Archive of the Field Production Category

This year Reel-Exchange member, and Reel Impressions participant, Westley Gathright posted video blogs on his first experience attending the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Westley patrolled the exhibit halls and attended some of the sessions and provided his POV via videos captured with a Flip camera then posted to YouTube.

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Next time you watch a newsfeed of a reporter out at a really remote location (like really remote), you may notice that the picture quality is better than you previously remembered. If so, it may be because Inmarsat just boosted the bitrate of their BGAN (broadband global area nework) X-Stream service from 256 kbps to a minimum of 384 kbps, with the potential for streaming up to 450 kbps. At these rates, according to Frank August, Inmarsat’s Director of Business Development for the Americas, quality is sufficient for wide shots and real action, not just jerky postage stamp talking heads.

Don’t know much about satellite delivery? I didn’t either; here’s the Cliff Notes version I got from August. Inmarsat is the world’s leading provider of global mobile satellite communications. When I say mobile, I mean a dish that’s smaller than a 17” notebook. Obviously, if you can get a satellite truck involved, with a huge dish, you get much higher speeds, but such dishes tend to be tough to check on a plane, or for roving reporters to carry. more

While we’ve handed the buzzword crown this year to “3D,” let’s not forget about old friend “workflow.” Solutions and improvements abounded this year at NAB, and the Vision Research people are no exception. They are addressing the issue as it relates to their popular high-speed digital camera technology.

The guys at Vision Research showed me their new 10gigabit Ethernet Phantom CineStation—a docking station for its hot swappable CineMag memory magazines designed to speed up the transfer of data from the magazine to the people who need it—both the transfer and the download of the data. When you consider, according to Vision Research, that the Phantom HD system gobbles up about four megabytes of memory for each frame shot, just a few seconds of material can suck up internal camera memory quickly. more

From Mix’s Kevin Becka

D&M Professional, manufacturer of the renowned Marantz Professional PMD series of professional recording products, has released the PMD661 Compact Digital Recorder, the successor to the PMD660. Continue reading at MixBlog.

More coverage from MixBlog

Reel-Exchange Community Manager Craig Erpelding talked with Angela Wilson Gyetvan of 3ality Digital about the company’s offerings featured at NAB 2009.

The most succinct spin I’ve heard over the last couple of days about how best to analyze the dichotomy between the clearly smaller flow of attendees to NAB this year and the show’s potential for productivity came late this morning from audio veteran Norman Levenstein, sales and product development director for Azden Corporation (manufacturer of wireless microphone technologies). Norman said there is no point in pretending numbers aren’t, or won’t be, down this year at NAB.

“However, the people who are here this year, want to be here, and that means they are more serious about business,” he pointed out. more

We got a look at the Nexto DI unit, a portable handheld device that dumps all sorts of P2, SxS, SD and flash media to a 500GB drive, and can even allow you to review dailies via a built-in LCD screen. We also stopped by the Rosco booth at NAB 2009 to check out its LitePad systems.

It’s the solar charger that sucks people into the Anton Bauer booth—imagine a kind of picnic blanket embedded with solar cells with an adapter that plugs into the battery. It’s a just a technology demonstration at the moment, but since the collector part of it is real, Anton Bauer has a reasonably manageable task to deliver a camping-friendly batter charger that will run on sunlight.

Meanwhile the company has delivered a hot new 4-gang charger. VP of Marketing and Business Development Shinichi Minowa says the TM4 charges batteries up to two times faster than the Anton/Bauer TWQ charger. It doubles as four discreet AC power supplies; it can power various equipment with a 70W supply via a 4-pin XLR. The power supply can be used simultaneously with the charger, allowing three batteries to be charged while operating from AC mains.

Also new, the Dionic HC high current battery, capable of up to 10 amps, with 91 watt-hr capacity; a built-in LCD real-time fuel gauge tracks up to nine hours of run time.

Focus Enhancements sells an assortment of products in multiple markets, so it’s always a fun visit at NAB. The coolest item this year was an upgrade of the company’s popular FS-5 DTE recorder, which includes the ability to create MPEG-4 proxy files after recording for preview on the FS-5’s color LCD. MPEG-4 is a good choice, since you can obviously play the clips on a computer, upload them to a video sharing site or display them on most mobile devices.

Also new is the ability to wirelessly log clip metadata using any WiFi capable device like an iPod. You can even link multiple FS-5 units together and add the same metadata to all units simultaneously. FS-5 version 2.0 should ship in May and will be free to all customers who purchased the FS-5 between February 2009 and June 30, 2009. Otherwise, the upgrade will cost $39. more

Maxell continues its immersion into the world of tapeless field recording with its massive iVDR push at NAB this year. Company executive and iVDR guru Rich D’Ambrise today walked me through the advances in Maxell’s iVDR strategy compared to a year ago, when the rugged field media device was first shown around. Today, iVDR-Xtreme is now available and shipping, and in addition to that, the company is diving into all sorts of other iVDRish arenas.

Among those areas, at the Maxell booth, you can now see work in progress related to iVDR for FireWire, iVDR smart adapters for cameras that do not have host mode capability, iVDR for field viewing, and iVDR desktop drives, not to mention iVDR consumer products, some of which are already available in Japan. more