Government videographers and photographers alike often are called on to do great work on incredibly small budgets. But it isn't only government entities that need to keep costs down when producing content. We've all heard the "doing more with less" mantra. So where do you start?

Stephen Badger, a public affairs officer with the Dept. of Natural Resources for Maryland, knows a thing or two about creating content on a small budget as the only dedicated videographer and photographer for a massive state agency that manages multiple department units. How does he do it? Badger will share his insight, tips and techniques in the session “Production on a Government (Shoestring) Budget” at The Video Show, a two-day event in Washington, Dec. 4–5.

The Video Show caught up with Badger for just a minute ahead of the show.

The Video Show:How does a single dedicated videographer and photographer support a massive state agency that manages police, parks, forestry and other units?

Stephen Badger: In short, I do whatever is necessary to accomplish the agency's goals, but there are challenges, of course. One of my biggest hurdles is sourcing quality imagery. Over the years, the department staff has generated some solid resources—built on the backs of photo contests, historic archives, volunteers, colleagues and more.

I'm also quite grateful for the support of those not directly involved with media production. My work wouldn't be possible without collaboration from field personnel and the agency's communications team. Their assistance with access, scheduling, scripting, publishing and promotion is indispensable.

TVS:Working with a constrained budget is a daily reality for many who work in and around government media. Share a tip that might be of help, as a preview of your session.

SB: Be frugal. Buy only the tools you need for the job that's required. Prioritize versatility. A solid, mirrorless or DSLR might fall on the lower end of industry standards, but works quite well in a variety of applications.

The Video Show will feature more than 100 sessions on nine presentation stages, as well as a dedicated screening room, demo areas, streaming studio and dynamic exhibit floor. Want to hear more about this topic? Visit theVideo Show websiteto learn more and register.

At Government Video Expo 2018, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers® (SMPTE®) will be producing an intensive, one-day conference, SMPTE in D.C. 

Geared to broadcast and video professionals who want to learn about the latest advances in emerging and potentially transformative video production technologies including high dynamic range (HDR) and the transition to IP. 

Through Wednesday, November 21, we are offering a discounted registration price. Member registration, ordinarily $99, is $49. Non-member registration, usually $199, is $99. Use the code SMPTE50 when registering.

Attendees who register for the SMPTE in D.C. conference at Government Video Expo 2018 will receive a free pass to the show, which includes access to 120+ exhibits, free theater sessions and keynote presentations, the Government Learning Symposium, networking events, and more. The cost to attend the SMPTE in D.C. event is $99 for members and $199 for non-members. 

To view the SMPTE in D.C. full schedule, click here.

To register to attend, click here.

To view the full Government Video Expo Schedule, click here.

Government Video Expo is held November 28 and 29 at Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The event features 32 live free presentations and a free exhibit floor, as well as additional training opportunities. Register here to attend.

To plan your visit, you can download the show guide in advance here.

SMPTE in D.C. Schedule

9–9:30 a.m.

Open, Welcome and an Introduction to Professional Video Over IP

Video over IP networks and the internet has existed for more than two decades. Why is SMPTE developing Studio Video over IP (SVIP)— a new set of standards for video over IP? Why are they needed? What is the difference between streaming video and SVIP?

Peter Wharton, President, Happy Robotz

9:30–10:30 a.m.

High Dynamic Range: The Best TV Picture You've Ever Seen

This HDR presentation will introduce HDR and discuss HDR standards, terminology and the history of dynamic range. The advanced part of the presentation will cover HDR transfer curves and comparing HDR profiles, as well as compatibility with SDR displays and the consumer adoption of UHD HDR TVs.

Although Ultra HD and HDR are usually mentioned together, high-dynamic range is not limited to UHD. HDTV can also benefit from a dramatic improvement in picture quality. HDR offers a more realistic picture, similar to the way we see things in real life. In the future, it’s likely that multiple HDR profiles, optimized for either live TV or postproduced movies, will be utilized.

John Humphrey, Vice President Business Development, Hitachi

10:30–11 a.m.

Break

11 a.m.–12 p.m.

Building Scalable Facilities Using SMPTE 2110

The new set of SMPTE standards (ST 2110) provides a technical underpinning for building large-scale media facilities with uncompromised picture quality and low latency, with scalability to large image formats (4K, 8K and beyond) and advanced color

depths and spaces. This talk is an overview of the new standards, and also covers the practical details of implementing large-scale systems including control APIs and network topology.

John Mailhot, Systems Architect for IP Convergence, Imagine Communications

12–1 p.m.

How Smooth Are Your Packets? Implementation Realities and Best Practices of IP and PTP

This session is a tutorial on what you need to know to understand the challenges we face in the process of making the transition to IP-based transport for video, audio and data. This move toward infrastructure efficiency has brought new technical challenges requiring broadcast engineers to gain an understanding of the technology and the latest techniques needed to monitor these signals.

The development of SMPTE ST 2110 is a suite of standards that provide encapsulation of uncompressed video within IP packets and for live IP production carrying separate streams of video, audio and data packets. This new standard also allows for SMPTE ST 2022-6 that provides encapsulation of uncompressed SDI as well as ST 2059 for system timing.

