Well, even though it looked like I was a few cables short of a complete production studio yesterday, I managed to get everything connected. And the booth looks great — even though the rest of the show floor is covered in packing cases.
We now have a fully-functioning news production studio at NAB: we are podcasting our news briefs live, while still able to record multi-channel split feeds for all studio interviews to simplify editing.
Every morning, our team of reporters, lead by show producer Cirina Catania, gets together to plan coverage and figure out what we want to present for each newscast and show special.
A special thanks to the folks at EditShare, we are using their Field Network Server to create a ten-seat production network for ingest, file management, editing and live-to-air playback. An interesting story with the EditShare — they loaned us one of their Field Network Servers and we were having connectivity problems with it. We discovered we had attached a bad switch. I replaced the switch and files are just sailing around the network. Also, in diagnosing the problem, we also discovered that one of the hard drives inside the unit had died. However, since an EditShare unit is fully redundant, we didn’t lose any data. (Note to self: Always use a RAID 5 to make sure data stays safe in live situations.)
Marantz loaned us four of their latest PMD-661 digital audio recorders for our field reporters use. I am very impressed with how easy they are to use and how readable the LCD screen is. They make our recordings sound great, without requiring a lot of operating expertise on the part of our reporters.
Another great toy that I’m delighted to work with is the Aphex 230 Master Voice Processors — we, um, have four of them. Sigh… These are just sweet – that make our voices sound great, without worrying about over-modulation. I’m also using their multi-channel output to create a split-feed for each mic: one to the mixer for live feeds and the other to a Presonus Firebox to digitize for our interview recordings.
If you have a chance, stop by our booth – Central Hall C-1062 – and I’ll show you how we are using all the gear.
However, there’s no sense having all this equipment if we don’t create some programs with it. So, today, we launched our new hourly NAB News Briefs — we posted four today and will ramp up to hopefully double that tomorrow.
You can hear them here: www.nabshowbuzz.com.
Also, we’ve created a one-hour NAB Special Report – the first of seven reports that we will run every night of NAB. Our guest list for this first show includes:
- Chris Brown, Executive Vice President of the NAB Show
- Vance Van Petten, Executive Director of the Producers Guild
- Boris Yamnitsky, CEO at Boris FX
- Marco Bario, VP, Theatrical Post-Production at Technicolor Creative Services
- Marvin Ceasar, CEO of Aphex Systems
- Will Richmond, President, Broadband Directions
- Ron Clifton, CEO, International Datacasting
You can hear the entire show here.
Also, as a reminder, now that we are reporting live from NAB, please consider adding our player to your website. You can get all the details here.
It’s been a great, but tiring day. Tomorrow, we’ll be doing even more live interviews in our booth. Stop by, take a seat, and listen in.
Until then, I’m taking a nap.
Larry
One Response to Digital Production BuZZ Starts Podcasting from NAB
This sounds good Larry, hard work that some people like me appreciate.
I will stop by Wednesday though. I guess you’ll be at the FCP meeting Tuesday.
Thank you.
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Yup. I’ll be at the SuperMeet Tuesday night, otherwise, I’ll be in the Digital Production BuZZ booth presenting news and interviews from NAB. I’d enjoy the chance to meet you.
Larry