Washington Area's Henninger Media Services Helps Bring History into Homes Around the World

January 20, 2009, Barack Obama is inaugurated as America's first African-American President. The world watched the day's events, and ABC provided the first-ever view of what happens post-inauguration--the glitzy inaugural balls. But how do you bring the First Couple's first dance into the homes of millions of Americans? Arlington, VA and Washington, D.C.-based Henninger Media Services provided ABC and White Cherry Entertainment with the media and production solutions.

Arlington, Virginia (PRWEB) February 12, 2009 -- January 20, 2009, Barack Obama is inaugurated as America's first African-American President. The world watched the day's events, and ABC provided the first-ever view of what happens post-inauguration--the glitzy inaugural balls.

But how do you bring the First Couple's first dance into the homes of millions of Americans? Arlington, VA and Washington, D.C.-based Henninger Media Services provided ABC and White Cherry Entertainment with the media and production solutions.

Many of our staff members stayed overnight in the edit suites and offices in order to beat the January 20th traffic rush and security lockdown

Executive Producer, Ricky Kirshner and Director/Executive Producer Glenn Weiss, had just days to edit all story features and graphics packages that needed to be rolled in live for the Obama-inspired, Neighborhood Ball: An Inauguration Celebration television production.

"Video footage came to us on every format you could think of…" - Henninger DC Chief Engineer, Dave Komes.

The Neighborhood Ball dealt with nearly a dozen different formats of incoming footage. Formats included standard DVD, Digi Beta, XDCam from ABC News, and tapeless P2 cards from remote shoots.

"Henninger Media Services found time-efficient and cost-effective ways to convert all of these formats to 720p," (the broadcast standard for ABC) Jim Mullen, the Field and Post Producer from White Cherry Entertainment said.

"XDCAM standard-definition footage needed to be upconverted, the P2 material had a different frame rate, transcoded quicktimes needed to be converted, plus we had to extract video from raw MXF files. And it all needed to be output at 720p HD," said Henninger's Senior Editor on the project, Jef Huey. Both Larry Duke and Kevin Barker were integrally involved in the editing process as well.

Three edit rooms were set up at the company's Washington, D.C.-based facility. The 17th Street location was a few blocks away from the action, both on the mall during the day, and at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center at night.

Henninger staff and the visiting White Cherry Entertainment staff worked around the clock to complete all of the on-air pieces.

"Many of our staff members stayed overnight in the edit suites and offices in order to beat the January 20th traffic rush and security lockdown," said Robert Anderson, General Manager of the Washington, D.C. Henninger facility.    

Simultaneous edits and shared storage between edit rooms via the Facilis Terrablock, enabled Henninger Media Services to pull off an amazing and historic production feat. Twenty-first century media technology brings twenty-first century political change to life.

About Henninger Media Services:
Henninger Media Services (HMS) specializes in a full range of high-definition services, including original script-to-screen production, video editing, color correction, film transfer, quality control, and duplication; as well as surround sound audio, motion graphics, design, and DVD. HMS has served broadcast, corporate and government clients for over 25 years, with facilities in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia. Information on Henninger Media Services can be obtained by calling Michael Delpierre at 703-908-4021. Further information is available online at www.henninger.com.

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Designing For Video

Translating Print to Video

There's a natural expectation that graphics used in print will translate directly to broadcast television or presentation video. That's true if you know how to overcome the limitations of the video medium.

The Horror!

For artists, the first ghastly realization is the relatively horrible resolution available on standard video. Graphics intended for print typically require at least 300 dpi (dots per inch) or much higher on serious work. Television isn't measured in dpi because the display system could be virtually any size, so it doesn't apply. However, once the image is physically displayed, dpi can be measured for that particular instance. On a standard broadcast television display, you're lucky if you can achieve 50 dpi. That's right, about 50 dpi on a 19" display and even less as the display area gets larger. "Big Screen" TVs of the 1990's might achieve 20 dpi.

The reason for televisions's poor resolution is the number of available pixels in the video image. Compare this: an image of 300 dpi printed in landscape on U.S. Standard Letter paper would measure 3,450 pixels wide by 2,550 pixels tall. A standard television image is only 720 pixels wide and 486 pixels tall covering the same area which is a relatively crummy image - about 65 dpi. The compressed digital world (which is everything delivered to the consumer) has to live with only 480 vertical pixels.

Thinking in terms of consumer digital cameras which are typically 5 Megapixels (5,000,000 pixels), a standard television signal is only some fraction of that - less than 000.35 Megapixels (350,000 pixels). Sad but true.

High Definition television helps that problem a great deal. The current top end HDTV image is 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels tall. That's just north of a 2 Megapixel image but still far short of a common digital still camera. On a mid sized 42" HDTV screen (about 36" wide), that translates to - uhhh - 53 dpi. It's not much better than standard television on a 19" monitor and it seems we're right back where we started from. That's not quite true; there are more pixels in HDTV which allow the images to look great on bigger screens. Watching HDTV, suddenly you can read the street signs in the Rose Bowl parade where you couldn't before.

If you're dealing with a High Definition 720p image, that image is 0.9216 Megapixels (1280 wide by 720 tall) in the same image area - worse resolution than some cameras in cell phones but still very forgiving on larger screens.

More Horror!

