Surviving Pool Feeds (Without Drowning)

As you may recall, a lab test indicated that cyclist Floyd Landis had synthetic testosterone in his body during his victorious 2006 Tour de France ride. Landis denied taking the drug, said lab mistakes led to an errant finding and declared that he would contest the test result in an arbitration hearing. He also said he wanted the hearing to be open to the public. Since all other previous hearings of the sort had been closed, and since I’m both writing a book and working on a TV doc about doping in sport, I had to be there to collect words and video.

So there I was, this past May, at Pepperdine University in California with a couple dozen other print and television journalists waiting for the start of the United States Anti-Doping Agency vs. Floyd Landis hearing. The United States Olympic Committee controlled press access to the hearings, but ruled with a light hand. There was one key stricture: The only video cameras allowed in the hearing room for more than a few minutes would be those creating the official recording of the proceedings. The press could, however, tap into a pool feed of video and audio from those cameras.

For broadcast crews, pool coverage can be nothing but hours or days of unbroken boredom punctuated by changing tapes. For doc producers who don’t want or need 60 hours of tape, it can be nothing but unbroken boredom punctuated by moments of terror as they make sure they didn’t miss the key scenes. At least that’s when things go as planned. Things don’t, however, always go as planned. That’s why, for those occasions, I have four guidelines that I follow that increase the chances of my climbing out of the pool with the footage I need.

Problems crop up in every production, but since you don’t control the full camera-to-media chain, recording a pool feed presents additional opportunities for disaster. The key challenge: successfully connecting to the feed. Should be simple, but occasionally it isn’t. The key solution: carrying more equipment than necessary in the hope that you’ll have enough to record and monitor any signal. This means:

Adapters. A standard press box from a company such as Opamp Labs provides a dozen or more BNC connectors feeding composite analog video, and the same number of male XLR jacks feeding balanced analog audio. But sometimes the feed isn’t of the best quality, and sometimes you aren’t pointed to a standard press box.

For example, I’ve twice faced pool audio fed through an audio snake with only female/input XLR jacks, not male/output XLR jacks. So I carry an adapter with XLR male jacks at both ends that allow me to flip a jack designed for input to one that works for output. But that’s not all I carry.

I also have audio pads, BNC-to-RCA adapters, ground lifts and audio Y-cables in case all available audio ports are taken. I also pack more cables, adapters and problem-fixers for a pool feed than I do for a typical field production gig because I can’t predict what I’ll need to connect to or what problems I may encounter. The "What to Bring to a Pool Party" sidebar (page 40) lists specific suggestions.

Audio Mixer. I bump into more problems with audio feeds than video. An easy way to control levels, convert impedance and otherwise fix audio problems is through a small desktop audio mixer designed for music recording, such as a sub-$150 model from Tapco, Behringer, Alesis, etc. These mixers don’t deliver sonic quality equivalent to a good $1,000-plus field mixer, but they don’t need batteries and offer a wider range of I/O.

Equipment Manuals. At Pepperdine, one guy’s PDW-R1 XDCAM field recorder couldn’t establish sync with the video feed. Who knows why? My Sony DSR-11 DVCAM VTR wasn’t having that problem, so I gave him a FireWire feed from my VTR. The XDCAM recorder didn’t instantly recognize the FireWire input, and a hunt through the recorder’s menus left us in the dark.

I keep a folder on my notebook computer with PDF manuals of cameras, VTRs and other bits of gear that I’ve owned, rented or used. For some reason (I can’t remember why) that folder holds a PDW-R1 manual. A quick search told us to switch the recorder from IMX to DVCAM, the required format for a FireWire feed. Makes sense once you think of it. But we didn’t. Good thing we had the manual.

Monitoring Tools. I’d rather work with a dedicated recorder and good field monitor, or a production truck, but I sometimes get by with a pair of headphones and a FireWire cable running from my VTR to a laptop. The laptop runs video-monitoring software such as Adobe OnLocation (formerly Serious Magic DV Rack) or just the logging window of an NLE application. I can’t fully control the feed I get, but at least I know I’m getting a feed, can do some simple logging and can be alerted to problems.

