AJA Helo helps Simple Thought to show corpse flower growth

Simple Thought recently produced a live stream of the corpse flower bloom on YouTube for Rollins College in Florida using a camera and an AJA Helo H.264 streaming and recording device.

Amorphophallus titanum, commonly known as the corpse flower, is an endangered plant that takes up to ten years to develop in captivity. When in flower, it can grow up to 15 centimetres a day, and emits an unforgettable putrid smell. Public interest in viewing these rare blooms online has grown in recent years, and university botanic gardens and greenhouses have risen to the occasion with live broadcasts of the bloom.

Rollins College greenhouse director Alan Chryst obtained the university’s first caddisfly seedling in 2004, and its first bloom took place more than a decade later. After successfully transmitting the first event, he asked Simple Thought Productions to take over the two blooms scheduled for April 2022. The production company’s founder, Josh Chesarek, always up for a challenge, was delighted with the job: “It’s not every day as a video production pro that you’re asked to capture a live feed of a plant that grows upwards of six feet in under a week and unleashes a scent so rancid that it reminds you of roadkill roasting on a hot summer day. The environmental conditions also made it a fun challenge. We had to figure out the right gear to withstand incredibly hot, humid, and wet greenhouse conditions, and AJA Helo proved just the right fit.”

Before flowering, Chesarek placed the Canone camera and Helo within sight of the corpse flower and packed the equipment in a large plastic bag to prevent damage from the humidity in the greenhouse. With the camera connected to Helo tramite SDI and Helo connected to Ethernet and a power supply, Chesarek was able to easily stop and start the 1080p live stream on YouTube remotely: “I chose Helo because I’ve used it in production and felt confident it could manage the job. During the previous bloom, we used other encoders, which would go offline randomly, and interrupt the stream, so I’d have to stop what I was doing and drive in to reboot the encoder. This time around we had more than 10,000 viewers tune in without interruption, thanks in large part to Helo.”

Fighting the humidity

The performance of the AJA solutions was up to the task. Even when the broadcast reached 237 consecutive hours in 32-degree humid weather, the transmission ran smoothly, a feat that impressed Chesarek himself: “I kept thinking the camera or Helo might die, but neither skipped a beat, even when baking inside the greenhouse for nine days. It was great!”

When Simple Thought Productions isn’t broadcasting stinkweed blooms, Chesarek and his team can be found producing live local Division II sports games, e-sports competitions and events for the city of Orlando. Looking ahead, they are exploring 4K production:“To the untrained eye, the differences between 1080p, and 4K are not easily distinguishable, and most live events today are streamed in 720p. That said, we’re seeing more interest in higher resolution production, especially in sports,” Chesarek added. “Even if a match isn’t streamed in 4K, some clients are requesting 4K recordings for replay review, the ability to pan and scan, and more. We can easily shoot in 4K, mixing the footage with graphics and sound and hand it over to Helo in 1080p60 for HD streaming.”

Whatever the production, Chesarek makes a case for continuing to approach production in a way that improves on the previous one: “I can spend hours sweeping Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit for gear advice, recommendations, and reviews, but I also make a point to get out and talk to professionals and vendors where possible; it’s a strategy that’s paid off and one that led me to Helo. In talking to vendors specifically, you can also get an idea of how receptive they are to feedback, and that’s what I like about AJA. They truly listen to users and iterate the technology to align with customer needs whether through software and firmware updates or new products.”