This session will take a look at the basic structure of the packets for ST 2022 and ST 2110, how variable delay across the network introduces jitter at the receiver and how measurements can be made on the stream. Latency in the network can produce out-of-order packets or corruption of the data causing packets to be dropped. Therefore, it is important to monitor the stream to ensure an error-free network to ensure transmission of the high bit rate media and how these errors affect the actual video and audio signal.

For redundancy in the media network, SMPTE ST 2022-7 can be used to provide a Path One and a Path Two stream so that the downstream device can determine which path is the most appropriate to use. Measurement of the integrity of both paths is important and we will look at ways of monitoring the signal paths.

Karl Kuhn, Sr. Field Video Application Engineer, Tektronix

1–2 p.m.

Lunch

2–3 p.m.

Myths and Realities of Security of Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks

It seems that nearly every day there is another story about an IP network breach. Now "they" want to build professional media creation facilities with IP at the core? What are the risks? And, are the risks as bad as "they" say? Find out the facts about IP network security in this must-see SMPTE session.

Thomas Bause Mason, Director Standards Development, SMPTE

3–4 p.m.

The People Side: Managing Change and Skills Transition

The accelerating pace of technological change requires an increased focus on an organization's top resource — its people. This presentation will provide insights, practical approaches and tools for managing change, building and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce.

John McCoskey, Industry Executive, Eagle Hill Consulting - Technology, Media & Entertainment

You've seen him on CNN stalking around a virtual environment and interacting with graphical representations of the SCOTUS process, North Korean missiles or Royal Thai Navy SEAL divers. Tom Foreman has established much of the network's work beyond video, playing a key role in the development and use of an immersive, 3D virtual studio that takes viewers to space to study satellites, onto distant battlefields to promote understanding of dangerous conflicts and down deep into the data of presidential elections.

Foreman will be a keynote speaker at Government Video Expo 2018. He spoke with Managing Director of Content Paul McLane for Government Video.

Government Video: You've done a lot of work in broadcast news with technology you've described as "going beyond video." What exactly does that mean?

Tom Foreman: We now have tools that allow us to visualize concepts that previously were not visual. We can turn data, we can turn ideas, we can turn trends, into interactive, touchable graphics, with which we can tell a story that adds clarity to our understanding of an increasingly complex world.

Previously, there were economic trends, crime trends, security trends that were difficult to visualize. But if you can turn it into an environment that you can stand next to, it helps people, who are visual creatures, to see what we're talking about.

GV: How did you become involved with the virtual studio?

Foreman: Hurricane Katrina was the birth of a lot of this. I had a deep and long understanding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast from having worked there in traditional journalism — doing beautiful pictures, explanatory pictures and reports. And yet Katrina brought such a scope of disaster that no one picture could do it justice. Even a collection of pictures could not do it justice. You needed the giant view that we could bring through a graphic treatment. What we were using at the time was a giant wall-based projection of Google Earth, which I was controlling with a mouse in my hand, I was controlling it on set and we were flying in and out.

The real value, though, came from the combination of traditional on-the-ground reporting and photography video that supported it, then using this as a high-tech frame that let us add the meaning that said, "Okay, I just showed you a picture of a church halfway underwater. That matters because this is where that church is; and down the street is this school, and down the street is this government building, and over here is the streetcar line." It gave a context.

We did the same thing after the earthquake in Haiti. We were able to show, not only where the damage was, but by widening out and using some of these tools to show satellite images before and after, we were able to analyze road blockages and say why it was so hard for aid to get to people. The Army asked if they could get copies of our images, because they were having trouble figuring out how to get things to people, and our analysis with the satellite images worked for them.

GV: Why aren't more people doing this in such a visual world? Is it cost?

Foreman: I don't think it's cost, it's understanding. This is a very high-tech tool for a very traditional and old-fashioned process: storytelling. A lot of people mistakenly think that this is whiz-bang, it's all about amazing graphics and immersive graphics; that is not the case at all.

Almost everything we produce begins as simple paper-and-pen drawings on my desk, where our team gathers around, and we draw it; and as we draw it, we're saying, “What is the story? What is it we're trying to convey?”

I think one of the reasons people don't do it — or do it effectively — is they compartmentalize it. "Well, the graphics department will create this; and the show production team will create this; and we'll bring in a reporter at the last minute and plug them in." That absolutely does not work. You have to have the full team involved from beginning to end.

GV: Is there a risk that these tools could come to be used in place of live reporting, rather than to complement it?

Foreman: I don't think so, because everything we do is grounded in traditional journalism. Everything we do is grounded in finding actual facts. In fact, we steer away from doing it when we can get access that shows us what we want.

GV: You've used this technology for so many interesting projects. Are there two or three that particularly stand out?

Foreman: This has been tremendously helpful in giving a sense of scale, when we've dealt with natural disasters; in giving a sense of proximity, when we've dealt with war situations; and in helping us peek into places where we can't readily look.

