New Digital HDTV Stations Standardize On Canon XL H1 HD Cameras For Video Production In Both The Studio And The Field

November 29, 2006

The future of television broadcasting is visible today behind a 120-ft. glass window at a Reno NV shopping mall. There, in full public view in an adjoining building, is the new purpose-built studio complex for Pappas Telecasting’s KREN TV 27 and co-located sister station KAZR TV 46. The stations have been engineered to integrate the very latest digital, computer-based technologies to maximize production workflow efficiencies and bring viewers stunning HDTV picture quality. Central to this design is Pappas Telecasting’s choice of Canon’s XL H1 HD cameras for all of the stations’ video-acquisition needs. Three XL H1’s have been configured for studio camera operation, with another three in the field for video journalism. A seventh serves as a hand-held camcorder for impromptu interviews at the mall, where the stations’ glass window lets the public view live newscasts. “We chose the Canon XL H1 because of its flexibility,” explains Dale Scherbring, Vice President and Director of Engineering at Pappas Telecasting Companies. “Not only is it a great HD portable field camera, it can also be used as an HD studio camera with its genlock input and HD-SDI output. In launching KREN’s new HD newscasts, we felt it was very important to maintain a consistent look between what’s shot in the studio and in the field. The XL H1 is an advanced, small-format HD camera that’s a good match for our small but advanced Reno TV stations.” Studio Performance Pappas Telecasting Companies is the largest privately held commercial TV broadcast group in the U.S. in terms of household coverage. The company owns 27 stations, which include affiliates of nearly all the major broadcast networks. KREN is a CW affiliate; its co-located sister station KAZR carries Azteca America programming. Both stations went live from the new facility in early September and are currently delivering a 1080i HD signal via local cable providers to approximately 50 percent of their DMA (Designated Market Area). Pappas Telecasting is preparing for daily production of two separate one-hour HD newscasts for both KREN and KAZR seven days a week. All video capture, whether in the field or the studio, will be done exclusively with the Canon XL H1HD Camcorder. “We haven’t launched our news yet, because we’re going through the final phases of our training, as well as getting our live-studio kinks worked out,” explains James Ocon, Deputy Director of Engineering at Pappas Telecasting Companies and Chief Engineer at KREN and KAZR. “We’re already automated, and our master control is built out. As for the XL H1 cameras, they were almost perfect right out of the box. When we first set-up the XL H1 cameras in the studio we hardly needed to make any adjustment to match them. We used a registration chart designed for HD, and checked the back focus, skin detail, flare, gamma, and other settings. The cameras really want to perform. “Even though we’ve added LCD viewfinders and teleprompters to our XL H1 studio cameras they’re still lighter-weight than typical studio cameras, which means that the tripods don’t have to be as heavy-duty, and that means they’re less expensive,” Ocon continues. “I think that notions are going away as to what people think a ‘studio camera’ should really look like. If you showed some seasoned broadcast engineers the HD video output of the XL H1 on a reference monitor, I think they’d be quite surprised when they saw the actual size of the camera itself. Another thing I like about the XL H1 is that it has a top-quality Canon lens. That, I think, helps quite a bit with the picture quality as well as the XL H1’s image-processing ‘engine.’ ” Canon Console Software Scherbring and Ocon explain that the HD-SDI output of the KREN/KAZR XL H1 studio cameras is fed directly into the stations’ HD production switcher. “These pictures,” Ocon comments, “look just spectacular.” In addition to taking advantage of the full uncompressed image quality of the XL H1’s HD-SDI output, which is a standard feature of the camera’s Professional Jack Pack, the stations are also utilizing Canon Console, an advanced next-generation software product that enables a desktop or laptop computer to serve as a camera control unit (CCU) for the XL H1HD Camcorder. “I first saw Console at a trade show,” Scherbring notes. “Canon showed a full XL H1 studio configuration that basically replaces anything commonly thought of as a studio camera set-up. Because Console is software it means that you can update and change it without having to pull a whole unit out and replace it with something else.” “You just download a newer version,” Ocon adds. “When we first saw the Canon Console software we were very impressed with it. I like the fact that you can put waveform monitor and vector-scope readings right up on the same screen, that you can do file setups, and that—in our case—you can use one screen to look at three separate cameras despite toggling between computers.” The backbone of KREN’s advanced digital architecture is a gigabit Ethernet network, which links all production equipment, including