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A
discussion of ETV production technology, by
Ken
Freed The
educational television marketplace is driven in
large measure by advances in technology, so
understanding the market forces must begin with an
understanding of the technology. The person or
company looking to invest in educational TV,
whether as a stockholder or entrepreneur, need not
be an engineer to make smart financial decision.
However, a rudimentary grasp of the technical
principles involved can spare one from being fooled
by those trying to exploit the gullible. Knowing
the main trends in educational TV technology is
vital for wise business planning. In this chapter, we'll
cover the basic types of TV technologies being
deployed for educational content production,
distribution and display. Each piece of technology,
hold in mind, is being manufactured by a company
that likely is welcoming investors or partners with
open arms. Business opportunities in the TV
technology field abound. But do your homework
first. Just because a whiz-bang
gadget makes your jaw drop, that does not
necessarily mean the gadget will succeed in the
real-world marketplace. The junk heap of TV history
is littered with lots of good ideas that never went
anywhere. The device itself may be perfectly
functional, yet what guarantees you that the device
will be "interoperable" with all of the other
pieces of equipment on which its functionality may
depend? Some companies may say they are offering
"end-to-end solutions" for educational media
content production, distribution and display, but
caution is still warranted. Why be locked into
proprietary technologies that become obsolete when
some other company releases a better solution? This
caution goes double if the reader also is the one
who will be buying these technologies on behalf of
any education TV operation. The more one know about
these technologies, the better. Therefore, please treat
this a primer on the technologies being used to
produce, deliver and present educational video
content for display on any television screen. Some
of these technologies may overlap with technologies
aimed at the computer screen, but this is
inevitable because the TV and PC "platforms" are
converging. However, our focus here is the business
of educational television. Because buying quality
technology often is the single largest expense in
any educational television operation, and because
choosing the right technology can make or break any
ETV enterprise, we're going to spend some time
covering this subject. The capability to capture
moments of real life in a recordable and
transportable format represents a major
breakthrough in human technical evolution. The
video camera that captures live images and sounds,
the tape or disk recorder that holds them, the tape
machine or digital file server that replays them
for studio editing and digital enhancement, the
switcher and computers that deliver the final mix,
all of these are products of our imagination as
much as the educational programmes that the
television equipment is used to produce, distribute
and display. The creation of quality
video content with high production values is
expensive, and the high-end systems generally yield
the best product, yet quality work can be delivered
with mid-range and even low-end equipment. If
creative programme producers are able and willing
to invest intelligence and care in their
productions, the caliber of their equipment becomes
secondary. Below are some possibilities. VIDEO
CAMERAS FOR EDUCATIONAL TV All
cameras are characterized by the focal length and
quality of their lenses, how well the camera can
zoom and focus on a subject. The clarity and
resolution of the image is another matter. A modern
video camera has one to three silicon chips inside
that the camera uses to capture an image on an
electronic grid of picture elements, called
"pixels." The configuration of the grid, the number
of pixels across and the number of lines down, is
described in terms of the given camera's compliance
with one or more national and international video
format standards. Home video cameras mostly
use a system called VHS, and the tapes are playable
on the home VCR. The image tends to be a bit
grainy, lacking sharpness, and the colours tend to
blotch in all but the better units. In educational
video applications, if a home video camera is the
only camera available, anything less that a
high-end consumer electronics product will not
produce video images good enough to sell. An
educational video programme that looks like a home
movie may be acceptable in the classroom when the
producer also is the instructor, but the market for
the product outside that classroom is limited, if a
market exists at all. Professional video cameras
comply with either the PAL standard in Europe or
the NTSC standard in America. Europe's Phase
Alternating Line standard is not compatible with
the standard set by the National Television Systems
Committee in the USA. Video from a PAL European
camera (studio or shoulder-mounted) must be
converted to NTSC before it can be played by an
American television station, and the reverse
naturally applies. This is not a problem for
producers working strictly in either Europe or the
United States, but for those active in both
markets, buying standards conversion equipment can
prove more cost effective in the long run than
paying the service fees of standards conversion
companies. Also, the PAL standard has variations
within Europe from one country to the next, which
adds to the total expense of standards conversion.
The top-of-the-line broadcast cameras are becoming
"switchable," so the camera operator can choose
which standard to use, a feature that ultimately
could pay for itself over time. The newest broadcast
cameras are compliant with standards for high
definition television (HDTV). The most dramatic
change in HDTV is a shift in the shape of the
picture that a camera records and that a television
displays. Until now, the TV screen width-to-height
aspect ratio has been 4:3, nearly a square. The
aspect ratio for high-resolution TV is 16:9, a
horizontal rectangle, the same dimensions as the
modern motion picture frame. That's no accident.