The next realization is the limited color space available in video. The color gamut of video is tightly controlled due to the limitations of delivery systems. If you're used to designing with colors from Pantone charts, you can tear out the most vibrant of those from your swatch book. Dramatic colors like "Screaming Zonker Red" are outside of the range current digital systems may describe. It's possible to create a digital system to describe hugely saturated colors but the amount of data required to do that plus maintain subtle hue differences in the lower ranges would be prohibitive to record and transmit. Photoshop contains tools for use on art destined for video. You should get friendly with these tools because "legalizing" a picture for video will dumb your designs down if you press the limits.

Another rude shock is the non-square pixels of standard definition video. If you draw a circle in Photoshop, it will be an elipse on a standard definition video monitor unless you compensate for the differences. Standard Definition video has rectangular pixels that are stretched in width, so a circle in one medium is not a circle in another. Fortunately, the 1080 line and 720 line High Definition systems both have square pixels by design, so that's not an issue.

But wait, there's more. Designers can't use the whole canvas. There's a 20% bleed for titles or still graphic elements and a 10% bleed for action elements in the scene that move. Those margins are called "Title Safe" and "Action Safe" respectively. Both are caused by an old expectation that display devices are "overscanned". The need to compensate for overscanned displays is going away, but there should still be a healthy vertical and horizontal margin just for composition purposes.

If you're designing for HDTV, you may need to consider even more margin in the horizontal direction if the project will also be used in Standard Definition video. The sides of an HDTV product are simply cut off to reformat the images for SDTV, plus you need to allow for "Safe" areas on the remaining video real estate.

Designing Down

All this just scratches the surface of design limitations for video. As maddening as it is, designers need to throw away any expectation of highly detailed images, fine print elements or contrast that ranges from midnight to looking directly at the sun. That said, there are ways to achieve a perfectly viewable image on a video screen in either High Definition or Standard Definition.

Some basic rules of thumb for designing for video:
1. Save your images as 24 Bit RGB Color at 72 ppi (dpi).
2. Design your image file at 720x540 for NTSC graphics and resize down to 720x486 for final
output. (square to rectangular pixel adjustment)
3. Design your image file at 768x576 for PAL graphics and resize down to 720x576 for final
output. (square to rectangular pixel adjustment)
4. A pure white background will flicker on the television, and may cause text to flicker. Use an
light grey/off white (234,234,234) colored background.
5. Use maximum R, G, B values of 234 or less.
6. Run Photoshop's NTSC video filter on your graphic for it to bring colors back into "safe"
range.
7. Action Safe is 90% of your screen size and is considered safe for elements other than text
that still needs to be seen.
8. Title Safe is 80% of your screen size and is considered safe for all text and elements that
"must" be seen.
9. Account for the Interlaced Scanning found in NTSC and PAL television sets. To avoid
flickering, make sure all fine lines are at least 2 pixels wide and that any width is defined in
multiples of 2 pixels.
10. 24 point fonts are best for television readability. A 14 point font, bold, is the absolute
minimum size to use.
11. Anti-alias all text to avoid sharp edges.
12. Leave around a 25 pixel border from the edge of the graphic so that any element doesn't
appear exactly at the edge of the screen.
13. Look at your work on a native video monitor (in addition to the computer display) to see
how it looks on a television used in someones home. What you see on your monitor will
most likely look better then what someone will have on their home TV.

CINE, Finishing In High Def Seminar

For over 45 years, CINE has supported media talent by recognizing excellence in video and film production through semi-annual competitions.  CINE’s most prestigious award, the Eagle Award, has been received by world-renowned producers such as Steven Spielberg and Ken Burns. Aside from their competitions, CINE also holds seminars and workshops to further educate existing producers and advise current students.

 CINE will be holding a seminar in February, 2009 entitled Finishing in High Def as part of their Educational Series.  Of all the media facilities in the Washington D.C. area, CINE chose Henninger Media Services (HMS), a long-time partner of theirs, to host this seminar.  Rob Henninger (CEO and founder of HMS) has a wealth of knowledge about media production and will be instructing parts of this seminar, which will be broken down into the following three workshops.

Digital Glue: Keeping It Together is the first of the three workshops.  It will be held on Saturday, February 7 from 10am to 4pm.  The second workshop, Audio All Around will be held on Thursday, February 12, from 7pm-9:30pm and will focus on audio technology and mixing for surround sound. Picture Perfect is the last workshop of this series.  It will be held on Thursday, February 19, from 7pm-9:30pm and go over color correction, optimization, passing QC’s and compression for non-broadcast distribution.  All sessions will be held at Henninger Media Services at 2601-A Wilson Blvd. in Arlington, VA.

HMS holds Washington D.C.’s only commercially available HD Spirit Datacine+Davinci 2k.  Among several capabilities, HD Spirit allows for motion picture film to be transferred into and viewed in standard video form.

Henninger Media Services (HMS) specializes in a full range of high-definition services, including original script-to-screen production, video editing, color correction, film transfer, quality control, and duplication; as well as surround sound audio, motion graphics, design, and DVD.  HMS has served broadcast, corporate and government clients for over 25 years, with facilities in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia. Information on Henninger Media Services can be obtained by calling Michael Delpierre at 703-908-4021 or by email at mdelpierre@henninger.com. Further information is available online at www.henninger.com.