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by Ken
Freed . As
digital video technology expands into virtually
every aspect of teleproduction, industry demands
grows for professional training in the operation
and maintenance the increasingly sophisticated
equipment. Industry manufacturers are responding to
this need with a broad spectrum of training options
that include both traditional and innovative
approaches. Training customers builds their
satisfaction with the products, which invites
repeat business. Extensive research by TV
Technology reveals that equipment vendors are using
an array of training methods that includes:
centralized training; cross-country training tours;
independent, third-party training facilities;
on-site training; training delivery by U.S. mail
and satellites; online (Internet) training, and
tutorials that are actually built into the
equipment itself. Overall, the trend is toward
ever-increasing levels of interactivity as a means
of training video professionals. The general industry
attitude toward training is best summed up by David
Frasco, director of marketing for Chyron Corp.,
which has sold 3000 iNFiNiT!, Max! and Maxine!
graphics systems worldwide. "You can build any
product with a technological advantage, but the
lifeblood of Chyron is our operators, the growing
group of users who make our products
sing." In other words, what's the
point of producing a great product if no one knows
how to use it? And the demand for knowledgeable
users continues to outpace the supply. According to the 1995 Ron
Carelli Report, 12,000 to 25,000 skilled digital
animators will be needed annually in the television
and motion picture industry as well as such fields
as multimedia CD-ROMs and DVDs, industrial design,
and even motion-simulator rides for amusement
parks. "The biggest battle ahead
is finding qualified animators," agrees Paul Babb,
product marketing manager for Pasadena,
Calif.-based Electric Image Inc., which produces
the Electric Image 3D animation and rendering
package used for the vortex effect in Sliders, the
opening graphics of Dateline NBC, and many TV
station IDs. "Top animators are being recruited
like sports figures, with signing bonuses and other
perks. Look at the aggressive recruiting by
DreamWorks at SIGGRAPH in New Orleans this year.
And with equal or similar demands expected for
nonlinear editors and digital compositors, it's no
wonder everybody is getting into the training
businesses." "Training is absolutely
part of the total product solution that we
produce," says Brad Harris, U.S. regional business
development manager for Tektronix Corp. "If we are
not addressing the training aspect, we are not
providing the solution." Here's a look at the most
common training methods now available within the
industry. Centralized
Training The traditional approach
of bringing people to one central location for
training remains the most common
technique. Panasonic Broadcast &
Television Systems Company has established regional
training centers in Cypress, Calif., Suwanee, Ga.,
Elgin, Ill., and at its U.S. headquarters in
Secaucus, N.J. National training manager Harry
Foulds says that equipment is shipped and installed
in each training room as products are launched.
Another training center in San Diego focuses only
on M-II machines. According to Foulds, these
training centers teach about 500 customers a
year. Direct competitor Sony
packages centralized customer training as part of
their multi-tiered Uptime service program, created
to minimize equipment and staff downtime. A
subscription to the Sony Support Net entitles
Uptime members to publications, CD-ROMs, and
reduced pricing on remedial repairs as well as
training on operations and maintenance at Sony
training centers or at customers' sites. The 17
Sony staff trainers currently offer 45 different
courses in the seven fully-equipped training rooms
divided among the three training facilities at Sony
headquarters in San Jose, CA, and at Sony sales
offices in Teaneck, NJ, and Boca Raton,
FL. Another company with
dedicated training sites is Chyron, which has two
training rooms at company headquarters in Melville,
New York, in addition to training centers in
Atlanta and Los Angeles. Like other companies, says
Frasco, Chyron uses freelance trainers to
supplement its core group of full-time, staff
trainers. These freelancers are usually working
professionals with expertise in the systems or
techniques being taught. A variation on the
centralized training site has been undertaken by
Discreet Logic Inc., producers of the Flint, Flame,
Inferno, and related nonlinear, on-line, digital
video and audio systems for creating, editing and
compositing digital imagery and motion picture
special effects. Beyond the busy training center at
corporate headquarters in Montreal, reports
professional services manager Richard Martin,
Discreet Logic offers five-day courses through
authorized training centers at Silicon Graphic's
"Silicon Studio" facilities in Santa Monica and
London. New York University in lower Manhattan is
another authorized training center. Third-Party
Training A growing trend among
television equipment manufacturers is to place
responsibility for their training in the hands of a
third-party facility. A leading independent
training center is Future Media Concepts (FMC) in
New York City, founded in 1993 by Jeff Rothberg and
Ben Kozuch. Future Media Concepts is authorized to
offer beginning to advanced training courses for
the full line of Avid Technology,
Microsoft/Softimage, Quantel, and Adobe Systems
products. Their small classes of up to six people
each permit extensive hands-on
experience. "We set up the company to
address a need in the marketplace by both users and
vendors for an impartial training arm," says
Kozuch, who serves as FMC president. "When people
go to get trained by a vendor or reseller, they
expect a lot of subtle or blatant sales pressure. A
third party trainer like ourselves knows the
product at least as well as the manufacturer, but
we're not in sales at all, so we're
non-threatening. Also, we never compare competing
products or promote one over the other. We teach
the equipment as is." Electric Image has chosen
to go exclusively with third-party trainers,
concentrating on schools like UCLA, which offers a
two-year animation program." We're placing
ElectricImage in as many schools as we can,
sometimes for free," says Babb, "because with
thousand of customers, it's impossible to train all
of them. We can't keep up with that kind of demand.
