VTA

Viewers of The Weather Channel are used to getting accurate and timely national and local forecasts 24 hours a day.  But for the past few years, TWC has produced compelling original programming which shows how the weather affects our daily lives and altered the course of history.

“100 Greatest Weather Moments”, “Epic Conditions”, “Weather Ventures” and “When Weather Changed History” are some of the programs TWC has produced and broadcast on this topic.  Seeking to widen their audience, TWC offered these and other series as Video On Demand.  For the third year in a row, VTA has been privileged to be TWC’s choice of editorial partner on this project.

The Weather Channel project started with a phone call. They wanted to know if we could reformat their broadcast HD masters to VOD specifications faster than the current workflows and without disturbing the existing HD closed captioning.

As clients and staff of VTA know, I likes a technical challenge.  Because VTA uses video equipment from many different manufacturers, I was able to create a new workflow for TWC that maximized technical quality and accuracy while minimizing post-production time.

Live Edit is a tool that VTA has used to great effect in the past and I was certain it could save our client time and money. Rather than taking the time to capture, render and output half-hour or one-hour shows, I decided to work directly off the HDCam masters and add the Weather Channel logo in realtime using our Evertz HD logo inserter.

Because the TWC logo could not interfere with existing graphics and supers already in the program, I used VTA’s Axial 3000 edit controller to precisely time the fades or cuts of the logo to be as unobtrusive as
possible while maintaining field accuracy to the existing edits.

To capture and output back to tape a one hour show takes at least two hours. Rendering time to add an HD logo throughout the program increased total delivery time per episode way beyond that. Live Edit was the solution that kept the project on schedule and budget.

After successful use in 2007 and ’08, TWC added, in late 2009, an additional requirement for the series “Storm Stories”.  For this program, standard definition Digital BetaCam masters were generated at the same time as the HDCam VOD masters using real-time downconversion.

Live Edit came through again. By using the Multiple-Record feature of the Axial, I was able roll HD and SD tape machines, cascade the video through different mix/effects banks of the switcher and transcode HD closed captions to SD without needing an additional pass.”

VTA is not locked into a single edit system manufacturer or workflow, butcan provide the flexibility and quality that its clients have come to expect for the past 40 years.

-Bob Castro.