 inches, or 350mm, in 

diameter. 

The gimbal is usually fitted near the nose of the helicopter 

onto specially built mounts. Two cables connect to the 

rest of the system, which is placed internally in the helicopter. 

Its sleek design and small size allows shooting at airspeeds of 

up to 140 knots. Powerful motors enable the gimbal to move 

dynamically through its impressive range. 

A joystick in the operator’s laptop console provides controls 

for pan, tilt and roll axes, with numerous user-defined 

fine adjustments. Zoom, focus and iris, as well as the camera’s 

menu settings, can also all be adjusted at any time from 

the laptop console, which has embedded in it the Sony RM- 

B750 remote controller. 

All of Helifilms Australia’s Cineflex V14 laptop consoles 

also have special modifications allowing in perfect and repeatable 

moves. A separate focus/iris controller can be connected 

to the console to allow another pair of hands to make 

adjustments when the operator’s workload is high. Connected 

by two cables from the gimbal, the Aux(illiary) Box 

contains circuitry, cabling, power supplies and power filters 

to protect the sensitive equipment while also providing connections 

to system components. We then connect the Aux 

Box to a recording unit such as the Sony S280 or AJA Ki Pro. 

A gyrostabilized mount which is as remarkably stable 

as the Cineflex V14 can easily service long zoom lenses. We 

used the Fujinon HA 42x9.7BERD: 9.7mm – 410mm. The lens 

is fitted with an optical doubler which can be operated at any 

time with a switch on the Laptop Console. Additionally, there 

is a built-in digital doubler allowing up to 4x magnification, 

providing 1640mm, or 4100mm in 35mm equivalent terms. 

The Asset Management and Digital Distribution Issue — Creative COW Magazine

40 

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THE FINAL SCORE 

One evening, after 2 hours of 

trying to solve problems with 

our broadcast feed on several 

channels, we still had RF issues 

that we could not resolve. We 

did everything we could. We 

recycled the camera system 

and RF units in the helicopter, 

and at the stadium RF receive 

point. We also changed the 

RF frequencies, but nothing 

could help. 

We eventually discovered 

that there was a nondescript 

white van jamming our radio 

signal! South African secret 

service agents subsequently 

traced this back to a foreign 

security agency during the 

England vs. USA match. 

Such interruptions are 

actually very typical at large 

international events like this, 

and as a supplier, we have to 

make sure the broadcaster is 

aware of the possibility. For 

example, we experienced the 

same thing when covering 

the sailing competition at the 

2004 Olympics in Athens. 

Another of the many challenges 

we had to meet was dealing with language barriers across all our 

production crews, whose members spoke languages including French, 

German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. One of our crew members also 

only narrowly avoided a highway carjacking. 

As we look back at our coverage, we find that solid state hard drive 

recorders such as the AJA Ki Pro, which can deal with the high and low frequency 

vibration environment of the helicopter, are very advantageous. 

The Pro Res 422HQ format allows seamless integration for editing with 

Final Cut Pro. It also allows the operator to quickly review footage, as well 

as an editor to select clips easily as they ingest in these fast paced, nearlive 

edit environments. 

With the improvements in footage codecs, and the ability to immediately 

edit or ingest, we are also finding that we may require data wranglers 

in the near future. This will allow easier immediate access to our footage, 

which can often be lost among a very large team in a broadcast production. 

It can also give wide access to departments which previously have 

not imagined that they could incorporate this into their deliverables. 

Speaking of our work on the World Cup, “It’s true,” said Geoffrey Mason, 

Head of Production Planning for ESPN. “The aerial coverage is the 

best I’ve ever seen — at any event, worldwide.” 

As you can imagine, this was quite an exciting experience to coordinate 

and manage. Despite the atmospheric, logistical, and linguistic 

challenges with such a large scale international event, the coverage was 

ultimately a great success. 

n 

The Asset Management and Digital Distribution Issue — Creative COW Magazine 

Available Now Online at www.creativecowtraining.net

How to Shoot Footage 

Your Editor Will Respect 

When it comes to shooting, David Allison’s experience in the editing room has helped him develop 

parameters that lead to better footage that embodies the sensible values of an efficient shooter. 

