But it’s all for the sake of experience (in driving as fast as you can without getting caught, in my case) and that’s why so many people put themselves through the hard slog of being a TV runner. Below, I’ve put together some tips on how to survive weeks, months or even years in this role.

Survival tip 1

Be prepared to move. Most TV runner production jobs tend to be in London, Cardiff, Manchester and Bristol, so living close to one of these will help your chances. Or, if you’re not nearby to one of these cities, letting potential employers know you are willing to move will also stand you in good chance of being chosen for the job.

Survival tip 2

Being a licensed driver. And better yet, having your own transportation. Most runner jobs require you to drive around a lot, from different set locations, and collecting and delivering items. Sometimes they might even need you to drive other vehicles, such as small vans and even large lorries, depending on the job requirements. So being comfortable in these situations is important.

Survival tip 3

Your age can hold you back. This kind of ties in with the previous tip, so you need to be aware that being under the age of 25 could hold you back as a TV runner. It’s always going to be cheaper to insure older people as drivers on production vehicles. This isn’t really helpful when you’re 18 and testing out a life in production, so be prepared to fight your case and make them pick you over someone older.

Survival tip 4

Be willing to do anything that is asked. You might not like the sound of working down in the archives or buying lunches, but it might lead to your dream role, or at least give you a broader understanding of a job that you might not have considered before (not specifically buying lunches for ever more, but on delivering those lunches, it gives you a chance to network with more people, and that’s always useful).

Survival tip 5

Be frugal with your money. Although there are lots of TV runner jobs out there, competition for them is high. You don’t always know when the next job will be coming along and you don’t want to be left broke, so it’s best to make sure you have some funds left in reserve for important things like paying rent and buying food. Don’t panic though, because if you keep the job up you will start to make a name for yourself and soon people will be asking you to work for them. This in turn will get you to the next step on the career ladder!

So there you have it, 5 handy survival tips on becoming a TV runner. If you think I’ve missed off something important or have an opinion on this article, then feel free to leave a comment below.

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Now, one of the things I really dislike is when you’re editing a sequence, the programme crashes and you lose everything you’ve done in the last 10 minutes. Sometimes that’s not very much, but other times that can be a lot of work. If you’re lucky, the auto-save recovered some of the work, but seeing as that annoying little pop-up box only appears intermittently, chances are you’ve lost 10 minutes of work. It can be very frustrating. Luckily, when editing in Forscene, the professional video editing software continues to save your work every minute. And if you accidently exit the programme, the next time you launch Forscene, you can go to ‘previously saved versions’ (it’s the little recovery truck in the left side panel!) and load the last auto-saved version of the sequence.

In my overview blog post on editing time wasters, I was irritated by macros, or rather the lack of being able to create your own. Keyboard shortcuts are a feature of Forscene that are really very useful. Not only can you set keys to do any function that suits you, there are also pre-defined keyboard shortcuts that mirror functions in other well-known NLEs. Then there are macros, where you can set one key (or a combination of keys) to do multiple functions. In Forscene, you can add to existing keyboard shortcut lists or set up your own from scratch, and they will be saved in your account for use on different projects.

The next two time wasters I’m going to look at are menus and structured layouts. Trawling through menus and sub-menus, looking for specific transitions or effects that aren’t in your favourites’ is maddening. It’s great that many different effects are supported, but really, how many do you use? Structured layouts are another one that gets me down. Yes, you can set-up different workspaces for different projects, depending on whether you’re editing or reviewing, etc, but sometimes you just want to be able to move the timeline a few inches towards the top of the screen to save you from getting neck ache after an entire day of editing. Forscene allows you to move all windows within the application around freely – so they can be neatly lined up or overlapping each other!

I’m just going to touch on the last point briefly, as I covered it quite well in the overview blog: online support forums. The likes of Creative Cow are very useful, as they answer all queries on a range of video editing topics. Yet sometimes you just want to be able to quickly ask someone for help on how to use a function and not wait an hour for a reply. I see it as a time waster because it slows you down and could be a barrier for you being able to continue with editing a project. Forscene on the other hand has support teams available in the chat window to answer your questions in real-time, the ability to chat with other people in your project in a private chat window, as well as everyone working in Forscene in other accounts in the public chat window.

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The post Why saving a video project is an editing time waster appeared first on Blackbird.

It’s one thing to wow the attendees of a trade show with amazing technology, but not all the shiny equipment and software launched at IBC will stand the test of time. That’s why I’m proud to be part of the Forscene team exhibiting at IBC this year. Forscene was launched at IBC in 2004, before anyone had come up with the term “the cloud” and when people thought it was impossible to view – never mind edit – video over the public Internet. But the product has stood the test of time and is now an integral part of post-production workflows for broadcast programming, news, education and sport content across the world.

