cameraphones--NOT!

Terry E. Toller

Well-known member
Sprint offers a plan that uses their device called an "Aircard". They have specials where they give you the device for free when you sign up for a two year plan at $60 per month.

You can have BROADBAND wireless ANYWHERE! No hot spot needed. Think of it, you could send high quality video to a station's server from your laptop. Great for feeds where you can't get line of sight microwave... Great for stringers!

IT IS BROADBAND!!!
 

Natural Born Stringer

Well-known member
Terry,

What kind of specs are we talking here? I'd want a minimum 3 to 5 mbps upload speed before I'd be willing to spend 60 a month. Even then, you're limited to how fast the station's server can pull it in. Also is it unlimited transfers or do they charge you for overages over so many megs or gigs transferred? Sending video several times a day will go thru TONS of bandwidth usage and if they charge you for extra usage you will get a rather nasty surprise in your statement.

EDIT: Besides, there's so many free hotspots these days, why not just shoot your video, drive to the hotspot and send it from there for $0?
 

Terry E. Toller

Well-known member
Well, the last time I covered a forest fire, I don't recall coming across any internet cafe's...

Sorry, I went to the Sprint web site and looked for the Aircard but found nothing... I admit, I only spent a few seconds there. I didn't have time to check it out. Your questions are interesting... I would like to know myself.

My friend who has it uses it for playing online games... ZZZZZZZZ...
 

Terry E. Toller

Well-known member
sorry... I don't think that link will help... I am on a spot job right now and can't sit on my cell phone. I will call sprint within the next few days and find out what I can.

If this unit works, it would be great for stringers to feed video to stations. You could even do live shots...

I see it as a way to provide live, on scene video to my clients as I am doing my PI thing... :)
 

Natural Born Stringer

Well-known member
Terry E. Toller said:
Well, the last time I covered a forest fire, I don't recall coming across any internet cafe's...
Heh. Good point! :D

I'm not pooh-poohing the idea at all... I'm interested in this as well. A company I used to work for had Cingular aircards and man, did they ever get BENT OVER for exceeding their bandwidth... It got so bad that management was telling people any usage over their limit would come out of their paychecks, because people were using the snot out of them even in places where there were faster and FREE hotspots available. We're talking monthly bills in excess of $500 for EACH ONE (this company has a few HUNDRED of the damn things).

But, if you only used it for the times when there's no hotspot around, I could see a benefit there.

The right way to do it is to have your own server you send your video to, and let your clients pull it from there. That way you only incur bandwidth usage ONCE on the aircard, instead of once for each station wanting the vids. That'd save you bunches. Either that or get a plan with unlimited usage. Now, THAT would be a steal at only $60 per month.... hmmm.

An intriguing idea. I'll do some digging on my own and see what I can find out as well.
 

couryhouse

Well-known member
fast but not fast enough... but... sort of useful

with the E Technology you can uplinkl at 100 kb downlink at around 400 ( do not beleive the 2 meg burst they mention)

I am also playing around with some hi speed high power radios to pump data over around the downtown core here but the cap on that is 2 megs. more news as the experiment continues with this NLOS technology.


Natural Born Stringer said:
Terry,

What kind of specs are we talking here? I'd want a minimum 3 to 5 mbps upload speed before I'd be willing to spend 60 a month.
 

RichVid

Well-known member
Hey Gentlemen...

If you were uploading vid to your laptop at MPEG-2 quality, which I think is pretty high <edit typo> quality, if you had say a 5 min clip to transmit, I believe that's somewhere near or over 1 gig of data...that could take QUITE awhile to transmit no? I think MPEG-4 would compress the same file down to around 100 megs, but it would look pretty crappy...Of course, compressed 3CCD-acquired video would still woop woop the camera phone...
 

couryhouse

Well-known member
not ready for prime time video uploads...

the best was is to put yur own radio system up in town.... I fear the EVDO and EDGE will limit the upload speed except for the extremely patient wireless user....

There is one hotspot in glendale here though I have used the 802.11 at 256 upload speed... but really anything less than 2 megs seems sooooo slow......


RichVid said:
Hey Gentlemen...

If you were uploading vid to your laptop at MPEG-2 quality, which I think is pretty high <edit typo> quality, if you had say a 5 min clip to transmit, I believe that's somewhere near or over 1 gig of data...that could take QUITE awhile to transmit no? I think MPEG-4 would compress the same file down to around 100 megs, but it would look pretty crappy...Of course, compressed 3CCD-acquired video would still woop woop the camera phone...
 

couryhouse

Well-known member
not ready for prime time video uploads...

the best was is to put yur own radio system up in town.... I fear the EVDO and EDGE will limit the upload speed except for the extremely patient wireless user....

There is one hotspot in glendale here though I have used the 802.11 at 256 upload speed... but really anything less than 2 megs seems sooooo slow......


RichVid said:
Hey Gentlemen...

If you were uploading vid to your laptop at MPEG-2 quality, which I think is pretty high <edit typo> quality, if you had say a 5 min clip to transmit, I believe that's somewhere near or over 1 gig of data...that could take QUITE awhile to transmit no? I think MPEG-4 would compress the same file down to around 100 megs, but it would look pretty crappy...Of course, compressed 3CCD-acquired video would still woop woop the camera phone...
 

