How We’re Doing GeekBrief.TV from Two Locations
I’ve said all I’m going to say about the personal part of what’s happening, but I thought it would be kind of cool to share how we’ve been producing the show from two locations.
Writing the show hasn’t changed much except that Luria writes much more than she did when she was here. It’s been interesting to see the different types of stories she chooses than me. I tend to write about gadgets. She tends to write about tech news and Web services like Google Docs. The Brief we will release today is about stuff we both wanted to cover. I wrote some of today’s show yesterday, some this morning and she wrote some to. Because of Google Docs, it’s always been easy to collaborate on a script.
After the script is done, Luria shoots it herself. She has our lights and the camera and the teleprompter. She shoots in front of a green screen in one take with one fixed shot and then she transfers one HUGE file to me, via FTP. The uncompressed footage is typically 4-8GB per episode. Sometimes it takes five hours, and really, that’s the biggest downside of the setup.
I have all the editing gear. As I download the file, I do preproduction graphics that will be used in the episode. When I have the file, I drag it into Final Cut Pro. It usually takes less than an hour to edit. Occasionally, when there are unusual graphics or video features in a particular episode, it takes longer.
I compress the show into three formats using Sorenson Squeeze. It does an excellent job, but it’s slow (and expensive). Then I upload the four formats to Mevio and post to the GeekBrief.TV Web site.
Except for news that needs to be more timely the workflow has worked well. It’s always fun to trouble shoot our way through new challenges.
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It stinks that you two have to go through this but we’re all happy that you’ve continued on with GBTV so professionally. You are both very talented and do a great job.
I’m glad to see that, despite the obvious, you’ve managed a “workaround”. I hope that however your situation resolves itself there will be viable solutions like this for you both. You’ve provided all of us with such a wonderful thing through GeekBrief that we can’t ever say thanks enough.
Isn’t it better to remotely login on a local computer in her studio and do all the editing remotely? It will shave off 5 hours…
Do you need to work with uncompressed footage and therefore transfer 4-8Gb a day?
Couldn’t she compress it before you edit it?
May be she could save it in a USB and send it with DHL
Oh … now you guys have me thinking different. I’ll look into what’s possible with remote access. My initial concerns about issues with resolution. How well would I be able to see it? Also response time seems like it would lag. The delay is time, but it’s time I use working on future projects. Working remotely on a slower system might save upload/download time, but my guess is that it would take up more of my actual time.
I can’t think of a way that she could compress it before I edit and maintain quality good enough for HD on TiVo.
I don’t know the distance between the 2 location, but maybe get a hard drive shipped by courier would be faster. Sometime sneakernet is faster at least in the terabyte.
Neal,
What about just using a regular data compression program like 7zip or WinZip (or the Mac equivalent) to compress the file before transmitting? If the raw video data is uncompressed, it might undergo a standard compress quite well with no impact on the quality of the video.
Yes, it would take time on each end to do the compression and decompression; but if the time to to do that takes less time than what would be saved during the FTP process, that would be a win.
Forget shipping hard drives, etc.
FTP works okay, but http is faster. I’d suggest setting up (on either end, preferably the one with slower upload) a remote storage device. AKA PogoPlug?
It could be at either person’s location, easy to remove (from PP) and mount to local computer, edit, and send off to Adam’s crew in SF.
We’re going to try the PogoPlug option, if Luria is okay with that.
I don’t know how far away you are but it could be faster even than a courier to send it using a 16GB USB stick and a pigeon…
Analog solution?
Geez that’s alot of work for 3:50 mins of video.
I agree with CGHERA could you put everything onto a portable device and just give it to each other? Its not like you two aren’t speaking and don’t want to see each other.
PS How are the kids (dogs) handling the transition, I worry about them they are not spring pups, you know.
Dogs are good. It’s been three months. They love when they get to see her.
Dallas is BIG and spread out, y’all!
That’s very strange if you think about it: I live in Brazil and you guys in the USA, nevertheless I see you every couple of days or so… Subconsciously GeekBrief, you and Luria are already part of my life! When I read about the divorce yesterday on twitter I got very sad, as if I really knew you personally. Minutes after that I went to bed and I dreamed all night about you guys… Well, I do wish the best for both and that you keep the friendship. I was married for 4 years and then i got divorced, it has been 20 years and my ex is now one of my best, dearest friends. I do hope things get on the tracks no matter in which way, as long as you both can find happiness in the end.
The file transfer is huge and I see now why you guys post so late. Great overview of how GeekBrief is done. But nothing about the Hobbit hole?
Hey Neal, aside from ConchTees, I am director of IT at a post production company with locations in LA and Manhattan. My job is to deal with situations like this every day. I have a few recommendations that would make your life much easier if you are willing to spend a little cash on some better items than an FTP transfer and Sorenson Squeeze. You need to have Luria only encode her video at your highest common denominator file spec. No need to waist the time on uncompressed Quicktime 1920x1080i if you never need to go above a Prores or Prores HQ bit rate at 1280x720p, although since ProRes produces a very large file for web use, its probably safe to assume you never need to render higher than DVCPRoHD for your HD files? Also, ever thought about closed captioning? Since you already have your scripts it is easy to caption your files without going to tape first.
Let’s chat. Shoot me an email!
I agree with Alan. Have Cali compress to the biggest format (TiVo?), and, if her time allows, edit anything obvious out.
Also, she should be uploading directly to your computer, or at least one that’s local to you. Either set up FTP access on the Mac you edit with, or set up a cheap Linux box with SFTP/FTP/SSH access and a gigabit ethernet cable to drag the file off of and onto your Mac when it’s done uploading.
Another user suggested 7zip compression. Depending on file size, I’m not sure it would be worth your time to decode it, especially if Cali starts uploading to you directly.
Hope that makes things go a little smoother for you!
I don’t think she’s willing to put in time to compress the file first.
Can you not write an automator script to compress the file and then upload it? At least that would be a single action. Or, you remote in, compress the file and transfer it via ftp. The guy is right. RAW data usually compresses down very well.