There's now 50 schools teaching Electric Image, and
we plan to build that up as quickly as
possible." One of Electric Image's
instructors is Zax Dow, developer of the EPS
Invigorator, a plug-in for modeling encapsulated
PostScript images. He teaches 3D animation through
the Advanced Technology Program of the American
Film Institute (AFI), in Los Angeles. "AFI specializes in
training people in the industry who are already
using digital technology but who can't take a night
every week for six month or five nights a week over
four months," says Dow. "That's why the AFI catalog
is filled with workshop-oriented
classes." The 60 advanced technology
programs offered in the AFI catalog cover digital
imaging, digital video, animation, multimedia,
networked media, and computer fundamentals. Beyond
ElectricImage, instruction is offered for Adobe
Premier, After Effects and Photoshop, as well as
Macromedia Director and Studio. Other courses cover
every aspect of website design, including the use
of VRML and Shockwave authoring
languages. Training
Tours Bringing students to the
teachers is a one method of providing training, but
taking teachers to the students, who might not be
able to get the training otherwise, is the next
best thing in training. The most common method has
been to present training workshops in local
hotels. A company with a vibrant
road show is Tektronix, based in Beaverton, OR,
which is a leading producer of video signal
monitoring and test equipment. The training tour
now in progress is called the "Convergence
Symposium Series," says Harris, and is traveling to
22 cities in the USA and Canada. Tektronix instructors
present technology overviews and discuss
measurement techniques for MPEG, serial digital
video, SONET transmission, mobile communications,
time division and co-division multiple access,
cable TV digital transmission, and physical layer
testing from an engineering design
perspective. The free two-day seminars
are conducted in local hotels and attract an
average of 100 customers each. "As you might
expect," notes Harris, "the MPEG program is
standing-room only." On-Site
Training For those professionals
that are so busy they can't get to a dedicated
training facility and can't find the time to catch
one of the traveling workshops, some companies will
bring an authorized instructor right to your
facility to provide on-site training. One vendor who exclusively
offers on-site training is Hitachi Denshi America, Ltd., the
video imaging arm of Hitachi Denshi of Japan. "We
offer full on-site training as a routine part of
every sale," says Tony Delp, product manager for
Hitachi cameras. The five day class covers all
aspects of maintenance and operation. "It may seem a little
extreme doing this for every customer," Delp
explains," but if we don't properly train those who
buy our cameras, if their lack of training causes
operational errors, our cameras would a get a bad
reputation they don't deserve." He offers another
compelling reason for on-site training. "With
centralized training, if a customer from the
midwest only sends one or two operators, those
people alone know how to use the equipment
properly. But if the training is done on site, all
of the likely operators and maintenance people are
trained, which helps eliminate future
problems." Sony also visits
customers' sites along with presenting classes at
their Sony retail locations. "We'll go directly to
customers if it best meets their needs," says Ray
Unser, national training manager in charge of
operations, maintenance and repair training. "We've
given classes to as few as three people in a
professional studio and as many as sixty people in
such major operations as Turner and NBC. We can
customize the training and provide anything from a
one-day seminar to a full two-week class. And to
keep their staff downtime for the class to a
minimum, we send them advance materials to study
and pre-class exercises to practice, so we can
provide more hands-on learning during the actual
class." Training
by U.S. Mail Another means of taking
the training to the student, often referred to as
customer support, is by sending educational
materials (both printed and on VHS cassette)
through the U.S. mail. Numerous manufacturers
have found that distributing an instructional
videotape is a cost-effective way of getting a
message out. For example, Hitachi is now
distributing an instructional videotape for its new
Z-2000A three-chip digital camera. Produced by MTA
Video Productions in New York City, the 42-minute
video covers all the key elements of the camera's
operation and maintenance. "You can do so much with
digital processing on the Z-2000A," says Delp,
"that operators were getting confused. The
videotape is intended to reduce the number of
service calls by clearly explaining such features
as how to set-up and adjust for flesh-tone detail.
