The Rock and Roll Hall of fame provides their fans with a wide range of programs and events such as concerts, interviews, and informational programs, so they are producing a lot of content. The new SiriusXM Studio and their NewTek video production system are able to get out all their content easily.

Sam Avellone, Director or Sales at NPI Audio Visual Solutions in Cleveland, has helped design and install the video production studio and control room at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame facility.

“The TC1 makes it all happen, It’s the perfect tool. It’s called the TriCaster because it switches, records and web streams simultaneously. TriCaster is the only product on the market that does all three things at the same time in one chassis.

Sam Avellone

When designing the new control facility they needed something to produce, record and disseminate content from any location inside the museum and anywhere on the museum grounds. With such huge grounds, NDI Technology was able to make that possible. According to Avellone, NDI technology has revolutionized the production world, saving time, money, and personnel.

“The whole building is tied together in a platform called NDI. NDI is basically video-over-IP, which NewTek developed a couple of years ago.  Now, it’s a protocol in the industry.  I use the phrase, ‘if you’re not using NDI, you’re a dinosaur,’ because video-over-IP is what makes this whole set-up happen.  With NDI, we can go anywhere in the complex with a camera and plug into a network jack and send the signal from that camera to the new control room where it can be simulcast or web streamed.”

Sam Avellone

With NDI Technology, the new SiriusXM studio and control room, and their NewTek setup, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will be able to tell their story and reach even more people they have in the past. Rock and Roll will never die.

Check out the full article here!

Learn more about NewTek here!

Burgos was able to create a remote production setup with NDI KVM. He used Skype integration of the TriCaster TC1 to bring on talent and used Zoom and Microsoft Teams as an intercom system for the production team. “With both of those video conferencing options I can offer directors and producers multiview access by sharing the NDI KVM output” says Burgos.

“This sounds simple, but that’s the beauty of it. I achieved this capability without any extra hardware or a reduction in quality. It was a swift and effective pivot that kept business going.”

Jose Burgos

Burgos utilizes NDI KVM to bring web feeds into productions. This allows him to reduce the number of mice, keyboards and monitors to juggle. NDI KVM has helped him get more creative.

“I’m happy to report there are more productions on the horizon for my business. And I can say with confidence the NewTek TriCaster line of switchers with native NDI KVM components are the reason.”

Jose Burgos

Check out the full article here!

Learn more about NewTek here!

NewTek TriCaster^® offers many powerful keying functions to allow you to layer video in creative ways. Among those is a Tracker, that lets you select a color region in a video source, whether live or pre-recorded, and key video or graphics into that area. For this tutorial we have a video of our onscreen talent holding a blue artboard card and moving it around. NewTek Video Producer Richard Evans shows us how to set up Tracker, select the blue card and key in another video that will then stay mapped to the card no matter how it is moved.

The feature can certainly be used for fun, but on the practical side, this is an easy way to apply branding to an element of a video, even if that element is in motion. You can embed your own branding into your productions in clever ways, or producers can monetize branding opportunities by embedding sponsors’ branding into their productions. A venue could map branding to locations without built-in fascia displays, for example, in video going out to broadcast. This also allows elements of a virtual set to be used as virtual displays, even if they were not among the preset areas for such displays built into the virtual set.

Learn more about NewTek here!

San Angelo, Texas

“Hey, aren’t you the guy I saw on TV?” Surprisingly, that’s a question that Anthony Wilson—communications director for the City of San Angelo, Texas—gets asked a lot at supermarkets, restaurants, the gym, and other places around town.

While you might think he’s an on-air personality for the local TV station, he’s actually the “face” of San Angelo Television (SATV), the city government’s local access TV channel. Besides broadcasting on Suddenlink cable channel 17, SATV also distributes its videos via Facebook, YouTube, and the City’s website, cosatx.us. SATV’s mission is to keep San Angelo citizens informed about what their local government is doing for them.

While many government-run public affairs channels struggle to find viewers and stay relevant, Wilson and his colleague, City Videographer Brian Groves, are a two-man team that’s redefining what community media can be—a well-equipped, visually appealing, award-winning success story.

“We pride ourselves on producing the best video in this region,” said Groves. “Today’s video can’t just have substance, it also has to be a high-end product that really impresses viewers.” 

Despite the fact that their videos compete against those produced by regional ad agencies, production companies, and network TV affiliates, the SATV team has won 50 to 60 awards since 2013—the year Wilson joined the City’s Public Information Office, which produces SATV. Many of their awards have been for video production, including Groves’ Lone Star EMMY Award for the short film “Shattered Dreams” in 2017.

Video: The Go-To Medium

“The more people understand what our municipal government is doing, as well as how and why we’re doing the things we do, the more supportive they are. And, in this day in age, the best way for us to communicate with them is via video that’s accessible from multiple platforms,” Wilson said. 

