Government

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Goes HD

As part of the U.S. government's concerted effort to transition its video infrastructure from SD to HD, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a bureau of the Department of the Interior, has recently adopted its first high-definition video production platform.

For ten years, the National Conservation Training Center has operated a full-service video production studio in its Shepherdstown, West Virginia training campus. Responsible for producing conservation training videos, public service announcements, and visitor center orientation videos for over 550 national wildlife refuges nationwide, the studio had been receiving increased demands from its field offices to produce programming with more life-like image quality.

"We had planned on going to HD as soon as it became available, and had already purchased HD lenses a few years ago, and upgraded our two editing suites to HD" explains David Cooper, chief of video production. "The visitor centers have started installing higher-quality video projection systems and we were receiving a surprising amount of requests for HD programming."

In addition to production of wildlife documentaries, Cooper's studio is responsible for nationwide video training sessions among conservation organizations, and within the National Park Service and other bureaus of the Department of the Interior. It also produces live satellite broadcasts, distance Learning, web casting, executive announcements, and intra-agency communication.

With six staffers, Cooper's branch is equipped to produce video in all formats: SP, DV, DVD, VHS. It maintains a tape archive of thousands of hours of video footage on physical media and in assorted formats. The ability to maintain its new HD footage in a non-linear, optical media format was extremely appealing to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife video team, and in June of this year they purchased their first two HD camcorders, which offer HD recording in 1080/59.94i, 50i, 29.97P, 25P and native 23.98 P. Being a dual format camcorder, the system can also record in SD mode at 25 Mb/s.

After testing the system at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in April, Cooper decided to make a move from tape and to begin the studio's transition toward optical media. "I was convinced that the media is better than it has ever been before," Cooper added, citing positive reviews in the trade press and the grueling tests that successfully underwent during the legendary Iditarod dogsled race in Alaska.

The Fish and Wildlife Service HD units were first put to the test on a three-month production assignment in Alaska, where they produced two visitor center videos for the Togiak and Kodiak national wildlife refuges. The HD camcorders were accompanied by an HDV camcorder, specially housed for underwater assignments. What were the reports from the field? Cooper says that his team was excited that the system could shoot in 16x 9 as well as in a variety of pulldown rates; they liked the ability to download footage right from camera into a laptop in the field, well as is the system's compatibility with the studio's Avid studio editing system. "And of course every nature videographer is going to make good use of HD's time-lapse feature," Cooper remarks.

With his agency's mission to "conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people," Cooper's team uses HD video to inform and educate the public about the value of its natural resources. With HD production now underway, the National Conservation Training Center is fully equipped to capture and archive the motion, color, and vivid imagery of our nation's wildlife refuges in a video format that can satisfy the increasing visual demands of future generations.

Click below to request a Product Demonstration: