In order to further optimize the overall configuration of the Group's camcorders and solve the lack of video recorders in the Shanghai Media Group (SMG) TV News Center, in February 2007, the SMG Technology Operations Center “News Video Camera Update†project was officially established. The goal is to select the most suitable camcorder and video recorder, so that the new generation of storage media truly reflects its value, making the TV news production process better, faster and more cost-effective, for the TV news production of SMG TV News Center Bring new changes.
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After the project team was established, the project's schedule was first developed, as shown in Figure 1.
According to the project's work plan, we conducted nearly half a year of nearly rigorous testing and trials on the equipment of the selected manufacturers. After the final business negotiation, the XDCAM professional CD and its products finally emerged from many manufacturers and became the SMG TV News Center. A supplier of camcorder products. Now take the test and trial process of XDCAM professional disc products as an example.
Figure 1
An XDCAM professional disc
The press center selected the PFD23 single-sided disc, which is packaged in a special disc box. The non-contact recording method makes the disc safer and more durable. All audio and video content is stored in a professional disc in the form of a file. Professional CDs manage these contents in the form of MXF files, which makes data processing more flexible in the IT environment. The data transfer rate of professional optical discs is 72Mb/s in the case of a single optical head and 144Mb/ in the case of double optical heads. s; In addition, by using 405 nm blue-violet technology and a 0.85 relative aperture lens, professional discs can achieve 23.3 GB of storage capacity.
Emerging storage media and methods have the incomparable advantages of tape. After comparing and analyzing professional CDs, whether it is security, speed or capacity, it meets the requirements of the existing news center.
Two XDCAM professional disc product testing and trial
We divided the test and trial of the product into three parts. The first part is the test and trial of the XDCAM professional disc camera. The second part is the test and trial of the XDCAM professional disc recorder and related products. The third part is the news center process. Definition and testing.
1.XDCAM professional disc camera test and trial
At the beginning of the project test and trial, SONY's camera for SMG is the PDW-530P professional disc camcorder.
The test and trial of the camera is mainly divided into three parts: the first is the camera function test, the second is the camera technical index test, and the third is the subjective evaluation and trial.
(1) Functional test of the camera
It mainly includes the following items:
* component fastness;
* System stability;
*Environmental adaptability;
*power consumption;
* Is there a unique feature that is conducive to news shooting;
*Easy operation.
(2) Camera technical index test
It mainly includes the following items:
*sensitivity;
*Signal to noise ratio;
*Minimum illumination;
* Modulation depth;
*Dynamic Range.
(3) Subjective evaluation test and trial of the camera
Mainly to shoot the standard color card and skin color card - to examine the quality of the picture taken, and for the news center to shoot daily use, get the user's first-hand data, for comprehensive evaluation.
(4) Analysis of camera test and trial results
The professional disc camcorder is sturdy and stable, and can adapt to the requirements of actual shooting. At the same time, the objective index and the subjective evaluation angle. The camcorder of the professional disc continues the style of SONY's previous digital camcorder, which can fully satisfy the editing of the news center. Claim.
The disc automatically finds blank areas when recording material, which reduces the cumbersome operation. The camera is always ready for the next shot; convenient single-disc editing function, interval shooting function, pre-shooting function and shortcut keys for assignable functions Etc. provides greater convenience for the production of the show. In the later stage of the project, SONY brought the newly launched PDW-539P professional disc camera for news center testing and trial use. Finally, SMG News Center purchased the PDW-539P professional disc camcorder.
2. XDCAM professional disc recorder and related products testing and trial
SONY's VCRs and related products for SMG during project testing and trials include PDW-1500 Professional Disc Recorder, PDW-R1 Professional Disc Recorder, PDW-V1 Professional Disc Recorder and RM-280 Editing Controller.
The test and trial of video recorders and related products are mainly divided into three parts: first, the function test of video recorders and related products, the second is the test of technical indicators of video recorders and related products, and the third is subjective evaluation and trial use.