On SATV’s many shows, Wilson conducts studio interviews with public officials and other special guests. The channel also features live city council meetings, community events, and talk shows focusing on public safety, property taxes, schools, and other city issues.

Behind the scenes, Groves serves as a one-man-band shooting, directing, and producing the shows largely because of the versatility of their new studio space, and the NewTek TriCaster TC1 live production switcher in the adjacent control room.

This efficient, ergonomic workflow was part of an end-to-end, turnkey package provided by Nelco Media that included the NewTek TriCaster TC1 4-HD/SDI input production switcher. Nelco also designed and built the set, lighting, and control room, as well as provided A/V systems integration.

“To ensure SATV’s success, the workflow had to be easy to learn, and easy for a one-man band to create a lot of content, including broadcast-quality live productions,” said Philip Nelson, CEO of Nelco Media. “SATV also needs to create a lot of content that responds quickly to hot topics involving the City.”

Quality Sells

While many U.S. PEG (public, education, and government) and public access stations struggle to make-do with SD cameras and sub-par production gear due to tight budgets, SATV acquired the HD video gear by using their “PEG dollars.” The local cable provider, Suddenlink, collects this fee that subscribers pay and gives it to the City of San Angelo to fund community media television.

“Since PEG dollars can only be used to cover A/V equipment, but not staff or freelance workers, that was another reason why the workflow had to be extremely efficient and ergonomic for a single employee to operate,” Nelson added. And to ensure that the PEG dollars would be spent wisely, Wilson embarked on an arduous, time-consuming Request for Proposal (RFP) process to solicit and evaluate prospective equipment vendors’ bids. The City Attorney’s office also helped him draft and review numerous contracts.

The final equipment package included: the TriCaster TC1, a LiveU 200, an Allen & Heath digital audio mixer, an assortment of studio and lavelier mics, six Canon C100 digital cameras, as well as a Kessler Crane camera jib and sliding crane motion control system that can be set-up and operated using an iPad.

According to Nelson, “The motion control slider enables Brian to have a dynamic shot where the camera slides back and forth across the studio without any need for a dedicated camera operator. And the jib lets him capture interesting angles of the studio, such as, downward views from the lighting grid.”

Finding their Mojo

Wilson and Groves are both extremely pleased with their new 30 by 20-foot studio space, which they renovated on the second floor of a city-owned building in an ideal location.

After covering one of their many city council meetings—which SATV simultaneously broadcasts and streams live—Wilson can invite one of the city officials back to their studio to recap the highlights of that meeting and more fully discuss the importance of key agenda items.

According to Groves, the studio lights and cameras are set up and the production is ready to roll with just a few button-clicks on the TriCaster’s control panel. While having a great studio and production switcher is not extraordinary for most broadcast stations, it’s a total gamechanger for this community media operation. To understand how their workflow has been revolutionized, let’s consider how life used to be before this upgrade.

“Every time we wanted to shoot an interview, we first had to find an available location, such as a conference room or the back of council chambers. We’d then have to lug two or three cameras, a lighting kit, backdrops, microphones and other stuff to that site, and spend three hours setting it all up and testing it,” Groves recalled. “To make matters worse, many segments we wanted to shoot only took about 10 minutes, and then we’d spend more time taking it all down, rolling up the cables, packing it away, and putting it back into storage.”

With the efficiency of this new studio and the TriCaster TC1, their productivity has increased dramatically, and as Groves puts it, “The TriCaster is a fantastic system that has made life easier. We just turn on a few switches, roll our program open, switch the cameras, roll the B-roll, roll titles, whatever we want our show to feature.” During production, the switcher takes care of outputting the live show for broadcast while simultaneously streaming it to a designated social media site.

With only a half-day’s training, Groves says the TC1 control panel was fairly easy to learn and intuitive enough for a single operator to manage every aspect of a live show with confidence.

Telling the Story from Every Angle

In the workflow designed the TriCaster is directly fed by four of the six HD/SDI Canon C100 studio cameras. The two additional C100s are connected to a “BirdDog” converter that converts the HD/SDI signal into the NDI^® IP-based network protocol for NDI^® input into the TriCaster.

Three of these cameras are on tripods, one is on the cine slider, one is on the jib, and the remaining camera is attached to a pole mounted near the ceiling for a wide shot. Prior to the show, Groves positions each of the cameras and then switches them using the TriCaster control panel while watching the studio through the control room window. 

Live graphics, including title graphics and lower third supers, are created in After Effects. Each graphical element is then imported into the TriCaster as a video clip along with its alpha channel. Brian can then roll them back from the TriCaster’s internal DDR as a downstream key overlay.  

