Maintaining News Quality Standards with Citizen Journalism

By Miles Weston

Nearly every television news department has begun soliciting and accepting on-the-scene video inputs from viewers. Most of the time it is because the news department no longer has the luxury of a team of seasoned news video personnel located throughout the coverage area.

At the same time, the station's news department has undergone significant budget and staff reductions just as the demand and expectation for spot news coverage has grown.

For station and news department management the solution is easy. . . solicit spot news items from on-the-scene viewers. There is a wide proliferation of low-cost, high quality cameras as well as ubiquitous camera phones. As a result, there's a high probability of someone capturing fast-breaking news items on their camera.

Today, virtually every man, woman and child in the station's viewing area can at one time or another become an instant news stringer -- capturing and submitting the news video while it is extremely timely.

The new news team coverage ties the station and network more closely to the community. It provides the type of instant news people have come to expect in our Internet- and video-enabled times.

A million-plus news reporters help news departments deliver immediate and breaking news. They also assist the news department by providing a continuous backlog of video content for the department's streaming news site; providing not just gripping news but also less-pressing news items that can appeal to a variety of personas in the viewing audience.

It's enough to make any news department manager and station/network stockholder smile because the added news coverage costs very little or is free.

Too good to be true?

It is!

Most -- if not all -- of the amateur video that is submitted is far below what news and production teams would consider "broadcast quality."

The easy answer would be to have the video production team clean up the video. The problem is that compensating for the low resolution source, sharpening details, smoothing shaky video, and removing noise artifacts usually requires talented specialists and . . . time.

The creative specialists were usually the first to leave.

Time in any news organization is something that is in extremely short supply.

Drawing heavily on its patented "CSI"-style super-resolution technology--used by national, regional and local law enforcement and intelligence agencies--MotionDSP Inc. recently introduced a consumer video enhancement solution for Windows PC users.

Called vReveal, the software instantly cleans up videos that are shaky, dark, noisy or blurry. While the software works well with recent-generation multi-processor personal computers, it provides optimum performance when coupled with the massively parallel processing power in NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPUs (graphic processor units). By taking advantage of the economical and powerful NVIDIA CUDA-enabled video cards, vReveal can enhance flawed video up to five times faster.

While vReveal is a consumer level product, it has the power and built-in features to improve consumer video in minutes for fast-turn around news production.

The software can dramatically improve the quality of videos captured by cell phones, digital cameras and other handheld devices.

Hiding much of its forensic post production clean-up, the software uses familiar one-click touch-up tools (Figure 1). Within a few minutes, even an intern can stabilize, brighten and sharpen flawed videos.

Figure 1: The "one click fix" controls make vReveal easy to use.

Priced at only $50, vReveal has the unique ability to increase detail in low-resolution videos and to remove video "noise," such as graininess and pixelation. If the news or promotional department wants to produce stills for on-air, print or on-line promotion, you can even use it to capture print-quality images from enhanced videos.

Click for full view

Figure 2: Multi-frame analysis is the basis of super-resolution technology.

The software enhances video using the company's advanced, unique super-resolution technology. Dr. Sean Varah, MotionDSP's CEO, explained that the firm's patented algorithms literally reconstruct each frame in a video with better detail by analyzing the information available in the surrounding frames.

For news or production personnel who want to "fine tune" the video before putting the content on the air, the software also provides advanced, drill-down enhancement controls for each of the key video improvement functions.

Figure 3: Partial view of Fine Tuning controls. Advanced news production staffers can tweak noise removal, sharpening, deinterlacing, color, contrast, and more.

Reveal directly imports .AVI, .MPG, .ASF, .WMV formats. If news personal have QuickTime installed on their system, the software will also play .MOV, MPEG 4, and .3GP files. Once the news segment is completed and the news team is satisfied with the post production work, the segment can be saved to Windows Media (WMV) or uncompressed AVI.

Presently the software can save enhanced videos to 720p (1280x720 HD) resolution and lower.

The MotionDSP vReveal software works with Windows XP or Vista running on a system using an Intel or AMD 1.6GHz CPU and 1GB RAM. For optimum performance and to take advantage of NVIDIA's GPU acceleration, it is recommended that users also have an 8-series or higher GeForce video graphics card installed.

If you're interested in testing the video performance and quality for your station's news department -- or personal use -- try the free 30-day trial at www.vreveal.com.

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Undercover author Miles Weston has spent more than 15 years in the optical storage, software and video industry, indulging in, among other things, marketing activities in promoting MO, CD, DVD technology and its applications. Contact Miles through his editor by clicking here.

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