In Broadcast - September 2013 - 36

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 23 - SEPTEMBER 2013

N E W S

InTECH

AJA Powers Live AV For Capitol Region
Education Council Safety Conference
In May, close to 1,000 local state officials, school staff, law enforcement, safety personnel
and business managers converged at the Connecticut Convention Center to participate
in “School Safety: It’s Everybody’s Business”…

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36

eld by the Capitol Region
Education Council (CREC),
the full-day conference brought
community inﬂuencers together
to address several challenges that
schools face in ensuring the safety
of students and staff. Highlights
included a ﬁve-hour multimedia
presentation from Safe Havens
International Executive Director
Michael Dorn, as well as a few words
from guest speakers Connecticut
Governor Dannel P Malloy, Hartford
Mayor Pedro Segarra, State
Police Spokesperson Lieutenant
J Paul Vance and Newtown First
Selectman E Patricia Llodra.
To keep audiences engaged
throughout the entire conference,
CREC brought Freelance Producer
Matt Bradbury on board to deliver
high quality AV production. The
AV design would require several
tools that could feed content from
Dorn’s laptop in 1080 HD to two
screens on stage, and also capture
and distribute live footage of his
presentation as he moved through
the audience to those screens.
Knowing that he’d need a strong
team to facilitate such large-scale
AV, Bradbury called upon his good
friend and Independent Producer
Keith Larsen for assistance, in
addition to other local freelancers.
“We only had a short time to go over
technical details and ﬁgure out the
most cost-effective technology for
the event. AJA gear quickly became
the concrete holding our brick wall
together,” Bradbury explained. “The
ease of use and reliability of the gear
were huge factors in the decision.
We knew our volunteers would be
able to jump on the AJA equipment
and just run it. We also knew we
could depend on it; it wouldn’t

overheat or flake out.”
Having used AJA gear in the past
for other CREC events, as well as
in other freelance productions,
Bradbury tapped an AJA Ki Pro
digital video recorder to serve as
the master recording deck to feed all
audio and video out to the audience.
“When approached by CREC with
the project, I immediately thought
– let’s use the Ki Pro and build the
rest of our workﬂow around it. It
would have been a huge challenge
to keep the entire show in 1080 HD
without it,” he shared.
The workflow centred around
gear that included two AJA HA5
HDMI to SDI Mini-Converters, an
AJA ROI DVI to SDI Mini-Converter,
the AJA Ki Pro, two Canon XF300
camcorders with HDMI outputs, a
Panasonic AG-HPX500 camcorder
with an HD-SDI output, a laptop with
a VGA output as well as a second
Mac laptop with DVI-D, a Panasonic
AV-HS400A Compact Live MultiFormat SD/HD-SDI Switcher and
two large projection screens on
either side of the stage.
Bradbury shared: “We had quite
a collection of devices – each with
its own format and connector
requirement. Figuring out how to
get all of the tools to communicate
was essential to the event’s
success, which is where AJA’s
Mini-Converters really came in and
saved the day.”
Connecting two AJA HA5 MiniConverters to the Canon camcorders,
Bradbury and Larsen were able to
convert the HDMI feeds to HD-SDI,
which were then routed through the
HD switcher into the Ki Pro and then
out of the Ki Pro to produce a live
HD feed of Dorn’s presentation on
the two screens. AJA’s ROI MiniConverter was
leveraged to
bring the loops
and logos from
a Mac Laptop
through DVI-D
to SDI into
the switcher
and
onto
the screens,
while the VGA
laptop signal
was converted
through a DVI
add-on-board
to
deliver
The CREC School Safety Conference was held at the
Dorn’s laptop
Connecticut Convention Center

CREC Freelance Producer Matt Bradbury pictured with State Police
Spokesperson Lieutenant J Paul Vance

content through the switcher
to each screen.
Bradbury and Larsen arrived on
site one day prior to the conference
to ensure everything was set up and
running properly, and in three hours,
they were ready to roll. “I’ve done a
lot of live staging events that have
required hours and hours of setup,
but with the AJA gear, it was simple,”
noted Larsen. “We had the chain all
set up and once the cameras arrived,
we literally plugged the HDMI cable
into one side and the HD-SDI cable

AJA’s live AV set up for the CREC
Conference

into the other, and it just worked.”
Leveraging AJA DataCalc, a free
iOS app available from the iTunes
store, on their iPhones, the team
was also able to calculate how much
storage they needed for the event in
advance. Larsen added, “It’s a nice
little freebie to have in your back
pocket, because you can make the
appropriate format decisions ahead
of time. Knowing that we were
covered from the get-go calmed
us down on the day of the event.”
As CREC continues to promote
school safety, the organisation is

collaborating further with Bradbury
to develop video content for its
YouTube page, as well as for a
broadcast documentary concept.
Using a Sony FS700 Super-35mm
sensor digital camera connected
to an AJA Ki Pro Quad via an HDSDI port, Bradbury bypassed the
FS700’s internal codec to capture
and record several on-camera HD
interviews with VIP guests in ProRes
444 1080/24P to Solid State Drives
(SSD) throughout the event.
The space where the interviews
were held was inundated with
light from surrounding windows,
and several dignitaries arrived
early to record their interviews
before the team had even ﬁnished
setup – providing atypical shooting
conditions. However, the Ki Pro
Quad allowed Bradbury to add a Log
RGB LUT to the recorded footage
to facilitate a unique, cinematic
aesthetic with increased dynamic
range that would be essential to
the team in the post workflow,
which had yet to be determined
at that time.
“In a rush to complete interviews
on the spot, our camera wasn’t
properly balanced nor was our
lighting set up right for all of the
interviews,” he shared. “With Ki
Pro Quad, we could apply a Log
RGB LUT to the recorded footage,
which gave us a dynamic range for
colour work in post. In the end, we
were able to create more visually
appealing interviews because of the
Ki Pro Quad.”

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