Staying power is not our only strength though – Forscene is constantly evolving to meet the changing needs of our users. At IBC this year we’ll be demonstrating some of our significant new developments including dual system audio, multicam editing and expanded social media integration. But what we’re most excited about is our racing simulator. Not because it’s epic (it is) or because I’m going to be top of the leader board (I will, ahead of our Marketing Director) but because we’re using it to demonstrate how Forscene is reinventing production processes with the industry’s first end-to-end virtualised post-production workflow.

https://youtu.be/nDjpWD3SBZQ

We’re inviting IBC visitors to experience the workflow first-hand by competing in a simulated car race, editing the live race footage in Forscene, and then sharing the video on social media – all without the need for any Forscene hardware. And if you can knock me out of first spot on the leaderboard you might even win a prize!

I’m really excited to work for a company that’s pioneering big changes to the way we produce video and to also work with clients that are constantly pushing the boundaries of delivering content in new and engaging ways. We’ve invited some of our clients to share their experience of how the cloud is changing post workflows at the Tech in Action Theatre at IBC. Join us on Saturday at 2:30pm in Hall 3 where I will be hosting a session about how logging, editing, reviewing and/or distributing content in the cloud has redefined post for these production, facility and digital rights content production specialists:

Edurne Bengoa: Head of Post Production MSV Post, Tinopolis Group

With over 20 years in industry, Ed started in production sound then moved to post. She worked at Molinare for 5 years and then the BBC for 9 before joining the Tinopolis group in 2012. Ed runs post facilities in London and Glasgow for Mentorn Media, Pioneer, Firecracker, Sunset+Vine and Passion Distribution.

Pete Burns: Commercial Manager UK, deltatre

Pete works closely with many of deltatre’s Federation and Broadcast clients, including European PGA, Sky Sports, and BBC Future Media, where he oversaw all digital projects for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Pete is responsible for the commercial strategy of deltatre’s video-based products and services, working closely with the product teams.

Gary Bradbury: Technical Manager Princess Post Production, Shine Group

Gary has 10 years experience in the post-production industry at Princess Productions and Evolutions. He runs the day-to-day technical operations at Princess and Shine TV including designing post-production workflows and solutions and managing the support team.

Looking forward to an amazing show, see you there.

The post How the cloud is changing post workflows appeared first on Blackbird.

Below are some of our top video editing time wasters – the biggest bug-bears when it comes to editing video! We’ve given a short explanation for each, but look out for future blog posts where we highlight some of these in more detail.

Also, this is by no means a definitive list – let us know if you have some of your own to add by following us on Twitter @forscenepro or liking us on Facebook!

1. Rendering – now we’re not saying rendering isn’t important, it really is, but this is about highlighting the biggest time wasting acts, and rendering takes the crown. Think about it: you’ve got an hour long panel presentation that’s going to take thirty minutes to render and during that time you can’t do anything else, not even export other files. It’s the biggest waste of valuable time, and life would be simpler if you worked at lower resolutions and full HD quality was restored on export, for example.

2. Menus – when you’re deep in the throes of editing and you really need that specific transition, you know, the one you used once before but can’t remember the name of and didn’t save to your favourites. But there are so, so many menus and sub-menus to trawl through. Editors don’t have time to look through endless menus!

3. Structured layouts – now, this can sometimes be helpful, as it keeps all of your windows aligned. However, just sometimes you want to be able to move your timeline to the exact height on your monitor so you don’t get neck ache. Life would be so much simpler if we could move windows independently of each other, without being constrained to locking proportions.

4. No macros – some video editing software do come with pre-defined macros, but how efficient would it be for you to be able to create your own and apply them to multiple projects? This is possible, but requires you installing plug-ins and other apps. Big snore.

5. Only playing one clip at a time – it would be really useful to be able to play your source footage at the same time as your edited footage. Say you’re listening out for a key word and aren’t too concerned with the visual – it would save so much time if you could play the media simultaneously, thus speeding up your workflow.

6. Getting edits to production crew – you’re working to a tight schedule and you really need the producer and director, who are located on opposite sides of the country, to review what you’ve edited. So, you need to set up an FTP and load all the footage onto it, or, even more time consuming, burn everything on to a DVD or external hardrive and get it posted to them. This is an inefficient use of time and it’s costly – life would be so much simpler if you could send them clips straight from the editor, or even give them independent access to your account.

7. Sitting through client reviews – this is similar to the previous point as it’s tiresome having to organise directors, producers and whoever else needs to review the footage to all meet in the same place. Nobody’s schedules ever align!