A s an editor with over 25 years of experience in 

film and video, I’ve seen more than my share of 

horrible shots. Happily, I’ve also been privy to a few good 

ones as well. What makes one shot good and another bad? 

It’s not always as obvious as some might think. 

There are many factors that determine a shot’s value, 

yet, amazing as it may sound, the most obvious is often 

overlooked. Stated plainly, this factor is usefulness. Given 

the project at hand — be it a news production, commercial, 

corporate video, feature film, or documentary — the shooter 

should always pause to ask the most basic of questions, 

“Am I providing footage that is compelling enough, appro- 

42 

David Allison 

Cincinnati, Ohio USA 

priate enough, flexible enough, efficient enough, editable 

enough — to be useful in post-production?” 

All too frequently, the answer is no. While I’ll grant that 

“usefulness” is a relative term (even the worst swatches can 

usually be sewn together to make a quilt), the fact remains 

that when editors receive poorly conceived and executed 

footage, costly overages are often looming around the 

corner. 

As one example, I recently edited a project that was to 

culminate in a five minute video. To cut costs, the producers 

had hired a shooter who came with an excellent camera 

package, but minimal experience. The result? I received four 

David Allison is an editor, creative consultant and writer with Bright Light Visual Communications 

of Cincinnati, Ohio. After studying Philosophy and Fine Art at Colgate 

University in New York, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where 

his master’s thesis project, The Geometry of Love, was honored with a number of national 

awards. David has written four original screenplays, two of which won consecutive 

Gold Awards at the Houston International Film Festival. The latest, Episodic Life, 

is currently in development with Opal Films of Los Angeles. Among the places you’ll 

find David is Creative COW’s Adobe After Effects Expressions forum. 


and a half hours of material, 25 minutes of which was useable. 

Let me repeat that: I received four and a half hours of 

material to edit a five-minute video — bad enough — yet 

only 25 minutes of it was even remotely useful!!! (Fade-up 

scream SFX.) 

To say that the decision to hire an inexpensive shooter 

cost more money than it saved would be an understatement. 

Without going into too much detail, just ponder the 

extra time I spent making data space for 4½ hours of material, 

ingesting 4½ hours of material, reviewing 4½ hours of 

material, culling shots from 4½ hours of material, dealing 

with system sluggishness brought on by 4½ hours of material 

etc., etc. so on and so forth, multiplied by seventeen days 

of editing. 

Is it any wonder why I eventually decided to put gripes 

like this down on paper? 

In addition to being an editor, I’ve also experienced 

what it’s like to be a director, producer, writer, and, yes, a 

shooter. I’ve studied under people who’ve studied under 

Orson Welles. I’ve worked in the realm of the avant-garde 

with figures of varying quirkiness, such as Peter Kubelka 

and P. Adams Sitney. I’ve logged long hours with A-list, commercial 

directors who’ve agonized over the best way to sell 

donuts and cottage cheese. 

Through it all, I’ve developed a reasonably good feel 

for The Big Picture: Why are we all doing what we are doing? 

What particulars help (or hurt) the process that leads to the end 

goal? 

When it comes to shooting, my experience in the editing 

room has helped me develop parameters that lead to 

better footage. While I tend not to think of these parameters 

as rigid or static (we’re not talking “The Ten Commandments” 

here), a list of common problems — and common 

solutions — has naturally taken form over the years. I eventually 

gathered the list under one umbrella, which I fondly 

call: How to Shoot Video Your Editor Will Respect In the Morning. 

QUITTERS NEVER WIN (except in production) 

Imagine for a moment that you are in the editing room, 

watching your editor pore over some footage you shot. 

(You should always imagine this, by the way). Now let’s say 

you arrive at a series of tabletop product shots. In the first 

shot, you accidently “miss the landing pad” (or as Mary Lou 

Retton would say, you didn’t “stick it”). 

This is harmless enough. No shooters are automatons, 

and “sticking the landing” can be tricky business. The editor 

watches in silence as you stay with your final position for 

the traditional five seconds. 

