King 5 Goes Direct to Air with Nucleo Pro
 William
Drescher, originally from New York, is somewhat of a legend
in the After Effects world and his top-notch skills are often
in high demand. Drescher was most recently recruited by the
Seattle-based NBC Affiliate KING 5, which is owned by Belo Corp.,
one of the nation's largest media companies with 28 stations
around the country. Just off the bus, KING 5 handed William
the hefty assignment with an $800,000 budget. He designed, purchased,
and built a new graphics plant from the ground up while KING
stayed #1. In January he led a team which launched a redesign
shared by seven other Belo properties. Then in April 2007, under
his direction, KING 5 became the first station in the Seattle
market to broadcast in true 1080i HD.
No
Time to Wait, We’re Going Direct to Air
Drescher decided to buck the trend of going with status quo
hardware and instead designed a unique system with flexibility
and scalability. The KING 5 News and Creative Services plant
is entirely Mac-based running After Effects and Apple Software
along with every known plug-in. This design frees artists to
ingest After Effects RAM previews directly into the news edit
systems– a process that is quite unique in the industry.
KING 5 needed new station graphic looks that would marry elements
for both SD and HD viewers. Right now the market is split between
people who’ve already made the jump to HDTVs, as well
as other viewers that are waiting until the FCC forces them
to get a new TV in 2009 to see the full width of a news broadcast.
"We worked with 168 Design for the look
and then internally produced 26 workable templates and other
designs for everything from bump opens to lower-thirds. Once
we had the final designs, we needed a speedy way to render out
full 1080i and uprez the vector based broadcast graphics for
the quick production of ‘Day of Air’ needs," said
William Drescher.
For News Updates:
Speed is the Ticket to Success
Drescher’s graphics room design was built for flexibility
and scalability in order to meets deadlines which in a frenetic
news environment can be nearly impossible. Speed is the ticket
to success. While working on the immense process, William enlisted
help from many resources, including former After Effects Product
Manager Steve Kilisky, who whispered to him about GridIron Software
Nucleo early on. KING 5 used the beta version of Nucleo and
later switched to Nucleo Pro, to be able to render After Effects
RAM previews and go directly to the servers with field renders
with out RAM constraints. In addition Nucleo Pro’s background
rendering is a crucial process for continuing to work and meet
creative deadlines.
 Nucleo
Pro really fit into our pipeline. One of the biggest challenges
we had was figuring out a way to make 1080i files work in a
production environment. After Effects RAM limits gave us some
challenges, but Nucleo Pro overcame them. We rely on Nucleo
Pro’s speed to make critical deadlines. KING 5 along with
other Belo stations KONG 6/16 and NW Cable News produce upwards
of 250 news and programming elements per day. Without Nucleo
Pro, we would have been forced to cut the workload by roughly
a third or reduce the complexity of the market leading projects,”
continued Drescher.
Toolkit
Hardware
- Mac G5 QUAD 2.6ghz, 4.5 - 8 gigs
ram
- Nvideo 4500
- 40 Terabyte Apple Xsan split in
2 volumes – 4 Xserves
- AJA Kona LHE HD Video cards
- Dual Apple 23 Apple Monitors
- Wacom Intous 2 tablets
- Dual Fibre
- Dual Ethernet
Software
- Apple XSAN, Open Directory Profiles,
Final Cut Studio with Live Type and Sound Trak, Compressor,
Motion, iDVD Studio 3.0, iWork, iLife
- Adobe Creative Suite 2, After Effects
7, GoLive, Acrobat 7 Pro
- Brainstorm eStudio
- Maya, 3D Studio Max
- After Effects Plug-Ins
- Allegorithmic MaP|Time 1.5
- Alien Skin Eye Candy for AE
- Automatic Duck
- Pro Import
- AE, FCP, & Pro Export Bundle
- AE and Pro Export Bundle
- Boris Final Effects and Complete
4
- DigiEffects Delirium
- Digital Film Tools' 55MM 5.0
- GenArts Sapphire Entire Package
- Digital Anarchy
- Geomancy
- Text Anarchy
- Anarchist Suite
- GridIron Software Nucleo Pro
- Red Giant Software
- Magic Bullet Suite
- Composite Wizard
- Knoll Light Factory
- Image Lounge
- RE:Vision Effects
- Twixtor 4.5 Pro
- ReelSmart Motion Blur Pro 3
- Synthetic Aperture
- Tinderbundle (Tinderbox 1, 2
& 3)
- Trapcode Suite
- Zaxwerks
- 3D Flag
- The Werks Vol 1
- 3D Invigorator Pro
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