Live from TED

Backstage at TED2010: Welcome KiPros

Posted by:

_MG_6529_1280

This year’s TED in Long Beach will be the first conference that we shoot entirely to hard drive — previous TEDs have been a combination of tape and drive. Above, set up in our production area (accurately called the Media Cave) is the array of specialized drives for recording camera feeds, called KiPros. There’s one KiPro and one laptop for each camera in our shoot and one for the live mix. It’s impressively dorky, yes, but the big takeaway for TED fans is: We can post beautifully shot and edited TEDTalks starting right from the conference, without making anyone stay up all night digitizing tape over to hard drive. Another benefit: It just looks better, because we’re working with first-generation media, not copies, and because this media is very good at capturing, in particular, the color red. Which is a color we like a lot. We’re looking forward to sharing this gorgeous footage in TEDTalks throughout the coming year.

Photo: TED / James Duncan Davidson