(1) Functional test of video recorder
It mainly includes the following items:
* System stability;
* Whether the frame precision is reached;
*Can you combine editing and insert editing;
* Whether it can be dubbed;
* Is there ample interface;
*Easy operation;
* Is there a unique feature that is conducive to news editing.
(2) Test of technical indicators of video recorders
It mainly includes the following items:
*SDI output eye diagram indicator;
*AES/EBU output amplitude and jitter (devices without AES/EBU interface measure analog audio metrics).
(3) Subjective evaluation and trial of picture quality of video recorder
It mainly uses Tek's PQA300 to generate 12 sequences, and examines the picture quality recorded by the video recorder. At the same time, it selects some editors in the news center to use it every day to obtain the user's first-hand data for comprehensive evaluation.
(4) Analysis of video recorder test and trial results
Professional Blu-ray recorders are connected to traditional video tape recorders, retaining the functions of traditional video tape recorders, and seamlessly integrating with existing tape media to meet the broadcast requirements of the news center.
The file-based recording method has the functions of instant random reading and thumbnail search, friendly IT interface and low-stream AV data, which showcases the outstanding innovation of XDCAM professional disc products.
3. News center process definition and testing
After using the new XDCAM products, how to change the production process of the news center, how to make full use of the advanced functions of the new equipment in the case of minimal changes to the production process is the focus of our testing.
In order to carry out process definition and testing in a more targeted manner, the project team first conducted a research on the news workflow of the news center tape platform, and roughly classified the form of the news center tape platform news production and broadcasting, and designed different types of news separately. Process and test.
After investigation, the project team divided the news of the news center into two categories: the first category is daily news, mainly the news with less shooting volume, shorter production cycle and shorter film length; the second category is news of reviews and columns. It is mainly news with a large amount of shots, a long production cycle and a long film length.
Because the news center has achieved full-scale networked production, the process changes mainly focus on the use of tape recorder uploading, emergency production, broadcast and reporter outbound process.
The process of redefining after using the XDCAM professional disc product is shown in Figure 2.
figure 2
(1) Daily news upload process
Due to the centralized uploading method, the daily news involves a large system. After multiple research and comparison, the project team decided to use the same tape-like process. As shown in Figure 2, in the uploading machine room, the VTR recorder will be replaced by the CD recorder. The material in the disc is encoded into high and low stream material and stored in the high and low stream memory. After the upload is completed, the reporter preliminarily compiles the low stream material through the preliminary software, and saves and generates the high code stream semi-finished material corresponding to the high stream material. It is shared by the editorial department of each channel of the news center. The fine-tuning staff of each channel compiling department edits the high-stream semi-finished material in the fine-tuning software according to their respective news series.
When uploading, you can use the function of single-disc editing of the CD-ROM to directly upload the editing form completed on the CD-ROM. You can also find the material by convenient thumbnail method and upload the material.
(2) Comment, column news upload process
Due to the large amount of photographs in the comments and column categories, the initial editing can only be achieved by means of CD-ROM editing. After the initial editing, the content is only used by the commenting department. There is no sharing requirement, so the initial editing material is directly edited. Uploaded and edited on board. Based on this feature, we have designed three upload schemes, as shown in Figure 3.
image 3
After analysis, the comments and column news are different from the daily news. The fine editing has less changes to the semi-finished materials. The editing is mainly for the artistic processing of the initial materials, so there is no need to upload the low-stream material through the 1394 file first, and then correspondingly The high-stream material of the film is uploaded twice; in addition, the FTP upload has a large change to the system, and it needs to be re-routed. At the same time, the operation is relatively cumbersome, so the comments and column news still retain the original tape process, that is, the CD-ROM. For the rough editing, the SDI data stream can be directly connected to the finishing machine with the CD recorder in the fine editing. At the same time, the editing of the partial material and the convenient thumbnail mode can be used to find the material.