Shot 2 comes along. Again, you don’t quite nail the final 

position, but dutifully stay with it — hoping that something 

salvageable might result. 

Shot 3 represents a variation on the theme: you miss 

the landing, but proceed to sneak back with the camera until 

you arrive at a flawlessly composed, final position. 

After ten similar attempts, just when evidence is developing 

that you’re getting closer and closer to the Holy 

Grail, the editor turns to you and says, “You know what your 

problem is? You never quit.” 

Hunh??! What’s that about?! You were always taught that 

quitters never win! Well, what’s going on here is that your 

well-mannered (and no doubt good-looking) editor is politely 

telling you that you are wasting valuable post-production 

time, and probably costing someone money, to boot. 

You see, unlike in the Olympic world of Mary Lou, if 

you don’t “stick” the landing, you can’t simply fling up your 

arms, arch your back, and hope the judges like your spunky 

exuberance. Dude, you repeatedly missed your mark (no 

sin), and then chose to hang with the shot for five agonizingly 

long, utterly worthless seconds! 

While our example only demonstrates the loss of a 

minute of time, you should never lose sight of how quickly 

these wasted minutes add up. The cumulative effect these 

types of decisions can have on an edit session can be significant. 

What’s more, your reputation as a camera op will 

never be enhanced if you continually provide lengthy useless 

shot after lengthy useless shot. 

The same trouble can surface with a simple, rackfocus. 

If you miss your destination, immediately quit on the 

shot. I mean, c’mon, tenacity may be a virtue, but addictive 

stubbornness surely is not. Efficiency is what results from 

common sense and determination, not super-human abilities. 

No shooter would ever be able to produce footage that 

leads to a 1:1 ratio, but every shooter is capable of eliminating 

those senseless frames of abject uselessness. 

NOT STICKING THE BEGINNING EITHER 

An inversion of the Quitters Never Win (except in postproduction) 

motif occurs when the beginning of a shot is 

flubbed, but the camera rolls on obliviously. I call this the 

“I Didn’t Quite Catch the Beginning, But Let’s Roll With It Anyway” 

Syndrome. 

That 12 year-old genius who is happily flourishing in 

the local med school is your assignment du jour, but as she 

holds a hypodermic needle up to the natural light for a 

quick tap, you’re late establishing focus. No matter, you tell 

yourself, you’ll just keep following her as she strolls over to 

her patient and swabs down his arm. 

CUT to the post-pro suite, where your editor, upon 

viewing this near-miss of a spectacular shot, is screaming 

at the monitor, “Would it have killed you to ask her to stop 

and do it again?!!!!” 

Here, your stunningly-handsome editor is merely trying 

to remind you of the most important tool a shooter has 

at his or her disposal: A VOICE! Even when a director is calling 

the shots, your professionalism is elevated when you exhibit 

some responsibility for addressing small failures such 

as this. 

REWIND: you’re back in the hospital. You pull your eye 

away from the lens and interrupt the medical prodigy, “Excuse 

me, Dr. Jennifer-In-Training, but would mind terribly if 

I asked you to go back over to that window and tap that 

needle-thingy again? I missed it…” 

Jennifer obliges, the director nods approvingly, and 

soon, your editor will be salivating over the marvelously useful 

shot you just helped to manufacture. 

Another incarnation of the Quitters Never Win (except 

in post-production) motif is what I call The “I Know There’s a 

Drunk Peeing In the Background, But The University President 

Is Still Welcoming The Famous Actress Back to Campus” Di- 


lemma. While shots like this may gain you infamy when you 

upload them onto YouTube, they certainly won’t help your 

editor create a piece that will make the client happy (especially 

if the client is the university). The longer you persist 

with your compromised shot, the longer the peeing drunk 

will persist. This is bad. 

Not long ago, I was editing material from a military 

grocery store. In a memorable clip from the raw footage, 

a female soldier approached a long and colorful array of 

produce. For a moment, I marveled at the shot’s perspective 

beauty; the tight rows of fruits and veggies perfectly 

receded into a distant, softly-focused vortex. 