The tape shows when and how to use each feature and
what effect the various adjustments will have
during actual hands-on operations." On more conventional
lines, many companies mail out printed
instructional materials. Discreet Logic sends to
all clients a quarterly technical bulletin,
Discreet Technical News, along with a tri-ennial
magazine, Logik, that features product overviews
plus tips and tricks. Combining the best of both
worlds, Tektronix makes available to customers both
printed technical primers and an array of how-to
videotapes. Satellite-Delivered
Training Moving past videotape, an
expanding list of companies now offer video
training to their dealer network via
satellite. Illustrating this trend,
Panasonic contracted with the Teletraining
Institute on the campus of Oklahoma State
University, in Stillwater, Okla., to create and
host the Panasonic Academy of Learning, now in its
third year. This DSS-based operation provides live
and pre-recorded training programs exclusively to
Panasonic's flagship dealers and service centers
across the country. Says Teletraining
Institute president Lauren Parker, "Our ultimate
goal is that when the student walks away from the
training, they are able to dissemble, reassemble,
test, troubleshoot, and repair any Panasonic unit
we train them on. For the PostBox A/V nonlinear
editing system, for example, each student goes
through a written test and then a hands-on editing
test to produce a videotape. We've made this into a
contest, and the producer of the best tape wins a
prize." Online
Training The next evolutionary step
is to offer training online, and toward this end,
numerous companies offer technical and educational
materials at their websites. Chyron
(www.chyron.com) has a training directory at their site,
which Frasco says attracts about the same number of
hits as the "products" section. "Sony is starting to
employ online distance learning services as voice
and video conferencing becomes more commonplace on
the Web," says Unser. "By the end of year, we
expect to provide training through our website
(www.sony.com) where you already can read about the
courses we have available. You'll soon logon at the
website to take courses live, but until the
bandwidth of web expands and you can download bulky
software directly from our website, the CD-ROM is
probably the best method for delivering multimedia
training, and DVD will be viable once it gets into
the marketplace. The key is offering options that
bridge the gap, so customers can choose what work
best for them." The Panasonic site
(www.panasonic.com) also offers educational and
technical materials, says Foulds, and the next step
will be to add multimedia training section. "We're
already seeing videoconferencing on the Web, and in
1997 we'll start online transmissions from the
Teletraining Institute. We're now looking at using
either Shockwave or Java for the video although
streaming technology seems to evolve
daily." Tektronix's site
(www.tek.com) also contains extensive product
literature and an E-mail customer-support
mechanism, says Harris, "and now we're moving
toward actual live demos you can download, which
soon will be a routine part of our
business." Tektronix is also
inserting "help buttons" and tutorials into the
equipment itself. "The instrument themselves are
getting smart," Harris says, explaining that the
newest metal TDR (time domain reflectometer, a
cable tester) has a built-in help button with a
menu of embedded tutorials. "You now can call up a
tutorial that walks you through how to make a
measurement." He adds that all of the newest
Tektronix scopes, such as the VM700-T video
measurement set, are being upgraded with a help
button. Increasing
Interactivity What's next? Discreet
Logic's Martin looks for video training to become
increasingly important online, especially with the
deployment of cable modems. "As soon as we see
higher speed limits on the Internet," he says, "our
Website will include video tutorials you can
download, and this increased flexibility will mean
our documentation materials will be updated faster,
too." "This decade is all about
merging computers and video," says Frasco at
Chyron, "so operators are taking on a new role of
creating live digital content. This means
interoperability is crucial for both the equipment
and the operators. Since all the products are
becoming capable of talking to each other on one
network, system operators need to know how to put
it all together." "More and more companies
will outsource their training," predicts Kozuch at
Future Media Concepts. "And as cross-platform
editing, compositing and audio finishing becomes
one profession, the people who used to do just the
story-telling now also have to be able to sit down
and build a five-layer opening for a documentary.
Some will find this exciting, and some will find it
intimidating, but now is the time to get the
training you'll need in the years ahead."
First Published
1996 in TV Technology
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