These days, up-to-the-minute TV reporting is subject to the changing conditions of production. Purple.Field, the new mobile video editing system from FAST, offers new opportunities to creative freelancers involved in today’s television journalism. Romain Geib met a versatile, multi-faceted TV producer who shoots and edits segments for Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Television) magazine programs.

He refers to himself as the type of person who wants to do it himself, he doesn’t just mean pictures as the basis for the visual medium of television, but also the stories that are told with these pictures. Since the end of the 80s, Matthias von Mutius has been on the road with his camera as an author of magazine contributions, determined to tell stories with pictures. Now, modern recording and editing technology has given him the independence he sought.

Von Mutius does more than shoot. He writes and edits his television pieces himself on Silver, a nonlinear editing system from FAST. Most recently, he's been able to produce segments in the field using a Purple.Field laptop whose software version 2.55 supports native DV, DVCAM and DVCPRO. The FASTstudio editing software is identical even if he switches from Silver to Purple.Field. But this dedicated freelancer is not entirely alone on the road. His assistant is an indispensable part of the team as the second in command for providing high quality sound and lighting. For over six years he has regularly produced contributions for the Abendschau of Bayerischer Rundfunk. As he puts it, he's busy putting together “between two and three short pieces every week, usually reports that appeal to me from the filming side.” His current focus is on his homeland of Bavaria. He has an excellent reputation at his managing editorial desk at BR as a highly appreciated “permanently employed freelancer” because his personal signature style as an producer is recognizable in the two- to three-minute pieces and highly appreciated.

Von Mutius shoots in DVCAM format using a Sony DSR-300. He's equipped his camera with a RF unit that sends the sound wirelessly to the sound assistant via a radio transmitter, providing reliable monitoring capabilities. This setup lets him shoot easily in any situation. His subjects are extremely varied and often have a special character. For example, he accompanied a Bavarian Maibaum (maypole) which was felled in Bavaria, cut up and transported to a French sister city. At the end of the piece, the premiere of what was probably the first maypole ever erected on French soil, he then attended a proper Bavarian beerfest which included a unique mixture of French folklore and German beer-bash partying.

Mobile Deployment
Especially for fast, up-to-the-minute field production, the mobility of this enthusiastic television producer is at its best. In urgent situations, such as a recent Hanover Fair report commissioned by Bayerischer Rundfunk or at this year’s CeBIT, von Mutius is completely self-sufficient with his Purple.Field laptop video editing system. He can edit and complete the material on location, e.g. in a rented mobile home. Purple.Field works natively in DVCAM format and comes standard with the XL software option for enhanced editing and multi-layering. And, because he likes to work with digital image effects such as 3D DVEs on the road, he has also equipped his Purple.Field with the FX option.

A Vaio F808 laptop with 256 MB of RAM including an external 60 GB FireWire hard drive makes for a powerful computer platform. In the end, the completed report is played out on Betacam and then only has to be delivered to the BR editorial desk as quickly as possible as in the case above from the NDR Studio in Hanover via the ARD cable network to Munich. For on-the-road jobs of this kind, von Mutius carries all the equipment a modern TV reporter needs in a flight case available at any time in his Audi station wagon. To be compatible with the standard technology of ARD broadcasting stations, his equipment includes a Betacam SP recorder. The fact that he stopped by the wayside on his way to Hanover to quickly shoot a piece in the Upper Palatinate that he then proceeded to edit on Purple.Field during the remaining drive north for yet another piece can be considered a small record in today’s current television journalism. Thanks to his multi-functional abilities in shooting, editing, and realization, he cartainly can't complain about a lack of assignments. He thus takes well-deserved breaks in between jobs.

The completion of assignments -- from acquisition to final production -- is always a matter of the right timing. In his own studio, Matthias von Mutius works on a Silver system (512 MB RAM, Dual PIII, Sony DSR 80 player, Sony BVW-75 recorder), primarily in uncompressed quality, avoiding storage problems because of the short length (20-30 minutes of taped material for the three-minute magazine pieces) of his finished segments. With 6 to 9 GB, the existing storage space is usually enough for approximately one hour of uncompressed material.

Uncompressed to the ready-for-broadcast master
As a TV professional, von Mutius had his nonlinear beginnings years ago with FAST’s Video Machine. He now prefers the Silver MPEG-2 editing system, for he can work entirely with uncompressed material so as to have more “reserves” during rendering and to avoid compression difficulty between DVCAM and MPEG2/50 Mbps. Unlike DV, DVCAM and DVCPRO native purple, Silver.DV transcodes the signal to MPEG-2 and can then be scaled.

In some cases, when he has large amount of footage, he digitizes it first from Sony DVCAM player DSR 85 (in MPEG-2) to then redigitize the final edited version uncompressed using the “batch digitize” function and then output the completed TV piece via the SDI interface from Silver to Beta-SP. When onlining the completed TV piece, the processing power of the InTime accelerator board from FAST provides color correction features for fast rendering and numerous other effects. He then takes this master tape to the broadcast station in which content and voice text are approved by the editorial desk.

Multi-functional vantage point
It is the versatility of his job that appeals to von Mutius most. Although originally involved in journalism, the dedicated reporter has gradually elevated his change in perspective to his work ethic: “Forget what you want to capture as a cameraman. Now take a look as an editor,” is his new cognitive exercise of which he reminds himself again and again. He does this to distance himself from the usual way of looking at things, and takes a self-critical look at how he portrays his subject. Being open to new things and the conscious disregard of boring routines are other aspects he hopes to pass on to colleagues at the Schule für Rundfunktechnik SRT (School for Broadcasting Technology) in Nuremberg.

Creative leeway
In the end, according to von Mutius, he also benefits from his way of working and ability to perform as a multi-functional reporter as much as his commissioning broadcast station. The personal melding of reporter, cameraman, and editor is simply more practical and economical for the majority of jobs. Short pieces can be produced with reasonable time and effort, and can be done more cost-effectively. Smaller teams mean savings in cost of up to one third. He considers the DVCAM format and the camera technology from Sony as the most professional format for current and future TV reporting. This technology is increasingly popular, especially in production at the rapidly expanding regional television stations.

Transfer via satellite uplink
With mobile video editing on notebooks, e.g. the professional Purple.Field system from FAST Multimedia, a brand new age begins for TV reporting. The ability of freelance TV producer/editors like Matthias von Mutius to “run” completed material via mobile satellite video transmission technology from location to the TV station is no longer a vision of the future.

At this year’s NAB, FAST Multimedia presented its new FASTtransmit system with satellite uplink. Contributions edited with Purple.Field can be converted into files for data transfer via satellite (Inmarsat). In addition to the Purple.Field notebook, the turnkey system consists of a collapsible satellite uplink unit, an ISDN modem, as well as the add-on software VoyagerLite from TransTel which converts the edited films into transmittable files. The prerequisite for all on the receiver side: the TV broadcast station must have the appropriate converter unit to “unpack” the delivered files. In addition to transmission via uplink, FASTtransmit also supports data transmission via modem or ISDN.