This month for Tech Edge, we are going to have a conversation with Kevin Scanlon. Kevin is the Digital Asset Manager for CBS at WBZ –TV channel 4 in Boston and myTV38 (WSBK-TV). As their Digital Asset Manager, Kevin performs a wide-range of duties including media management, troubleshooting, and workflow design from ingest, edit, and play-out of on-air news and commercial media; both within the WBZ facility as well as for the photographers and journalists in the field. His regular duties branch into multiple areas of WBZ-TV including the newsroom, promotions, graphics, and web departments. He is also very active in researching, testing and implementing new technologies in effort to streamline efficiencies and quality control of post-production.
Kevin Scanlon is a native of Massachusetts. He went to Fitchburg State University where he obtained his B.S. in Communications concentrating in Film, Video and Multiple Media. Before moving to WBZ-TV he worked at Avid Technology. Since at WBZ, Kevin has simplified the WBZ post production process as they moved from a tape environment to a file-based 128TB network storage asset management system. WBZ also has a 300TB digital LTO archive library. He also managed WBZ through multiple format changes such as transitions in shooting, editing and play-out for SD 4:3 to SD 16:9 and HD.
I was able to sit down with Kevin at the WBZ studios and ask him some questions about shared storage and how it affects the workflow of the daily news.
Steve McGrath (SM): WBZ uses shared storage to share video assets with editors. How does that shared storage change the way you work?
Kevin Scanlon (KS): Shared storage has completely changed the game for us. For the first time it made media available to everyone at the same time. Until then, in a tape world someone would have to wait until others were done with that tape footage or have a dub made in real time of said footage just to view and log, let alone start to edit material. The days of folks running down the hallway of a newsroom with tape in their hands to make air on time is becoming a thing of the past.
SM: Do you feel a news station could operate in this day and age without shared storage?
KS: I can’t see any other way to do business now. Based on how much storage you have, consider the possibility of the amount of footage everyone around the newsroom has available to them at any given moment. Not to mention in a fast-paced world we live in these days, if you want to stay competitive in the game and have the means to get that story out there quickly. Having a networked shared storage system is what really makes that possible.
Viewers probably don’t realize how close things just barely make it to air sometimes. Especially now when you consider rather than running a tape down the hall to play-out to be cued up in time for air, you now have a little more time to make those last minute editing changes to polish your story. This is possible because and editor now can just click on a finished sequence in their editing system to send it to a playback server which is delivered within seconds. From there your finished piece is wrapped up for you by the computer and sent to the video play-out server, which sometimes makes it to the server within moments of a technical director hitting that play command. All the while the editor can move right onto there next story to do that process again and again. It definitely allows us to push the limits of time even further, but that’s what makes this business exciting.
SM: When your photographers shoot video out in the field, how do you then get it onto your shared storage?
KS: We have photographers who both shoot and edit material out in the field using a laptop editing system. Traditionally, we use microwave or satellite to play out that material in real-time to receive it back here at the station which is then turned around by and editor to send to the play-out servers and make air. We have, however, over the last few years been experimenting around either on our own or through other vendors to deliver media over the internet. Whether hard-wired, WiFi or 3G/4G air cards we have tried a bit of everything. We’ve done so either sending back raw footage, edited packages or even in several cases doing live shots and sending that media in real-time over cell phone signals to play out to live air.
This kind of technology has allowed us to be mobile in places like last year’s tornadoes in western Massachusetts. When roads are covered to too much with debris to get a microwave or sat truck through, the mobility of these future technologies allow us to get to the places and broadcast it live like never before.
SM: Is shared storage available to more than just editors to access the same clips? And how are those other folks using the media?
KS: Everyone from producers, editors, reporters, to the promotions department is using the shared storage and can all be working on the same media at once. An ENG recording operator will use a software viewer/logging tool to confirm incoming feeds are recording and checking into our network storage with proper color and audio levels, in addition to adding metadata information about the feed. Metadata such as “good take”, “bad take”, “standup” or “’tease”, so others can navigate to the necessary portions of a clip they need faster. Meanwhile, in the newsroom, a reporter can start to view and log media to write their stories. This is done while the promotions department editor is taking B-Roll and sound bites to cut into the show’s opening segment or commercials to run before the show airs. While a newsroom editor is waiting for the stories to be written, they can start to comb through footage to sub clip out good b-roll shots, sound bites, or import graphics needed for the edited package to start to put together a rough cut. And even while all that is going on, producers will be cutting together teases for that same story that will run before commercial breaks during the news show. On top of all that, the executive producer or news director can call up finished pieces to review and approve before airing. This entire process happens simultaneously from each person’s individual computer around the newsroom. The real time collaboration you get with shared storage allows all this to happen simultaneously.
SM: Once a news broadcast has aired, do you keep the clips on the storage or are they archived?
KS: Our media these days is all archived through a robotic digital LTO archive tape library. The daunting task is taking over 400 hours of recorded online media and deciding what to keep short term, what to delete, and what to archive for long term use. Generally, we keep new media captured into the network storage online for about two weeks. From there, we melt and consolidate down the edited portions of our broadcast to keep just what was used. Larger high profile ongoing stories or investigative reports we will keep more of that raw media to have for a later dates when that story comes up in the news again. Also, historical footage such as weather or political events we log and archive for long term use as well.
SM: Do you have a way of finding clips on your shared storage that you have already used? For example, if you are doing a sports story and you want to recap how an athlete’s entire season is going?
KS: Whenever dealing with as many file assets as we have in our system, a consistent naming convention is a key part of our workflow. Things like a date stamp helps find a piece that was created last Tuesday. But when over 300 stories could be created over the course of a day, most stations have a system of abbreviations such as “PKG” for package, “VO” for voice over and so on. These are so anyone could search for certain key words to help reduce the amount of results they find when performing a search for a particular story. Every story we air also has what’s called a video ID, which like date stamp on your file asset provides another uniquely coded number attached to its metadata to provide an individual identifier to search and find your story quickly.
You also asked about sports which for us is necessary, as I’m sure for other stations as well to keep very well organized. Beyond naming conventions, we use a simple system of organizing virtual folders on our asset management system.
Most of our sports folders are broken down into sports leagues such as NBA, MLB, etc. From there, we have folders of each of our major teams which are broken down into dated folders for a season, and then dated folders for each game. That game folder will consist of highlight reels that someone will cut together for each game of the season. Within this, the editor/producer will add in metadata about the game such as goals scored or big plays for certain players. All of metadata carries with the asset all the way through to archive.
We will also create player profile pieces highlighting practice or game footage of said players to have available whenever they may come up in the news due to injury or scandal. That way, when a player is mentioned during a press conference, we have some footage to quickly cut together and send to play out and use as B-Roll video to switch to during that press conference. When you are working in any newsroom that cuts together tens of thousands of stories over the course of a year without any means of organization and or naming convention, your entire workflow can come to a grinding halt all because someone cannot find that one piece of iconic video that we shot early in the year. Even then, video can still be hard to find, so it’s an issue we are constantly trying to modify and improve upon.
SM: Kevin, thank you for your time and having me by the station.
KS: Anytime, Steve.
Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications. He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, Versus, ESPN, Reuters, Pentagon, USDA, Powderhouse and many others. You can reach him at Steve.McGrath@HBCommunications.com