Wanting movies to play on TV at full size, the
motion picture industry has played a central role
in the national and international organizations
developing the HDTV standards. Yet here, too, vital
differences exist between European and American
implementations. Thus, companies invested in
standards conversion will stay solvent for the near
term, but negotiations continue toward agreeing
upon one global digital TV standard, and that will
make standards conversion a less viable business in
the long term. Another important
characteristic of a quality video camera is its
ability to record clear and clean audio. Just as a
quality video camera yields a low signal-to-noise
resolution, so the audio systems on a quality
camera filter out unwanted auditory noise, probably
with Dolby. Home video cameras have built-in
microphones, and the audio is too fuzzy as a rule
for commercial applications. Professional cameras
have jacks for plugging in whatever kind of
microphone is suited to the acoustics of the
situation. Videographers may debate whether poor
audio is more or less acceptable than poor video,
but why get caught in either trap? The investment
in a quality professional camera and microphone
pays dividends for years. Regardless of whether the
reader is an investor or participant in the
enterprise of producing educational video content,
thinking about which cameras are suitable is
worthwhile. Video cameras can cost from about
£150 for consumer electronics products upward
toward a £75,000 or more for the most
sophisticated studio digital cameras that are
becoming switchable from PAL to NTSC to HDTV,
alternating between picture sizes with the flip of
a switch or the touch of a button. VIDEO
RECORDERS FOR EDUCATIONAL TV Many
of the same concerns that apply to cameras also
apply to recorders. The recorder must employ the
same video standard as the camera (VHS, PAL, NTSC,
HDTV, or any formats that appear). Similarly, the
machine must record the audio as clearly as
possible. The better the recording, the better the
programme. Video can be recorded onto
either tape or disk. Tape widths range from 1/2
inch for consumer electronics to 3/4 inch for older
professional equipment to one-inch and occasionally
two inches for high-end systems. Professional
quality analog video tape can run as much as
£20 to £60 per cassette, and more for
digital tape. Reliance on tape is being displaced
by reliance on recordable disks, which have a
relatively higher unit cost but can hold
significantly more material. Disk recorders also
tend to be a bit lighter than tape recorders, a
benefit for production out in the field where the
camera operator needs to lug the equipment around.
Prices range from under £100 for a VHS
recorder to £50,000 or more for a digital disk
recorder. In recent years, the
"camcorder" has been popular for both home and
professional use. Combining the camera and recorder
into one unit tends to simplify life for the camera
operator. In response to the competing recording
formats, however, the camera manufacturers have
started making cameras that can attach or "dock" to
the different kinds recording devices designed to
fit that "dockable" camera. This means a TV
operation can buy a shoulder-mounted camera that
may be docked at the back to either a tape or disk
recorder, this being switchable as need arises. The
trait of dockability does not apply to the large
studio cameras connected by fixed cables to a
control room, but that control room may be using
either tape or disk to record the video shot on
their soundstage. Flexibility is the name of the
game. Although they may be
combined in one unit, the odd thing about video
recorders in contrast to cameras is that there is
not one single national or global standard
recording format. Instead, there are competitive
proprietary recording standards from Panasonic,
Sony, JVC, Philips, and others. Sometimes
manufacturers have licensed an existing format for
their own products, but recording formats abide as
one of the last un-standardized areas of TV
technology. Some see this situation as a problem
while others see it as an opportunity for
innovation. For producers, the best approach is to
study each competing digital or analog recording
format, read the spectrum of television engineering
trade magazines for comparisons and user reports,
then make a decision based on their particular
application. Whatever recording format
is chosen, that format will influence many other
key purchasing decisions down the line, like the
playback systems for video editing and
transmission. As in any TV system, all equipment in
an ETV production operation is interdependent. For
this reason, the savvy ETV operator will stick to
"open architecture" systems, so that equipment from
one manufacturer is easily integrated with
equipment from another architecture. Beware of
dead-end choices. ETV
PRODUCTION CONTROL SYSTEMS Capturing
the video image with a camera and recorder is just
the first step in the production of an educational
programme. For any production "shoot" involving
more than one camera, some kind of video and audio
mixer or switcher must be used to take all the
video and audio inputs and combine them into a
master tape or disk. Low end VHS-compatible
switchers are available in the better consumer
electronic stores, but these are designed for
making fancy home movies, actually, and rarely are
suitable for commercial productions. The serious
producer of ETV content needs a multichannel