Groves has tested TriCaster’s virtual set capabilities and has been impressed with the results, but they haven’t used that feature yet. Future plans include occasionally using a virtual set, likely based upon virtual set designs that come with the TC1.

The large, new studio space was designed to convey a unique sense of San Angelo, including paintings by local artists. The decor is continually reconfigured with different furniture, such as desks, couches, arm chairs, and coffee tables, to fit the mood of each show.

The overhead lighting grid supports a mix of conventional spotlights and accent lights, as well as Lightpanels Astra, Flolight Bladelights and other Mega Lite LED fixtures. The lighting design was not intended to be changed once the grid was set up. The lighting designer Lowry Perry conducted numerous lighting tests to ensure the right amount of illumination, given that the studio has many floor to ceiling windows. This natural light, which pours in and changes from day to night, needed to be filtered, while minimizing lighting reflections on the glass.

Lowry said, “We placed a special solar screen in front of the windows to cut down the light coming in. We chose a screen that did not have a pattern that could cause a moire effect when the cameras aimed at them. The screens roll down for production, and then roll back up when they want to have natural light coming in again.”

Shooting in the field is also much easier than before. Groves puts one of the C100s on a Movi Pro Stabilizer that allows him to move unobtrusively around the action while recording the video onto the camera’s media. This remote field capability gives them a greater, more visible presence in the community.

Never Lose Sight of the Mission

As a government entity, Wilson said that it was important for the City to tell its own story and to disseminate official information quickly via its own channels. The City’s Facebook page is also a valuable conduit that conveys comments and suggestions from over 29,000 unique followers. This feedback is used to raise the bar on future videos and shows and deliver programming that keeps viewers engaged.

In deciding which stories to cover on the channel, Wilson said, “We first ask ourselves, ‘Is it interesting? Is it of importance? and/or, Is it of impact’ to our citizens?”

If this three-pronged test isn’t met, we decline those opportunities in favor of stories that do support our objective—to enlighten our community about what our city government is doing, how we’re doing it, and why we’re doing it.”

EQUIPMENT LIST:

• NewTek TriCaster^® TC1 live video production switcher
• Six Canon C100 cameras; tripods
• Kessler cine slider motion control camera system
• Kessler Crane camera jib
• Allen & Heath digital audio mixer
• MoviPro Stabilizer
• BirdDog NDI^® signal converter
• Lighting grid with Astra LED lights, Mega Lite and Flolite Bladelights; solar screen
• Sennheiser Lavaliers and Heil Mics

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.

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.

Click here for the full article.

If your mission is to prepare media students with the best experience for a career in video then it’s reasonable to assume you want them to learn with the most appropriate technology.

Sadly, that’s not always possible, with many institutions saddled with outdated equipment and a budget that restricts the educator’s options.

When the opportunity does arise for fresh investment, however, the moment should be seized.

When the School approved a facilities upgrade earlier this year, the department heads saw a far greater purpose than merely a kit update from SD to HD. They could overhaul the workflow to reflect the evolving demands of the modern media industry.

“When we teach students to produce a story, we don’t want to spend our time training them how to operate the equipment,” says Sally Goldrick, lecturer in Screen Arts and Journalism who teaches TV studio skills to students. “We want to talk about why to choose a shot, when to use cutaways, what variety of shots we can include to make it compelling. This was the side of teaching we wanted to focus on…read more

Click here to watch on YouTube.

What’s New in Rev 7 for TriCaster^® TC1 and NewTek VMC1

NewTek has released TriCaster^® “Rev 7” software, as a free download in Products and Updates. This software applies to the TriCaster TC1 and NewTek VMC1 multi-camera 4Kp60 IP-based live production systems. It is the second version of software for these systems, so in some marketing and support materials you may see it referred to as “v2”.

The new software includes over 20 new features, some of which are complete new workflows. An example is the Express Switcher, which provides a greatly simplified UI, which can be perfect for content creators who frequently produce less complex programs, and those who depend on less experienced operators to work their productions.

In addition, Rev 7 is required in order to take advantage of the new Premium Access subscription program. Premium Access includes several innovative and powerful new NDI applications and advanced production features for NewTek’s live production systems, plus a way for content creators to keep these up to date.

Among the new capabilities in Rev 7:

New Workflows and UI Enhancements

Express Switcher

A single-row Switcher with all your available sources and your DSKs. Select from the available Fade and Take or preload a transition, and changing sources or keying graphics is a one-click operation. Much faster to learn, much faster to use, a major boon for those using volunteer operators.

Adaptive Multiview

Now you can minimize the Media Players, Audio Mixer and Buffers, and the Multiview picks up the screen real estate, making the monitors (and the new controls on them) larger and therefore easier to see.

