Video @ National Community Church Thursday, November 16, 2006

On a weekly basis I get many inquiries about how NCC's (www.theaterchurch.com) streaming video looks so good. So, I asked Dave Clark from NCC to take a moment and tell us about there process. Thanks Dave for taking the time to do this!

Video Procedure: National Community Church

Camera
Currently, we use the Canon XL-H1 to record our weekly messages. The HD-SDI output from the camera sends an uncompressed HD signal. That is very important for our process. We will probably never actually use a tape in this camera. In my opinion, the HDV codec is subpar.

Production Machine
The HD-SDI output from the camera is sent to a Macintosh G5 Quad with a Blackmagic Design Decklink HD Extreme capture card. We then capture the live 1080i video signal into Final Cut Pro 5 and compress using the DVCPRO HD codec. DVCPRO HD is a very nice codec. It looks great and helps keep files to a reasonable size.

The Canon XL-H1 can be managed with Console, an application that allows a producer to remotely adjust all of the settings on the camera via a firewire connection. You can modify parameters like zoom, focus, iris, and color.


Post-Production
Once the raw video is captured, we'll trim the ends to include just the message, add some fades, and then splice in any video clips that happen during the message. This process helps the production teams at our weekend services manage less during the live re-play.

Once everything is just right, we export a QuickTime movie in DVCPRO HD 1080i. The final file takes about 15 to 20 minutes to render out. The resulting file size is approximately 35 to 40 gigabytes. The file is then loaded onto external hard drives that are dispatched to all "video locations” for playback. We use ProPresenter for presentation. Our ProPresenter source has been customized specifically for us to achieve 1080i playback.

Post-Post-Production
Once the weekend process is complete, we encode a version of the message to MPEG4 for delivery via video podcast. We also encode a Flash version for on-demand delivery at theaterchurch.com. We use Light Cast Media to stream that Flash video to congregants and site visitors.

Currently, the Flash video is encoded using On2 Flix Pro with the recommended settings from Light Cast. We hope to find something on the Mac platform that will support batch encoding of DVCPRO HD files. Getting all five possible versions (HD, high, medium, low quality and audio) prepared for Light Cast in one move would be far more productive.


Also, for those of you who may be interested, we are using two Panasonic AG-HVX200 cameras for all of our field work and off-site videos. I love these cameras. They record directly to hard disk (Firestore FS-100) via a firewire cable. Once a video shoot is complete, you can import your clips directly into Final Cut Pro. No more real-time capturing. It’s an excellent advantage in productivity.

Labels:

posted by Light Cast Media @ 11:05 AM,  

0 Responses to “Video @ National Community Church”

Post a Comment