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Then, all hell broke loose! Just beyond my happy, little, 

background-y vortex, the doors to the meat locker swung 

wide open. Men in bloody smocks and bloody yellow boots 

were suddenly traipsing around in my beloved vortex — only 

now the vortex was the only part of the shot commanding 

attention! 

What was the reaction of the shooter? NOTHING! He 

rolled on for 20 additional seconds! I can still see the female 

soldier sniffing a melon — blissfully unaware of the carnage 

ensuing just under her well-focused nose and chin. 

Needless to say, the shooter missed a classic 

opportunity to quit on the shot. I don’t know about you, but 

I find that sort of hazy-headed, brain-dead, gum-chewing 

laziness the antithesis of what I’m looking for in a shooter. 

So what am I looking for? Well, sticking to the confines 

of this discussion, I’m looking for someone who knows when 

to quit on a shot. I’ve even created an imaginary character, 

Shooter-X, who embodies all the lean, serene, and sensible 

values of this efficient shooter (an homage to Speed Racer 

and Racer-X, perhaps?). 

When I am reviewing material that has been shot by 

Shooter-X, I can literally sense what was in the mind of this 

caring professional with each pan of the camera. There is 

an awareness”that comes through loud and clear. Shooter-X 

“gets it,” because Shooter-X cares. Shooter-X is paying attention; 

he’s fully focused on what he’s delivering. 

Re-envisioning the table-top product shoot, Shooter-X 

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ing with clay. Over and over and over again, Shooter-X caresses 

the product with his lens, never wasting a smidgen 

of time if the “landing pad” is missed. Soon hitting his stride, 

he delivers two to three simple, solid shots before moving 

on to a new angle. In the end, Shooter-X always gets me 

what I’m looking for, not because he is perfect, but because 

he is smart. 

When it comes to rack-focusing, Shooter-X is likewise 

unafraid to quit. A rapid-fire magician, he quickly retreats, 

resets, and re-racks. Infused with the simple knowledge 

that a rack-focus is almost never done properly on the first 

attempt, Shooter-X does not hide his failures, but neither 

does he dwell on them. Put another way, he fails efficiently 

— a great trait when success is your goal. 

In the end, Shooter-X always gets me that useful “rack” 

I’m looking for, not because he is flawless, but because he 

is alert. 

And is Shooter-X hesitant to use the most valuable (but 

underutilized) tool in a shooter’s entire bag of tricks — his 

voice? With or without a director on set, Shooter-X is the tail 

that wags the dog — and he is never wary of barking! If he 

didn’t happen to catch the beginning of some easily repeatable 

action, no problem: he speaks up and suggests a redo. 

In the end, Shooter-X always gets me that wonderful 

moment I’m looking for, not because he is an Academy 

Award winning cinematographer, but because he knows it 

is in his job description to care. 

By the way, Shooter-X is no myth. I hope it serves as an 

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inspiration to all camera ops trying to elevate their game 

to know that professionals like Shooter-X actually exist. 

They are not always flashy; they are not always brilliant; 

they are not always tech-savvy; they are not always dexterous; 

they are not always edgy; they are not always visionary. 

Indeed, they can possess all or none of these attributes, 

but there is one thing they all have in common: 

they sure are useful. 

All hail, Shooter-X! I think I love you, man! (Or woman, 

as the case often may be.) And more importantly, I 

respect you. 

n 

Never hesitate to use the most valuable (but underutilized) 

tool in a shooter’s bag of tricks — your voice. 

