We had a unique challenge at KTVB today. We have a crew in Shanghai, China for the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games. The next World Winter Games will be held in Idaho – making the coverage a natural. Anchor Carolyn Holly and photographer Xanti Alcelay were supposed to report live from the opening ceremonies during our 10pm newcast. But the president of China decided to show up – meaning no live uplink (that’s the simple version). But building blocks we’ve put in place over the past year made that less of a problem then you might think. Xanti “fed” Carolyn’s standups and a portion of a package via the Internet. Instead of choppy Internet-quality video, Xanti sent back full-quality AVI files. He exported the media from a Grass Valley NewsEdit laptop, dropped the files over the network, and we imported them back in to our Grass Valley system in Boise, and aired the video. It wasn’t exactly… quick – but was a neat work around to the challenge.
Carolyn and Xanti being told of the change of plans