Dave Randolph

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of articles from computer techs about what its like to be an Apple repair person or Microsoft person or Linux guru and how no one could ever understand them. So I figured it would be a good time to tell my side of being a broadcast engineer.

It wasn’t that long ago that a broadcast engineer spent the day with a soldering iron, a service manual and a scope turning knobs and tuning everything till it fell into range. Oh there were computers and they dealt with them but they were few and far between. Mostly just basic terminals with simple controllers to controller tape machines. It was considered impossible to get video to go in and out of computers in high “broadcast quality” a term I will address later. Master controls had people manually load a tape for each segment for the show and an editor cut every commercial break together to tape. Watching a MCO (Master Control Operator) slide from one side to the other throwing tapes around and pushing buttons at the exactly right moment was like watching Picasso paint, shear beauty and expensive. All while broadcast engineers run around in the back calibrating decks and terminal gear with a greenie. (little flat head screwdriver with a green handle) Tape machines were usually ¾ tape while actual post work was still done to 1” reel to reel. ¾ decks would cost 50-60k each and the MCO would have 5-10 of these machines just for them not including the rest of the building. 1” machines cost almost as much as a small house and the post production people needed at least 3 of them. It wasn’t uncommon for an edit suite to cost a million dollars and they had custom kitchens and couches and sometime mini-bars all just to keep directors and producers happy. I say it wasn’t that long ago because it was the early 90’s. I look back on these times as they king of media and where I began. I still look at photos or suites long abandon with a lot of respect because the operators were true artist and the engineers were just as much a part of the production and the editors or the producers. We would rewire the equipment between each edit or tweak the decks to give it a certain look or completely rewire the building to make a 6 sided video cube spin in space.

Then not long after that computer devices started passing video with ease and we started seeing computer based switching like the Video Toaster. Now you had one box creating effects and CG (character generator, not computer graphics) and controlling the decks. The giant million dollar rooms turned into 10 smaller rooms. Most engineers were annoyed at the idea that computers could handle video and just let the operators handle the computers on their own. This is where I would build my strengths. However these edit bays still suffered from one flaw, every single edit of a project took forever because it was linear. So a project had to be pieced together from the first frame to the last in that order and if you want to add or remove a shot in the middle you would copy the master tape, edit in or remove the shots you did or didn’t want and then edit the remainder of the tape back on. Now if you were trying to be professional about it you would rewind the master tape, make your change and remake every single edit again to the end of the program. Thankfully the computer kept track of every edit you made and all you did was load the piles of source footage into the machines.  Master controls started getting their first computers as well. Automated tape loaders and play list managers. This is where the problems of computers and where my career truly begins. I realized that computers were going to be in this business and that they will never be like other machines. I took charge of all the CG boxes and effects boxes in the live studios, toasters, CMX editors in the edit bays and automation playout in master control. If you remember back then, it was amazing if you even knew how to turn a computer on. Well I was crazy enough to think I could handle zero down time, high demand equipment. I got a very new title, I was no longer “Broadcast Engineer” I became “Computer Video Engineer”. Having CVE on a business card was pretty sweet to look at while listening to Bon-Jovi Slippery When Wet on tape.

Now the problems start. We have Broadcast Engineers who are not strong with computers, operators who don’t know computers and little me. So not only do I have to understand the engineering side but now I also have to understand the operator’s side of the equipment. You could say things like “well its just gone, start over I guess”. So I would go into the various software and try to figure out what happen. The best way I could explain it is if you open someone’s word doc and trying to figure out if they really meant to put an extra period in a sentence or it was a mis.take.

With Nirvana Nevermind playing on FM radio a new box arrives at the door and by box I mean forklift. On the side it says “Avid” and like a curious puppy my head cocks to one side and my eyes grow wide. Welcome Non-Linear editing, sort of. The video was highly compressed but it would playback real time. It looked a lot like a youtube video with large chunky block everywhere. So you would edit the “offline” version and send it to “online” or back to the linear edit bay for assembly. The linear editors would become assembly line workers just bolting parts together and they never saw it coming. So editors are lined up at the door saying “teach me”. They were not ready to learn and it really took a new kind of person to be a non-linear editor then. Some did alright but many would fail. It was like being taught to write with your right hand your whole life and then being taught to write left handed. You’ll never be as good as you were before because the two editing techniques were that different. This is when I realized that I would have to involve myself with the editor’s process and not just keep the systems running. I had to truly understand every aspect of the art form in order to be a better engineer. Nothing really changed for MC or Studio during this time.

Cue Art school: Heck I might even find out I was destine to be an artist.
OK, I was NEVER going to be an artist and it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. I spent my entire time in college jumping from every aspect of production just so that I would understand the people I would be working with. I understood why they wanted a red light in the scene even though red light would screw up the tube cameras technically. This is still the roll I play today. I spend most of my time discussing projects in details with clients and not only thinking about the technical requirements of the project like how much storage they need but about aesthetic concerns as well.

So today I drive to a client with my iPhone docked in my car listening to a Pandora mix of classic Pearl Jam thinking about the project on a super wide “big picture”. I then sit down a discuss the project, maybe watch a rough cut and besides asking questions like what’s the power requirements and cooling output of a room I have to also know the production backgrounds of everyone and the artistic vision of the project. If there is a problem I have to solve it two steps, one get them up to a functional level and then get them back up to full speed because downtime is death. If a website goes down for an hour it might suck and unless you’re someone like Amazon it’s not a huge deal. In broadcast or film if you’re down for an hour the world ends. It’s a strange world where there is redundancy everywhere except with time.

Those broadcast engineers that were afraid of the computers but did amazing work are few and far between and are not as valued as they should be. So if you ever meet a true broadcast engineer please sit down with them, they have such a great knowledge of electronics on an analog level, which is a dying art in America. Most of these original engineers have faded to people like me who are more computer than broadcast anymore. With people doing 3d and post work on laptops bought from Best Buy and master controls being fully automated and sometimes unmanned altogether the roll of the broadcast engineer has changed from fixing the equipment at a core level to advanced operators with an intense I.T. background and still understand electronics. As things get simpler maybe one day in the very near future people like me will to fade and maybe who ever replaces them will write a blog post about them. Just not before I’ve retired.