Off the Line

 Web Expanded

Photo Gallery

Kevin Tierney and his second cameramen for KTI Video use two Panasonic AJ-HPX500s recording to four 16GB P2 cards each to capture on-the-water HD footage for George Poveromo''s World of Saltwater Fishing.

A typical working day for Kevin Tierney involves standing around on a boat and watching guys fish. Of course, he's watching extremely closely — via the viewfinder of a Panasonic AG-HPX500, ready to press record if the professional angler he's watching gets a bite. (The 5-second prerecord cache on the camcorder certainly comes in handy.)

Later, he'll go back to his hotel room and perform mundane, but crucial, asset-management duties involving a P2 Store, PC card slots, external hard drives, and checkboxes on Excel spreadsheets. For someone whose career in professional video started more than two decades ago, these minor rote obligations pale in comparison to the logistical challenges of yesteryear.

Tierney had always wanted to be both an editor and a cameraman. During his first days in professional video, in the '80s at Media Productions in Pompano Beach, Fla., that ambition was rarely realized. Editors worked with millions of dollars worth of specialized gear, so they were kept inside the facility in order to maximize their billing potential.

“They didn't want you to go out and play in the field for the day,” Tierney says. So in 1985, he founded his own company, KTI Video, based in Hollywood, Fla. The business was based around an Ikegami ITC-730 camcorder and a 1/4in. tape deck, and it allowed him to both shoot and edit video.

Early on, Tierney's jobs involved “anything and everything,” as he describes it — mainly local commercial work and corporate jobs. Ryder Transportation became a big corporate client of KTI Video, flying Tierney and partners around the country to produce sales, training, and corporate identity video for internal use.

Even after he had founded KTI, Tierney still worked inhouse at Media Productions as a freelance editor. In the late '80s, an angler named Mark Sosin approached Tierney about helping him self-produce a TV show for ESPN. The proposal sounded like a natural career move for Tierney. “I wouldn't live in Florida if I didn't like to dive and fish and play in the ocean,” he says.

A couple of years later, this idea came to fruition. Tierney helped Sosin put together a tape-based editing facility in Sosin's house in Boca Raton, Fla. The suite was based around a Sony edit controller, an Echolab switcher, an Abekas A51 DVE, and three Sony decks — BVW-60, BVW-65, and BVW-75 — for A/B-roll editing.

Always somewhat into computers — he had taken to Macs early on — Tierney soon realized he could put together his own nonlinear editing system. In 1994, he purchased a Media 100 system (which he ran on his Macintosh Quadra 840AV), putting him at the very forefront of the desktop-editing revolution. “That was my dream system,” he says. “With tape-based editing, ‘change' was always an unwelcome word from a client.”

Since then, Tierney has produced other fishing shows, and he has moved on to Apple Final Cut Pro editing. KTI still provides production and post-production services for a wide variety of projects, including corporate videos and local commercials (especially those that involve underwater shooting). But during this decade, Tierney has had one main client: professional angler George Poveromo, host of George Poveromo's World of Saltwater Fishing — which kicked off its eighth season on ESPN2 last month.

Rarely is any piece of gear purchased solely because of its technological merits. There are almost always other considerations — such as price, compatibility with a facility's other components, and client demands. As the outlet for its primary client's work, ESPN has had a heavy influence over the types of cameras KTI Video has purchased, as well as the way Tierney outputs Poveromo's show from his NLE.

Tierney says that his choice to switch to Final Cut Pro with an AJA Io box in 2003 was serendipitous; ESPN would soon issue a dictate that all submitted programs needed four channels of audio laid to the tape. With the Media 100 system, Tierney would have had to perform multiple passes in order to lay out the extra two channels of audio. The Io box supported output of four channels of audio.

A recent technological edict from ESPN caught Tierney just as he was trying to decide on an HD camcorder to replace his Sony DSR-500. In the months leading up to NAB last year, Tierney and other producers had been asking the network for guidance as they were attempting to upgrade their cameras to meet ESPN's HD standards. Just before NAB, on a conference call between ESPN and various packagers of outdoor programs, the network announced the requirement that shows be shot with two HD cameras with 2/3in. chips. “When they snap their fingers, you have to move,” Tierney says.

KTI Video was looking to purchase two cameras, and naturally, Tierney wanted to keep costs down. He had been looking at Sony XDCAM HD models — he liked the affordability of the nonlinear disc media and the fact that they accept high-quality lenses — but these were suddenly out of the running because of their 1/2in. chips. The Panasonic AJ-HDX900, a 2/3in. camera that records to P2 media, was next on the list, but it cost a bit more than Tierney wanted to spend (it's listed at $26,500).

