Preparing for the Dual Feed

For those who do not know me, I am a TD and I have been cutting dual feeds here and there since the practice was started last year. We all know that there are a few concessions that must be made when producing a show as a dual but rest assured that with proper preparation, a dual can be done to some decent standards. I know that there are those who will argue against this but this past week I did three duals with Jim Armintrout and the Brewers that would have fooled virtually everybody at home including some in the television broadcast business. I think I can say that we even had some fun doing it.

Let me state from the start that a "high quality" dual is currently an exception to the rule but with a little cooperation and preparation from the production staff and others, it may become the standard. "Preparedness" is the key! Until you've done a dual feed you might not realize that small problems can snowball into big ones, culminating into challenges of epic proportions as the air time approaches. Of course that's a worse case scenario but I've seen it several times. Know that every ounce of prevention not only prevents a pound of pain later in the day, it is a step toward the production of a smooth dual feed.

If I'm making a dual feed sound like something different than a usual production, that's intentional. It is. But like anything else it just takes a bit of mastery and this will come. Until then, I see three issues that are making duals complicated:

  1. Inexperience of the TD - Over time I see this becoming a non-issue however, one can wind up with a TD who, while not bad at all, is not experienced at setting up a dual feed. Again, over time I expect this issue to be resolved as more TDs are introduced to the duals through both training and trial.
  2. Difficulties configuring the truck in a timely manner - This is also being solved with more experience by the engineers, some "regularizing" of how things are set up and with better "fact sheets" being submitted.
  3. Preparedness of the production staff on the dual feed - Because the demands of a dual feed are more stringent, being prepared and communicative is tremendously helpful!
This third point is the area that I wish to address as it will yield the most benefit at this time. No producer likes to be told how to do his job but every one of them likes to have a smoother production. By observing a few disciplines, we can go a long way toward acheiving easy dual feeds.

To start, it is crucial to note that setup of a dual is challenging and many operations will take longer than expected. Although the switcher setup on the dual panel is not overly complicated, it is tedious and time consuming to do for several reasons:

  1. The dual feed panels lack many convenient buttons for simple tasks. This means that the same operations must be done by wading through different menus instead but realize that this takes much more time. Setting up a simple wipe is not nearly as easy and some things (such as setting a key mask on the Kalypso) are not possible.
  2. As only one M/E is available, it is not feasible to do any sort of production while other portions of the show are being set up. This basically means that the TD will get very little done once production starts. On a full switcher, TDs will get away with setting up portions while other parts are used for something else (marrying fonts and backgrounds, faxing, etc). This is not feasible on a dual panel. It is therefore critical that delays in setup are minized.
  3. With only one M/E, strategies for doing things like replays are different. This does not affect you but CAN cost the TD a lot of time to debug problems.
Speaking as a TD, here is a list of the things that the production team can do that would greatly assist the setup of a dual feed:
  1. Please, please, PLEASE have a replay animation built to tape which can be loaded into a Fast Forward (better yet, also travel your own Fast Forward disk drive with the tape just as back-up). This saves a great deal of time because your replay must come as an animation from the Fast Forward as no DVE is available. If this animation is not provided then one must be created with the assistance of the Primary show and this is often difficult to coordinate in the setup/production schedule or two shows and can cost 10 to 30 minutes for both shows (if it works the first time). I'll outline procedures later for your home TD that will make this easy.
  2. Please advise the EIC through direct or indirect methods of the cameras/positions that you will be using and other equipment that will be incorporated into the show. I KNOW that this is already being asked but some people are not doing it. I begin the day by labeling the monitor wall and mapping inputs into the switcher. Since I usually arrive before the production crew (sometimes by an hour or more) I would like to have this info so that I can hit the ground running.
  3. Get a monitor wall diagram and switcher source assignments completed to your satisfaction and return it to the truck vendor BEFORE you even arrive on setup day. (These montior wall diagrams are available for the Mobile Group dual-feed trucks at www.MobileTVGroup.com) Completed monitor wall layouts gives the EIC a chance to pre-patch the wall and this saves far more time than you realize. I know that this is a slight inconvenience but I usually arrive before the production team and could be labeling the monitor wall in that time. Further, I need to see some things in the monitor wall right away and I know from experience that EICs like to patch the wall only once given the time restraints.
  4. The TDs and Engineers need to have the switcher source assigments before the day starts (along with the monitor walls) so they can have these set-up early.  Any changes in swticher source assignments affects both shows and can seriously delay pre-production. Timelines for the secondary feed need to be built on the main switcher when not in use by the primary feed and ONLY when your ME is not split to the secondary switcher. This is another inportant reason to have as much info to the truck vendor prior to the event day.
  5. Prioritize what you want. You'll get cuts, dissolves and the keys that you want. You'll probably want a replay move to be the next priority. If you want a split screen or anything special, ask first if it can be done and decide how important it is. We'll build all we can and sometimes you may be surprised how much you get. Understand that not all trucks that do dual feeds have identical capabilities (ironically, the switchers in the standard definition trucks offer more capability for your show than those in the high definition trucks).
Regarding replay animations, there are a lot of choices to be made. You could use that very nice baseball flare that Fox has available or you can make your own animation from the standard DVE move for OTA and non-Fox games. I (and so far, all TDs I've asked) prefer to have a custom effect produced which has the replay brand built into it because it makes the replay timeline much easier to build. However, it would still be nice to have unbranded animations available in case any rebuilding becomes necessary due to Fox Box changes (of course we assume that won't happen but let's be safe). So here is what I'd like to see traveled on a tape with each production team, in this order of priority:
  1. Replay animation for "over the air" broadcast (with brand)
  2. Replay animation for broadcast (with brand)
  3. Unbranded version of the replay(s) if it is NOT the DVE move.
  4. Flare effect animations for transitions to full screen graphics (if you use such a thing but realize that we build these only if time is available).
Be aware that not all of these moves will look good when broadcasting an HD show using 4:3 based animations but this matter is a whole different discussion that I'll address at another time.

I've outlined a procedure for building the DVE based replay animations. Give these tips to your home television TD (who probably already knows how to do it anyway) but PLEASE ask him/her to save the effects used to create these animations in his/her home television setup in an "out of the way" place. If a visiting show comes unprepared, you will not want to sacrifice 20 minutes of your time while your TD rebuilds these effects to bail out the other show.

Though this is written a bit more for "first time" dual producers, I hope that this has been helpful for all producers in that it may ease the process of doing dual feeds and help improve the quality of your product. I can assure you that some of these suggestions will make the TDs life a lot easier that that can translate into a nicer show for all of us.

Len Marinaccio
lmarinaccio@qwest.net
April 26, 2004