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INDUSTRY NEWS: O C T O B E R 2 0 1 0 INDUSTRY NEWS: O C T O B E R 2 0 1 0 

IKEGAMI EXHIBITS WIDE RANGE OF 

BROADCAST HDTV CAMERAS AND LCD 

MONITORS AT HD WORLD 

http://news.creativecow.net/story/864943 

Tapeless ENG pioneer Ikegami demonstrated the latest 

advancements to its acclaimed tapeless GFCAM HDS-V10 Flash- 

RAM camcorder at the HD World Conference and Exhibition. Part 

of the GF Series tapeless HD ENG system, the GFCAM HDS-V10 

Flash-RAM camcorder is an advanced yet affordable three-CCD 

ENG camera featuring 1080i/720p HDTV format support, full Avid 

NLE compatibility, and advanced features such as Bluetooth for instant export of thumbnail clips directly to 

laptops for fast logging, metadata insertion, and other workflow advantages. Ikegami’s tapeless GFCAM 

HDS-V10 employs GFPAK media, a removable Flash-RAM cartridge with up to 64GB capacity and a 

convenient USB port for instant access to file-based video from laptop or desktop editing systems. Users 

can also choose Ikegami’s new CF Adaptor, which can be loaded with off-the-shelf CompactFlash Type I 

media for “plug-and-play” compatibility with the GFCAM slot. As with all components in Ikegami’s tapeless 

GF Series product line, the GFCAM HDS-V10 Flash-RAM camcorder employs MPEG-2 compression and the 

MXF file format for an open-codec HD/SD recording architecture. Ikegami’s GF Series production solution 

leverages the increasing integration of IT networking in the broadcast and professional video production 

industry and delivers unprecedented file-based HD workflow efficiencies extending from digital video 

capture, to non-linear editing, to final content delivery. All video and metadata recorded with GFCAM has 

direct compatibility to all major Avid Technology nonlinear edit systems via Avid’s new AMA (Avid Media 

Access) plug-in architecture for optimum production-workflow. 

BAND PRO HOSTS ONE WORLD 

SEMINARS & OPEN HOUSE 

EQUIPMENT EXHIBITION DEC. 16 


Band Pro’s One World Open House will open 

at 1pm on Thursday, December 16, 2010. Held 

at Band Pro’s Burbank headquarters, the exhibition showcases the newest 

HD technology in an informal setting that allows professionals to get handson 

experience with the latest groundbreaking gear while conversing with 

colleagues and industry decision-makers. Over 30 leading equipment makers 

will show their latest digital cinematography products. Doors open from 1:00 

pm to 8:00 pm. A buffet and beverages will be served. 

Band Pro’s 2010 One World events kick off with seminars on Tuesday, December 

14 and Wednesday, December 15. Sessions will feature technical presentations 

and trainings, as well as announcements regarding new cameras, 3D Tools and 

tapeless workflow. The event is located at Band Pro Film & Digital, Inc., 3403 

West Pacific Avenue, Burbank, CA. The event is free to industry professionals. To 

RSVP for any or all events, and for more information, please visit: 

http://www.bandpro.com/oneworld 

SACHTLER CINE DSLR FLUID HEAD 


Sachtler, a Vitec Group brand, presents a new fluid head specially designed 

for DSLR filmmakers. The Cine DSLR has a payload range of 2 to 11 lbs (1 to 5 

kg) and is thus ideal for state-of-the-art digital single-lens reflex cameras with 

HD video function. A counterbalance in ten steps as well as three vertical and 

horizontal grades of drag allow for professional operation. In addition, the 

Cine DSLR comes with a special camera plate with an anti-twist retainer for 

HD DSLR cameras. 

“If a video-enabled DSLR is being used for filming, precise panning and 

tilting are only possible with fluid heads equipped with a corresponding 

tilt range. And it also requires well-engineered damping,” explains Barbara 

Jaumann, Product Manager at Sachtler. For smooth horizontal and vertical 

pans, the new Cine DSLR fluid head works with the fully developed technology 

of the big Sachtler heads: The 3-step damping is based on the patented Sachtler damping system. “In 

comparison to other manufacturers, our fluid heads in this payload range offer extremely soft and finely 

graded damping,” says Barbara Jaumann. 

Speedbalance technology for fast counterbalance 

The new Cine DSLR fluid head works with Sachtler Speedbalance technology that enables a fast and targetoriented 

counterbalance of the camera set-up. The long sliding range of the camera plate as well as the 

self-illuminating Touch Bubble are practical features of the new head. The Cine DSLR has a tilt range of 

+90° to -75°. 