Even when you’re well prepared, you may still get stuck. That’s why you need more than equipment at a pool feed. You need smart friends and the right attitude. On the first day of the Landis hearing, the pool video was blown out, with IRE way above 120. The team providing the feed didn’t know what was wrong and had their hands full covering the hearing. The broadcast network guys couldn’t solve the problem either.

An ABC photographer had a Sony BVW-50 portable Betacam SP recorder and was able to dial down the input enough to get a good signal. The rest of us hoped to save the footage in post. Knowledge of composite analog bugaboos has faded in this digital age.

I wasn’t sure what was wrong, though I had a couple of guesses. But rather than just guess, I called up a smart friend, Adam Wilt, and asked him what he thought. He said it sounded like a termination problem. Well there was that uncapped loop-through BNC connector on the Opamp box.

No one at the hearing had a BNC terminator. I searched the Web and found a Fry’s Electronics in Woodland Hills, about 30 minutes away. I couldn’t leave the hearing, so that evening I drove to Fry’s and bought two 75 Ohm BNC terminators for $1.79 each. The next morning, I stuck one on the open loop-through BNC and all was well. At least, the luma levels were much more acceptable. Adam (and Google Maps) saved the day. And I got better video.

Later that morning, a network photographer stuck his Lectrosonics plug-on transmitter into a press box XLR for a wireless feed to his recorder. Instantly, we were all hit with 60 Hz hum. I wasn’t as concerned about the cause as I was with finding a solution. I reached into my run bag and tossed the guy two XLR mic cables. He unplugged his transmitter and ran my cables back to his recorder. Both of our problems were solved. Throughout the hearing, I loaned out some other gear, and so did other members of the pool. If I had needed anything, someone would have done the same for me, I’m sure. In fact, someone did, in a manner that really saved my butt.

I had to miss one of the nine hearing days. When I showed up the next day, a cameraman that I’d helped earlier in the week offered me a dub of a key witness’s testimony from the previous day. Alas, I fear naming him will bring down the wrath of his bosses. So he remains unnamed, but not unappreciated.

Grabbing video for the doc while simultaneously taking notes for the book was stressful. But compared to the lawyers, the witnesses, the arbitrators (i.e., judges), to say nothing of Floyd Landis and his family, we media were on a holiday. Most of us kept that in mind when we interacted with those folks. It was the right thing to do, but it also helped us get our jobs done.

Ongoing issues with the pool feed led CBS and me to ask the USOC rep if we could put one more camera in the hearing room during a couple of key moments (well, hours) in the hearing. CBS said it would provide a second pool feed from that camera. The USOC rep asked the arbitrators and undoubtedly our professional and polite efforts over the previous days didn’t hurt our case. The arbitrators agreed, and we got the images we needed.

Being on the receiving end of a pool feed isn’t much different from most location work, except you control and shape the image through sharing and suggestion, not through hands-on action. Just like any producer.

It’s not as fully stocked as a satellite or ENG truck, or as integrated as a dedicated field recorder, but the equipment listed here fits in a medium-sized production case and will solve most pool feed problems:

VTR or camera
with composite analog input and FireWire output

Computer with composite analog input and FireWire output
Software to view FireWire video feed

One 2′ 4 channel audio mixer<
Headphones

Adapters/problem fixers
(2) BNC terminators
(2) BNC-to-RCA adapters
(1) BNC-to-BNC extender
(1) Female XLR to 2 Male XLR Y-cable
(2) Female XLR-to-RCA adapters
(2) Male XLR-to-RCA adapters
(1) 10dB, 15dB, 40dB audio pads (or adjustable pad such as Sure A14AS)
(1) Male XLR-to-Male XLR adapter
(1) XLR ground lift
(1) XLR polarity reverser
(1) Small flashlight
(1) Multitool (e.g., Leatherman)
(1) Roll gaffers tape

Cables
(1) 20-foot+ power cable
(1) Multi-outlet power strip
(2) 15-foot+ BNC cables
(4) 15-foot+ balanced audio cables
(2) 6-pin-to-6-pin FireWire cables
(1) 4-pin-to-6-pin FireWire cable
(1) Y/C video cable
(2) 3-lead RCA cables

Recording Media
Estimate hours you plan to record, then bring double the media

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