Live Truck Takes North KC Students’ Broadcast Skills to the Next Level
By Jim Bask
The North Kansas City School District is now operating the first student-run live production truck in the country. Primarily based at Staley High School, the 33-foot long truck is also shared with Oak Park, North Kansas City and Winnetonka high schools for sporting event coverage. Kansas City’s Fox 4 News recently profiled the project.
“We get to set up the cameras. We can plug everything into the live truck, so it’s all us and we can pretty much learn from start to finish how to set it all up and that’s exciting.” Karson Davis, Staley HS student, executive producer.
Staley High School student Karson Davis operating the TriCaster TC1.
The truck was purchased from a television station in Ohio, and equipped with a new NewTek TriCaster® TC1 4Kp60 16-input hybrid IP/SDI integrated multi-camera production system with short panel control surface. The live production system supports cameras connecting either via SDI, or over the network via NewTek’s NDI® bidirectional technology for transport of video, audio and data over standard networks at very high quality and very low latency.
The TriCaster TC1 is the most complete multi-camera integrated live production system on the planet. Production capabilities include CG text and graphics creation, multiple downstream keyers per channel for video layering and graphics and text overlay, multiple Mix/Effects busses for layering and special effects. The system comes with a library of hundreds of built-in digital effects and transitions plus hundreds of graphics templates, many virtual sets, plus the applications to customize all of these assets and create new ones. Also provided are:
- Real-time social media publishing
- Media asset storage, management and playback
- Virtual sets, with virtual camera moves
- PTZ camera control
- Audio mixing
- Professional broadcast quality video calibration tools
- Automation
- And much, much more.