Natural Born Stringer

Well-known member
couryhouse said:
There is one hotspot in glendale here though I have used the 802.11 at 256 upload speed... but really anything less than 2 megs seems sooooo slow......
Yeah, see that's the problem.. The cell broadband is even SLOWER than your typical 802.11 hotspot, and considerably more expensive when used in large amounts. Still, if it's the only way to do it, it's the only way to do it - I can see a stringer charging a premium for such a "gotta have it now" service.

If I did this, I would upload to my own server, and then the stations would be given a secure link to get it from. That way my bandwidth usage is kept at a somewhat normal rate (although slinging around 50+ meg MPEG files would still burn it up pretty fast) and all the stations can then get it at the same time instead of "wait in line please".
 

Terry E. Toller

Well-known member
why would you want or need to feed five minutes of video from the scene? as a stringer, you could send a couple of minutes and be done with it. edit in the field... I used to edit video while waiting for a live truck to arrive and when we were pushing deadline, I would cut about 45 seconds. that was usually more than needed for a morning live hit...
 

RichVid

Well-known member
"why would you want or need to feed five minutes of video from the scene?"

I guess it all depends on the story you're shooting... In this market, car crashes and gang shootings are getting harder and harder to sell... And, as they should, more shows are looking for SOTs to go with these cheesy little overniters...
 

Natural Born Stringer

Well-known member
RichVid said:
"why would you want or need to feed five minutes of video from the scene?"

I guess it all depends on the story you're shooting... In this market, car crashes and gang shootings are getting harder and harder to sell... And, as they should, more shows are looking for SOTs to go with these cheesy little overniters...
Same thing out here... although anymore, I don't even run on such things unless there's multiple victims/bodies.

Even so, I swear - I could catch a officer involved shooting, as it happened at 11:30PM and the dumb deskie would still want me to wait around for the f'ng soundbite (which takes HOURS of waiting to get). WHY? Send your own shooter for that - you can wait until he gets in at 4AM because there will be no sound until 4:45!

I've been thinking about assessing a "wait rate" meaning if you want me to hang around waiting for soundbites for hours on end it's gonna tack an extra $30 an hour onto the tab. That should put a stop to the retarded "hang out and get sound" requests on these overnite filler stories where 1. It's obvious what happened and 2. They can just call the damn PIO in a few hours to get the details instead of wasting MY time.
 

RichVid

Well-known member
Natural Born Stringer said:
Even so, I swear - I could catch a officer involved shooting, as it happened at 11:30PM and the dumb deskie would still want me to wait around for the f'ng soundbite (which takes HOURS of waiting to get). WHY? Send your own shooter for that - you can wait until he gets in at 4AM because there will be no sound until 4:45!
I'm a little luckier; most of the "dumb deskies" work during regular hours Mon-Fri where they can get trained (God willing)... I've got a nice niche going on weekends with the same folks more often than not... The thing about SOT is that, yeah, they want it, but if we're gettin' close to air and the vid is that good, then I'm out, and on the way to feed... I know enough people in Emergency Services in the area who'll talk to me off cam and I can write a synopsis 1/2 way decent, so more often than not, especially if I know the story is VO only, I'm good without it...Waiting for PD SOT is the worst... You might as well have a sit down dinner, go home, take a nap and a shower, and then come back...You'll still be early!
 

Terry E. Toller

Well-known member
The people I deal with trust my judgement. I usually pick my own bite form a long interview. I can still send a one minute video with pleanty of footage and a ten second bite.

I just did a test run with a local station. I sent him a one minute video with sot and it took two and a half minutes to upload. Yes, it was MPEG2 which was at 720X480. It looked fine on his end and he was impressed. Later tonight I am going to attempt a live feed to his server. If it works, it will take a simple patch to do an actual live shot. We will see if this thing will do a live hit without hickups...

Damn! I wish I would have found this thing a couple of years ago while I was still stringing...
 

EFP

Active member
Back when I used to string the stations had a union policy stating that only union editors using station gear (on the shop's clock) could cut stringer video.

I guess a way around this policy is to send them a rough cut only. A 45 sec vo could be sent as a sixty sec rough cut.
 

Terry E. Toller

Well-known member
I have delivered edited video many times. No unions... The live feed test didn't work. The video needs to be compressed. Too many glitches... :(
 

couryhouse

Well-known member
tell me more about how you attempted the live feed....

ed sharpe

Terry E. Toller said:
I have delivered edited video many times. No unions... The live feed test didn't work. The video needs to be compressed. Too many glitches... :(
 

Terry E. Toller

Well-known member
We set up a time during the middle of the night and I set up my camera on an intersection. I fed the video into my laptop with the aircard activated and sent it to the station's ip... the producer had the ability to actually patch directly to feed from the server to broadcast. For the test, the last step was not done... Anyway, it didn't work too well. We got a few bad hits every minute and a half or so... I guess it would be OK for a live bumper but I would not count on it!
 
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