Studio Cameras

The FinanceVision team stands by the old broadcast adage, "garbage in, garbage out," and has taken great care to select professional video equipment well suited for webcasting. "Attention to that kind of detail is as important as the attention we pay to getting a sound editorial product out," adds Scholl.

The studio is set up with three broadcast-quality digital cameras managed by one person, who also acts as Floor Manager. "We don't move the cameras, we don't have robotics," says Scholl. "You will see us change-up the shots, but you'll never see a zoom or pan live because that would screw up the quality of the stream."

The cameras are equipped with analog outputs connected to an analog/digital (A/D) converter. The digital output then feeds the Ultimatte keyers, where each video signal meets its corresponding vi[z]rt virtual set perspective for insertion. "We have identified positions and shots that match up with the virtual set," explains Orlin. The Ultimatte then feeds a composited digital signal of the camera view and virtual set to the GlobeCaster switcher. The switcher simply treats the three sources as individual camera source inputs.

Feed Me

Keeping up with the pace of breaking financial news requires continuous live feeds from the heart of Wall Street. However, booking broadcast feeds from New York City to Yahoo!'s Santa Clara, Calif. studio would be extremely costly via fiber-optic video transmission services. In its continuing effort to keep costs at a minimum while streamlining the production process, Yahoo! placed its feed area (Quality Control) in New York City.

Yahoo! has a dedicated path from NASDAQ and NYSE cameras to the feed area where the video is compressed into MPEG-2 format and delivered, one source at a time, over the same T1 to the Santa Clara control room. "The difference in quality is not noticeable at all," says Scholl. "We're saving millions of dollars a year by doing that." In the event that a FinanceVision guest will be featured from a remote location in New York, Yahoo! employs this same delivery strategy to acquire the feed.

Yahoo!'s Santa Clara location currently hosts two satellite dishes, one of which receives an MPEG-2 Reuters feed, while the other is available for subsequent live events and interviews. The control room also takes a TV-1 line input from Pacific Bell, connecting Yahoo! to Vyvx video transmission services to pull feeds for additional live events or breaking news.

Additional sources take on a more traditional slant, including two Beta Players, one DV player and an Avid Newscutter used on-site for playback of video segments.

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