Native Support for Touch Screens

TriCaster Rev 7 is touch screen capable, users can tap an ISO monitor in the UI to switch to that source or activate DSK, two-finger tap a viewport to open panels, and more.

Any Input Can Host a PTZ Camera

In the first version of TC1 and VMC1 software only 8 inputs could host a PTZ camera. Now they all can.

ISO Monitor Updates

Tap to Switch

When using a touch screen monitor, the user now can turn on an option to do switching by touching the ISO monitors in the Multiviewer section of the UI.

Local Audio Control

V2 adds a volume level control on rolling the mouse over the VU meter, allowing you to quickly adjust volume from any source. The Master audio mix can be adjusted when you mouse-over the Program monitor).

Media Player ISO Controls

ISO monitors now sport (touch-friendly) previous, next and start/stop controls in their label area when displaying a Media Player source. There is also a progress gauge in the label.

Switcher Control Enhancements

• Delegating Video Layers: The layer label is now a delegate toggle button. Simply click or tap the label to delegate it, and the button lights in bright blue. Click it again to de-activate it, or delegate another layer at the same time by clicking its label too.
• Layer Tally: A red border around the layer thumbnail monitor indicates the layer is currently displayed on Program out.
• Transition Timing: The duration controls for Background and DSK/KEY layer transitions have been moved into the transition 9-bin, which – as before – opens when you clip the effect icon at lower left in a control group.

Smart Source Configuration

Simply click the gear shown over an ISO monitor (or, on a touchscreen, two-finger tap the viewport) to open V2’s smart Input Configuration panel. This even works with the DSK/KEY monitors embedded in the Switcher and M/E panes.

Less is More

Let’s be frank – at times the bountiful features your system offers can be overwhelming. The V2 Input Configuration panel makes extensive use of ‘twirl-down’ gadgets to group controls logically and reduce panel clutter, making it much easier to locate the settings you are looking for.

For example, color, keying and cropping options are now all found together in the Image tab.

One Stop Shopping

You’ll also find you are opening fewer panels to get the job done.

Previously, for example, configuring SDI-PTZ cameras required you to visit Input Configuration, Hardware Configuration, and the PTZ tab. Now all related settings are nested in the Source group (Input tab).

Context Sensitive Tools

Configuration Panels are now context sensitive:

• The Input tab Configuration panel for an input assigned to a DDR now includes a playlist and most DDR controls
• Open the same panel from an input displaying a DSK, and it will include a complete set of DSK positions tools, etc., along with the DDR
• For a PTZ camera, the Input Configuration panel now includes PTZ presets and controls
• And so on for the Configuration panels for other production components in the TriCaster UI

Configuration panels have been cleaned up considerably to make room for this. (Among other benefits, PTZ setup is finally all in one place, rather than scattered in three different panes).

Context Sensitive Tools

Configuration Panels are now context sensitive:

• The Input tab Configuration panel for an input assigned to a DDR now includes a playlist and most DDR controls
• Open the same panel from an input displaying a DSK, and it will include a complete set of DSK positions tools, etc., along with the DDR
• For a PTZ camera, the Input Configuration panel now includes PTZ presets and controls
• And so on for the Configuration panels for other production components in the TriCaster UI

Configuration panels have been cleaned up considerably to make room for this. (Among other benefits, PTZ setup is finally all in one place, rather than scattered in three different panes).

More External Recorders

Rev 7 doubles the number of sources that can be captured externally to eight, in addition to the four main MIX (Quicktime) and MP3 recorders. This includes the ability for local capture of remote NDI

Enhanced Notifications

Popup notifications that appear and disappear are a thing of the past. Top right of the UI is a new Notifications icon. This opens a new Notification panel that alerts you to various events and transactions, and warns you of impending problems.

Click here to watch on YouTube

See NewTeks full article here

Carla Schwartz and crew of CB99videos on YouTube have produced a complete and concise tutorial for using NewTek TriCaster^® to stream live to YouTube. The tutorial specifically goes through the steps to create a YouTube Live event. Some of the steps to stream to YouTube need to be done on the TriCaster system, but many of the steps involved in setup on the YouTube side can be done from any available system. Using another system for those steps frees the TriCaster to prepare for, initiate, and deliver the live stream.

Not specifically mentioned here, but among the recommended best practices is to start live streaming a few minutes before your advertised start time so that you confirm the stream is working and resolve any problems before start time. For YouTube Live, do not use the common practice of putting up a static graphic or image during that time, that is specifically forbidden under YouTube Live rules. They want active live content during the entire stream, even a preliminary test period ahead of a scheduled live stream. They test streams to detect static images and text, and have banned users for periods of a month or more for having static content for any period of time at the beginning of a stream…read more.