8. Getting a list of corrections – sometimes you can think you’ve finished an edit job and then you still receive a list of changes to make from the producers. It’s a time waster because you’ve already got your audio aligned and then you need to add in an extra 10secs of footage… if only they could see how you’re editing as you work.

9. Saving – remembering to save your work every few minutes when you’re trying to concentrate on a tricky bit of editing is really frustrating. And worse still is having that annoying auto-save box pop up at the exact moment you try to apply an effect to a clip. It would save a lot of time if editing applications would just save your work every minute, without having to inform you.

10. Online support forums – now, I’m not saying that support forums are a waste of time, quite the opposite, they’re very useful; but what is frustrating is having to come away from the editing application, go to a web page and then search your query. I’m mid-edit; I need an answer right now! Life would be far simpler if every edit application had a chat window installed, with real-life people answering on the other end.

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The post Top video editing time wasters appeared first on Blackbird.

This free session will look at:

• Making sure high shoot ratios don’t break your post-production budget
• How easy it is to integrate collaborative workflows for technophobes
• How to distribute content to multiple platforms in one simple step

Fill in the form below to sign up for this free session now, so you can quiz Neil and find out his insider tips on how to maximise the potential of your production

The post How to increase efficiency on your production appeared first on Blackbird.

One of the areas where we pride ourselves within the education sector is that we offer the same expertise and professional workflow to the education sector as we do the industry. However, recognising the important investment in the future generation of editors, we invest our time in training and equipping our students in this solution, so that they are ready for industry.
There are a variety of workflows, however the two most common ones are:

• Camera ingest, then upload from laptop.
• Camera ingest, connect to networked storage (such as SAN, Edit Share, NAS or Avid ISIS) then upload using a Forscene ingest server installed on the campus or venue of choice.

With all of these different ways of working, it culminates in content being transcoded in the cloud. This system doesn’t need a high level of upload speed, around 1.5mbps connection will suffice, as 15:1 proxy versions of the original media are uploaded to the Forscene cloud instead of the original high-res source. Forscene supports a whole host of formats and there is a list of them available, should you be interested – just contact me.

What should you do if you need to do a final edit or use a third party NLE tool like Avid, Adobe or Final Cut? There are ways of exporting an AAF or XML from Forscene and conforming the original media for the finishing touches. The majority of our education clients use Avid, for example, and this is one way of relinking media within the Avid environment.

The process would involve ingesting an Avid MXF to Forscene. Forscene picks up and stores all the information needed to generate an AAF already linked to the source material in Avid Media Composer. It might be necessary to open a bin containing the material before it becomes visibly linked. Avid Media Composer stores separate tracks into separate files, and Forscene will re-combine these files into one item during it’s ingest. It will refuse to ingest and notify you if some of these files are missing:

1. Re-linked
i. Ingest to Forscene and ingest to Avid independently from camera source files.
ii. Generate AAF in Forscene and import it into Avid Media Composer. You have to relink the clips and sequence to the ingested material in Avid Media Composer, and that depends on reelname and disk label matching up. Some cameras generate (non-Avid) MXF files and these contain a unique ID for the media that Forscene uses.

2. Import workflow
i. Ingest to Forscene from camera source files and generate an AAF that relates to filenames of the material.
ii. Import AAF to Avid and then use “Bulk import” in Avid to ingest the material.
iii. At the moment Forscene only includes the filename, not the directory into the AAF, so be sure to set up multiple cameras to generate unique filenames!

3. Mixed
Any mix of the above as long as filenames and/or reelnames are the same.

One of our longstanding clients, Ravensbourne has successfully used Forscene to integrate within their pre-existing workflow and to maximise their infrastructure. From the aspect of the financial investment in Forscene, the level of results and impact felt by their students has been high, especially considering the low levels of investment when compared to other products on the market. The relatively low cost of the solution, is due to our investment in cloud technology that minimises the necessity for physical infrastructure.

If this has got you thinking about your own workflow, please contact me to see how Forscene can be integrated into your higher education institution.

Enoch

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For this reason, Forscene has integrated FileCatalyst’s patented file transfer acceleration technology within its platform. FileCatalyst is immune to latency and linear with packet loss. With the click of a button, the user is now able to send these hi-res sequences to any other Forscene location at full line speed, regardless of how far away the destination is. Users are now able to benefit from faster access to original source rushes or sequences cut in Forscene for further post-production.

The partnership was first established in September 2014 at IBC. In the beginning, it was a loose integration, but as the months went on, we also integrated TransferAgent into the Forscene edge server. This is still a new partnership, but we have already hosted a webinar with Forscene and plan to have a solution paper out by IBC 2015, which will provide all of the details of the integration.

https://youtu.be/5qjiBDs_tw0

Two pieces of software can be made to work together; however, it is the teams behind them that are the glue in creating a great partnership. Forscene’s entire team have been very supportive with this integration and have gone to great lengths to allow their users to experience the FileCatalyst advantage from within the Forscene platform.