switcher able to handle inputs from as many as
three to five cameras and at least that many audio
sources along with inputs from tape or disk
playback machines for inserting interstitial
materials, such as graphics or text. Professional
switchers can run from £7,500 to more than
£75,000 with all the bells and whistles needed
to meet the most complex digital production
needs. Within a studio setting,
switchers and recorders are installed into a
control room that generally has a glass wall
looking out onto the soundstage. The control room
must be equipped with an audio mixer to control the
volume and balance of the sound being recorded with
the video. On a wall or operator console will be
small video monitors, one for each camera, plus a
larger monitor displaying the final mix. If the
production facility is transmitting the signal,
there must be a monitor showing the signal going
out of the facility and another monitor showing the
signal coming back. Also in the control room will
be time base correctors to synchronize video and
audio signals along with a rack of diagnostic
equipment to test the colour video for hue,
brightness and saturation. A digital TV production
control room can cost £250,000 up to £1
million or more. For remote productions, a
portable switcher is needed to mix down all the
signals from the cameras and microphones and send
them to video recorders. Whenever a production
outfit has the budget, a production van or truck is
rented, leased or else purchased outright. At the
low end are the small vans that TV news crews use
for electronic news gathering (ENG) with a cramped
control console inside and likely a steerable
microwave antenna mounted on the top. A middle
range remote truck might be the size of a delivery
lorry, packed with the same kinds of equipment. At
the high end will be an 18-wheel tractor-trailer,
the kind seen on the highways, specially configured
with compartments for storage of cameras and cables
along with sections for a control room plus an
editing and special effects suite. Over and above
the costs of the vehicle itself, add the costs of
the equipment along with the costs for the vehicle
to be customized. A fully equipped remote
production trailer can easily surpass £1
million, which is why renting or leasing makes
sense for everyone but those doing truck shoots
often and profitably enough to justify a purchase
of their own rig. ETV
EDITING & POST PRODUCTION
SYSTEMS Apart
from productions broadcast live, the usual routine
is to take all the video footage and edit it down
into a final programme. An average producer will
shoot at least ten times more footage than will
actually be used in the final cut, which is called
a 10:1 production ratio. Some productions, such as
documentaries, can go as high as 20:1 or more. The
extra footage is essential so the editors have a
choice of shots to pick from for the sake of
accuracy, continuity and simple story-telling.
The classic editing
formula comes from the Russian filmmaker Sergei
Eisenstein: A+B=C. First, a wide shot establishes
the crowd scene. Second, a medium shot of a solder
firing a rifle. Third, a close up of a bleeding
civilian. The mind links these together to "see"
the civilian actually being shot although that
moment is never depicted on screen. In Hitchock's
Psycho, the shower scene is so terrifying because
of brilliant editing. We see a hand wielding the
knife, the shower curtain tearing, blood going down
the drain. The film is in black and white, yet many
viewers swear they witness the entire murder in
colour. Great editing is magic. For educational
television programmes, of course, violence and gore
generally are neither desirable nor appropriate,
but the same editing techniques can be applied to
lend excitement and interest to even the most bland
exposition. Long shot of a biologist collecting
seashore specimens as young students stand nearby.
Medium shot of the instructor reaching down into
the water. Close-up up a small octopus. Close-up of
a student looking scared. Medium shot of the
laughing scientist. Technically, all that's
needed for analog editing are two video machines,
one for playback and one for recording, plus a
monitor for each machine that permits the editor to
cue up each clip with precision. A simple "linear"
analog videotape edit suite can be built for about
£10,000. For more sophisticated "non-linear"
digital editing, the cost for the edit suite can
quadruple with the addition of compression
encoders, and decoder along with provisions for
inserting computer-generated digital effects. The
advantage is that the video editor only needs a
single computer with software like FinalCutPro.
Within the edit suite or a
separate digital effects suite, a full-loaded Sun,
SGI or similar workstation is needed to produce 3D
animation, object morphing, and the kinds of
textual effects seen on the commercial television
channels. But many marvelous digital effects also
can be produced on an Apple Macintosh AV or a
Windows NT machine. An educational TV producer can
quickly expend £50,000 to £200,000 or
more to construct state-of the art editing and
special effects suites. INTERACTIVITY
IN EDUCATIONAL TV PRODUCTIONS The
list of equipment described above, until recently,
was all one needed to create an educational
television programme or telecourse. Now a new
factor enters the equation &emdash; interactive
television. With the rollout of digital TV,
regardless of the delivery mode, wide avenues are
opening for learners to become more involved.