As we've analyzed the North Korean missile and nuclear program, it's been tremendously useful to show exactly how much progress they're making — and what they still have not yet accomplished. Missiles involve almost incomprehensible distances and speed and force; this allows us to depict that.

In the search for the missing Malaysian airplane, this was an enormously useful tool. When you say to somebody "five thousand square miles of ocean," most people have no idea what that looks like. If somebody talks about something being 1,500 feet underwater, they don't really understand what that means either. We're able to depict that in ways that make sense.

GV: Look ahead five years, how is our experience of watching content going to change further?

Foreman: You see sports embracing this a little bit. Sports can do that in part because you're always talking about a very defined situation. The football field is this size, and there are two teams, and they play this long. Basketball, field hockey, arena, whatever.

We're going to see a lot more of this embraced, not just by news organizations but by anyone who's in the business of trying to tell a story. Because frankly the world we live in today is endlessly complex compared to the world we lived in 50 years ago. You can wake up in the morning and get an email from a friend in Indonesia, respond to a phone call from your office down the street, see photographs from a family member who's three time zones away, and search back 20 years for records of information that you might need that day. You are traveling time and space every minute, much more than we used to. That requires a new kind of understanding of that information.

We can't make our brains evolve that quickly, so what we have to do is have tools that allow our brains, as they are, to connect with this new reality.

GV: What about artificial intelligence, 4K, other technical areas?

Foreman: Willa Cather once wrote that art should simplify, that it's about simplifying ideas and making them understandable. All these technological things—the quality of video; the immersive nature of some of these systems—I think that's going to continue. The real secret here, for those who want to thrive in this environment, is to recognize them for just what they are: These are tools for a simple process of understanding. If you let it become about the tools, then it becomes more noise, more clutter that doesn't help you understand the world.

This world that we're going into is not for the faint of heart. There are huge challenges to making sure this technology serves us. But the rewards for doing that are absolutely immense.

Many years ago, when I was a very young person, I did a big, a big magic show with flying doves and floating ladies and fireballs and the whole thing. That has been enormously useful to me. The whole purpose of a magic show is knowing what's really going on, which can be incredibly complex. And yet remembering what the audience sees — and knowing you have to let them come along in the story, in a way that works for them — that's what we're doing here.

When I'm in the virtual environment, there is rarely a gesture or a step or a turn that is not carefully constrained by the technology that I'm surrounded by. Only if you do that properly does it appear real, in a virtual sense; and only then can the technology disappear and the understanding come through.

Key Takeaways

Who? Tom Foreman of CNN is a featured keynoter at Government Video Expo on Wednesday, Nov. 28, in the session "From the 'Situation Room' to the Thailand Caves — Today's Evolving Journalism”

Why? New technology is helping media professionals tell stories more effectively by leveraging "the one thing humans are really good at: visual interpretation."

Now What? Register now to meet and learn from CNN's Tom Foreman and other top speakers from PBS, The DC Visionaries, BundlAR, Creative Media Matters and more.

WASHINGTON —NewBay Media has releasedthe full program for the 2015 National Drone Show, a new conference and expo featuring video capture technology for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Scheduled for Dec. 2–3, 2015, in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center ,and co-located with NewBay Media’s Government Video Expo, the National Drone Show will bring together video professionals from a variety of sectors for two days of discussions and demos of the latest UAV and UAV-based video capture systems, management and delivery technologies and techniques. Stampede is the event’s charter Gold Sponsor.

The Drone Show will feature a Drone Flying Cage and a series of free sessions on the exhibit floor covering the latest drone technologies and regulatory topics. Educational sessions include “Command & Control for Drones,” “Drones for Large Sporting Event and Entertainment Event Coverage,” “Drones for Law Enforcement/Security/Public Safety,” “Drone-vertising—Using Drones to Deliver Marketing/Advertising Messages,” and “Rise of the Drones: A DMV’s Producer’s Panel for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.”

An after-hours event ib Dec. 2, hosted by the Television, Internet and Video Association of DC (TIVA-DC), will also focus on UAV/UAS production.

Instructors from Unmanned Vehicle University, the only university licensed to offer graduate degree programs in Unmanned Systems Engineering, will conduct drone-operating demonstrations in the show’s Flying Cage, allowing show attendees to experience firsthand the differing capabilities of various UAV manufacturers — such as DJI, AEE and XLY — and learn which is best suited for their enterprise’s needs and requirements.

The show is the only such event that will bring together video professionals from the Washington region’s government, military, law enforcement, enterprise, broadcast, cable, production, and post production communities. Invited exhibitors include drone manufacturers, drone accessory equipment companies, and drone software and service providers.

Registrants for the National Drone Show and Government Video Expo include tech leaders from DCTV, Discovery Communications, the U.S. Department of State, Department of Defense, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security, NASA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs & Border Patrol, the Department of Justice, Chesterfield Fire & EMS, The White House, the Transportation Security Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Army, Navy and Air Force; and local and state officials from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, Baltimore, Alexandria, Fairfax, Bowie, and Prince Georges Country, among others.

Program details are available at www.gvexpo.com/the-drone-show/#.

Event registration is at nationaldroneshow.com.