August 2014
A “routine” project for a Chicago law firm turns into a technical challenge.
08/12/14 11:38 Filed in: On Location Production | Multi-Camera Production | On Location Audio Recording | MultiMedia Production
When the law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman (www.kattenlaw.com) asked us to record a live multi-media presentation by UCLA Law Professor Jerry Kang (www.law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/jerry-kang) at their Chicago offices, it seemed almost too simple. Film the professor speaking, get a copy of his PowerPoint, and then edit in the slides later. The finished video was to be distributed to Katten’s 13 offices in the U.S., London and Shanghai.
But then we learned that Professor Kang’s support visuals were not PowerPoint, Keynote, or anything else we had ever heard of. He was using a touch screen, interactive program called “Mind Manager” which allowed Kang to move through the visuals and link to a variety of different media more or less at will. There was no way we could re-create this presentation in post.
We needed to find a way to capture the Mind Manager visuals live in high definition during the presentation. After assessing Katten’s in-house AV system, we realized we would need to tap into their 5 BNC / VGA system. This would require scaling the image to 1920X1080 using our TV One Universal Scaler (http://www.tvone.com/video-scalers), convert the signal to HDSDI with a Black Magic Design Terranex 2D Broadcast Converter (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/teranex), and then send it to an AJA KiPro hard disk video recorder (https://www.aja.com/en/products/ki-pro).
We ended up hauling in a little more gear than the IT people at Katten had probably expected, but everything worked and the finished video looked great.
But then we learned that Professor Kang’s support visuals were not PowerPoint, Keynote, or anything else we had ever heard of. He was using a touch screen, interactive program called “Mind Manager” which allowed Kang to move through the visuals and link to a variety of different media more or less at will. There was no way we could re-create this presentation in post.
We needed to find a way to capture the Mind Manager visuals live in high definition during the presentation. After assessing Katten’s in-house AV system, we realized we would need to tap into their 5 BNC / VGA system. This would require scaling the image to 1920X1080 using our TV One Universal Scaler (http://www.tvone.com/video-scalers), convert the signal to HDSDI with a Black Magic Design Terranex 2D Broadcast Converter (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/teranex), and then send it to an AJA KiPro hard disk video recorder (https://www.aja.com/en/products/ki-pro).
We ended up hauling in a little more gear than the IT people at Katten had probably expected, but everything worked and the finished video looked great.