The National Theatre decided to install a remote
three-camera pan and tilt setup in their main theatre, so they
could create a digital archive of past performances and make
finding out about a specific performer, play or scene easier for
students and researchers. We helped them find the camera and
capture system, then teamed up with Armadillo to build a simple,
user-friendly archive interface.
One of Britain's most popular and versatile theatres, the
National Theatre has staged work by everyone from Shakespeare to
Terry Pratchett. Founded in 1963, it now comprises three stages and
numerous exhibition spaces. Its best known works include the West
End hit 'War Horse' and Danny Boyle's
'Frankenstein'.
What they needed...
The National started taping performances in 1995 so that
they could offer students and researchers the chance to compare
different versions of a play or scene, or get an overview of an
individual director's career. They'd decided it was time to upgrade
to a three-camera tapeless setup that would give them the
ability to cover more of the stage and capture footage from more
angles, as well as improving picture quality. They also wanted to
move all their existing footage into a dynamic, interactive archive
that'd help users find the footage they needed without hours of
searching.
Finding the right cameras
To ensure the National's cameras could cover the whole
stage, we worked with Panasonic's engineers to design a system that
would meet their requirements, providing three pan and tilt
heads holding box cameras. This allowed the National's camera
operator to set up, calibrate and control every aspect of a shoot
from a single control surface in the theatre's control room,
where we also installed the main capture station.
In order to provide some variation in the footage shot -
and to make it easier for the National's camera operators to get
close-ups of key sequences - two of the cameras were fitted with
long lenses, so the camera operator could focus in on a specific
part of the action, while the third was fitted with a wide-angle
lens that captured a master shot of the entire stage.
Developing the archive
While we were working the National's camera
specifications, we also consulted with their archive team to work
out what they wanted their new archive to achieve. In order to help
people find the performance they needed as quickly as possible, the
team wanted a Mac and PC-compatible archive that would allow them
to sort footage by date, director, play and even scene.
Our consultants helped the National team review designs
from a number of user interface and user design companies. After
discussing several solutions, we teamed up with Armadillo Systems
(specialists in media communications). Together we joined forces
with the National to design and build a user-friendly graphical
user interface (GUI). Once it was complete, the interface would sit
on top of the archive and provide a simple, intuitive way for users
to find and view the footage they needed, cutting out hours of
searching and making it far easier for them to pinpoint a scene and
stream it.
Custom video compression
The National's master footage would need to be
able to be edited and utilised at full resolution,
but capturing many hours from multiple cameras
would require a hugely expensive storage system. To
address this issue we built a custom compressor
algorithm to provide low bandwidth but high quality
versions of the footage. The main capture station and the edit
machines were connected to a SAN to allow seamless integration
of editing, compression and delivery of clips to the browser
GUI.
Alongside the SAN we also installed Qmaster, a
redistribution application which speeds up compression and
transcoding tasks by splitting them between computers and cores for
maximum efficiency.
To ensure users could play back clips smoothly even when
the system was being heavily used, we configured the interface to
allow users to view low resolution proxies while browsing, rather
than automatically streaming the original high-res file. The
result: less strain on the National's system, meaning users got
faster search results and smoother video playback, but could still
watch the high quality master copy of a clip once they'd found
it.
The result...
The National Theatre Digital Archive is now quickly,
easily and centrally accessible. Students and researchers can
perform searches to get access to specific clips, while the archive
team have plenty of storage to house live edits and master shots of
future performances, and can access them via a user-friendly,
cross-platform GUI.
If you'd like to learn more about our video and storage
services, get in touch with our team on 03332 409 306, email broadcast@Jigsaw24.com or
drop us a question in the box below.
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