Educational media is becoming a two-way street, and
not just on the computer platform with the Internet
and the World Wide Web. Interactivity is migrating
to the television set, and educational TV will
never be the same. Given the interactive TV
technologies already in the marketplace, and those
now being tested, static one-way educational TV may
soon be passé. Interactive video disks are
already on the market, and these utilize many of
the same authoring tools used for multimedia CD-ROM
production. The idea is to take advantage of the
mind's ability to learn though lateral modes of
sight, sound, touch, not only the linear reading of
text as you're doing here. Interactive teaching
takes imagination. As one example, a company
based in New York's Rockefeller Center, ACTV
(Advance Cable TV ), in the Eighties developed for
distance learning an analog TV technology with
"branching video," allowing the instructor to
seamlessly respond to student answers. Each
possible teacher response was pre-recorded in the
studio, then all the video was bundled into final
tape. A student's answers on a remote control would
automatically determine which segment of video
played next, almost like editing on-the-fly. The
ACTV system [now part of OpenTV] of one-way
interactivity was licensed in 1990 by
Vidéotron for their Videoway personalized TV
service, which today has more than a half million
customers in Quebec and the London area. Following
the takeover of Videotron by CWC, the delivery of
personalized TV in the London system is now in
doubt, but the smart money is on CWC keeping a
winner since ACTV has improved their technology for
two-way interactivity. Allowing students (or even
sports viewers) to instantly replay any segment or
to change camera angles at will makes plain old
static TV seem pretty boring in
comparison. Because many of the new
interactive TV authoring tools are computer-based,
they require little additional equipment at TV
facilities beyond, perhaps, an upgrade to whatever
digital insertion system may be on hand. Also,
little or no remodeling may be needed if the TV
production facility already has the requisite
computers set up in a control room, edit suite, of
digital effects suite. The chief cost for upgrading
to interactive TV service is licensing the
technology, and this varies too much, company by
company, for hard figures here. (Please see
Appendix for key players in the interactive TV
business). The path into the golden
age of interactive TV still seems shrouded in mist,
but most of the debris blocking the way has been
and will be removed by time, by the ongoing rollout
of digital TV services in the marketplace.
Therefore, educational TV producers with an eye on
the future, accounting for the shrinking lag time
between technology introduction and market
acceptance, already are acquiring the authoring
tools for interactive TV production. They will be
at the head of the queue when the TV services issue
the call for content to fill all of the new
channels that will be opened in the next few years
by the start of digital video compression.
PRODUCTION
OF EDUCATIONAL TAPES AND DIGITAL
DISKS Many
educational TV producers rely on sales of
pre-packaged programming to their customers. Their
target audiences include educational institutions,
for-profit or nonprofit organizations, and home
learners in general or niche markets. Before a marketing team
can deliver products to customers, the products
must be manufactured. Firms specializing in the
mass-production of videotapes and digital video
disks (or, digital versatile disks) can be found in
any city having significant video or film
production activities, including such European
capitals as London, Paris, Berlin, Geneva,
Stockholm, Rome, Prague, plus such North American
TV centres as Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto,
Hollywood, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington,
New York. Entrepreneurs are starting tape/DVD
duplication services in these and other locales,
competing for business by offering the highest
quality at the lowest cost. The better companies
offer good investment opportunities. From a producer's
perspective, just because a duplication firm is
nearby does not mean that firm is the best one to
use. Some duplication companies offer a lower unit
cost than competitors by cutting corners with
inferior high-speed duplication equipment. Why risk
a background ultrasonic whine pervading the
soundtrack? Also, DVD duplication equipment may not
match the standards agreed upon by the
manufacturers of DVD players. Wise producers always
obtain random sample copies from a manufacturer for
replay on equipment at their own production
facility. Saving money with low quality could
become too expensive in the end. Once the tape or disk is
mass produced, from here the problem chiefly
becomes one of marketing. All the business rules
for manufacturing and distributing any consumer
product apply to distributing pre-packaged
educational programming. Institutional sales
strategies differ from wholesale or retail sales
strategies. First make sure the video programme
"delivers the goods" in terms of technical and
educational quality, then and only then should a
robust sales team be turned loose to implement
whatever marketing plans have been developed.
