Print Page 12/5/2008

Times are tough for everyone, even the government. But as exhibitors and attendees saw this week at GV Expo, there are a wide variety of government video missions requiring highly specialized and technical tools.

From the Armed Forces to just about every executive agency and at the nation’s museums and parks, the breadth of video production might surprise folks outside Washington.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The feds have complex systems of procurement and accountability and demand top-flight results in their video projects, said exhibitors.

“Government communications are very sophisticated,” said Ted Terrenoire, producer, director and editor at Moon Bounce Media, a production company in Herndon, Va. “Government is dealing with really big-picture concepts, ideas and regulations. … For their communications needs, not just anybody can jump in.”

Telestream provides its video encoding boxes to outfits such as the Navy and the Pentagon Channel, and was showing, among other tools, its new Pipeline HD Dual, which can encode two 1080i streams in real time. Big agencies have lots of video formats and legacy material and want to get it on the Web, on cable, out to news agencies, on DVD and to their own employees for training.

“There’s a lot of video sitting on the shelf that they need to digitize,” said Rhett Mappin, Telestream Southeast/Mid-Atlantic regional manager. “[Telestream’s Pipeline encoder] is kind of like a Swiss Army knife of video formats.”

About 6,000 people attended the conference.

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein spoke at GV Expo Wednesday. Thursday, the keynoter was Elizabeth Musteen, project manager of the new Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History.

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