The Cine DSLR is lightweight, compact, and easy to transport. It has a robust metal housing that 

dependably protects it from exterior influences. Thanks to the special Sachtler lubricated oil damping, 

filming is also possible in extreme temperature ranges, as the damping is not negatively influenced by 

them. With the Cine DSLR, Sachtler offers professional photographers and filmmakers alike an authentic, 

professional fluid head for filming with video-enabled DSLRs. 

BROADCAST PIX UNVEILS FLUENT RAPID CG 


Broadcast Pix announced Fluent Rapid CG, a new option for its Granite and Slate 

integrated production systems, which streamlines the creation of data-intensive 

CG graphics. Rapid CG automatically integrates databases, RSS feeds, and custom 

actions like scorekeeping into templates for customized graphics with significantly less manual effort. Simply drag 

and drop a Microsoft Access or XML database into Rapid CG, link it to a template created in Inscriber GS CG (which 

is included with every Broadcast Pix system), and the information is automatically updated in specific fields within 

the template — no re-keying of data necessary. Because Rapid CG operates within specific fields, the operator can 

only change the data, not the templates. 

Data can include text and graphics, so photos can be changed automatically as well. RSS feeds can also be 

used to update weather and other information from the Web automatically. The automated process can also be 

applied to a number of templates simultaneously. 

Users can also create custom action buttons easily to add incremental graphics if there is no automated 

database. For example, an action button can be designed to add six points to the score if a football team scores a 

touchdown, which makes data input easier and eliminates mathematical errors. Other information, such as clocks 

and dates, can be added as well. 

“Rapid CG is ideal for live sports, election results, and other data intensive productions that feature a lot 

of graphics that change throughout the show,” said Ken Swanton, president of Broadcast Pix. “It’s easy to link 

a database to a graphics template for clean information updates on the air. Plus, you never have to worry about 

altering the template by mistake during the show, because Rapid CG does not allow access to the additional 

graphic elements.” 



48 

48 

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CoreMelt .................................... 37 

CPC Captioning Software .... 16 

Dulce Systems ......................... 41 

Elsevier / Focal Press ............. 45 

Euphonix, Div. of Avid .......... 29 

G-Technology .......................... 39 

iStorage ...................................... 49 

Litepanels .................................. 44 

Matrox ........................................ 31 

Maxx Digital ........... inside front 

Neo Sounds .............................. 45 

Panasonic ................. back cover 

Safe Harbor ... inside back cover 

Small Tree .................................. 37 

Sony Creative Software .......... 5 

TeleStream ................................. 19 

Videoguys.com ............. 20 & 21 

Utah Scientific First to Employ 

Innovative New Switching 

Technology in a Video Router 


Utah Scientific announced that it is the first manufacturer in the world to deploy innovative new highperformance 

switching from Mindspeed Technologies Inc. in a video router. 

Currently, the company’s top-of-the-line UTAH-400 288R video router is shipping with the Mindspeed® 

M21170 crosspoint switch at its core. The Mindspeed M21170 is a single part that replaces the four 

interconnected 144x144 crosspoint chips that were previously required to create a 288x288 matrix. 

Use of the M21170 enables Utah Scientific to simplify router design, resulting in a system that uses less 

power, generates less heat, and operates more reliably. 

Able to expand seamlessly from 8x8 to 1152x1152 and beyond, the UTAH-400 series of routers was 

designed to address the growing requirement for large switching systems. Features include a wide 

selection of frame sizes for all signal types; a full range of I/O options including 3Gbps, analog, and fiber; 

optional crosspoint redundancy in all matrix sizes; redundant power supplies and controller cards; and 

signal-presence detection.The Pro Tools | HD Native system will be available worldwide November 5 

starting at $3,495 USD. Pro Tools | HD Native will also be available bundled with Pro Tools HD OMNI I/O 

starting at $5,995 USD. 

THOUSANDS 

OF FREE VIDEO 

TUTORIALS, 

PROJECT FILES, 

USER REVIEWS, 

FEATURES, AND 

PODCASTS 

TO TAKE YOUR 

SKILLS TO THE 

NEXT LEVEL. 

