This year (A-Kon® 20) A-Kon® TV will be shooting in high definition wherever possible.  We will also have the ability to film things against a green screen so that we can add an appropriate background to them at a later time.  We’ll explore the possibilities that it will bring us together.   Staff, friends, we’re all a part of this.

We frequently receive questions from convention attendees as well as from staff about how quickly they can watch the footage that we’ve filmed.   One question in particular seems to be about why it takes so long to get footage edited, and why it can’t be rebroadcast immediately after being filmed.

Unfortunately, getting video that has been shot from a MiniDV camera, such as the ones that we normally use, into a state that we can show on the television channel takes a fair amount of time.

The first step is to import the video from tape into a computer.  This is a real-time process, which means that if the video that has been shot is an hour long, it will take an hour to import it.  If there were two or more cameras that were simultaneously shooting the same shot, it will take that hour multiplied by the number of cameras.  So three cameras times one hour equals three hours.  Sometimes, this can be reduced by the number of input computers that are in use, but it will still take at least an hour.

The second step is to edit the video.  Sometimes this is a straightforward process.  In the case of something like a panel, it’s usually a case of adding a fade in at the beginning and a fade out at the end, since it’s usually one take with no cuts.  Two camera shots of the same panel will take longer because of the need to sync the multiple camera files and then to edit them all at once.  The sync process relies on both audio and visual cues and can be very time consuming if there is not an obvious one to use.  Multiple breaks in any of the camera files simply add to the editing time required.

The final step in getting the video that we shoot at the convention out to the TVs is time consuming on its own level.  Once we’ve managed to get the video input and edited, it has to be transported to the broadcast computer.  Unfortunately, due to the layout of the hotel and the locations of the broadcast computer and the production room for A-Kon® TV, this requires traversing at least three different elevators.  This is not made any easier or faster by the antics of the con attendees while trying to be cute.

Normal turnaround time for editing 1 hour of video shot from a single camera is about 4 hours, provided that nothing else comes up and there are no emergencies that require the editors to work on something else.