(3) Emergency production process
In order to ensure news production when there is a problem with the network or system, we have designed two sets of emergency processes:
a. Recorder emergency mode
Similar to the original tape emergency process, there is no need to make major changes to the equipment room. Just replace the tape recorder with a CD recorder, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4, 5
b. Finishing single machine emergency production process
When there is a problem in the network or system, the fine editing machine loses the function of network sharing editing. In the original tape system, because the editing needs to be downloaded 1:1, the efficiency is not linearly high, so the basic finishing machine in the emergency process Also in an idle state.
After using the CD-ROM machine, taking full advantage of the characteristics of the non-linear uploading method of the 1394 file of the CD-ROM machine, combined with the single-machine function of the finishing machine, we designed a streamlined single-machine emergency process, as shown in Figure 5.
Among the two processes, the first process user is most familiar with the emergency process adopted by the original tape system. However, the problem of this process is that the news center has realized the full-process networked production and broadcast, and the normal network and system are relatively stable. For emergency reasons, it is necessary to back up several video recorders for emergency use, resulting in a large number of video recorders being idle. Therefore, after applying professional optical disc products, we have made changes to the emergency process. Refine the single-machine emergency process, and gradually replace the video recorder emergency mode, configure a CD-ROM recorder for each fine-tuning room, connect the finishing machine through the 1394 cable, and connect the recorder with the fine-tuning machine in case of network or system problems. For the emergency mode, the fine-tuning machine uploads the low-stream material in the CD at a speed of about 20:1, and then converts the finished film into a high-stream material with a speed of about 1:1, which not only improves the emergency speed, but also saves The video recorder resources have also improved the efficiency of the use of CD recorders and finishing machines.
(4) Emergency broadcast process
When there is a problem in the network system or hard disk broadcast, the CD recorder can be used for emergency broadcast. Each recorder outputs one SDI video signal to the switcher, and simultaneously outputs one AES/EBU audio signal to the mixer. As shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6
(5) Reporter's outgoing process
The reporter went out to interview with a Blu-ray camera, a PDW-R1 recorder, and a Sobe E1000 mobile non-linear editing. After the shooting is completed, if the material has only one CD, you can directly use the CD-ROM editing function to edit the form on this CD. When the satellite is transmitted, you only need to play the editing form on the VCR; if the material has multiple discs, Use the 1394 cable to connect the recorder to the non-linear editing device, upload the low-stream material in different discs at a speed of about 20:1, and fine-code the low-stream material in the non-linear editing, and then edit the finished film into about 1:1. The speed corresponds to the high-stream material, and the generated file is generated. The generated file can be directly written back to the optical disc and transmitted by the video recorder. If there is no satellite transmission point in the interview place, the editing is also performed through non-editing. Export to wmv file FTP mode backhaul.
The new production method is easier and faster than the traditional tape production.
(6) News center process definition and test result analysis
In the definition process of the news process, without prejudice to the safety broadcast, we always take speed, control and stability as the reference standard, and design the process as best as possible. In addition, in the process, the same operation We may have designed a variety of processes, although some processes have not been adopted for various reasons, but let us see the next direction of the system.
This test also allowed us to see many expectations, such as studio video recorder broadcasts, we still use the method of manually switching between different video recorders, refer to the way the news center broadcasts the existing hard disk and successful experience, We are working on a development of a playback software that controls the playback of materials from multiple VCRs. These expectations are bound to have broad prospects for development.
Three training and formal use
After one month of centralized training and assessment of 600 employees in the news center and one-month partial replacement, the project team successfully completed the replacement of all the equipment in the news center, and achieved a smooth transition of new equipment on the premise of ensuring safe broadcast. .
Four conclusions
Through professional disc technology, XDCAM professional disc products have a variety of unique functions. In the use of SMG TV news center, XDCAM professional disc products show their use whether they are used independently or in combination with non-linear networks. Excellent innovation and wide applicability.
The emergence of professional optical disc technology has truly introduced IT technology into the AV world. Although there are still many problems to be solved further, it has fundamentally broken through the traditional barriers of the AV and IT world, let us see an AV and IT. The road to the world.
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