Posted on Jul 2, 2009


For an upcoming webcast we need to get some footage of a NEES quake simulation being conducted in Japan (14 hour time difference) and have it into the Broadcast Pix Slate G 1000 switcher within a matter of hours for the show.

Part of the mission of NSF’s Studio 8 is to try and figure out workarounds to traditional TV-satellite-based technology.

To that end, we had to figure out a way to get the 720p DVC Pro HD footage (three different camera angles) recorded in Japan into our switcher (we’re located just outside DC) in time for the webcast.

While it’s not ideal and isn’t an option for broadcast, we went with h264 compression. Using FCP, it’s a fairly simple export:

This yields a manageable file size (approx 100 mb for a three-minute clip with some dollys, tilts, and pans) that can be sent using services like Sendspace.com (fairly fast servers, files up to 300mb) or Transferbigfiles.com (slower servers but can support files up to 1GB).

After we get the h264 file from Japan, we need to transcode it into a DVC Pro file format that our Broadcast Pix Slate G switcher likes:

As I mentioned, there is certainly some loss of information (evident by tearing and a slight strobing in the switcher) with all the transcoding, but for getting “good enough” footage around the globe quickly, this is a viable work flow.

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