a shared storage system that enables anyone to access video footage from any location in the station. The system is administered by a Broadcast Information Technologist, a new job title combining IT and broadcast-engineering skills. “The very fact that Console is a software-based CCU that communicates over FireWire to the cameras enables us to save rack space and gives us greater flexibility for our workflow environment,” Ocon emphasizes. “The network includes the computers running Canon Console software, so we can look at a waveform vector for any of the cameras from anywhere we want. Canon has been working very closely with us from the beginning to make sure that the cameras are set up properly, and they’re interested in our feedback. We really like the relationship. We’ve gone through several rounds of training, not only on the field cameras, but also with the Console software. I sense that Canon wants to make further improvements, so it can only get better from here.” Nonlinear Field Acquisition “As with any TV station, field cameras are very important to our news operations,” Ocon says. “The XL H1’s worked great right from when we first started testing them. The video looked much better than our previous field cameras. What I like about the XL H1 in the field is that its focusing circuitry is very adaptive and seems to be a bit more intelligent than some of the other cameras that I’ve seen. Canon’s got a pretty good legacy. The locking mechanism that mates the lens to the XL H1 camera seems pretty robust. So far, the XL H1 appears to be as robust as any other professional camera.” In keeping with the stations’ emphasis on production workflow efficiencies and an advanced digital architecture, the KREN/KAZR field XL H1’s record their video to a Focus Enhancements FireStore FS-C Portable DTE (Direct to Edit) Recorder, which mounts directly to the back of the cameras and connects using a single FireWire cable. This nonlinear recording device comes standard with either a 60GB hard drive for up to 4.5 hours of 1080i HD recording time or a 100GB hard drive for more than 7 hours of recording time. “A mandate from Pappas Telecasting states that everything we design from here on out needs to be tapeless,” Ocon says. “The workflow efficiencies we achieve with the FireStore FS-C Recorders on the XL H1’s are outstanding. We custom-built computers with dual processors that can handle the HDV format. The FireStore FS-C transfers the video files captured on the XL H1’s at six times normal speed. If you have, for example, a five-minute piece, you can transfer it in 20 seconds, so you’re editing in real-time almost instantly. It really speeds things up. A video journalist can come in and dump his or her footage into the edit system, and we can send that XL H1 camera and its FireStore FS-C right back out into the field.” “The network at the station has Cat 6 cable running to all the desktops, which enables reporters to edit in a nonlinear shared-storage environment,” Scherbring elaborates. “Instead of the old workflow of shooting on tape, editing to tape, bringing tape to the control room, and playing back on tape, it’s all been replaced with a system that lets you bring in the XL H1’s FireStore FS-C hard drive, plug it in, and from that point on everything becomes a digital file transfer.” “We have a lot of hybrid reporters--one-person crews that shoot and also report--and they like the lighter, smaller form-factor of the XL H1,” Ocon adds. “There will, of course, still be stories where we’ll need someone to do a camera move, but the XL H1HD camcorder is going to make it a lot easier for a single video journalist to set up a tripod and do a quality shoot without needing someone else present. Stand-ups are going to look very nice, because video journalists can use the remote control that comes with the XL H1 to do a zoom. “We’ve also launched an initiative called Community Correspondent.Com, which means that anybody can cover a story and send it to us. We still want to have high-quality video, but because the Canon XL H1 helps us lower the barriers to entry, price-wise, it allows us to buy more cameras for the same money that we’d be spending on some other model. Working in concert with the resources we have back at the station, we’re getting a better return on investment.” “Not so long ago it was hard to see something like this on our radar screen,” Scherbring observes. “But in less than a year all the tools that continue to be integrated into the XL H1 have turned it into a product that really opened our eyes.” The technology implemented at Pappas Telecasting’s two Reno stations will serve as a beta test site for the company’s other stations, Ocon reveals. “We’ve already bought seven XL H1’s for our Fresno station, KMPH. Technology is changing rapidly, and I think this facility is probably one of the top ten most advanced studios that’s ever been put together anywhere. We’re still integrating all of the pieces, but as we continue to test and implement them we’re seeing better results than even we expected. And the XL H1 HD camcorder is definitely a big part of our successful results.”

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