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Forscene’s tools also complement Field59’s Video Platform in spaces beyond broadcast television, such as newspapers streaming high school sports, and production companies. The newest integration between the two products allows for Field59’s live streams to be ingested directly into Forscene. This introduces new benefits: users can now live stream through Field59 and edit in Forscene using a single Field59 video source. Also, clients can now use Forscene without needing to invest in additional enterprise hardware — a small portable encoder or even a mobile device can be used to capture video. This combined efficient workflow offers a complete solution that works even in bandwidth-challenged environments, and provides many new opportunities to work together.

We’re pleased to be able to talk more about Field59 and Forscene combined workflows at Forscene’s NAB booth this year, and we’ll even be demonstrating live stream examples right from the booth! So please arrange a demo or stop by and talk to us about how we work with Forscene or one of the many features of our end-to-end video platform, such as automated smart playlists, live event scheduling and recording, mobile video publishing, and monetizing via pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll for desktop and mobile.

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https://youtu.be/IgloT0LRe8M

There is a free Sony app (Content Browser Mobile for Android and iOS) that gives you basic camera controls, clip browsing and shot selection. And with a choice of transmittable file sizes – as low as 0.5 Mb/s – even the smallest of bandwidths can be accommodated, allowing you access to your rushes from way out in the field. It will even work over a 3G or 4G dongle ensuring a very cost effective step in your workflow.

This might not look amazing when the camera and the cloud are in the same room – but imagine if you’re shooting in LA and your production office is in London. If you have the budget to courier your rushes back each day it could still take two or three days for you to see them. We can show you them in two to three minutes! Now you can log, edit, review and publish your media from Forscene before the disks have even left the location. And, your Forscene cuts will link back to the high res when it comes to do your online. But why wait until then? You can view your rushes almost as they’re being shot, allowing you to be selective on what you use, enabling you to direct story lines and be reactive to the actuality unfolding. When the adapter supports a growing upload it’s like watching a gallery feed!

As the adapter is now part of the camera itself the cost of it is negligible but the savings in time and money are huge and the implications for the future of production are vast. As more and more companies begin to see the benefit of the camera to cloud workflow I’m expecting to be busy at NAB!

If you want to know more about this workflow, or anything else Forscene can do, book a meeting with me now!

Chris

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Most importantly, digital content distribution is no longer an afterthought. Realising the potential income from digital content distribution, many sports rights holders now split the licencing for broadcast and digital rights content. This has created space for digitally focused companies to own the post-production and distribution of web and mobile content with a different mind-set, ensuring digital is no longer an afterthought – and to choose products that serve this content best.

Digital content delivery is all about speed, efficiency and price point – which play directly to Forscene’s strengths.

Whether it’s getting to the finish line or getting content onto your website – every-one involved in sports wants to be first.   And that means being efficient. Forscene ingests and transcodes growing files a few seconds behind the live sports event from traditional SDI, IP or cloud streams, allowing you to work in a single post-production platform for logging, search, editing, conform (often faster than real-time) and distribution. Forscene also integrates with market leading brands like EVS, enabling best practice workflows with pre-existing infrastructure.

Unfortunately, budgets in digital content remain a fraction of those in broadcast, so traditional broadcast post workflows using traditional broadcast equipment are not a viable solution for this growing market.   As a cloud service, Forscene has a low cost of entry for ingest hardware on premise, or a zero cost of entry for virtualised services. For seasonal rights Forscene is offered as a package licensing model, and for one-off events on a per-user basis as a SaaS model. Our clients plug our service into their proposals without the need for our input, as costing is as simple as counting ingest feeds and number of users and deciding where the conform is going.

ESPN commented at a recent Sports Video Group event, that more than a third of their live event budgets are spent on human resource.   Forscene clients make substantial savings by not having to send post-production staff to sporting events. As a cloud-based platform, Forscene transcodes the original high-res source into our own proprietary proxy and makes it available anywhere in the world over a modest Internet connection of around 1.2Mbps. Teams then work in a collaborative environment off one set of shared content, from various locations.

After a strong start to the year we have recently signed on as sponsors of SVG events throughout 2015 in both Europe and the US. I am attending the SVG Europe Football Production Summit this week in Barcelona and look forward to catching up with existing clients and making some new connections at the event.

Drop me an email or LinkedIn message should you want to meet.

Jason

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The post WHY FORSCENE IS SET TO DOMINATE SPORTS WORKFLOWS IN 2015 appeared first on Blackbird.