AND THEY’RE 

FREE! 

ALL IN THE LIBRARY AT: 

CREATIVECOW.NET 

The Divergence Issue — Creative COW Magazine 

The Asset Management and Distribution Issue — Creative COW Magazine

50 

50 

Ron Lindeboom 

Paso Robles, California USA 

T H E B A C K F O R T Y 

If You Fail to Plan, You’re Planning To Fail 

A case study in why our Business & Marketing forum is one of our Top 5 most visited forums 

Looking down the road a couple of months 

or so, it will be 2011. Once again, dear ole 

Dad was right: time passes far too quickly — especially 

if your business is searching for its place in the 

market. At that point, time drags like a sixth-grader 

counting down the last 30 days of school before 

Summer vacation. 

When we started building online peer-to-peer 

support sites back in 1995, it wasn’t long before 

our original site outgrew our ability to fund it. 

Unfortunately, it’s hard to maintain something that 

eats far more resources than it brings in. Back then, 

most of the industry’s advertisers were not interested 

in the goings-on on the web. (A rare exception was 

Artbeats, who started with us long ago and remains 

with us to this day. Without their support, we’d have 

quit long ago. Please let them know you appreciate 

their longtime support of it all.) 

Even when we launched the COW, we had to 

wait for the market to catch up with the web’s earlier 

adopters. We built the new site using hard-won 

lessons about the deadliness of uncontrolled growth. 

Those lessons provided a sense of cautious well 

considered planning and implementation and we 

played within our means, always. Well, almost. 

We balanced our cautious slow growth plans, 

with a sense of thrice weighed and considered 

strategic gambling. Still, to really win the hand, 

sometimes you must throw caution to the wind and 

push all your chips into the game — risking it all. 

You are holding in your hands, our biggest 

gamble. If the magazine had failed, Creative COW 

would have quietly faded into the ether. 

Why did we do it? Because we knew that the 

time had come to make our move, as our goals were 

far bigger than to remain where we were in 2005. 

The scary part was that we made our most risky 

move “without a safety net.” We had no investors and 

we had just enough money in the bank to produce 

only one issue, nothing more. Crazy, huh? But we 

knew that in the end, markets mature and consolidate 

— as bigger, stronger corporations acquire smaller 

and more innovative companies, largely to maintain 

their own perceived “innovativeness.” 

In the end, usually one dominant player leads 

the market, with a few support players splitting the 

rest. It would happen in this market, too. It has. We 

wanted that dominant player to be Creative COW, so 

we gambled. We drew on all that we’ve learned over 

a lifetime and we had many great minds to draw on. 

From Day One of Creative COW, we have been 

grateful to be surrounded with an incredible body of 

leaders and members daily posting in our Business & 

Marketing forum. 

I still recall over a decade ago when Nick Griffin 

called me to discuss starting a business forum. “I 

think it would become one of the most important 

forums in the line-up,” said Nick. And it has. Today it 

is nearly always in the Top 5 most trafficked forums in 

the line-up, and I am regularly amazed by the kinds 

of discussions that are raised there. 

I have drawn many lessons from the forum and 

have combined these ideas with what we see in the 

news, what we see our competitors doing, what 

trends we see in the market, and what we need to 

do to “be there” for our members and meet their 

expectations and needs. If it is true that “two minds 

are better than one,” then many-minds-as-one is 

even better. Our Business & Marketing forum has 

been a great value to our business over the years. As 

another year draws to a close, let it become a value to 

you as you make your own plans for the days ahead. 

n 

To discuss this topic, please visit: 

http://forums.creativecow.net/businessmarketing 


The Divergence Issue — Creative COW Magazine 

Unprecedented. Editing. Power. 