Fortunately, before NAB 2007, Panasonic announced the AG-HPX500, a 2/3in. model that also shoots to P2 cards but that costs significantly less, starting at $14,000 list. This meant that KTI could purchase two HPX500s as soon as they became available in May, and they'd need to rent HDX900s only for the first two episodes of the current season of Saltwater Fishing.

KTI actually does shoot some small-format HD footage for every episode of Saltwater Fishing — usually an HDV clip from a Sony HVR-Z1U or HVR-A1U sealed in underwater housing. These cut together with the DVCPRO HD material quite well, according to Tierney, who says that for these shots, even the single-CMOS A1U generally produces sufficient images. “Underwater, you've got fish, and you've got blue,” he says, adding that ESPN understands that a certain percentage of clips — especially underwater and other hard-to-achieve shots — will be shot with smaller camcorders. (Tierney says that using Final Cut Studio 2, he can drop clips of both types into the timeline and experience no lag in performance, rendering only upon final output.)

The bulk of the show is shot on shoulder-mounted, 2/3in. HPX500 cameras. “I really didn't have much time to play with these cameras before getting thrown into the fire with a trip out to the Bahamas with it,” Tierney says. Luckily, the camera provided what KTI needed overall — particularly, after some necessary logistical planning and discipline, the solid-state recording workflow.

Kevin Tierney and his team use a 60GB P2 Store to offload three of their eight 16GB Panasonic P2 cards while in the field. Tierney then plugs the P2 Store into his Mac PowerBook via USB, and then he oflloads the footage into an off-brand disk drive with two removable sleds that are mirrored in a RAID 1 configuration. He stresses the importance of being organized and double-checking everything, suggesting that those in a similar situation keep track of all that footage with a worksheet.

To shoot Poveromo's show and capture the angling action, Kevin Tierney travels with a second cameraman — usually picked from among a usual stable — to whichever locale the host has chosen for the episode that's under production. That might be the Bahamas, Alaska, Long Island Sound, or Brazil. The concept of the show is to fish in saltwater situations that a serious fisherman might actually attempt, typically from a 25ft. center-console boat. (The Brazil trip this year was this season's “aspirational” trip, which involved much larger boats.)

Like a professional angler, Tierney and his partner need to be ready to make a move as soon as there's a strike. The prerecord cache that's found on the HPX500 and many other modern camcorders certainly helps matters: The cameramen can keep their cameras paused, the 17X Fujinon lenses trained on the fishing lines, and commit to recording the preceding 5 seconds to the P2 card when there's a nibble.

With four 16GB P2 cards in each of the two camcorders recording 720p60 video, Tierney says he currently has a capacity of 140 minutes per day. Additionally, KTI brings a 60GB Panasonic P2 Store along to expeditions, allowing the cameramen to clear off three of the eight cards once in the field.

Having tested it in several sink-or-swim situations far from dry land, Tierney says he's happy with the overall performance of the HPX500. Shooting just this past season, he can compare the 500 to the more expensive HDX900 models that served the team for the first two episodes. Tierney says the 500's viewfinder is the main disadvantage vs. the 900: It's standard-def on the less expensive camera, and he found himself using the focus-assist function to compensate somewhat for the lack of resolution on the 500's standard LCD. Other than that, Tierney says that although the more expensive HDX900 seems to have a slight edge, image quality between the two models is quite comparable.

The HPX500's menu-driven selections, such as gamma, work well for KTI Video's two-man crew. If Tierney decides to change camera settings on one of the units, he can pull out its SD card and slip it into the second camera's slot in order to update its settings.

Tierney uses Sony 2-channel wireless UHF receivers on both cameras, which each capture two channels from the mics on the boat. This redundancy helps protect the audio from receiver hits. (Tierney puts heavy foam windscreens on lavaliers, which do the job; Tierney says that if the wind is strong enough to affect the audio, it's usually too windy to fish.) The 500 has four XLR inputs, so KTI can record primary stereo audio and a third channel from the camera's shotgun mic or a location besides that of the host and guest — say, from the boat captain up in the tower — to either a single camera or both, depending on the location's needs. Having four channels on one camera's P2 cards keeps the audio assets unified, making editing easier.