(Please see the appropriate chapters in the
briefing for information on the target
markets.) THE
EDUCATIONAL TV PRODUCTION STAFF Before
any equipment is purchased for ETV production, ask
who will be using it. Ease of use clearly is a
crucial criteria in selecting ETV production
equipment. Educational institutions
entering the production business often rely on
student volunteers and work-study interns to
perform many aspect of production, such as camera
operation. They need cameras and recording decks
that can be used with little training. Even where
professional operators are employed, ease of use
still matters. Camera operators, for instance, need
to zoom and focus without ever removing their eyes
from the viewfinder, which means camera controls
must be as intuitive as possible. For a camera
mounted on the operator's shoulder, one-hand
control is crucial, such as when the other hand is
holding a boom mike. For larger studio cameras
mounted on gliding tripods, the controls for zoom,
focus, pan, and tilt need to be at the fingertips,
so the operator need not look down when trucking
across the studio floor in a long dolly shot. A
sudden camera jiggle cannot be edited out when
broadcasting live, and suppose this live ETV
programme has an email component. Will students
make teasing remarks about the camera work?
After making sure the
equipment is easy to use, the next big challenge is
making sure the staff possesses the "skills set"
needed to operate the equipment.. For any
production facility affiliated with a high school,
college or university, training students in
television production provides many of the trained
personnel needed. What these student workers lack
in finesse, they make up in dedication. Students
will work for little or nothing when being
well-paid in training and experience. On the flip side,
qualified television production professionals do
not come cheap. In the USA, for example, good
freelance videographers will not walk through the
door for less than $50 an hour with a minimum
guarantee of $200 per day. Pros who master
non-linear editing or digital effects generation
can write their own tickets. Hollywood hires kids
straight out of colleges and technical schools with
starting salaries at $30,000 just for competent
editing skills. Young adults in their late twenties
with proven technical skills and strong
imaginations are earning six figures, and these
folks more than pay for themselves by creating
salable content. The savvy educational
television producers spend at least as much on
staff hiring, development and benefits as they
spend in equipment research and acquisition.
Superior people with adequate equipment can produce
higher quality educational programming than
adequate people with superior equipment. The
Internet has shown that a million monkeys at a
million keyboards still can't equal
Shakespeare. PROFITABILITY
ISSUES IN EDUCATIONAL TV PRODUCTION The
producers of educational content simply want to
reach an audience. Whether their programmes are
distributed by broadcasters, cable casters,
satcasters or even the phone company makes little
difference from a technical point of view. Their
concern is whether the people they attract as
business partners in their endeavors will share
their educational vision. They seek allies above
all else. Any reader considering an
investment in any educational TV production
venture, as a stockholder or participant, needs to
apply an understanding of TV production technology
when evaluating the potential return on investment.
Posing the right questions can be more important
than getting the right answers. Always start by asking: Is
the production quality worth the production cost?
In educational TV, where high-production values can
mean the difference between learner acceptance or
rejection, the ETV operations with the best
combination of reliable equipment and talented
staff often represent the most worthy investment
opportunities. How does one identify the right
balance? Each case is unique, yet here are some
follow-up question than may provide useful
information. Will the finished
production be marketed for fast splash sales, or is
the goal to create an "evergreen" product with an
enduring shelf life? When the subject of the
programme is highly topical, such as a one-time
"electronic field trip" that offers live
interaction with the scientists controlling a
landing on Mars, timeliness and the ability to cut
away to spacecraft slow-scan video will be far more
critical for success than the accuracy of the flesh
tones on the announcer who's facilitating questions
from primary school students submitting questions
by phone and email. If the recording of this
historic event will be edited and resold for study
by future generations, then unfaltering video
quality become much more essential. What is the smartest way
to pay for the production costs? Do anticipated
revenues rationally suggest renting, leasing, or
buying production facilities? An enterprise formed
to produce only one specialty ETV programme is wise
to rent production capacity at a commercial
production house, starting at £150 or $100 per
hour. A startup venture planning multiple
programmes, like a 13 week series, may want to
lease production facilities. After surviving the
halcyon years, a solid production operation with
dependable revenue streams may prefer to buy or
build its own production centre. Consultants abound
who will gladly assist with facility
design. And finally, are the
programme goals best served by using student
volunteers, contracting with freelance talent or
hiring a professional production team? Just as with
production facility decisions, the end use and
shelf life of the programming will indicate which
option is the better choice. As with all things in
free markets, we get what we pay for. The most
wonderful piece of new-fangled modern TV technology
is worthless without a qualified person at the
controls. Who's minding the machine? Do they know
what to do, when to do it, and how to do
it? Ask and answer such
questions before investing in any educational
television production operation. Even if
considering a nonprofit educational organization
for a grant to produce educational TV content, ask
these questions. (c)
1998-2005
by
Ken
Freed.
Based on the book, Financial
Opportunities in Educational
Television, by Judah Ken Freed. . New
in the CASTING
THE NET OVER GLOBAL
LEARNING An
comprehensive overview of critical advances in k-12
and higher education along with corporate training
and lifelong learning.
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