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NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800/4800/5800 & the new Quadro 4000/5000 graphics 

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MediaShout 4.5 

Matrox MXO2 Mini with MAX 

MediaShout provides your I/O device for Mac or PC, laptop 

organization with the presentation or desktop use. Capture and 

tools you need in a streamlined, playback video via HDMI or analog 

intuitive workspace. From basic connections with Final Cut Pro or 

slideshows to intricate multimedia Adobe Premiere Pro. Matrox utility 

experiences, communicate your included to calibrate HDMI 

message to any size audience. display. MAX provides hardware- 

Now available on PC and Mac accelerated H.264 output for Blu- 

platforms. 

ray, web and devices. 

Includes free tutorial for PC users. 

Final Cut Studio 

Post-production suite offers tools 

for precision editing; 2D and 3D 

motion graphics; streamlined 

audio post; professional color 

grading; multiformat delivery to 

Apple devices, the web, and disc. 

Includes Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, 

Soundtrack Pro 3, Color 1.5, 

Compressor 3.5, & DVD Studio 4. 

800-544-6599 

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INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR VIDEO PRODUCTION SINCE 1987 

Terms: POs accepted from schools and government agencies. All checks require 7 10 days to clear. Defective 

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in original packaging, postage prepaid, undamaged. Opened software not returnable. Shipping charges not 

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© 2010 Safe Harbor Computers. All rights reserved. 

Adobe ® Creative Suite ® 5 

Production Premium 

Unprecedented power to produce 

engaging media for virtually any 

screen. Breakthrough native 

64-bit performance, GPU 

acceleration, and native editing 

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workflows from scriptwriting 

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Sorenson Squeeze 6.5 

Best in class, award-winning 

video encoding and delivery, now 

decodes AVCHD. New enhanced 

filters including a faster, better 

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an Optimized Color Converter. 

One-year Sorenson 360 Review & 

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review with automated e-mail alerts. 

Education pricing also available. 

EDIUS 6 

More real-time SD and HD editing 

performance than any other NLE. 

Titles, 3D DVEs, transitions and 

video filters delivered in full 

resolution and full frame rate. 

On-the-fly conversion of frame 

rates, aspect ratios and resolutions 

for mixed-format editing. Now 

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Safe Harbor Computers 

W226 N900 Eastmound Dr. 

Waukesha, WI 53186 

www.sharbor.com 

Viewcast Osprey Cards 

The Osprey line offers a wide 

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do live video capture and 

streaming — from the entry-level 

Osprey 100 to the Osprey 700e 

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for Webcasting, Podcasting or 

Video-on-Demand. 

CineRAID EditPRO 

Professional-grade storage 

solutions in 4 or 8-bay tower 

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hardware RAID controller for 

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1, 10, 1E, 3, 5, 6 or JBOD. 

800-544-6599 Information & Orders 

262-548-8120 

262-548-8157 Tech Support/RMAs 

Mon–Fri 9am–4pm CST 

262-548-8130 Fax

BIG QUALITY VIDEO. 

SMALL FOOTPRINT AND PRICE. 

ALL-NEW 50 SERIES -- PANASONIC’S FIRST IP CONTROLLABLE, COMPACT PRODUCTION SYSTEM. 

Incorporating many of the innovative features of our larger systems, the new 50 Series is Panasonic’s smallest video production system ever. 

This affordable, ultra-compact series includes AW-HE50 integrated multi-format, pan-tilt-zoom HD/SD cameras (the 50S with HD-SDI, and 

50H with HDMI), both with high-resolution (850 TV lines), superb low-light performance, a fast 18X HD zoom lens, plus built-in IP and RS-422 

serial control. The 50 Series also includes the versatile AW-HS50 live switcher—with built-in MultiViewer display, up-conversion, chroma key, 

AUX bus, PinP and effects memories—a great tool for mobile or small studio production. The HS50 also provides HD-SDI and HD DVI-D in/out, 

24p live mixing, and can even serve as a multi-image processor for IMAG and webcasting. The powerful AW-RP50 remote camera controller 

works with existing Panasonic AW-series pan-tilt systems and can control up to 100 HE50 cameras over an IP network. So wherever you are, 

you can easily produce high-quality, high impact HD and SD video. 

Learn more: 1.877.803.8492 or www.panasonic.com/broadcast 

50 SERIES 

© 2010 Panasonic Solutions Company

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