So far, as an independent producer, Tierney's adoption of P2 hasn't generated enthusiasm from potential clients — understandably, they're simply not that interested in workflow. It hasn't exactly been a hindrance, however — even if he's delivering material he's shot to a client (and not editing it himself). “If you have a minute to sit down and explain to somebody what the workflow is,” Tierney says, “and you say, ‘Well, I can hand you a hard drive to go home with, and all you have to do is copy it in and start working,' it starts sounding better than, ‘Well, I can't give you a tape.'”

Without the handy physical backup that tapes represent, Tierney says he has become extremely protective of his data since adopting the solid-state cameras. Back in his hotel room after a day on the water, he practices a routine that reflects the justified paranoia of someone who has experienced a catastrophic data crash (which Tierney has, when he switched from Media 100 to Final Cut Pro).

Tierney plugs his P2 Store into his Mac PowerBook via USB, and any extra P2 cards directly into the older laptop's larger PC card slot that accommodates P2 media directly. He then offloads all this footage to an off-brand disk drive with two removable sleds that are mirrored (in a RAID 1 configuration). Then he goes through the Panasonic software to check visually that everything he knows he shot is really on the drive. “It helps to make a worksheet for yourself,” Tierney says, “to know what cards came off of where. ‘Camera 1 dumped to P2 Store at this time.' Have little checkboxes.”

On the plane, he carries one of the mirrored hard-drive sleds with his personal luggage in the cabin and stashes the other in a checked bag. At home, he transfers all his new clips to his 4.5TB Apple Xserve RAID (configured as RAID 5), which Tierney thinks should be bulletproof, because it rebuilds itself. Still, he describes himself as “leery,” so Tierney keeps a copy of everything on various 1TB desktop drives around the office. If that's not enough, he's looking into an LTO tape-drive system from Quantum as a final resting place for his high-definition video assets.

Cutting together a show means working with Poveromo in person, over the phone, and over the Web. Tierney will do a first cut of an episode, call Poveromo for advice, and post files to a NAS drive with a static IP address so that the angler can enter a password to access it and view clips. Typically once for each episode, the host will make the 45-minute drive to Tierney's studio to perform voiceovers and consult in tweaking.

KTI is currently using Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 to edit the P2 footage, HDV secondary and underwater footage, and the occasional anamorphic DVCAM clip from a previous season. Tierney says that depending on the level of audio sweetening that's needed, he either edits audio in Final Cut Pro or opens up Apple Soundtrack Pro for finer control. For titling, KTI incorporates a TGA that ESPN generates from a Chyron Duet. ESPN has a Duet graphics package for producers of all shows to use in order to ensure a uniform look. Tierney built the open to Saltwater Fishing in Apple Motion and Adobe After Effects from footage from the show. All told, KTI produces graphics for the open, bumpers, and some of the technical fishing information that's shown during the program. The final master is completed in Final Cut Pro and sent to KTI's Panasonic AJ-HD1400 VTR for the creation of a D-5 tape, and then that master is sent out for closed captioning.

In the end, the non-technical Poveromo's conception of Tierney's production process might be the ultimate confirmation that his workflow is truly nonlinear — both on the shooting and editing ends. The angler, seeing an opportunity out on the water to bolster an episode with some additional colorful material, might tell Tierney (as the shooter/editor relays it), “Shoot some more of that. Just throw it in the blender with the other stuff. It'll look good!”

Kevin Tierney may be shooting and editing using nonlinear methods, but to deliver an episode of George Poveromo's World of Saltwater Fishing, he has to send five tapes to ESPN in Bristol, Conn.

1. Closed-captioned D5 master (HD primary)
2. Closed-captioned D5 clone (HD backup)
3. Closed-captioned Digital Beta master (SD primary)
4. Closed-captioned Digital Beta clone (SD backup)
5. Digital Beta clean copy (minus graphics, scorebug, and billboards, with clean billboard bed).

To prepare its HD programming for the Web, ESPN converts high-def MPEG-2 files hosted within its server to more web-friendly, DVD-quality files, which are then encoded to Flash using Grass Valley ProCoder running on Canopus NX cards. The Flash files are then sent to ESPN's hosting vendor, and an XML feed is sent through to ESPN's data center in Seattle. The content can then finally be accessed and integrated into the ESPN website.

These final-output Flash clips typically have a resolution of 320×240, a frame rate of 29.97fps, and a bit rate of approximately 600kbps. Audio is mixed mono at 48kHz.

To comment on this article or share your own nonlinear workflow story, email the

Digital Content Producer
editorial staff at
feedback@digitalcontentproducer.com.